Explore the vast range of titles available.

Since Bowers 1993, it has been accepted that nonverbal small clauses are headed by a functional head, Pred⁰, whose function is to obligatorily mediate all nonverbal predication. I argue against this hypothesis by critically reanalyzing the original syntactic arguments for PredP, examining possible semantic support for mediated predication, and reviewing the putative crosslinguistic evidence for overt equivalence of Pred⁰. I first demonstrate that the facts originally taken as motivating a functional head in small clauses can now be accounted for by independently needed assumptions. I then show that standard Montagovian semantics treating NPs, APs, and PPs as unsaturated functions requires no mediating projection and that suggested alternative meanings for Pred⁰ either fail or cannot be used as motivation for its existence. Finally, I provide evidence that the syntax of copular particles and other “overt predicators” is different from that expected of Pred⁰ in such ways that they cannot be taken as prima facie evidence for it either. I sketch an alternative theory linking the use of predicative particles to nominal predication and provide evidence for it from crosslinguistic lexicalization patterns of copular particles. In sum, neither theoretical nor empirical considerations require a mediating functional head in small clauses, and therefore the PredP hypothesis should be abandoned.

The paper examines the syntax of two unaccusative verbs in Polish – ubyć.perf/ubywać.imperf ‘to disappear, to decrease’ and przybyć.perf/przybywać.imperf ‘to arrive, to increase’ – with a view to shedding light on the structure of existential unaccusatives. The two above-mentioned verbs appear in two distinct paradigms – the disappearance/motion verb and the existential one – both of which are taken to represent subtypes of existential structure. Existential verbs are treated here as monadic predicates with a single small clause complement, whose internal structure may vary, depending on the predicate. The two existential unaccusatives analysed in the paper may select two different types of small clause complement, which are different from the small clause selected by the existential być ‘to be’. Thus, Polish seems to make use of three different small clause structures in existential clauses. The paper also provides evidence that in Polish, like in English, existential unaccusatives are structurally distinct from change of state unaccusatives, and thus in the two languages there is more than one way to be structurally unaccusative. The account bears on the analysis of the genitive of negation in Polish, especially the issue of its inapplicability to existential unaccusatives versus its presence with the existential być ‘to be’.

This paper revisits a well-established areal phenomenon in Mainland Southeast Asia and Northern Europe involving an element, ACQ(UIRE), that functions as a lexical verb meaning ‘to get or acquire’ and appears, as a functional item, in numerous seemingly unrelated constructions such as modal constructions, resultatives, descriptive complementation, and focus constructions. This paper presents a generative framework for the postverbal ACQ-structures in Hong Kong Cantonese involving the marker dak1 . The proposed framework takes into account four readings of postverbal ACQ-sentences, namely potential, permission, descriptive, and focus, and argues that all postverbal ACQ-structures in Cantonese share the same basic configuration in which the ACQ heads a v P-internal ModP which expresses possibility modality and selects a small clause XP. The postverbal ACQ takes an AspP as complement which indicates the (non-)realization of the projected endpoint. The interpretational difference and other structural variations are boiled down to the three parameters realized in featural terms as: [±Realised] on Asp 0 , [±Possibility] and [±Deontic] on Mod 0 . The analysis also provides an explanation for several long-standing issues, including the verb-copying phenomenon, the co-occurrence of dak1 with the modal auxiliary ho2ji5 , the distribution of the A-not-A form and negation, and the across-the-board aspectual incompatibility in postverbal ACQ-structures. The parametric framework demonstrates how apparently unrelated ACQ-constructions are closely connected with each other and provide a testable model to account for cross-linguistic variation found in other ACQ languages.

I propose a comprehensive analysis of what has been commonly referred in the literature to as split, discontinuous noun phrases or split topicalization. Based on data from Basaá, a Narrow Bantu language spoken in Cameroon, I partly capitalize on previous authors such as Mathieu (2004), Mathieu & Sitaridou (2005) and Ott (2015a), who propose that this morphosyntactic phenomenon involves two syntactically unrelated constituents which are only linked semantically in a predication relation in a small clause (Moro 1997, 2000; Den Dikken 1998). According to these analyses, split noun phrases are obtained as a result of predicate inversion across the subject of the small clause. Contrary to/but not against these views, I suggest that what raises in the same context in Basaá is rather the subject of the small clause as a consequence of feature-checking under closest c-command (Chomsky 2000, 2001), and for the purpose of labelling and asymmetrizing an originally symmetric syntactic structure on the surface (Ott 2015a and related work). The fact that the target of movement is the subject and not the predicate of the small clause follows from agreement and ellipsis factors. Given that the subject of predication is a full DP while the predicate is a reduced DP with a null head modifier, the surface word order is attributed to the fact that noun/noun phrase ellipsis is possible if the elided noun is given in the discourse and is recoverable from the morphology of the stranded modifier. This paper offers a theoretical contribution from an understudied language to our understanding of this puzzling nominal construction.

