Lexicalizing number and gender in Lunigiana

In this article, I present an analysis of gender and number marking on nouns in a group of Italian dialects. These dialects share the property that the plural morpheme is -i- in both the feminine and the masculine gender in both declension classes. But there is an asymmetry: in contexts where plurality is marked on a determiner, the plural marking -i- does not appear on nouns or adjectives in the feminine gender, but does appear on masculine nouns and adjectives. I argue that this asymmetry can be understood once it is recognized that a vocabulary item can lexicalize more than a single terminal, and that lexicalization is governed by the Superset Principle, i.e. if the lexicon associates a vocabulary item with a feature set F, it can lexicalize any constituent with the feature set F' provided F is a superset of F'

Two Components of Long-Distance Extraction: Successive Cyclicity in Dinka

This article presents novel data from the Nilotic language Dinka, in which the syntax of successive-cyclic movement is remarkably transparent. We show that Dinka provides strong support for the view that long-distance extraction proceeds through the edge of every verb phrase and every clause on the path of movement (Chomsky 1986, 2000, 2001, 2008). In addition, long-distance dependencies in Dinka offer evidence that extraction from a CP requires agreement between v and the CP that is extracted from (Rackowski and Richards 2005, Den Dikken 2009b, 2012a,b). The claim that both of these components constrain long-distance movement is important, as much contemporary work on extraction incorporates only one of them. To accommodate this conclusion, we propose a modification of Rackowski and Richards 2005, in which both intermediate movement and Agree relations between phase heads are necessary steps in establishing a long-distance dependency

Unagreement is an illusion

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-015-9311-yThis paper proposes an analysis of unagreement, a phenomenon involving an apparent mismatch between a definite third person plural subject and first or second person plural subject agreement observed in various null subject languages (e.g. Spanish, Modern Greek and Bulgarian), but notoriously absent in others (e.g. Italian, European Portuguese). A cross-linguistic correlation between unagreement and the structure of adnominal pronoun constructions suggests that the availability of unagreement depends on whether person and definiteness are hosted by separate heads (in languages like Greek) or bundled on a single head (i.e. pronominal determiners in languages like Italian). Null spell-out of the head hosting person features high in the extended nominal projection of the subject leads to unagreement. The lack of unagreement in languages with pronominal determiners results from the interaction of their syntactic structure with the properties of the vocabulary items realising the head encoding both person and definiteness. The analysis provides a principled explanation for the cross-linguistic distribution of unagreement and suggests a unified framework for deriving unagreement, adnominal pronoun constructions, personal pronouns and pro

On augment-less NPs in Xhosa and de NPs in French

Augment-less NPs in Xhosa and de NPs like de chevaux ‘of horses’ have strikingly similar properties. It seems that the properties of de NPs reflect the absence of the definite article les which combines with de to form the so-called partitive article des chevaux ‘some horses’. Taking the Xhosa augment to be similar (though not identical) to the French definite article, we account for the observed similarities between augment-less NPs and French de NPs

NPE, gender and the countable/mass distinction

The main purpose of this paper is to present arguments for the existence of a certain relation between formal gender features and the semantic notions ‘count noun’ and ‘mass noun’. In particular, facts relating to how NP ellipsis operates in indefinite DPs in Dutch and Afrikaans are taken to provide evidence for the proposed relation.Keywords: NP ellipsis, gender, countability, Dutch, Afrikaan

An introduction to Nanosyntax

This article provides an introduction to Nanosyntax – an approach to the syntax/lexicon interaction originating from work by Michal Starke. I present some of the motivation for allowing lexical items to replace whole phrases rather than only terminal elements, present the basic principles taken to govern the lexicalization procedure and show how syncretism patterns are handled in Nanosyntax

Nanosyntax and syncretism in multidimensional paradigms

This article discusses certain problems that arise when the basic tenets of Nansyntax are employed in an analysis of syncretism patterns in multidimensional paradigms and presents and evaluate different solutions to these problems. The article is intended as a follow-up to my article an introduction to Nanosyntax