Since the 1990s, there have been major developments in the variationist approach to morphological and syntactic variation and change in European Spanish. This research area has garnered increasing interest because of the various morphosyntactic phenomena available for study. A significant amount of work on morphological and syntactic variation and change has been devoted to analyzing the linguistic differences among variants and the social and stylistic communicative settings in which they are used. The main phenomena studied in European Spanish are classified in three main groups: variation of personal pronouns, variation of verbal forms, and variation of syntactic constructions.
Morphological and syntactic variants are linguistic choices constructed in a meaningful way that reveal speakers’ perceptions of real-world events and are projected stylistically onto the domain of discourse and interaction. Effective engagement with these choices requires the adoption of a broad, multifaceted notion of meaning to overcome earlier methodological controversies about studying variation at the morphological and syntactic levels because of the meaning that variants convey. In recent years, variation theory has benefited greatly from research in cognitive linguistics, a field whose basic tenet is that grammatical structures reflect the human perception of events. In fact, the most modern theoretical approach to morphosyntactic variation is based on the study of the cognitive meanings underlying variants, which is at the core of the empirical concerns of cognitive sociolinguistics. From a cognitive viewpoint, language is not a separate ability within the realm of human cognition; rather, it is developed along with all other cognitive skills. Studies of morphosyntactic variation address the social contexts in which variation takes place to adequately explain linguistic variation phenomena.
The analysis of the communicative and cognitive backgrounds of morphological and syntactic variation challenges the traditional, structural, and behavioral concepts of linguistic variability and change. Thus, the study of these changes reflects the diversity and evolution of ways of thinking.
Article
Morphological and Syntactic Variation and Change in European Spanish
María José Serrano
Article
Object-Fronting in Archaic Chinese
Victor Junnan Pan and Yihe Jiao
The SOV order is very productive in Archaic Chinese. Most scholars believe that Archaic Chinese has SVO as basic word order and that SOV is derived by fronting the direct object from the postverbal position to a preverbal position. The most frequent cases involving object fronting in Archaic Chinese are those with pronominal objects. For instance, when the direct object is an interrogative pronoun, a demonstrative, or an ordinary personal pronoun appearing in a negative sentence, it is usually fronted to a preverbal position. Historically, object fronting has already been observed in oracle bone script, and gradually disappeared in the Han dynasty (202 bce–220 ce). After the Wei and Jin dynasties (220–420 ce), object fronting was extremely rare, and it only occurred in fixed expressions, which even stay in Modern Chinese in the early 21st century. Object fronting in Archaic Chinese can be roughly classified into two categories: unmarked object fronting and marked object fronting. The former category includes cases in which the object is positioned in a preverbal position or a pre-prepositional position without any morphosyntactic marking devices, while the latter category includes cases in which the fronted object can be either preceded or followed by some morphosyntactic markers. For instance, a fronted object can be followed by shì (是) or zhī (之), both of which are the most frequent markers co-occurring with a fronted object in Archaic Chinese. Given that both zhī (之) and shì (是) were used as pronouns and demonstratives in Archaic Chinese, when they appear in sentences involving object fronting, some scholars treat them as resumptive pronouns referring to the object NP. Due to the presence of the resumptive pronoun, object NP is allowed to be fronted in a preverbal position. In fact, there is no fixed position as a landing site for fronted objects in Archaic Chinese; instead, different preverbal positions exist. Fronted objects can be followed by functional elements of different categories: negative elements such as bù (不), wèi (未), mò (莫), and wú (无); ordinary adverbs such as qián (前) ‘before’ and jūn (均) ‘all’; modal verbs such as néng (能) ‘be able to’, dé (得) ‘be able to’, gǎn (敢) ‘dare’, and kěn (肯) ‘be willing to’; control verbs such as rěn (忍) ‘bear’ and zhī (知) ‘know’; conjunctions such as yì (亦) ‘and’, yòu (又) ‘and, as well as’, and shàng (尚) ‘yet’; and modal adverbs such as qí (其) indicating a rhetorical meaning, jiāng (将) ‘will, would’ and qiě (且) ‘will, would’. Object fronting in Archaic Chinese is closely linked to information structure. For instance, when the focalized element in a negative sentence is the direct object, then such an object will be fronted.
Article
Acquisition of Inflection in Romance Languages
Christophe Parisse
Inflection is present in all Romance languages, even if at times it can be replaced by the use of clitic elements. It is therefore a crucial feature of the language for children to acquire. The acquisition of inflected forms was studied in the nominal, verbal, and adjectival systems because it is present from the very first forms produced by children. Data are presented from the literature for six languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, and Romanian. For all these languages, there exist open access corpus data available on the CHILDES website, which make it possible to have first-hand access to actual spoken data for these languages. Results show that children produce correct forms very early on for the most frequent grammatical elements (by age 2 for most children, but sometimes as early as age 18 months). This includes the use of nouns and determiners in both genders, and the use of verbs in the present, perfect, and imperative forms. Verbs are produced first in the third person, followed by the other persons. Nouns and verbs are used in the singular form before being used in the plural form. Other more complex grammatical forms, such as, for example, the imperfective past tense or the present conditional, emerge only later, and this is probably related to the semantics of the forms rather than their complexity. In most cases, there is correct agreement between noun and determiner, or verb and personal pronoun, or noun and verb. Errors are infrequent, and the nature of the errors can be used as means to study the mechanisms of language acquisition.
Article
Raeto-Romance: Romansh, Ladin, Friulian
Luca Melchior
Raeto-Romance languages are spoken in northeastern Italy and (south)eastern Switzerland. They are subdivided into three major groups: Romansh, with about 40,000 speakers in Switzerland; Dolomite Ladin, with about 30,000 speakers in the Italian South Tyrol, Trentino, and Veneto; and Friulian—whose speaker number is estimated between 420,000 and 600,000—in the Italian Friuli and in eastern Veneto. The (supposed) linguistic unity of these subgroups bases on phonological and morphological features like the retention of Lat. clusters C+l, sigmatic noun plural, sigmatic second-person singular ending, palatalization of Lat. c
a
, g
a
, and syncope of proparoxytones, which separate them from Italian dialects. Other features, such as verb–subject (clitic) inversion in interrogative sentences, are more or less spread, and others like periphrastic future or differential object marking are characteristic only for one or few subvarieties. The unity (and uniqueness) of the Raeto-Romance group is hardly debated.
The three groups do not have a common history and do not correspond to a unique political entity. Therefore, they show different language contact phenomena, whereby Romansh and Dolomite Ladin are characterized by a strong influence from German, while Friulian has been historically influenced by Germanic and Slavic languages, but much more from Venetan and Italian. Standardization efforts do not have the same success in the three areas: rumantsch grischun and Standard Friulian dominate in the official written uses in Grisons and Friuli, whereas the use of ladin dolomitan is more marginal. Romansh and Dolomite Ladin are compulsory subjects in school education while Friulian is only an optional subject.
Article
Sentence Fragment Ellipsis in Chinese
Audrey Yen-hui Li and Ting-chi Wei
Understanding what sentence fragments requires a detailed investigation of their properties. Relevant studies have classified fragments into four types according to the use of the copular verb shi ‘be’ with fragments: the occurrence of the sentence-final particle ne, syntactic categories allowed, island effects, P-stranding, and connectivity effects. It is shown that the distinction of fragments into different types is not necessary. The wider range of data considered fails to convincingly support the need for distinction, and a unified analysis of all fragments should be pursued. Three logical possibilities for a unified approach to sentence fragments are evaluated: (a) fragment as a result of deleting all but the fragment of a sentence (movement + deletion approach), (b) fragment base-generated as [pro + copular verb + fragment], and (c) fragment base-generated as a fragment. The first two options face challenges. The last option, even though seemingly a more adequate analysis for the range of facts, requires connectivity effects to be analyzed in semantic terms.
Article
Sluicing and Predicate Ellipsis in Chinese
Audrey Yen-hui Li and Ting-chi Wei
This article focuses on sluicing-like constructions and those that have been subsumed under predicate ellipsis—the Aux(iliary)-construction (VP-ellipsis) and the shi-construction. Important facts and main analyses are evaluated in regard to their strengths and weaknesses, leaving some issues for further research. Regarding the sluicing-like construction, this article shows that neither the approach of base-generating a clause [pro (+ copula) + wh] nor the movement + deletion approach fully accommodates all the relevant facts. Nor is it adequate to adopt both derivations simultaneously, as it would wrongly allow sentences that are unacceptable in a number of cases. The second part of this article briefly compares the Aux-construction and the shi-construction. The two differ in the size of the part that is missing—in the former, a Verb Phrase (VP) licensed by an auxiliary, and in the latter, a Tense Phrase (TP) licensed by the verb shi. Neither one allows extraction from within the missing VP/TP, pointing to the advantage of a Logical Form (LF)–copying approach over a Phonological Form–deletion approach.
Article
Southern Gallo-Romance: Occitan and Gascon
Andres M. Kristol
Occitan, a language of high medieval literary culture, historically occupies the southern third of France. Today it is dialectalized and highly endangered, like all the regional languages of France. Its main linguistic regions are Languedocien, Provençal, Limousin, Auvergnat, Vivaro-dauphinois (Alpine Provençal) and, linguistically on the fringes of the domain, Gascon. Despite its dialectalization, its typological unity and the profound difference that separates it from Northern Galloroman (Oïl dialects, Francoprovençal) and Gallo-Italian remain clearly perceptible. Its history is characterised by several ruptures (the Crusade against the Albigensians, the French Revolution) and several attempts at "rebirth" (the Baroque period, the Felibrige movement in the second half of the 19th century, the Occitanist movement of the 20th century). Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the Occitan koinè, a literary and administrative language integrating the main dialectal characteristics of all regions, was lost and replaced by makeshift regional spellings based on the French spelling. The modern Occitanist orthography tries to overcome these divisions by coming as close as possible to the medieval, "classical" written tradition, while respecting the main regional characteristics. Being a bridge language between northern Galloroman (Oïl varieties and Francoprovençal), Italy and Iberoromania, Occitan is a relatively conservative language in terms of its phonetic evolution from the popular spoken Latin of western Romania, its morphology and syntax (absence of subject clitics in the verbal system, conservation of a fully functional simple past tense). Only Gascon, which was already considered a specific language in the Middle Ages, presents particular structures that make it unique among Romance languages (development of a system of enunciative particles).
Article
Verb Positions and Basic Clause Structure in Germanic
Jan-Wouter Zwart
The syntax of the modern Germanic languages is characterized by a word order pattern whereby the finite verb appears to the immediate right of the first constituent (“verb second” or V2). In canonical verb-second languages (German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish), verb second is limited to main clauses, yielding a main-embedded clause asymmetry, characteristic of the syntax of many Germanic languages. In the standard generative analysis, dating from the 1970s, the derivation of the verb-second pattern involves two ordered steps: (a) verb movement to the complementizer position C and (b) phrasal movement of an arbitrary constituent to the specifier position of the complementizer phrase. While this analysis remains a popular starting point for generative treatments of Germanic verb second, later developments have posed serious problems for the approach. These developments include (a) the articulation of a more detailed structure of the functional domain of the clause, providing a range of possible landing sites for the finite verb in verb-second clauses; (b) higher standards of descriptive and explanatory adequacy, necessitating well-motivated triggers for each individual movement step; (c) the development of the minimalist program, involving a sharper definition of what counts as syntactic operations, allowing for the possibility that certain processes previously considered syntactic are now better regarded as post-syntactic linearization processes; and (d) the widening of the empirical scope of verb-second research, including a range of related phenomena (such as verb-first or verb-third orders) not easily accommodated within the traditional frame. These developments make the study of verb second an exciting field in current syntactic theory, in which the varied and well-studied phenomena of Germanic continue to provide a fertile ground for the advancement of theory and description.
Article
(Non-)Local Dependencies in Germanic
Augustin Speyer
Dependencies in the Germanic languages are usually established by local configurations in which one element is in the sphere of influence of another. Non-local dependencies are defined as dependencies holding between elements that are not in such a configuration that one element is in the sphere of influence of the other, at least not on the surface. Non-local dependencies can arise as a result of movement, and mostly do so, but there are counterexamples. This article reviews some common non-local dependency phenomena found in the Germanic languages, namely, extraposed relative clauses, predicative adjectives, split topicalization, preposition stranding, long-distance reflexivization, and long wh-movement. For each phenomenon, hints to the analysis are given, and it is checked in which Germanic languages the phenomenon occurs. The focus is on modern Germanic languages, although occasionally the perspective is widened to older stages of Germanic languages. For all cited phenomena with exception of predicative adjectives and long-distance reflexivization, it can be shown that the non-locality of the dependence arises as a result of movement. It is thus spurious non-locality. Predicative adjectives receive their inflectional features by control, whereas for long-distance reflexivization, explanations have been brought forward that center on the question of whether anaphoricity is a sufficient condition on the use of a reflexive pronoun.
Article
Liheci ‘Separable Words’ in Mandarin Chinese
Kuang Ye and Haihua Pan
Liheci ‘separable words’ is a special phenomenon in Mandarin Chinese, and it refers to an intransitive verb with two or more syllables that allows the insertion of syntactic modifiers or an argument in between the first syllable and the second or the rest of syllables with the help of the nominal modifier marker de. There are two major groups of Liheci: those stored in the lexicon, such as bangmang ‘help’, lifa ‘haircut’, and shenqi ‘anger’, and those derived in syntax through noun-to-verb incorporation, such as chifan ‘eat meal’, leiqiang ‘build wall’, in which fan ‘meal’ and qiang ‘wall’ are incorporated into chi ‘eat’ and lei ‘build’, respectively, to function as temporary verbal compounds. The well-known behavior of Liheci is that it can be separated by nominal modifiers or a syntactic argument. For example, bangmang ‘help’ can be used to form a verb phrase bang Lisi-de mang ‘give Lisi a help’ by inserting Lisi and a nominal modifier marker, de, between bang and mang, with bang being understood as the predicate and Lisi-de mang as the object. Although Lisi appears as a possessor marked by de, it should be understood as the theme object of the compound verb. In similar ways, the syntactic–semantic elements such as agent, theme, adjectives, measure phrases, relative clauses, and the like can all be inserted between the two components of bangmang, deriving verb phrases like (Zhangsan) bang Zhangsan-de mang ‘(Zhangsan) do Zhangsan’s help’, where Zhangsan is the agent; bang-le yi-ci mang ‘help once’, where yi-ci is a measure phrase; and bang bieren bu xiang bang de mang ‘give a help that others don’t want to give’, where bieren bu xiang bang is a relative clause. The same insertions can be found in Liheci formed in syntax. For example, chi liang-ci fan ‘eat two time’s meal’ (eat meals twice), lei san-tian qiang ‘build three day’s wall’ (build walls for three days).
There are three syntactic-semantic properties exhibited in verb phrases formed with Liheci: first, possessors being understood as Liheci’s logical argument; second, interdependent relation between the predicate and the complement; and, third, obligatory use of verbal classifiers instead of nominal classifiers.
In this article, first, five influential analyses in the literature are reviewed, pointing out their strengths and weaknesses. Then, the cognate object approach is discussed. Under this approach, Lihecis are found to be intransitive verbs that are capable of taking nominalized reduplicates of themselves as their cognate objects. After a complementary deletion on the verb and its reduplicate object in the Phonetic Form (PF), all the relevant verb phrases can be well derived, with no true separation involved in the derivation, as all the copies of Liheci in question remain intact all along. After a discussion of the relevant syntactic structures, it is shown that with this syntactic capacity, all participants involved in the events can be successfully accommodated and correctly interpreted. The advantage can be manifested in six aspects, demonstrating that this proposal fares much better than other approaches.
