Volume 32, Issue 2

This paper is devoted to the study of definite kinds and other generic expressions, such as subkinds and definite plurals in argument position in Romance, namely Spanish. We support the claim that definite kinds denote the kind itself and are the expression of D-genericity in this type of languages. We argue that at the syntax-semantics interface definite kinds are numberless DPs composed by applying a iota operator (the meaning encoded by the definite article) to the meaning of nouns, thus constraining a generic interpretation for the sentence in which they appear. Subkinds and generic definite plurals, on the other hand, are the expression of V-driven genericity, since the generic meaning of these expressions is constrained by the type of predicate (kind and individual level predicates) they combine with. Subkinds are argued to differ from kinds in that they require Number (conceived as a realization operator ). Generic definite plurals are argued to be syntactically and semantically different from both English bare plurals and definite kinds, and derived by applying an intensionalizing operator over the iota operator (Chierchia 1998).

Aspectual notions, although displayed most clearly in verbs, manifest across categories, with notions like (un)boundedness manifesting themselves in several instantiations which are sometimes specific of individual grammatical categories. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on how aspectual notions emerge in different categorial domains by an analysis of subject-experiencer and object-experiencer psychological predicates (SEPVs and OEPVs, respectively). We review the evidence that SEPVs denote individual level (IL) states, and provide new facts – taken from the behaviour of participles – in favour of that diagnostic; we also argue that OEPVs should be classified as states of the stage level (SL) class. We argue that OEPVs denote states with an onset, which corresponds to the denotation of SLs. SEPVs simply denote states without boundaries, which we argue to correspond to IL predicates. Finally, we show how these two denotations follow without further assumptions from the structures proposed for SEPVs and OEPVs in previous work, specially Pesetsky (1995), making it unnecessary to postulate that the distinction is of lexical nature.

In many languages a linker element is inserted between a noun N and a modifier or a complement of N. We focus on Albanian articles and on Iranian ezafes, and we introduce comparison data from Aromanian. In section 2, we provide arguments as to why currently available formal theories of linkers (as copulas, as case assigners, as means for identity avoidance) face problems when applied to Albanian or Kurdish. In section 3 we argue, on the basis of morphological, syntactic and interpretive evidence, that linkers (at least in the languages considered) form a constituent with the A(P) that follows them and that their category is D. Section 4 contains the theoretical core of the discussion. A linker D and a determiner D have in common the fact that they are both able to satisfy argument slots of a predicative head (e.g. A). However a D closing off a DP is an operator, establishing a relation between a restrictor (the NP) and a domain of quantification (a VP). A linker D is a bound variable – it provides a satisfaction for a theta-role ultimately bound by the higher D. A cross-linguistic typology of determiners, linkers and pronominal clitics based on this analysis is provided. In section 5 we extend the analysis to pre-genitival linkers, treating genitive case as an elementary part-whole relation, of which the linker saturates the external argument (the possessum).

Dutch modal verb hoeven ‘need’ is a Negative Polarity Item (NPI) because of its restricted distribution to certain negative contexts only. By investigating the distribution of this NPI in child Dutch, the paper explores a solution to a learnability problem raised by the existence of NPIs: how can a child acquire the limited distribution of an NPI in the absence of both direct and indirect negative evidence? Corpus data collected through CHILDES confirm children's employment of a conservative widening learning strategy to solve the learnability problem. This strategy entails that children start out with the strictest assumption of hoeven , exhibiting a lexical dependency with the negative marker niet ‘not’, and weaken the assumption down to a less rigid reanalysis of this NPI, associated with an abstract negation in its underlying syntactic representation. The initial learning process turns out to be distribution-based only, i.e., without presuming any innate knowledge of NPIs and their restricted occurrences. However, distributional properties alone are not sufficient for children to reanalyze the NPI. Children's linguistic knowledge of negative indefinites as exhibiting a decomposable negation plays a crucial role in the subsequent reanalyzing process. The reanalysis emerging shortly after age four signifies exactly how adult speakers analyze the NPI, also explaining hoeven 's strength as a polarity item.

In Mandarin Chinese, the phrasal modifier or complement of a noun, usually followed by the functional element de , may occur either between a classifier and the noun, or at the left edge of the whole nominal, preceding a (demonstrative)-numeral-classifier string. The latter order exhibits many restrictions and thus is marked. Some of the restrictions are similar to the restrictions on the marked nominal-internal order in English. This paper argues that the marked order in Chinese is derived by a phrasal movement. The movement analysis is supported by the hierarchy of nominal-internal elements, the Superiority Condition effect, the Crossing-Over-Nesting effect, and island effect. This movement analysis is able to explain certain restrictions on the marked order, with respect to the types of modifiers, the readings of the same modifier, and zheyang ‘such’ at the left edge. The analysis also provides a possible account for the absence of nonspecific readings and the impossibility of de -stranding for the marked order.