Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 39, Issue 2, 2015

Based on a large corpus of dative constructions in Hebrew, we propose that dative-marked pronominals manifest a facilitated path from adjunct to argument. Since datives tend to be pronominal, adding them onto existing argument structures avoids a clash with the Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) Quantity constraint against more than one lexical noun phrase per clause. Supporting a more fluid adjunct/argument distinction, our first claim is that different Hebrew datives are grammaticized as arguments to different degrees. We then demonstrate a correlation between the degree of grammaticization of the dative as an argument and pronoun/lexical ratios. We show that incipient grammaticization phases involve virtually exclusive use of pronominal datives, but deeper grammaticization phases allow increased use of lexical nouns, within the constraints of PAS. Thus, it is pronouns that blaze the path from adjunct to argument status.

The paper proposes that the three main ditransitive alignment patterns result from the competition between the Event Construal Constraint (ECC) motivated from event semantics and the Animacy(/Definiteness) Hierarchy Constraint (AHC) motivated from inherent role properties. The ECC and the AHC lead, respectively, to the Theme (T) and the Recipient (R) of a ditransitive verb being coded in the same way as the Patient (P) of a monotransitive verb. The competition model also correctly predicts the difference in the frequency of the indirective and secundative alignments. The indirective preference in flagging results from flagging’s being more sensitive to event role properties (cf. ECC) and the secundative preference in indexing results from indexing’s being more sensitive to animacy and definiteness (cf. AHC). Moreover, the paper argues that both the ordering of R and T nominal arguments in flagging and the ordering of R and T bound forms in indexing can be successfully accounted for through the interaction of the following constraints: the Animacy (/Definiteness) Effect on Ordering, the Weight Effect on Ordering, and the Coding Effect on Ordering (i.e. which ditransitive role is coded in the same way as the P).

Antipassive constructions are commonly associated with languages with a predominantly ergative alignment. In this article, we show that antipassive constructions can also occur in predominantly accusative languages such as Cilubà, a Bantu language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is expressed by the verbal suffix -angan-, deriving an intransitive clause from a transitive one by omitting the object noun phrase. This suffix functions canonically as a reciprocal marker and is also used to express sociativity/reciprocity and iterativity. An analysis of the suffix’ polysemy is provided on three levels: We argue that (i) plurality of relations is the underlying concept that semantically accounts for its different meanings, (ii) that its use in an antipassive clause is syntactically derived from its use as a canonical reciprocal marker by the demotion and omission of the second participant, and (iii) that the suffix is diachronically bimorphemic and originally consisted of two suffixes that still exist in Cilubà today, with the sum of its individual meanings not straightforwardly reflecting the synchronic polysemy of -angan-.

Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Burmese is usually analysed as directly related to the expression of information structure. Yet, this corpus-based study of DOM and the associated prosody finds that DOM is not based on information structure alone, but is also additionally motivated by discourse structure and content management. The suggested analysis proposes that DOM in Burmese provides a grammatical structure of information packaging: a system of separating information into units (packages) and establishing relations between them. Different configurations of packaging are employed to create an array of context-dependent interpretive effects related to information structure, discourse structure, and other factors. Hence, it is argued that information structure is not directly expressed in the language. Instead, it stems from an interpretation of the interplay between information packaging and various pragmatic-semantic factors, and is but one of the possible effects created by packaging.

Abstract This paper proposes that adjunct island effects (Ross, 1967; Cattell, 1976) receive a discourse-semantic explanation. The exact formulation of this explanation builds upon previous work (e.g. Kehler, 2002) on island effects of conjuncts (Ross, 1967), which explains asymmetrical extraction from coordinate structures in English (that is, violations of the coordinate structure constraint) in terms of certain coherence relations (Hobbs, 1979). I show that asymmetric extraction from adjuncts in Chinese (that is, violations of the adjunct island constraint) is also sensitive to coherence relations. I argue that such similarities exist because coherence relations may be expressed by either a coordinative or a subordinative structure, and the variation in the syntactic realizations of coherence relations can be characterized through an independently motivated interclausal relations hierarchy that governs the mapping between semantics and syntactic linkage (van Valin, 2005).

This paper addresses the emergence and development of the Chinese cleft construction, with particular attention to the period from Early Archaic Chinese through Late Medieval Chinese. Prototype copulas are typically of the form [NP SHI NP], are predicational or specificational, and cue information focus. We trace the gradual development over time of copula clefts in addition to prototype copula constructions. A key factor in their development is the use in Medieval Chinese of nominalizations in post-copula position. Copula clefts typically have the form [NP SHI XP DE] and cue both specificational and contrastive meaning. The study is a contribution to the developing field of constructionalization by making more explicit the way in which individual constructional changes contribute sequentially to constructionalization. It also demonstrates one way in which a complex contrastive cleft construction may come into being.