Linguistic Variation - Current Issue

This paper aims to make a contribution to the study of the nature of syntactic categories by analysing a single element in a single language, namely the marker -lao in Yixing Chinese. Although this marker has previously been analysed as an adjectivaliser (Hu and Perry 2018), we show that it has a much broader range of uses. We suggest that the bulk of cases can be captured in a unified way by supposing that the marker in question displays a type of possessive semantics (which we label possession-as-attribute), which is defined by delineating a kind (in the sense of e.g. Carlson 1977; Chierchia 1998), with similar semantics being expressed by adjectival elements in languages such as English. It is observed, however, that this meaning can emerge in the absence of the marker -lao, and that -lao can, in a restricted set of cases, surface in the absence of this meaning, and we suggest that these facts are attributable to the diachronic development of the marker and can be captured synchronically by making use of late-insertion mechanisms for phonological and semantic features. We propose that the case of -lao provides a suggestive argument for a substance-free approach to syntactic features, whereby syntactic features are not inherently specified for interface interpretations. Other cross-linguistic implications of our analysis are noted, in particular for the representation of adjectives.

This study investigates various un(der)studied word-internal language mixing patterns among Turkish, Anatolian Arabic and Northern Kurdish, in the context of both verbal and nominal domains. The examination of these patterns reveals various theoretical implications. First, head-directionality may change as a result of language contact. Second, in some instances, certain functional categories are borrowed as semantically vacuous heads, and are identical to their bare counterparts (cf. Marantz 2013; Anagnostopoulou and Samioti 2014). Therefore, such semantically empty heads are ignored for meaning. Moreover, informed by the rarely-discussed trilingual language-mixing contexts, the study demonstrates that various formal approaches to code-switching which rely on either a distinction between functional vs lexical categories or phasehood as the defining constraint on code-switching are not tenable (e.g., Poplack 1981; Belazi et al. 1994; López et al. 2017). This study demonstrates language mixing is more permissive for the languages in question than would be predicted by these approaches, and proposes the No-Reversal Constraint, whose governing restriction is that code-switching does not allow a switch back to a language that has already been externalized earlier in the derivation.

This work examines the behavior of vibrant (presenting linguo-alveolar contact) tap/trill variation across generations of bilingual Afro-Caribbean speakers of Spanish and an English-Lexifier Creole, known here as Raizal Creole, in the Archipelago of San Andrés, Colombia. In these islands, a bilingual Spanish variety, known here as Raizal Spanish, coexists with a monolingual Spanish variety spoken by Colombian immigrants (Costeño Spanish). Data consists of over 3,300 tokens (867 trills and 2531 taps) compared across three generations of Raizal Spanish speakers with a sample of 528 segments (133 trills and 395 taps) produced in Costeño Spanish. Results show that although the frequency of use of vibrant taps and trills in younger generations increasingly resembles those presented in the monolingual variety, the behavior of rhotic variation is different in both Spanish varieties. In addition, non-vibrant or approximant variants are increasingly prevalent in the first and second generation informants with rates doubling those of the younger generation and monolingual Costeño Spanish. Results of the cross-variety comparison show that Raizal Spanish displays a generational continuity where a restructuring of the constraint ordering starts in the second generation and is completed with younger Raizales. On the contrary, Costeño Spanish behaves differently in terms of the systematic linguistic conditionings. The evidence suggests that rhotic variation has changed internally within both varieties.

This paper uses survey results to analyze patterns of judgments across different versions of the non-standard verbal use of the word rather, which can take participial morphology, as in rathered. Across numerous possible instantiations of the construction, there appear to be in fact a quite limited number of grammars, which are generated by an implicational hierarchy of functional heads, along with the availability of a silent verb have. The overall picture supports several broader conclusions. First, bare-infinitive–selecting verbs are nearly “closed class” because they have special syntactic properties that go beyond semantic or even syntactic selection: they must value the temporal verbal features of the embedded verb, or else provide a structural context for such valuation. Second, silent verbs can be licensed by head-moving to a modal head in the extended projection. This movement is freely available, but silence demands recoverability, which limits its application only to certain verbs, and certain uses/meanings of those verbs. Third, in addition to previously known configurations for building parasitic participle constructions, movement of a lower verb to a higher verb can extend the phase of the lower verb and lead to its silence. Fourth, the distribution of rather suggests that volitional meaning is not a primitive, but is constructed from smaller primitives. Finally, microvariation reveals a tight connection among logically distinct functional heads, suggesting that they are not acquired independently of each other, but interact in significant ways.

This paper examines the syntax of a novel construction I call Passive without Morphology (PwM) constructions in Bùlì and the question of whether they have projected external arguments. The main proposal that I argue for is that PwM constructions in all their occurrences possess projected implicit external arguments. The discussions presented in the paper provide empirical as well as theoretical support for the classification of passives (Keenan and Dryer 2007) and a theory of passives and implicit arguments (Collins 2021). This paper argues that the internal argument moves to Spec,TP in two steps: first, the VP moves into Spec, VoiceP and from there the internal argument raises to Spec,TP (Collins 2005, 2021).