On adverbial inflection in Spanish: Syntactic agreement and post-syntactic feature manipulation

We propose the “grammatical profile” as a means of probing the aspectual behavior of verbs. A grammatical profile is the relative frequency distribution of the inflected forms of a word in a corpus. The grammatical profiles of Russian verbs provide data on two crucial issues: a) the overall relationship between perfective and imperfective verbs and b) the identification of verbs that characterize various intersections of aspect, tense and mood (TAM) with lexical classes. There is a long-standing debate over whether Russian aspectual “pairs” are formed only via suffixation (the Isacenko hypothesis) or whether they are formed via both suffixation and prefixation (the traditional view). We test the Isacenko hypothesis using data on the corpus frequency of inflected forms of verbs. We find that the behavior of perfective and imperfective verbs is the same regardless of whether the aspectual relationship is marked by prefixes or suffixes; our finding thus supports the traditional view. Introspective descriptions of Russian aspect have often connected the use of particular inflectional forms with certain uses of aspect; for example, the use of imperative forms with the imperfective aspect to produce expressions that are very polite. Grammatical profiles make it possible to identify verbs that behave as outliers, presenting unusually large proportions of usage in parts of the paradigm. This analysis both gives substance to and extends previous introspective descriptions by identifying the verbs most involved in certain TAM-category interactions. On a methodological level, this study contributes to current discussions on the use of inflected forms vs. lemmas in corpus studies. Newman (Aiming low in linguistics: Low-level generalizations in corpus-based research: National Chiao Tung University, 2008) finds valuable information at the level of the inflectional form, and Gries (forthcoming) argues that inflectional forms do not necessarily provide a better basis for analysis than lemmas. We agree with them that the appropriate level of granularity is determined by both the language and the linguistic phenomenon under analysis.

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This paper investigates the occurrence of inflected predicative adjectives, an optional yet distinguishing feature of German dialects spoken in southern Switzerland. We provide an in-depth analysis of the patterns of change of this morphosyntactic marker with a particular focus on extralinguistic factors. Historical records from 1950 were compared to contemporary data collected from 192 speakers across 49 localities in 2020–21. Our results corroborate previous reports indicating a substantial, real-time decline in inflected forms. Logistic mixed-effects modeling suggests that the inflection of predicative adjectives occurs more frequently among speakers who report tight social networks, have a strong local dialect identity, and regularly use one or more Romance languages. These findings support the claim that tight social networks and local dialect identity construction may lead to the preservation of conservative grammatical forms. Additionally, the effect of Romance languages highlights the role of transfer phenomena induced by language contact.

Previous research on loan word accommodation has shown that English‑origin verbs in Present‑day Dutch and French‑origin verbs in Late Middle English are subject to usage biases. In both language‑contact settings, loan verbs are disproportionally frequent in non‑finite and morphologically unmarked forms as compared to native verbs. The present study demonstrates that accommodation biases are also found in loan adjectives. Concretely, loan adjectives are more prevalent in predicative than in attributive syntactic position as compared to native adjectives (predicative bias), and they are more prevalent in uninflected than in inflected forms (markedness bias). The predicative bias is found to rank stronger than the markedness bias, which is consistent with the findings for verbs. Additionally, biases are more pronounced in the French‑Middle English than in the English‑Dutch contact setting. The findings indicate that direct insertion of loan-words, despite being the cross-linguistically most frequent strategy for loan word integration, is not free of obstacles, possibly due to processing costs specifically associated with loan words.

The verbs persuade and convince are often used interchangeably due to their synonymous meanings. However, there is a need to explore whether there are any syntactic or semantic differences between these two verbs. This paper aims to address this inquiry by conducting a comprehensive analysis of data from the British National Corpus (BNC). The study examines the distribution and syntactic patterns associated with persuade and convince to identify their most frequent types of constructions and their associated meanings. Additionally, the analysis includes the verb dissuade to further explore its distinctive nature. The findings reveal that persuade is predominantly used in control constructions involving the performance of a specific action, while convince is typically employed in non-control constructions involving influencing a belief or conviction. Furthermore, dissuade is identified as a negative control construction that discourages an action. The paper concludes that while persuade and convince share a similar lexical meaning, their constructional and semantic preferences differ significantly. Understanding these differences can contribute to a more precise and effective use of language in different contexts.

