A note on the silent GO that underlies an instance of apparent suppletion in Spanish

The Spanish counterpart of English go shows apparently suppletive forms as follows. The alternation between v-, f- and i- seems not to be phonological. We can call it 'suppletion' as long as we recognize that doing so leaves questions open that we need to try to answer. In this paper, I will focus on the forms in f-. A familiar way of talking about the f- in question would be to say that it is inserted (late) as a realization of Spanish go in the context of preterite or imperfect subjunctive (or of what the preterite and the imperfect subjunctive have in common). I will, instead, try to throw some light on the identity of preterite and imperfect subjunctive forms across Spanish go and be by bringing in additional considerations that have nothing directly to do with verb morphology

The transformational cycle in French syntax.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics. Thesis. 1969. Ph.D.Vita.Bibliography: leaves 195-198.Ph.D

On some Prepositions that Look DP-internal : English of and French de

The article shows that, in spite of their DP-internal appearance, many instances of the English preposition of and of the French preposition de can be reanalyzed as being VP-external. Moreover, it is argued that what looks like movement of a bare quantifier turns out to be remnant movement. It is also claimed that each +N subpart of DP must get its own Case, which means that (non-head) phrases never have Case.En català les seqüències de sibilants no es pronuncien mai com a tals. En la majoria de contextos s varietats coincideixen pel que fa a les «estratègies» que utilitzen per evitar aquestes seqüències, que poden ser l'epèntesi o l'elisió. La variació només es troba en el domini dels clítics pronominals (però no en el d'altres menes de clítics). Una de les fonts de variació s'explica mitjançant la divisió d'una restricció general en dues restriccions més específiques, la qual cosa implica una reordenació parcial de restriccions. L'altra font de variació, que inclou un cas d'opacitat aparent, s'explica mitjançant una restricció del tipus output-output que fa referència a relacions paradigmàtiques

Stepwise evolution of a butterfly supergene via duplication and inversion

Supergenes maintain adaptive clusters of alleles in the face of genetic mixing. Although usually attributed to inversions, supergenes can be complex, and reconstructing the precise processes that led to recombination suppression and their timing is challenging. We investigated the origin of the BC supergene, which controls variation in warning coloration in the African monarch butterfly, Danaus chrysippus. By generating chromosome-scale assemblies for all three alleles, we identified multiple structural differences. Most strikingly, we find that a region of more than 1 million bp underwent several segmental duplications at least 7.5 Ma. The resulting duplicated fragments appear to have triggered four inversions in surrounding parts of the chromosome, resulting in stepwise growth of the region of suppressed recombination. Phylogenies for the inversions are incongruent with the species tree and suggest that structural polymorphisms have persisted for at least 4.1 Myr. In addition to the role of duplications in triggering inversions, our results suggest a previously undescribed mechanism of recombination suppression through independent losses of divergent duplicated tracts. Overall, our findings add support for a stepwise model of supergene evolution involving a variety of structural changes. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Genomic architecture of supergenes: causes and evolutionary consequences’

A modal ambiguity in for-infinitival relative clauses

This squib presents two puzzles related to an ambiguity found in for-infinitival relative clauses (FIRs). FIRs invariably receive a modal interpretation even in the absence of any overt modal verb. The modal interpretation seems to come in two distinct types, which can be paraphrased by finite relative clauses employing the modal auxiliaries should and could. The two puzzles presented here arise because the availability of the two readings is constrained by factors that are not otherwise known to affect the interpretation of a relative clause. Specifically, we show, first, that “strong” determiners require the FIR to be interpreted as a SHOULD-relative while “weak” determiners allow both interpretations (the Determiner-Modal Generalization). Secondly, we observe that the COULD-interpretation requires a raising (internally headed) structure for the FIR, while the SHOULD-interpretation is compatible with either a raising or a more standard matching (externally headed) structure (the Raising/Matching Generalization)