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- Volume 19, Issue 2, 2019
Linguistic Variation - Volume 19, Issue 2, 2019
Volume 19, Issue 2, 2019
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Morphology and syntax in the Scandinavian vernaculars of Ovansiljan
Author(s): Piotr Garbaczpp.: 199–231 (33)More LessAbstractThe paper deals with the assumed correlation between morphological and syntactic phenomena, especially the one that has its roots in a parametric approach to syntax since (Chomsky 1981). Its main focus is on testing predictions presented in two works (Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998 and Holmberg 2010a). These papers connect verbal morphology with a clustering of syntactic phenomena in the Scandinavian languages and maintain that morphological evidence – in the form of ‘rich’ verbal agreement – signifies a positive setting of a parameter that in turn makes certain syntactic patterns possible. In the present paper it is shown how this relation works when tested on a group of Ovansiljan vernaculars (East Scandinavian non-standard varieties). Five of these vernaculars have retained verbal agreement in number and person, whereas two others have not. It turns out that the hypotheses encounter difficulties when faced with the Ovansiljan data.
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Microvariation in the have yet to construction
Author(s): Matthew Tyler and Jim Woodpp.: 232–279 (48)More LessAbstractThe have yet to construction, exemplified by sentences such as John has yet to visit his grandmother, is widespread across dialects of English. However, recent studies have revealed that behind this apparent unity, there is significant variation in the syntactic properties of the have yet to construction. Speakers vary with respect to (i) the status of have as an auxiliary or main verb, (ii) the status of negation tests, and (iii) the status of a variety of related yet to constructions. The goal of this paper is to sort out the microsyntax of have yet to across speakers, in the face of contradictory empirical claims and mutually incompatible proposals in the existing literature. We develop an analysis based in part on two wide-scale surveys we have conducted. With respect to have, we show that speakers who can treat it as a main verb can also treat it as an auxiliary, but not necessarily vice-versa. We propose that the variation in this case has to do with where the perfect features are introduced in the clause. With respect to negation, we find that speakers do not treat all the negation tests the same, forcing us to contend with the question of how these tests work. We propose that for most speakers, only the embedded clause is syntactically negative. Negation tests split according to whether they must target the matrix clause, or whether they can target an embedded clause as well. In some cases, the tests reveal the same sentence to be both affirmative and negative, as we expect: the matrix clause is syntactically affirmative, but the embedded clause, which hosts the lexical content, is syntactically negative.
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Quantifier particle environments
Author(s): Benjamin Sladepp.: 280–351 (72)More LessAbstractI examine the set of environments in which KA-type quantifier particles appear crosslinguistically. These environments include interrogatives, disjunctions, indefinites, all of which arguably involve elements with Hamblin-type ‘alternative’ semantic values. I show that if KA-particles are assigned a uniform denotation as variables over choice functions we can account for their appearance in what otherwise appears to be a set of heterogeneous environments. Crosslinguistic and diachronic variation in the distribution of Q-particles – including, in some cases, the appearance of multiple morphologically-distinct Q-particles in different contexts – can be handled largely in terms of differing formal morphosyntactic features and/or pragmatic components of specific KA-particles. This study focuses on tracking the evolution of KA-type particles in the history of Sinhala, with comparison to other languages of the Indian subcontinent (including Malayalam and Tamil) as well as to Japanese, Tlingit, and English.
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Basque question particles
Author(s): Andreas Trotzke and Sergio Monfortepp.: 352–385 (34)More LessAbstractIn this paper, we focus on the syntax of question particles in Basque and provide an account that draws new parallels between the syntactic behavior of discourse particles in Basque and some recent findings that have been reported for the German language, perhaps the most studied language of all when it comes to discourse particles. In particular, after having argued for a syntactic perspective on discourse particles for German, we deal with Basque particles in both wh-questions and polar questions. For wh-questions, we provide evidence for the claim that the particle ote occupies an IP/TP-internal particle position and, when attaching to a wh-element, can serve to form emphatic questions of the type that have also been observed in German. In the context of polar questions, we demonstrate that there are two distinct positions for discourse particles in central and eastern dialects of Basque: one inside the IP/TP-domain and one in the left periphery of the clause. Again, we indicate relevant cross-linguistic parallels, thereby dealing with Basque discourse particles from the perspective of a cross-linguistic syntax of particle elements.
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William B. McGregor & Søren Wichmann (eds.). 2018. The diachrony of classification systems
Author(s): Marc Tangpp.: 386–392 (7)More LessThis article reviews The diachrony of classification systems
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