Volume 60, Issue 2

This article provides a systematic comparison and detailed analysis of two prenominal possessive constructions in Yiddish, the familiar mayn khaver ‘my friend’ and the less well-known mayner a khaver ‘a friend of mine.’ It is demonstrated that the first construction is definite and that the second construction is indefinite. It is argued that the possessor in the first construction is in Spec,DP. Making the standard assumption that (in-)definiteness is determined in the DP-level, this construction straightforwardly adheres to Definiteness Spread analyzed as Spec-head agreement. As to the second construction, it is proposed that the possessor is embedded in a second nominal and that nominal is in a position higher than the DP-level. Discussing four different analyses, it is concluded that the possessor of the second construction is most likely adjoined to the DP-level. As such, the possessor plays no role in Definiteness Spread, and the indefinite article brings about indefiniteness. The investigation is guided by relating the second construction to two other intriguing cases: eyner a khave r ‘a certain friend’ and epes a khaver ‘some friend.’ It is shown that predeterminer elements ( mayner , eyner , epes ) can be stacked and switch positions. This supports an analysis of adjunction. More generally, the data provide more evidence that there are structural positions above the DP proper.

This article studies the role of synthetic-compound families, both formal families and their semantic (or rather conceptual) subfamilies, in the analysis of synthetic compounds (SCs). For this purpose, four formal families of English non-Latinate synthetic compounds sharing their second base and three Latinate families have been investigated. Unlike previous approaches ranging from a purely syntactic treatment of SCs to a more lexical treatment, this study aims at providing a novel explanation for these complex formations. First, it argues that SCs have an ambiguous nature, hovering between (a) morphological suffixation of a verb/word group and (b) morphological derivation and subsequent compounding. Second, it emphasizes the importance of compound families and subfamilies in SCs’ formation and interpretation. By combining a corpus-based analysis with a qualitative synchronic and diachronic investigation of seven compound families – namely X-breaker , X-holder , X-killer , X-maker , X-manager , X-producer , and X-provider  – the article provides a fine-grained semantic categorization of their subfamilies. Results show that (a) a homogeneous approach to SCs is not sufficient to account for observations in corpus data and (b) there are different types of SCs reflecting different constructional types. Nearly all results from questionnaires completed by native speakers confirm, or are at least compatible with our results. From a theoretical viewpoint, these results suggest a novel addition to the definition of productivity in word-formation: i.e., the ability to create new (sub-)families. The basic ambiguity between a derivational and compositional analysis of SCs can be resolved by assuming dualism and superposition of suffixing and compounding, similar to Albert Einstein’s assumption of duality and superposition of waves and particles (photons) for light. Thus, several subfamilies (clearly or predominantly) consist of derivations, others of compounds, still others show superposition of both, and at least partial superposition seems to be possible for most of the other subfamilies.

It is often reported that embedded questions (EQs) are not syntactic islands in Spanish. However, some authors have observed that the acceptability of filler-gap dependencies (FGDs) into Spanish EQs varies with the EQ-embedding verb: FGDs into EQs under responsive verbs (e.g., know ) do not result in island effects, but FGDs into EQs under rogative verbs (e.g., ask ) do yield island effects. One account attributes the contrast to a structural difference between the two EQs, due to which ask -EQs violate Bounding constraints, but know -EQs do not. In two acceptability studies we investigated the reliability of verb-dependent island effects in EQs introduced by si ‘whether’ and cuándo ‘when’. We found no qualitative acceptability differences between ask and know EQ-island sentences, suggesting that the syntactic islandhood of Spanish EQs is not verb-dependent. Nevertheless, average island effects were numerically greater with ask , suggesting the presence of a non-syntactic constraint. In addition, FGDs into whether -EQs were generally acceptable, whereas FGDs into when -EQs obtained unacceptable average ratings and highly variable judgments. We argue that in neither case there is a Bounding constraint violation. Instead we explore alternative potential explanations for the differences in terms of features, presuppositions and processing pressures.

The article aims to advance the general understanding of negative concord through a comparative analysis of nominal and pronominal negative concord in Jamaican and Belizean Creole, based on the translations of the New Testament. It supplies a general characterization of Jamaican and Belizean negative concord and then focuses on negative concord with a negator like what corresponds to English not and either a pronoun or a nominal like what corresponds to English nobody or no man , respectively. The paper makes a strong plea for studying nominal negative concord in its own right. It shows how it differs from pronominal negative concord and for both it lays bare a variety of non-concordant patterns. It explains the variation in terms of a number of principles, one of which is what is standardly called the ‘Negative First’ principle, but it is defined in a new way. The article shows that there can be concord with definite negative nominals.

Despite extensive research efforts to explain the Mandarin Chinese particle le , confusion persists in the absence of a unitary theory and sufficient empirical evidence. This study provides a unitary account of le by adopting a usage-based constructionist approach, one that liberates grammatical aspect from, and is able to accommodate, lexical aspect. We argue that le participates in two distinct family resemblance constructions of aspect construal associated with two distinct sentential positions. The clause-internal le construction construes the closing or final boundary of an event and the clause-final le construction construes the opening or initial boundary of an event. Corpus analysis showed that the two aspect constructions have distinct patterns in natural language uses that are consistent with the proposed construals. Results from elicited response data showed that native speakers paid attention to construction-level formal and semantic cues in making family resemblance judgments about tokens of the two constructions. This study has both theoretical and methodological implications for crosslinguistic research on grammatical aspect in relation to lexical aspect and for usage-based constructionist approaches to grammatical categories beyond aspect.

Every language has at least two demonstratives or deictic terms, a proximal one and a distal one, and some languages in addition have a medial (or some other additional) demonstrative. Demonstratives exhibit a variety of grammatical and pragmatic functions, and they also serve as major sources for the development of various important grammatical devices, such as copulas, relativizers, definite articles, and complementizers. However, lexical sources for demonstratives remain largely unknown, as do the mechanisms leading to their emergence. Based on a database of more than 1000 subdialects of Chinese, this article demonstrates that the distal demonstratives in these subdialects are phonologically derived from their corresponding proximal demonstratives, which were themselves grammaticalized from classifiers in Late Medieval Chinese. This finding identifies a new type of mechanism leading to the emergence of grammatical items: within a pair of two closely related grammatical elements, the basic and unmarked member originates from a lexical source, and gives rise to the other member through certain phonological principles. The domain of demonstratives thus illustrates how processes of grammaticalization and phonological derivation can interact giving rise to the emergence of new grammatical forms.

In this article, we first show that the Bribri (Chibchan) middle voice suffix - r derives passive voice from active transitive and agentive intransitive verbs, as well as anticausative verbs from nominal and adjectival roots. Second, we focus on five media tantum verbs, i.e., forms that synchronically carry the - r suffix and have no counterpart without - r . Unlike most other verbs, these five forms are labile, i.e., they can occur in syntactically intransitive and transitive constructions with no (supra-)segmental change. After describing the valence patterns in which Bribri media tantum labile (MTL) verbs occur, we investigate whether: (i) their non-absolutive arguments behave like ergative phrases; and whether (ii) MTL verb forms in two-argument constructions behave like active voice transitive verb stems. Third, we outline a hitherto unnoticed diachronic path for the rise of lability in a small subgroup of Bribri media tantum verbs.