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In many western Austronesian languages, the fact that an agentive argument lacks full control is morphologically marked on the verb. The formatives used for this purpose are often also found on stative predicates, and it has been suggested that limited-control predicates are stative-like in that they denote the result state of a given eventuality. Here, we argue that limited-control predicates differ from both stative and dynamic predicates, and constitute a category of their own. Limited-control marking primarily pertains to agentivity and not to aspectual structure, and, importantly, is only used when control is at issue. With respect to the frequent overlaps with stative morphology, we argue that historically speaking, limited-control and stative marking have a common origin. While the current investigation does not include a full account of the historical developments leading to two synchronically separate categories (stative and limited control), we provide evidence for the hypothesis that perception predicates had a major role to play in this development.

The paper deals with predicate nominals and related constructions in the Vakh dialect of Khanty. They include nominal predicates (which typically express proper inclusion and equation), predicate adjectives, predicate locatives, existentials, possessive, comparative constructions, as well as predicate comitatives and abessives. These constructions tend to be similar grammatically in lacking a semantically rich lexical verb. The following elements can be used in these clauses: the copula wăs- ’be’, the copula wăl- ’be, live’, the existential negative predicate ӛntím neg.ex, the predicative suffix -iki prd, the possessive verb tăjá- ’have’ and a zero copula. The study was carried out on two diachronic layers and revealed the changes in the Vakh dialect of Khanty — a drift to the Russian models in some cases.

In Late Vedic and Classical Sanskrit, a periphrastic construction consisting of a desemanticized motion or position verb and a participle is used to express a continuous, habitual or iterative action. Since in Early Vedic the finite verb still retains its lexical meaning, the grammaticalization must have taken place in post-Rigvedic times. Still, there are some ambiguous sentences in the Rigveda where interpretation as motion event and as continuous etc. event appear equally plausible and which are possible bridging contexts for the later reanalysis as a periphrasis. This paper focuses on the start of the development and re-evaluates the Rigvedic data. Two factors that have not been considered yet seem to have played a decisive role in the grammaticalization process: (1) the synchronic function of the participle as secondary predicate, a participant-oriented adjunct that overlaps temporally with the time frame set by the finite verb, and (2) the usage of motion verbs in non-directional contexts, i.e. in sentences without overt complements. Both factors are fundamental for the interpretational switch from motion to non-motion event, which is a prerequisite for the rise of the later periphrastic construction.

French distinguishes between indicative vs. subjunctive markings morphologically, by showing mood on the embedded verb. Embedded subjunctive appears with specific (classes of) matrix predicates, like vouloir (want), while the indicative mood is found with others, such as dire (say). This suggests that the subjunctive is licensed lexically by specific classes of predicates. However, the existence of verbs like rêver (dream), which seem to accept both moods, poses a challenge to this idea and raises the question of the source of optional mood selection. A recent approach sheds light on the importance of emotive contexts in the selection of subjunctive mood cross-linguistically (Baunaz & Pusks 2022, Baunaz & Lander 2024). Our hypothesis is that in cases where mood selection is optional (i.e., with alternating verbs), the subjunctive mood is licensed by the presence of the [Emo] feature, which is activated in emotive contexts. Consequently, we predict for alternating verbs, that the emotive contexts will favor the subjunctive mood, whereas the non-emotive contexts will favor the indicative mood. In contrast, the context manipulation will not affect the mood selection patterns of verbs that exclusively select either the indicative or subjunctive mood. We provide an experimental confirmation of this claim.

Drawing on Catalan, we show how the aspectual classification of intransitive prepositional verbs is, partially, a predictor of their argument structure properties. Prepositional verbs qualifying as Stage-Level form a heterogeneous class, comprising both unergative and unaccusative verbs. By contrast, those prepositional verbs that qualify as Individual-Level predicates are homogenous as regards argument structure: their prepositional complement is robustly obligatory and their subject is not an external argument, suggesting that they involve a predicative configuration whose predicate is the prepositional complement. This result supports the more general Property Verbalization Constraint hypothesis (Acedo-Matellán 2019), which states that Individual-Level property predicates cannot be encoded as unergative verbs.

This study focuses on an understudied phenomenon in European Spanish: por + topicalized infinitive (= por TI). This pattern is contrasted with the more common bare topicalized infinitive construction (= bare TI), e.g., por comer, come versus comer, come (both of which mean ‘as for eating, s/he eats’). Based on pertinent literature and bolstered by corpus examples, this paper formulates the hypothesis that the por TI variant is preferred in scalar contexts, i.e., combined with scalar focus adverbs such as hasta ‘even’, whereas bare TI is preferred in adversative contexts, i.e., continuations beginning with pero ‘but’. In a forced-choice questionnaire, scalarity and adversativity were manipulated as independent variables and tested against each other. The results show a clear positive correlation between scalarity and the por TI variant, whereas adversativity is not correlated with either variant. Furthermore, the results suggest that por TI is more likely to occur in exaggerated, unexpected, unreal, or hypothetical contexts. These findings are also supported by the answers to a metalinguistic question in the questionnaire.

Predicates within many conceptual classes are intuited as mutually exclusive. Based on these predicates’ interaction with logical vocabulary like and or also , however, this paper argues that they are in fact underlyingly consistent; the strong intuited meanings arise from semantic exhaustification. In addition to demonstrating that exhaustification is more widespread than previously believed, this paper also shows that this particular exhaustification effect behaves in a hitherto undescribed manner. Indeed, a predicate’s exhaustification is always computed locally at the level of the predicate, rather than the clause or sentence containing it.

Clause-embedding predicates come in three major varieties: (i) responsive predicates (e.g. know) are compatible with both declarative and interrogative complements; (ii) rogative predicates (e.g. wonder) are only compatible with interrogative complements; and (iii) anti-rogative predicates (e.g. hope) are only compatible with declarative complements. It has been suggested that these selectional properties are at least partly semantic in nature. In particular, it has been proposed that the anti-rogativity of negraising predicates like believe comes from the triviality in meaning that would arise with interrogative complements. This paper puts forward a similar semantic explanation for non-veridical preferential predicates such as hope, which are anti-rogative, unlike their veridical counterparts such as be happy, which are responsive.