This paper provides a semantic analysis of the particles afinal (European Portuguese) and alla fine (Italian) in terms of the notion of truth unpersistence, which can be situated at the intersection of epistemic modality and discourse structure. In the analysis proposed, the particles are propositional operators and require that the truth of a proposition p* fail to persist through a temporal succession of epistemic states, this proposition being incompatible with the prejacent, and that the interlocutors share knowledge of a previous epistemic attitude toward p*. We analyze two main cases (plan-related and non plan-related propositions) and also show that these particles are indexical to one (or more) epistemic agent(s) and allow for shifts in perspective.
The goal of this paper is to account for instances of anaphors that appear to be exempt from Condition A, based on the French anaphors son propre (‘his own’) and lui-même (≈ ‘himself’). Drawing on specific tests, I show that such anaphors must be anteceded by logophoric centers, specifically either by attitude holders or by empathy loci. This generalization is explained if we suppose the existence of silent logophoric operators that corefer with the antecedent and locally bind the anaphor: apparently exempt anaphors are in fact not exempt. This accounts for why they have the same form as anaphors standardly obeying Condition A: they are one and the same element. Their specific distribution and interpretation derives from their silent logophoric binder.
In this paper we discuss the argument structure of psych verbs in connection with information structure, particularly object experiencer psych verbs (OEPVs), which select an accusative and/or dative argument. We propose that the natural order available in all-focus sentences for dative OEPVs is OVS, whereas the order for accusative OEPVs is SVO. Any rearrangement of these two patterns is caused by a different information structure interpretation.
I observe that the Aktionsart of the underlying VP within the participle plays a key role in the (un-)availability of event-related modification in Spanish adjectival passives: telic VPs disallow event-related modifiers, but stative causative VPs allow them. I adopt a temporal syntax framework (Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 2000 et seq) for the structure of the VP, and propose that the temporal argument (EV-T) of telic verbs is external to the VP. Adjectivization happens before EV-T projects and thus the event is not spatio-temporally instantiated, effectively barring event-related modification. Stative causatives’ temporal argument is internal to the VP and thus adjectivization cannot prevent its projection.
This study explores phonetic and social variation in coda (-ɾ) production in Buenos Aires Spanish. Although the traditionally described canonical realization of coda /-ɾ/ is occlusion + vocalic element, our results reveal that the “lenited” approximant + vocalic element is the most frequent variant, and that deletion, approximant, trill, and fricative realizations also exist. We found higher rates of lenited forms in informal speech and among younger, male, and working-class speakers. Higher percentages of canonical forms in careful speech and among older, female, and middle-class speakers indicate possible hypercorrection. Finally, we question the “canonical” status of coda (-ɾ) as occlusion + vocalic element, calling for the consideration of variant frequency and context in establishing a baseline description of coda /-ɾ/.
This study investigates the acquisition of vowel-vowel sequences across words in twenty-five L2 Spanish learners. Building on González & Weissglass (2016), it analyzes their acoustic realization and examines the incidence of hiatus maintenance, hiatus resolution, and glottal stop epenthesis in L2 Spanish. Eight Spanish native speakers are included for comparison. Based on our data, we propose a preliminary Optimality-Theoretic account of the different stages that L2 learners go through when acquiring vowel-vowel sequences. We find evidence for three possible target grammars in our dataset, which correlate with dialectal differences. Two of these grammars appear to have been acquired by some of the L2 learners investigated.
This paper reports on a preliminary production experiment in order to argue that word-word compounds with a left or right prosodic adjunct in Brazilian Portuguese (e.g., porta-guarda-chuva ‘umbrella holder’, lit. holder keep rain, and mico-leão-dourado ‘golden-lion-tamarin’, lit. tamarin lion golden, in which the adjunct is in bold) are prosodized recursively. It assumes that word-word compounds in BP correspond to composite groups, the prosodic domain between the phonological word and the phonological phrase proposed by Vogel (2008, 2009), based on the observation that word-word compounds display phonological behaviour that is distinct from the behaviour of both regular words (i.e., non-compounds) and other composite structures in the language. The preliminary experiment involved the production of sentences containing complex compounds with left adjunction, complex compounds with right adjunction, coordinate compounds and coordinate phrases by native speakers of BP (n = 3). The results indicate that compounds with adjunction have specific acoustic profiles, which differ from the acoustic profile of both coordinate compounds and phrases. The analysis supports both prosodic recursion and the introduction of an additional prosodic domain, two views on prosodic configuration that are traditionally considered to be mutually exclusive.
