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May 1, 2013
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The choice of theme vowels in Spanish nouns and adjectives can be predicted neither from the phonological shape of roots nor from syntactic features like gender. However, this state of affairs does not require the postulation of inflectional class features. The alternative is for the Spanish lexicon to store stems with their theme vowels, instead of roots annotated with declension diacritics; default generalizations over the lexical entries of stems can be expressed by means of lexical redundancy rules. The hypothesis of stem storage is compatible with the failure of Spanish theme vowels to surface in certain environments: this is demonstrably caused by an entirely general and regular phonological process deleting unaccented stem-final vowels before suffixes beginning with another vowel. Stem storage receives further support from psycholinguistic data from recognition latencies. Additional new evidence comes from cyclic locality conditions on allomorph selection, as shown by an analysis of the well-known stress-driven alternation displayed by items like [k o nt-á-ɾ] ‘count. inf ’ ∼ [k wé nt-a] ‘count. 3 sg ’. In derivatives like 〚 N 〚 V k o nt-a〛 ðóɾ-∅〛 ‘counter’, assuming that diphthongal allomorphy is a property of the root incorrectly predicts that the choice of allomorph will be determined in the first cycle: i.e. *[k we ntaðóɾ]. The locality problem vanishes if /koNt-a/ and /kweNt-a/ are both listed in the lexicon as stem allomorphs. These data show that Stratal Optimality Theory allied to a stem-driven theory of morphology performs better than alternative approaches to allomorphic locality. Root-driven Distributed Morphology is too local: the domains for allomorph selection that it generates are too narrow. Conversely, noncyclic versions of Optimality Theory fail to predict allomorphic locality (even if they can describe its effects) because they endow allomorph selection with unrestricted access to the global environment.
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A first exploration of acceptable and unacceptable discrepancies between linguistic and musical rhythm in Italian songs has uncovered two kinds of discrepancies which do not have counterparts in literary verse: durational discrepancies between adjacent syllables and stress-beat misalignments that involve nonadjacent syllables. The latter type is explored in greater detail than the former. Our survey suggests that analogous misalignments are in principle impossible in literary verse composed in accentual or accentual-syllabic meters, because, on the one hand, the abstract metrical templates that characterize such meters are not anchored in measured time, and, on the other hand, they do not recognize more than two degrees of metrical prominence.
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This paper compares the evolution and contemporary distribution of subjunctive and indicative in spoken Quebec French with the development of normative injunctions on variant choice over five centuries of grammatical tradition. The subjunctive has been prescribed with hundreds of lexical governors, verb classes and semantic readings since the 16 th century, but in spontaneous speech, it is virtually limited to a handful of matrix and embedded verbs. Our analysis shows that the overriding determinant of variant choice is not meaning, as most would claim, but the lexical identity of the governor. The only other factors that play a role are those pertaining to the construal of the context as canonical for subjunctive (e.g. suppletive morphology, presence of the complementizer que , and adjacency of main to embedded clause); where these are present, subjunctive is favored. Quantitative discrepancies among governors and embedded verbs, their previously undocumented associations (or lack thereof) with the subjunctive, and the unpredictable mood preferences they display at different points in time have all conspired in obscuring community patterns. Once actual usage facts are systematically analyzed, however, the grammar of subjunctive selection emerges as regular and stable. Its discrepancies with respect to both normative and theoretical linguistic accounts stem from attempts to impose the doctrine of form-function symmetry on a phenomenon which is inherently variable.
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This article addresses one particular aspect of the cartographic enterprise, the cartographic study of the left periphery of the clause, the system of criteria, and the “syntacticisation” of scope-discourse semantics that rich and detailed syntactic maps make possible. I will compare this theoretical option with the conceivable alternative, the “pragmaticization” of a radically impoverished syntax, and will discuss some simple kinds of empirical evidence bearing on the choice between these alternative perspectives. I will then turn to the issue of whether the properties of the functional sequence (ordering, cooccurrence restrictions) are amenable to “further explanations” in terms of more basic principles constraining linguistic computations. I will argue that the search for deeper explanations is an integral part of the cartographic endeavour: it presupposes the establishment of reliable maps, and nourishes the pursuit of further cartographic questions. I will conclude by illustrating the issue of further explanation by comparing certain properties of topicalization in English and Italian, in particular the fact that DP topics are fundamentally unique in English, while they can be freely reiterated in Italian. This pattern can be plausibly traced back to intervention locality, once certain independent properties distinguishing Italian and English topicalization are taken into account.
