On past participle agreement in transitive clauses in French

This paper provides a Minimalist analysis of past participle agreement in French in transitive clauses. Our account posits that the head v of vP in such structures carries an (accusativeassigning) structural case feature which may apply (with or without concomitant agreement) to case-mark a clause-mate object, the subject of a defective complement clause, or an intermediate copy of a preposed subject in spec-CP. In structures where a goal is extracted from vP (e.g. via wh-movement) v also carries an edge feature, and may also carry a specificity feature and a set of (number and gender) agreement features. We show how these assumptions account for agreement of a participle with a preposed specific clausemate object or defective-clause subject, and for the absence of agreement with an embedded object, with the complement of an impersonal verb, and with the subject of an embedded (finite or nonfinite) CP complement. We also argue that the absence of agreement marking (in expected contexts) on the participles faitmade and laissélet in infinitive structures is essentially viral in nature. Finally, we claim that obligatory participle agreement with reflexive and reciprocal objects arises because the derivation of reflexives involves A-movement and concomitant agreement

An acoustic-phonetic descriptive analysis of Kagoshima Japanese tonal phenomena

This thesis presents a linguistic-phonetic description of the acoustic properties of the contrastive accentual patterns in Kagoshima Japanese. Kagoshima Japanese is one of the traditionally so-called two pattern varieties of Japanese. Different phonological analyses of the contrast are described in detail in order to situate the phonetic description. Data from four native speakers—two males and two females—are used, appropriately log z-score normalised to yield mean normalised FO curves necessary for linguistic-phonetic description. Normalisation procedures are discussed, justified and explained. The acoustic realisation of the Kagoshima Japanese contrast is specified on words from one to seven syllables in length, and a surface representation proposed within Autosegmental-Metrical theory. Some microprosodic aspects are also examined, especially in terms of the effect of the syllable-rhyme structure (i.e. vowel length, final nasal) on FO. In addition is examined what happens when accentual units are juxtaposed in three types of syntagms (noun phrase e.g. nagaka tamago; possessive phrase e.g. mago no kimono; simple sentence, e.g. sakana ga nigeru). Where appropriate, comparisons are drawn with Standard Japanese to highlight similarities and differences in tonality. It is shown that, like Standard Japanese, the Kagoshima Japanese accentual contrast is realised as ± falling pitch/FO, and also like SJ, the contrast is manifested globally, throughout the word. Microprosodically, it is shown that syllable-final nasals are associated with higher FO, not necessarily on the nasal itself, and that heavy syllables also evince a higher FO. Finally, two extrinsic allotones—level and falling—are demonstrated for one of the accentual types, depending on its rhyme constituents. As far as the juxtaposed data are concerned, it is shown that, unlike Standard Japanese, no deaccentuation is involved. Moreover, a differential effect is demonstrated, in terms of FO downstep, with respect to syntactic type: noun phrases behave differently from possessive phrases and simple sentences in showing no downstep. It is suggested that the magnitude of downstep in Kagoshima Japanese may be smaller than in Standard Japanese. It is proposed that the linguistic-phonetic representations derived in this thesis can be used not only to investigate within-language linguistic features (e.g. the Kagoshima Japanese accentual contrast), but also to compare Kagoshima with the corresponding linguistic-phonetic representations of other Japanese varieties