We focus on a pattern of Spanish se-reflexivization in ditransitive contexts that has not received due attention in the previous literature, namely, the impossibility of reflexivizing the direct object in presence of a dative clitic. In doing so, we will argue in favor of a particular long-distance approach to θ-assignment and against attract-based models. We will also defend the view of se as an edge marker (i.e., a v expletive) and argue against the hypothesis of se as residue of A-movement.
The present study examines the tradeoff between the on-line construction of modifier-noun gender agreement and the automatization of agreement, through the study of bilingual speakers of Spanish and the Afro-Colombian creole language Palenquero, whose lexicon is highly cognate with Spanish, but which lacks gender agreement. The study focuses on L1 Spanish speakers who are acquiring Palenquero as L2, since when switching from the gender-agreeing L1 to the gender-less L2, the persistence or absence of gender agreement in cognate items can be taken as an indirect measure of the cost differential between producing morphosyntactic agreement and suppressing the carryover of obligatory agreement to the L2. The results of experiments conducted with bilingual Spanish-Palenquero speakers in San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia reveal the tenacity of Spanish gender agreement among L2 Palenquero speakers; heritage Palenquero speakers’ retention of gender agreement falls between traditional speakers and L2 speakers.
TP-ellipsis with polarity particles exhibits island effects not only in cases of long-distance movement of the remnant but also when the remnant does not cross any island, showing that some non-overt element moves from the elided TP. Also in non-island contexts, TP-ellipsis with non-local antecedents is sensitive to finiteness. Correlating these properties I will argue that the null-T, the head of the elided TP, moves, for scope reasons, to the topmost sentence that relates the elliptical site to the sentence containing its antecedent. The resulting T-chains, which must preserve the finiteness value of each link, constitute a requirement for the identification of the elliptical-TP.
In this paper I argue that locative agreement and possessor raising in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) should be subsumed under Nunes’s (2008) analysis of hyper-raising in BP. More specifically, I propose that these unorthodox instances of A-movement in BP do not violate minimality, for the crossed potential interveners become inert for purposes of A-movement after receiving inherent Case. The proposed analysis extends to “extralong” cases of possessor raising and mixed patterns involving possessor raising out of locative configurations and provides an account for the role of the EPP in bleeding ɸ-minimality.
This paper explores semantic extensions and pragmatic functions of two evidential forms found in La Paz Spanish, digamos ‘let’s say’ and dice ‘s/he says’. Both forms are inflected forms of the verb decir ‘to say’. The form dice ‘s/he says’ has the function of a reported evidential form, conforming to results from previous studies (Babel 2009; Olbertz 2007; Travis 2006; Laprade 1981), while the form digamos is used according to a previously unnoticed function of an inferential evidential.
This paper analyzes the diffusion of contact-induced linguistic innovations in Portuguese spoken in Maputo, Mozambique, in two datasets from 1993/4 and 2007, focusing on quantitative accounts of linguistic innovations at lexical, lexico-syntactic, syntactic and morphosyntactic levels. Overall, innovative features that registered in the two datasets are qualitatively the same. Results confirm an increase in the frequency of innovative features related to second language acquisition and language contact at all linguist levels, with particularly high diffusion rates of morphological simplifications. This increase may be related to bilingualism and changes in use of, access to, and input of Portuguese. Furthermore, the qualitative stability of features may be a sign of an emerging usage norm.
