Some notes on central causal clauses in Venetian

The goal of this paper is to provide novel evidence in favor of an integration of Haegeman’s (2002) taxonomy of adverbial clause subordination by discussing some data from C-introduced causal constructs in Venetian, the Italo-Romance dialect spoken in the city of Venice. Haegeman’s model is based on a two-class categorization of adverbial structures into central clauses, in which matrix-clause phenomena (such as the licensing of some sentence-initial or sentence-final discourse particle-like items, XP-fronting) are excluded, and peripheral clauses, in which these phenomena are licit. The external-syntactic distinction predicted by this model, namely a semantic differentiation resulting from TP/VP-adjunction for central vs. CP-adjunction for peripheral adverbial clauses, has severe consequences for the internal syntax of the a/m constructions, the most striking being the absence of the upper projections of the Split CP of central constructs. The data presented in this paper, however, suggest that (at least) in Venetian, (some) main-clause phenomena may also be licensed in central adverbial clauses under specific circumstances. Additionally, it will be shown that the conclusions drawn from the observation of the Venetian data match the behavior of the same constructions in Standard Italian, as well as in other languages, under the very same conditions.

The Linearity of Verb Copying Cleft Construction in Chinese: Semantic Underspecification and Pragmatic Enrichment

In Standard Chinese, verb doubling cleft construction (henceforth VDCC) has received little attention in the linguistic literature. Recently, Cheng and Vicente (2013) claim that VDCC has the same internal syntax as regular clefts, and two verbs stand in A-bar movement relation based on the lexical identity effect. In this paper, we argue that (1) VDCC is derived in line with the principle of linearity; (2) the first verb is a reduced minimal form acting as a topic which is pragmatically enriched via contextual information; (3) the second verb is interpretively dependent on the first verb.

Morphosyntaxis of Modern Greek Spatial Adverbs in a Diachronic Perspective

Greek adverbs are often claimed to have almost completely lost the ability to govern the genitive case, which is replaced by prepositional phrases with the accusative. Nevertheless, the corpus study presented in the article demonstrates that some low-frequent spatial adverbs δεξιά/αριστερά ‘on the right/left’ and βόρεια/νότια/ανατολικά/δυτικά ‘in the north/south/east/west’ retain the ability to govern genitive along with prepositional phrases. Moreover, cardinal directions prefer this archaic model to all the other options. Cross-linguistically, lexical items traditionally classified as adverbs and/or adpositions often demonstrate mixed syntactic behavior, since adverbs that were relatively recentlyderived from nouns, can retain their initial nominal internal syntax. The diachronic development of the Greek adverbs ‘right/left’ and cardinal direction terms also have well traced nominal sources. In the present study I suggest that the mixed category analysis can be applied to some Modern Greek adverbs.

Variation in P

This introduction presents a brief overview of the major achievements on the internal syntax of spatial prepositional phrase (PPs) as developed in the generative literature of the past two decades. The most important ingredients of the Split-PP hypothesis identified by the works in Cinque and Rizzi (2010) are described, and integrated with new proposals on the basis of novel macro- and micro-comparative data presented in the chapters collected in the volume.

To the Etymology of the Name Vladimir

Amongst other ancient Slavic pre-Christian two-part anthroponyms, the name Vladimir (*Voldimirъ) has been a recurrent subject of etymological analysis. However, some aspects of its etymology remain unclear. The article discusses four main issues: 1) the morphology of the first member of the name (is it a noun or a verb stem?); 2) the meaning of the second element of the name (-mirъ as ‘pax’ or ‘mundus’?); 3) the correlation between Old Russian names Volodimirъ and Volodimѣръ; 4) the overall meaning of the compound. The author concludes that the verbal nature of the first component of the name is suggested by the structure of the whole corpus of names ended in -mirъ, generally preceded by a verbal form, either in the imperative or the pure stem variant. Contrary to many researchers, the author believes that -mirъ, as part of personal names, should mean ‘pax’. This is evidenced by the meanings of the verbs preceding this element (‘to want,’ ‘to guard,’ ‘to protect,’ ‘to make,’ ‘to destroy / break / crush,’ etc.), the co-occurrence of the words found in name variants (cf., ‘peace’ and ‘silence’ in *Tixomirъ) and phraseology (cf. ‘to reach peace’ in *Stanimirъ, ‘to conquer peace’ in *Ratimirъ, ‘to break peace’ in *Lomimirъ, *Krušimirъ, *Rъvimirъ). Yet, it is the issue between the final elements -mirъ and -měrъ that remains the most controversial. The majority of scholars agree upon Germanic origins of the element -měrъ or the whole name *Voldiměrъ, however, some opinions about the possible Slavic origin of the ending formant (at least for some names in -měrъ) also persist. The etymology of the name Vladimir and similar two-component names should account for the systemic connections of each component with other lexical units having the same position in the structure of the compound name, the morphology and morphonology of these compounds, the internal syntax of the name, the meaning of each component and of the whole name.

NP internal syntax: High tone and quantifier conditions

This paper applies a model of tonosyntax designed for the Dogon languages to Emai, another language of West Africa that belongs to the Edoid group. The Dogon model aligns with and diverges from the tonosyntax of Emai. In Dogon noun phrases, an adnominal controller prompts a {L} (low) tone overlay onto the lexical tone of a left-adjacent target. Numerals, quantifiers and discourse markers fail as controllers. In Emai, most adnominals except cardinal numerals and discourse markers trigger a {H} overlay on a left-adjacent head or other adnominal. Emai varies from Dogon on two additional counts. Emai quantifiers prompt tonal overlay. In addition, right edge lexical /H/ constrains {H} overlay. We conclude by positing a potential relation between low {L} vs high {H} overlay and Clements and Railland’s (2008) lax vs tense prosody types.