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Differential marking as applied to direct objects has long been discussed as one of the characterizing traits of many Romance languages. There is however wide consensus that a detailed investigation into the nature of this phenomenon raises numerous challenges both at the empirical and theoretical level. Many questions are still being raised regarding which precise morpho-syntactic strategies count as differential object marking whether the data can be unified and subsequently how they are to be unified formally and theoretically. Additionally a thorough investigation of this phenomenon is still needed for many Romance languages and especially at the micro-variation level. This volume brings together original papers addressing various aspects of differential object marking in Romance languages focusing on micro-variation from both a descriptive and formal perspective touching on diachrony language contact synchrony and using a large set of methodologies.

This book proposes a new solution to the long-standing puzzle of auxiliary selection in Romance languages in particular Italian. The following questions are addressed: why the perfect auxiliary appears in the two forms be and have within a single language what drives this distribution and how cross-linguistic data can be accounted for. The solution to these issues consists of an Agreebased analysis that accounts for auxiliary selection in root clauses and restructuring in Standard Italian and in Italo-Romance varieties which is also compatible with participle agreement. By answering these questions the book also touches upon more theoretical and foundational problems such as the distribution of labor between syntax morphology and the lexicon and the conditions on the operation Agree (in particular multiple probing locality and minimality). This work contributes to the discussion in the fields of formal morpho-syntax theoretical linguistics and Romance linguistics.

Individual Differences in Anaphora Resolution: Language and cognitive effects explores anaphora resolution from different perspectives and investigates various aspects of the phenomenon as contributions include research protocols that combine old and new experimental methodologies as well as theoretical and empirical approaches. A central theme across volume contributions are the multiple linguistic and extralinguistic factors that constrain anaphora resolution its processing and acquisition by a variety of populations (children and adults monolinguals bilinguals and second language learners) as well as the mechanisms underlying anaphora resolution. Anaphora resolution constitutes an ideal environment to test the interaction between domain-general cognitive systems and domain-specific linguistic sub-routines since variability in referential preferences is not related to binding constraints (an integral part of syntax per se) but is closely tied to processing (functional constraints) modulated by the integration of discourse-filtered information.

The range of meanings expressed by derivatives formed by the attachment of the four principal verb-forming suffixes - ate - en - ify and - ize has been the subject of extensive analysis for over two decades. From a descriptive perspective the research reported in this volume constitutes the most comprehensive usage-based analysis of verbal derivatives available to date and provides register-based and diachronic comparisons of usage and distribution patterns across corpora of spoken English. The semantic analysis adopts the seven well-established semantic categories of verbal derivatives and extends the set to twenty by including further meaning classes documented in the morphological literature and additional senses that emerged from the contextualized analysis of complex verbs in the datasets. From a theoretical standpoint the novel approach involves the explicit linking of affix schemas to argument structure constructions and proposes a unified model of verb-forming suffixation that accounts for the multi-functional characteristics of verbal derivatives from a constructional perspective.

This book represents a detailed discussion and corpus analysis of Theme in English and German originals and translations. The empirical results are based on thousands of clauses from four different registers cover a variety of linguistic aspects including multiple Themes marked Themes participant roles agency and identifiability and are tested statistically using regression analyses. The book sheds light on one of the most elusive concepts of the systemic functional linguistics framework Theme by comparing it with different approaches related concepts and realizations in different languages and by examining empirically different Theme models contrastive differences and translation effects. Given that Theme in English and German is realized formally by being the first clause constituent and is thus effectively a syntactic phenomenon this monograph is not only relevant for functional linguists but any interested in English and German word order differences and their effects on translations.

This volume brings together twelve empirical studies on ditransitive constructions in Germanic languages and their varieties past and present. Specifically the volume includes contributions on a wide variety of Germanic languages including English Dutch and German but also Danish Swedish and Norwegian as well as lesser-studied ones such as Faroese. While the first part of the volume focuses on diachronic aspects the second part showcases a variety of synchronic aspects relating to ditransitive patterns. Methodologically the volume covers both experimental and corpus-based studies. Questions addressed by the papers in the volume are among others issues like the cross-linguistic pervasiveness and cognitive reality of factors involved in the choice between different ditransitive constructions or differences and similarities in the diachronic development of ditransitives. The volume’s broad scope and comparative perspective offers comprehensive insights into well-known phenomena and furthers our understanding of variation across languages of the same family.

This e-book is made available as Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

This volume reflects the centrality of the existential construction in current linguistic research and offers studies that both consolidate and challenge established research agendas. It addresses (i) a variety of constructions related to ‘prototypical’ existentials (including the have-possessive construction) and investigates (ii) the relationships between locative existential and information structure (iii) the quantification of the pivot and (iv) the issue of negative existentials. It brings together different and complementary approaches (functional cognitive pragmatic typological comparative diachronic philosophical) based on a wide variety of data sources. The contributions illustrate how the so-called existential construction can take a variety of forms – more or less grammaticalized – and functions – ranging from the expression of literal existence to that of localization and discursive focus – in a wide range of languages. The book will be valuable for linguists researchers or students interested in the cross-linguistic manifestations of existential constructions at the interface between syntax semantics and information structure.

This book offers a fresh take on several long-standing issues relating to the (non-)truth-conditional interpretation of epistemic evidential hearsay and attitudinal sentence adverbials. Drawing on a wealth of data from English and German it shows for the first time that all four adverbial classes can have both truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional (parenthetical) readings. A novel account is presented according to which (non-)truth-conditional readings may arise at either the syntactic or the pragmatic level. Couched in relevance theory the book also re-examines the explicature and illocutionary status of the adverbial qualification and the qualified proposition and refines the notions of pointhood and at-issueness to provide an original information-structural analysis applicable to not just sentence adverbials but a range of other propositional qualifiers. Finally the investigation identifies five factors affecting (non-)truth-conditional interpretation: linear position prosody the semantics of the adverbial its information-structural properties and the wider context. The book will be of interest to those interested in relevance theory the semantics/pragmatics interface the syntax/pragmatics interface and information structure as well as for syntacticians semanticists and pragmatists interested in sentence adverbials other propositional qualifiers and parentheticality syntactic and interpretational.

This volume offers insight into different aspects of an interesting but fairly understudied language family opens a path to new inquiries and provides valuable contribution to linguistics in general and to Iranian linguistics in particular. The articles in this volume offer novel analyses of significant properties of some of the Iranian languages and contribute to various linguistic subareas such as experimental and historical linguistics as well as the morphology syntax and semantics of several members of this language family. Specifically this volume features a few articles on the Ezafe construction which shed new light on this interesting phenomenon of Western Iranian languages from historical comparative and syntactic points of view. Moreover a few articles address the syntax and formal semantics of properties of Persian offering new insight into particular constructions in this language which are also fruitful for the general theory of linguistics. Crucially all authors raise important questions opening up the path for further investigations.

This book aims at investigating discourse phenomena (i.e. linguistic elements and constructions that help to manage the organization flow and outcome of communication) from a typological and cross-linguistic perspective. Although it is a well-established idea in functional-typological approaches that grammar is shaped by discourse use systematic typological cross-linguistic investigations on discourse phenomena are relatively rare. This volume aims at bridging this gap by integrating different linguistic subfields such as discourse analysis pragmatics and typology. The contributions both theoretically and empirically oriented focus on a broad variety of discourse phenomena (ranging from discourse markers to discourse function of grammatical markers to strategies that manage the discourse and information flow) while adopting a typological perspective and considering typologically distant languages.