Abstract Valencian vowel harmony has been analyzed as a process that spreads the color features of the stressed open-mid vowels /ˈɛ, ˈɔ/ to a following final posttonic open vowel /a/ within the morphological word. Although this statement correctly depicts the prevailing pattern, recent experimental studies within the framework of laboratory phonology show that harmony may extend further. In light of these new data, we postulate that the scope of Valencian vowel harmony is conditioned by the prosodic structure, and that part of the variation found is due to the different ways in which clitics can prosodically integrate with their lexical hosts. We examine in detail the variation that arises from enclitics being parsed as either affixal or internal clitics and their interaction with the lexical host, providing additional evidence for the suitability of internally layered ternary feet. In our proposal, vowel harmony arises from licensing constraints demanding the features of the mid-open vowels to be attached to salient enough positions. We develop a prominence-based analysis in which features extend over increasingly larger prosodic domains in order to improve their perceptibility, giving rise to the whole typology of Valencian harmonic patterns without generating unattested forms.

Abstract While Standard Italian only displays word-final consonants in loanwords and some function words, Italo-Romance varieties show a wide range of variation in which major classes of consonants can be found in this position. This survey provides a first overview and finds that the northern varieties and the southern varieties are two different systems, the north gravitating to sonorants and the south showing a preference for obstruents. In the vast majority of cases, unattested consonant classes are excluded by non-application of apocope, which, in Optimality Theory, can only be accounted for with positional markedness or licensing, not with positional faithfulness. The typological relationship between different sets of final consonants as well as types of final clusters shows, furthermore, that an account of the southern system in terms of final onsets is undesirable.

Abstract The swarm -alternation shows two variants, where the locatum and location alternate their positions: in the locatum-subj variant ( The bees swarm in the garden ), the locatum appears in subject position, whereas the location surfaces as a PP. In turn, in the location-subj variant ( The garden swarms with bees ), the location appears as the subject, and the locatum is introduced by a preposition ( de/di “of” in Spanish, Catalan, and Italian). We argue that the locatum-PP is, in fact, the element introducing the initiator of the event in the latter variant. This is so because the subject is a non-theta selected element, functioning as the undergoer of the event; hence, it does not meet the requirements to initiate it. As to the locatum-subj variant, the locatum subject works as the initiator and undergoer of the event. Furthermore, we show that the argument structure of these verbs consists of both process and initiation phrases in Ramchand’s first phase syntax. While the location-subj variant is consistently unergative, the locatum-subj variant can also be unaccusative as is the case with verbs such as overflow or abound .

Abstract This article presents the first analysis of the word order of Early Old Catalan by examining four texts dating from the 10th and 11th centuries. While the texts vary in nature, they all fall within the legal register, and they are all deemed suitable for the study of syntax based on extra-linguistic criteria. Approaching the data from a generative and cartographic perspective, it is shown that (i) broadly speaking, Early Old Catalan patterns with contemporary Romance texts in exhibiting an active low V2 grammar; (ii) it shares with other Old Romance varieties the use of expletive elements to satisfy the V2 parameter; (iii) Early Old Catalan differs notably from 13th century Catalan in the use of the left periphery and the application of V2. The findings in this study cast light over the fragmentation of the Romance linguistic continuum at syntactic level and open new avenues of research on the matter.

Abstract One major achievement in syntax has been a deep understanding of displacement in terms of Internal Merge. Therefore, displacement types initially resisting that analysis deserve scrutiny. This article investigates one. Latin verse permits tmesis – the division of “words” into nonadjacent pieces. In one subtype, radical tmesis, the cut is not obviously at a morpheme boundary. If it were not, radical tmesis would be theoretically recalcitrant. The article argues, however, that radical tmesis is actually derived by Internal Merge. The cut does occur at a morpheme boundary, despite appearances. Furthermore, the constituent orders radical tmesis produces can be derived syntactically, positing only independently motivated operations. Radical tmesis, then, is syntactic – supporting nonlexicalist frameworks, e.g., Morphology as Syntax. Even displacement types yielding apparently “irregular” outputs, then, can turn out on examination to be products of Internal Merge, a subcase of the elementary structure-building operation Merge – a theoretically welcome result, given minimalist aims.

Abstract In several Indo-European languages, including Romanian, predicates such as plăcea ‘like’ from Latin placēre ‘like, please’, are found selecting for a dative experiencer and a nominative stimulus, which appear to allow for two opposite, but equally neutral, word orders, i.e. dative-before-nominative and nominative-before-dative. This stands in stark contrast with topicalized datives, which are always focal in Romanian. We hypothesize that the two word orders with plăcea represent two diametrically-opposed argument structures, Dat-Nom and Nom-Dat, thus predicting that the dative behaves syntactically as a subject in Dat-Nom structures and the nominative as a subject in Nom-Dat structures. An inspection of seven subject tests, recently applied in the literature on Romanian, reveals that two of these do not distinguish between subjects and objects, while the remaining five confirm that either argument of plăcea, the dative or the nominative, passes the subject tests, with the other argument, the nominative or the dative, behaving as an object.

Abstract This work presents original results from a new experimental approach to Differential Object Marking (DOM) using customized Acceptability Judgment Tasks (AJTs) in varieties of Spanish (Iberian, Mexican, Peruvian, and River Plate) and Portuguese (Brazilian, European), together with data from Catalan varieties obtained with the same methodology, Differential object Marking in Romance: The third wave, 279–314. Berlin & Boston: de Gruyter). We show that AJTs can be used to produce a fine-grained picture of similarities and contrasts in the variation of Ibero-Romance DOM along well-established prominence scales, such as the Extended Animacy Hierarchy. We also test a series of predictions from the literature for each variety. Although we find clear evidence for scalar effects, we question the explanatory potential of a finite set of categories on prominence scales, and we argue that in order to explain DOM in the varieties under investigation, the nature of such scales needs to be better understood.

Abstract Most analyses of wh -questions posit the existence of a dependency between the scope position and the theta position of the wh -constituent, both in ex situ questions and in in situ questions, but they disagree on the nature of this dependency and in particular on whether it is the same or different in the two strategies. The aim of this article is to verify how things stand in French, which is a mixed language allowing both in situ and ex situ wh -phrases in normal information seeking questions. We tested with two acceptability judgment tasks and two sentence-picture matching tasks whether in situ questions in French display the same subject advantage that has been widely attested in ex situ A-bar dependencies across languages. We found as expected a subject advantage in French wh -ex situ questions but an object advantage in French wh -in situ questions. We explain this seemingly divergent pattern by a) assuming that the same kind of movement dependency is established in both strategies but b) that its landing site is different and hence interacts differently with the clitic left dislocation structure (CLLD) we introduced in our experimental items. In both strategies, a processing advantage is observed when the wh -dependency and the clitic left dislocation structure (CLLD) dependency are nested, while crossing dependencies result in a cost in both cases.