Spanish imperfect subjunctive form –se

This paper analyzes use of and linguistic attitudes toward the Spanish imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive –se form (e.g., tuviese ‘had’ and hubiese tenido ‘had had’, respectively). The study consists of two phases, P1 and P2. P1 is quantitative in nature and focuses on production of the form; P2 is qualitative in nature and centers on linguistic attitudes associated with –se. P1 data come from 24 Spanish speakers and a semi-controlled oral/written interview. P2 data are from 15 Spanish speakers and a questionnaire. Chi-square results were significant for nationality, i.e., Spaniards used the –se form significantly more than Latin Americans. Sex, modality (oral/written), syntactic context, and verb type were all found insignificant. Qualitative comments from P2 suggest an overall negative association with the –se form. A somewhat weak relationship between the form and Spanish nationality emerged from the Latin American cohort, but not strong enough to suggest a definitive stereotype.

Die Präposition „auf” als Verkettungskomponente

The article presents the idea of examining the preposition auf ‘on’ from the generative perspective, in which the preposition is understood as an elementary unit of the mental lexicon (lexical array) without a syntactic category. The unit auf ‘on’ is treated as a phonological segment to which a corresponding syntactic category is assigned in the selected syntactic context. The syntactic processing system ensures the correct assignment through correct decoding from auf ‘on’ by concatenating various grammatical features with different functions and meanings. The article analyses the unit auf ‘on’ in terms of concatenation properties in the syntactic process of sentence generation in German.

The Semantics of Chinese Noun Phrases

Chinese nominal phrases are typologically distinct from their English counterparts in many aspects. Most strikingly, Chinese is featured with a general classifier system, which not only helps to categorize nouns but also has to do with the issue of quantification. Moreover, it has neither noncontroversial plural markers nor (in)definite markers. Its bare nouns are allowed in various argument positions. As a consequence, Chinese is sometimes characterized as a classifier language, as an argumental language, or as an article-less language. One of the questions arising is whether these apparently different but related properties underscore a single issue: that it is the semantics of nouns that is responsible for all these peculiarities of Mandarin nominal phrases. It has been claimed that Chinese nouns are born as kind terms, from which the object-level readings can be derived, being either existential or definite. Nevertheless, the existence of classifiers in Chinese is claimed to be independent of the kind denotation of its bare nouns. Within the general area of noun semantics, a number of other semantic issues have generated much interest. One is concerned with the availability of the mass/count distinction in Mandarin nominal phrases. Another issue has to do with the semantics of classifiers. Are classifiers required by the noun semantics or the numeral semantics, when occurring in the syntactic context of Numeral/Quantifier-Classifier-Noun? Finally, how is the semantic notion of definiteness understood in article-less languages like Mandarin Chinese? Should its denotation be characterized with uniqueness or familiarity?

Determiners are "conservative" because their meanings are not relations: evidence from verification

Quantificational determiners have meanings that are "conservative" in the following sense: in sentences, repeating a determiner's internal argument within its external argument is logically insignificant. Using a verification task to probe which sets (or properties) of entities are represented when participants evaluate sentences, we test the predictions of three potential explanations for the cross-linguistic yet substantive conservativity constraint. According to "lexical restriction" views, words like every express relations that are exhibited by pairs of sets, but only some of these relations can be expressed with determiners. An "interface filtering" view retains the relational conception of determiner meanings, while replacing appeal to lexical filters (on relations of the relevant type) with special rules for interpreting the combination of a quantificational expression (Det NP) with its syntactic context and a ban on meanings that lead to triviality. The contrasting idea of "ordered predication" is that determiners don't express genuine relations. Instead, the second argument provides the scope of a monadic quantifier, while the first argument selects the domain for that quantifier: the sequences with respect to which it is evaluated. On this view, a determiner's two arguments each have a different logical status, suggesting that they might have a different psychological status as well. We find evidence that this is the case: When evaluating sentences like every big circle is blue, participants mentally group the things specified by the determiner's first argument (e.g., the big circles) but not the things specified by the second argument (e.g., the blue things) or the intersection of both (e.g., the big blue circles). These results suggest that the phenomenon of conservativity is due to ordered predication.

