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

Negation and the functional sequence

There exists a general restriction on admissible functional sequences which prevents adjacent identical heads. We investigate a particular instantiation of this restriction in the domain of negation. Empirically, it manifests itself as a restriction the stacking of multiple negative morphemes. We propose a principled account of this restriction in terms of the general ban on immediately consecutive identical heads in the functional sequence on the one hand, and the presence of a Neg feature inside negative morphemes on the other hand. The account predicts that the stacking of multiple negative morphemes should be possible provided they are separated by intervening levels of structure. We show that this prediction is borne out

Prépositions et rôles

G. Rauh, Préposition et rôles : pointe de vue syntaxique et sémantique The present article is concerned with a description of the relation between prepositions and thematic roles, a relation which has been described nonuniformly in the literature. It is claimed — and demonstrated — that the nonuniformity is due to the fact that on the one hand prepositions form a heterogeneous class, and on the other there are different views on thematic relations. It is finally argued that a unique definition of thematic roles as grammatical features with specific licensing effects provides a basis for an explicit description of prepositional variants, at the same time explaining the heterogeneity of the relation between prepositions and roles.Rauh Gisa. Prépositions et rôles. In: Langages, 28ᵉ année, n°113, 1994. Les relations actancielles. Sémantique, syntaxe, morphologie, sous la direction de Jacques François et Gisa Rauh. pp. 45-78