Volume 43, Issue 2

Studies of the English dative alternation during the last three decades have not yet reached an agreement on the proper syntactic analysis of this alternation. The main goal of this article is to show that a study of the information structural properties of certain constructions can provide independent evidence for the adequacy of a particular syntactic analysis. Relying on the empirical adequateness of the argument structural approach to focus structure (Gussenhoven 1984; Selkirk 1995), we use accentual patterns as a test for syntactic representations. We argue that approaches in which any of the semantic arguments in triadic constructions is represented as a syntactic adjunct is not supported from a focus-theoretical perspective. Since double object constructions raise some problems for the overall applicability of the focus rules, a constraint on focus domain formation will be formulated which is not construction specific, but independently motivated.

In this article, I will investigate genericity from a cross-linguistic perspective. After discussing some methodological and theoretical problems involved in this task, I will present a multidimensional approach, arguing that it is necessary to factor apart different types of information involved in the notion of genericity. In the empirical part, generic marking and interpretation in the nominal domain will be analyzed in terms of this approach for five languages: English, German, French, Hungarian, and Greek. As a result, I will claim a fundamental typological difference between QUALITY-marking languages (English) and DISCOURSE REFERENT-marking languages (French, Hungarian, Greek), with German representing a mixed type between the two.

The phenomenon of that -deletion in English has traditionally been taken to be one of the prime examples of syntactic free variation: it has implicitly been assumed that the language arbitrarily allows predicates to embed their propositional complements with the complementizer that (as that -clauses), or without it (as bare clauses). Different researchers, however, have demonstrated that the complementizer CANNOT be deleted under certain classes of predicates. In this article, I show that the distribution of that -deletion across the different predicate classes is determined by a single semantic property, which I call “truth claim”: that -deletion is possible under predicates which semantically entail that a cognitive agent (most often their subject) has made an epistemic claim concerning the truth of the proposition denoted by the embedded clause. In some cases, that -deletion is also possible under predicates which pragmatically approximate the meanings of real truth claim predicates. This pattern is explained on the basis of semantic compatibility. I suggest that that -clauses and bare clauses have different meanings: that -clauses denote propositions, but bare clauses denote what I call “asserted propositions.” Only truth claim predicates, and those predicates which can be pragmatically used as such, are compatible with asserted propositions. Consequently, only they are capable of embedding bare clauses. To account for the impossibility of that -deletion in non-complement positions, the above semantic theory is supplemented with a complexity-based, adjacency-type constraint on the pronunciation of the bare clause.

The present work explores the nature of bare nominal arguments in Japanese and Korean in conjunction with Chierchia's (1998a) nominal mapping parameter. The nominal mapping parameter categorizes Japanese and Korean as NP [+argument, −predicate] languages. His theory predicts that Japanese and Korean bare nouns denote kinds and come out of the lexicon with mass denotations. In the present work, I will discuss the following two crucial differences between conventional mass nouns like the English furniture and Japanese/Korean bare nominal arguments. First, although conventional mass nouns do not get pluralized, Japanese and Korean bare nouns do. Second, bare mass nouns cannot refer to specific individuals, but Japanese and Korean bare nominal arguments can. I will investigate what modification is necessary in order to accommodate these non-mass-like characteristics of Japanese and Korean bare nominal arguments to Chierchia's (1998a, 1998b) theory. I will demonstrate that Japanese and Korean plural nouns do not appear in generic/kind-predication sentences and that Japanese and Korean anaphoric bare nominal arguments are not necessarily number neutral. Given these observations, I will argue that only kind-referring expressions are true bare NPs and denote mass. Non-kind-referring arguments will project the higher projections like DP (determiner phrase) or Cl(assifier)P, and DP and ClP will trigger the mass to count denotation shift.

The present article seeks to provide an answer to the following question: according to which mechanisms may a pattern of word formation develop a new meaning? In order to keep the task to a manageable size only changes will be considered, the result of which stays within the same type of pattern (affixation, compounding, etc.). Hence, we will not discuss how affixes develop out of compounds or similar phenomena. The only scholar who, to the best of my knowledge, has addressed this issue in a systematic and comprehensive manner is Jaberg (1905), who claimed that semantic change in affixation is always the result of semantic change in individual words plus reanalysis. Our study will reveal, however, that, though this is in fact the most common scenario, there is yet another, hitherto ignored mechanism of semantic change in word formation where no lexical change is involved. This mechanism, which will be called “approximation,” allows a mismatch to arise between a word formation pattern and a neologism formed according to it, if the distance is bridged by metaphor or metonymy.