Volume 53, Issue 5 -

This paper addresses the distribution of a phonetically null pronoun and the clitic lo referring to a proposition as the direct object (DO) of cognition and communication verbs in Spanish. The use of this null object referring to propositions is found cross-dialectally in Spanish, and this paper argues that the completeness of the proposition constrains in crucial ways the distribution of these two propositional anaphors. The analysis of five different cases in which the DO pronoun refers to an incomplete proposition illustrates that the null object is the anaphor preferred when the proposition being referred to is incomplete, whereas the propositional pronoun lo is preferred to refer to complete propositions. Completeness of the proposition – defined here as a gradient feature and not a binary distinction – is discussed in relation to the notion of saliency or accessibility of the referent and the data analyzed in this article for propositional anaphora is discussed in relation to NP anaphora.

Filler–gap dependencies involving a clause-initial filler constituent of some kind followed by a matching gap are an important feature of human languages. There are also certain cases where what looks like a filler differs in some way from the following gap. In the case of Welsh there is a mismatch between apparent filler and gap in some nominal cleft sentences. It can be argued, however, that the initial constituent is not a filler but one term of a hidden identity predication. There are various other complexities in this area. There is one word, the identity copula, which only allows a complement that is a gap. There are two cases where a deletion process conceals the identity of the initial constituent in a cleft sentence, making a Progressive Phrase look like a Verb Phrase and a Predicative Phrase look like an Adjective Phrase or a Noun Phrase. Finally, there are three cases where a verb with a gap as a dependent has a special form, two cases involving the predicational copula and one involving all transitive verbs. Thus, a number of mechanisms are required to deal with the full set of facts.

This paper has a twofold goal: (i) In the context of negation in general to provide a clear conceptual distinction between internal and external negation, which is summarized as follows: Internal negation/ predicate denial : the negative statement is about the topic of the sentence. It provides new negative information about the topic of the clause. External negation : it is a statement about a statement; it provides information about the truth value of the root proposition, i.e., reverses it; (ii) In the context of the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (=JBA) to present an analysis according to which lāw is marked for external negation, while lā is the unmarked negator, which usually appears in internal negation. I propose that in various contexts lāw , which historically functioned as a complete clause, was reanalyzed as an independent negator and thus grammaticalized as an external negation. The support for this hypothesis comes from historical, syntactic, and functional evidence. Moreover, this paper demonstrates a connection between its two goals: although Jewish Babylonian Aramaic is a historic language, its data still provoke a discussion on negation in a more general way. The following claims have been stated among those who argue that with respect to negation the TL framework is more suitable for natural languages: (i) Standard negations represent predicate denials and (ii) Natural languages do not express external negations without subordination (it is not the case that/it is not true that…) Following our analyses for the data from JBA, it becomes clear that claim (2) is not true. Moreover, paying attention to the environments in which the lāw appears in JBA reveals contexts that should be classified as cases of external negation even when it is not marked syntactically, for the distinction which has been made between the two categories is a conceptual one and not a syntactic one. Accordingly, claim (i) is also not accurate, as in other languages, we do find standard negations in such contexts.

This study investigates the acquisition of Mandarin spatial phrases from the perspective of language universality and specificity. The potential language universals discussed in this study include aspect shift (Fong 1997; Smith 1997; Rothstein 2004), and subevent modification (Dowty 1979; Parsons 1990). We propose an event-semantics account for the distribution and interpretation of Mandarin spatial PPs headed by zai ‘(be) at’. However, in Mandarin, the formation of localizer phrases and the division of labor between zai and dao ‘reach, to’ in the postverbal position also demonstrate language-specific complexities. We conducted a corpus study of Mandarin-speaking children aged between 1;9 and 6;0, adopting an integrative approach that takes into account multiple factors, including linguistic input, children’s knowledge of event semantics, formal complexity, and cognitive development. Inconsistent cues from the input slow down acquisition: children up to 6;0 omitted localizers that are obligatory; 4-year-olds have not acquired the division of labor between zai and dao . Children’s early sensitivity to the placement and interpretation of zai -PPs suggests guidance by universal principles. Formal complexity explains why prepositional zai , being more complex than verbal zai , is acquired later. Further, children’s cognitive development explains their reliance on deictic pronouns, and their preference to express Goal.

This article criticizes the wide-spread view, sometimes referred to as the “aspect first hypothesis” (initiated by Antinucci and Miller 1976 and supported by Bloom et al. 1980; Bickerton 1981; Weist et al. 1984; Shirai and Andersen 1995, among others), according to which a universal acquisition path is postulated in the tense-aspect domain, based on the leading role of actionality (or Aktionsart) and aspect. According to this view, children build their competence starting from the pervasive correlations atelic∴imperfective∴present vs. telic∴perfective∴past, before gradually learning to disentangle (i.e., freely combining) the various actional, aspectual, and temporal components. The alternative view advocated here (typologically-oriented and morphologically-sensitive) claims, instead, that children start out with no predefined strategy and extract the relevant information out of the individual language’s morphological structure. The data stem from four longitudinal corpora relating to three Italian children and one Austrian German child, showing that: (i) the strong correlation between actionality, aspect, and tense can only be supported if activity and stative verbs are lumped together within the category of atelic predicates. Once activities are separately examined, their behavior stands out as absolutely incompatible with the traditional view. (ii) In the relevant languages, there can be earlier understanding of the temporality-oriented morphology as contrasted with the aspect-related categories. (iii) The analysis does not support the so-called prototype hypothesis (Shirai and Andersen 1995), since the examined children were strongly affected by their linguistic input from the very beginning. (iv) The children presented (to a greater or lesser extent) a notable verb spurt that very briefly preceded the first uses of the Past tenses. In conclusion, the actual acquisition path followed by the analyzed children undermines the hypothesis of a universal acquisition pattern, supporting instead the view that acquisition depends on the specific morphological shape of the target language.

Studies of narrative in various European languages analyzed the discourse structure as an elaborate system of oppositions based on complex paradigms of TAM categories. However, for obvious reasons this approach is not applicable for languages like Burmese, whose paradigmatic sets of TAM categories are very limited. Hence, although manifold discourse structuring devices are identified and described for this kind of languages, rarely do they form a coherently structured system. This study aims at representing discourse structuring strategies of narration in written colloquial Burmese as consisting of three principal categories, mobilized to reveal different aspects of the otherwise concealed presence of speech act participants. This results in a deviation of the narration from its typical form of untouched retelling of objectively represented events along three parameters: (a) remoteness vs. “here-and-now” relevance, (b) objective vs. subjective representation and (c) monologue vs. dialogic settings of communication. The fine structure of narrative in Burmese is shown to be an outcome of the interaction of these functions.

It is known that bare NPs can be interpreted as an indefinite description or a definite description in Japanese. A question arises as to whether a bare NP in Japanese can always obtain an intended anaphoric definite reading from the previous context. The present work attempts to answer this question. More specifically, we will explore the occurrences and nonoccurrences of anaphoric definite bare NPs in terms of the Givenness Hierarchy of Gundel et al. (1993). We will first discuss the advantages of adopting the Givenness Hierarchy to the studies of occurrences of bare NPs and show how the Givenness Hierarchy accounts for cases in which the use of a demonstrative determiner for anaphoric definite NPs is either optional or infelicitous. We will then examine apparent counterexamples for the Givenness Hierarchy, namely cases in which a bare NP cannot refer to an individual that is introduced in the previous context. We will argue that these apparent counterexamples are due to competing readings arising from various independent sources and demonstrative determiners are used to force intended anaphoric definite readings, as argued in Gundel (2010) and Gundel et al. (2012).