Syntactic Theory

The status of basic grammatical relations such as 'subject-of'has been a matter of some controversy in current linguistic theory. While Keenan has argued that they are squishy of 'cluster'concepts, Johnson and others have taken the position that they must be analyzed as discrete entities. This paper provides empirical evidence to decide between the two opposing positions. The syntax and semantics of the so-called Dative Subject Construction in South Asian languages demonstrate that the underlying subject is different ...

Choosing and structuring a word, making a statement, and comprehending the formulated statement require complexprinciples andprocesses. Within this context, complicated procedures and processes might be faced in the second language learning as well. Learning a second language means grasping the syntacticprinciples of a language and transforming these principles into language skills. In our very specific study, ten Syrian primary school students comingfrom diverse psychological and sociological backgrounds, and being at varying ages were investigated. The participants were asked to narrate the pictured book Frog, Where Are You? by Mercer Mayer in Turkish language and the narrations were audio-taped by the researchers. Based on a descriptive research design, the data were collected and analysed qualitatively. As a result of this study which investigated the morphosyntactic developmental features of Syrian primary school students, diverse and common morpho-syntactic features were detec...

The position of the reason-asking ‘why’ has been under much discussion for the past few years. Although some have suggested that it is situated within the CP domain, its exact position varies depending on different proposals. Meanwhile, a noncanonical why-like ‘what’ has also attracted much attention. Some assume it to be merged to the top of a sentence while some assume it to be merged lower. In this study, new evidence is provided to show that in Chinese the reason-asking ‘why’ should be merged to the Int(errogative)P in the CP zone, confirming Rizzi’s (2001) and Tsai’s (2008) claims, whereas the why-like ‘what’ should be merged as low as in vP but target the topmost of a clause, supposedly ForceP, by covert movement.

This study investigates two types of adjunct WHAT merged at peripheral positions in Chinese. The L-WHAT denotes a why-interpretation with an aggressive, prohibitive force. A VP shell construction is adopted to accommodate the L-WHAT. The H-WHAT is merged at the left periphery of a sentence and is exclusively used in expressing a speaker’s refutatory force without interrogativity. The two WHATs are encoded with different modalities: the L-WHAT with root modality while the H-WHAT with epistemic modality. Such is a natural consequence if it is assumed that the former is derived from vP and the latter CP. It is proposed that the interpretation of the two types of WHAT is compositionally derived from the modality and the speaker force that each WHAT carries. This study not only explores the origins of different interpretations of adjunct WHATs, but also advances a uniform approach in mapping the speaker force unto syntax.

Bantu languages, which are spoken throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa, permit wh-questions to be constructed in multiple ways, including wh-in-situ, full wh-movement, and partial wh-movement. Shona, a Bantu language spoken by about 13 million people in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, allows all three of these types. In this dissertation, I conduct the first in-depth examination of Shona wh-questions, drawing on fifty hours of elicitation with a native speaker consultant to explore the derivational relationships among these strategies.

Wh-in-situ questions have received a wide variety of treatments in the syntactic literature, ranging from covert or disguised movement to postsyntactic binding of the wh-phrase by a silent question operator. In Bantu languages, wh-in-situ questions are often taken to be derived via a non-movement relation (e.g., Carstens 2005 for Kilega, Diercks 2010 for Lubukusu, Muriungi 2003 for Kîîtharaka, Sabel 2000 for Kikuyu and Duala, Sabel & Zeller 2006 for Zulu, Schneider-Zioga 2007 for Kinande), but alternatives have rarely been considered. I demonstrate how movement-based analyses that have been proposed for wh-in-situ in non-Bantu languages make the wrong predictions for Shona wh-in-situ, which lacks word order permutation, extraction marking, island effects, and intervention effects. These properties provide support for the traditional Bantuist view that the relation between the pronunciation site of an in-situ wh-phrase and its scopal position in the left periphery is not movement; I claim that in Shona it is unselective binding.