The purpose of this study is twofold: One is to examine the semantic role of the prefix ‘re-’ and the adverb ‘again’; the other is to show the similarity and dissimilarity between ‘re-’(verb) and (verb) + ‘again’ in English and ‘tasi’ and ‘tto’ in Korean. To achieve the purpose, first, this study examines semantic and pragmatic differences that ‘tasi’ and ‘tto’ trigger in terms of the readings of ‘restitutive’ and ‘repetitive'. Second, it shows that the two restitutive and repetitive readings can be explained in terms of the difference in syntactic position. That is, for the former, if any, an event modifying adverb falls within the VP headed by the verb in question; for the latter, it appears outside of the VP. Third, the current study contends that both ‘re-’(verb) and (verb) + ‘again’ have in common the same function to denote the repetition of the event in question, whereas ‘re-’(verb) is used more restrictively than (verb) + ‘again’. In other words, ‘re-’(verb) is possible only if there is an object to undergo the event represented by the verb, and it is restored to the previous state as a result of the event.

This chapter provides a survey of the inflection of nouns, adjectives, and verbs in Dutch. Productive nominal inflection is restricted to making plural forms of nouns. In addition, there are remnants of case marking that function as markers of specific constructions. Adjectives are only inflected in pre-nominal position, in which gender also plays a role. Verbs are inflected according to two systems: weak verbs by means of suffixation, strong verbs by means of stem change (mainly vowel alternations or Ablaut). Some tense forms are periphrastic in nature. This chapter introduces the distinction between inherent and contextual inflection, and shows that inherent inflection may feed word formation. Thus use of inflectional forms is subject to syntactic restrictions, and its use is also pragmatically determined.

This paper argues that the degree modifier kkway ‘quite’ in Korean is used as an adjective inside NPs although it is normally used as a degree adverb inside the predicate of a sentence. Several pieces of evidence for the adjectival status of kkway ‘quite’ are provided in this paper: i) kkway ‘quite’ inside NPs cannot have the topic marker -(n)un like other adjectives, ii) kkway ‘quite’ must appear in the prenominal position when it modifies a head noun, iii) kkway ‘quite’ restricts the meaning of the head noun, iv) kkway ‘quite’ can be modified by a degree adverb, and v) kkway ‘quite’ can be stacked with other typical adjectives within NPs. I further show with similar evidence that other degree modifiers – sangdanghi ‘considerable’ and maywu ‘very’ – can be also used as an adjective inside NPs. Finally, some nominal expressions with kkway ‘quite’ are analyzed in the Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard & Sag, 1994; Sag, Wasow, & Bender, 2003).

