On the status of Resumptive Pronouns in Restrictive Relative Clauses

We discuss the status of Modern Greek Resumptive Pronouns, focusing on Restrictive Relative Clauses. Several analyses have been proposed to account for the phenomenon of resumption in Modern Greek Relative Clauses arguing in favour of a similar treatment of gaps and resumptive pronouns, suggesting that Binder-Resumptive Dependencies are triggered by the same mechanism as Filler-Gap Dependencies. In this paper, it is argued that resumptive pronouns are the ordinary pronoun forms of the language and that they are not alternative manifestations of gaps, presenting evidence from Asudeh's (2004) criteria for Hebrew, Irish and Swedish. Following this, we propose an LFG analysis for resumption in Modern Greek pu and o opios Restrictive Relative Clauses, distinguishing between two types of Dependencies (Filler-Gap and Binder-Resumptive Dependencies), following Asudeh (2004)'s treatment of the syntax of resumptives in these languages

Acusativo y dativo en la construcción factitiva: hacia un replanteamiento en términos multifactoriales

Most investigations of Romance factitive constructions study the causative verb hacer (‘to make’) and pay little attention to related verbs such as dejar (‘to let’). This article seeks to fill up this gap by contrasting the syntax of positive and negative causation, and particularly focuses on the case marking of the causee. The analysis of a Spanish corpus allows us to examine previous accounts of case marking, namely the hypothesis of incorporation and the related ‘Stratal Uniqueness Law’, and the theory of direct vs. indirect causation. The second part is dedicated to the question whether the cognitive-semantic characteristics of the causation models have any effect on its syntax. Finally, a multifactorial analysis, taking into account the degree of dynamicity of the constituents and the accusative or dative case of the causee, demonstrates that variation of pattern mainly depends on the rich polysemy of the main verbs

Restrictive Relative Clauses in Maltese

This paper provides a descriptive overview of restrictive relative clauses (henceforth RRCs) in Maltese, a construction which has received little atten- tion to date and which is poorly described in existing grammars. We outline an LFG approach to the facts we describe bulding on existing LFG work on relatives. Further we explore some issues raised by Maltese for approaches to resumption

Adapting the Core Language Engine to French and Spanish

We describe how substantial domain-independent language-processing systems for French and Spanish were quickly developed by manually adapting an existing English-language system, the SRI Core Language Engine. We explain the adaptation process in detail, and argue that it provides a fairly general recipe for converting a grammar-based system for English into a corresponding one for a Romance language.Comment: 9 pages, aclap.sty; to appear in NLP+IA 96; see also http://www.cam.sri.com

Inferentials in spoken English

Although there is a growing body of research on inferential sentences (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 1990, 1995, 2001, Koops 2007, Pusch 2006), most of this research has been on their forms and functions in written discourse. This has left a gap with regards to their range of structural properties and allowed disagreement over their analysis to linger without a conclusive resolution. Most accounts regard the inferential as a type of it-cleft (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 2001, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Lambrecht 2001), while a few view it as an instance of extraposition (Collins 1991, Schmid 2009). More recently, Pusch's work in Romance languages proposes the inferential is used as a discourse marker (2006, forthcoming). Based on a corpus study of examples from spoken New Zealand English, the current paper provides a detailed analysis of the formal and discoursal properties of several sub-types of inferentials (positive, negative, as if and like inferentials). We show that despite their apparent formal differences from the prototypical cleft, inferentials are nevertheless best analysed as a type of cleft, though this requires a minor reinterpretation of “cleft construction.” We show how similar the contextualized interpretations of clefts and inferentials are and how these are a function of their lexis and syntax

Nominal predication and focus anchoring

It will be shown that verbs can be missing in predicative sentences by using the data from Chinese. Copula-less sentences in Chinese are subject to 'Generalized Anchoring Principle' (GAP), which requires that every clause be anchored at the interface for LF convergence. To satisfy GAP, clauses may be either tensed or focused. It is shown that copula-less sentences in Chinese are subject to focus anchoring. It will be further argued that whether a verb is needed in predication depends on the syntax of predicate nominals