The paper investigates the syntax and semantics of an indirect causative construction, ‘make’ causatives, in Sason Arabic with a focus on the syntax of the embedded structure and the status of the implicit embedded agent. On the basis of several diagnostics, the study demonstrates that ‘make’ embeds an agentive VoiceP, which also manifests an active-passive alternation despite the absence of any morphological reflex. Regarding the nature of the implicit embedded agent, the paper argues that it is present as a free variable à la Heim (1982) generated on the Voice head itself. In so doing, it adds to the ontology of null arguments as well as suggesting that licensing of a grammatical object is dissociated from the projection of a specifier.

This study examines the anaphoric status of the sequence et pourtant si/non in French. This sequence displays some properties not only of TP-Ellipsis but also of propositional anaphora. Consequently, the antecedent of this sequence can be recovered by means of either type of anaphoric process. I argue that the salient and relevant antecedent is constrained by the presence of a modalized environment. I claim that the discursive marker pourtant is assimilated to a modal operator (Jayez 1988, Martin 1987) expressing discourse contrast between two propositions anchored in two possible worlds that are not contradictory. Polarity Particles (POLPARTS) involved in this sequence are analyzed as emphasizing the truth of a proposition. As such, they are conveying semantic contrast between two polarities, that of a salient and accessible discourse antecedent and that of the missing part after et pourtant si/non. This is how POLPARTS upgrade the Common Ground. I develop a focus-based account for Verum Focus, building on alternatives along the lines of Hardt & Romero (2004). I suggest that the scope of an epistemic operator (Romero & Han 2004) and the conditions of use are relevant in order to reconstruct the adequate antecedent, which is not possible in an analysis based solely on lexical insertion and upgrading the Question Under Discussion (qud) by conditions governing the felicitous use of et pourtant si/non.

Stem alternation is present in the verbal inflection of all documented Kiranti languages, where it ranges from the straightforward phonologically conditioned (e.g. Athpariya and Chintang) to the purely morphological and baroque (e.g. Khaling and Dumi). This paper surveys stem alternation patterns across the whole family. Its main finding is that, unlike the morphological stem alternations of West Kiranti, the phonologically-conditioned stem alternations of East Kiranti are characterized by a very striking distributional similarity (often identity) across languages, even in the presence of quite drastic affixal changes. This and other findings suggest that these stem alternation patterns should be regarded as a (morphomic) grammatical phenomenon of its own right, despite being derivable from the forms of suffixes. Furthermore, comparison with West Kiranti suggests that this coextensiveness with a coherent phonological environment actually enhances some typically morphomic traits such as diachronic resilience and productivity.

This paper investigates the syntax–semantics interface within the domain of the realization of applied objects in Bantu languages, and I argue that the syntactic structure and semantic contribution of a given argument-licensing functional head (here, the applicative) do not covary. Specifically, I show that in principle, both high and low applicatives can (and should) be available with any type of applicative and not tied to a specific semantics (such as transfer of possession) or thematic role, as proposed in earlier work. Furthermore, I reject the centrality of thematic roles as a component of grammar that determines the grammatical function of applied objects, and I propose instead a typology of Bantu applied objects based on their semantic and morphological properties. This approach makes several predictions about applied objects: (i) syntactic and semantic diagnostics for high and low applicatives need not pattern together, (ii) syntactic asymmetry (such as c-command) can arise for applied objects which pattern symmetrically with other diagnostics (such as passivization), and (iii) the type of an applied object does not universally capture symmetry properties cross-linguistically. The view put forward in this paper provides a framework that can better capture this type of variation with object symmetry in Bantu languages as well as language-internal facts about applied objects; more generally, this paper sheds light on the nature of the syntax–semantic interface by showing that the meaning of a functional head is not necessarily determined by its syntactic position.

This article examines a turning point in the history of the theory of phonological distinctive features. In Morris Halle’s (1959) The Sound Pattern of Russian, features are organized into a contrastive hierarchy designed to minimize the number of specified features. Redundancy rules, however, ensure that the resulting underspecification has no real phonological consequences and, in subsequent generative approaches to phonology, contrastive hierarchies were largely abandoned. We explore how Halle’s hierarchy would have been different if it had been based on phonological patterns such as voicing assimilation, and show that this reorganization makes plausible predictions about other aspects of Russian phonology. We conclude by pointing to recent work in which the concept of a contrastive hierarchy has been revived, illustrating the range of phenomena that this theoretical device can account for if minimizing specifications is not the primary concern.