Volume 35, Issue 1 -

This paper analyzes the ingredients of a Romance construction, henceforth named the V ben V construction, consisting of a verb and its theme object in combination with a degree adverb ben ‘{well, really}’ followed by a verb in past participle or an adjectival form. It describes the properties and restrictions of the various constituents involved in this construction, and it presents a new analysis focusing on the properties of the main predicate, the theme object, the degree adverb ben and the degree phrase ben+ V PP /A. It accounts for the potential manner and result readings of the adjunct constituent that ben introduces (i) by postulating that the ben+ V PP /A modifier always predicates of the (sub)event expressed by the verb (an activity or a change of state), (ii) by associating manner with a do verbal layer, and result with a become verbal layer, and (iii) by identifying different asp ectual structures in the complement position of the degree adverb.

Recent analyses of sluicing focus on the underlying structure of the sluiced clause, i.e. sluicing as deriving from full-fledged wh-questions, or from reduced clefts (Ross 1969, Guess who? In Robert I. Binnick, Alice Davison, Georgia M. Green & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society , 252–286. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago; Merchant 2001, The syntax of silence . Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press; Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van. 2010b. The syntax of ellipsis: Evidence from Dutch dialects . Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press., inter alia). In this paper, we investigate two sluicing strategies in Spoken Tamil, namely case-marked (CM) and non-case-marked (NCM) sluicing. In addition to the morphological distinction with respect to the presence/absence of grammatical case on the wh-sluice, we argue that the two types of sluicing differ in the configuration of the underlying embedded CP. For CM sluicing, the sluiced clause is derived from a full-fledged interrogative CP at the underlying level, whereas the bare wh-sluice undergoes leftward wh-scrambling to the CP-initial position followed by TP-domain deletion at PF. While we contend that most A/A’-diagnostics are uninformative of the type of operation wh-scrambling in Tamil involves (contra Sarma 2003, Non-Canonical word order: Topic and focus in adult and child tamil. In Karimi Simin (eds.), Word order and scrambling , 238–272. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell), various properties of the CM wh-sluice (e.g. scope, negation, adverb placement, multiple sluicing) can still be described by postulating that the wh-sluice involves A’-scrambling. For the second type of sluicing (NCM sluicing), the sluiced clause involves a biclausal structure formed by a normal sentence and a null copular question. We claim that the NCM wh-sluice is derived from Spad ( Sluicing Plus A Demonstrative ), since the null copular question can be accompanied by a demonstrative, cf. English ‘John met someone, who is that?’ and Dutch spading (Van Craenenbroeck 2010b). Spad is not derived from a full-fledged interrogative CP, and therefore its wh-sluice does not involve any scrambling operation. The present analysis of Tamil sluicing refutes the claim that reduced clefts are one underlying sluicing source in Dravidian languages, and moreover invites an inquiry of whether Dravidian as a language family in the historical sense always receives a homogeneous analysis, given the immense parametric variation among branch languages. In the same vein, we contend that any claim about the ‘principles’ of Dravidian syntax must be supported by strong cross-linguistic evidence at the microscopic level.

This paper contributes to the discussion around the (extra-)grammatical status of language games (or ludlings). We collected over 60 games which are based on the affixation of a dummy morpheme, which is infixed and iterated in most cases. While some are obviously reduplicative, closer investigation reveals that all the games involving iterativity function like reduplication. Our optimality-theoretic analysis concentrates on the explanation of shape, segmental content, placement and iterativity of the dummy affix and employs only constraints standardly assumed in the literature on reduplication. We show that no ludling-specific constraints or stipulations are necessary to account for this typology and make predictions on limitations that presumably apply to typological variation with regard to language games. Ludlings are thus variations of grammatical constraint rankings.

This paper focuses on the characteristics of circum ’s prefixation in Latin taking into account the properties of this item in different syntactic contexts and its combination with transitive and intransitive base verbs. The analysis follows a non-lexicalist framework −Distributed Morphology (Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In K. Hale & S. Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20 , 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), specifically Acedo-Matellán’s (Acedo-Matellán, Víctor. 2016. The morphosyntax of transitions. A case study in Latin and other languages . Oxford: Oxford University Press) approach−, which is particularly relevant to relate the prefix to its homophonic preposition and adverb. Thus, we assume that this prefix is a Root related to Place in the main structure, not a preposition or an adverb incorporated to a verbal configuration. In fact, we argue that the distinction among the prefix, the preposition and the adverb derives from the merger of the same Root √CIRCUM in different structures. Along this discussion, it is shown that c ircum ’s prefixation has different consequences for the argument structure depending on the location of √CIRCUM in the structure: when it adds the nuance of manner, its presence does not trigger the addition of new arguments; nevertheless, when it is interpreted with reference to final location, unexpected accusative objects frequently appear with the prefixed verb. We argue that these unexpected objects do not end up showing accusative case because of circum ’s case assignment, but because of the DP position in the main structure. For that reason, the DPs involved in the structure of the prefixed verb behave like any other argumental DP and they are subject to the same syntactic operations (ellipsis, demotion, and so on).

This manuscript presents a dependency grammar (DG) theory of answer fragments. The ellipsis mechanism implicated in answer fragments is called fragment ellipsis . The potential of a DG account based on the catena unit is probed, but found to be insufficient because it fails to account for certain cases involving in-situ focusing, e.g. Institutional what is hindering progress? – Authority . Therefore, an alternative account is produced, one that identifies four constraints on answer fragments, two that pertain to the elided material and two that pertain to the remnants that survive ellipsis. These four constraints then predict the shape of answer fragments to a large extent.