We compare the production of anaphoric expressions in Spanish and Italian. In two sentence completion tasks, Spanish and Italian-speaking participants complete sentence fragments where we manipulate ...the location of the antecedents (in a main or subordinate clause), the gender of the antecedents (similar or different) and the referent of the anaphoric expression (subject or object antecedent). Our results show a weaker subject bias for null pronouns and a weaker object bias for overt pronouns in Spanish compared to Italian. In addition, a thetic interpretation of the initial (subordinate) clause decreases the accessibility of the subject antecedent, leading to an increased use of noun phrases when there is gender-similarity between antecedents. By including gender dissimilar antecedents, we further observe an increase in speakers’ production of overt pronouns when reference to an object antecedent is expected.
This paper deals with the ‘reverse’ double object construction in Hakka, where the theme NP precedes the goal NP without being mediated by an adpositional goal marker. I show that the reverse ...V‐theme‐goal order is sensitive to verb types and argue that this construction takes an underlying dative structure with a non‐thematic null prepositional goal marker. This formal syntactic account is shown to capture the word order alternations and grammatical properties observed in Hakka ditransitives.
This paper proposes a uniform analysis of canonical and noncanonical French and Dutch attributive adjectives. Canonically, French adjectives are postnominal and Dutch adjectives are inflected. The ...noncanonical counterparts are prenominal, for French, and lacking inflection, for Dutch. A review of the literature indicates several proposed locations in the noun phrase for adjectives, and this analysis utilizes three: Spec‐Subj in the D‐layer, Spec‐Agr, and NP‐internal. Adjectives in Spec‐Agr produce a canonical reading, functioning like predicates of the noun phrase. The subjective nature of the D‐layer and the proximity of NP‐internal adjectives to N accounts for the noncanonical interpretations. The formal distinction in canonicity arises because Dutch adjective inflection is the exponent of the Agr‐head, so that only Spec‐Agr adjectives are inflected, and because French NP movement crosses the adjective in Spec‐Agr, so that only Spec‐Agr adjectives are postnominal.
This article focuses on the choice of nominal forms in a language with articles (Catalan) in comparison to a language without articles (Russian). An experimental study (consisting of various ...naturalness judgment tasks) was run with speakers of these two languages which allowed to show that in bridging contexts native speakers’ preferences vary when reference is made to one single individual or to two disjoint referents. In the former case, Catalan speakers chose (in)definite NPs depending on their accessibility to contextual information that guarantees a unique interpretation (or the lack of it) for the entity referred to. Russian speakers chose bare nominals as a default form. When reference is made to two disjoint referents (as encoded by the presence of an additional altre/drugoj “other” NP), speakers prefer an optimal combination of two indefinite NPs (i.e., un NP followed by un altre NP in Catalan; odin “some/a” NP followed by drugoj NP in Russian). This study shows how speakers of the two languages manage to combine grammatical knowledge (related to the meaning of the definite and the indefinite articles and altre in Catalan; and the meaning of bare nominals, odin and drugoj in Russian) with world knowledge activation and accessibility to discourse information.
The paper argues that natural language quantification, as expressed by determiner phrases, is not polysemous. The foil for this claim is Hofweber (Ontology and the ambitions of metaphysics. Oxford ...University Press, 2016; Mind, 128:699–734, 2019), who contends that natural language quantification is polysemous between a domain reading and an inferential reading. The thesis is intended to support a more general division between externalist and internalist positions in semantics. The paper, to the contrary, argues that there is no linguistic evidence for polysemous quantification, and Hofweber’s proposal proves to be non-compositional. Further, an approach at least consistent with internalism is available independent of an inferential reading, for natural language quantification can be read as ontologically neutral, which removes the rationale for the polysemy hypothesis. The paper remains neutral on so-called heavyweight (thick) vs. lightweight (thin) construals of quantification, which are not claims about natural language semantics.