Computationally-assisted analysis of early Tahitian oral poetry

A computationally-assisted analysis was undertaken of Tahitian oral poetry transcribed in the early 19th century, with the aim of discovering its poetic organization. An automated pattern detection process attempted to recognize many of the organizational possibilities for poetry that have been documented in the literature, as well as be open to unanticipated varieties. Candidate patterns generated were subjected to several rounds of manual review. Some tasks that would have proved difficult to automate, such as the detection of semantic parallelism, were pursued fully manually. Two distinct varieties of meter were encountered: A syllabic counting meter based upon a colon line, and a much less common word stress counting meter based upon a colon line or a list item. The use of each meter was ubiquitous in the corpus, but somewhat sporadic. Word stress counting meter was typically applied to lists, and generally co-occurred with patterns of syllabic counting meter; perhaps in order to enhance metrical effect through an addition of rhythm. For both meters, counts were regulated by an external pattern, wherein they were observed to repeat, increment, form inverted structures, or group into alternating sequences. There appeared to be few limitations as to the possibilities for a pattern‟s starting count or length. Patterns were found to juxtapose freely, as well as alongside unpatterned counts. According to Nigel Fabb and Morris Halle, syllabic counting meter is only otherwise encountered in a style of Hebrew poetry from the Old Testament (Fabb and Halle 2008:268, 271, 283). Word stress counting meter may be unique to Tahitian poetry. The colon also functioned as poetic line for purposes of sound parallelism, which manifested itself in patterns of simple assonance, simple consonance, and complex patterns that combined simpler ones of assonance, consonance, and parallel strings of phonemes. Although sound patterns most often spanned lines, they were sometimes constrained to within a line. Occasionally, they were arranged into inverted structures, somewhat analogous to those noted for counting meter. Some sound patterns were contained within names and epithets, and perhaps served as recurring islands of parallelism. Syntactic parallelism was common, especially in the organization of lists. Occasionally, its application was suggestive of canonical parallelism. Items of syntactic frame lists were often arranged so as to assist patterns of counting meter. A syntactic frame‟s variable elements often belonged to a single semantic category for which there seemed to be no restriction, and which could represent any taxonomic level. There appeared to be complete freedom in regards to the arrangement of syntactic frame patterns, and it was common for several to follow one another in unbroken succession. There is evidence that some of the corpus poetry was memorized. Other evidence suggests that a capacity existed, and perhaps continues to exist, of poetic composition-in-performance

Proceedings of the XXXIII Incontro di Grammatica Generativa

The “Incontro di grammatica generativa”, in 2007 at its 33rd edition, started in the 70's as an informal meeting for Italian scholars working on this, at time quite new, grammatical approach. Evolved into an important international meeting at the beginning of the 90s, it has since then remained a significant moment of debate for scholars interested in formalization in grammar. The proceedings here collected are just a part of the talks given at the 33rd Incontro, held in Bologna from 1st to 3rd March 2007. The talks there presented were numerous and ranged over a wide varieties of fields of research in grammar: not only those that we could call ‘traditional’ as phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, but also language acquisition and pathology have been taken into account. Contributions in these proceedings, even though limited in number, are an excellent example of richness in contemporary linguistics research and evidence of the attraction that formal linguistics holds on young researchers, which a part of relations was reserved for. We have chosen to divide this collection into subject fields: phonology, morphology, syntax and language acquisition. Problems of phonology are tackled in the proceedings by Stefano Canalis, Maria Rosa Lloret, Attila Starčević; morphology is represented by the work of Susanna Padrosa Trias, while to syntax is dedicated the widest range of contributions: Theresa Biberauer with Anders Holmberg and Ian Roberts, Vincenzo Moscati, Ía Navarro Ibarra, Andrew Radford with Michèle Vincent, Francesca Ramaglia, Balázs Surányi; about acquisition’s problems argue instead the contributions by Elisa Di Domenico with Elisa Bennati and by Andrea Gualmini