Many Bantu languages, including Shona, prohibit wh-phrases from appearing in the canonical preverbal subject position. Wasike (2007) demonstrates that this restriction applies to topicalized non-subjects as well as preverbal subjects. I replicate these results for Shona and argue that they cast doubt on Sabel & Zeller's (2006) attempt to characterize the ban with an appeal to improper movement. I argue instead that restrictions on the distribution of wh-in-situ in Bantu are tied to restrictions on the domain for focus licensing. This claim is further bolstered by an examination of crosslinguistic variation within Bantu with respect to whether the ban on in-situ preverbal wh-subjects applies in embedded clauses. I observe a previously unnoticed generalization: languages that universally ban in-situ preverbal wh-subjects (like Zulu) have immediately after the verb (IAV) focus effects; languages that do allow in-situ preverbal wh-subjects in embedded clauses (like Shona, Lubukusu, and Kîîtharaka) also lack IAV effects.

Full wh-movement in Shona gives rise to questions that bear a certain similarity to English wh-questions. However, using a range of diagnostics including extraction marking, island effects, reconstruction effects, and the distribution of temporal modifiers, I argue that what appears to be full wh-movement in Shona actually has a cleft structure: the wh-phrase moves to become the head of a relative clause, which is selected by a copula in the matrix clause. Just as in wh-in-situ, an ex-situ wh-phrase is pronounced lower than its scopal position, and the relation between these two positions is established via unselective binding. Additional evidence for this proposal comes from the sensitivity of partial wh-movement to island boundaries below but not above the pronunciation site of the wh-phrase, a pattern that has been predicted by previous analyses (e.g., Abels 2012, Sabel 2000, Sabel & Zeller 2006) but for which empirical support has been lacking until now. I therefore unify full and partial wh-movement under a single analysis for cleft-based wh-in-situ that involves a step of relativization (independently needed for relative clauses) and a step of unselective binding (independently needed for wh-in-situ).

The Causative/Inchoative alternation involves pairs of verbs, one of which is causative and the other non-causative syntactically and semantically (e.g., John broke the window vs. The window broke). In its causative use, an alternating verb is used transitively and understood as externally
caused. When used non-causatively, the verb is intransitive and interpreted as spontaneous. The alternation typically exhibits an affected argument (i.e., a Theme) in both intransitive and transitive uses, whereas the transitive use also involves a Causer that brings about the event.
Although they are often volitional agents (e.g., John broke the window with a stone), external causers may also be non-volitional causers (e.g., The earthquake broke the windows) and instruments (e.g., The hammer broke the window). Morphologically, languages exhibit different patterns reflecting the alternation, even intralinguistically. In languages like English, alternations are not morphologically coded, but they are in most languages. Languages like Hindi commonly mark causative (or transitive) alternations by means of different mechanisms, such as internal vowel changes or causative morphology. In many European languages, a subset of alternating verbs may exhibit an uncoded alternation, but most alternating verbs mark anticausativization with a reflexive-like clitic. In Yaqui (Uto-Aztecan), different patterns are associated with different verbal roots. The alternation may be uncoded, equipollent (i.e., both alternating forms are coded), and anticausative. Theoretically, different approaches have explored the alternation. Both lexical and syntactic causativization and anticausativization accounts have been proposed to explain the alternation. A third approach postulates that both forms are derived from a common source.

This paper examines the role of syntactic complexity in L2 reading outcomes across different EFL proficiency levels in an Indonesian university. Indonesian university students (N=148) at Intermediate and Advanced levels of proficiency read four English passages differing in syntactic complexity. The latter was measured by several widely used text modelling tools. Participants read two low and two high complexity texts and completed a post-test comprehension test. Syntactic complexity had a statistically significant but low magnitude effect size, accounting for 2%-5% of the variance of reading performance between the L2 English proficiency levels. There were also noticeable differences in text analysis measures across the different complexity tools. The usefulness of syntactic complexity as an isolated dimension of text complexity is evaluated. The contribution of this study to the field both in theory and practice is presented.

