The Interplay between VSO and Coordination in Two Types of Non-Degree Exclamatives

Research for this paper was funded by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the project WOChWEL - Word Order and Word Order Change in Western European Languages (PTDC/CLE-LIN/121707/2010). I am thankful to the editors of the current volume of CatJL and an anonymous reviewer, who in different ways contributed to this work. All shortcomings are, of course, my own responsibilityAquest article estudia dos tipus diferents d'estructures en indicatiu que tenen inversió subjecte-verb i que no han rebut gaire atenció en els estudis sobre l'ordre VS al portuguès europeu. Ambdues estructures expressen la comparació/contrast mitjançant la coordinació, presenten l'ordre VSO i poden ser classificades com a oracions exclamatives sense gradació. Mentre que en el primer tipus (tipus I) el subjecte postverbal rep una lectura de focus contrastiu, l'altre tipus (tipus II) es caracteritza per tenir un patró menys general d'inversió subjecte-verb que no requereix ni focus del subjecte ni sintaxi de V2, però que afegeix al contingut proposicional de l'oració un comentari implícit que denota una actitud de desaprovació per part del parlant respecte a l'estat de coses descrit. Es proposa que el factor que unifica els dos tipus d'exclamatives sense gradació és la presència d'un tret valoratiu a dintre del domini del CP que dóna lloc al trasllat de V a C. Les estructures de tipus I mostren desplaçament de V a C en tots dos membres de la coordinació i comporten, a més, trasllat del subjecte a SFoc. A les de tipus II no hi ha trasllat de focus i el trasllat de V a C només es produeix en el primer membre de l'estructura coordinada, ja que l'element que satisfà el tret valoratiu del segon membre de la coordinació és el nucli de l'estructura (la conjunció coordinant).This paper studies two types of indicative structures displaying subject-verb inversion which have received little attention in the literature on VS order in European Portuguese. Both types of structures involve coordination as a means to overtly express comparison/contrast, show a VSO pattern, and can be characterized as non-degree exclamatives. Whereas in one type (Type I) the post-verbal subject receives a contrastive focus reading, the other type (Type II) shows a less common pattern of subject-verb inversion, which does not involve focus on the subject nor verb-second syntax, but adds to the propositional content of the sentence an implicit comment conveying a speaker's attitude of disapproval towards the described state of affairs. It is proposed that the unifying factor behind the two types of VSO non-degree exclamatives is the presence of an evaluative feature in the CP field that triggers V-to-C movement. Type I structures further involve movement of the subject to FocP and display V-to-C in both conjuncts of the coordinate structure. Type II structures do not involve focus-movement and V-to-C is restricted to the first member of the coordinate structure while the head of the structure itself (i.e. the coordinate conjunction) satisfies the evaluative feature of the second conjunct

Inborn errors of metabolism: a clinical overview

CONTEXT: Inborn errors of metabolism cause hereditary metabolic diseases (HMD) and classically they result from the lack of activity of one or more specific enzymes or defects in the transportation of proteins. OBJECTIVES: A clinical review of inborn errors of metabolism (IEM) to give a practical approach to the physician with figures and tables to help in understanding the more common groups of these disorders. DATA SOURCE: A systematic review of the clinical and biochemical basis of IEM in the literature, especially considering the last ten years and a classic textbook (Scriver CR et al, 1995). SELECTION OF STUDIES: A selection of 108 references about IEM by experts in the subject was made. Clinical cases are presented with the peculiar symptoms of various diseases. DATA SYNTHESIS: IEM are frequently misdiagnosed because the general practitioner, or pediatrician in the neonatal or intensive care units, does not think about this diagnosis until the more common cause have been ruled out. This review includes inheritance patterns and clinical and laboratory findings of the more common IEM diseases within a clinical classification that give a general idea about these disorders. A summary of treatment types for metabolic inherited diseases is given. CONCLUSIONS: IEM are not rare diseases, unlike previous thinking about them, and IEM patients form part of the clientele in emergency rooms at general hospitals and in intensive care units. They are also to be found in neurological, pediatric, obstetrics, surgical and psychiatric clinics seeking diagnoses, prognoses and therapeutic or supportive treatment.CONTEXTO: Os erros inatos do metabolismo (EIM) causam as doenças metabólicas hereditárias (DMH) e classicamente resultam da falta de atividade de uma ou mais enzimas específicas ou defeitos no transporte de proteínas. OBJETIVOS: Revisão clínica sobre Erros Inatos do Metabolismo (EIM) voltada para o médico na sua prática diária, com tabelas e figuras que sumariam as diversas doenças que fazem parte deste assunto. Uma pequena revisão das bases bioquímicas suficiente para compreensão da fisiopatologia dos EIM. FONTES DOS DADOS: Pesquisa bibliográfica utilizando livros de textos sobre os EIM e suas bases bioquímicas (Scriver, CR et al, 1995), revisão da literatura que abrangeu os artigos clássicos e aqueles publicados nos últimos dez anos, fornecendo assim referências atualizadas sobre as diversas doenças metabólicas hereditárias (DMH). SELEÇÃO DOS ESTUDOS: Foi realizada seleção de textos de autores consagrados pelo conhecimento e experiência na área dos EIM e descrição de casos clínicos com suas manifestações clínicas mais peculiares e marcantes. SÍNTESE DOS DADOS: Os EIM são doenças subdiagnosticadas pela falta de hábito do médico geral, neonatologista e intensivista em pensar nesta hipótese. Na revisão são descritos os mecanismos de herança, as principais características clínicas e os achados laboratoriais dos EIM, dentro de uma classificação que fornece uma visão geral sobre o assunto. São abordadas sumariamente as formas de tratamento existentes para os diversos grupos de EIM.CONCLUSÕES: Os EIM não são doenças raras como se pensava no passado e pacientes portadores de DMH fazem parte do atendimento geral nos pronto-atendimentos, nas clínicas cirúrgicas, obstétricas, pediátricas, neurológicas e psiquiátricas, aguardando diagnóstico, prognóstico e tratamento terapêutico e/ou de suporte.Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP)Escola Paulista de MedicinaUNIFESP, EPMSciEL