Starting from Higgins’s taxonomy, this paper investigates Latin copular constructions and in particular the existence of “specificational” copular clauses. Morphosyntactic and semantic criteria are put forward in order to make clear the status of copular clauses such as (Plaut. . 621).

It is generally assumed that universal island constraints block extraction from relative clauses. However, it is well-known that such extractions can be acceptable in the Scandinavian languages. Kush & Lindahl (2011) argue that the acceptability in Swedish is illusory; relative clauses that allow extraction have a different structure (small clause structure) from those that block extraction (true relatives, CPs). We present data from an acceptability survey of relative clause extraction in Danish. In the survey, extraction significantly decreased acceptability but we found no statistically significant effect of the ability of the verb to take a small-clause complement. We also found no difference between som ‘that/who/which’ and der ‘that/who/which’, both of which can head a relative clause while only som can head a small clause. We argue that our results do not warrant the stipulation of a structural contrast between acceptable and unacceptable extractions, and that variation in acceptability stems from processing.

The proper treatment of so-called Small Clauses (SQ including nonfinite clauses has been rather controversial in theories of English grammar. There are arguments for - as well as arguments against - the postulation of SCs, and multiple analytical alternatives thereof. Drawing from Pollard and Sag (1994) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), we argue that only a small set of English verbs allow SC complements, and that there is a large family of constructions where [NP Predicate] sequences form a constituent. We depart from the latter, however, in including in this set of constructions gerundive phrases, absolute constructions, and - most notably - subject-auxiliary inversion constructions and SCs. We formalize a general account of these families of constructions in HPSG (Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar).

The theoretical framework of this paper is based on the Extended Adjectival Projection hypothesis first introduced by Corver (1997). In Absolute Measure Phrase constructions (AMPC), of the “2m tall” type, we argue that, in the Romance equivalent “alto de 2m”, the adjective first merges with the functional item ‘de’, and then with an inflected functional head, above the MP position. As there is independent motivation that this position is [Spec, QAP], we consider ‘de’ as a spell-out of the functional quantifier head QAº. We propose the Adjectival Linker Hypothesis (ALH), in which ‘de’ is a binding particle whose function is to allow the projection of absolute measurement expressions in Romance gradable adjectives syntax. The data resulting from the insertion of ‘de’ is then crossed with other adjectival expressions in Romance, Germanic and Scandinavian, in which the QA position is alternatively filled by different QA spell-outs. Further Romance data is then confronted with some cases of pseudopartitive adjectival ‘de’ in a Small Clause like configuration. We finally introduce a MP parameter to justify how variations affect the adjectival expressions of measurement across languages, and how and why the functional head QA may be null or filled with ‘de’, therefore postulating a phonetically null form as one of its various spell-outs. In the absence of an absolute MP and its related ALH, QA is alternatively filled with regular, lexical spell-outs such as superlative suffixes or autonomous morphemes. Lastly, in the case of relative MP expressions, a functional head DegA is lexically filled with a degree morpheme, switching the whole adjectival expression to a comparative form.

This article investigates the nature of predication of so-called subject-oriented adverbs in English. It is noted that there are both conceptual and empirical issues to be addressed. On the conceptual side, there is no consensus in previous studies on what exactly the notion of subject is for these adverbs and why these adverbs have an orientation to the subject. On the empirical side, there are circumstances in which some of the adverbs seem to be construed with the object argument of the verb. This article focuses on these problems through an examination of the adverbs occurring in locative, passive, unaccusative, and resultative constructions. It is argued that when these adverbs seem to be associated with the object, they are predicated of a phonetically empty pronoun that occurs as the subject of a small clause, controlled by the object. Moreover, it is indicated that subject-oriented adverbs occurring in different positions across different constructions are all parasitically predicated of DPs that are introduced by a functional head in primary predication. Given the proposal made in recent studies that predication relationships between lexical categories and their external arguments in general are mediated by a functional head, it is claimed that subject-oriented adverbs also need to be supported by such a head to be associated with DPs. Thus, it is concluded that the notion of subject for these adverbs and their orientation are derived from the general theory of predication.

This paper provides new evidence for the availability A-movement out of a CP and considers its theoretical implications. The discussion concerns what I call the “pseudo”-small clause construction in Japanese, which has not received much attention in the literature. The pseudo-small clause construction shows a puzzling constraint on major subjects originating in complement clauses: the major subjects must receive accusative Case from a matrix predicate despite the availability of nominative Case within the complement clauses. To explain this constraint, it is proposed that (i) pseudo-small clauses are phasal CPs and (ii) the major subjects originating in the pseudo-small clause complements must undergo movement into a matrix theta-position, which takes place across the CP phase. It is also suggested that (i) Tense in Japanese moves to C, (ii) Standard Japanese has null complementizers, and (iii) the ban on A-movement out of a CP is explained in terms of the locality of Agree.