Volume 61, Issue 3

This study addresses the issue of unmarked word order in Modern Eastern Armenian (MEA), typologically considered a flexible (S)OV language due to its being strongly left-branching as well as the syntactic properties of its VP (focus, bare objects, low adverbs). However, Armenian grammars generally consider (S)VO to be the canonical order. We have conducted a corpus study and two sentence production experiments to tackle this controversy. These studies show that the placement of direct objects (DOs) is mainly triggered by definiteness. While definite DOs are overwhelmingly postverbal, indefinite DOs display a strong preference for preverbal placement. This implies a “typological discrepancy”: although MEA is a strongly left-branching language, the unmarked placement of definite DOs is postverbal. We account for this “discrepancy” based on areal, historical and cognitive factors. Contact with OV languages has resulted in a consistent shift from right to left-branching in Armenian, whereas word order at the clausal level has resisted the shift because MEA makes optimal use of each order in accordance with their cognitive advantages. The evolution of word order in MEA is an illustration of the universal crosslinguistic bias toward SVO.

This article focuses on a case of prosodically-driven morpheme non-realization found in the Minorcan Catalan DP that has not been documented or accounted for in the previous literature. In this variety of Catalan, kinship restrictive appositive phrases show the realization of the masculine personal article if the following personal name starts with a consonant ( es conco en Toni , the -def.art.m uncle the -pers.art.m Toni ‘uncle Toni’), but not if it starts with a vowel ( es conco Àngel , the -def.art.m uncle Àngel ‘uncle Àngel’). This asymmetrical pattern is entirely unexpected since a preconsonantal coda is generated in the former cases (cf. es conco en Toni [əs.kòŋ.ku n.t ɔ́.ni]) and an onsetless syllable and a hiatus are generated in the latter (cf. es conco Àngel [əs.kòŋ.k u.á n.ʒəl]). The structures obtained are indeed non-optimizing from a strictly syllabic point of view and stand as a clear case of antimarkedness. We argue that this asymmetric behavior is prosodic in nature, and is mainly driven by the need to keep the left edge of the prosodic word free of clitic material, without challenging basic syllabification constraints active in Catalan. We further justify how the cases under scrutiny shed new light on the typology of alignment constraints referred to the alignment between prosodic and lexical categories, on the nature of morpheme realization constraints, and on the morphosyntax-phonology interface.

This article argues against the claim that the dispositional middle construction is always subject-oriented, by discussing dispositional constructions in Japanese and impersonal middle constructions formed with the causative verb lassen ‘let’ in German. In Japanese, the disposition is ascribed not to the nominative subject, but to an object. In German, nominative subjects are not required. This suggests that subject orientedness is not inherent but arises from the properties of independently existing constructions that are interpeted as dispositional. In English and German, an intransitive or a reflexive construction derived from its transitive variant is employed as a canonical middle construction. In these cases, the accusative argument becomes a nominative subject by applying specific grammatical operations; thus, the expression of a subject becomes obligatory. In contrast, a potential construction is interpreted as dispositional in Japanese in which case the disposition is typically ascribed to the object with nominative case, which is almost obligatory in Japanese. It follows that the target of the disposition in middle constructions is a grammatically “highlighted” event participant, as in the case of root modals.

When speakers combine (or blend) expressions – that is, utter them in overlapping fashion – there is usually some degree of semantic overlap between the expressions. There is much agreement on this point. Some authors have gone further and suggested that the expressions involved are usually synonyms or near-synonyms. Others have gone further still, claiming, at least implicitly, that blends always involve synonyms or near-synonyms. In this paper I show that in many cases where expressions are combined they differ substantially in meaning, in some cases even expressing distinguishable events. I show that there is regularity in the nature of the differences in meaning, and that the differences often correspond to construal distinctions identified in the cognitive linguistics literature. Four degrees of semantic overlap between combined expressions are identified: synonymy; subsumption, where the meaning of one expression encompasses that of the other as well as contributing a bit extra; partial complementarity, where each expression conveys some element of meaning not conveyed by the other; and distinctness. Despite the parsing cost to the hearer of the speaker combining two expressions rather than choosing one over the other, the many cases of partial complementarity can be seen as serving a useful purpose. By combining semantic content that is not conventionally combined the speaker can cover more of his/her intended meaning. And by combining different construals of the same semantic content (e.g. interpretive and descriptive, different viewpoints, stative and dynamic, agentive and non-agentive, etc.) the speaker can equivocate in areas where conventionally a commitment is required. Twelve recurrent meaning differences are illustrated with examples from three different datasets.

