Vocatives: A Note on Addressee-Management

The aim of this paper is to establish a semantic characterisation of vocatives, while leaving aside pragmatic and sociolinguistic considerations as far as possible. I will defend the `IPA-hypothesis\u27 of the meaning of vocatives, that is, the hypothesis that vocatives have three basic functions: to identify the addressee(s), to predicate something on the addressee(s), and to activate the addressee(s). It will be argued that the traditional call vs. address dichotomy is insufficient

The syntax and semantics of past participle agreement in Alemannic

International audienceThis paper investigates agreement on past participles in Highest Alemannic dialects of German. We will first show that participle agreement only occurs in contexts where the participle is adjectival, viz., in stative passives and in resultative perfects, but not in eventive perfects. The participles thus pattern with predicative adjectives, which also display agreement in these varieties. In the main part of the paper, we address double compound perfects and eventive passives, which also display agreement on the lexical participle. Even though it is initially not obvious that the participle is adjectival in these cases, we will provide syntactic evidence for their adjectival status. Furthermore, we will pursue the hypothesis that the adjectival head of all agreeing participles is a stativizer, even in the double compound perfect and the eventive passive. At the same time, both the double compound perfect and the eventive passive also clearly have an eventive component. We will model their behavior by treating the participles as mixed categories, viz., as adjectival heads that take a large amount of verbal structure as their complement (VoiceP/AspP). While recent work on German stative passives has argued that even those should be analyzed as containing a substantial amount of verbal structure, the behavior of participles in the double perfect and the eventive passive in the varieties under consideration is clearly different. They thus contribute to the typology of adjectival passives in German and beyond and show that the familiar distinction between 'adjectival' and 'verbal' participles needs to be further refined

Language change for the worse

Many theories hold that language change, at least on a local level, is driven by a need for improvement. The present volume explores to what extent this assumption holds true, and whether there is a particular type of language change that we dub language change for the worse, i.e., change with a worsening effect that cannot be explained away as a side-effect of improvement in some other area of the linguistic system. The chapters of the volume, written by leading junior and senior scholars, combine expertise in diachronic and historical linguistics, typology, and formal modelling. They focus on different aspects of grammar (phonology, morphosyntax, semantics) in a variety of language families (Germanic, Romance, Austronesian, Bantu, Jê-Kaingang, Wu Chinese, Greek, Albanian, Altaic, Indo-Aryan, and languages of the Caucasus). The volume contributes to ongoing theoretical debates and discussions between linguists with different theoretical orientations

The syntax and compositional semantics of English ONE

International audienceIn this paper, I analyse the syntax and compositional semantics of the unity cardinal one in English. I argue that the three different uses of one, namely as a determiner, as a DP pronoun and as a prosortal can be accounted for with a single, monosemic analysis. It will be argued that an NP-ellipsis account is not able to provide a unified account of the major uses. However, it will be argued that anaphoric uses of one always involve predicate anaphora. Therefore, a variable-free semantics will be adopted, and it will be shown that in such a framework, one can indeed provide a uniform account for all three uses, using type-shifting operations and Skolem-functions

Present perfects compete

International audienceThis paper proposes a new look at the so-called ‘present-perfect puzzle'. I suggest that it is in fact part of a bigger problem, which also involves simple past tenses. I argue that present perfects compete with simple past tenses, and that the distribution of these tenses shows signs of the impact of this competition. The outcome of the competition is argued to be heavily dependent on which of the two tense-forms is the default. A pragmatic theory is proposed which accounts for the reduced distribution of the present perfect in languages like English and (American) Spanish, and the reduced distribution of the simple past tense in languages like French and German

Rational Interaction and the Pragmatics of the Slippery Slope and 'Guilt by Association'

International audienceThis paper proposes a pragmatic analysis of two so-called fallacies in argumentation, namely the 'Slippery Slope' and 'Guilt by Association'. I will examine their rational use, and argue that they exemplify at least partially non-cooperative, but still inference-based conversational moves

Formalizing Current Relevance

International audienceThis article presents a way of formalizing the notion of Current Relevance based on the seminal work by Merin (1999). Its aim is to provide formalist linguistics with a valuable tool for accounting for the meaning of present perfects

An Intersective Account of Localizing Temporal Adverbials

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