In this thesis, I propose that the distribution of nominal phrases is constrained by the relative positions of phi-features that nominal phrases contain. More specifically, I propose a condition according to which two syntactic nodes bearing visible phi-features cannot be directly merged. This constraint results in the well-described generalization according to which Agreement is severely limited in the Nominal Domain and complements to nominals may not bear direct case-marking, unlike the complements of verbs and prepositions. Next, I suggest that the propagation of phi-features can be blocked by a formal feature – epsilon – that is borne on such morphemes as prepositions and linkers, as well as oblique case markers. A nominal phrase merged with an epsilon may combine with another nominal phrase when a bare nominal phrase may not. Next, I argue that the syntactic identity of nouns can be fully reduced to phi-features. The proposed approach is shown to extend to adjectives – another category whose syntactic behavior is largely determined by the presence of phi-features. To that effect, I show that the ban on direct marking of the complements of both adjectives and nouns can be understood as a constraint on the merger of two phi-bearing structures. I show how the proposed theory can account for several well known syntactic phenomena, including the ban on double Absolutives in Ergative languages and the lack of Structural Dative marking in the Nominal Domain. The empirical data is mainly drawn from Slavic, Romance, Germanic and Iranian languages of the Indo-European family and from Nakh-Dagestanian languages.

This paper examines Minimal Search, an operation that is at the core of current Minimalist inquiry. We argue that, given Minimalist assumptions about structure building consisting of unordered set formation, there are serious difficulties in defining Minimal Search as a search algorithm. Furthermore, some problematic configurations for Minimal Search (namely, {XP, YP} and {X, Y}) are argued to be an artefact of these set-theoretic commitments. However, if unordered sets are given up as the format of structural descriptions in favour of directed graphs such that Merge(X, Y) creates an arc from X to Y, Minimal Search can be straightforwardly characterised as a sequential deterministic search algorithm: the total order required to define MS as a sequential search algorithm is provided by structure building.

This paper tackles the topic Akan Serialization which comes under the umbrella of multiverb
construction in Syntactic theory. Syntax is a central component of human language. Languages
has often been characterised as a systematic correlation between certain types of gestures and
meaning. (Van Valin, Jr. 2001). According to Matthews (1982: 1), the term syntax is taken from a
Greek word s ý ntaxis, a verbal noun which literally means ‘arrangement’ or setting out together’.
He argues that traditionally it refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which
words, with or without appropriate inflections are arranged to show connections of meaning within
the sentence. 
Syntax deals with how sentences are constructed, and users of human language deploy a striking
variety of arrangements of element in sentences.

This thesis discusses and implements Arabic data from the Syrian dialect within the Minimalist Machine program first created and developed for English and Japanese by Sandiway Fong and Jason Ginsberg. This thesis centers on implementing data found in Kristen Brustad’s The Syntax of Spoken Arabic: A Comparative Study (2000) and introduces a minimalist Arabic grammar into the Minimalist Machine program, a Prolog-based system [that uses an online server to self-contain the information recall]. The data and insights from Brustad, as well as other prevalent sources in Arabic syntax, were used to inform and compose the syntactic constraints for the Prolog-based system.

In this multidisciplinary paper I will argue that speech module is but the tip of the ice berg of language whereas other language modules – such as thought – are still concealed in the dark recesses of the human brain. Considering several paths of possibilities that come to mind, I intend to address the question of whether language is really particles or waves. In essaying to answer such inextricably complex question, I will shun exegetical polemics and draw on an equally complex theory: the quantum theory as advanced by Niels Bohr (1913) whose views have recently been much absorbed by scientific opinion. My aim is to instantiate a posteriori that language is essentially a form of energy – electrically charged particles (which I will call thotons) generated when electrons leap downward from one fixed orbit to another within the nerve cell. Adopting a deductive comparative approach, I will argue that since electrons entangle each other even if they are in discrete locations, the thotons – here defined as the linguistic bits – they emit are, by the same token, not tied down to any particular location; instead they can be anywhere and nowhere in the nerve cells of two or more minds even if they are on different sides of the globe.

