Prog imperfective drift in ancient Greek? Reconsidering eimi 'be' with present participle

In this paper, I reconsider the diachrony of the Ancient Greek periphrastic construction of eimi 'be' with present participle by means of Bertinetto’s recently proposed model for the development of progressive grams (a process called ‘PROG imperfective drift’). While Bertinetto’s proposal sheds new light on the diachronic development of the construction, at the same time the evidence from Ancient Greek brings to light the need for modification and further refinement of the model (most importantly with regard to the role of what I call the ‘stative’ function, next to the diachronic source(s) of the construction). I furthermore show that eimi with present participle never fully developed a (focalized) progressive function, which can be explained in terms of ‘constructional competition’

Copulative Predication in Tarifit Berber

This paper investigates the typology of copulative predication in Tarifit Berber. Three main copulas are identified: (1) verbal, (2) nominal and (3) locative. Given that these elements can all be used as predicates, a uniform configuration which accounts for their derivation is proposed. The structure consists of a lower lexical layer occupied by the predicate (VP, NP etc.) and a higher functional projection represented by the Predicate Phrase (PredP). The Pred – head then enters into an agreement relation with the lower head in the complement position, yielding a predicational copula sentence. Since these constructions are all marked for tense/aspect, the derivation is extended further to a TP projection where the relevant feature is valued. In view of the unified syntactic analysis, the difference between various copula predicates is optimally reduced to the categorial status of the basic predicate occupying the lower lexical projection. The paper identifies another copula construction, which correlates with the proxemics-locative. An examination of this configuration from a close range reveals that this particular locative occupies the subject position whereas the Pred – head is only filled with a bare syntactic feature but encodes no phonological information.Prédication copulative en berbère tarifit Cet article explore la typologie de la prédication copulative en berbère tarifit. On identifie 3 copules principales : (1) verbale, (2) nominale et (3) locative. Etant donné que tous ces éléments peuvent être employés comme prédicats, l’article propose une configuration uniforme qui rend compte de leur dérivation. Cette structure consiste en un niveau lexical inférieur occupé par le prédicat (VP, NP etc) et une projection fonctionnelle plus haute représentée par le Predicate Phrase (PredP). La tête Pred entre ensuite dans une relation d’accord avec la tête basse située en position de complément, créant une phrase à copule prédicative. Comme ces constructions sont toutes marquées pour le temps/aspect, la dérivation est étendue à une projection TP, où le trait pertinent est valué. L’analyse syntaxique étant unifiée, la différence entre les divers prédicats copulatifs est réduite de façon optimale au statut catégoriel du prédicat de base occupant la projection lexicale basse. Cet article identifie une autre construction copulative correspondant au locatif proxémique. L’examen précis de cette configuration révèle que ce locatif particulier occupe la position de sujet tandis que la tête Pred est occupée par un trait syntaxique seulement, mais n’encode aucune information phonologique

Negation of subject with nominal modifiers in Sesotho

This article examines constituent negation in Sesotho, focussing on negation of the subject with nominal modifiers of matrix clauses. Sesotho is an African language that falls under the Bantu family. Unlike English, which makes use of negative elements to negate clausal constituents, such as no in no children have eaten, Sesotho does not have a direct means of negating a clausal constituent. The central aim of this article is to demonstrate how Sesotho employs negative clauses, such as negative cleft sentences, negative pseudo-cleft sentences and negative clauses, together with the marker ho, to realise constituent negation. This article will also argue that, in terms of Haegemen’s (1995) Neg-Criterion, Sesotho does not have non-negative operators that could constitute the realisation of local or constituent negation.Keywords: constituent negation, cleft sentence, nominal modifiers, pseudo-cleft sentence, Sesotho, subjec

Explaining the uses of ser and estar: A didactic proposal for English learners of Spanish

37 p. : il. -- Bibliogr.: p. 34-37The distinction between ser and estar is one of the most difficult aspects of Spanish grammar for English learners of Spanish. There are many authors from different backgrounds that have dealt with this topic aiming to explain the contexts in which both copulas can appear and those in which only one of the two may occur. Nevertheless, this specific subject of Spanish grammar still creates confusion among non-native speakers of Spanish. Due to the large amount of exceptions within the norm and the incomplete and unclear explanations of the topic provided in many manuals, Spanish learners acquire a vague knowledge of the correct uses of ser and estar preventing them from a full comprehension. For that reason, the aim of this paper is to shed some light on this convoluted issue. Ser and estar are two copulative verbs whose functions widely differ between them. While ser is used to represent temporal and inherent individual properties, estar expresses temporal events. Nonetheless, things are not as easy as they seem to be, since there are many contexts in which both copulas are likely to get mixed by English students of Spanish, due to the fact that their mother tongue lacks this type of distinction. Additionally, and due to their capriciuous character, they do not always appear in complementary distribution. For these reasons, I will deeply analyse the occurrence of these two predicates and their restrictions with regards to the acceptability of one verb or the other following the account based on the distinction of individual and stage level predicates. Finally, I will expose a didactic proposal for practising the uses of both verbs in different learning levels

