Volume 54, Issue 3

This paper offers a first systematic investigation of predicative possessive constructions across Western Iranian languages. The notion of possession is conceived as a prototypical domain. It is shown that investigated languages are classified into two major areally distributed groups with respect to predicative possessive constructions: (i) “be”-verb languages, (ii) “have”-verb languages. “Have”-possessives, which originated from “action schema”, are argued to have superseded the archaic “be”-possessives, which trigger a non-canonical marking of the possessor argument. However, “have”-verb languages have preserved relics of the older “be”-possessive in some neighbouring domains to possession. In addition, two languages exhibit possession split and are in transition from “be”-possession to “have”-possession: these languages demonstrate the effect of alienability/inalienability in such a split.

This paper presents a detailed analysis of nasality in Dagbani, a Gur language of Ghana, and the role it plays in Dagbani prosody. It demonstrates that the nasal is at the centre of defining the range of what is possible in Dagbani prosodic patterns. Nasals provide the basis for determining the full range of syllable types and the tone bearing unit of Dagbani; nasals are the only coda consonants that licence vowel lengthening; and nasals provide the only cases of phonological non-vocalic geminates. The overall effects of the influence of nasality is the emergence of complex prosodic structures. Contrary to the crosslinguistically acclaimed marked position of the coda, the CVN syllable is the default, unmarked syllable in Dagbani.

Recent studies have argued that proper naming expressions cross-linguistically display distinct morphosyntactic behavior, i.e., naming-specific marking for case, definiteness, number and gender, among other categories. This study aims to contribute to the discussion by analyzing the marking of definiteness and specificity (D-marking) on naming expressions and common nouns from a comparative perspective, drawing on a sample of 50 areally, genetically and typologically diverse languages. The results present little support for D-marking being part of a cross-linguistically special onymic grammar: rather, the data suggest that there are different ways in which splits between common nouns and proper naming or between naming classes can materialize. Moreover, it is argued that the variability in D-marking of naming expressions correlates not just with animacy but with other semantic features as well, only some of which are integrated into the Animacy Hierarchy, including agentivity, individuation, identifiability and augmentation.

The purpose of this study is to re-evaluate the interpretation of a particle that has hitherto been analyzed as a marker either of addressee or the subject of a quoted clause in Ben Tey (Dogon, Mali). As both of these interpretations are typologically rare if not unique, a broader conceptualization for the particle as a quotative topic marker is proposed here. Data are from a newly compiled cross-linguistic annotated corpus of discourse reports within textual contexts. Along with data presentation and analysis, a methodology is illustrated for multilingual comparative corpus construction for the analysis of discourse reporting strategies.

In this paper we analyse Spanish verbal constructions that accept both the clitic se and the prefix auto- in order to determine whether these formations are or are not more agentive than the corresponding non-prefixed constructions ( autocriticarse vs. criticarse ). The proposal arises from the discussion about the different semantic values observed in formations with auto- and explores the distinctive features of such formations in contrast to those without auto- . We carried out a twofold analysis: first, we applied a set of tests of agentivity and control to a sample of 130 verbs with auto- extracted from the Modern Spanish Reference Corpus (CREA) and compared the sample with its non-prefixed pronominal pairs (i.e. verbs with clitic se ). Second, we carried out a series of surveys using similar tests with Spanish speakers to guarantee the acceptability of the corpus interpretations. We argue that prefixed constructions show a higher degree of agentivity and control by external arguments, which results in the impossibility of bidirectionally replacing these constructions with those that only have the clitic se .

This paper explores the formal expression of two Basque dative argument types in combination with psych nouns and adjectives, in intransitive and transitive clauses: (i) those that express the experiencer, and (ii) those that express the stimulus of the psychological state denoted by the psych noun and adjective. In the intransitive structure involving a dative experiencer (DatExpIS), the stimulus is in the absolutive case, and the intransitive copula izan ‘be’ shows both dative and absolutive agreement. This construction basically corresponds to those built upon the piacere type of psychological verbs typified in (Belletti, Adriana & Luigi Rizzi. 1988. Psych-verbs and θ -theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6. 291–352) three-way classification of Italian psych verbs. In the intransitive structure involving a dative stimulus (DatStimIS), the experiencer is marked by absolutive case, and the same intransitive copula shows both absolutive and dative agreement (with the latter corresponding to the dative stimulus and not to the experiencer). We show that the behavior of the dative argument in the two constructions is just the opposite of each other regarding a number of morphosyntactic tests, including agreement, constituency, hierarchy and selection. Additionally, we explore two parallel transitive constructions that involve either a dative experiencer and an ergative stimulus (DatExpTS) or a dative stimulus and an ergative experiencer (DatStimTS), which employ the transitive copula * edun ‘have’. Considering these configurations, we propose an extended and more fine-grained typology of psych predicates.

Folklore refers to information that we have learnt as a part of the history of our own people and that has passed on from generation to generation for hundreds, or even thousands of years. This paper shows that as an information source folklore has features in common with other information sources, most notably hearsay, but it nevertheless constitutes an information source of its own, characterized as [−personal] [−direct] and [+internalized]. In addition, the paper proposes a formal-functional typology based on the element used for folklore coding. It is also shown that the semantic similarity of the coded element with the proposed definition of folklore corresponds to its frequency. Finally, the paper discusses the central theoretical implications this study has for our understanding of evidentiality.