Morphosyntactic Behavior Research Articles

A polymorphic word in old Romanian (adjective, noun, adverb and interjection): ferice ʻgood/blessed/well, happyʼ

Consulting the main Romanian lexicographic works and taking into account some previous contributions on Romanian (diachronic) morphosyntax, the author aims to discuss the meanings of the word ferice ‘good/blessed/well, happy’ and its morphological values or syntactic implications, as they are presented in the old Romanian writings, more precisely in some old texts integrated into the SOR Corpus, enriched with new sources recently published. To this day, despite the antiquity of the word in question, it has been discussed only sequentially, which calls for revealing its morphosyntactic behavior. Consulting the main Romanian lexicographic works and taking into account some previous contributions on Romanian (diachronic) morphosyntax, the author aims to discuss the meanings of the word ferice ‘good/blessed/well, happy’ and its morphological values or syntactic implications, as they are presented in the old Romanian writings, more precisely in some old texts integrated into the SOR Corpus, enriched with new sources recently published. To this day, despite the antiquity of the word in question, it has been discussed only sequentially, which calls for revealing its morphosyntactic behavior. Therefore, it will be possible to establish much better the place and role of the word ferice ‘good/blessed/well, happy’ at the sentence level (in the old language), proposing some relevant analytical solutions, leading to some interpretative repositioning, so necessary for a proper understanding of language facts that are not always clear.

Missing link: code-switches, borrowings, and accommodation biases

Abstract When words are transferred from a source language into a target language, they may become conventionalized and appear to fully adopt target-language morphosyntactic behavior. Such words are traditionally regarded as borrowings. Even borrowings, however, are subject to probabilistic usage constraints, which we refer to as “accommodation biases” and which distinguish borrowings from native vocabulary. A case study is presented on accommodation biases in French-based verbs and adjectives in Middle English, showing that accommodation biases are robustly attested and can be diachronically persistent over long periods. In structural terms, accommodation biases resemble some of the familiar morphosyntactic constraints on code-switching. Combining the empirical evidence with theoretical argumentation, it is proposed that accommodation biases reflect a processing cost that is specifically associated with transferred items, and that arises from dual-language activation in bilingual speakers. Thus, accommodation biases indicate that even conventionalized borrowings may be more akin to code-switches than hitherto assumed.

The Parts of Speech from the Perspective of the Correlation between Lexicon and Grammar

The purpose of the article is to present an analysis of parts of speech from the point of view of the interference between semantic features and their morphosyntactic behavior. The elucidation of the established relationships between the lexical meaning of words, on the one hand, and their grammatical categories and the syntactic functions with which they are used, on the other, requires the analysis of these entities from a functional perspective. Since the relationships between the mentioned features are revealed when the lexical units function in the structure of the statement, we could say that the research addresses the problem of the correlation between the three components of the statement, namely the lexical, morphological and syntactic components. Revealing the relationships between these components would allow overcoming the artificial separation between the levels of semantic and syntactic description, but also a better understanding of how the utterance is constituted and functions.

Differential Object Marking and Other Object Licensing Strategies

The theoretical status of differential object marking (DOM) has given rise to numerous debates. In this paper we examine data from a set of languages with DOM (Uzbek, Hindi-Urdu, Estonian, Finnish), showing that previous theories addressing the problem of object licensing in DOM languages are insufficient to account for the data. The complex morpho-syntactic behavior of direct objects in these languages provides further support to an account according to which is DOM does not simply signal the difference between syntactically licensed objects, which are marked, and unlicensed ones, which are unmarked. Rather, DOM signals an additional licensing operation beyond that of structural licensing in terms of (uninterpretable) Case ((following Irimia 2020, 2021, 2022).

