This paper introduces two instances of person effects with 3rd person items – the reflexive clitic se in French and the non-honorific clitic pronoun suu in Punjabi. Examining the properties of these items, we argue against the phi-feature based accounts of person licensing. Instead, we re-conceptualize it as a syntactico-semantic phenomenon, which requires a pronominal to be contextually-anchored via a feature labeled [F]. More globally, this paper attempts to work out the special status of person and articulate why person requires special licensing in grammar.

The core proposal of this contribution is that in [P DP] or [K DP] structures, where K, P are oblique prepositions or cases, either P/K or DP can label the resulting constituent. If PP/KP is the resulting label, the constituent does not provide a goal for Agree. If DP is the resulting label, the constituent behaves like any other DP, providing a goal for Agree. This is what we call the agreement parameter for structural obliques. Inherent obliques, i.e. those selected by a predicate, obligatorily project as PP/KP. In section 1 we use this hypothesis to explain variation in the agreement pattern of pseudopartitives, in section 2 we institue a parallelism with Differential Object Marking (DOM). In section 3, we illustrate a consequence of the same labelling algorithm independent of agreement, arguing that so-called Romance partitive articles include the partitive preposition di ‘of ’, but at the same time project as DPs. 

With the multiplication of various functional projections, syntactic structures became very complex entities. Approaches like Cartography (e.g. Cinque and Rizzi 2008) went one step further than most other approaches, proposing that each sentence comprises of a number of universal, strictly ordered functional projections. In the noun phrase, the strictly ordered functional projections are said to be responsible not only for the relative order of numerals, demonstratives and nouns (cf. Cinque 2005), but also for the universal order of various types of adjectives (cf. Hetzron 1978; Sproat and Shih 1991; Cinque 1994; Scott 2002, etc.). Cinque and Rizzi (2008) discuss possible origins of the many hierarchies of functional projections and suggest that they might derive from general cognition. If cognition and its restrictions are behind the hierarchy of functional projections, then the order of projections hosting adjectives should be reflected in various non-linguistic cognitive processes. We designed several experiments to test this hypothesis. Our experiments did not confirm our hypothesis; but as we have also identified problems in the design of our experiments, our results do not warrant a clear rejection of the hypothesis either.

The paper examines Object Experiencer (henceforth, OE)/Subject Experiencer (henceforth, SE) verb alternations in Polish in order to check whether Polish exhibits the causative/ anticausative alternation in the psych domain (psych causative alternation of Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014, henceforth A&I 2014). The focus is on two types of SE reflexive alternants of OE verbs, i.e., (i) SE forms with an obligatory instrumental case-marked DP derived from stative OE roots, and (ii) SE forms with an optional instrumental DP derived from eventive OE roots. It is argued that in both cases the reflexive SE alternants of either stative or eventive OE verbs have an obligatory or optional instrumental DP which acts as a complement and represents a Target/Subject Matter (henceforth, T/SM, cf. Pesetsky 1995), not a Cause. Therefore, the reflexive OE/SE verb alternation cannot be of the causative/anticausative type. Monovalent reflexive SE verbs, lacking an instrumental DP altogether, are unergative (Reinhart 2001), not unaccusative (contra A&I 2014). The overall conclusion reached in the paper is that the psych causative alternation is absent in Polish.

Polish adnominal participles accept a wide range of event modifiers except when they are additionally modified by focus or phase particles corresponding to still. The paper argues that the semantic contribution of still is incompatible with the change-of-state component of the meaning of participles. While still presupposes that the property denoted by the participle holds over the initial proper subinterval during which the focalized state holds, the measure-of-change function found in resultative participles entails that the relevant subinterval corresponds to the change of state over which the relevant property does not hold yet. The participles modifiable by still are argued to lack the change-of-state component.

The paper argues that sonority on the one hand and other segmental properties such as place of articulation (labiality etc.) and laryngeal properties (voicing etc.) on the other hand are different in kind and must therefore not be represented alike: implementations on a par e.g. as features ([±voc], [±son], [±lab], [±voice] etc.) are misled. Arguments come from a number of broad, cross-linguistically stable facts concerning visibility of items below and above the skeleton in phonological and morphological processing: sonority, but no other segmental property, is taken into account when syllable structure is built (upward visibility); processes located above the skeleton (infixation, phonologically conditioned allomorphy, stress, tone, positional strength) do make reference to sonority, but never to labiality, voicing etc. (downward visibility). Approaches are discussed where sonority is encoded as structure, rather than as primes (features or Elements). In some cases not only sonority but also other segmental properties are structuralized, a solution that does not do justice to the insight that sonority and melody are different in kind. Also, the approaches that structuralize sonority are not concerned with the question how the representations they entertain come into being: representations are not contained in the phonetic signal that is the input to the linguistic system, nor do they fall from heaven  – they are built by some computation. It is therefore concluded that what really segregates sonority and melody is their belonging to two distinct computational systems (modules in the Fodorian sense) which operate over distinct vocabularies and produce distinct structure: sonority primes are used to build syllable structure, while other computations take other types of primes as an input. The computation carrying out a palatalization for example works with melodic primes. The segment, then, is a lexical recording that has different compartments containing domain-specific primes [

This contribution deals with secondary stress in Modern Standard German (MSG) and its relevance in affixation using the verbal prefix ver-. While the pattern ver+stressed syllable or ver+schwa is allowed, ver+unstressed syllable is avoided in contemporary German (see also Kaltenbacher 1999). Diachronical data reveals that in earlier stages this prosodic restriction was not as strong as in MSG. The consistency with which verbs with the pattern ver+unstressed syllable are discarded in MSG (confirmed by look-ups in corpora and dictionaries) is a strong argument for the hypothesis that the relinquishment is due to a form of blocking related to the stress properties of the direct base: The affix ver- needs a direct base with some initial prominence, that is with primary or secondary stress. The only (apparent) exception to this stress condition is a base containing a schwa syllable which seems to be “invisible” for the stress-seeking prefix. Verbal derivation with the prefix ver-demonstrates that the stress properties of the base have to be taken into account also with regard to secondary stress. The data provided in this paper can count as further evidence for the existence and relevance of secondary stress in Modern Standard German and its interaction with morphology

In this study, we report an experiment focusing on pragmatic factors (unlikelihood presupposition) in licensing of Czech superstrong negative polarity items.

The paper presents an analysis of three pronouns used to refer to a right-peripheral complement clause in Russian. It is demonstrated that two of them exhibit properties associated with expletives, which is unexpected at first sight, Russian being a (partial) null subject language. However, these pronouns are shown to have a discourse-related function rather than a syntactic one. The third pronoun under discussion, though used in the same grammatical context, turns out to be referential. The paper offers an account for this fact and proposes that the parameters that have proved to be relevant for differentiating expletives and non-expletives in Russian should be regarded as general criteria for expletiveness.

The Hungarian inferential-evidential expression szerint ‘according to somebody/something’ is highly multifaceted. It can be furnished with person and number suffixes. It can occur in all major sentence types but with different person features and/or collocations. It can be associated with a quotative meaning and can express some kind of judgment in declarative sentences and questions, too. Imperative sentences can serve as a source of its further uses: it can be interpreted both as advice and as an expression of the speaker’s firm stance typically based on moral concerns. We intend to account for this extremely complex distribution with respect to person, attitude, sentence type and collocation in a highly systematic and explanatorily adequate manner in the “cognitively viable” representationalist dynamic discourse- and mind-representation theory ReALIS. We attempt to carry out this task in a way that sheds new light on how such expressions make language a basic means of achieving epistemic control and intersubjective alignment.