Volume 34, Issue 1 -

I n many languages a set of adjectives are characterized by their “past/passive” participial morphology. Lexicalist and syntactic approaches to word formation converge on the claim that such adjectives can be derived from verbal inputs with no external argument but never from verbal inputs with an external argument. That is, there are “adjectival passives” but no “adjectival antipassives” marked with the same morphology. I argue that a sub-class of adjectives marked with the “past/passive” participial morpheme –do in Spanish, labeled participios activos in descriptive grammars, should be treated as adjectival antipassives in precisely this sense. I propose that Spanish has an Asp head that (i) is spelled out with “past/passive” participial morphology and (ii) selects an unergative verbal input creating a state/property whose argument corresponds to the external argument of that verbal source. If on the right track, the proposal supports the existence of a typology of adjectivizing heads that are spelled out uniformly with “past/passive” participial morphology but must be distinguished in terms of selectional and semantic properties (Bruening 2014, Word formation is syntactic: Adjectival passives in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32. 363–422; Embick 2004, On the structure of resultative participles in English. Linguistic Inquiry 35. 355–392). It differs from previous approaches in claiming that such a typology must include root-derived adjectives, as well as ‘active (=unergative)’ and ‘passive’ deverbal adjectives.

This paper argues for quantity-sensitive, trochaic foot structure in Québécois French, which allows for a unified prosodic account of the variable distribution of tenseness of high vowels in non-final syllables. Following Montreuil (Montreuil, Jean-Pierre. 2004a. Fragmenting weight in Scottish English. In Monica Pulki (ed.), La tribune internationale des langues vivantes , 36, 114–22. Paris. Montreuil, Jean-Pierre. 2004b. The Computation of weight in English and in Québec French. First PAC Workshop 23–24 April 2004, Université de Toulouse le Mirail.) a grammatical, sonority-based surface weight distinction is assumed for Québécois French vowels, with tense high vowels associated to a full mora µ, while lax high vowels are associated to a hypomora λ, a weight value less than µ. The weight is shown to be regulated at the level of the minimally monomoraic foot, which can be expanded to include an adjacent syllable in words consisting of more than two syllables, following the proposed Trochaic Markedness Hierarchy, based on the following three ranked principles: 1) quantitative minimum: light and heavy rimes are preferred to superlight (λ) rimes, 2) quantitative evenness: even trochees are preferred to uneven trochees, and 3) quantitative dominance: the left branch that is heavier than the right branch is preferred to the left branch that is lighter. Possible shapes of the trochee are shown to be aligned with alternating surface realizations of high vowels.

This paper explores the logic behind the various morpho-phonological subdivisions in the verbal system of Palestinian Arabic. It argues for the importance in the understanding of Palestinian Arabic of the apophonic chain proposed for Classical Arabic in Guerssel and Lowenstamm (1993). In Palestinian, it is first argued, the Measure 1 perfective template includes a hard-wired association of its two vocalic positions; the main differences in vocalization between the Palestinian and Classic varieties follow from this fact. The account is then extended to include three large subclasses of weak verbs. Following the analysis of Classical Arabic in Chekayri and Scheer (1996), it is argued that such verbs involve a null element ø, whose realization is determined by the apophonic chain. The second part of the paper provides an account of the entire inflectional paradigms of each of the verbs discussed, a task that was not fully undertaken in previous work. The mechanism of apophony is shown to be at work in this domain, too. An interesting case is discussed of an apparent shift in inflectional paradigm in some forms of the biradical verb. This shift is again shown to follow from the general mechanisms used in the analysis.

A controlled reading experiment reveals that stress-based linguistic rhythm impinges on syntactic ambiguity resolution in silent and oral reading. The results suggest that, at points of syntactic underspecification, the accruing prosodic representation may affect even the earliest stages of structure building, viz. the analysis of syntactic features of an ambiguous word. Such an effect remains inexplicable in the context of (psycho-)linguistic theories that assume a strictly unidirectional relationship between syntactic and phonological processes, the latter merely interpreting the conditions the syntactic component imposes on it. Here, a performance compatible grammar in the framework of Optimal Parsing is presented that is capable of capturing the reading data. The model integrates syntactic parsing and prosodification in reading and predicts that, at points of syntactic indetermination, weak prosodic constraints alone may guide syntactic structure assignment. This suggests a bidirectional relationship between syntax and phonology in grammar and processing while, at the same time, confirming a tight coupling of language production and comprehension.

This paper proposes that the presence/absence of the Foot is parametric; that is, contra much previous research (see e. g. Selkirk, Elisabeth (1995). Sentence prosody: intonation, stress and phrasing. In J. Goldsmith (ed.) The handbook of phonological theory . Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. 550–569., Vogel, Irene (2009). Universals of prosodic structure. In S. Scalise, E. Magni, & A. Bisetto (eds.) Universals of language today . Dordrecht: Springer. 59–82.), it is argued here that the Foot is not a universal constituent of the Prosodic Hierarchy; rather, some languages, such as Turkish and French, as well as early child languages, are footless. Several types of evidence are presented in support of this proposal, from both Turkish and French, as well as child English. A comparison of regular (word-final) and exceptional stress in Turkish reveals, for example, that regular “stress” is intonational prominence falling on the last syllable of prosodic words in the absence of foot structure. Both acoustic and formal evidence are presented in support of this proposal, as well as evidence from syntax-prosody interface. The paper also presents evidence for the footless status of French, which, unlike Turkish, is proposed to be completely footless. Several arguments are presented in support of this position, such as the fact that, in French, the domain of obligatory prominence is the Phonological Phrase (PPh), not the Prosodic Word (PWd); in a PPh consisting of several PWds, therefore, nonfinal PWds can surface without any kind of stress or prominence, suggesting that, at least for non-final PWds, one cannot assume stress or foot structure. Finally, the proposal is extended to additional languages, such as those demonstrating Default-to-Opposite Edge stress.