(Non-)factive (non-)islands and meaning-based approaches

A key question in the literature on factive Weak Islands has been whether the effect is syntactic or semantic. Since Szabolcsi & Zwarts (1993), a key argument for the semantic nature of Weak Islands is the observation that the effect requires not just factivity, but also that the property described by the embedded clause is non-iterable with respect to the extracted argument (uniqueness). We present twocaveats concerning the notion of factivity needed in meaning-based approaches. First, we present novel data on factive non-islands showing that certain lexically factive verbs do not (always) lead to islandhood when combined with uniqueness. Second, recalling data from Cattell (1978), we argue that certain non-factive islands can be captured by the same meaning-based explanation. The emerging picture is that lexical factivity of the embedding verb is neither necessary nor sufficient to induce weak islands in combination with uniqueness; rather, what matters is whether or not there is a contextual entailment, pragmatic or lexical, that the complement proposition is true.

On the synchrony, variation and diachrony of adverbial exceptive clauses in Polish

In this article, I examine the synchrony and diachrony of adverbial exceptive clauses in Polish headed by the complex complementizer 'chyba że' (unless). Synchronically, I argue that 'chyba-że'-clauses are syntactically nonintegrated adverbial clauses and that they cannot be analyzed as negated conditionals, although both clause types can give rise to an exceptive interpretation. Diachronically, I provide an analysis according to which 'chyba że' (unless) is treated as a complex C-head that is due to head adjunction of the discourse particle 'chyba' (presumably) and of the declarative complementizer 'że' (that). Essentially, there are three main factors that paved the way for the development of the exceptive complementizer in Polish: i) syntactic adjacency of the discourse particle 'chyba' (presumably) and of the declarative complementizer 'że' (that) establishing a subordination relation between the matrix clause and the embedded clause, ii) movement of the conditional clitic 'by' from MoodP to the CP domain, and iii) accommodation of negation of focus alternatives. As it will turn out, this process was completed in Middle Polish (1543-1765).

The That-Trace Effect: Evidence from Spanish–English Code-Switching

The that-trace effect is the fact that many languages (like English) ban the extraction of embedded-clause subjects but not objects over an overt complementizer like that, while many other languages (like Spanish) allow such extractions. The effect and its cross-linguistic variation have been the subject of intense research but remain largely a mystery, with no clear consensus on their underpinnings. We contribute novel evidence to these debates by using Spanish–English code-switching (the use of two languages in one sentence) to test five contemporary theoretical accounts of the that-trace effect. We conducted a formal acceptability judgment experiment, manipulating the extracted argument and code-switch site to test different combinations of linguistic features. We found that subject extraction is only permitted in Spanish–English code-switching when both the C head (que ‘that’) and the T head (i.e., the verb) are in Spanish, but not when either functional head is in English. Our results demonstrate indirect support for two of the five theories we test, failing to support the other three. Our findings also provide new evidence in favor of the view that the that-trace effect is tightly linked to the availability of post-verbal subjects. Finally, we outline how our results can narrow the range of possible theoretical accounts, demonstrating how code-switching data can contribute to core questions in linguistic theory.

Perspectival factors and pro-drop: A corpus study of speaker/addressee pronouns with creer ‘think/ believe’ and saber ‘know’ in spoken Spanish

This paper examines overt and covert speaker/addressee pronouns with the cognitive verbs creer ‘think/believe’ and saber ‘know’ in a corpus of spoken peninsular Spanish – the Madrid and Alcalá samples of PRESEEA (2014– ) – with a focus on 1st person singular (yo) creo que ‘(I) think that’. Departing from the observation made in the literature that overt pronouns are highly frequent with creer and that topic shift cannot account for all of them, it will be argued that perspectival factors related to evidentiality/epistemicity and subjectivity influence overt pronoun realization. A corpus study was conducted to investigate whether (i) [person] and [polarity] and (ii) the type of complement affect overt pronoun realization with the cognitive verbs creer and saber. The results indicate that the type of belief expressed in the embedded clause should be taken into account, as well as person and polarity. The ultimate trigger for phonetic realization of speaker/addressee pronouns will be argued to be the notion of contrast: cognitive verbs whose embedded complement encodes evaluations and non-visual, abstract information have high frequencies of overt pronoun realization because these contexts favor the evoking of alternative perspective holders. Overt pronouns will be analyzed as the result of a [+contrast] feature which is assigned to the specifier of a functional category encoding perspective in the split IP.

