Pronominal Argument Research Articles

Deictic vs. anaphoric pronouns: a comparison of fluent and non-fluent aphasia in English and Tagalog

ABSTRACT Deictic pronouns refer directly to the extralinguistic world (as in Stop her!), while anaphoric pronouns refer to elements introduced in discourse (as in My best friend is Mary. John adores her.). The distinction is central to linguistic theory and may be central also for understanding aphasia. This paper compares the production of deictic and anaphoric pronouns in fluent aphasia and non-fluent aphasia. It does so both for English and for Tagalog, which allows extensive omission of pronominal arguments. For both languages, the results show a dissociation between deictic and anaphoric pronouns. Non-fluent aphasic speech displays a lower proportion of anaphoric pronouns to non-pronouns than non-brain-damaged speech, while the proportion of deictic pronouns to non-pronouns is either not different (Tagalog) or higher (English). In contrast, fluent aphasic speech displays a higher proportion of deictic pronouns to non-pronouns, while the proportion of anaphoric pronouns is either not different (Tagalog) or lower (English).

Observations on Tagalog Genitive Inversion

Abstract: Tagalog is a strongly head-initial language: arguments without special discourse status typically follow their lexical heads. However, genitive-marked pronominal arguments display a word order alternation where instead of following their lexical head, they may precede it. This alternation, which I refer to here as Genitive Inversion, has received comparatively little attention in the research on Tagalog, even though it is relatively commonplace. This paper offers a detailed description of the behavior of Genitive Inversion, showing what kinds of arguments it can apply to and what environments it can apply in. I show that this process raises questions about the basic properties of Tagalog and discuss directions for potential analyses and avenues for further research into this topic.

Extending the Person-Case Constraint to Gender: Agreement, Locality, and the Syntax of Pronouns

In many languages with clitic or other weak pronouns, a Person-Case Constraint (Perlmutter 1971, Bonet 1991) prohibits certain combinations of these pronouns on the basis of their person features. This article explores the crosslinguistic variation in such constraints, starting with several closely related Zapotec varieties. These restrict combinations of clitics not just on the basis of person, but also on the basis of a finely articulated, largely animacy-based gender system. Operating within a larger combinatorial space, these constraints offer a new perspective on the typology of Phi-Case Constraints (ΦCCs) more generally. This typology has an overall asymmetrical shape correlating with the underlying syntactic position of pronominal arguments. We develop a principled theory of this typology that incorporates three hypotheses: (a) ΦCCs arise from how a functional head Agrees with clitic pronouns, subject to intervention-based locality (Anagnostopoulou 2003, Béjar and Rezac 2003, 2009); (b) the variation in these constraints arises from variation in the relativization of probes (Anagnostopoulou 2005, Nevins 2007, 2011); and (c) clitic and other weak pronouns have no inherent need to be licensed via Agree with a functional head. Under this account, the crosslinguistic typology of ΦCCs has the potential to shed light on the grammatical representation of person and gender.

Mihi est from Brythonic to Breton II

Abstract Middle Breton (MB) presents an anomaly of pronominal argument coding in imperative and mihi est HAVE constructions: objects can be accusative proclitics only in 1st/2nd person, while unique enclitics appear in 3rd person. Part II traces the history of object coding: Independent > enclitic coding originates in unavailability of accusative object mesoclitics in V1 imperatives by Vendryes’ Restriction in Brythonic, and nonagreement with nominative objects of mihi est in Breton-Cornish. Restriction of enclitics to 3rd person originates with mihi est in typically nonhuman nominative object possessa in Brythonic or Breton-Cornish. It spreads to imperatives through shared enclitic coding in MB, and is circumvented by the MB innovation of accusative proclitics for mesoclitics that allows 1st/2nd person even in V1, as well as the participle in the new HAVE-perfect later in MB. “Innovative” varieties of Breton transition to regular accusative objects with or without losing dative subjects of mihi est. The developments are constrained to familiar patterns of nominative/anomalous subject + accusative/nominative object case combinations, giving rise to the imperative + HAVE construction grouping of Finnish within the history of Breton.

