Word order in measure phrases in Malagasy dialects

The goal of this paper is to explore a possible dialectal (and idiolectal) variation within measure phrases in Malagasy. It appears that there is a word order variation that appears in structure of the type two bottles of wine. We will see further that there are idiolect variations within one dialect in term of what acts as the head of the entire nominal

Parameters and effects of word order variation

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1984.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND HUMANITIES.Bibliography: leaves 278-284.by Lisa deMena Travis.Ph.D

No and Ny In Official Malagasy and Bezanozano

The goal of this paper is to describe four uses of the particle no in Official Malagasy (OM) and then to compare these realizations to those in Bezanozano (Bz), a Malagasy dialect spoken in the area of Moramanga.1 We will show that three of the functions of no in OM have the same realization in Bz, but that the fourth use takes a different form. Importantly, this form is identical to the determiner in this dialect, making the construction quite similar to related languages in the Philippines such as Tagalog, and unrelated languages such as Kaqchikel, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. We will show, however, that the Bezanozano construction falls between the pattern of OM and the pattern of Tagalog/Kaqchikel. The particle used is in form is quite similar to the determiner but in function quite different

Negation, Polarity, and Deontic Modals

Universal deontic modals may vary with respect to whether they scope over or under negation. For instance, English modals like must and should take wide scope with respect to negation; modals like have to and need to take narrow scope. Similar patterns have been attested in other languages. In this article, we argue that the scopal properties of modals with respect to negation can be understood if (a) modals that outscope negation are positive polarity items (PPIs); (b) all modals originate in a position lower than I[superscript 0]; and (c) modals undergo reconstruction unless reconstruction leads to a PPI-licensing violation