The work is devoted to analyzing the plot and composition in the poetic texts of Yuri Levitansky and their cinematography features. There has been examined the lyric plot of the texts in the light of the definite grammatical categories – tense and taxis.
Lyrical poems of the analysed author are full of story lines; that is not typical for lyrics of XX century. The texts which show the events from author’s life prevail in the individual style of Y. Levitansky. Lyrical time in some poetic texts is prolonged while the other texts contain fasten time. There has been researched that prolonged time prevails while recollecting the youth.
Besides the analysis shows that a narrative type of the storyteller prevails in the author’s texts. It has been distinguished a specific type of text composition – scenario. There has been determined that composition and stylistic role of the titles intensifies the cinematography effect in the in the poetic text of Y. Levitansky. Lots of poetic texts may be gathered in different group; it creates the impression that there are several film series.

There is general agreement in the theoretical literature that the concept of ‘complex predicate’ refers to a multi-headed monoclausal structure, which means that at least two predicational constituents are merged to contribute to the overall predication of the clause. Complex predicates therefore challenge syntactic frameworks which define a clause as being headed by a single predicate. The term ‘complex predicate’ is also used in the typological literature to capture various syntactic constructions involving serial verbs, coverbs, preverbs, secondary predication, and noun incorporation.

This thesis focuses on coverb constructions (CVC) and serial verb constructions (SVC) in two unrelated languages. The selected languages are Wagiman from northern Australia and Vurës from northern Vanuatu. Wagiman makes extensive use of coverb-verb combinations, while Vurës has productive verb-verb combinations. The morphosyntax of Wagiman is synthetic and typical of a non-configurational language. Vurës is a predominantly analytic language with a strict SVO word order. This thesis evaluates the ability and constraints in forming complex predicates in both languages and calls into question whether there is a motivation to establish distinct categories like complex predicate, coverb construction, and serial verb construction, or whether the underlying conceptual structure is fundamentally identical.

I demonstrate that ‘complex predicate’ is not simply an umbrella term to cover various syntactic structures, but that it is a theoretical concept on the syntax-semantics interface. Drawing on previous merger analyses for complex predicates in combination with a VP-shell analysis from the Minimalist Program, it will be shown how the predicational constituents of
a complex predicate merge and how this can be represented syntactically. One of these constituents is located in ‘little v’, the other sits in ‘big V’. The v position is filled by the (light) verb in CVCs or by the main verb (V1) in SVCs, whereas the V position in CVCs is filled by the coverb, but in SVCs by a verb in the V2+ position. Cross-linguistically, other potentially predicational parts-of-speech can also occupy the V position, licensed through the Syntactic Position Hypothesis proposed in this thesis. The constituents in v and V undergo a merger, so that their combined argument structure and event structure correspond to those of a single
predicate. This confirms previous analyses which state that a complex predicate is conceptualised as a single event.

This thesis contributes to a better understanding of the theory of complex predicates by asking the question “What is and what is not a complex predicate?” I show that some structures which have been described as complex predicates are better analysed as adverbial constructions because they do not consist of two predicational constituents. A constituent in the adverbial position acts as a modifier of the predicate. This analysis is reminiscent of Svenonius’ (2016) categorisation of complex predicates into complementation and adjunction, although I arrive at a different conclusion. I argue that only v + V combinations are genuine complex predicates, whereas an adverbial construction is an adjunction, and therefore not a complex predicate.

To test various hypotheses of complex predicates, I collected material from previously published works and carried out fieldwork in Australia and Vanuatu. The relevant data have been annotated in ELAN and FLEx and are available in PARADISEC and AIATSIS.

This chapter discusses one of the major advances of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) relative to other theories of grammar: the view of grammatical relations as construction-based, and so not only language-specific but construction-specific, rather than being global categories of the whole language and being found in every language. We also discuss the RRG conception of the function of grammatical relations in referent tracking, which was one of the major insights that led to the development (and naming) of RRG. These two insights have influenced the development of ideas outside RRG.