The present article’s topic of study is the Romanian numeral, more precisely, the numeral’s capacity to function as pro-form. The first part of the study aims to clarify several issues regarding the ...delimitation of this grammar class, due to the fact that in Romanian the morphological classification of numerals as „names of numbers” generated numerous controversies. The second part of the research is dedicated to the analysis of the Romanian numeral from the semantico-functional point of view. The conclusion that can be drawn is that the numerals, with a few exceptions, have features which give them the quality of pro-forms, especially pro-nouns.
This paper presents some arguments against a unilateral account of numerically quantified noun phrases (NQNPs) and for a bilateral account of such expressions. It is proposed that where NQNP give ...rise to at least readings, this is the result of one of the two forms of pragmatic reasoning. To that end, the paper develops an independently motivated account of specificity and existential closure involving diagonalization.
•Baker's (2014) analysis of PNI cannot account for the data from Hocak (Siouan).•Contra Baker 2014, there is no surface adjacency requirement for Hocak PNI.•Hocak also does not display V-to-T ...movement.•The Hocak data are compatible with Massam (2001).
This paper provides evidence from Hocąk (Siouan) that Baker's (2014) analysis cannot account for all cases of pseudo noun incorporation (PNI). Baker (2014) argues that PNI is best analyzed as complex predicate formation derived via head movement of the object NP's head noun into the verb. Baker contends that the resulting structure cannot be linearized at PF if any material intervenes between the two copies of the noun, and thus that this movement must be string-vacuous. Here, I present data from Hocąk PNI that are problematic for Baker's theory. First, I show that internal arguments that are not base-generated in a position linearly adjacent to the verb can nonetheless be incorporated. Second, NP-internal modifiers can surface between the incorporated noun and the verb, which is also not compatible with Baker's theory. Instead, this paper demonstrates that Massam's (2001) analysis of PNI in Niuean (Oceanic) is able to account for the Hocąk data. Massam proposes that PNIed objects are NPs that are base-generated in object position. Thus, while Baker's head movement theory may be the right analysis for PNI in other languages, I argue that the data from Hocąk demonstrate that it cannot be the only possible mechanism.
Previous research on syntactic complexity in academic writing has mostly examined traditional large-grained indices to capture this construct, measuring complexity at clause or sentence level. ...However, due to the heavier reliance of academic writing on complex noun phrases, these traditional indices of syntactic complexity are not adequate for operationalizing this linguistic feature in academic writing. Therefore, the present research used fine-grained phrasal and clausal indices to investigate syntactic complexity in the discussion section of research articles (RAs) in three disciplines, namely applied linguistics, chemistry, and economics. In addition, texts from two groups of writers, L1-English authors and L2-English authors, were compared with respect to clausal and phrasal indices. Nine indices of clausal complexity and thirteen indices of phrasal complexity were examined. The findings revealed significant disciplinary differences in both types of complexity. It was found that in clausal measures, applied linguistics and economics discussions were generally more complex than those of chemistry, while in phrasal measures chemistry texts were generally more complex than those of applied linguistics and economics. However, the picture related to L1 vs. L2 differences was not that clear. The results are discussed and theoretical and pedagogical implications are offered.
The aim of this self-paced reading study was to investigate the role of grammatical and context-based gender in assigning an antecedent to a pronoun where the antecedent is an epicene or a bigender ...noun. In Italian, epicene nouns (e.g., vittima, victim) have grammatical gender, whereas bigender nouns (e.g., assistente, assistant) do not have grammatical gender but instead acquire it from the context in which they occur. We devised three different types of context: incongruent contexts (i.e., contexts containing a gender bias that differed from the grammatical gender of the epicene), congruent contexts (i.e., contexts where the gender bias and grammatical gender coincided), and neutral contexts. In the case of epicenes, pronoun resolution was driven by grammatical gender; in the case of bigenders it was driven by the gender assigned by context. The results are discussed in the light of current models of anaphor resolution.
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