Mande languages are known for their typologically unusual SOVX word order, in which the subject and direct object precede the verb, while adjuncts and other complements must follow it. Koopman (1992) argues for Bambara that this unique word order arises when the direct object obligatorily raises to a preverbal position for Case, while any other postverbal elements surface in their base-generated position within the VP. However, Nikitina (2019) proposes for Wan that postverbal elements are located in a high, clause-adjoined position. This paper presents syntactic evidence from Mandinka in support of the former analysis of postverbal indirect objects. In particular, I provide word order, pronominalization, and binding facts that show that postverbal indirect objects must be located in a low, VP-internal position, which is incompatible with a clausal-adjunction analysis.

Case, agreement, and A-movement dependencies across finite clause boundaries, such as Hyperraising (to subject or object) or Long-Distance Case or Agreement [LDA], are available in many typologically diverse languages. The research on such dependencies typically distinguishes between cross-linguistically restricted true A-dependencies across finite clauses, and generally available binding-like A′-dependencies as found in Prolepsis. In this paper, we investigate both types of configurations in parallel and refer to this as the A-domain. Since the diagnostics to distinguish A-configurations vary across languages and often cannot be compared directly, we define four characteristic properties: (A) whether the construction is restricted by matrix predicate selection, (B) whether movement in the embedded clause is involved, (C) whether the dependency shows locality restrictions (in particular, A-Minimality), and (D) whether there are semantic restrictions on the relevant DP. By combining different values of the characteristic properties, we show, differently from previous approaches, that the A-domain does not simply consist of two types of configurations, but that the empirical landscape represents a continuum of five A-constructions. We suggest a theoretical implementation of our empirical findings, which is built on a predicational relator phrase above the embedded CP and propose that, in some of the constructions, these two projections fuse into one. We employ a minimalist probing approach which relies on differences in the base-generated position of the relevant DP (matrix clause, high in the embedded clause, argument position in the embedded clause), differences in the feature composition of the embedded C (a plain A′-head, or a bundled predicational C head involving composite A/A′ probes), a composite probe hierarchy yielding three types of feature-dependencies of composite probes, and, resulting from that, different probing mechanisms (conjunctive satisfaction, dependent satisfaction, and independent satisfaction). Lastly, this paper also contributes methodological tools for disentangling constructions of the A-domain.

In traditional grammar, two different kinds of T are found: modals and auxiliaries. Modals include words like can, could, must, shall, should, will, would, may, might and so on. Auxiliary verbs include such words as do, have and be, and their inflectional words: did, had, was, were, and showing personal and number?s words; does, has, is, are and so on. Previous studies have analyzed the CP, IP, vP and VP of modal verbs and auxiliary verbs, mainly discussing the attribution of modal verbs and auxiliary verbs. This paper analyzes the syntactic characteristics of modal verbs and auxiliary verbs, discusses the base-generated position and role of modal verbs and auxiliary verbs in syntax, and puts forward own views on the basis of this analysis. It is believed that modal verbs and auxiliary verbs have similarities and differences in syntax.

The present paper investigates the Hijazi Arabic (HA) morphosyntactic properties of the widely known linguistic phenomenon of sluicing from a generative perspective, taking into account the latest advancements of the Minimalist Approach (Chomsky 1995, 2000, 2001). In this paper, sluicing is a linguistic phenomenon of deleting an entire TP clause, leaving only a wh-remnant. Adopting the Structural PF-Deletion approach, we argue that HA employs sluicing and that the ellipsis site contains a fully-fledged syntactic structure that must be deleted at the PF level after the movement of the remnant to a higher CP. On a par with previous crosslinguistic ellipsis studies, the current study shows that ellipsis is permitted if and only if there is a specific head carrying some specific morphosyntactic properties occurring in a local relation to the ellipsis site. This specific head, with its morphosyntactic properties, licenses for the ellipsis phenomenon to occur. The head properties trigger the whword to move from its base-generated position to the specifier position of this particular head, i.e., Spec CP, and then delete all other constituents included within the TP.