The present contribution reflects on the competing disciplinary, ideological, and methodological tensions in the study of bilingual code-switching and advocates for a data-driven structural approach to the patterns of language mixing attested across language pairings and Speech communities. More specifically, the chapter argues for the benefits of corpus and computational techniques in yielding reliable and replicable findings with which to confront long-standing questions and established theoretical constructs and in advancing our understanding of this bilingual phenomenon.
This work argues against the view that phonological factors play a role in the distribution of vocalic auxiliary subject clitics (vocalic auxiliary scls), namely, those scls which occur with auxiliary verbs beginning in a vowel. Evidence is given to support the view that such scls are purely syntactic entities, whose distribution is governed only by syntactic factors. The analysis leads to a re-casting of vocalic auxiliary scls as “be-scls,” where the phonological structure of the auxiliary becomes irrelevant. Removing the phonological component from the explanation of the behavior of these syntactic elements further allows us to make fruitful connections with many other syntactic phenomena which would not otherwise have been seen.
The objective of this study is to analyze the production of voiced labial consonants from an auditory and acoustic perspective in the Spanish of speakers recorded in The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project (Bullock & Toribio 2013). For example, the phrase la vaca ‘the cow’ might be realized as [la.'va.ka] in El Paso, Texas as opposed to the standard Mexican Spanish pronunciation [la.'βa.ka]. While a similar pronunciation is attested in some specific varieties, such as in New Mexican (Torres Cacoullos & Ferreira 2000) or Paraguayan (Lipski 1994) Spanish, it is otherwise rare in the Spanish speaking world, where the oral voiced labial phoneme /b/ is usually realized as a bilabial approximant [β], as in la vaca, or occlusive [b] consonant, as in cien vacas ‘one hundred cows’ [sjẽm.'ba.kas].
The aim of the current paper is to establish if the Texas Spanish speakers from the corpus (1) produce an auditorily and visually perceptible distinction between [v] and [β]/[b], and (2) make an acoustic distinction between [v] and [β]/[b] that correlates with the perception of different categories. Furthermore, this investigation (3) analyzes the linguistic and social factors that condition the use of [v] versus [β] and [b]. The influence of the English language is a fundamental factor that must be taken into account; on the other hand, the realization of /b/ as the voiced labiodental allophone [v] might be an archaism inherited from Old Spanish and preserved in West Texas dialects.
In pursuing these research aims, 850 tokens from video-recorded interviews with 17 participants were submitted to auditory, visual, and acoustic analysis. The results will inform that there are two perceptible categories, labiodental vs. bilabial, and that these also constitute separate acoustic categories.
This paper provides a semantic analysis of the particles afinal (European Portuguese) and alla fine (Italian) in terms of the notion of truth unpersistence, which can be situated at the intersection of epistemic modality and discourse structure. In the analysis proposed, the particles are propositional operators and require that the truth of a proposition p* fail to persist through a temporal succession of epistemic states, this proposition being incompatible with the prejacent, and that the interlocutors share knowledge of a previous epistemic attitude toward p*. We analyze two main cases (plan-related and non plan-related propositions) and also show that these particles are indexical to one (or more) epistemic agent(s) and allow for shifts in perspective.
The goal of this paper is to account for instances of anaphors that appear to be exempt from Condition A, based on the French anaphors son propre (‘his own’) and lui-même (≈ ‘himself’). Drawing on specific tests, I show that such anaphors must be anteceded by logophoric centers, specifically either by attitude holders or by empathy loci. This generalization is explained if we suppose the existence of silent logophoric operators that corefer with the antecedent and locally bind the anaphor: apparently exempt anaphors are in fact not exempt. This accounts for why they have the same form as anaphors standardly obeying Condition A: they are one and the same element. Their specific distribution and interpretation derives from their silent logophoric binder.
In this paper we discuss the argument structure of psych verbs in connection with information structure, particularly object experiencer psych verbs (OEPVs), which select an accusative and/or dative argument. We propose that the natural order available in all-focus sentences for dative OEPVs is OVS, whereas the order for accusative OEPVs is SVO. Any rearrangement of these two patterns is caused by a different information structure interpretation.
