Volume 56, Issue 6 -

Coordinating compounds, i.e. complex word forms in which the constituent lexemes are in a coordination relation, may be divided into two classes: hyperonymic, in which the referent of the whole compound is the “sum” of the meanings of the constituent lexemes (Korowai yumdefól ‘(her) husband-wife, couple’; van Enk, Gerrit J., & Lourens de Vries. 1997. The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their language in its cultural context . Oxford: Oxford University Press: 66), and hyponymic, where the compound designates a single referent having features of all the constituents (English actor-director ). It has been proposed that languages choose either type as the one with the “tightest” marking pattern; whereas the crosslinguistic tendency is to have tighter hyperonymic compounds, most languages of Europe rather have tighter hyponymic compounds (Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco, Nicola Grandi, & Bernhard Wälchli 2010. Coordination in compounding. In Sergio Scalise & Irene Vogel (eds.), Cross-disciplinary issues in compounding , 177–198. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins). In this paper, we will test this assumption on noun-noun compounds in a sample of 20 Standard Average European languages and in a balanced sample of 60 non-SAE languages, arguing that the preference for hyperonymic compounds is best explained by the default referential function of nouns; in hyponymic compounds, on the other hand, nouns are used to indicate properties. We will then compare nominal and adjectival coordinating compounds, showing that for the latter the hyponymic compounding pattern is the dominant one, as adjectives are prototypical property-denoting words.

In this paper we consider the grammaticalization of subject agreement adducing first-hand synchronic evidence from presentational VS constructions in Italo-Romance dialects. While the existing literature has placed emphasis on the pragmatic properties of the controller, we explore its semantic properties. We argue that variation in subject agreement can only be fully captured with reference to an independently established semantic scale of subjecthood that is based on the position of arguments in semantic representation, and hence on their lexical entailments. Unaffected actor is the default controller in accusative alignment. The patterns of dialect microvariation arise, in our analysis, from variation in macrorole assignment in presentational focus. Our proposal formalizes at the discourse-semantics-syntax interface the idea that, in presentational VS constructions, the core argument S may be treated as part of the predicate, thus failing to control grammatical subject agreement. This happens in presentational focus because the predication is about an implicit topic. The latter can trigger a type of pronominal agreement that is comparable to Bresnan and Mchombo’s (Bresnan, Joan & Sam A. Mchombo. 1987. Topic, pronoun and agreement in Chichewa. Language 63. 741–782) anaphoric agreement. This study provides robust arguments in support of an understanding of subject agreement as the grammaticalization of semantic-relation contrasts, as well as pragmatic-role distinctions.

Previous work on frequency has in the main focused on paradigmatic aspects such as irregularity and allomorphy. This study, in contrast, addresses the syntagmatic dimension and in particular examines the effect of token frequency on serial order. A simple prediction follows from the psycholinguistic observation that frequency facilitates the retrieval of linguistic units: frequent units should precede infrequent ones rather than vice versa in the linear representation of speech. This prediction is tested on a total of fourteen phenomena from various languages and found to receive wide support in the domain of word order. However, it exerts only a sporadic influence on morpheme order and apparently no influence on phoneme order. Frequency is argued to be a cost-free, explanatory and pervasive, albeit a relatively weak factor. It is most likely to manifest itself in areas where alternative ordering options are available which are also semantically similar. Frequency may accompany linguistic change through its various stages.

Modern eastern Basque dialects have several conservative features, including the maintenance of historical /h/, which is lost in other dialects. Zuberoan, the easternmost dialect of Basque still spoken today, shows both this /h/ as well as a phonetically nasalized segment [h ̃ ] which is a reflex of intervocalic *n. In this paper I argue that these two segments contrast in Zuberoan. Evidence for the contrast comes from both a newly described process of assimilation of /h/ to /h ̃ / in nasal environments which then serves as a basis of the analogical extension of the nasalized aspirate in a context where it cannot be phonologically derived, and from neighboring Mixean Low Navarrese where the nasalized [h ̃ ] has no other obvious source. Since a contrast between oral and nasalized aspirates is rare crosslinguistically, the Zuberoan and Mixean sound patterns discussed here should be of interest to typologists and phonologists alike.

Category change and recategorization processes have received renewed attention in recent years. In this paper, we focus on the shift from noun to adjective on the basis of a corpus-based study of the Dutch lexical item luxe ‘luxury; luxurious’. What is particularly interesting about this case is that in some contexts luxe combines nominal and adjectival properties (e.g. een erg luxe hotel ‘a very luxury/luxurious hotel’) and displays some intersective gradience . We will investigate to what extent luxe exhibits the typical profile of an adjective in present-day Dutch by applying a specific set of synchronic criteria, in addition to a diachronic analysis of the data, and by taking into account regional variation between Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch. This detailed data analysis will allow us to examine which type of recategorization process is responsible for the N>A shift. Since the category change is not formally marked, we will examine whether we are dealing with a case of conversion (a regular morphological process of category change) or syntactic transposition (the ad hoc use of a lexical item in a syntactic context typical of another category). We will conclude that this particular type of change cannot be correctly attributed to either conversion or syntactic transposition and that a new type of category change should be considered responsible for this case and similar ones, i.e. “morphological transposition”. This process takes place within attributive compounds and is followed by a process of debonding and further context expansion.

The Mek language Nalca has undergone a rapid synthetization of verbal negation by way of two successive stages of asymmetric negation, the first one involving referential zeroing with a verbal noun, the second one reintroducing person marking with an auxiliary in analogy to non-verbal predicates. This development can be traced in texts in the more conservative closely related Mek language Eipo. Referential zeroing originally had the connotation of absolute negation (more than the denial of one specific event). As Nalca negation was integrated into inflectional morphology, it developed some of the hallmarks of autonomous morphology – morphomes and empty morphs. Nalca negation illustrates how grammaticalization and analogy can go hand-in-hand. The fusion of verbal negation is a case of the morphologization of a construction which does not occur in isolation but in concert with other similar processes, together entailing a fragmentation of negation marking. Finally, the Nalca development shows that cases of fusion of verbal negation must be taken into account when dealing with the interplay of existential negation and verbal negation in terms of cyclic processes.

This article investigates consonant gemination in late Nineteenth- and early Twentieth-century haketía , a now moribund, regional dialect of Judeo-Spanish spoken in northern Morocco since the late fifteenth century. Some, but not all, consonant clusters arising across a word boundary undergo regressive total assimilation, e.g. [n.n] siudad ninguna ‘no city’ but [z.n] laz niñas ‘the girls’. We present novel descriptive generalizations to show that regressive gemination is sensitive to the degree of sonority distance between the coda and the onset. Evidence of parasitic harmony comes from lateral+consonant clusters, which undergo gemination only if the target and trigger consonants are already similar in some respect. In the framework of Optimality Theory, we formalize syllable contact as a relational hierarchy of *D istance constraints and capture parasitic harmony effects by similarity avoidance, or Obligatory Contour Principle, constraints against adjacent consonants with identical manner and/or place features. These markedness constraints interact with other universal faithfulness and markedness constraints in a language-specific ranking that predicts the attested patterns of regressive gemination. This study lends further support to sonority distance effects and gradient syllable contact in phonological theory and shows that similarity avoidance is also necessary to give a full account of regressive gemination in Moroccan Judeo-Spanish.