Volume 60, Issue 1

This study is based on a sample of 116 languages from the Mainland East and Southeast Asian linguistic area. Its first objective is to examine four distinct synchronic patterns of areal polysemy, created by the semantic domains of copular, locative, existential and possessive verbs and the constructions they form. As a consequence, its second objective is to model the diachronic change underlying four language types identified on this basis from the data. We argue that there are three grammaticalization pathways which motivate the four synchronic patterns: Type III languages are distinguished by the grammaticalization chain: (P ostural verb) > (Dwell) > Locative > Existential > Possessive, while the other two types, Type II and Type IV, show an opposing pathway: ( Grasp) > Possessive > Existential . Type I and Type II languages additionally reveal a recurrent polysemy between Locative and Copular verbs. On this basis, an implicational universal is adduced to the effect that no diachronic adjacency exists between locative and possessive constructions. Crucially, the intervening stage of an existential construction provides the necessary bridging context for possessive reanalysis in this first pathway, while possessive verbs are formally distinct from locatives in the second, bearing no diachronic relationship to them. The findings on the patterns of polysemy sharing reinforce the notion of a clear typological split between Tibeto-Burman languages on the one hand, and Sinitic, Kra–Dai, Hmong–Mien, and Austroasiatic on the other.

Tlapanec (Mè’phàà), an Otomanguean language spoken in Mexico, has several allomorphic alternations which are sensitive to the number of syllables of the stem (monosyllabic vs. disyllabic). We argue that these alternations are motivated by the foot structure which consists of two syllables, and that such alternations can be captured by subcategorization frames. An alternative, P » M analysis is also provided, where the allomorphic alternations are motivated by markedness constraints, namely *(tV.ˈσ), which avoids [t] in the weak position of the foot. These two approaches will be compared, and it will be argued that a subcategorization approach is more adequate than a P » M analysis.

This article addresses the question of how and why verbs combine in complex verb constructions in Dutch. We discuss introspective data reported in reference grammars and add evidence from corpus data to uncover the systematic ways in which Dutch verbs combine. Our analysis shows that verbs expressing meanings such as tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality are organized in a semantic scope hierarchy; that is, some verb meanings systematically have scope over others but not the other way round. We argue that this scope hierarchy reflects hierarchies of functional categories, elaborated in both functional and generative frameworks.

This paper explores the grammaticality status of reduced sluicing remnants (i.e., remnants realized as NPs due to preposition drop) in Polish. We provide experimental evidence that reduced remnants are variously acceptable in a specific environment (where there is a prior explicit correspondent in the antecedent clause) and are as unacceptable as ungrammatical structures elsewhere. We interpret this pattern as reflecting elaboration effects (i.e., effects that the degree of elaboration of explicit correspondents has on the acceptability of reduced remnants) that follow from the cue-based retrieval theory of sentence processing. Our data support the option of treating reduced remnants as ungrammatical but sometimes acceptable and the option of treating them as grammatical but sometimes degraded, and we discuss how they fit into the current theories of clausal ellipsis.

Middle voice constructions are generally understood as syntactically detransitivizing and as semantically characterized by a “low degree of event elaboration” (in Kemmer’s terms) involving a relatively affected subject. Middle voice constructions thus characterized have been identified in several Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) languages, in particular by LaPolla. In Macro-Tani languages, we find a seemingly cognate construction with a similar distribution; however, Macro-Tani middle-like constructions are not detransitivizing, and do not mark subject affectedness. Instead, their primary meaning appears to be one of highlighting subject autonomy : a heightened degree of autonomy, volition and/or responsibility over an action on the part of the clause subject. In this article, following an analysis of Macro-Tani subject autonomy marking, we will argue that its similarities to and differences from middle voice marking in other Trans-Himalayan languages is consistent with Zúñiga and Kittilä’s view of middle voice as a “network of meanings,” whose properties derive not from their reflection of a unified underlying cognitive category, but rather from a heterogeneous set of developments from similar diachronic source forms.

Ongoing innovations in Standard Belarusian nominal declension indicate that speakers are aware of and actively using paradigmatic stress patterns for grammatical purposes. The adoption of new mobile stress patterns in paradigms which originally had fixed stress is now complementary in Declension Ia masculine nouns and in Declension II feminine nouns; most neuter nouns simply default to fixed stem stress. The highlighting of grammatical gender distinctions via changes in paradigmatic stress patterns has led to a reanalysis of stress, gender , and declension class in common gender and a-stem masculine nouns and their case exponents have now become stress-dependent, a situation markedly distinct from that found in the other closely related East Slavic languages, Russian, and Ukrainian. These developments pose a challenge for several theories of morphology, either because the theory takes paradigmatic stress to be dependent on declension class or because the theory does not have a provision for paradigmatic stress to determine inflectional exponents.

The main aim of this article is to investigate the prosody-information structure interface in the analysis of the Hungarian additive particle is ‘also, too’. We present a prosodic study of narratives, collected through guided elicitation, and provide a prosodic basis for a focus-based analysis of is . Standard formal semantic approaches to the interpretation of additive particles regard additive particles as focus sensitive , hence the associate of the particle is focal and the focus interpretation (in terms of alternatives) is a significant part in its semantics. This view is considered crosslinguistically valid, although the discussion mostly concerns English. In Hungarian, the focus sensitivity of the additive particle is not directly transparent and needs more elaboration. In the relevant literature, the issue of focus marking with respect to the additive particle is has been insufficiently studied or merely stipulated. In this article, we argue for the importance of a more elaborate study of the prosody-information structure interface in the analysis of Hungarian additive particles. Accordingly, we provide data and its analysis to support our core argument and claims. Our study contributes to the overall understanding and analysis of is and to the general claims about focus marking and focus types in Hungarian. We aim to complement the standard semantic analyses by providing a prosodic analysis supporting the focus-sensitive analysis of is instead of merely stipulating an association with focus. On a more general level, we show that the various readings of additive particles can be explained by taking the prosodic patterns of the relevant constructions into account.

This article aims at giving a comprehensive account of a so far undescribed reduplicative pattern in Italian named syntactic discontinuous reduplication with antonymic pairs (SDRA). This pattern, characterized by the non-contiguous repetition of the same element within a larger fixed configuration defined by two spatial antonyms, can be schematized as <X i Adv 1 X i Adv 2 >, where Adv 1 and Adv 2 are antonyms (e.g., di qua ‘here’ ∼ di là ‘there’). After describing its formal and functional properties, based on naturally occurring data extracted from the Italian Web 2016 corpus, the SDRA is analyzed as an independent ‘construction’ in the Construction Grammar sense. This construction is claimed to convey a general value of ‘plurality’ and to have developed a polysemy network of daughter constructions expressing more specific functions such as ‘distributivity,’ ‘related variety,’ and ‘dispersion.’ In addition, we propose considering the SDRA a ‘multiple source construction,’ originating from the blending of two independent constructions: syntactic reduplication and irreversible binomials with antonymic adverbs. Finally, we discuss SDRA-like patterns in other typologically different languages (Russian, Modern Hebrew, Mandarin Chinese, German), pointing out similarities and differences, and paving the way to a more systematic study of discontinuous reduplication in a crosslinguistic perspective.