In the mids of cold northern winds and landscape covered with snow we are pleased to announce the first ALA issue of the year 2019, which contains six research articles. Warm congratulation goes to all the authors, and words of appreciation to the Editorial team and recently enlarged proofreading team that have been working very hard in order to offer state-of-the-art contemporary linguistic research in this journal.
 The present issue is opened up by Mayuri J. DILIP and Rajesh KUMAR, who present a unified account of licensing conditions of Negative Polarity Items (NPI) in Telugu. In their work “Negative Polarity Items in Telugu” they analyze the distribution of NPIs in complex sentences with embedded clauses, and conclude that negation c-commanding NPI be conducted at the base-generated position.
 Kun SUN with his article “The Integration Functions of Topic Chains in Chinese Discourse” thoroughly presents the long and extensive Chinese research tradition on topic chains, and re-examines their core characteristics with the help of the so-called “integration functions”.
 The following paper “Tracing the Identity and Ascertaining the Nature of Brahmi-derived Devanagari Script” by Krishna Kumar PANDEY and Smita JHA exploits the orthographic design of Brahmi-derived scripts. Authors argue that such scripts should not be described with the existing linguistic properties of alphabetic and syllabic scripts but should instead gains its own categorization with a unique descriptor.
 Chikako SHIGEMORI BUČAR successfully submitted the article “Image of Japan among Slovenes” in which she represents the process and mechanism of borrowing from Japanese into Slovene. Conclusions briefly touch the image of Japan seen through the borrowing process and consolidated loanwords, and predict possible development of borrowing in the near future.
 Another interesting paper “Understanding Sarcastic Metaphorical Expression in Hindi through Conceptual Integration Theory” was authored by Sandeep Kumar SHARMA and Sweta SINHA. Based on a corpus of five thousand sentences, authors examine the abstract notion of sarcasm within the framework of conceptual integration theory, and with special reference to Hindi language. Findings aim to provide a theoretical understanding on how Hindi sarcasm is perceived among the native speakers.
 And last but not least, Điệp Thi Nhu NGUYỄN, An-Vinh LƯƠNG, and Điền ĐINH humbly observe research backlog in the area of Vietnamese text readability and write their paper “Affection of the part of speech elements in Vietnamese text readability” to encourage researchers to further explore the field and put Vietnamese findings on the world’s map.
 Editors and Editorial Board wish the regular and new readers of the ALA journal a pleasant read full of inspiration.

Abstract In this paper, I will discuss some types of variation in wh-expressions asking for reasons such aswhy,what…forandhow comewith special attention to their base-generated positions in the framework of the cartography of syntactic structures. I will first discusswhyandwhat…forto illustrate variation in the base-generated position of wh-expressions asking for reasons. I will next explore a new dimension in the cartography of syntactic structures by discussing some variation in the use ofhow comeand the complementizerthatamong speakers.

This paper provides new evidence for the claim that nominative objects in Japanese undergo overt movement without remaining at their base-generated positions, based on a variant of the construction which has not received as much attention as its complex predicate counterpart. It is then argued that the overt movement is scrambling. Departing from the general assumption, this paper investigates the hypothesis that an application of scrambling affects Case valuation, which was originally investigated by Fukui & Nishigauchi (1992) and Fukui (1995) (cf. Kuno 2002). Under the proposal, a nominative object is scrambled from its original position to the edge of vP, where nominative Case can be assigned. When scrambling does not take place, the object stays in-situ and receives accusative Case at its base-generated position. In other words, the Case alternation is contingent on the application of scrambling, which captures the optionality of the Case alternation in terms of that of scrambling. It is also proposed that the proposed mechanism of the Case alternation be restricted in such a way that the landing site and the base-generated position are included in the same transferred domain. Given this restriction, it is also possible to correctly capture cases where scrambling does not affect case valuation. The proposed analysis crucially adopts the hypothesis proposed by Chomsky (2001), where the transferred domain is the complement of a phase head. To the extent that the proposed analysis is successful, this paper lends support to this characterization of transferred domains.

We argue that English why-questions are systematically ambiguous between a purpose and a reason interpretation, similarly to Mandarin, Russian, and Polish (contra Stepanov & Tsai 2008). We argue that the distinct semantic interpretations correspond to two distinct base-generated positions of why. While reason why is base-generated within CP (Rizzi 2001, Ko 2005), purpose why is adjoined to vP (Stepanov & Tsai 2008). Furthermore, we show that English purpose why, similarly to previously reported data from Mandarin, is only compatible with dynamic predicates with agentive subjects. We argue that this selectional restriction follows from two properties: (i) why semantically requires a proposition as its argument, and (ii) only dynamic predicates with agentive subjects have a syntactic structure that accommodates two adjunction sites of the relevant semantic type, i.e., they contain two distinct propositional levels (Bale 2007) and therefore two attachment sites for why. In contrast, propositionally simple predicates only have one propositional level and hence only one possible attachment site, which corresponds to the reason interpretation of why. Evidence for this proposal comes from the observation that only the lower why - associated with the purpose reading - is sensitive to negative islands, which suggests that its attachment site is below negation (vP), whereas the higher why is insensitive to island effects of this sort, which suggests that its base generated position is above negation (CP).