This dissertation draws on the systematic nature of restrictions on code-switching (CS) to provide evidence concerning the morphosyntactic properties of wh-questions in Spanish and English, particularly with respect to inversion. CS allows one to independently control the language of individual words, and their associated syntactic properties, and observe the effect that those properties have on a given sentence's acceptability. In this way, CS becomes a tool of linguistic analysis.

Data comes from Spanish-English CS. Both Spanish and English exhibit a phenomenon known as subject-version, in which the subject is sometimes required to appear after the verb or auxiliary, but the structural requirements vary by language and include various factors. This raises two important questions that are the focus of this dissertation: (i) what head or phrase ultimately determines the word order (i.e. the grammatical subject positions) in a given wh-question? and (ii) what are the restrictions on code-switching between the complementizer head, the tense head, and the wh-phrase?

To answer these questions, a controlled experiment was conducted in which participants provided written acceptability judgments for both CS and equivalent monolingual sentences. In response to the first question, the results of this dissertation provide evidence that the complementizer is ultimately responsible for determining the properties of inversion for a given wh-question. Regarding the second question, the results also provides evidence for restrictions on code-switching between C and T and C and the wh-phrase. In particular, it provides evidence that a code-switch between an English simple wh-phrase and a Spanish C is ungrammatical in embedded questions with a Spanish T.

Additionally, this dissertation serves as one example of an experimental approach to investigating code-switching, particularly with respect to syntactic structure. There are a variety of different concerns that need to be addressed in conducting such research, and this dissertation offers one perspective.

In conclusion, the combination of controlled experimental methods and the unique analytical potential of CS to tease apart otherwise opaque syntactic relationships makes for a valuable tool for addressing a wide range of questions in theoretical linguistics.

In Construction Grammar, grammar is conceived as an inventory of form-function-meaning complexes of varying degrees of internal complexity and lexical fixity. These complexes range from single lexemes like the verb demur to multiword expressions like the VP sweep x under the rug to syntactic templates lacking any lexical content, like that used to form polar interrogative questions.  Whether we are describing a lexeme, a class of lexemes, a word with highly constrained selection properties (e.g., the adjective blithering) or a way to create a headed phrase of a particular type, we are describing patterns, because in each case we are describing the combinatoric properties of words.  But if we take pattern to mean a recurrent configuration containing some fixed and some variable components—which is presumably the standard sense of the term—only a phrasal template would seem to qualify. A verb by itself does not constitute a configuration, and a fixed expression like call it a day, while arguably phrasal, does not contain any open slots—it is inflexible. So can a word or a word class or a fixed formula really be a pattern? This puzzle is resolved in Sign Based Construction Grammar (SBCG; Sag 2012, Michaelis 2012, Kay and Sag 2012): all linguistic expressions are modeled as feature structures, whether these are signs or sign configurations, the latter of which are referred to as  constructs. The question of what forms the grammar licenses comes down to the question of whether a given feature structure of the type sign is well formed. SBCG analyzes lexical signs and constructs in much the same way: each kind of model object is deemed well formed (or not) according to its conformity to a feature-structure description of the type sign. The repertoire of signs includes lexemes with idiosyncratic valence requirements. The well formedness of a construct is determined indirectly, according to whether the construct’s mother sign conforms to a phrasal sign of the grammar. Because lexical signs and constructs are licensed in the same way, SBCG offers a uniform approach to all of the expressions—both lexemic and templatic—that populate the idiomaticity continuum. This point will be made using two patterns from antipodal points on the idiomaticity continuum, the negative polarity item a red cent and the abstract auxiliary-initial pattern, which captures properties common to numerous construct types in English. A pattern in SBCG is a feature-structure description, whether the feature structure describes a local tree (a combination of signs) or a single sign. Key to this approach is the idea that we can factor out phrasal information from multi-word expressions, allowing independently motivated phrasal constructions like the Head-Functor construction to create phrases from idiom words.