Syntactic change in Portuguese and Spanish: divergent and parallel patterns of linguistic splitting

This chapter describes two cases of divergent syntactic change between Portuguese and Spanish, namely clitic placement and post-nominal algum/alguno. While both changes feature instances of linguistic splitting from a former unity during the Middle Ages, they nevertheless exhibit different patterns of development, illustrating what the author calls the ‘inverted-Y’ and the ‘I’ patterns of change. Under the former, the two languages start diverging as soon as grammatical change is set in motion. Under the latter, the two languages show a similar/parallel path of change and eventually split apart when one of them goes a step further than the other. Clitic placement in the history of Spanish and Portuguese exemplifies the ‘inverted-Y’ pattern, post-nominal algum/alguno exemplifies the ‘I’ pattern of change.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Against V2 as a general property of Old Romance languages

This paper revisits the hypothesis that the verb-second property was a shared feature of the Old Romance languages by investigating Old Portuguese. It demonstrates, on the basis of positive empirical evidence, that Old Portuguese allowed clausal configurations that could not have been derived by a verb-second system. It is shown that clitic placement offers the means to pinpoint items that are categorically excluded from left-peripheral topic positions (non topic items – NTIs). Once NTIs are identified, the distinction between verb-third orders that can be accommodated within a verb-second system and those that cannot becomes clear-cut. It is shown that the test devised to recognize ‘true’ verb-third orders in Old Portuguese produces similar results when applied to other Old Iberorromance languages.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Emphatic Polarity in European Portuguese and Beyond

This paper deals with denials. ‘Emphatic polarity’ is here approached from a well-defined perspective that focuses on the syntactic expression of reversing reactions to assertions. Three syntactic strategies to convey emphatic affirmation in the Romance languages are described and their distribution across languages elucidated, namely: the verb reduplication strategy, the sí que (AFF that) strategy, and the sentence-final sim/sí strategy. In order to account for the common traits of the structures displaying emphatic affirmation and concomitantly for their restricted cross-linguistic availability, the paper argues for the hypothesis that: (i) the functional categories C (encoding relative polarity features) and Σ (encoding absolute polarity features) are jointly involved in the syntactic expression of emphatic polarity and must be both phonologically realized in the relevant structures; (ii) verb movement in relation to the functional heads C and Σ (the topmost head of the IP domain) plus the specificities of the polarity lexicon are the main sources of variation across the Romance languages. Under this hypothesis, (i) is the unifying factor that lies behind the variation emerging from (ii). In its final section the paper briefly discusses emphatic negation. Two patterns are identified that parallel respectively the sí que pattern and the sentence-final sim/sí pattern.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Negation and NPI composition inside DP

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Review of: ‘Jürgen Meisel, Martin Elsig & Esther Rinke. 2013, Language acquisition and change. A morphosyntactic perspective.

Recensão do volume: Jürgen Meisel, Martin Elsig & Esther Rinke. 2013. Language acquisition and change: A morphosyntactic perspective. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. xiii + 202. ISBN 978-0-7486-4225-0.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

VP and TP Ellipsis: sentential polarity and information structure

This paper focuses on two types of predicate ellipsis, namely Verbal Phrase Ellipsis (VPE), also known in the literature as Verb-stranding ellipsis, and Tense Phrase Ellipsis (TPE), also called Stripping or Polarity Ellipsis. It suggests that the polarity-encoding functional category ΣP is involved in the licensing of both types of predicate ellipsis, but only VPE requires that the verb be morphosyntactically associated with the Σ-head. The more restrictive licensing conditions imposed on VPE, relative to TPE, explain its more restricted distribution across languages. At the same time, it permits to account for the correlation between the availability of VPE and a particular type of (typologically rarer) answering system where the bare verb constitutes the unmarked pattern of minimal polar affirmative answer. The paper then concentrates on comparing VP and TP ellipsis in one of the few Romance languages where both types of predicate ellipsis are allowed, viz. European Portuguese, and describes their different articulation with discourse and infor-mation structure. The fact that VPE and TPE might not be in free variation in European Portuguese is shown to be a consequence of the different information structure of the elliptical clause in each type of ellipsis. VPE is an instance of single focus (that can be assigned to different constituents) and is subject to a parallelism constraint on contrastive topic structures (Kertz 2013); TPE features double focus bearing on the polarity word and the constituent preceding it.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Subjects

This chapter deals with two main topics: constituent order (focusing on the interaction between subject positions and interpretation), and null subjects. Both issues relate to case, agreement and expletives. The chapter discusses what motivates and licenses verb-subject orders in Romance non-wh sentences and identifies focalization, theticity and non-degree exclamatives as unifying factors across Romance languages. Focali-zation of the subject derives VOS order, whereas theticity and non-degree exclama-tives display VSO order. On the topic of null subjects, the chapter offers a critical review of the assumption of a pro-drop parameter (also called the Null Subject Pa-rameter) for Romance, considering different types of null subject languages (consistent and partial pro-drop languages). It provides evidence that the pro-drop parameter cannot be maintained as originally formulated since the richness of gram-matical variation between Romance languages requires a more intricate, fine-grained parametrization.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio