This volume grew out of our research agenda, seeking to understand the structure and interpretation of bare nouns in three typologically and genetically unrelated articleless languages: Lithuanian, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun. None of these languages has articles, and yet they are very different from one another with respect to the syntactic and semantic behaviour of their bare nouns (for Lithuanian, see Gillon and Armoskaite 2013, 2015; for Lithuanian and Innu-aimun, Gillon and Armoskaite 2012; for Inuktitut, Lithuanian and Innu-aimun, Gillon 2013, 2015). This variation forced us to question the universality of D, as well as the universality of the semantics of D.

This article measures the productivity index of the Old English suffixes -cund, -ful, and -isc as well as the prefix ful- and checks the results against the diachronic evolution of the affixes. The frameworks brought to the discussion include Type frequency measurement, as well as productivity indexes proposed by Baayen (1992, 1993, 2009) and Trips (2009). The sources are both textual (The Dictionary of Old English Corpus) and lexicographical (the lexical database of Old English Nerthus). The conclusion drawn is that Baayen's (1992, 1993, 2002) index of Global Productivity provides the most consistent results with the diachronic evolution of the affixes.

Theoretical accounts of Greek compounds argue for a close relation between their stress properties and their underlying structure. Compounds that preserve and receive stress at the same position as their second constituent are analyzed as stem-word constructions, while those that receive antepenultimate stress are viewed as belonging to the stem-stem category. Using an auditory lexical decision task, we examine the effect of stress change on the processing of compounds in the light of existing theoretical linguistic accounts. Although our experimental results do not reach statistical significance, we believe that they are informative of the cognitive status and role of stress in compound processing. Finally, they relate to existing theories of compounding in Greek and reflect the complex interaction of the psycholinguistic effects of stress and the structural properties of these constructions.

This paper assumes that the basic denotation of nouns can be that of kind or property and that the determiner system of a language is a direct consequence of this cross-linguistic variation. An analysis of how definiteness and specificity are marked across three languages with different determiner systems, namely, English, French and Mauritian Creole (MC), provides evidence of the co-relation between noun denotation and determiner system. Languages with kind denoting nouns (English and MC) admit bare nominal arguments, which are barred in French, whose nouns denote properties. However, English and MC differ in that English has an overt definite article, which is a lacking in MC. This null element requires licensing by an overt specificity marker in some syntactic environments. The English and MC definite articles are analyzed as operators that quantify over sets of kind denoting nouns, and they serve a different function from the French definite article, which is specified for number and selects properties.

The DO in “Subject DO Predicate” sentences is often associated with unexpected meaning, including contradictory uses in dialogue where DO functions as a sort of reassertive marker and in monologal contexts where a speaker short-circuits potential objections. Many instances of affirmative DO do not fit into this category, however. These involve quasi-exclamative use, non-polemical use in dialogue or gnomic confirmation. Often considered prototypical, contradictory DO represents only one possible configuration: other uses can be accounted for as paramétered variations of a single fundamental operation. Affirmative DO marks speaker endorsement. Values of affirmative DO — polemical, concessive, exclamative, etc. —are shown to result from the relation between various preconstructed subjective positions and the speaker’s own position.

The study explores the expression of the unexpected by English adjectives and participles prefixed in un- in The Picture of Dorian Gray. The study compares their oral realizations and translations in connection with the various modes of construction of otherness, which can either be a dual opposition between the expected and effective values, with participles and some adjectives, or a gradient between the two values with adjectives. In the case of dual opposition, ungradable adjectives tend to be translated using positive adjectives and there is clear acoustic prominence on the prefix, as in the case of special focus. “Constructed negation” in translation is illustrated by sans + (aucun) NOUN or the suffix -able, and corresponds to greater duration of the prefix. In other cases, the base is acoustically prominent, but translation techniques vary, although four techniques account for 80% of the entries, even if translator styles differ considerably.

This article investigates the postverbal negation construction in Taiwanese Southern Min. I propose that the construction is derived in a way similar to resultatives and that the postverbal negation bo and its affirmative counterpart u are particular kinds of aspectual elements in the resultative complement. Given this, the lack of (apparent) postverbal negation in the closely-related language Mandarin Chinese can be ascribed to the fact that Mandarin Chinese lacks this particular aspectual use of affirmative you and negative mei(you) and thus it fails to generate the structure under investigation. It is also shown that the proposed analysis is supported by cross-linguistic correlations among Chinese languages.

In this paper, we reconsider whether article-less languages have the DP projection, focusing on Tatar. We argue that putative correlations between the presence/absence of articles in a language and various DP-external phenomena (e.g. Left-Branch Extraction, superiority effects, and others), discussed by Bošković and Şener (2014), inter alia, do not hold if a broader range of languages is considered more carefully. Instead, we show that certain correlations obtain between the internal structure, syntactic position, case marking, and interpretation of. noun phrases found in distinct structural environments: direct objects, possessors, and complements of the so-called attributivizers. Specifically, we demonstrate a contrast between two types of nominals: accusative direct objects, possessors in ezafe-3, and complements of certain attributivizers share properties that contrast them with unmarked direct objects, possessors in ezafe-2, and complements of other attributivizers. We argue that postulating the DP projection in the former but not the latter type of noun phrases allows us to account for these observed correlations in a unified way.