Kay, Paul and Ivan A. Sag. 2012. Discontinuous Dependencies and Complex Determiners. In H. Boas and I. Sag, (eds.), Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 211-238.

Michaelis, Laura A. 2012. Making the Case for Construction Grammar. In H. Boas and I. Sag, (eds.), Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 31-69.

Sag, Ivan A. 2012. Sign-Based Construction Grammar: An Informal Synopsis. In Hans Boas and Ivan A. Sag, (eds.), Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 69-202.

In this paper we will analyze the conceptual and computational motivations of the property of displacement in natural languages from a revisited perspective. We will account for displacement phenomena proposing our own version of displacement-as-external token Merge, as opposed to the traditional displacement-as-literal movement or, more recently, displacement-as-copy and Merge (Chomsky, 1995; Kitahara, 1997; Nunes, 2004). Our focus, as far as empirical data is concerned, will be set on parasitic gaps and their derivation, comparing our proposal with previous accounts making particular stress on the idea that operations are not feature-driven but interface-driven.

We examine the morphology, syntax, and semantics of number in
Balinese. All Balinese pronouns are singular, and non-reduplicated common nouns have general number. Regular and associative plural constructions allow for expression of nominal plurality. Common nouns can also be reduplicated, which often (but not always) indicates plural meaning. In the verbal domain, reduplication generally marks pluractionality. We show that reduplication is a derivational process which can imply rather than encode plural meaning. We also explore parallels between nominal and verbal plurality, examining inclusive/exclusive plural readings in nominal and verbal domains, and associative pluractionality in the verbal domain.

This short article aims to explicate some of the key arguments for the determiner phrase hypothesis (DP hypothesis). The goal is to show that within the framework of current formal syntactic analysis, the DP hypothesis is not an alternative but a mandatory hypothesis for a consistent valid syntactic analysis of the English sentence. The article builds on an inclusive notion of the category of determiner based on shared distributional features of its sub-categories. Key arguments for the DP hypothesis build around previous ones such as those made by Abney (1987) but mainly focus on new and fresh insights that take into account holistic and logical arguments and focus on the particular case of expletives as a unique type of determiners.

In the paper, morphosyntactic types of complex sentences in Korean are considered, in particular, sentential complement sentences, including clauses that correspond to European infinitive clauses, as well as modal / analytic constructions. Different types of embedded clauses, or predi-cations, are compared based on formal tests to determine the degree of dependence of the em-bedded clause and the matrix clause. That is, the embedded clause and its predicate can undergo reduction to some extent, or certain morphosyntactic features can be required to coincide in the main and embedded clauses.

This chapter describes salient characteristics of Balinese, Sasak, and Sumbawa, the languages that form a distinct subgroup within Malayo-Polynesian, called “Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa” (BSS) (Esser 1938, Dyen 1965, 1982, Mbete 1990).

In terms of their voice systems characterising Austronesian (AN) languages (cf. Himmelmann 2005), BSS languages show a continuum: from clear symmetrical voice morphosyntax and sporadic person marking in Balinese to Sumbawa with its lack of voice system, but pervasive person indexing on verbs. Sasak dialects show properties in between the two, with certain dialects exhibiting various degrees of attrition in Austronesian voice morphology and the emergence of argument/person indexing. For example, NN-Sasak is more like Balinese in showing verbal morphological marking for its AV-UV opposition whereas MM-Sasak is more like Sumbawa in lacking such verbal voice opposition.