In this article I intend to show that the concept of ‘grafts’ that I have argued for in a number of articles (cf. Van Riemsdijk, 1998b, 2000, 2001a) can be given a natural interpretation in a framework that makes use of internal and external merge. More specifically, I will argue that when all the logical combinations of internal and external merge are taken into account, grafts must exist and are not, as hitherto believed, an odd problem for phrase structure. It follows also that, in addition to my prime examples of grafts (free relatives (FRs) and transparent free relatives (TFRs)), we should expect there to be more constructions with the telltale properties of grafts. One such construction, “Horn Amalgams” will be introduced here in combination with an argument that Grosu’s (2003) attempt at reducing TFRs to regular FRs fails. 1. Introductory remarks1 In a number of articles I have argued that there are constructions in which classical syntactic structures in terms of so-called well-formed trees are insufficient.2 A typical simple example is (1). (1) a far from simple matter Clearly this is a noun phrase. The question is, what is its left-hand modifier? Is it the adjective simple, or is it the adjective far? Semantically, simple seems to be the head, but then what modifies it? Far from is not really a constituent. If far were the head, then it might be thought to have a PP-dependent in the form of from simple. But the latter option is unlikely anyway since adjectival heads in prenominal position must be adjacent to the noun.3 This means we have a paradoxical situation. Under the assumption of grafts, trees can ‘grow together’ in unconventional ways, specifically in sharing terminal elements. Under such an analysis, (1) would consist of two simple trees, one corresponding to a simple matter, the other one representing far from simple. the adjective simple is the shared element, the ‘callus’ in my botanical metaphor. The paradox is avoided by the idea that the root node of the PP is not connected to any position in the host tree (the DP). Even in a simple case like this, interesting evidence exists in favor of an approach like this. Consider the fact that in Dutch attributive adjectives inflect, while predicative adjectives do not. In the equivalent of (1), the adjective is inflected by means of schwa: 1 The ideas presented here have benefited from discussions with the students in my classes at the University of Vienna in June 2004, and from thoughtful comments by Edwin Williams. Thanks are also due to audiences at Tilburg University and at the Incontro di Grammatica Generativa in Rome, February 2005, as well as subsequent comments by Alex Grosu, Viola Schmitt and an anonymous reviewer. Parts of the present article appear in Van Riemsdijk (2004, to appear-b). 2 See Van Riemsdijk (1998b, 2000, 2001a) with antecedents in Nakau (1971), Kajita (1977), Lakoff (1974), and McCawley (1982, 1988). Lakoff coined the term ‘syntactic amalgams for what I call grafts. My own work grew out of a critique of Wilder (1998, 1999). 3 Cf. Williams’ (1982) Head Final Filter, going back to the Surface Recursion Restriction of Emonds (1976:19, Emonds, 1985:131). See also Van Riemsdijk (1998a) for more recent discussion. (2) a. een alles behalve eenvoudig-*(e) oplossing a anything but simple solution b. deze oplossing is alles behalve eenvoudig-(*e) this solution is anything but simple On the graft approach we can say that the uninflected adjective is the shared element, while the inflection marker remains outside the callus. The most compelling evidence for grafts comes from the construction called ‘transparent free relatives’ which I will return to in section 4. Before doing so, however, consider the question of whether the introduction of grafts into the arsenal of descriptive tools in linguistic theory4 does not constitute an excessive extension of power. The point of the present article is to argue that, on the contrary, the existence of grafts follows directly from the logic of external and internal merge, as developed in Chomsky (2001, 2005). 2. The logical necessity of displacement In two recent lectures,5 Chomsky has sharpened the reasoning concerning what used to be called the displacement problem. Until recently, the existence of movement (displacement) was seen as a problem: why does it exist?6 Chomsky now argues that this is a misguided question. Recursive merge is now thought to be the defining property of the human language faculty (cf. Hauser et al., 2002). What Merge does is, it takes two elements, call them A and B, and puts them together. Now, in the simplest case, A and B are both simplex. That would be a case of ‘very first merge’. Apart from this case, however, A and B will generally be syntactic trees that have been formed by previous instances of merge. Consider the following situation. (3) A B

Dutch, like other Germanic languages, disposes of two strategies to express past tense: the strong inflection (e.g.,rijden–reed‘drive – drove’) and the weak inflection (spelen–speelde‘play – played’). This distinction is for the most part lexically determined in that each verb occurs in one of the two inflections. Diachronically the system is in flux though, with the resilience of some verbs being mainly driven by frequency. Synchronically this might result in variable verbs (e.g.,schuilen–schuilde/school‘hide – hid’ orraden–raadde/ried‘guess – guessed’). This diachronic (1300–2000) corpus study shows that this variation is not haphazard, but that semantic factors are at play. We see two such effects. First of all, synchronically, the variation is exapted in an iconic manner to express aspect: durative meanings tend to be expressed by longer verb forms and punctual meanings tend to be expressed by shorter verb forms. Secondly, we see that metaphorical meanings come to be associated within obsolescent inflectional forms, as predicted by Kuryłowicz’s “fourth law of analogy”.