In Amazonian Spanish, este has two main functions: demonstrative and filler. Filler- este , which originally evolved from demonstrative- este , serves to deal with word-formulation delays during spontaneous speech production. Analyses of conversations reveal that este primarily functions as a filler: 70% of the tokens of este are either fillers serving as placeholders, which replace lexical items in specific syntactic slots, or fillers serving as hesitators, which are non-referential and distributionally free. Further, phonetic analyses show that demonstrative- este and filler- este exhibit different phonetic shapes. Demonstrative- este patterns with disyllabic words with penultimate stress – the first vowel is longer than the second vowel. Filler- este shows the opposite configuration – the second vowel is significantly longer than the first vowel. The evolution of este from demonstrative to filler may have been facilitated by two conspiring forces: its use as cataphor whose referent comes later in the discourse, and its use for recognitional purposes, in which establishing a referent relies on shared knowledge. This use is often accompanied by signs of hesitation. The diachronic proposal outlined here can account for the emergence of the filler- este in several varieties of Spanish spoken in Latin America. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of the syntax of real-time interaction.

The present study aims to throw light on the behavior of the Spanish copulas ser and estar in locative sentences, beyond their classical distinction in terms of Individual-Level (IL) versus Stage-Level (SL) predicates. The behavior of the Spanish copulas in locative contexts constitutes an oddity that we aim to probe here: events ( concierto ‘concert’), despite their clear spatial and temporal anchorage, combine with ser ( El concierto es en París ‘The concert is in Paris’), which is the copula typically associated with IL or permanent predicates. To do so, we discuss the behavior of copulas as locative verbs in a broader empirical context, where not just events and individuals are considered, but also other types of nominals, such as qualities and states. We argue that ser emerges with events because time and place constituents combine directly with events, without the intermediation of extra predicational structure. When carrying a marked value, that extra predicational structure triggers the insertion of estar; when there is no predication structure (such as with events) and when the predication structure is unmarked (IL predicates), ser appears as the default copula.

Differences in language use between men and women have been studied intensely. We take stock of the findings and venture into less charted territory. First, we broaden the scope from well-known lexical features to the domain of syntax. Second, we take a diachronic perspective, looking at changes between 1880 and 1999. Based on a corpus of written Dutch by prolific writers, we find statistically robust differences: men’s style can be characterized as more complex, with the exception of lexical diversity. Through the years, however, there is growing convergence for all linguistic metrics. In the discussion section, we look at different explanations for the observed trends.

This article investigates how EFL learners’ progressive markings are influenced by the lexical aspect of verbs, mode of expression (spoken vs. written), and proficiency levels, focusing on the controversial issue of stative verbs in progressives in L2 acquisition. Spoken (SECCL) and written (WECCL) corpus data from two proficiency levels of Chinese EFL learners and comparison data from native English speakers (COCA) were analyzed. The results suggest that in both learner and native data the progressive - ing is strongly associated with activity verbs, stative verbs being least likely to be inflected with the progressive. this association strengthens with higher proficiency of the learners. Learners’ use of stative verbs in the progressive and the overextended use of stative progressives was also found to be related to spoken versus written mode of production and proficiency levels, with learners retreating from overextension as their proficiency increases. A usage-based account of the findings is proposed.

Linguistic judgment experiments typically elicit judgments in terms of the acceptability or surface probability of a sentence. There is evidence that the dimension of the scale on which sentences are judged influences the outcome of the experiment, but to date this evidence is only limited. This is not a trivial matter, as the elicited judgment data are increasingly considered the basis for inferences about linguistic representation. The present study investigates whether the dimension of the scale influences judgments. Sentences are judged in one of three dimensions: acceptability , probability , or aesthetics . Two distinct sets of experimental items are tested; one with cases of stigmatized variation (violations of the prescriptive norm) and another with cases of non-stigmatized variation (middle-field scrambling) in Dutch. The results show that participants take into account the scale dimension, both in stigmatized and in non-stigmatized variation. The results for stigmatized variation reflect a certain degree of conscious reflection based on the judgment scale; the effects in non-stigmatized variation, by contrast, are only main effects of instruction without changes in the relative pattern of judgments between conditions. These findings corroborate the idea that linguistic judgments of non-stigmatized variation are not the result of introspection in the technical sense, but automatic, multi-dimensional responses to a stimulus.