Artikler, rapporter og annet (CASTL)

Vowel reduction in Russian: no phonetics in phonology

Iosad, Pavel — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Iosad, Pavel

El + verb complex predicates in Hungarian

Dekany, Eva — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:00:00 GMT

Dekany, Eva

Faroese wh-nominals

Vangsnes, Øystein A — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Vangsnes, Øystein A
This paper presents a survey of Faroese wh-nominals, in particular (i) the hvør N construction, (ii) the hvat fyri (ein) N construction, and (iii) the hvat slag av N.dat construction. The first construction involves a wh-item which is used both pronominally, corresponding to English who and what, and adnominally, corresponding to English which, what (N), and what kind of. The second construction is the Faroese version of the was für/what for construction, including versions with and without an indefinite article and with and without both the preposition (fyri) and the indefinite article (i.e. a “bare what” construction). The last construction involves an overt kind noun which must be followed by the preposition av ‘of’ which in turn assigns dative case to the main/head noun. The survey is based on data collected during the NORMS fieldwork in the Faroe Islands in August 2008, focusing on a number of morphosyntactic issues as well as the semantic distinction between kind and token interpretation. The various findings on Faroese are compared to data on other varieties of Germanic, in particular the North Germanic ones.

I músu fu woóko taánga : Restructuring in Saamáka

van de Vate, Marleen Susanne — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:00:00 GMT

van de Vate, Marleen Susanne

Resultative predicates in Japanese

Takamine, Kaori — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 23:00:00 GMT

Takamine, Kaori
Washio (1997; 1999) observes that resultative predicates are divided into two different groups, strong and weak resultatives, depending on ‘patienthood’ of the object. This typology of resultatives seems to capture a point of crosslinguistic variation in resultatives; Japanese has weak but not strong resultatives, while English has both. Washio also observes that there is another group of examples that bears a superficial resemblance to resultatives but constitutes a different phenomenon, hence spurious resultatives. The difference between weak and strong resultatives is made in terms of the ‘affectedness’ of the verb. Thus the typology of resultatives proposed by Washio is semantically grounded. In this paper, I propose: (i) a finegrained distinction for Washio’s weak resultatives: (ii) a syntactic analysis of the different resultative types. On the basis of syntactic evidence, I argue that there are two types of weak resultatives, an adjunct of VP and a complement of VP within the vP projection. I also argue that spurious resultatives are structurally higher than weak resultatives in Japanese.

Nanosyntax : A short primer to a new approach to language

Starke, Michal — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Starke, Michal
Nanosyntax is a novel approach to the architecture of language, designed to make (better) sense of the new empirical picture emerging from recent years of syntactic research. It is a large-scale project, addressing a wide array of issues, ranging from big issues such as the modularity of language, to fine details, such as the derivation of allomorphy in irregular patterns of given languages and its interaction with syntactic structures.

Directionality and Resultativity : The Cross-Linguistic Correlation Revisited

Son, Minjeong — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 23:00:00 GMT

Son, Minjeong
Recent approaches to the cross-linguistic variation in the expressions of directed motion assume a tight correlation between adjectival resultative and directed motion constructions (e.g., Beck and Snyder 2001, Mateu and Rigau 2001; 2002, McIntyre 2004, Beavers et al. 2004). Beck and Snyder (2001), in particular, argue that languages that allow adjectival resultatives also allow directed motion with goal PP (or telic Path PP) based on the compounding parameter proposed by Snyder (1995; 2001). This paper, however, shows that such ‘macro’-parametric approaches to the cross-linguistic variation (in directed motion) fail when individual languages are investigated in detail. Based on Korean, Japanese, Hebrew, Czech, and Indonesian, I show that there is no necessary correlation between directed motion (i.e., goal PP) constructions and the availability of resultative phrases, and that the previous parameter approaches face challenges in explaining the facts drawn from these languages. I further show that the variation in directed motion is better explained by careful examination of individual adpositions that differ from one language (e.g., English) to another (e.g., Korean).

Lexical items in complex predications : Selection as Underassociation

Ramchand, Gillian C — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:00:00 GMT

Ramchand, Gillian C
This paper examines the problem of selectional ‘matching’ effects in Bengali V-V complex predicates, and English denominal verbs within the context of a decompositional syntax/semantics for verbal meaning and a theory of lexical insertion under non-terminals. It argues that within the particular version of this kind of lexical insertion, as proposed by Ramchand 2008b, selection can be captured by the underassociation of category features constrained by Agree. In this way, I argue that we can achieve many of the effects of selection without any distinct lexical subcategorization frame, or sub-type of feature-checking, once we have a suitably articulated theory of lexical insertion.

Resultatives in Korean Revisited : Complementation versus Adjunction

Son, Minjeong — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:00:00 GMT

Son, Minjeong
Korean resultatives are divided into two types depending on whether the subject of a resultative secondary predicate is assigned accusative case or nominative case. The former is comparable to selected object resultatives (e.g., Mary wipe the table clean), and the latter to unselected object resultatives (e.g., John screamed himself hoarse) in English. Korean resultatives have received a great deal of attention in the literature due to di erent case markings on the subject of a secondary predicate. However, there has been no agreement regarding whether Korean resultatives should be analyzed as small clause complements, similar to English, or adjunct phrases. Some argue that both resultative types are small clause complements (e.g., Kim 1999, Chang and Kim 2001), but some argue that only the selected object resultatives are true small clause type resultatives while the unselected object resultatives are VP adjuncts (e.g., Song 2005, Yeo 2006). A recent proposal by Shim and den Dikken (2007), however, suggests that both types should be analyzed as TP adjuncts. This paper defends the second position, a split analysis for the two types of resultatives: a complementation analysis for selected object resultatives, and an adjunction analysis for unselected object resul- tatives. Supporting evidence for the split analysis is provided by a few syntactic and semantic facts that lead to the conclusion that the two resultatives must be structurally distinguished from one another in terms of their complementhood/adjuncthood.

Noun-verb conversion without a generative lexicon

Lundquist, Bjørn — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Lundquist, Bjørn
This paper discusses different types of zero-derived de-verbal nominals with a focus on result nominals, simple event nominals and complex event nominals. I argue that zero-derived nominals should be treated on a par with overtly derived nominals. I claim that verbs that have related zero-derived nominals have nominal gender features in their lexical entries in addition to verbal features, like Proc and Res, and that merging a gender feature on top of an event-structure representation results in a nominal. To capture the fact that verbal entries can be inserted in both nominal and verbal contexts, I apply the principle of underattachment, or underassociation, that allows lexical entries to be inserted in the syntax even when not all of the features in the lexical entry are present in the syntax (see e.g. Ramchand 2008 and Caha 2009). In verbal contexts, no gender feature is inserted, and in some of the nominal contexts, only a subset of the verbs event features are present. I further argue that the only function of overt nominalizing suffixes is to lexicalize a gender feature. If the lexical entry of a verb already contains a gender feature, no overt nominalizing suffix needs to be inserted.