In terms of other morphosyntactic properties characterizing AN languages, the BSS languages share the following same typological features: post-posed possessors, no alienable/inalienable distinction, negators in pre-predicate position, and V-initial or SVX, rather than V-second of V-final, constituent order. On a broader note, the varying degrees of attrition and disappearance of AV voice morphology in certain dialects of Sasak and a total loss of it in Sumbawa clearly indicates that Lombok and Sumbawa are transitional zones towards a full-fledged subject (S/A) person marking/indexing system as typically found in the Austronesian languages of Sumba in eastern Indonesia.
In terms of their clausal and phrasal syntax, the BSS languages are head-initial; e.g. preposition instead of postposition, VO instead of OV, the noun head preceding modifiers, the auxiliary (expressing TAM information) occurring before the main verb. They exhibit grammatical relations with robust morphosyntactic evidence for syntactic PIVOT/SUBJ, particularly in Balinese and NN-Sasak. All BSS languages are not case-marking languages. Yet, the distinction between core and non-core or Oblique arguments is typically clear: core arguments, which include intransitive subject, the agent-like argument, and the patient-like argument, occur in unmarked form (i.e. bare NP). On the other hand, non-cores or obliques, which typically express peripheral semantic roles, such as locations or instruments, appear with prepositional flagging. Alternations of argument status can therefore be assessed through this flagging, which also often correlate with verbal marking, such as the presence of applicative (transitivising) morphology.

While this discussion has provided a succinct overview of BSS languages at various linguistic interfaces, there are many areas that would benefit from additional research. For instance, it remains unclear whether similar bare stems like lalo ‘go’ in Sasak and Sumbawa, and teri? ‘come’ in Sasak / teri’ in Sumbawa are indeed verbs; or whether the bound roots such as -rari ‘run’ in Sasak and Sumbawa are also verbs, or precategories. Thus, similar research to Clynes (2010) and Mistica et al (2010) is needed in Sasak and Sumbawa to settle the issue on roots and word classes in these two languages. Further, while Sumbawa has types of serial verb constructions as seen in Balinese, more research is needed to uncover their properties and distinguish them from ordinary bi-clausal coordination/subordination structures. Finally, the distinction of finite clauses is well studied in Balinese (Natarina 2018), but could benefit from additional investigation and comparative analysis in Sasak and Sumbawa.

This paper addresses partial wh-movement in Shona ([sna], Bantu, Zimbabwe), which is sensitive to islands below but not above the pronunciation site of the wh-phrase. This contrasts with partial wh-movement in languages such as Kîîtharaka (Muriungi 2003, Abels 2012) and Singaporean Malay (Cole & Hermon 1998), which is sensitive to islands both below and above the pronunciation site. I argue for a composite derivation of the Shona phenomenon: the wh-phrase moves overtly to its pronunciation site at an intermediate clause boundary, where it is unselectively bound by a null operator in the scopal position.

I show that in Shona partial wh-movement, the relation between the wh-phrase's base position and its pronunciation site patterns like full wh-movement in terms of island sensitivity, cleft structure, extraction marking, and reconstruction effects. On the other hand, the relation between the wh-phrase's pronunciation site and its scopal position displays the same lack of island sensitivity and lack of extraction marking exhibited by wh-in-situ in this language. Thus, Shona partial wh-movement can be reduced to a hybrid of full wh-movement and wh-in-situ. This composite derivation has been predicted to be possible (Sabel 2000, Abels 2012), but clear empirical support for it has been lacking until now.