Headless Relative Clauses in Yucatec Maya

This chapter surveys headless relative clauses (i.e. ones with no overt head noun) in Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of southern Mexico. For Indo-European languages, discussion of such constructions has focused on “free relative clauses”—those with only a bare wh-word in place of a head—and to a lesser extent, “light-headed” relative clauses⎯those with a dedicated set of pronominal elements in place of a head noun. In contrast, Yucatec Maya is shown to allow for four different kinds of surface headless relative clause forms depending on the presence or absence of a wh-word and the presence or absence of a determiner, quantifier, or other D-element. With respect to free relative clauses, whereas many more well-studied Indo-European languages have morpho-syntactically distinct constructions for definite and indefinite free relative clauses (e.g. with an infinitive or subjunctive form in the latter case), Yucatec Maya is shown to have a single morpho-syntactic form whose (in)definiteness is determined by syntactic context.

On Scalarity in the Verbal Domain. The Case of Polish Psych Verbs. Part 2: The Aspectual Classes of Polish Psych Verbs, Perfectivity, and Scales

Dokonane czasowniki stanów emocjonalnych sązwykle analizowane jako czasowniki wyróżniające fazępoczątkowądanego stanu. Te same predykaty mogąw pewnych kontekstach składniowych wyrażaćznaczenia ewolutywne. W artykule przedstawiona jest hipoteza, że w kontekstach inicjalnych, czasownik wyraża moment zaistnienia stanu w nosicielu. W kontekstach ewolutywnych predykat wyraża stopniowązmianęna skali intensywności stanu lub stopniowe nabycie stanu przez wszystkie części podzielnego argumentu czasownika. Zależnośćinterpretacji wewnętrznej struktury temporalnej zdarzeńod kontekstu składniowego pokazuje, wbrew tezie zawartej w pracy Rothstein (2020), że interpretacja rodzaju zdarzenia nie jest określona na poziomie czasownika dokonanego, ale ustalana jest na poziomie struktury zdaniowej (VoiceP/vP). ABSTRACT Polish perfective psych verbs are generally analyzed as inceptive predicates denoting the beginning of an emotional state holding of an experiencer. However, a perfective psych verb can also denote an event of gradual scalar change. In this paper, I argue that on the inceptive reading a perfective psych predicate denotes a transition from a state in which p does not hold to a state in which p holds of an experiencer. In events of gradual change, there is an increase in the degree on the scale of intensity of a given psych state or on the (abstract) extent scale contributed by a verb’s argument. As the internal temporal structure of the events denoted by perfective psych predicates can depend on elements of syntactic context outside the verb, the domain of aspectual composition in Polish is not the verb, pace Rothstein (2020), but VoiceP/vP.

Breaking the Syntactic Context in Arabic Grammar: The Out-of-Context Adjective as an Example

The research addresses an issue known in Arabic grammar as ‘the out-of-context adjective’. This is when the adjective ceases to relate to the preceding noun, so that it does not become subordinate to it but rather has a different syntax. This phenomenon exists in the Arabic language but it has not been examined in one single study, hence this paper aims to treat its aspects in one single work, thus facilitating its overall study. Following a descriptive and analytical approach, the paper explains this phenomenon and distinguishes between three cases: the case where the adjective can be cut from the noun it describes, the case where this is a must and the case where this is optional. The primary findings of the research include the fact that none of the above three cases can be deemed most appropriate, rather this depends on the intention of the speaker. The study recommends further investigation in both Arabic prose and poetry.

On Scalarity in the Verbal Domain. The Case of Polish Psych Verbs. Part 1: Polish Perfective Psych Verbs and Their Prefixes

Polish perfective psych verbs are generally analyzed as inceptive predicates focusing the beginning of an emotional state holding of an experiencer. However, a perfective psych verb can also denote an event of gradual scalar change. In this paper, I argue that on the inceptive reading a perfective psych predicate denotes a transition from a state in which p does not hold to a state in which p holds of an experiencer. In events of gradual change, there is an increase in the degree on the scale of intensity of a given psych state or on the (abstract) extent scale contributed by a verb’s argument. As the internal temporal structure of the events denoted by perfective psych predicates can depend on elements of syntactic context outside the verb, the domain of aspectual composition in Polish is not the verb, pace Rothstein (2020), but VoiceP/vP.