Un adverb scos la iveală din vechile scrieri româneşti: adevăr. Contribuţii etimologice, lexicale şi gramaticale

"In the current study, the author aims to continue the detailed analysis of the inherited Latin adjectives used adverbially in Romanian in order to highlight the lexical-semantic and functional features of the word adevăr ‘really’ in the ancient period, when it had different uses. The starting point for the analysis was some previous contributions, in whose pages aspects concerning adjectives with similar morphosyntactic behavior have been described, some of them, at that time, being presented sequentially, revealing the typological characteristics of the class and less the morphological or the phraseological (implicitly prepositional) variation of each lexical unit. The choice of this adverbial adjective as the main topic of the current analysis is also explained by the fact that, in ancient texts, its number of occurrences was relatively significant because it was often found in the structure of adverbial phraseological units. For a proper interpretation, the author uses a corpus of ancient language (SOR Corpus), which facilitates an objective analysis of language facts. It also refers to similar studies and dictionaries of Romance languages to show the similarities between them, more exactly similar uses, confirming the unity of the Neolatin idioms regarding the adverbials. In this paper, the author will prioritise several perspectives: the etymological, the Romance, the morphological, the structural and the syntactic. The main aim is to illustrate the dynamics of this adverb in the ancient language, which was, naturally, much more striking than nowadays. This analysis will undoubtedly make it possible to identify certain constants and relate them to other adverbial adjectives in order to confirm or refute some trends in the language or to seek the fixing of some structures or the generalization of some particular phraseological variants."

The syntax of the diminutive morpheme-aajin Egyptian Arabic, Syrian Arabic, and Jordanian Arabic

AbstractThis article investigates the morphosyntactic behavior of the diminutive morpheme-aajin three Arabic dialects (Egyptian Arabic, Syrian Arabic, and Jordanian Arabic). It argues that this morpheme is categorially a head that projects Size Phrase (cf. De Belder, Marijke. 2008. Size matters: Towards a syntactic decomposition of countability. In Natasha Abner & Jason Bishop (eds.),Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 116–122. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project). In so doing, this analysis obviously challenges (Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 2018.Constructing feminine to mean: Gender, number, numeral, and quantifier extensions in Arabic. Lanham: Lexington Books) recent proposal that (non-)concatenative diminutives in Arabic are modifiers that are adjoined to categorized words when they indicate smallness in size. Additionally, this article provides an account of the observation that the diminutive morpheme-aajcan only appear with the feminine ending and a certain group of nouns, including collective aggregates (e.g., fruits and vegetables) and granular aggregates (e.g., grains, nuts, and seeds). We show that words suffixed with the diminutive morpheme-aajcan only give rise to an individuation reading (not a partition or non-count reading). This is syntactically interpreted as indicating that Size Phrase (headed by-aaj) is always dominated in Arabic grammar by Division Phrase (cf. Borer, Hagit. 2005.In name only. Oxford: Oxford University Press), whose presence derives an individuation reading.

Same: Structural sources of anaphora and relativization

This paper offers a unified structural analysis of anaphora and relative clauses licensed by same within definite descriptions. Taking as a point of departure the proposal that indices occupy syntactic positions in anaphoric DPs (Schwarz 2009; Simonenko 2014, i.a.), I examine the open issue of how anaphoric modifiers, particularly same, interact with this proposed structural complexity. Based on the morphosyntactic behavior of definites with same, I argue that indices may be introduced via different positions within the DP. I argue moreover that the behavior of same in both anaphoric and non-anaphoric contexts supports the view that same is syntactically an equative head (Alrenga 2007; Oxford 2010), whose selectional properties are shared across equative constructions. I also propose an analysis of as-relatives that accounts for their alternation with anaphoric interpretations, and offer a comparison with restrictive relatives.

Realis converbs and irrealis converbs in Hwari Tibetan

Abstract This article analyzes the realis converbs and irrealis converbs in Hwari (Dpa’ ris) Tibetan, an Amdo Tibetan dialect spoken in Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Wuwei City, Gansu Province, China. One peculiarity of Hwari Tibetan morphosyntax is the existence of a large set of converbal suffixes. A survey of previous descriptions reveals a lack of consensus in the analysis of these converbs. They have been included in the framework of Written Tibetan too often, which has led to confusion regarding their typological status. A primary objective of our paper is to rectify this approach by describing the language on its own terms by comparing the morphosyntactic behavior of eight selected suffixes with regard to relevant criteria, such as realis and irrealis. This empirical research feeds back into the theoretical discussion, as it shows that the Hwari Tibetan converbs can be described using conventional typological concepts if construed appropriately. Our second objective is to explain the semantic and pragmatic properties of these converbs, particularly -na and -ta. The conclusion is that the two converb types are located along a continuum from realis/irrealis to positive/negative, thus constituting an instantiation of syntax-semantics isomorphism. The clause chaining in Hwari Tibetan is representative. By describing the converbs in Hwari Tibetan from the perspective of realis and irrealis, and by focusing on the syntactic properties and pragmatic features of -Ce in realis converbs and -Ca in irrealis converbs, it is revealed that the irrealis converbs -na and -ta function in a unique way in Hwari Tibetan.

