The availability of preverbal focus in Romance is still the subject of controversy in the relevant literature. In this paper, we investigate the distribution of information focus in three Romance languages: Catalan, Spanish and Italian. The main goal is to understand if and to what extent information focus can occur preverbally in these three languages. To this end, we applied a new technique (Questions with a Delayed Answer) to elicit both production data and acceptability judgements. Our results show that preverbal foci are almost never produced in free speech under elicitation but are judged as acceptable by native speakers in rating tasks. The acceptability of preverbal foci, however, is subject to variation: they are more acceptable in Spanish but less so in Catalan and Italian. We interpret this difference across the three Romance languages in the light of the hypothesis formulated in Leonetti (2017), according to which Catalan and especially Italian are more restrictive than Spanish with respect to the mapping between syntax and information structure. While all languages resort to the dedicated word order with a more transparent information-structure partition for a focal subject (i.e. VS), Spanish is more permissive in also allowing a narrow focus interpretation of the subject in an SV order.

Greenberg’s Universal 42 states that all languages have pronominal categories involving at least three persons and two numbers. However, this characterization fails to capture the properties of pronouns in Japanese, which are not bundles of person, number and gender features (so-called phi-features); rather, they contain sociolinguistic information about the interlocutors. We propose that these properties are structurally determined. Following Ritter and Wiltschko, we assume that the highest layer of structure in nominals is interactional structure. As for phi-features, we adopt the standard assumption that they are represented internal to the determiner phrase (DP). We propose that the distinctive properties of Japanese pronouns follow from the hypothesis that they spell out elements of the interactional structure and not the DP. We show that the lack of phi-features in Japanese pronouns correlates with other properties of this language’s grammar. Support for this analysis comes from languages where pronouns with phi-features can optionally be used to encode formality (e.g. German and French). We propose that in these languages, formal pronouns originate within the DP but are interpreted in the interactional structure. Finally, we suggest that this analysis may extend to imposters and vocatives in that they may also be interpreted in the interactional structure.

Using data from the understudied language Gιsιɖa Anii, we provide a formal analysis of irrealis that builds on the framework of modality proposed in Giannakidou and Mari. In particular, we propose that Anii has an irrealis modal morpheme whose meaning is that the speaker does not believe that the proposition is true at a particular time. This gives irrealis, at least in Anii, a negatively biased meaning. Giannakidou and Mari propose that the subjunctive in European languages is a positively biased modal but find no evidence in their data for a corresponding negatively biased one. However, in expanding their approach to a completely unrelated language, we show that modal bias can also be negative, filling in the paradigmatic gap left open by Giannakidou and Mari’s work. We also illustrate the utility of analyzing irrealis (in relation to the concept of veridicality) as a morphosyntactic and semantic category with a status similar to tense and aspect. Our formal analysis accounts for the obligatory realization of irrealis in a wide range of semantic contexts in Anii, including future tense, negation, and wishes, and shows how irrealis can be composed with other clausal elements. We suggest that reality status, which we analyze as (non)-veridicality, is obligatorily present in the Anii clause and discuss the implications of this for other languages.

In this article, we describe and explain patterns of variation in acceptance of amn’t in varieties of Scots, drawing upon data from the Scots Syntax Atlas. Partly in line with findings from Bresnan (2001), we show that amn’t is much more widely accepted in inversion environments (amn’t I?) than in declaratives (I amn’t), but nevertheless, amn’t in declaratives is still accepted in certain regions of Scotland. We combine the productivity-based explanation of the amn’t gap in Yang (2016, 2017) with new insights into the syntax of Scots negation from Thoms et al. (2023) to provide a predictive account of the attested variation.

The English Preposing in PP construction (PiPP; e.g., Happy though/as we were) is extremely rare but displays an intricate set of stable syntactic properties. How do people become proficient with this construction despite such limited evidence? It is tempting to posit innate learning mechanisms, but present-day large language models seem to learn to represent PiPPs as well, even though such models employ only very general learning mechanisms and experience very few instances of the construction during training. This suggests an alternative hypothesis on which knowledge of more frequent constructions helps shape knowledge of PiPPs. I seek to make this idea precise using model-theoretic syntax (MTS). In MTS, a grammar is essentially a set of constraints on forms. In this context, PiPPs can be seen as arising from a mix of construction-specific and general-purpose constraints, all of which seem inferable from general linguistic experience.

I argue that more and less are always determinatives, contrary to the categorization in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), which treats them as adverbs in analytic comparatives. Evidence is presented of contrasts between more/less and much/little in various contexts, challenging CGEL’s empirical claim that such contrasts never occur in analytic comparatives. The observed distributional patterns can largely be explained by the semantics of more/-er and much without positing a category distinction: more/-er establishes a salient scale-internal reference point, while much requires such a point to already be present. Furthermore, mere distributional differences should not be relied upon for category assignment, following arguments by Payne , Huddleston & Pullum (2010). For these reasons, analyzing more and less as adverbs in any context is unnecessary and unparsimonious. The determinative analysis can account for all the relevant data. Beyond the narrow point about categorization, the paper illustrates the contributions of semantic, pragmatic, and distributional evidence in resolving category assignment.