Apparent raising in Tongan and its implications for multiple case valuation

Apparent raising (AR) constructions in Tongan resemble raising constructions in that the thematic subject of the embedded clause seems to occur in the matrix subject position. Unlike regular raising, however, Tongan AR shows characteristics of A-bar movement such as long-distance dependency, sensitivity to islands, and syntactic ergativity. This chapter argues that Tongan AR involves three operations: (a) topic movement of a DP to the embedded [Spec, C], (b) cancelation of the previous valuation of the case feature on the DP in [Spec, C], and (c) subsequent case valuation under Agree with the matrix v. The proposed analysis calls for a parametric adjustment to the activity condition to allow for multiple case valuation: in languages like Tongan, a DP located at the edge of a phase not only remains active, but the valuation of its case feature gets undone upon completion of the CP phase.

The Morphosyntax of Embedded Clauses in Western Neo-Aramaic: Arabic Influence or Retention from Older Aramaic?

The article asks whether the morphosyntax of embedded direct object clauses and purpose clauses in Western Neo-Aramaic reflects retention from older stages of Aramaic, or innovation under the influence of contact Arabic. To this end, direct object clauses and purpose clauses are analysed in Western Neo-Aramaic, in older stages of Aramaic, namely, Old, Official, Biblical and Qumran Aramaic, as well as Syriac, the three Western Late Aramaic dialects (CPA, JPA, SA), and in contemporaneous Syrian Arabic. The analysis considers the embedded verb form, the formal means of linking the embedded clause to the matrix clause, and the co-referentiality of the matrix and embedded subjects, and relates these features to tense-aspect-mood. The article compares the constructions in the various sources of Aramaic and Syrian Arabic and finds features that Western Neo-Aramaic has retained from Late Aramaic, which differ from Syrian Arabic, despite the well documented influence of the latter.

Two types of alignment change in nominalizations

This paper investigates two instances of alignment change, both of which resulted from reanalysis of a nominalized embedded clause type, in which the external argument was marked with genitive case and the internal argument was focused. We show that a subject marked with genitive case in the early development of Austronesian languages became ergative-marked when object relative clauses in cleft constructions were reanalyzed as transitive root clauses. In contrast to this, the genitive case in Old Japanese nominalized clauses, marking an external argument, was extended to mark all subjects. This occurred after adnominal clauses were reanalyzed as root clauses. Japanese underwent one more step in order for genitive to be reanalyzed as nominative: the reanalysis of impersonal psych transitive constructions as intransitives. With these two case studies of Austronesian and Japanese, we show that reanalysis of nominalization goes in either direction, ergative or accusative, depending on the syntactic conditions involved in the reanalysis.

L1 transfer in the interpretation of L2 reflexive pronouns by child learners of Korean

Aim: The current study explores first language (L1) transfer in child second language (L2) acquisition, testing whether L1-Chinese children learning L2 Korean show an advantage over L1-Russian children in the acquisition of Korean reflexives. Methodology: L1-Chinese and L1-Russian children with L2 Korean completed truth-value judgment tasks designed to explore their interpretation of the Korean reflexives caki and caki-casin in bi-clausal sentences. Chinese, like Korean, has a monomorphemic reflexive that takes a long-distance (LD) antecedent, and a polymorphemic reflexive that prefers a local antecedent; Russian, in contrast, has only a monomorphemic reflexive, which requires a local interpretation in finite clauses. Data and analysis: The proportion of preferences for each condition in the tasks was statistically compared using a logistic mixed-effects regression. Findings: The study resulted in two main findings. First, L1-Chinese children, regardless of L2 proficiency, preferred the LD antecedent (i.e., the matrix clause subject) for caki and the local antecedent (i.e., the embedded clause subject) for caki-casin, which is target-like for Korean and consistent with the interpretation of the Chinese reflexives ziji and taziji. Second, high-proficiency (but not low-proficiency) L1-Russian children showed target-like behavior in rejecting an LD interpretation for caki-casin, but a non-target-like acceptance of the local interpretation for caki, which may be due to L1 transfer based on Russian’s locally bound reflexive. Originality: L1 transfer in the interpretation of L2 reflexive pronouns has been reported with adults, but not with children. The current study fills this research gap. Implications: This study provides evidence that supports L1 transfer in the context of child L2 reflexive interpretation, countering arguments claiming for a limited role of L1 transfer in child L2 acquisition.

Extraction strategies in Norwegian

In this paper I will show that it is possible to extract elements from an embedded root clause in a V2 language, provided that the deleted copy is spelled out in a high position. However, if the embedded clause does not have V0-to-C0 movement, no deleted copy can be spelled out. This difference falls out naturally from the assumption that embedded root clauses must be thematically complete and that in the case of movement chains, the foot of the chain cannot be spelled out. This paper is a detailed study of extraction strategies in Norwegian, based on a corpus of 1329 informants. Its novelty lies in combining the study of extraction strategies with the presence of resumptive elements in the embedded clause.