Common names and proper nouns: Morphosyntactic evidence of a complete nominal paradigm

The terms "common noun" and "proper name" encode two dichotomies that are often conflated. This paper explores the possibility of the other combinations—"common name" and "proper noun"—and concludes that both exist on the basis of their morphosyntactic behavior. In support of common names, inflectional regularization is determined to result from a "name" layer in the structure, meaning that common nouns that regularize are, in fact, common names (computer mouses, tailor’s gooses). In support of proper nouns, there are bare singular count nouns in English that receive definite interpretations and seem to be licensed as arguments by the same null determiner as proper names (I left town, she works at home). Not only does a four-way distinction between nouns, names, proper nouns, and proper names achieve greater empirical coverage, but it also captures the independent morphosyntactic effects of [PROPER] and [NAME] as features on D and N, respectively.

The Mechanism of Noun Incorporation in Ancient Greek

Based on inner- as well as on cross-linguistic evidence, a copious group of compound verbs of the form [N+V]V such as στεφανη-πλοκέω and νομο-θετέω can be described as instances of noun incorporation in Ancient Greek. These verbs – diachronically, denominal verbs derived from verbal governing compounds – synchronically display characteristics of compounding of a nominal element to a verbal element. This compositional quality, amply attested textually, as well as other unique semantic, pragmatic, and morpho-syntactical properties of the process we term ‘noun incorporation’, set this group of verbs apart from mere denominalization and mark their derivation as a distinct morphological mechanism in Ancient Greek. This is most clearly discernible in the effect this process has on the valency and argument structure of the verbs in question, mostly yielding an intransitive verb, or, under very specific conditions, a transitive verb governing a direct object in a close morphological and semantic relationship to the incorporated noun. Viewing these verbs as cases of noun incorporation not only aligns Ancient Greek with other noun-incorporating languages but also elucidates the internal structure, derivational scheme, and morpho-syntactic behavior of these verbal compounds, as attested in Ancient Greek texts, ranging from Homeric Greek through Hellenistic and Imperial Greek.

Distinction between nouns and verbs in Guató

Abstract Even though the distinction between nouns and verbs is generally considered to be universal, it has been argued for some languages of Northern North America that they lack this distinction. The main argument for such assertion is that in these languages lexemes denoting entities and lexemes denoting actions receive the same markers, when used as predicates. Guató, an isolate from South America, exhibits a similar phenomenon. In Guató, lexemes considered nouns receive the same subject markers as intransitive verbs do, when they occur in predicative function. Moreover, nouns and verbs share other morphosyntactic features. This article aims to describe and to compare the morphosyntactic behavior of Guató nouns and verbs, pointing out similarities and differences between them.

Variable D-marking on proper naming expressions: A typological study

AbstractRecent studies have argued that proper naming expressions cross-linguistically display distinct morphosyntactic behavior, i.e., naming-specific marking for case, definiteness, number and gender, among other categories. This study aims to contribute to the discussion by analyzing the marking of definiteness and specificity (D-marking) on naming expressions and common nouns from a comparative perspective, drawing on a sample of 50 areally, genetically and typologically diverse languages. The results present little support for D-marking being part of a cross-linguistically special onymic grammar: rather, the data suggest that there are different ways in which splits between common nouns and proper naming or between naming classes can materialize. Moreover, it is argued that the variability in D-marking of naming expressions correlates not just with animacy but with other semantic features as well, only some of which are integrated into the Animacy Hierarchy, including agentivity, individuation, identifiability and augmentation.

