Volume 47, Issue 6

This article analyzes inherent clitics of idiomatic constructions as verbal arguments (Jelinek, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2: 39–76, 1984; Baker, The polysynthesis parameter, Oxford University Press, 1996; Hale, On the significance of Eloise Jelinek's pronominal argument hypothesis, John Benjamins, 2003) that are translated as free variables (Delfitto, Catalan Journal of Linguistics 1: 41–69, 2002): they are anaphoric to a (hidden) nonreferential discourse topic or (right) dislocated constituent. Furthermore, since they denote abstract semantic objects (Asher, Reference to abstract objects in discourse, Kluwer, 1993), they are assumed to be semantically incorporated into the verb to which they are affixed at the syntax-semantics interface (Van Geenhoven, Semantic incorporation and indefinite descriptions, CSLI, 1998), either by unification of selecting features or by predicate modification of some role function of the event under consideration (Farkas and Swart, The semantics of incorporation, Stanford University Press, 2003; Dayal, A semantics for pseudo incorporation, Rutgers University, 2003). Whereas noun incorporation is a salient property of polysynthetic languages (as has been extensively argued in the linguistic literature [Mardirussian, Chicago Linguistic Society 11: 383–389, 1975; Mithun, Language 60: 847–894, 1984]), in this article the incorporation of clitics and nouns is argued to be a covert phenomenon of nonpolysynthetic languages, specifically in idiomatic constructions (Espinal, Property denoting objects in idiomatic constructions, John Benjamins, 2001).

One of the ways in which discourse coheres is by means of repeated reference to entities. Theoretical accounts of referential coherence propose heuristics for the interpretation of referential expressions, which are especially important when there is more than one potential antecedent. One of the most explicit accounts is provided by Centering Theory (Grosz et al., Computational Linguistics 21: 203–225, 1995). Using features such as grammatical status, expression type, and the referential relation with sentences still further back in the discourse, it produces a ranking of discourse referents in terms of forward prominence. We present two corpus studies of how these features, in combination with discourse topichood, help to predict referential continuations in actual discourse. In Study 1, we analyzed newspaper fragments in which he is preceded by a sentence presenting two male singular participants. The factors Grammatical Role (being a Subject), Backward Center Status and Discourse Topichood appear to increase the chance that a referent is the intended one for a potentially ambiguous pronoun, while Expression Type (noun or pronoun) makes no difference. In Study 2, the continuations for sentences with two referents differing on the same four factors were compared, assuming that the most prominent referent will reappear in the next sentence. The study reveals that Grammatical Role only affects the form of continuation: subject referents do not reappear more often, but when reappearing they are more often realized as pronouns. Backward Center Status increases the chance of subsequent references to a referent, and also decreases the chances for its competitor of being referred to again. Discourse Topichood has the same double effect. In conclusion, both global and local factors affect referential prominence, but in different ways.

The purpose of this research was to discover how the aspectual properties of predicate structure influence the acquisition of agreement and tense morphology in Polish and English. We investigated the corpora of six children learning each language by tracking the emergence of their verb morphology within a set of predicates in each of three categories, i.e., stative, dynamic-atelic, and dynamic-telic. We used contrast as a measure of acquisition, e.g., past versus nonpast. In Polish, the age of the initial contrast in agreement and in tense was very similar for dynamic predicates, and agreement emerged before tense in stative predicates. In English, contrasts in tense preceded contrasts in agreement for dynamic predicates, but the pattern of acquisition was the same for stative predicates. The interaction of grammatical and lexical aspect permeated the pattern of the acquisition of the finite morphology. For stative predicates, finite contrasts occur exclusively in the imperfective aspect in Polish and exclusively in the nonprogressive aspect in English. In Polish, finite contrasts for atelic predicates were very likely to be found in the imperfective aspect and telic predicates in the perfective aspect. The related pattern in English was much less distinct. In Polish, when a contrast in agreement (e.g., 3rd versus 1st person singular) coincided with a contrast in tense (e.g., past versus future), all of the children demonstrated the capacity to immediately (i.e., without further development) produce the agreement contrast in both tenses. These findings indicate that the children are acquiring their knowledge of tense and agreement in a systematic manner driven by the acquisition of predicate-argument structure.

This article presents an in-depth analysis of entonces as a temporal adverb in Spanish. The deictic and/or anaphoric nature of this expression is discussed, and it is shown that entonces always acts as an anaphoric element that relates events in a temporal way. In its semantic specification entonces includes particular instructions on the temporal relation it may establish between events. It only obtains a temporal reading when the event it accompanies is understood to occur inside a temporal frame set by these instructions. Further temporal, aspectual and lexical constraints must be satisfied for this temporal relation to take place.