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Taking Miyagawa’s (2022. Syntax in the treetops . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) discussion as a point of departure, I examine the properties of the formal politeness markers in Japanese and Korean, namely, - mas /- des and - (su)pni . Besides being markers of formal politeness (or allocutive agreement), these elements are parallel in that they are all limited to Emonds’ (1970. Root and structure-preserving transformations . Ph.D. dissertation, MIT) root contexts and are able to license special interrogative particles, which according to Miyagawa (2022. Syntax in the treetops . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) is a consequence of their head-to-head φ-feature movement. In addition to the systematic similarities, there is an important difference concerning their base-generation in TP-internal and TP-external positions, which I suggest reflects a general pattern of grammaticalization in these languages. In addition to providing support for Miyagawa’s analysis, the discussion in this paper also shows that aspects of the behavior of Japanese and Korean, such as the formal politeness markers -mas/-des and -(su)pni , can generally be better understood when they are analyzed side-by-side rather than in isolation.

We divorce Negative Concord (NC) among two or more n-items, which is invariably present in Romance languages, from the mutual exclusion or cooccurrence between clausal negation markers (CNMs) and other n-items. The standard minimalist treatment in terms of Agree with respect to a formal feature [n] (for [negation]) is maintained here. However, an EPP-like principle, conceived as a (parametrized) condition regulating the representation of [n] at phase edges is introduced to deal with CNMs. By divorcing the n-EPP condition from n-Agree, we eliminate Zeijlstra’s Upward Agree in favor of Multiple Downward Agree between a phase head probe endowed with Formal Feature FF and one or more elements endowed with the same interpretable feature FF in the WorkSpace. We argue that these theoretical moves are beneficial from an empirical point of view. Focusing on varieties spoken in Northern Italy, we argue that an exhaustive typology of Romance negative systems can be derived by the parametrized [n]-EPP. We claim that the present approach allows this variation to be accounted for within the syntax – specifically, no recourse is made to semantic variation.

A number of the quantity-sensitive stress systems which are characterised by complex weight distinctions have often proven challenging for parallel constraint-based metrical frameworks. A number of parallel-OT accounts are proposed to explain stress systems with multi-level weight hierarchies, in which syllables with long vowels (CVV) are more prominent than closed syllables (CVC), and closed syllables are more prominent than short open syllables (CV). The majority of these accounts are either inadequate or implausible. This paper seeks to provide an alternative account of stress systems with complex weight distinctions. Gradual prosodification, as an application of Harmonic Serialism, is the proposed framework for analysis. Maintaining gradualness and harmonic improvement in prosodic structure across the different steps of the derivation is deemed to be sufficient to achieve the required effects. The realisation of the various prominence relations illustrated in those multi-level weight hierarchies is considered to be an epiphenomenon of the sequential application of independently motivated prosodification processes, such as coda consonant moraification and foot construction. The proposed gradual prosodification model is applied to the stress systems of Kashmiri and Pulaar, that have identical algorithms for primary stress assignment, in addition to the secondary stress patten attested in Pulaar.

Despite the fact that Italian has been studied intensely for many years, the intricate relationship between its syllable structure and its metrical facts (weight and stress assignment) still poses a very significant formal challenge to previously published theoretical accounts. In this paper, we provide a novel account of Italian stress within the framework of Strict CV Metrics. We show that this approach most accurately captures the empirical data of the language, while providing a formally simple analysis which does not require feet, binary or ternary. The analysis is computationally simple and derives the ‘three syllable’ window effect without arbitrarily stipulating the foot-size of the language or overgenerating forms.