Negative verb clusters in Mari and Udmurt and why they require postsyntactic top-down word-formation

In this paper, we provide an in-depth study of the morphosyntactic behavior of negative verb clusters in the Finno-Ugric languages Udmurt and Mari. We argue that the standard treatment of negation as an auxiliary is inadequate for these languages as it does not explain its morphosyntactic and morphophonological behavior, which presents a challenging morphology-syntax-semantics mismatch: Despite taking high scope and governing the highest verb of the clause, negation surfaces immediately before the highest verb rather than at the end of the verb cluster as would be expected in head-final languages. Furthermore, we show that negation forms a complex unit with the highest verb of the clause and thus crucially differs from negative auxiliaries in other Finno-Ugric languages like Finnish and from other auxiliaries. We argue that the properties of negation are best modelled by means of postsyntactic Lowering (Embick and Noyer 2001). Next to the semantic vacuousness of the displacement, the main arguments for a postsyntactic perspective come from the internal constituency of the verb cluster, the possibility to interleave clitics inside the verb cluster only in the presence of negation, and cases where Lowering fails and a syntacto-semantically inert copula is inserted as a repair. We show that competing approaches to complex head formation based on narrow-syntactic head-movement, flexible spell-out in different positions or base-generation fail to capture the crucial properties of negative verb clusters. On a more general level, we thus provide evidence for the necessity of post-syntactic mechanisms for word formation and a serial architecture of the morphology-syntax interface.

Gender switch in Sidaama

Abstract In Sidaama, a Highland East Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia, the majority of nouns are feminine in the plural, regardless of their gender in the singular. We refer to this as ‘gender switch’ and we investigate how best to analyze this puzzling change in morphosyntactic behavior. We compare gender switch in Sidaama to the well-studied gender switch in Somali, arguing that Sidaama is different in that it is a true morphological syncretism unrelated to the syntax of plurality. We develop an analysis of Sidaama gender switch in the framework of Distributed Morphology and show how this analysis correctly predicts that feminine is the default gender in Sidaama. Overall, the paper provides a better understanding of gender switch in Sidaama and of the relationship between gender and number generally, it contributes to the very small theoretical-linguistic literature on Sidaama, and it offers some empirical support for Distributed Morphology.

El pretérito perfecto compuesto en relatos del castellano de Acolla (Junín)

Este artículo científico da cuenta del comportamiento morfosintáctico del pretérito perfecto compuesto (PPC) en relación con el pretérito perfecto simple (PPS) en el castellano de Acolla. El objetivo del estudio fue determinar si la frecuencia de uso del PPC era mayor al de PPS en relatos orales del pasado de esta variedad dialectal. Se trabajó sobre la base de la producción narrativa de 75 niños y niñas de seis años, monolingües del castellano. La estrategia Mi mascota favorita (MMF) resultó ser bastante efectiva para el acopio de información, insumo útil en la conformación del corpus lingüístico. Para el cálculo de la frecuencia absoluta y relativa de las formas verbales involucradas, se utilizó el programa informático Windows AntConc, versión 3.2.4. Los resultados señalan que en el castellano de Acolla, la frecuencia de uso del PPC es significativamente mayor a la del PPS tal como ocurre en otras variedades de castellano andino. Se concluye que en el castellano de Acolla, el PPC goza de mayor preferencia en narraciones que describen eventos temporalmente ocurridos no solamente en un pasado lejano sino también remoto.

Advérbios locativos em notícias jornalísticas: uma abordagem morfossintática

Considerando estudos de base funcionalista (NEVES, 2002, 2011; CASTILHO, 2014; entre outros), apresentamos, neste artigo, uma descrição e análise do comportamento morfossintático do advérbio locativo em leads presentes em chamadas de capa dos jornais Folha de São Paulo e A Tarde. Comprovamos que, em ambos os jornais, ele foi utilizado em sua forma composta, assumindo não apenas a função sintática de adjunto adverbial, que comumente lhe é atribuída nas gramáticas de orientação normativa, mas, também, a de adjunto adnominal e complemento verbal, funções essas que determinam o seu posicionamento na sentença.
 

