Linguistic Variation - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2011

This paper focuses on the syntactic role of the features related to discourse and information structure. It is argued that information-structure notions are encoded in syntax as syntactic features projecting their own phrase structure, and are fundamental in accounting for cross-linguistic variation. The word order alternations and syntactic operations which are strictly dependent on the discourse/informational properties of the sentence, as well as the different grammatical properties characterizing different information-structure categories, can all be related to the syntactic role of discourse-related features, the functional projections with which they are associated, and the type of movement that these features trigger. Under this view, this paper offers an analysis of fronting and dislocation phenomena in Romance, which entails that variation with respect to these processes is correlated to the activation and to the attraction properties of the functional projections encoding information-structure distinctions. Keywords: discourse-related features; information structure; functional projections; topic; informational focus; contrastive focus; Romance; Sicilian

The focus of this paper is the syntax of the so-called perfect doubling construction as it occurs in dialects of Dutch, namely cases of compound tenses featuring an additional, participial have (or be). We examine the properties of the construction on the basis of recent fieldwork research, and propose an analysis, whose starting point is the assumption that auxiliary doubling as such does not exist; what we have, rather, is the perfect tense of a lexical have (and be), which takes an adjectival (small clause) complement. Dialects vary with respect to the kinds of complement these lexical verbs can take. Our micro-comparative treatment takes into account related constructions, such as the geographically restricted so-called undative construction, as well as variants thereof that exist in the standard language. Keywords: syntactic doubling; (adjectival) participles; auxiliaries; present perfect; target state; resultant state; undative construction; possession

The nominal inflection system of Albanian includes specifications of case, definiteness, number and nominal class (gender). Our analysis recognizes three types of properties as theoretically relevant, namely N(ominal class), Q(quantification), D(efiniteness). Q inflections are responsible for the so-called oblique case - effectively a dyadic operator yielding a ‘zonal inclusion’ (possession) relation between the element to which it attaches and the internal argument of the verb (dative) or the head of a noun phrase (genitive). Q inflections are further responsible for plurality, while N inflections satisfy argument-of contexts (accusative)and D characterizes EPP contexts(nominative). Syncretisms (e.g. of dative and genitive, nominative and accusative) are not the result of morphological rules requiring Late Insertion of exponents (Distributed Morphology). Rather they are instances of ambiguity, resolved in the syntax (different embeddings) or at the interpretive interface. As such they are compatible with projection of the morphosyntax from lexical entries. Keywords: Case, nominative, accusative, oblique, syncretism, nominal class, plural, definiteness, possessor, locative.