Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 28 Issue 2 -

Issue of Probus

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available September 1, 2016

Frontmatter

Page range: i-v

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September 1, 2016

Spanish unspecified objects as null incorporated nouns

Grant Armstrong

Page range: 165-229

Abstract

In this paper it is argued that unspecified objects in sentences such as Maria leyo anoche (= Maria read (something) last night) should be represented as null incorporated nouns in l-syntax (Hale & Keyser 1993, 2002). Specifically, the material understood as ‘something’ is a null bare N that incorporates into the verb ‘read,’ forming an endocentric compound meaning ‘THING-read.’ While the general idea underlying such a hypothesis is not new (Mateu 2012; Marti 2011; Zubizarreta & Oh 2007), the analysis outlined here provides the first explicit formalization of it in such a way that can account for a wide range of properties (some not yet described in the literature) that are intimately related to what can be broadly defined as ‘noun incorporation constructions’ cross-linguistically. Like certain types of noun incorporation constructions in other languages, unspecified object constructions have the following properties: (i) they are restricted lexically (in this case to ‘activity’/‘manner’ verbs), (ii) the verb+unspecified object may have a conventionalized interpretation, (iii) unspecified objects are indefinite and take obligatory narrow scope with respect to all other operators, (iv) unspecified objects may be modified ‘externally’ by a limited set of adjectives (v) the verb+unspecified object gives rise to an atelic reading. All of these properties are shown to derive from the fact that unspecified objects are null incorporated nouns. This is desirable since the same set of properties are shared by different types of noun incorporation constructions in languages outside Romance and, to a large extent, by bare noun constructions in Spanish and other Romance languages (Espinal & McNally 2011).

September 1, 2016

French orphan prepositions revisited

J.-Marc Authier

Page range: 231-270

Abstract

In this article, I argue, contra Cervoni (1991), Olivier (2007) and others, that French does have prepositions without an overt complement that are syntactically transitive. That is, these prepositions take a syntactically projected, phonologically unrealized pronominal complement, as first hypothesized by Zribi-Hertz (1984), who coined them “orphan prepositions”. I offer new evidence in favor of this view based on a number of tests that distinguish between various types of implicit arguments, among which (in)definiteness, the (un)availability of bound variable readings, scopal properties relative to operators such as negation and intensional verbs and the (un)availability of sloppy identity readings. I also show that the set of French orphan prepositions turns out to be much smaller than that envisaged by Zribi-Hertz in that some lexical prepositions can function as orphan prepositions in some uses but not others and some lexical prepositions have an intransitive use as well. The article also includes two appendices that lay out a number of reasons why orphan prepositions should not be assumed to be prepositions that have become adverbs through a process of grammaticalization nor should they be assumed to be relational definite descriptions that pragmatically link up to an antecedent via accommodation, as suggested by Olivier (2007).

September 1, 2016

Clitic production by Portuguese and Capeverdean children: omission in bilingualism

João Costa, Maria Lobo, Fernanda Pratas

Page range: 271-291

Abstract

Omission of clitics is often considered a critical marker of language development in children. For this reason, clitic omission in language development has been studied crosslinguistically. Results on clitic production reveal that languages differ with respect to the rates at which clitics are omitted by children, as well as on the duration of the clitic omission stages. This paper compares clitic omission by monolingual and bilingual children acquiring European Portuguese – a language with both clitics and null objects – and Capeverdean Creole – a language with clitics in which null objects are ruled out. We show that omission is only found in monolingual Portuguese, and in bilingual Capeverdean. These results confirm earlier findings on the precocious sensitivity to the availability of null objects, and signal object drop as a critical distinguishing factor for differentiating bilinguals and monolinguals.

August 24, 2016

Inter-speaker variation, Optimality theory, and the prosody of clitic left-dislocations in Spanish

Ingo Feldhausen

Page range: 293-333

Abstract

This paper presents an empirical study on the prosody of clitic left-dislocations (CLLDs) in Spanish and offers new perspectives on how the phenomenon of inter-speaker variation in linguistic data can be integrated into formal grammatical theory. Results from a production experiment based on scripted speech show that CLLDs have an obligatory left and right boundary (typically a high edge tone at the intermediate phrase level), while other sentence-internal boundaries are subject to inter-speaker variation. The hypothesis presented here suggests that prosodic boundaries which mark information structural (IS) categories are more necessary than boundaries which satisfy alignment constraints; only the latter can show inter-speaker variation ( IS-over-Alignment Hypothesis). A modified version of the Stochastic Optimality Theory (SOT) is proposed to account for the attested inter-speaker variation. By assuming that the degree of constraint overlap can vary between individual speakers while the underlying hierarchy remains invariant, the modified version of SOT is applicable beyond variation in the output structure of a whole population.

September 1, 2016

Narrow presentational focus in Mexican Spanish: Experimental evidence

Bradley Hoot

Page range: 335-365

Abstract

It is most often claimed that in Spanish constituents in narrow presentational or information focus appear rightmost, where they also receive main sentence stress, while shifting the stress to the focus in its canonical position is infelicitous. Some, however, claim that Spanish in fact has recourse to both strategies for making the focus prominent, and some recent quantitative work has shown support for this alternative view. The present paper contributes to this debate by experimentally testing the realization of presentational focus in Mexican Spanish using an acceptability judgment task. The results of the experiment reveal that, for these speakers, focused constituents need not be rightmost and can in fact be stressed in non-final position, contra the consensus view. These findings expand the database on focus in Spanish and indicate that theories of the prosody/syntax interface may need to be revised, especially those theories that motivate discourse-related syntactic movement based on the requirements of the prosody.

September 1, 2016

Ineffable narratives in Spanish: Another case of overgeneration by e-GIVENness

Andrés Saab

Page range: 367-389

Abstract

In this paper, I present a new case of overgeneration for the semantic view on identity in ellipsis. Concretely, I show that a radical version of the semantic approach to the identity condition on ellipsis, in particular, one with the notion of mutual entailment at its heart, wrongly predicts as grammatical cases of TP-ellipsis in Spanish where a (formal) present tense feature on T in the antecedent entails a (formal) past tense feature in the elliptical constituent and vice versa. However, this is not attested: present tense cannot serve as a suitable antecedent for formal past tense in TP-ellipsis contexts, regardless of pragmatic entailment. On the basis of this and other new observations in the realm of tense and ellipsis, several consequences for the theory of identity in ellipsis, on the one hand, and the proper representation of tense in natural languages, on the other, are also discussed.

About this journal

Objective
Probus is a hybrid open-access platform for the discussion of diachronic and synchronic research in the field of Romance linguistics, with special emphasis on phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and language acquisition. The journal aims to keep its readers abreast of the developments in Romance linguistics by encouraging problem-oriented contributions that combine a solid empirical basis with the insights provided by modern theoretical approaches. Studies in applied disciplines in any of the sub-areas mentioned above are welcome provided they contribute to a better understanding of the global architecture of the grammar or the concepts and principles that play a role therein.

Probus is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal of international scope.

Topics

phonology
morphology
syntax
semantics
pragmatics
language acquisition

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