Adjective orders in Cimbrian DPs

AbstractIn this work we aim to give a first description of the morphosyntactic behavior of some adjectives in the Cimbrian of Luserna. This Germanic variety allows a subclass of adjectives to appear in post-nominal position. This aspect seems to be relevant, since neither colloquial Standard German nor any other German substandard variety spoken in German-speaking areas display a similar pattern. Along the lines of Cinque (2010, 2014), we argue that Cimbrian, with respect to the adnominal adjectival order, has maintained the Germanic pattern of Merge, but permits in some cases NP-Movement above the (“bare” AP reduced) relative clause projection. The fact that adjectives following the head noun are predicative rather than attributive is supported by the fact that post-nominal modifiers never show up with inflection.

From visual perception to evidentiality: A functional empirical approach to se ve que in Spanish

The Spanish sequence se ve (que) presents intricate functional polysemy, including constructionalization as an evidential. The present paper investigates its different formal-functional combinations and degrees of specialization as an evidential construction. The following questions were addressed: (1) How many different senses can be distinguished in the sequence se ve (que) and what are their respective frequencies? (2) How do these senses correlate with the morphosyntactic behavior of the sequence se ve (que)? (3) Which senses of se ve (que) are more closely related to each other, and how does the evidential construction relate to this polysemous network? The semantic and formal affinities of se ve (que) were studied through the Behavioral Profiles method developed by Gries and Divjak (2009), which provides an empirical, systematic and verifiable approach to studying lexical phenomena. Its application to a pragmatic phenomenon is a new departure. The results show seven senses of se ve (que), ranging from the lexical value of direct physical perception to the more abstract and evidential value of 'source of information'. According to the corpus analysis, the closest senses to the evidential pole are indirect physical perception and cognitive perception. These all introduce an inflected verb clause, possess propositional scope and are morphosyntactically frozen..

O comportamento sintático-semântico do pronome de terceira pessoa no português brasileiro

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo observar aspectos do comportamento morfossintático e semântico da forma pronominal de terceira pessoa plena no Português Brasileiro (PB), a partir do inventário de traços que a constitui, sob a perspectiva de uma teoria de traços (HARBOUR, ADGER & BÉJAR, 2003). Para tanto, foram observados dados de introspecção do português brasileiro, conforme os pressupostos teóricos da Teoria Gerativa, conforme o Programa Minimalista (CHOMSKY, 1995 e posteriores), os quais permitiram observar que a terceira pessoa plena pode ocorrer em qualquer contexto sintático, que permite apenas leitura definida e específica, exceto em posição de sujeito, que pode assumir leitura definida e/ou específica, ou ainda, nenhuma das duas (caso dos expletivos), e, portanto, terceira pessoa não apresenta comportamento arbitrário, como ocorre com a primeira e a segunda pessoa. Os resultados mencionados, por conseguinte, apontam para as seguintes conclusões: (a) a geometria de traços da categoria pessoa parece estar relacionada com elementos, em princípio, pós-sintáticos como semântica e pragmática; e (b) a terceira pessoa pode ser a forma pronominal default, em português, pois é o pronome pessoal cuja forma é mais subespecificada, não possui leitura genérica e comportamento arbitrário e é a forma expandida para neutros e expletivos na maioria das línguas humanas.

On the edge between nouns and verbs. The heterogeneous behavior of Spanish deverbal nominalizations empirically verified

This study investigates the intricate semantic and morphosyntactic behavior of morphological nominalizations. Besides offering an in-depth quantitative and qualitative description of a set of Spanish nominals, it empirically verifies to what extent the more ‘nouny’ items adopt nominal features more frequently than the more ‘verby’ items. The starting point is the tripartite semantic distinction between referential, event, and state nominals, whose morphosyntactic behavior is then described on the basis of a detailed corpus analysis. The following properties are analyzed: determination, modification, number, and argument structure. The corpus study makes it possible to verify a series of theoretical assumptions on the processes of deverbalization and substantivization, and in particular the applicability of the hierarchical clines proposed within a typological perspective. The article also explores the possibility of creating an integrated transcategorization cline, and for that purpose combines all morphological features – nominal as well as verbal ones – into a multifactorial (classification tree) model.