Nonpassive Verbal Periphrases in the Romance Languages

Verbal periphrases combine two verbal forms that share their arguments. One of the forms, [V2], lexically determines most of the argument structure of the whole construction, whereas the other, [V1], contributes the sort of abstract meaning usually associated with functional categories in the realms of tense, aspect, and modality and is often classified as a (semi-)auxiliary. In most cases, [V2] appears in a fixed nonfinite form (infinitive, gerund, or participle), whereas the inflection on [V1] is variable; the periphrastic pattern may also include a preposition introducing the nonfinite form. Research on verbal periphrases has concentrated on the differences between periphrastic patterns and free patterns of complementation or adjunction involving nonfinite clauses, on the syntactic analysis of those patterns, and on their semantic classification. The renewed interest in the field in recent years has two sources. On the one hand, research on grammaticalization has emphasized the importance of periphrases for our understanding of the way in which exponents for grammatical meanings emerge diachronically from lexical constructions. On the other hand, work in generative syntax (in the so-called cartographic approach) has taken periphrases as evidence for the postulated existence of highly articulated functional layers above a core verb phrase headed by a lexical verb. The bulk of nonpassive verbal periphrases either modify Aktionsart or express viewpoint aspect or relative tense. Research has revealed considerable differences in their inventory and in the status of cognate periphrases across Romance, as well as some parallel or convergent developments.

Sentence-final aspect particles as finite markers in Mandarin Chinese

In Mandarin Chinese, sentence-final aspect particles ne, le, and laizhe may occur in some types of embedded clauses, but not in other types, such as the complement of a control verb, a raising verb, lai ‘come’ and qu ‘go’, a non-epistemic modal, and the prepositional complementizer dui ‘to’. These latter types of clauses systematically show properties of nonfinite clauses in other languages. They are intrinsically embedded, ban pro-drop, their clause boundaries may be invisible for binding, and they disallow a speaker-oriented adverb and an epistemic modal. The restrictions on the distribution of the particles indicate that they are used in finite clauses only, although the language has no tense or case marker. The paper argues that finite clauses show speaker-oriented properties whereas nonfinite ones do not; instead, nonfinite clauses exhibit higher-clause-oriented properties. Identifying the role of speaker in the finiteness distinction reveals the capacity of finite clauses, whether or not the capacity is marked overtly.

The Syntax and Semantics of Nonfinite Forms

The syntactic and semantic properties of nonfinite verb categories can best be understood in relation to and distinction from the corresponding properties of finite verb categories. In order to explore these issues, it is necessary to provide a crosslinguistically valid characterization of finiteness. Finiteness is a prototypical notion, understood in relation to a language-specific finite verb prototype; nonfiniteness is therefore understood in terms of degrees of deviation from this prototype. The syntactic properties of nonfinite verb categories, so defined, can be considered from two perspectives: the functions of nonfinite clauses within superordinate clauses (e.g., argument and adjunct functions) and the internal structure of nonfinite verb phrases. Typical of the second aspect is that nonfinite phrases tend to be defective in one or another respect, relative to finite phrases, which may be understood in terms of lacking functional projections or features which are an obligatory part of finite phrases. This defectiveness relative to the finite prototype plays out also in the semantics; typically, certain aspects of the meaning of nonfinite phrases are not independently specified, but must be derived from semantic properties of a superordinate finite clause.

Noun Phrase Construction in Academic Research Articles

The study explored the syntactic complexity and semantic function of noun phrases in TESOL academic research articles. The corpus was comprised of 60 articles (572874 words) from three TESOL journals including TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Journal, and Journal of Second Language Writing. POS tagging was added to the corpus using TagAnt 1.2.0 (Anthony, 2015). A list of 20 highest-frequency nouns was generated using wordlist tool in AntConc 3.3.4 (Anthony, 2014). Based on the specific contexts of these nouns, the researcher analyzed the syntactic complexity of noun phrases in light of their pre-modifiers and post-modifiers. The semantic function of noun phrases was analyzed based on the excerpts generated by the Concordance tool. The results showed that the complexity of noun phrases was dependent on the complexity of their premodifiers and postmodifiers. A complex postmodifier usually contained more than one element, embedding prepositional phrases, nonfinite clauses, or relative clauses. The use of noun phrases enabled the writer to increase cohesion and coherence within and across the text. The findings were of value to both L2 learners and young scholars in developing their writing performance for the target journals in the field

On pseudo-non-finite clauses in Welsh

Languages differ in how they employ finite and non-finite clauses. Welsh finite and non-finite clauses have a similar distribution to their counterparts in English. However, it doesn’t look like this because Welsh has certain finite clauses which look rather like non-finite clauses. We examine two types of pseudo-non-finite clauses: finite "bod" clauses and finite "i" clauses. We argue that both cases are instances of a mismatch between syntax and morphology, while the latter only involves periphrasis. We provide an HPSG analysis capturing similarities and differences between these two constructions and canonical finite and nonfinite clauses.

The typology of Mandarin infinitives

There has been a long-standing debate in the literature about whether Mandarin has infinitival clauses. Since there is no verbal morphology to distinguish finite and nonfinite clauses, this is an open question. Researchers have used diagnostics such as the availability of an overt embedded subject and the interpretation of aspect markers to argue both for and against the presence of infinitival clauses in Mandarin. Using some of these diagnostics, in addition to the availability of partial control interpretations, Grano (2012/2015) argues that the distinction between types of clauses in Mandarin is not based on finiteness, but rather based on whether there is restructuring: some complement clauses are vPs, while others are CPs. We provide new data based on the distribution and interpretation of the reflexive ziji, which suggests that there is a finite/nonfinite distinction. We argue for the existence of nonfinite control complements in Mandarin. Further, we evaluate the diagnostics used by previous researchers and illustrate that some of them are not reliable indicators of finiteness or of clause size.