Volume 40, Issue 2

This paper demonstrates that narrow foci and wh-phrases, even in a language where they have (nearly-)identical surface distributions, do not have the same syntax – and, as such, are not a uniform category. Specifically, it shows that foci and wh-phrases in Georgian appear immediately preverbally but are derived differently. The evidence comes from standard syntactic tests and language-specific ones: I show that, in Georgian, neg-words can serve as a tool for determining the structural positions of other constituents, and foci and wh-phrases have different distributional properties with respect to neg-words. Based on this, I demonstrate that wh-phrases in Georgian undergo A-bar movement to the specifier of a dedicated projection, accompanied by verb raising. Preverbal foci remain in situ, while the material intervening between the narrow focus and the verb undergoes displacement. This demonstrates that what looks like unified preverbal placement of foci and wh-phrases corresponds to the outcomes of two independent syntactic processes. Additional support for this approach is provided by the analysis of the distribution of postverbal foci, also allowed in Georgian. The Georgian facts, I argue, support the hypothesis that syntactic/semantic notions (e.g., [+Q]) are encoded as syntactic features that drive movement. On the other hand, purely information-structural notions (e.g., semantically non-exhaustive focus) are not encoded syntactically, and, as such, cannot trigger syntactic movement – but can impose their own syntax-prosody mapping requirements onto the syntactic structure.

This article presents evidence that alienable versus inalienable possession is distinguished in the morphology of Nuer, a West Nilotic language. Although the distinction in possession type is subtle due to Nuer morphology being mostly non-segmental and is additionally obfuscated by numerous exceptions, we show that Nuer conforms to the well-established typological observation that alienable possessive constructions involve more structural complexity than inalienable ones. We argue that alienable possession is marked on the possessum with a non-segmental suffix owing to the presence of P oss P structural layer; in contrast, inalienable possession involves a simple juxtaposition of the possessum and the possessor, which are in a head-complement configuration. These structural assumptions account for several morphological patterns where possessed nouns behave differently based on possession type. We also suggest that the exceptional patterns can be dealt with under a presumption that another non-segmental morpheme – the linker – intervenes between the possessum and the possessor when one of them is larger than a monosyllable.

The paper argues for a bisentential, paratactic account of Hanging Topic Left Dislocations wherein the syntactically unconnected hanging topic phrase is the remnant of an elliptical copulative sentence which is linearly juxtaposed to the second, host sentence. This proposal represents a natural extension of Ott’s system for Clitic Left Dislocations and predicative non-restrictive nominal appositives. By assuming that the hanging topic is structurally disconnected from the host sentence, the analysis constitutes a radical departure from integrated/monosentential approaches within cartography, which analyze hanging topics as intrasentential, albeit peripheral, constituents in the left spine of the clause. Using data from English and Spanish as well as from other linguistic varieties, the paratactic approach provides a principled account of various issues facing monosentential analyses of hanging topics, including anti-connectivity, coreference with the resumptive/epithetic correlate, comma intonation/pause potential, case, insensitivity to locality constraints, islandhood, and potential presence of interjections between hanging topic and host sentence, amongst others. The account is also successful in capturing orphaned topics, which are not linked to any constituent in the sentence they occur with, alongside ‘interrogative’ and hyperdetached hanging topics.

Recent work on structure building and mapping in Minimalist syntax makes explicit reference to workspaces ; however, it is still an underexplored area. This paper is an attempt to (a) analyse the notion of ‘workspace’ as used in current Minimalist syntax and (b) provide a definition of ‘syntactic workspace’ that can help us capture interesting empirical phenomena. In doing this, we confront set-theoretic and graph-theoretic approaches to syntactic structure in terms of the operations that can affect syntactic objects and how their properties are related to the definition of workspace. We analyse the consequences of conceptualising ‘syntax’ as a set of operations that affect local regions of the workspace, defining directed graphs.