The present article demonstrates how the so far unchallenged misanalysis within Chinese linguistics of a few, but central, data points has led to a distorted picture biasing, inter alia, the general typology of wh-in-situ languages as well as the crosslinguistic study of Quantifier Phrases. This is the case for méi yǒu rén ‘not exist person’, hěnshǎo yǒu rén ‘rarely exist person’, and zhǐ yǒu DP ‘only exist DP’, which are not nominal projections equivalent of ‘nobody’, ‘only DP’, and ‘few people’ as currently assumed, but existential constructions: ‘there isn't anybody’, ‘there is only DP’, and ‘there are rarely people’. In addition, a subset of speakers has reanalyzed hěnshǎo (yǒu) rén with a covert yǒu ‘exist’ as a QP hěnshǎo rén ‘few people’. A corpus study highlights the limited distribution of hěnshǎo rén ‘few people’, which shows that it is not on a par with its antonym hěn duō rén ‘many people’.

This article examines two instances of metathesis that have occurred in Ch'ol (Mayan) since the late 18th century. While at first, they may seem to be cases of irregular, sporadic change, a closer look at constraints involving ejective consonants within disyllabic and trisyllabic roots or stems suggests that these cases conform to a regular pattern within Ch'ol, and more generally, Mayan languages, in which reflexes of *q’ or *k’ are preferred in medial position in disyllabic roots with a medial glottalized consonant. The data support Hume's (2004) attestation assumption for metathesis, as well as Hock's (1985) structural motivation.

Les adverbes français se terminant en –ment ont évolué par un double processus de grammaticalisation. Une première grammaticalisation, d'origine romane, a été responsable de l'émergence de tels adverbes, tandis qu'un second processus (appelé (inter)subjectification) a entrainé des changements syntaxiques et sémantiques spécifiques. Selon Traugott, ces changements répondent aux principaux critères établis pour le processus de grammaticalisation (recatégorisation, amélioration de la portée syntaxique, sens plus abstraits, enrichissement pragmatique et unidirectionalité (Traugott 1995b, 2010; Traugott et Dasher 2002). Afin de prouver cette hypothèse, j'analyse ici une collection de tels adverbes qui ont au moins trois usages différents en français contemporain : sérieusement, honnêtement, franchement, apparemment, carrément, décidément, étonnamment et seulement. Outre l'analyse synchronique et diachronique de ces adverbes, je rapporte des régularités spécifiques (ou chaînes sémantiques, selon Heine et Kuteva (2002) observées au cours de leur évolution.

This article explores the distribution of Arabic reflexive and reciprocal anaphors in various structures as well as the syntactic environments in which such anaphors are (in)admissible. In particular, it examines the binding domains for reflexives and reciprocals and focuses for the most part on the asymmetries between these two types of anaphors in possessive DPs and PPs. It will be shown that the binding facts are better captured by reducing binding domains to phases, that DPs and PPs constitute a phase only when containing a possessive phrase, and that a reflexive and a reciprocal behave differently in such possessive structures in that the latter, unlike the former, undergoes overt movement. Accordingly, it will be argued that reflexive possessives are ungrammatical because they are left unbound in their DP/PP phase, while reciprocal possessives are grammatical since multiple copies of the distributor are created during the derivation due to movement, allowing it to seek an antecedent in the higher vP, its phasal binding domain. For this to hold, Principle A should apply cyclically at the end of each phase; that is, before the complement of the phase head is spelled out.