Volume 39, Issue 1

A parasitic gap construction typically occurs when an otherwise illicit gap in an island is ameliorated by a gap elsewhere in the sentence. In this paper, we consider the relationship between the unacceptability of extraction from subject islands (ExtrSubj) and the amelioration associated with parasitic gaps. We argue that there is no parasitic gap mechanism per se that has the effect of making extraction from an island grammatical. Rather, the link between the two is a matter of processing complexity. Our central claim is that in ExtrSubj, the presence of a distinct referring argument in the predicate contributes processing complexity. This referring argument is the ‘Uninvited Guest’. If an instance of ExtrSubj is of reduced acceptability, inclusion of the Uninvited Guest is likely to make it fully unacceptable, or ‘ungrammatical’ in conventional terms. On the other hand, linking of the argument position to the extracted A′ constituent – a ‘parasitic gap’ configuration – does not contribute additional processing complexity, thus giving rise to the appearance of amelioration.

An outstanding question in current studies concerns the status of Romance SE that does not obviously mark reflexivity or anticausativity. This paper signals the presence of such constructions in Old and Modern Romanian, where SE occurs with unergative verbs and qualifies as pleonastic according to traditional grammars (i.e., it makes no difference for the truth conditions or for the argument structure). The main argument is that such constructions are actually instances of differential subject marking (DSM) in Romanian, and that the semantic triggers and the underlying configuration resemble those that occur with differential object marking (DOM) in this language. In terms of theoretical contribution, this analysis (i) widens the cross-linguistic inventory of DSM patterns, by adding Clitic Doubling; (ii) confirms the predictions of recent studies that there could be similarity rather than opposition between DOM and DSM contexts; (iii) shows the possibility of re-allocating the reflexive pronoun SE to other configurations besides (an instance of) verb reflexivization.

This paper proposes a Minimalist analysis of the Adjunct Condition. It shows that extraction from adverbial adjuncts is common, and it reviews and extends (Truswell, Robert. 2011. Events, phrases, and questions . Oxford: Oxford University Press analysis), which holds that extractions are grammatical when the adjunct and matrix predicates together constitute a macro-event. Syntactically, a UI feature (representing “unintegration”) on adjuncts must be active at either LF or PF; where it is active ill-formedness results. However, if a macro-event is possible, UI is inactivated at LF, allowing extraction; and though an active UI at PF normally causes ill-formedness, this is repairable by sluicing. This analysis improves on existing analyses by accounting for possible extractions, island repair by sluicing, and the basic conception of adjuncts as relatively unintegrated phrases.

One of the most significant results in syntax has been a deep empirical and, to some degree, theoretical understanding of the argument/adjunct distinction, which underlies a range of superficially disparate phenomena. Therefore, any phenomenon that seems to challenge the argument/adjunct distinction merits careful examination. This paper investigates just such a phenomenon: proleptic PPs. Previous claims about the argument/adjunct status of proleptic PPs are contradictory and mostly unsubstantiated. The paper subjects proleptic PPs to argument/adjunct diagnostics and shows that they unambiguously pattern as arguments: they cannot iterate, survive do so –replacement, or be stranded under v P-pseudoclefting; reconstruct for Condition C under v P-preposing; and are L-selected. They also pattern as arguments on a novel argument/adjunct diagnostic developed here, selectional switch : if adding XP to a structure changes the selectional interactions between a head Y and some ZP ≠ XP, then XP is an argument. Finally, the paper considers counterarguments to the view it defends, showing that they are unsuccessful or irrelevant. Thus, even XPs whose argument/adjunct status initially seems murky can turn out on closer scrutiny to pattern unambiguously as one or the other, supporting the traditional but not uncontested view that the argument/adjunct distinction runs deep, and suggesting that it may be categorical.

This paper addresses aspectual se in Spanish. Building on the previous analyses that have been proposed in the literature to account for constructions with aspectual se that mainly focus on the syntax of these (see, e.g., MacDonald, Jonathan E. 2017. Spanish aspectual se as an indirect object reflexive: The import of atelicity, bare nouns, and leísta PCC repairs. Probus. International Journal of Romance Linguistics 29(1). 73–118), this paper provides a semantic account that makes explicit (i) why dynamic predicates must be telic in the presence of se , and (ii) why the very same se can appear with a limited number of stative predicates, which are atelic. The account is implemented in the Figure/Path Relation model in Beavers, John. 2011. On affectedness. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29(2). 335–370, Figure/Path Relation model. I propose a maximization strategy that captures that dynamic predicates in constructions with se are always telic by indicating the conditions under which the theme has a fixed quantity and the scale/path that may be associated with the verb is bounded. This maximization strategy is then compared to and distinguished from the event maximization strategies proposed for Slavic languages (Filip, Hana. 2008. Events and maximalization: The case of telicity and perfectivity. In Susan Rothstein (ed.), Theoretical and crosslinguistic approaches to the semantics of aspect , 217–256. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) and Hungarian (Kardos, Éva. 2016. Telicity marking in Hungarian. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 1(1). 1–37), and to the scale/path maximization strategy proposed for Southern Aymara (Martínez Vera, Gabriel. 2021a. Degree achievements and degree morphemes in competition in Southern Aymara. Linguistics and Philosophy 44. 695–735).