Dutch preposition stranding and ellipsis: \u2018Merchant\u2019s Wrinkle\u2019 ironed out

This paper provides an explanation for the unexpected ban on preposition stranding by wh-R-pronouns under sluicing in Dutch. After showing that previous prosodic and syntactic explanations are untenable, we propose that the observed ban is a by-product of an EPP condition that applies in the PP domain in Dutch. Our analysis revolves around the idea that ellipsis bleeds EPP-driven movement, an idea that already has empirical support from independent patterns of ellipsis found in English and in other structural domains in Dutch. Our claim is that: (1) R-pronominalization involves a pronominal argument of P moving to the periphery of its extended PP domain (PlaceP) in order to satisfy a PP-internal EPP condition, (2) this EPP-driven movement is bled under sluicing, and (3) because SpecPlaceP is the ‘escape hatch’ through which R-pronouns must move in order to exit the PP domain to form preposition stranding configurations, bleeding the EPP-driven movement of R-pronouns to SpecPlaceP therefore precludes R-pronouns from undergoing the wh-movement required to form a sluicing configuration.

Argument Types Affect Children's Acquisition of a Novel Argument Structure.

Acquisition of an argument structure may be affected by the diversity of lexical types that appear in that structure (Conwell etal., 2011; Yang, 2016). Seventy-two 5- and 6-year-old English-speaking children completed a learning study where they were exposed to a novel argument structure and then tested on their ability to comprehend it. The number of verb types heard in the learning phase did not predict comprehension at test. However, learning with only full noun phrase arguments resulted in lower comprehension of the structure, particularly with pronouns. Hearing pronouns during learning supported comprehension of all argument types at test. These results indicate that pronominal arguments support argument structure learning by providing multiple cues that can facilitate thematic role assignment.

Subject marking in Awing

This paper investigates the principles that govern subject marking in Awing (Grassfields Bantu). We observe that the subject marker (SM) that doubles the subject is sometimes obligatory, sometimes optional and sometimes prohibited. We argue that it is the referentiality of the subject that controls the distribution of the SM in Awing, rather than factors such as its morpho-syntactic features or its information structural status, which have been identified to govern argument doubling in a number of other languages with a similar phenomenon. The empirical evidence leads us to conclude that the SM is a pronominal element in Awing rather than an agreement marker. When it occurs, it functions as the argument of the verb and the associated subject NP is base-generated in the left periphery of the clause; when it is absent, the NP is the verbal argument. Awing thus qualifies as a pronominal argument language in the sense of Jelinek (1984); Bresnan and Mchombo (1987); Baker (1996).

Mihi est from Brythonic to Breton I

Abstract Middle Breton (MB) presents a singular anomaly of pronominal argument coding. Objects are accusative proclitics save in two constructions, where coding is split by person: 3rd unique enclitics ~ 1st/2nd accusative proclitics. The constructions are HAVE, from Insular Celtic mihi est, where the new coding replaces inflectional nominatives (cf. Latin mihi est ~ sunt); and imperatives, where it replaces accusative enclitics in V1 (cf. French aide-moi ~ ne m’aide pas). The evolution is traced in light of a crosslinguistic construction type that suggests its nature, noncanonical subject + 3rd nominative ~ 1st/2nd accusative object. Part I: (1) Decomposition of HAVE as dative clitic + BE from Brythonic throughout “conservative” varieties of Breton. (2) Breton-Cornish innovation of nonclitic datives for mihi est and their subjecthood. Part II: (3) Brythonic unavailibility of mesoclisis in V1 and Breton-Cornish nonagreement with nominative objects, resulting in independent > enclitic pronouns for accusative objects of imperatives and nominative objects of mihi est. (4) MB alignment of imperatives with mihi est in 3rd person, restriction on nominative enclitics, and recruitment of 1st/2nd person accusative proclitics upon loss of mesoclisis. (5) Transition to accusative objects in “innovative” varieties and subject-object case interactions.

The effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension.

The English dative alternation has received much attention in the literature on argument structure acquisition in children. However, the data on the acquisition of this alternation have consistently revealed a counter-intuitive pattern: children look more proficient with the lower frequency prepositional form of the dative than with the higher frequency double object form (Conwell & Demuth, 2007; Rowland & Noble, 2010). This may be because the DO dative typically occurs with pronominal argument types in first post-verbal position, which may result in an over-reliance on stereotyped forms (e.g., give + me) for early comprehension and production (Conwell, O'Donnell, & Snedeker, 2011). This paper presents three studies of the effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension by three-year-olds. Children's comprehension of the DO dative improved significantly when the first post-verbal argument was pronominal; no other effects of pronoun use were significant. Children's experience affects their ability to use lexically general representations of syntactic structures.