Russian reduplicated constructions with colour terms have never previously been an object of a comprehensive corpus study. Nevertheless, they present considerable interest for a researcher because comparative ability of colour terms to be reduplicated reflects their semantic and pragmatic differences, whereas semantics and pragmatics of reduplication construction are revealed in the properties of colour terms that can fill its slots. Thus, the goal of the paper is to study semantic and pragmatic properties of Russian colour terms and Russian syntactic reduplication construction by analyzing their co-occurrence. We apply corpus methods to the data from the Russian National Corpus, RuTenTen Corpus on Sketch Engine and RuSkell corpus. We analyze absolute corpus frequencies and collocation patterns of Russian non-reduplicated colour terms, as well as their relative frequencies and collocation patterns in the construction of syntactic reduplication with a hyphen ( belyj-belyj ‘white-white, very white, spotlessly white’). Drawing on this data, we establish that absolute frequencies of non-reduplicated colour terms in Russian reflect both Anna Wierzbicka’s “universals of visual semantics”, as well as certain language and culture-specific tendencies, as evidenced by the prominence of goluboj ‘light blue’ and ryzhij ‘carroty-red’ in Russian. We also argue that the Russian reduplication construction with a hyphen ( belyj-belyj ‘white-white) is semantically and prosodically different from the construction of repetition with a comma ( belyj , belyj ‘white, white’). The former has the meaning of high degree, and thus attracts only gradable colour terms, such as belyj ‘white’, chernyj ‘black’, sinij ‘medium to dark blue’, and other basic colour terms. There are additional factors that influence colour term reduplication. Collocation patterns suggest that colour terms that co-occur with the names of culturally and cognitively salient objects, such as denotations of human appearance (face, hands, skin, eyes, hair) or landscape features (sea, sky, fire, grass) are more likely to be reduplicated. Moreover, aesthetic or emotional evaluation of such objects (‘blue-blue eyes’, ‘green-green grass’) is also a factor that is conducive to their occurrence in the construction of reduplication. Our findings establish the importance of corpus methods in the study of colour terms and reduplication, demonstrate that the use and interpretation of lexical and syntactic items hinges both on semantic and pragmatic factors, and add to the understanding of semantics and pragmatics of Russian colour terms and reduplication construction.

<p>The word form of the noun instrumental case with the semantics of comparison / likeness that is used in the syntactic position of a dependent element in a noun phrase is not widely used in Ukrainian that causes superficial attention of scientists. However, its noticeable expressive potential and pragmatic volume demand special attention. The aim of the article is to reveal the specificity of semantic-syntactic relations that form the basis of functioning of the instrumental case of the dependent element in a noun phrase. It has been found out that this word form, being at the first (syntactic) stage of adverbialization and being used in the syntactic position of an attribute that doesn’t agree with the head noun, has in its basis a predicative-characterizing meaning that belongs to the class of functionally-syntactically tied ones – the same a predicative in compound nominal predicates has. It is a construction with the instrumental case in the function of an attribute that doesn’t agree with the head noun – a folded sentence structure with two logical subjects of the action, joined by a link-verb or an adjective with the semantics of incipience of the attribute.</p>

Translating update operations from relational to object-oriented databases

This paper offers a minimalist account of the distribution of the features of case, number and gender in Polish phrases with cardinal numerals and vague quantifiers (Q-NPs) in the presence and absence of genitive of quantification (GQ) based on the assumption that GQ-cardinal numerals and vague quantifiers are phrasal and are merged as adjuncts to the projection of a null functional head (F), a phase head that values its complement with GQ in contexts in which GQ is not overridden by inherent theta-related or lexical case. Whether the null head F inserted in the derivation has unvalued features of number and gender has consequences for the syntactic computation of agreement relations, in which features may be shared. Heterogeneous case distribution in Q-NPs in nominative-accusative case contexts provides evidence that F is a phase head and triggers transfer of its complement. Variable agreement patterns of both attributive adjectival modifiers and adjectival predicates in the presence of GQ are argued here to reflect attempted-but-failed syntactic agreement, which does not lead to ungrammaticality, as some features unvalued in narrow syntax can still be interpreted by morphological realization rules in PF. GQ is shown here to provide evidence that predicative adjectives cannot have their φ-features valued in situ and must be remerged in a position where their φ-probes can initiate Search for matching features. Agreement in the presence of GQ in Polish thus demonstrates that the need of features to be valued drives syntactic movement.

The appearance of multiple case‐marking on a single nominal is a somewhat unusual phenomenon that is characteristic of many Australian languages, and which appears problematic for many grammatical theories. In this paper I will propose and describe an analysis of multiple semantic case‐marking in LFG, mostly on the basis of the unusually complex case morphology of the Australian languages Kayardild and Martuthunira. The analysis works by starting with the approach taken by Simpson (1991) for Warlpiri, and modifying it by using a notion of ‘inside out unification’ to express within LFG the basic idea of Jerry Sadock's ‘autolexical morphology’, that it is the basic stem of an inflected form rather than the entire form that is associated with the syntactic position that the form is inserted into.