Volume 29, Issue 2

It is widely accepted that subjects of verbs are base-generated within the (extended) verbal projection. In this paper I argue that the same is not true for predicative adjectives. In line with Baker (2003), I argue that while subjects of adjectives originate below spec,TP, they are not generated within the AP (or aP), but rather in the specifier of a higher functional projection, PredP. I further propose that the semantic relation between an adjective and its subject is not established by direct θ-role assignment. Unlike in the verbal domain, one of the adjective's θ-roles is lexically marked to undergo λ-abstraction in the semantic interface, and cannot be assigned syntactically to the subject. The discussion has consequences for the debate over the base position of subjects of verbs, providing evidence that they are generated in the specifier of the lexical verb, rather than in that of a higher “little-v” head.

Employing the morphosemantic identity approach of Inkelas and Zoll (2005) and Inkelas (2008), this paper presents data from Yoruba showing that morphological reduplication is compounding, and that this compound structure is primarily governed by semantics, which may require similarity, near-similarity or dissimilarity of compound members. On this view, several cases of reduplication patterns that have been treated as separate and unrelated in Yoruba can be seen as a unitary phenomenon. The analysis of these patterns is shown to naturally extend to the analysis of a special class of reduplicated homonym-synonyms, an extremely common pattern seen in poetic word play. In spite of the general success of the morphological approach, some patterns still require a prosodic rather than a morphological analysis. These patterns counter-exemplify the theory's strong claim that partial and total reduplication are morphologically constrained. They show that morphologically induced reduplication must be distinguished from prosodically induced reduplication (Pulleyblank 2009). By keeping these two entities distinct, reduplication can target either or both simultaneously. Finally, specifying the context of reduplication requires direct reference to phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, and thus demonstrates the multidimensionality of reduplication.

Verbs of detaching ( clear, wipe, squeeze, etc.) may occur in two frames in Hebrew. In the Change of Location (COL) frame, the stuff is a direct object and the location is a locative source PP. In the Change of State (COS) frame, the location is a direct object and the stuff is an oblique PP. We demonstrate that this PP is headed by a null preposition, which is responsible for a cluster of peculiar syntactic effects. COL and COS in the two frames instantiate scalar changes. Alternating verbs do not lexicalize any scalar change; nonalternating verbs lexicalize either COL (e.g., remove ) or COS (e.g., relieve ), failing to occur in the opposite frame due to a constraint against the encoding of multiple scalar changes per event. The advantages of this analysis are critically compared against previous accounts.

Although Einar Haugen in his 1967 article ‘On the rules of Norwegian tonality’ stated that “compounds are the most difficult part of the morphology”, it is precisely the distribution of word accent in compounds that provides us with insight into the morphophonological interactions of the language. In this article, we analyze compounds made up of all possible element and accent combinations, and show that by assuming a privative accent opposition for North Germanic languages where Accent 1 is lexically specified and Accent 2 the default and following a proposed lexical phonology for Standard East Norwegian, we can easily account for all the facts.