Modelling Selectional Super-Flexibility

The selectional flexibility of some attitude verbs (e.g. know, realize, report) between declarative and interrogative complements has been the subject of much recent work in formal semantics. However, little attention has been paid to verbs (e.g. see, remember, observe) that embed an even wider variety of complements (incl. subject-controlled gerundive small clauses and concrete object-denoting DPs). Since the familiar types of some of these complements resist an embedding in the type for questions [= sets of propositions], these verbs challenge Theiler, Roelofsen & Aloni’s (2018) uniform interpretation strategy for the complements of responsive verbs. My paper answers this challenge by uniformly interpreting the different complements of selectionally super-flexible verbs like remember in a generalized type for questions, viz. as parametrized centered questions. It shows that the resulting semantics captures the intuitive entailment pattern of these verbs.

Expressing perception in parallel ways

This chapter compares Pseudo-relatives (‘PRs’), a construction found in most Romance languages, with ‘Subject-wieclauses’ (‘SWs’), a German construction in which the subject of an embedded wie-clause precedes the complementizer wie (‘how’; e.g. Ich sah Maria, wie sie sang, lit. “I saw Mary, how she sung”, i.e. ‘I saw Mary singing’). We show that both constructions mainly occur with perception verbs, and that they have a very similar syntactic behaviour; e.g., they can be coordinated with adjectival or prepositional small clauses and have anaphoric tense. Furthermore, they both have a clausal nature but can modify a DP. We thus propose to extend Casalicchio’s (2016) analysis of PRs to SWs: they are Small Clauses (i.e., they have a typical subject-predicate configuration but no temporal independence) and they project a ForceP that hosts both the subject of the SW and the complementizer wie.

Resultatives, goal PPs, and postverbal subjects: From Scotland to Belfast

This paper investigates postverbal imperative subjects (e.g., get you to school), ungrammatical in standard English but grammatical in certain contexts in dialects of Scottish and Belfast English. Henry (1995) reports that unaccusative verbs generally allow postverbal subjects in Belfast English, but in the Scottish English (ScotE) dialect considered here, only a very restricted subset of verbs allow it. Moreover, in ScotE, the preposition away can appear without an overt verb (I’ll away to my bed); this also allows a postverbal subject in imperatives (away you to school). The ScotE data cast doubt on Henry’s (1995) proposal that the licensor of postverbal subjects is weak agreement. The paper argues that the subjects in these constructions are actually external arguments of small clauses (of which goal PPs are taken to be a subset following, e.g., Beck & Snyder 2001). The differences between dialects are located in the structure of resultatives; Belfast English allows Case to be assigned to the subject of small clauses in resultative constructions via a functional head endowed with a causation feature, allowing them to remain in situ in imperatives. In standard English, the causation feature is directly merged onto the verb, not allowing for Case assignment and forcing raising of the subject of the small clause. The ScotE data is argued to arise from the availability of a very ‘light’ verb which is realized as get in some contexts and as silence in others.

Verbless Predicative Clauses in the Romance Languages: Syntax, Semantics, Variation

Nonverbal or verbless utterances posit a great deal of challenge to any linguistic theory. Despite its frequency and productivity among many languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, Guaraní, Haitian Creole; Hdi, Hebrew, Hungarian, Irish, Korean, Mauritian Creole, Mina, Northern Kurdish, Romandalusí, Russian, Samoan, Turkish, Yucatec Maya, a.o., verbless clauses have received so far relatively little attention from most theoretical frameworks. The study of such clauses in general raises many interesting questions, since they appear to involve main clause structure without overt verbs. Some of the questions that arise when dealing with verbless constructions are the following: (a) are these clauses a projection of T(ense), or some other functional category, (b) do verbless clauses have an overt or null verbal head, (c) are verbless clauses small clauses, and (d) can verbless clauses be interpreted as propositions or statements that are either true or false. In mainstream generative grammar the predominant assumption has been that verbless clauses contain a functional projection that may be specified for tense (Tense Phrase) but need not occur necessarily with a verbal projection or a copula. This is strong evidence against the view that tense needs to co-occur with a verbal head—that is, tense may be universally projected but does not need to co-occur with a verbal head. This proposal departs from previous analyses where the category tense may be specified for categorial verbal or nominal features. Thus, in general, verbless clauses may be considered Tense Phrases (TPs) that dominate a nonverbal predicate. An example of verbless constructions in Romance languages are Predicative Noun Phrases (henceforth, PNPs). PNPs are nonverbal or verbless constructions that exhibit clausal properties.

Subordination and embedding

As an introduction to subordination the various functions of the particle ki are presented. The central question is how sentences are used as subject, object, and predicate. First, predicates and subjects are discussed, followed by a thorough treatment of direct and indirect speech. This includes certain colloquialisms based on the optative. After this intermezzo the discussion is resumed for direct objects based on both infinitival as well as on finite forms. The choice between these depends on the semantics of the verb involved. Next, the relation between secondary predicates (small clauses) and raising phenomena is explained, which all form peculiar types of embedding. Furthermore, it is shown that there are seven verbal classes, each of which takes either one, two, or three types of complement, accordingly being expressed by one propositional or two predicational types of complementation. The final sections deal with passive and postpositional embeddings.

Small Clause é PoP

Sempre foi discutido na literatura o status categorial das Small Clauses (SCs (STOWELL, 1981; MORO 2000 e outros), PrP (BOWERS, 1993), PredP (BAILYN, 2001) etc.) e, já que uma teoria de estrutura de sintagmas exocêntrica pede que Objetos Sintáticos tenham rótulos para que Interpretação Plena os interprete em CI, então é importante perguntarmos qual o rótulo das SCs. O principal objetivo deste artigo é argumentar que o sistema apresentado nos dois artigos recentes, Problems of Projection, PoP (CHOMSKY, 2013; 2015), pode explicar morfologia de caso e concordância dentro das SCs interlinguisticamente, discutindo dados do português e do russo. Proponho que, no Sistema de PoP, SCs podem ser rotuladas como ϕ, quando o sujeito e o predicado compartilham estes traços. De outra forma, quando a morfologia do conjunto sujeito-predicado não combina, o sujeito deve ser alçado, a fim de que o traço de caso do predicado seja checado.

Exclamatives are nonsententials: Evidence from Arabic and other languages

Previous studies overlook the fact that exclamatives (Excls) are temporally deictic to thehere and now, and they are anchored by the context rather than Tense (i.e., they lack the TP layer),and that they are constructed crosslinguistically as nonclausal projections. This paper provides anoverview of the literature and highlights that the clausal type of Excls is not agreed upon, the definingfeatures (e.g., factivity, scalar implicature, and question/answer relations) are highly controversialand cross-linguistically invalid, and previous analyses seem inconsistent, complicated, andinadequate to account for the idiosyncrasies of Excls. Unlike previous studies, the paper claims thatExcls as asymmetrical small clauses selected by Excl head. This analysis accounts for the peculiaritiesand intricacies of the three types of Arabic Excls (i.e., Wh-Excls, vocative Excls, and verbal Excls)such as (i) their inflexible word order, (ii) case alternation on the referent, (iii) the presence of spuriousprepositions, and (vi) the obligatory presence of some particles and affixes although not semanticallyrequired. Since the given peculiarities are not specific to Arabic and are found in other languages andsupported by cross-linguistic data, the paper claims that the nonsentential approach is empiricallymore defensible and conceptually simpler to account for Excls crosslinguistically.