The intervocalic position favors voicing in stops. Yet, some languages have been reported to feature the opposite (unnatural) process of intervocalic devoicing. This paper investigates two such case studies. Pre-Berawan intervocalic *b and *g have developed into Berawan k. Pre-Kiput intervocalic *g, *ɟʝ, and *v have developed into Kiput k, cç, and f, respectively. To account for the data, we invoke Beguš’s (2018, 2019) blurring process model of sound change. The model proposes that unnatural phonology derives from a sequence of at least three phonetically motivated sound changes. We argue that the steps involved in intervocalic devoicing are (i) the intervocalic fricativization of voiced stops, (ii) devoicing of fricatives, and (iii) the occlusion of devoiced fricatives. Each of the steps is independently attested and motivated. We demonstrate that our blurring process proposal explains aspects of the historical development unaccounted for by previous approaches, and present new evidence suggesting that a single sound change could not have operated in the prehistory of Berawan. Thus, we maintain the conservative position that unnatural diachronic developments arise from sequences of natural and phonetically grounded sound changes.

To bring linguistic theory back in touch with commonplace observations concerning the resilience of language in use to language change, language acquisition and ungrammaticality, Pullum and colleagues have argued for a ‘model-theoretic’ theory of syntax. The present paper examines the implications for linguists working in standard formal frameworks and argues that, to the extent that such theories embrace monotonicity in syntactic operations, they qualify as model-theoretic under some minor modifications to allow for the possibility of unknown words.

This paper deals with a construction, which we dub Non-Agreeing Degree (NAD) constructions, with the distinguishing property that the agreement pattern between subjects and degree predicates is optionally disrupted, even in languages (like Spanish) where verbs commonly agree with their subjects. We show that the agreeing versus non-agreeing alternation comes with important semantic differences for the interpretation of the degree construction. We provide a first systematic description of this type of constructions and postulate a formal syntactic and semantic analysis. We argue that NAD constructions are characterized by degree predicates that introduce a non-conventional nominal scale and by subjects that are interpreted as equally non-conventional units of measurement. We postulate an intensionalization process on the subject of NAD constructions, which we capture via a general nominalization function that allows a default as well as an ordinary agreement pattern between subject and copula.

Contrast, adversative and corrective can all be represented by er in Classical Chinese, but they are lexicalized respectively by er, danshi and ershi in Modern Chinese. The two lexicalization systems suggest that the opposition relations have commonalities as well as differences. In the framework of relevance theory and ‘three domains’, this study argues that the three opposition relations are in different cognitive domains, at different representational levels, and trigger different inferences, which accounts for their diverse lexicalizations in Modern Chinese. The opposition relations also have cognitive or metaphorical connections with each other, which justifies their unified actualization in Classical Chinese. The pragmatics-cognitive framework could also account for interlinguistic data.

In most of the literature on English phonology, historically prefixed words such as contain, respect or submit are seen as having no morphological structure synchronically. However, such words were treated as complex in the early generative literature and are still analysed in that way in part of the literature. In this paper, we seek to review the evidence for the claim that such words are simplex words, which predicts that they should pattern with words with no internal structure in their phonological and morphological behaviours and in psycholinguistic experiments. We show that the evidence does not support that claim and shows that these words should be treated as morphologically complex units, although they differ from words with productive morphology. As these words tend to be partly or entirely opaque semantically, this raises the question of how such structures may be learned. We argue that the recurrence of forms is the main factor leading to their identification and lay out a possible order of acquisition of various morphological structures. Finally, we argue that theories of phonology may account for this by allowing the reference to morphological constituents whose semantics are impoverished.

The hypothesis that affixes following a stem are easier to process than ones preceding has not been tested in a straightforward manner in any language, as far as we know. Cutler, Hawkins & Gilligan (1985) and Hawkins & Cutler (1988) adduce some evidence that supports this hypothesis indirectly, but they do not conduct experiments to test it directly. They use this hypothesis to explain in part the suffixing preference. Some others, such as Asao (2015), continue to assume the correctness of the hypothesis. We do not aim to explain the suffixing preference at all but to test the hypothesis that affixes preceding the stem (informally, prefixes) disrupt the comprehension of a word more than affixes that follow (informally, suffixes) do. In this paper we test this hypothesis (henceforth the ‘Cutler--Hawkins hypothesis’) on Georgian, because it has a wide variety of prefixes and suffixes, and in a single experiment on English. In Georgian we test a prefix and a suffix that mark the person of the subject in a verb, a circumfix and a suffix that mark derivation in nouns, and a prefix and a suffix that form intransitive verbs (usually called ‘passives’ in Georgian). Across the set of experiments, we find little support for the Cutler--Hawkins hypothesis.

