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This paper inquires into the structure of newly emerging relative clauses (RCs) in the Surgut dialect of Khanty, an endangered Finno-Ugric language of Western Siberia. The original externally headed RCs in this language are prenominal, with a participial verb form and a gap at the relativization site. More recently new types have been observed as well: post-nominal participles with and without ťu (a morpheme that looks identical to the distal demonstrative ‘that’) as well as postnominal finite RCs with a relative pronoun. These types have emerged as a result of extensive language contact with Russian, the socially dominant language of the area. The paper provides the first detailed description and analysis of the new Surgut Khanty RC types, exploring their syntactic structure as well as the extent to which language contact has shaped these structures.

This is a comparative investigation of contrastive negation in English and Finnish, i. e. combinations of a negated and an affirmed part construed as alternatives to one another. In both languages, there are several constructions that express contrastive negation, but their division of labour remains unclear. The aims of the paper are two-fold: first, to see what constructional strategies are available for contrastive negation in the two languages and, second, to see how the strategies are motivated by its interactional functions. In English, contrastive negation may be expressed by using the adversative conjunction but correctively (e. g. It’s not the bikers but the other vehicle on the road ), whereas standard Finnish has a specialised corrective conjunction vaan alongside the adversative mutta . Moreover, many constructions can express contrastive negation, including ones without a conjunction (e. g. It’s not the bikers, it’s the other vehicle on the road ). An analysis of conversational data shows that English favours constructions without conjunctions, while in Finnish constructions both with and without conjunctions are frequent. The uses of contrastive negation are divided into reactive and non-reactive. The pragmatic functions largely explain the usage patterns, and these in turn can explain the cross-linguistic regularities of corrective conjunctions.

This paper investigates the distinct functions associated with the copula morpheme and their distribution across Sinitic languages. Based on fieldwork on five Sinitic languages, an empirical generalization will be presented regarding the scope and variation of copular multifunctionality. Specifically, language-specific variation is witnessed in topic and conditional marking as well as verum marking. Conversely, it is found that Sinitic languages converge on employing the copula in constructions expressing phrasal and clausal level focus. The paper further explores whether these copular constructions should receive a uniform syntax, or should be conceived of as having a set of underlaid heterogeneous structures.

Mainstream approaches to the typology of reported discourse have been based on the notion of a direct-indirect continuum : reported speech constructions are traditionally analyzed as conforming to or deviating from the “ideals” of European direct and indirect speech. This study argues that continuum-based approaches fail to distinguish between two dimensions of variation that are systematically discriminated in a number of African languages and should therefore be treated separately. First, different constructions can be recruited for speech reporting, ranging from paratactic to subordinate structures. Second, languages differ in the way pronouns in speech reports are interpreted. In European languages two different deictic strategies are associated with different syntactic types of speech report (‘indirect’ and ‘direct’ deixis is correlated with subordination and parataxis, respectively). In Kakabe, we argue, the choice of pronominal values is independent of the construction’s syntax. Dissociating the construction’s structural properties from the behavior of indexicals allows us to describe the Kakabe strategies of speech reporting as well as account for the seemingly puzzling behavior of reported commands. Our data shows that speech reporting strategies of Kakabe should be treated as a type in its own right: a type characterized by loose syntax and flexible pronominal indexicality.

There is debate regarding the extent to which egocentric distance versus a more interactional approach underpin the use of spatial demonstratives across languages. This study experimentally tested the influence of object distance from a speaker and two dynamic speech-situation related parameters – position of an interlocutor, and the one who placed the object referred to – on adnominal demonstrative pronoun choice in two very close kindred languages: Estonian and Võro. These languages are spoken in the same geographical region and are closely related yet have different demonstrative systems. Our results confirmed the influence of egocentric distance on the choice of adnominal demonstrative pronouns in both languages, but the influence of two more interactional factors was found only in Võro. These results highlight the importance of egocentric distance underlying the use of demonstratives in a spatial context but also show that languages that are even closely related vary in the extent to which additional parameters affect dedmonstrative choice.

This paper is concerned with a hitherto undiscussed type of tough -construction in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Our starting point is the observation that the tough -adjective in this construction invariably displays nominative masculine singular morphology, a pattern of ‘default’ agreement which does not seem to occur elsewhere in the grammar of MSA. At a semantic level, the relevant adjective is argued to form a complex predicate with a deverbal nominalization that acts as its complement: together, these two elements indirectly modify the subject noun phrase. To explain the default agreement pattern, we propose that MSA tough -constructions involve two distinct subjects, viz. a phonologically null expletive subject which controls agreement on the tough -adjective, and a Broad Subject which acts as the semantic subject of the whole construction. We show that there is independent evidence for the existence of both null expletives and Broad Subjects in MSA.