Volume 49, Issue 1 -

The goal of the paper is to shed new light on the semantics and pragmatics of cleft sentences by discussing the exhaustive interpretation typically associated with these complex syntactic structures. Based on a fine-grained analysis of the contexts in which “exhaustiveness” can be cancelled as well as reinforced by English also and only and Italian anche and solo , we claim that this meaning component associated with clefts in English and Italian is best accounted for in terms of a conventionalized conversational implicature. Our analysis is based on a corpus of authentic cleft occurrences collected from different written sources.

The local dialect spoken in the Shetland Isles constitutes a form of Lowland Scots. It has been suggested that stressed syllables in Shetland Scots tend to contain either a long vowel followed by a short consonant (V:C) or a short vowel followed by a long consonant (VC:), and furthermore that this pattern constitutes a trace of complementary quantity in Norn, a Nordic language spoken in Shetland approximately until the end of the eighteenth century. The existence of such a pattern has also been supported by acoustic measurements. Following a summary and overview of Norn’s demise in the Shetland Isles, this paper presents a regional survey of the relationship between vowel and consonant duration in stressed syllables in Shetland Scots. Based on acoustic data from 43 speakers, representing ten separate regions across the Shetland Isles, the inverse correlation between vowel and consonant duration is assessed. The results reveal that the inverse correlation is strongest in the northern part of Shetland and weakest in the south, and displays a general north-to-south decline across Shetland. The results are thus generally consistent with predictions that follow from regional variation concerning Norn’s death; evidence suggests that it survived the longest in the northern parts of Shetland.

Mauritian Creole displays an alternation between a short and a long form of the verb, which is reminiscent of the conjoint–disjoint alternation found in some eastern Bantu languages. Based on comparison with other French-based creoles and socio-historical evidence, we conclude that the Bantu substrate must have had an impact on the grammatical system of Mauritian Creole. We compare the synchronic properties of the alternations in Mauritian Creole and the most likely substrate Bantu languages of northern Mozambique and examine two possible scenarios for the influence of Bantu on the Mauritian verbal alternation, concluding that probably only the (syntactic) basics of the Bantu alternation motivated the persistence of the alternation in Mauritian Creole.

Associated motion is a very little known category. Markers of associated motion encode, on a lexical verb, a motion event in a temporal relation with the event expressed by the lexical verb (and not just the path, as directionals do). The literature on associated motion is scarce, mostly restricted to Australian and Amazonian languages. The paper builds on the general literature on associated motion as a backdrop to the analysis proper of the data from Mojeño Trinitario, an Arawak language spoken in Bolivia. This paper offers a detailed description of the associated motion markers of Mojeño Trinitario, at the morphological, semantic, and discourse levels. The study is mainly based on textual and elicited data collected in the field. The new insights provided in this paper will contribute to the emerging typology of associated motion.

Expletives have been argued to be merged in Spec, TP, Spec, v P, or within DP. This paper argues that this line of thought does not apply to the existential expletive fii of Jordanian Arabic. The arguments presented in this paper rest on the assumption that merge of fii in any of those proposed merge sites cannot be empirically substantiated since it does not account for data from Jordanian Arabic. It is argued instead that, in an existential construction, fii heads its own projection, an expletive phrase, with the associate projected as complement of the expletive. Further, the expletive phrase is argued to merge in the specifier of a predicate phrase, whose head is a null adjectival predicate. Therefore, the view of fii as a syntactic dummy is reconsidered.

The present production study investigates the prosodic phrasing characteristic of sentences containing a relative clause with two possible noun phrase antecedents [Noun Phrase 1 Noun Phrase 2 Relative Clause] in the variety of Spanish spoken in the Basque Country. It aims to establish the default prosodic phrasing of these structures, as well as whether differences are found in phrasing between native and non-native speakers. Additionally, it examines the effect on prosodic phrasing of constituent length and familiarity with the sentences (skimming the sentences prior to reading them aloud). To do that, the productions of 8 Spanish monolinguals, 8 first language (L1) Spanish/second language (L2) Basque bilinguals, and 8 L1Basque/L2Spanish bilinguals are examined. A default phrasing consisting of the prevalence of a prosodic break after NP2 ([NP1 NP2/RC]) is obtained, and differences are found between the prosodic contours of native and non-native speakers. Additionally, a constituent length effect is found, with a higher frequency of prosodic boundaries after NP2 as RC length increases, as predicted by Fodor’s Same Size Sister Constraint. Last, familiarity with the sentences was found to increase the frequency of occurrence of the default phrasing.

This article discusses three variable coding properties of Spanish objects: flagging ( a -marking vs. ø-marking), indexing (clitic doubling vs. no doubling), and clitic case form (accusative lo vs. dative le ). These properties are essential for the formal identification of grammatical relations. They are triggered by similar parameters that partly overlap and partly show distinct distributions, yet they also challenge the boundaries between direct objects [DO] and indirect objects [IO] and raise the question whether the typological alignment of Spanish (di)transitive clauses is indirective or secundative. The study draws on quantitative and qualitative corpus data on formal, semantic, and discourse properties of core participants in Spanish clauses, relating these properties to the distribution of variable coding. It is concluded that a -marking, clitic doubling, and leísmo are less frequently employed than unmarked objects, no doubling, and accusative case for clitics, that Spanish DO and IO must be taken as extreme points of a more general Object syntactic function, and that, in general, all variable object coding follows an indirective alignment type. Consequently, animate and topical objects are considered as formally and functionally marked atypical objects both in monotransitive and ditransitive clauses.

This paper presents a functional account of directives in spontaneous conversations in Spanish. More specifically, we address the use of imperatives and free-standing que -clauses with a directive meaning in interactions among equals. We start our analysis from Searle’s Speech Act Theory. The purpose of this paper is to clarify how imperatives and free-standing que -clauses with subjunctive mood function in terms of the range of speech acts and degree of prototypicality within the category of directives. In order to do so, we describe the functional range of both constructions and the syntactic differences among them. It is argued that que -clauses are displaced directives , expressing atypical directivity. We also posit a functional division of labor between prototypical imperatives and free-standing que -clauses with subjunctive mood. The study is based on the analysis of 57 conversations among adolescents from Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile (COLA corpus).