RADIAL CATEGORIES IN SYNTAX: NON-RESUMPTIVE LEFT DISLOCATION IN ARUSA

This paper discusses the phenomenon of L(eft) D(islocation) in Arusa – a southern variety of Maasai – and, in particular, the presence of resumption in LD constructions. With respect to resumption, Arusa allows for two types of LD. In most cases, a non-resumptive type of LD is used. This variant is obligatory if a possible resumptive element refers to an argument of the verb of the matrix clause (i.e. subject, direct and indirect objects and applied objects). The resumptive type, which is significantly less frequent, appears only if the dislocate corresponds to an adjunct in the matrix clause. The pervasiveness of the non-resumptive LD stems from the ungrammaticality of overt independent pronominal arguments in most positions in Arusa. As a result, resumption cannot be viewed as a decisive feature for the classification of a construction as LD, and its lack as a sufficient reason to propose a different category. Rather, LD should be viewed as a radial category containing both constructions that match the LD prototype and structures that are more remote from the exemplar.

Transitivity and polysynthesis in Fijian

This article argues for a three-way structural characterization of Fijian objects: common nouns can be incorporated or dislocated, but pronouns and proper nouns occur inside the VP as complements. These facts support an analysis of Fijian as a polysynthetic language, since it is a pronominal argument language with incorporated objects. Having complement nominals inside the VP, however, puts Fijian outside the scope of Baker’s (1996) polysynthesis parameter. The distribution of complements in Fijian follows from Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) transitivity hypothesis , since only those nominals with the highest degree of individuation can occur inside the VP.

Are there null arguments in Athabascan?

The existence of null arguments in Athabascan languages, and other polysynthetic languages, is a debated topic. We argue that, if the agreement on the verb is the argument, the so-called Pronominal Argument Hypothesis, languages such as Navajo do not have null arguments in the traditional sense. We then outline the diachrony of Athabascan object marking on the verb (by looking at the various contemporary languages).

Null conjuncts and bound pronouns in Arabic

This paper presents a descriptive overview and a formal analysis of the syntax of pronominal arguments, pronominal conjuncts and bound pronouns in Arabic. I argue that Arabic allows first conjuncts to be null and that this is an instance of a more general pattern of zero anaphora that may affect pronominal arguments or their first conjuncts. First Conjunct Agreement and constraints on the distribution of zero anaphora are accounted for by a new feature sharing mechanism which allows a uniform treatment without appeal to the internal structure of argument NPs. I then argue that Arabic bound pronouns should be analyzed as affixes and present an analysis of their relation to argument structure and coordination. Finally, it is shown how constraints on case marking in Arabic coordination can be formalized. The analysis is part of an Arabic grammar fragment implemented in the TRALE system.

Pro‐drop and Theories ofproin the Minimalist Program Part 1: Consistent Null Subject Languages and the Pronominal‐Agr Hypothesis

Some languages allow for phonetically null arguments in certain environments. Others do not. This phenomenon, known as pro-drop, arose particular interest in the 80s with the theory of Government and Binding (Chomsky 1981) and the advent of a principles and parameters approach to the theory of grammar. One particularly well-studied phenomenon was subject drop in rich agreement, Italian-type languages, where the occurrence of null subjects correlates with a set of other syntactic properties, thus suggesting that the same abstract property is responsible for apparently unrelated syntactic phenomena. This article starts by reviewing the classic Government and Binding (Chomsky 1981) approach to pro-drop, according to which a phonetically null pronominal argument (pro) is an inherently unspecified nominal projection whose features are supplied contextually. In the case of the rich agreement null subject languages, it was assumed that pro’s ϕ-features are identified by Agr. This view is incompatible with the approach to feature theory developed in the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, 2000, 2001) given that, in this theory, the ϕ-features in T (=Agr) are uninterpretable and thus not specified for a particular value. In Part 1 of this article we concentrate on the family of analyses that propose that what characterizes the null subject languages of the rich agreement type is that the head bearing subject agreement has a nominal specification and valued phi-features; i.e., Agr behaves like a pronoun spelled out as an affix. In particular, we focus on the consequences of such a hypothesis for the cluster of properties associated with the (rich agreement) consistent null subject languages and for a theory of pro.