L’effet oppositionnel entre sens attendu et sens inattendu est ici examiné dans le cadre théorique de la psychosystématique guillaumienne, à travers l’étude des formes verbales de l’anglais. Deux types de situations interlocutives sont abordés. Le premier concerne la relation entre narrateur et lecteur et traite de l’écart opéré entre chronologie d’expérience et chronologie linéaire choisie par le narrateur. Le second met en présence des sujets parlants dans une situation d’énonciation et étudie l’écart entre sens attendu et sens obtenu dans les emplois modaux en discours rapporté. L’étude conclut à la distinction capitale qu’il convient d’opérer entre expérience et représentation. Les phénomènes de discordance narrative et de polyphonie énonciative dépendent ultimement de la manière dont la réalité phénoménale est représentée.

This contribution explores a methodological problem in language acquisition studies. Much research in language acquisition has shown that children use statistical learning as a strategy in the acquisition of their native language (Saffran et al. 1996 and many others). Frequency of occurrence is also believed to determine the order of acquisition of phonological structures in the construction of the grammar (Boersma and Levelt 2000, Levelt et al. 2000, van de Weijer and Sloos 2013). How do we obtain the relevant frequency information for acquisition studies?

Ideally, we should take into account children's speech or child-directed speech (CDS), depending on the purposes of the investigation. Investigations into the construction of the lexicon and acquisition of the grammar depend on the input, the perception, and the lexical storage of the child, and therefore, frequency data on CDS seem most desirable.

Evidence for a DP-projection in West Greenlandic Inuit Abstract The goal of this paper is to argue in favor of a DP-layer in West Greenlandic Inuit noun phrases and in doing so contribute to the argument that the absence of overt D-elements is not directly indicative of the absence of a DP-layer. Inuit is a polysynthetic, ergative language with no overt articles; for this reason it has been argued that a D-head is unnecessary. Others have argued contrastively that a functional projection KP (Case) is necessary (often assuming DP). This paper differs from both camps in the sense that it considers syntactic features specific to D. I present three primary arguments in support of a D-head in West Greenlandic: (i) the D-head acts as the locus of agreement features in possessive DPs, (ii) the D-head is the locus of the syntactic/semantic feature of definiteness; and (iii) a DP-layer is needed to provide a landing site for movement in DP-internal word order variations.

This paper considers the syntactic and semantic properties of two vocabulary items in Tagalog, ang and ng. It is shown that although ang and ng appear to encode definiteness (via familiarity), they are in fact unmarked for definiteness, being compatible with both familiar and novel readings. Crucial data from modification by weak quantifiers are presented in favour of this description. The default interpretation of ang and ng as familiar and novel, respectively, arises due to their syntactic position (subject versus object). Given that ang and ng mark case, it is argued that they are case markers in K° and not determiners.

La dichotomie subjectif/objectif est traditionnellement mise à contribution pour éclairer les différences d’emploi de must et have to. Cette représentation, qui se heurte parfois à la réalité linguistique, ne semble cependant pas propre à rendre compte à elle seule de la spécificité de have to. Il s’agit dans ces pages d’exploiter, énoncés authentiques à l’appui, les outils de la Théorie des Opérations Énonciatives afin de dégager les opérations dont have to et must sont la trace. Les deux formes se trouvent ordonnées sur un même axe paradigmatique, have to supposant en quelque sorte un must préconstruit, en ce que les opérations marquées par ce modal sont présentées par have to comme acquises au moment d’énonciation. Cette réflexion permet en outre de comprendre les glissements sémantiques provoqués en contexte par l’exploitation de la configuration de base du marqueur, qui le font préférer à must dans certains cadres potentiellement polémiques.

L’évolution du modal should s’est caractérisée par l’émergence progressive d’une interprétation non-déontique en construction hypotaxique. En effet, certaines constructions comportant should, du type It is surprising that he should say that, révèle un conflit sur une valeur construite ; celle-ci n’est alors plus repérée comme «effective» mais comme «fictive», et est considérée comme inattendue. Cette contribution se propose d’analyser le lien entre représentation attendue/inattendue et interaction de marqueurs hypotaxiques. L’examen d’exemples authentiques d’anglais contemporain révèle, en effet, la coexistence de plusieurs formes après la séquence It is + adjectif de valuation : constructions en for … to, propositions introduites par that (ou ∅) comportant should ou une forme assertée ou une base verbale. Il s’agit de montrer les différences de repérages entre ces formes et de rendre compte de l’apparition de l’une plutt que de l’autre en contexte.

This paper investigates the place of Vietnamese in the binary NP/DP typology as formulated by Bošković (2005, 2008, 2009, 2010). Vietnamese patterns with NP languages when it comes to its lack of a genuine definite determiner, the presence of radical pro-drop, and its lack of number morphology, but it patterns with DP languages when it comes to the presence of TP, subject expletives, and subject-object extraction asymmetries. The mixed status of Vietnamese suggests that the difference between article and article-less languages might not be as straightforward or clearcut as Bošković claims. In fact, the way these properties pattern in Vietnamese reveals that there are at least three smaller parameters (nominal, clausal, and quantificational) at stake, not just the presence or absence of DP, and that these three are independently fixed as [-DP], [+TP], and [-movement], respectively. Also important is the fact that Vietnamese is a topic-prominent language.

This paper investigates adverb extraction out of traditional adjective phrases (TAPs) like “extremely expensive”, in a number of Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages, and establishes two novel generalizations regarding such extraction out of predicative and attributive TAPs, also showing what the (un)availability of such extraction reveals about the structure of TAPs cross-linguistically and in different constructions in a single language. I argue that attributive TAPs are never bare APs in languages that use only one adjectival form attributively. Languages that use two adjectival forms in the attributive position allow adverb extraction out of predicative and attributive TAPs, which indicates that adverb extraction is possible only if a bare AP is used in this position. More generally, I argue that extended projections of different lexical categories tend to be uniform within a language with respect to how much structure they project.