Proleptic (or prothetic) objects ( Majaliwa remembered about Samson that he’s sick ) present a particular puzzle because they appear to instantiate an unconstrained cross-clausal dependency between the proleptic object ( Samson ) and a correlate ( he ). The current analytical approach to prolepsis is relies on a syntactic mechanism of treating the embedded clause as a predicate, derived by merging a null operator which unselectively binds the correlate. This approach faces a number of known empirical challenges. Moreover, this work does not meaningfully engage with any of the recent semantic innovations in our understanding of embedded clauses (Kratzer 2006. Decomposing attitude verbs. Available at: http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/DcwY2JkM/attitude-verbs2006.pdf). I offer an alternative to the CP-predicate approach, adopting three (semi-)independently motivated ideas concerning (i) the syntax of cross-clausal dependencies in Lohninger et al. (2022. From prolepsis to hyperraising. Philosophies 7(32)), (ii) the semantics of embedded clauses in Kratzer (2006. Decomposing attitude verbs. Available at: http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/DcwY2JkM/attitude-verbs2006.pdf)/Moulton (2009. Not moving clauses: Connectivity in clausal arguments. Syntax 16(3). 250–291), and (iii) the semantics of about in Rawlins (2013. About about. Proceedings of SALT 23. 336–357)/Onea and Mardale (2020. From topic to object, grammaticalization differential object marking in Romanian. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadienne de Linguistique 65(3). 350–392). I argue that proleptic objects are complex-NPs, roughly, the thing about Samson . The somewhat particular properties of prolepsis are natural consequences of these combined ideas. I further present empirical evidence from Japanese that the complex-NP analysis is on the right track. This analysis deepens our understanding of prolepsis by including both semantic and syntactic factors.

Mandarin numeral phrases display two characteristics. First, the numeral yi ‘one’ differs from other numerals in many respects. Second, classifiers can appear without any overt numerals, resulting in Cl-N phrases (e.g., ben shu ‘one book’): Cl-N phrases, like numeral phrases with yi ‘one’ (e.g., yi-ben shu ‘one book’), always denote singularity, but also contrast with numeral phrases with yi ‘one’ in various respects like scope. Although some of these patterns have been discussed before (e.g., Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen & Rint Sybesma. 1998. Yi-wan tang, yi-ge tang : Classifiers and massifiers. Tsing-Hua Journal of Chinese Studies 28(3). 385–412; Chen, Ping. 2003. Indefinite determiner introducing definite referent: A special use of ‘ yi ‘one’ + classifier’ in Chinese. Lingua 113. 1169–1184; Huang, C.-T. James. 2015. On syntactic analyticity and parametric theory. In A. Li, A. Simpson & W.-T. Dylan Tsai (eds.), Chinese Syntax in a cross-linguistic perspective . Oxford University Press; Li, Y. H. Audrey & Shengli Feng. 2015. ‘yi’ zi shenglüe de yunlü tiaojian [The prosodic conditions on yi -deletion]. Yuyan Kexue [Linguistic Sciences] 14(1). 1–12; Zhang, Niina Ning. 2019. Complex indefinites and the projection of DP in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics ), previous analyses could cover some but not all these observations. This paper provides a unified account for these two puzzles and a number of related issues. It will be argued that due to an ongoing grammaticalization process, Mandarin yi is ambiguous between a numeral and an indefinite article. The grammaticalization of yi is an instantiation of a well-known phenomenon: specifier-to-head reanalysis (e.g., van Gelderen, Elly. 2004. Grammaticalization as economy . John Benjamins Publishing Company; van Gelderen, Elly. 2019. Cyclical changes and problems of projection. In Anne Breitbarth, Miriam Bouzouita, Lieven Danckaert & Elisabeth Witzenhausen (eds.), Cycles in language change . Oxford University Press; Roberts, Ian. 1993. Verbs and diachronic syntax . Dordrecht: Kluwer; Roberts, Ian & Anna Roussou. 2003. Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Furthermore, with cross-linguistic evidence from Cantonese, I argue for an intermediate stage of specifier-to-head reanalysis: a functional category starts as a specifier of a phrase; it then adjoins to another head before being reanalyzed as an independent head projecting a separate phrase.

This paper investigates the scope interaction between modality and negation in Turkish. We observe that modals display a complex picture of scope interaction with negation: both possibility and necessity modals can have scope above or under negation on the one hand and both epistemic and root modals can take wide scope over or narrow scope under negation. This suggests that modals are interpreted in accordance with modal relations, bases, and sources closely associated with discourse and pragmatic factors, but not with lexical idiosyncrasies through which modals are classified as Modal1, Modal2. The study also presents empirical evidence for the idea that scope relations are determined by syntactic structure, indicating that complex grammatical operations are unnecessary to maintain the linear order of the sentence. This suggests that Turkish exhibits scope rigidity in syntax-semantics interface, a situation also noted for scope relations between NPIs and negation. For otherwise cases where scope relations are not read off syntactically, we offer LF movement of negation to a higher position, an operation which has already been introduced for independent grammatical phenomena such as NPI licensing. Hence, there is no need to postulate overt or covert head movement of modals to structurally higher positions to outscope negation.