The syntax of Southern American English personal datives: An anti-locality account

Southern American English licenses personal dative constructions (Horn 2008), also known as coreferential dative constructions (Al-Zahre and Boneh 2010). The sentences in (1) are a few examples; they contain nonsubcategorized pronominal arguments that are obligatorily coreferential with the subject. These unselected pronouns are dative case-marked in languages like Hebrew and Arabic— thus the name personal dative—but they are not overtly dative in Southern American English.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Rebuilding Australia’s Linguistic Profile – Recent Developments in Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages

At the end of the eighteenth century, between 250 and 700 languages were spoken on the Australian continent. No genetic link has been proven between these languages and those elsewhere, and there was remarkably little contact between speakers of Australian aboriginal languages and others during the tens of thousands of years that intervened between the first occupation of the continent and the arrival of English speakers. Although there are many hallmarks of Australian phonologies, morphology and syntax, as well as recurrent themes in semantic categorization and the linguistic reflexes of cultural preoccupations, there is considerable current debate over which of these may be attributed to shared inheritance from a common ancestor and which to more recent contact between linguistic groups. A course on the aboriginal languages of Australia might cover: (i) the structural features typical of Australian languages (highlighting those that are atypical in global perspective); (ii) whether and how these can be related to typical features of Australian cultures; (iii) the particular challenges Australian languages have posed to linguistic theories and typologies developed on the basis of other languages; and (iv) the genetic relationships between Australian languages and how well these are modelled by traditional methodologies.

Issues in Salish Syntax and Semantics

The Salish language family is of special interest for syntactic and semantic theory because it has been argued to differ radically from Indo-European languages in both structure and interpretation (see, e.g., Kinkade 1983; Jelinek and Demers 1994; Jelinek 1995; Ritter and Wiltschko 2005, forthcoming; Davis 2006, 2009; Matthewson 2006a, forthcoming). In this article, we survey four theoretical debates in the syntactic and semantic literature on Salish, one from each of the areas of lexical semantics, super-lexical syntax, semantics and pragmatics, with an eye to pinning down the principal loci of variation between Salish and Indo-European. In the domain of lexical semantics, we argue for the hypothesis that all Salish verb roots are intransitive and unaccusative. In the area of syntax, we outline the predictions of the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis, and provide counterarguments which show that at least some and probably all Salish languages have a fully configurational syntax. Turning to tense, we argue that Salish languages are tensed, despite superficial evidence to the contrary. Finally, we present arguments that at least one Salish language differs radically from English in its pragmatics: it lacks any familiarity presuppositions. Our conclusion is that major parametric differences between Salish and Indo-European languages are not to be found in the syntax or sentence-level semantics, but in the pragmatics, and possibly the lexical semantics.

Clitic incorporation and abstract semantic objects in idiomatic constructions

This article analyzes inherent clitics of idiomatic constructions as verbal arguments (Jelinek, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2: 39–76, 1984; Baker, The polysynthesis parameter, Oxford University Press, 1996; Hale, On the significance of Eloise Jelinek's pronominal argument hypothesis, John Benjamins, 2003) that are translated as free variables (Delfitto, Catalan Journal of Linguistics 1: 41–69, 2002): they are anaphoric to a (hidden) nonreferential discourse topic or (right) dislocated constituent. Furthermore, since they denote abstract semantic objects (Asher, Reference to abstract objects in discourse, Kluwer, 1993), they are assumed to be semantically incorporated into the verb to which they are affixed at the syntax-semantics interface (Van Geenhoven, Semantic incorporation and indefinite descriptions, CSLI, 1998), either by unification of selecting features or by predicate modification of some role function of the event under consideration (Farkas and Swart, The semantics of incorporation, Stanford University Press, 2003; Dayal, A semantics for pseudo incorporation, Rutgers University, 2003). Whereas noun incorporation is a salient property of polysynthetic languages (as has been extensively argued in the linguistic literature [Mardirussian, Chicago Linguistic Society 11: 383–389, 1975; Mithun, Language 60: 847–894, 1984]), in this article the incorporation of clitics and nouns is argued to be a covert phenomenon of nonpolysynthetic languages, specifically in idiomatic constructions (Espinal, Property denoting objects in idiomatic constructions, John Benjamins, 2001).