The boy that the chef cooked: Acquisition of PP relatives in European Portuguese and Hebrew

I propose that a moved clausal complement must involve a DP structure headed by a covert determiner. This proposal explains the fact that the base-generated position of a moved clausal complement must show properties of DPs even though the moved constituent appears to be a CP. I argue that the necessity of the DP structure comes from properties of an independently motivated mechanism for interpreting structures involving a movement dependency under the copy theory of movement. Together with a particular theory of counter-cyclic merger, the proposed analysis also captures (anti-)reconstruction effects exhibited by movement of a clausal complement.

In this article, an empirical study of how Chinese wh-questions are mentally represented in Japanese speakers' grammars of Chinese as a second language (L2) is reported. Both Chinese and Japanese are generally considered wh-in-situ languages in which a wh-word is allowed to remain in its base-generated position, and both languages use question particles to mark questions. It is assumed that C0 in wh-questions is essentially ambiguous and unvalued and that unvalued C0 must be valued. In Chinese, the wh-particle ne values C0 with [+Q, +wh] features, which licenses the wh-word in situ. As a result, no wh-movement is necessary and Subjacency becomes irrelevant. Japanese also employs question particles, such as ka or no. However, they are `defective' in the sense that they can only value the ambiguous C0 as [+Q] and they are unable to specify the question as to whether it is [+yes/no] or [+wh]. To value C0 as a head with [+wh], a wh-operator in a wh -word inside the sentence has to raise overtly to C0. The results of an acceptability judgement task show that although the Japanese speakers respond in a broadly target-like way, the lexical morphological feature [+wh] of the particle ne in their L2 Chinese lexicons is permanently deficient, which leads to variability in their intuitions about Chinese wh-questions. A lexical morphological feature deficit account for the results is proposed, and it is suggested that the lexical morphology—syntax interface can be a source of variability in L2 acquisition.

This paper offers a new analysis of Japanese scrambling, under which some instances of scrambling phenomena are derived from the process of linearization. It is specifically proposed that the absence of formal agreement in Japanese enables Spell-Out to apply solely to an argument of the verb. The spelled out argument is “dislocated” at PF by the mechanisms of linearization of spelled out syntactic objects. Radical reconstruction effects, along with various other properties of Japanese scrambling such as the proper binding effects, are captured as a natural consequence of the proposed analysis, because the scrambled constituent actually does not undergo any syntactic movement but rather stays in the base-generated position. It is also argued that an analysis of scrambling ought to be eclectic in the sense that another strategy, which employs null operator movement to establish the relation between the dislocated element and the gap, is also available in Japanese, as originally proposed by Ueyama (2002). Thus, the optionality of Japanese scrambling is shifted under the proposed analysis to the optional application of Spell-Out (made possible by the absence of formal agreement) and the optional selection of a null operator in the numeration. The paper is concluded with the speculation that the availability of the latter strategy is due to the rich use of predication in Japanese.

Verb and auxiliary movement in agrammatic Broca’s aphasia

Lexical, Morphological, and Syntactic Aspects of Verb Production in Agrammatic Aphasics

The movement operation Verb Second moves the finite verb from its base-generated position in VP to C via the I node within the Chomsky (1986) framework. As the finite verb and the complementiser are in complementary distribution, the above predicts that, contrary to fact, Verb Second is not possible in embedded clauses. However, in Frisian and Swedish Verb Second does occur in embedded clauses. This entails that a lexical complementiser does not always prevent a finite verb from undergoing Verb Second. 'The aim of this paper is to provide a survey of Old English and Middle English root clauses particularly with respect to Verb Second. Old English does not strictly conform to Verb Second in declarative root clauses. In Old English finite verbs also occur in first position and in third position in declarative root clauses. A comparison with Icelandic data will be provided as this language displays all three verb placements in declarative head main clauses as well.