Honorific titles are D

This study proposes a hypothesis that honorific titles such as English Mr and Japanese san occupy the D head position and discusses its consequences to the syntax and semantics of nominals. Seven pieces of supporting evidence are presented using data from various languages. If the proposed hypothesis is correct, (i) nominals in languages without articles are not NP but DP, (ii) proper names cannot be D but N, and (iii) a semantic parameter concerning the basic denotation of common nouns such as Chierchia's (1998) Nominal Mapping Parameter is unnecessary

The development of the English-type passive in Balinese

The morpheme -a in Balinese is ambiguous between the third person enclitic pronoun and a passive voice marker. Different views exist as to whether the morpheme can be the pronoun in the presence of a teken agentive phrase. This paper argues that it can and that the construction in which the pronoun -a and a teken phrase co-occur (the hybrid type) is an instance of clitic doubling. A hypothesis is proposed about how the third person pronoun changed into a passive marker and how different passive subtypes came into existence. It is claimed that the hybrid type played a key role in the change. The hybrid type supports the analysis of passives in general as a clitic doubling construction (Baker, Johnson and Roberts 1989). A clitic doubling analysis of passives enables a new typology of passives whereby passives are classified according to how the clitic and its double in a passive clause are expressed.</p