Problems for the pronominal argument hypothesis in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy

Abstract: According to the pronominal argument hypothesis, the characteristic features of many so-called nonconfigurational languages may be accounted for on the assumption that affixes of verbs or auxiliaries in such languages either function as syntactic arguments or identify null pronouns that fill this role. Overt NPs then stand as adjuncts to clauses that are formally complete without them. Several studies have proposed analyses of Algonquian languages that incorporate versions of this hypothesis. This article explores data from several areas of the morphology and syntax of the Eastern Algonquian language Maliseet-Passamaquoddy that suggest that it is not such a pronominal argument language.

Clitic Phenomena in European Languages (review)

Reviewed by: Clitic phenomena in European languages ed. by Frits Beukema, Marcel den Dikken Ana R. Luís Clitic phenomena in European languages. Ed. by Frits Beukema and Marcel den Dikken. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics today 30.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000. Pp. viii, 320. ISBN 1556199147. $100 (Hb). The essays in this volume are mostly about cliticization in South Slavic (i.e. Macedonian, Slovenian, [End Page 281] Bulgarian, and Serbo-Croatian). The introduction, by Steven Franks (1–46), discusses interface phenomena in South Slavic and examine show to best analyze the interaction between different components of grammar. Franks argues that an analysis of cliticization should combine insights from derivational syntax with representational work in optimality theory (OT). Theoretically, the position is taken that the proper place for OT in the grammar is at the interface between different components. Within the group of papers on South Slavic, ŽEljko Bošković (71–119) examines the mechanisms triggering clitic placement in Serbo-Croatian. After discussing the purely syntactic analysis and the purely prosodic reordering mechanism, he reaches the conclusion that placement mechanisms are phonological in nature. In ‘Where do clitics cluster?’, Ljiljana Progovac (249–58) writes a short reply to Bošković’s claim that second position clitic placement in Serbo-Croatian is phonological. She argues instead that both syntactic positions and intonation boundaries play an important role in determining where Serbo-Croatian clitics appear. Mila Dimitrova-Vulchanova (121–46) compares possessive clitics in English and Bulgarian, and argues that the difference between them is due to the nature of the clitic head: while English genitive ’s is nonreferential (realizing functional categories), the Bulgarian clitic is referential (i.e. pronominal). Marija Golden and Milena M. Sheppard (191–207) show that Slovenian pronominal clitics depart from prototypical second-position clitics as found in Serbo-Croatian, providing distributional evidence from the clitic systems of both languages to support this claim. Clitic doubling is addressed in Ivana P. Schick’s essay on Bulgarian (259–92). Comparing Bulgarian and Macedonian, she claims that clitic pronouns act consistently as topic markers and participate in the interpretation of information stucture. In the last essay on Slavic, ‘On clitic sites’ (293–316), Olga M. Tomić argues that Macedonian has both verbal and Wackernagel clitics, unlike other European languages with only verbal clitics. Tomić is mostly concerned with deriving the positions of both types of clitics within a derivational view of syntax. There are also essays on cliticization in Spanish, Greek, and Albanian. Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou (47–70) examine Greek restrictive relatives introduced by the complementizer pu. The crucial question addressed here is why only direct objects are sensitive to the indefiniteness of the head. Jon Franco (147–89), who looks at clitic doubling with respect to Spanish, takes the position that object clitics should be analyzed as agreement morphemes on the verb (on a par with subject agreement markers), rather than as phonologically dependent pronominal arguments. Dalina Kallulli’s (210–48) paper on clitic doubling focuses on Albanian and Greek. In contrast to Jon Franco’s position, Kallulli argues that clitic doubling and object agreement, despite the similarities, constitute distinct phenomena, particularly because doubled DPs behave like topics. She also discusses the information structure of clitic doubling and specificity. Other topics addressed in this volume include the difference in status between clitic pronouns and auxiliary clitics, and the nature of the functional features instantiated by clitics. Most of the contributions in this volume were originally presented at the fourth conference of the European Society for the Study of English, held at the Lajos Lossuth University in Debrecen, Hungary, in 1997. Ana R. Luís University of Coimbra, Portugal Copyright © 2005 Linguistic Society of America