The representations, operations, and principles of syntactic theories are generally held to be claims about how language is actually implemented in the human brain (Chomsky, 1965; 1995; Sprouse & Hornstein, 2016). For this reason, there is powerful potential for research on the nature of linguistic deficits due to brain damage, or aphasia, to inform syntactic theory. This is particularly so given that there exist disorders that appear to impair core aspects of language, such as agrammatism. Likewise, researchers and clinicians that seek to characterize the deficits in patients with aphasia and to develop assessment and treatment protocols can in principle greatly benefit from the insights into the nature of language provided by syntactic theory. However, there is currently little interaction between theoretical syntax and aphasiology. This is likely due to several reasons, including sociological ones such as the lack of researchers proficient in both fields and ineffective communication among researchers from these very different traditions. However, we suspect that there are deeper reasons for this disconnect. In particular, we suggest two fundamental obstacles: (i) a lack of insight into how grammatical operations apply to real-time sentence processing, and (ii) a focus by syntactic theories on grammatical operations, principles and modules that do not line up well with the currency of functional neuroimaging and neuropsychology: the cortical area. In addition, the assumption that 'agrammatism' is a syndrome caused by a single underlying cognitive source potentially related to a syntactic module is likely false, as is the assumption that damage to Broca's area is necessary and sufficient to cause agrammatism and/or Broca's aphasia. These are related to issues that have been raised by previous authors (Badecker & Caramazza, 1985; Embick & Poeppel, 2005; Embick & Poeppel, 2015; Mohr et al., 1978), and we reinforce them here. In this chapter we will first outline the methods of research in aphasia and how they have been applied to syntax. Following this, we will review the history of the interaction of these two fields, particularly with respect to the putative syndrome of " agrammatism " that is most relevant to syntactic theory. We will make key observations about the successes and failures of this research. In light of these failures, we propose splitting agrammatism into at least two separate syndromes: one that is tied to deficits in domain-general verbal working memory resources, and another that is tied to a content-addressable memory (CAM) retrieval system operating over syntactic features (McElree et al., 2003; Lewis & Vasishth, 2005). This distinction allows us to capture aspects of agrammatism that appear to be domain-general as well as those that appear to be specific to language. We then suggest some helpful steps to reconnect syntactic theory to the study of aphasia.

This paper presents very concretely on French examples  the choices to be made when devising a mecanism for analysing and understanding sentences, as applied to French in particular. The methodology presented is functionalist, operationalist and resolutely privilegies an onomasiologic approach.

Hittite attests two distinct second positions, occupied by (a) Wackernagel enclitics; (b) non-Wackernagel enclitics -(m)a, -(y)a as well as stressed indefinite and correlative pronouns. I argue that Hittite provides novel data on the syntax-prosody interface as reflected in the operation of the second position constraint: the words belonging to group (b) combine properties which are typically ascribed to stressed and unstressed second position constituents. These findings show that the boundary between the stressed, syntactically conditioned second position exemplified by Germanic verb-second and the unstressed, phonologically conditioned second position of Wackernagel enclitics is much more blurred than is commonly acknowledged.

Slides explicativos de estruturas de movimento sintático propostas por Richards (1997,2002) em sua tese "What moves where when in which language?" (1997) e livro "Movement in languages: interactions and archtectures" (2002) dentro do quadro do minimalismo.

This collaborative book has a twofold purpose. On the one hand, the authors present a new framework – Radical Minimalism. The development of such a framework, with a strong basis on mathematics and physics, was born out of the conviction that, if language is really a natural object, there is no a priori reason to study it in isolation from other natural systems. On the other hand, this work represents a significant simplification of the theory of displacement and so-called «empty categories» within the latest development of Chomsky’s Strong Minimalist Hypothesis, applying Occam’s razor and fulfilling Lakatos’ requirements for scientific evolution. Radical Minimalism thus accounts not only for the phenomena orthodox minimalism has explanations for, but also for empirical problems that have not yet been taken into consideration.

This research project explores the relationship between language learning beliefs and the levels of syntactic complexity in the learner's use of the language learned. It is hypothesized that language learning beliefs partly account for the levels of complexity in syntactic output. To test the hypothesis, one hundred and fifty-two (N=152) English-proficient freshman students were surveyed with the Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory/BALLI 2.0 (Horwitz, 2013). Their syntactic output was collected through formal exams held in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) undergraduate courses taught at the International University of Sarajevo. The written samples were converted to an electronic format and analyzed with the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (Lu, 2014; 2010). The results show statistically significant weak negative correlations between seven indices of syntactic complexity and the 'Motivation' BALLI subscale. The results also show statistically significant weak negative correlations between two indices of syntactic complexity and the 'Orientation' BALLI subscale.

Magmoids satisfying the 15 fundamental equations of graphs, namely graphoids, are introduced. Automata on directed hypergraphs are defined by virtue of a relational graphoid. The closure properties of the so-obtained class are investigated, and a comparison is being made with the class of syntactically recognizable graph languages. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.