I observe that the Aktionsart of the underlying VP within the participle plays a key role in the (un-)availability of event-related modification in Spanish adjectival passives: telic VPs disallow event-related modifiers, but stative causative VPs allow them. I adopt a temporal syntax framework (Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 2000 et seq) for the structure of the VP, and propose that the temporal argument (EV-T) of telic verbs is external to the VP. Adjectivization happens before EV-T projects and thus the event is not spatio-temporally instantiated, effectively barring event-related modification. Stative causatives’ temporal argument is internal to the VP and thus adjectivization cannot prevent its projection.
This study explores phonetic and social variation in coda (-ɾ) production in Buenos Aires Spanish. Although the traditionally described canonical realization of coda /-ɾ/ is occlusion + vocalic element, our results reveal that the “lenited” approximant + vocalic element is the most frequent variant, and that deletion, approximant, trill, and fricative realizations also exist. We found higher rates of lenited forms in informal speech and among younger, male, and working-class speakers. Higher percentages of canonical forms in careful speech and among older, female, and middle-class speakers indicate possible hypercorrection. Finally, we question the “canonical” status of coda (-ɾ) as occlusion + vocalic element, calling for the consideration of variant frequency and context in establishing a baseline description of coda /-ɾ/.
This study investigates the acquisition of vowel-vowel sequences across words in twenty-five L2 Spanish learners. Building on González & Weissglass (2016), it analyzes their acoustic realization and examines the incidence of hiatus maintenance, hiatus resolution, and glottal stop epenthesis in L2 Spanish. Eight Spanish native speakers are included for comparison. Based on our data, we propose a preliminary Optimality-Theoretic account of the different stages that L2 learners go through when acquiring vowel-vowel sequences. We find evidence for three possible target grammars in our dataset, which correlate with dialectal differences. Two of these grammars appear to have been acquired by some of the L2 learners investigated.
This paper reports on a preliminary production experiment in order to argue that word-word compounds with a left or right prosodic adjunct in Brazilian Portuguese (e.g., porta-guarda-chuva ‘umbrella holder’, lit. holder keep rain, and mico-leão-dourado ‘golden-lion-tamarin’, lit. tamarin lion golden, in which the adjunct is in bold) are prosodized recursively. It assumes that word-word compounds in BP correspond to composite groups, the prosodic domain between the phonological word and the phonological phrase proposed by Vogel (2008, 2009), based on the observation that word-word compounds display phonological behaviour that is distinct from the behaviour of both regular words (i.e., non-compounds) and other composite structures in the language. The preliminary experiment involved the production of sentences containing complex compounds with left adjunction, complex compounds with right adjunction, coordinate compounds and coordinate phrases by native speakers of BP (n = 3). The results indicate that compounds with adjunction have specific acoustic profiles, which differ from the acoustic profile of both coordinate compounds and phrases. The analysis supports both prosodic recursion and the introduction of an additional prosodic domain, two views on prosodic configuration that are traditionally considered to be mutually exclusive.
We focus on a pattern of Spanish se-reflexivization in ditransitive contexts that has not received due attention in the previous literature, namely, the impossibility of reflexivizing the direct object in presence of a dative clitic. In doing so, we will argue in favor of a particular long-distance approach to θ-assignment and against attract-based models. We will also defend the view of se as an edge marker (i.e., a v expletive) and argue against the hypothesis of se as residue of A-movement.
The present study examines the tradeoff between the on-line construction of modifier-noun gender agreement and the automatization of agreement, through the study of bilingual speakers of Spanish and the Afro-Colombian creole language Palenquero, whose lexicon is highly cognate with Spanish, but which lacks gender agreement. The study focuses on L1 Spanish speakers who are acquiring Palenquero as L2, since when switching from the gender-agreeing L1 to the gender-less L2, the persistence or absence of gender agreement in cognate items can be taken as an indirect measure of the cost differential between producing morphosyntactic agreement and suppressing the carryover of obligatory agreement to the L2. The results of experiments conducted with bilingual Spanish-Palenquero speakers in San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia reveal the tenacity of Spanish gender agreement among L2 Palenquero speakers; heritage Palenquero speakers’ retention of gender agreement falls between traditional speakers and L2 speakers.
