English non-manner how-clauses as answers to deficient questions

English exhibits a variety of embedded how-clause that, while introduced by a canonically interrogative item, lacks an intuitive sense of interrogativity. This paper offers an analysis of the semantics of these clauses that is grounded interrogative semantics. On this view, how in these clauses introduces a degenerate, necessarily-singleton question set. Further, the paper observes that how here introduces a factive presupposition that cannot be reduced to the matrix predicate’s entailments. Accordingly, this paper supports a view on which factivity can arise from multiple sources. A diachronic-based account is also offered to explain the reccurence of how in non-manner embedded clauses cross-linguistically.

Word order in heritage Russian: clause type and majority language matter

Heritage speakers (HSs) are known to differ from monolingual speakers in various linguistic domains. The present study focuses on the syntactic properties of monolingual and heritage Russian. Using a corpus of semi-spontaneous spoken and written narratives produced by HSs of Russian residing in the US and Germany, we investigate HSs’ word order patterns and compare them to monolingual speakers of Russian from Saint Petersburg. Our results show that the majority language (ML) of HSs as well as the clause type contribute to observed differences in word order patterns between speaker groups. Specifically, HSs in Germany performed similarly to monolingual speakers of Russian while HSs in the US generally produced more SVO and less OVS orders than the speakers of the latter group. Furthermore, HSs in the US produced more SVO orders than both monolingual speakers and HSs in Germany in embedded clauses, but not in main clauses. The results of the study are discussed with the reference to the differences between main and embedded clauses as well as the differences between the MLs of the HSs.

Embedded root phenomena and indirect speech reports

This article analyzes the occurrence of performative root phenomena in complement clauses. I show that the clauses that host this kind of phenomena have the same distribution as direct speech complements. I argue that the correspondence is based on the fact that, due to their rich syntactic left periphery, these embedded clauses convey speech acts. This assumption receives further support by the grammatical behavior of what I argue are the two major classes of verbs subordinating direct speech and ERP-hosting embedded clauses: locutionary and illocutionary embedding verbs. I analyze illocutionary verbs as bearing an abstract illocutionary predicate selecting either a propositional or a speech-act type, and locutionary verbs as ordinary relational predicates selecting a speech-act type. Taken together, these elements allow for a straightforward syntax-semantics interface and explain the differentiated behavior of root phenomena in complements to locutionary and illocutionary verbs.

Long-distance syntactic dependencies drive the complexity of legal language

Although contracts and other legal documents have long been known to cause processing difficulty in laypeople, the source and nature of this difficulty has remained unclear. To better understand this mismatch, we conducted a corpus analysis (~10 million words) to investigate to what extent difficult-to-process features that are reportedly common in contracts--such as center embedding, low-frequency jargon, passive voice and non-standard capitalization--are in fact present in contracts relative to normal texts. We found that all of these features were strikingly more prevalent in contracts relative to standard-English texts. We also conducted an experimental study ($n=108$ subjects) to determine to what extent such features cause processing difficulties for laypeople of different reading levels. We found that contractual excerpts containing these features were recalled and comprehended at a lower rate than excerpts without these features, even for experienced readers, and that center-embedded clauses led to greater decreases in recall than other features. These findings confirm long-standing anecdotal accounts of the presence of difficult-to-process features in contracts, and show that these features inhibit comprehension and recall of legal content for readers of all levels. Our findings also suggest such difficulties may largely result from working memory costs imposed by complex syntactic features--such as center-embedded clauses--as opposed to a mere lack of understanding of specialized legal concepts, and that removing these features would be both tractable and beneficial for society at large.

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.

Khoekhoegowab tone sandhi: New experimental evidence

Khoekhoegowab has a tone sandhi process that replaces each underlying tonal melody with an arbitrary secondary melody. This process at first appears to be an unusual example of a "left-dominant" sandhi process in the sense of Yue-Hashimoto (1987) or Zhang (2007). Within a given domain, the leftmost word retains its base from, but the other words undergo paradigmatic substitution; left-dominant systems typically involve spreading of a tonal melody rather than substitution. However, this description of Khoekhoegowab sandhi seems to break down when we consider verbs. Prior descriptions disagree as to whether verb sandhi depends on the placement of a tense-marking clitic (Haacke 1999) or the embedding status of the clause (Brugman 2009). This paper presents the results of a new prosodic production experiment aimed at resolving this conflict. The result is a hybrid generalization: verbs in matrix clauses undergo sandhi when preceded by a tense marker, but verbs in embedded clauses resist sandhi across the board. Thus, Khoekhoegowab continues to look like an exceptional left-dominant system: The verb and tense marking form a sandhi domain in matrix clauses (triggering sandhi on the verb whenever it is not leftmost within that domain), but in embedded clauses verbs form their own independent domain instead.

Deconstructing Stylistic Fronting in Old Norwegian and Old Spanish

Stylistic Fronting (SF) is usually defined as a special kind of fronting, where a constituent (or part of a constituent) which is not the subject is moved to a position that precedes the finite verb. SF is found in both Old Spanish and Old Norwegian. In this chapter we show that the two languages share several common properties regarding fronting patterns in embedded clauses, more specifically in restrictive relative clauses, and that in both languages, apparent heads and unambiguous phrases may be fronted. In both languages a fronted element may cooccur with an overt phrasal subject. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the phenomenon of Stylistic Fronting, suggesting that the original strong claims made regarding SF in Icelandic are idiosyncratic, and that the term Stylistic Fronting in fact subsumes several types of movement operations (Labelle & Hirschbühler 2017), some of which have none of the properties originally claimed for Stylistic Fronting in Icelandic. Furthermore, it appears as though the pragmatic effects of the fronting were similar in the two languages; fronting in restrictive relative clauses occurs to check an anaphoric feature (López 2009). The striking parallelisms between Old Spanish, a Romance language, and Old Norwegian, a Germanic one, invites further comparative research on similar syntactic phenomena in the languages.

Two subjunctives or three?

This paper examines the use of the three non-periphrastic subjunctives in Spanish in embedded clauses under obligatory subjunctive predicates in the past tense in three Spanish varieties: Argentinean, Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. By means of random forest and logistic regression analyses, I demonstrate that a grammar where the two “past” subjunctives make up one group, such that the variation can be modeled on a binary opposition between (morphologically) past vs. (morphologically) present, achieves better prediction accuracy and goodness-of-fit parameters than a grammar with a three-way split. The results suggest that, at least in complement clauses of obligatory subjunctive predicates, there appear to be no semantic differences between the two past subjunctives but there are still relatively large differences in how the three subjunctive forms are used across the three Spanish varieties studied.1

The missing-VP effect in readers of English as a second language

English sentences with double center-embedded clauses are read faster when they are made ungrammatical by removing one of the required verb phrases. This phenomenon is known as the missing-VP effect. German and Dutch speakers do not experience the missing-VP effect when reading their native language, but they do when reading English as a second language (L2). We investigate whether the missing-VP effect when reading L2 English occurs in native Dutch speakers because their knowledge of English is similar to that of native English speakers (the high exposure account), or because of the difficulty of L2 reading (the low proficiency account). In an eye-tracking study, we compare the size of the missing-VP effect between native Dutch and native English participants, and across native Dutch participants with varying L2 English proficiency and exposure. Results provide evidence for both accounts, suggesting that both native-like knowledge of English and L2 reading difficulty play a role.