In our paper testing the Cutler–Hawkins hypothesis that suffixes are easier to process than prefixes (Harris & Samuel 2025), we report little experimental support for the hypothesis. Several sources treat clitics as being similar to affixes (e.g. Himmelmann 2014, Asao 2015), and some argue that there is a parallel preference for enclitics over proclitics (Cysouw 2005, Dryer 2017). On this basis, we test an extension of the Cutler–Hawkins hypothesis to clitics because if true, that too could explain the suffixing preference (as well as the putative enclitic preference). Cutler et al. (1985) also state a hypothesis about the processing of infixes. Udi provides an excellent language for testing both hypotheses, since each person clitic in this language can occur before the verb, after the verb, between morphemes of the verb or inside the verbal root, under certain circumstances (Harris 2002). Although European Portuguese does not place clitics inside roots, it utilizes the other three placements. We have conducted three experiments on each language. The results demonstrate that an explanation for either the suffixing preference or the putative enclitic preference is unlikely to be grounded in the processing factors suggested by Cutler & Hawkins.

This paper presents a dictionary-based study of French loanwords in contemporary English in order to investigate the location of primary stress in these loanwords. Four factors are found to be significant predictors of the position of primary stress: endings, word complexity, the segmental structure of the final syllable, and syllable count. Moreover, this study confirms previous observations on the tendency for American English to have more final stress in French loanwords than British English. Finally, the implications of our findings are discussed in light of a model that assumes that English phonology consists of distinct interacting subsystems.

This paper considers the traditional idea about English that syntactic operations targeting Verb Phrase (VP), including do so-anaphora, do what-pseudoclefting and VP-fronting, can separate adjuncts but not arguments from the VP. I argue that, in each case, the argument/adjunct distinction (A/AD) makes incorrect predictions and that the behavior of verbal dependents is more accurately explained without reference to the A/AD. With do so-anaphora and do what-pseudoclefting, I show that the behavior of a variety of Prepositional Phrase (PP) dependents is better explained by the lexical properties of the verb do: a PP’s ability to occur with do so-anaphora/do what-pseudoclefting depends on the PP’s independent compatibility with the lexical verb do. On VP-fronting, I show that apparent stranding of arguments and adjuncts poses major problems for A/AD-based analyses and suggest apparent stranding is better analyzed as extraposition. These results weaken an important motivation for the idea that adjuncts attach to a higher projection in the VP than arguments do.

This paper investigates correlations between theme vowels and argument structure in Serbo-Croatian. Specifically, we focus on two different theme vowels, -i- and -ova-, isolating ‘minimal pairs’, that is cases where the same base combines with the two theme vowels to derive different verbs. Starting from two online corpora of Serbo-Croatian, we created a comprehensive list of -i-/-ova- minimal pairs. For all pairs in the list whose both members were attested at least 50 times in the corpora, we randomly selected 50 tokens per verb and annotated them for transitivity. A statistical comparison of -i- and -ova- verbs according to the proportions of transitive uses was carried out. The findings show that -i- verbs are much more likely to be used transitively than -ova- verbs. This finding corroborates the view that theme vowels are associated with argument structure properties and challenges the idea that they are universally ‘ornamental’ pieces of morphology without syntactic/semantic import. Based on these and supplementary (non-corpus) data, we claim that -i- derives transitives and unaccusatives, while -ova- derives unergatives. We propose a model couched in Distributed Morphology whereby these two theme vowels are treated as instantiations of different ‘flavors of v’.

In the present article, we describe what we call Intransparent-Gap Relatives (IGRs) in Japanese. In IGRs, a gap is located within the relative clause, and the head noun appears outside the relative clause. Unlike the standard head-external relatives, the gap in IGRs is not transparently associated with the head noun, but they are mediated through a metonymic relation. We propose a formal account of IGRs in terms of incremental parsing in Dynamic Syntax: an IGR string is processed in a left-to-right manner, and a semantic structure is progressively built up. This account unifies the standard head-external relatives and IGRs, relegating their differences to the ways in which the head noun is parsed and construed against the relative clause structure. Confirmation of this analysis comes from cross-constructional and cross-linguistic considerations. First, the analysis predicts that a metonymic reading is available in relatives but not in other rightward-displacement constructions, such as clefts and postposing. Second, the analysis suggests that IGRs are possible in languages such as Japanese and Korean, where the relative clause is processed before the head noun, but not in languages such as English and French, where the head noun is processed before the relative clause.