Volume 41, Issue 3

The present study describes and analyzes the morphosyntactic expression of the Southern Zazaki Ezafe – a linking element in the nominal domain common among Iranian languages. This morpheme is used to link modifiers (i.e. adjectives and possessors) to their head nouns as follows: n - ez 1 mod 1- ez 2 mod 2- ez 3 mod 3. Southern Zazaki, like other languages of the Kurdish region (and unlike, e.g. Persian) reflects phi-features (and case) of the head noun on each Ezafe morpheme in a noun phrase. This paper is focussed around two morphosyntactic puzzles that arise in Southern Zazaki. First, while the Ezafe marker in general reflects the case of the entire DP, the presence of a possessor produces invariant oblique case, regardless of the case value assigned to the DP externally (Paul, Ludwig. 2009. Zazaki. In Gernot Windfuhr (ed.), The Iranian languages , 545–586. Routledge; Todd, Terry Lynn. 2002. A grammar of Dimili. Also known as Zaza . Stockholm: Iremet Forlag; Toosarvandani, Maziar & Coppe van Urk. 2014. The syntax of nominal concord: What Ezafe in Zazaki shows us. Proceedings of NELS 43(2). 209–220 i.a. ). Second, Southern Zazaki uniquely employs a separate series of “D-form” Ezafe morphemes in certain syntactic contexts (Keskin, Mesut. 2010. Zazaca üzerine notlar (Notes on Zazaki). In Şükrü Aslan (ed.), Herkesin Bildiugi Sır: Dersim . Iletisim, 221–244; Paul, Ludwig. 2009. Zazaki. In Gernot Windfuhr (ed.), The Iranian languages , 545–586. Routledge; Todd, Terry Lynn. 2002. A grammar of Dimili. Also known as Zaza . Stockholm: Iremet Forlag; Werner, Brigitte. 2018. Forms and meanings of the Ezafe in Zazaki. In Saloumeh Gholami (ed.), Endangered Iranian languages . Reichert Verlag i.a. ). This study aims to provide a cohesive analysis of Ezafe in Southern Zazaki both with respect to its general phi- and case-sensitive realizations, as well as the distribution of D-forms.

An intriguing phenomenon in Korean vocative constructions has not received comprehensive attention in the generative literature: in the vocatives, the morpheme - i undergoes drop, and its absence hinges on its immediate adjacency to the vocative marker -( y ) a . This article contributes to the literature by demonstrating that this drop is an instance of morphosyntactic haplological dissimilation. Specifically, I identify two ϕ-features, ϕ[−HON: intimate] and ϕ[animate], and propose the morphosyntactic *<ϕ,ϕ> constraint on the - i drop, targeting adjacent matching ϕ-features. This constraint rules out the illicit sequence of *- i -( y ) a because both morphemes share matching ϕ-features and their exponents are immediately string-adjacent, resulting in the - i drop. This analysis offers theoretical insights into the mechanisms underlying the haplological dissimilation pertaining to ϕ-features.

The primary goal of this article is to take advantage of some recent theoretical innovations in syntactic theorizing to propose a novel characterization of some of the basic word-order types isolated by typological research. In the minimalist framework, a necessary condition for a derivation to converge is that the structure it generates should be appropriately labeled. This requirement in particular holds for the major syntactic structures displayed by the various linguistic types. It will be argued that labeling theory, combined with phase theory and the variable syntax of inflectional and discourse features, offers contrasting characterizations of these structures and, as such, provides a window on how exactly SVO, V1 and V2 grammatical systems differ: they differ precisely in the strategy that each type selects in order for neutral declarative root clauses to satisfy the labeling requirement. It will also be shown that the topic and focus structures involving phrasal movement to the periphery, although different parametric choices are made by the various grammatical systems considered here, basically conform to the same requirement.

We explore the possibility of assuming largely flat syntactic structures in Simpler Syntax, suggesting that these are plausible alternatives to conventional hierarchical structures. We consider the implications of flat structure for analyses of various linguistic phenomena in English, including heavy NP shift, extraposition, topicalization and constituent order variation in the VP. We also sketch a general strategy to circumvent some of the problems flat structure is said to cause for semantic interpretation. Our proposals eliminate the need for movement, unpronounced copies and feature-bearing nodes postulated to trigger syntactic operations. We assume the Parallel Architecture and use declarative schemas to establish direct correspondences between phonology on the one hand and syntactic and semantic structures on the other. The resulting picture is one in which narrow syntax can be relatively stable across languages and constructions, largely reflecting the structure of human thought, and the main source of linguistic variation is the linearization of conceptual and syntactic structures. Unlike other minimalist theories that reach a similar conclusion, the theory we propose takes mappings to phonology to be central to the architecture of grammar.

This paper means to re-examine the source of incompleteness for a clause with a bare verb as predicate and no other markings in Mandarin. I propose that the reason comes from the need for categorial labels at the syntax-semantic interface to produce a clear interpretation. Since there are no grammatical affixes marking category V available in Mandarin, it has to make use of functional morphemes which shape their complement space categorially. The result is that overt (or at least inferable) morphemes from the extended projections of VP must occur to assign category V for the predicate phrase, while a root needs merge with degree morphemes to be a predicate adjective. The analysis shows that some issues traditionally related to finiteness may have a pure syntactic account.