Two types of change-of-state attributes in English

Contrary to the common belief that all attributes denoting a change of state belong to one and the same uniform class, we strongly defend in the present paper the existence of two distinct syntactic-semantic kinds of change of state attributes in the English language: on the one hand, those that complement the aspectual variants of the semantically vacuous copula be; and, on the other hand, those that combine with lexically autonomous verbs and are, therefore, optional for the grammaticality of the construction. Due to the markedly different behaviour they exhibit, we are going to distinguish both classes of attributes from a terminological point of view: we will call the members of the former group 'change of state attributes', strictly speaking, and those of the latter type, resultative attributes. To prove our hypothesis, we are going to base our study mainly on the nature of the verbal constituent that surfaces in the attributive structure and, as a consequence, on the syntactic and semantic relation it maintains with the attribute under discussion

A collective extension of relational grammar

Relational grammar was proposed in Suppes (1976) as a semantical grammar for natural language. Fragments considered so far are restricted to distributive notions. In this article, relational grammar is extended to collective notions

What information structure tells us about individual/stage-level predicates

The goal of this paper is to explore the lexical-syntactic structure of copulative constructions and argument small clauses within the framework proposed by Gallego & Uriagereka (2011) for the Individual-Level/Stage-Level distinction (Carlson 1988, Kratzer 1995) and implement their theory by claiming that there is a crucial correlation between IL/SL constructions and their information structure. I argue that IL subjects are topics (and hence this is a categorical construction, following Kuroda 1972, Milsark 1977 and Raposo & Uriagereka 1995), whereas in SL constructions the topic may either be the subject or a silent spatiotemporal argument (their construction being thetic). I show the topic nature of IL subjects in contexts of specificity and subextraction. I ultimately derive the IS of IL/SL constructions from their lexical-syntactic structure and identify the type of topic here as an Aboutness-Topic (in the sense of Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007, Lambrecht 1994, Erteschik-Shir 1997). Keywords: individual-level/stage-level predicates, copulas, small clause, central-coincidence/terminal coincidence prepositions, topic, specificity, subextractio

Ser y estar as a semantic problem in Spanish : Polysemy and polyfunctionality of ser y estar in constructions with adjectives and participles

The verbal constructions of ser y estar with adjectives in current Spanish are characterized by their complexity and unpredictability. For this reason, they have been the subject of multiple studies that have tried to discover the linguistic keys of the functioning of both verbs. Among the many questions raised by the use and function of ser y estar (both as autosemantic verbs and copulative nexus), the problem of the semantics of these verbs still stand out. This paper presents a study of ser and estar verbs in current Spanish with the aim of re-examining the nature of both verbs. We wil check if both verbs are just copulative nexus without any semantic value or, on the contrary, they are predicative verbs that present only existential and narrative values. This work defends the idea that both ser and estar are polyfunctional and polysemic verbs. In the case of estar, its clear polysemy is the key to understanding its uses as a predicative verb and also as a copulative nexus. In the case of ser, there are reasons to argue for and against polysemy in its uses as a nexual verb

Application of Resolution Rules on phi-Features in L2 Compositions: Native Arabic Writers in an L2 English

Resolution rules are syntactic parameters that regulate the proper agreement of phi-features (person, number, and gender) between a noun/noun phrase and a verb phrase within a grammatical language system. This study examines L2 English compositions written by native Arabic speakers and investigates whether or not students transfer agreement patterns from their L1 to their L2. Although the compositions were examined primarily for salient resolution rule agreement errors, the scope was widened to also include other agreement issues that were prevalent. The findings revealed that although agreement errors were found in conjunction with person and number resolution rules, these were not the most wide-spread agreement errors with this group of Arabic writers. Constructions that included isolated subject referents and indefinite pronouns proved more difficult to resolve, and negative transfer led to copious zero copula errors and pro-drop errors. In terms of subject/verb agreement for these writers, data from this study determined that auxiliary verb constructions were the most difficult