Proceedings of the XXXIII Incontro di Grammatica Generativa

The “Incontro di grammatica generativa”, in 2007 at its 33rd edition, started in the 70's as an informal meeting for Italian scholars working on this, at time quite new, grammatical approach. Evolved into an important international meeting at the beginning of the 90s, it has since then remained a significant moment of debate for scholars interested in formalization in grammar. The proceedings here collected are just a part of the talks given at the 33rd Incontro, held in Bologna from 1st to 3rd March 2007. The talks there presented were numerous and ranged over a wide varieties of fields of research in grammar: not only those that we could call ‘traditional’ as phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, but also language acquisition and pathology have been taken into account. Contributions in these proceedings, even though limited in number, are an excellent example of richness in contemporary linguistics research and evidence of the attraction that formal linguistics holds on young researchers, which a part of relations was reserved for. We have chosen to divide this collection into subject fields: phonology, morphology, syntax and language acquisition. Problems of phonology are tackled in the proceedings by Stefano Canalis, Maria Rosa Lloret, Attila Starčević; morphology is represented by the work of Susanna Padrosa Trias, while to syntax is dedicated the widest range of contributions: Theresa Biberauer with Anders Holmberg and Ian Roberts, Vincenzo Moscati, Ía Navarro Ibarra, Andrew Radford with Michèle Vincent, Francesca Ramaglia, Balázs Surányi; about acquisition’s problems argue instead the contributions by Elisa Di Domenico with Elisa Bennati and by Andrea Gualmini

VELARS AND PROCESSES: THEIR TREATMENT IN PHONOLOGICAL THEORY

The dissertation argues for the following thesis: Velars to have a phonological representation where place specification may be accomodated, but this hosting site is left empty. In other words, I assume velars to be placeless in their phonological representation. This hosting site can have a number of formulations, depending on the particular phonological model. It can be conceived as a Place node, like in Feature Geometry, or an element tier as in Government Phonology, or a particular dependency relation as in Dependency Phonology. According to the thesis, velars share the presence of this hosting site in their representation with labial and coronal consonants (and with vowels, of course), while differing from labials and coronals in not having anything to occupy this hosting site. The thesis is supported by phenomena from a range of languages. The placelessness of velars goes against received assumptions where coronals are considered unmarked due to their absence of place specification. I will demonstrate that quite a number of the most frequently cited cases in support of the unmarked status of coronals do not seem to constitute firm evidence for coronal unmarkedness (and in fact for markedness in general). This suggests that if coronals are still to be considered unmarked, it will have to have a different reason

A grammar of Lewo, Vanuatu

The main aim of this study is to present a description of aspects of Lewo, an Oceanic Austronesian language spoken on the island of Epi, Vanuatu. With this, Lewo becomes one of the few languages of the 40-member Central Vanuatu subgroup to be described in detail in recent times. Cataloguing the structure of a previously unrecorded language always contributes to linguistic knowledge. The description begins by presenting background material on the geographic, social, and linguistic setting of the Lewo-speaking community. The phonological inventory and structure of Lewo is given next, and then the grammar is treated. The approach taken is “structural-functionalist”, whereby grammatical units are described hierarchically, beginning with morpheme and word, then phrase, clause, sentence and discourse: a fairly standard morphosyntactic analysis. Traditional structural notions of constituency, contrast, variation, distribution and so on are consistently employed, but at each point, the functional significance of the linguistic units is accommodated. Besides the presentation of the structure of the language, three particular contributions of this study can be mentioned. Firstly, the analysis of the structure of Lewo has resulted in the discovery of one feature that is unique in the languages of the world, and is therefore an important contribution to language typology. It will be shown that the Lewo negative construction is a tripartite disjunctive structure, involving three distinct elements. Previously, only bipartite disjunctive structures were known, such as those found in several of the languages neighbouring Lewo. Secondly, another contribution incorporated in this study is the use of a new word-class label, the Epistememe (Durie and Mushin 1992). This innovation results from the recognition that traditional designations of the word-class often called Interrogative Pronouns have failed to take account of wider generalities that apply to the members of this class and that have cross-linguistic validity. Thirdly, an additional feature of Lewo that is highlighted in this study is the extremely significant role that verb serialisation plays at different levels of the grammar of the language. Verb serialisation is appealed to as an unified explanation of aspects of structure at the level of verb morphology, clause structure, and interclausal relations. A theoretical contribution of this study is the extended application of Lehmann’s generalised typology of clause linkage (Lehmann 1988) to the phenomenon of serialisation in Lewo. Perhaps the major defect of the current study is that like most other grammars of languages, it attempts to cover a great span of material. With the usual limitations of time and space that apply, I have no doubt that every aspect of the language mentioned in the study could be covered to a much greater depth