TP-ellipsis with polarity particles exhibits island effects not only in cases of long-distance movement of the remnant but also when the remnant does not cross any island, showing that some non-overt element moves from the elided TP. Also in non-island contexts, TP-ellipsis with non-local antecedents is sensitive to finiteness. Correlating these properties I will argue that the null-T, the head of the elided TP, moves, for scope reasons, to the topmost sentence that relates the elliptical site to the sentence containing its antecedent. The resulting T-chains, which must preserve the finiteness value of each link, constitute a requirement for the identification of the elliptical-TP.
In this paper I argue that locative agreement and possessor raising in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) should be subsumed under Nunes’s (2008) analysis of hyper-raising in BP. More specifically, I propose that these unorthodox instances of A-movement in BP do not violate minimality, for the crossed potential interveners become inert for purposes of A-movement after receiving inherent Case. The proposed analysis extends to “extralong” cases of possessor raising and mixed patterns involving possessor raising out of locative configurations and provides an account for the role of the EPP in bleeding ɸ-minimality.
This paper explores semantic extensions and pragmatic functions of two evidential forms found in La Paz Spanish, digamos ‘let’s say’ and dice ‘s/he says’. Both forms are inflected forms of the verb decir ‘to say’. The form dice ‘s/he says’ has the function of a reported evidential form, conforming to results from previous studies (Babel 2009; Olbertz 2007; Travis 2006; Laprade 1981), while the form digamos is used according to a previously unnoticed function of an inferential evidential.
This paper analyzes the diffusion of contact-induced linguistic innovations in Portuguese spoken in Maputo, Mozambique, in two datasets from 1993/4 and 2007, focusing on quantitative accounts of linguistic innovations at lexical, lexico-syntactic, syntactic and morphosyntactic levels. Overall, innovative features that registered in the two datasets are qualitatively the same. Results confirm an increase in the frequency of innovative features related to second language acquisition and language contact at all linguist levels, with particularly high diffusion rates of morphological simplifications. This increase may be related to bilingualism and changes in use of, access to, and input of Portuguese. Furthermore, the qualitative stability of features may be a sign of an emerging usage norm.
The present contribution reflects on the competing disciplinary, ideological, and methodological tensions in the study of bilingual code-switching and advocates for a data-driven structural approach to the patterns of language mixing attested across language pairings and Speech communities. More specifically, the chapter argues for the benefits of corpus and computational techniques in yielding reliable and replicable findings with which to confront long-standing questions and established theoretical constructs and in advancing our understanding of this bilingual phenomenon.
This work argues against the view that phonological factors play a role in the distribution of vocalic auxiliary subject clitics (vocalic auxiliary scls), namely, those scls which occur with auxiliary verbs beginning in a vowel. Evidence is given to support the view that such scls are purely syntactic entities, whose distribution is governed only by syntactic factors. The analysis leads to a re-casting of vocalic auxiliary scls as “be-scls,” where the phonological structure of the auxiliary becomes irrelevant. Removing the phonological component from the explanation of the behavior of these syntactic elements further allows us to make fruitful connections with many other syntactic phenomena which would not otherwise have been seen.
The objective of this study is to analyze the production of voiced labial consonants from an auditory and acoustic perspective in the Spanish of speakers recorded in The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project (Bullock & Toribio 2013). For example, the phrase la vaca ‘the cow’ might be realized as [la.'va.ka] in El Paso, Texas as opposed to the standard Mexican Spanish pronunciation [la.'βa.ka]. While a similar pronunciation is attested in some specific varieties, such as in New Mexican (Torres Cacoullos & Ferreira 2000) or Paraguayan (Lipski 1994) Spanish, it is otherwise rare in the Spanish speaking world, where the oral voiced labial phoneme /b/ is usually realized as a bilabial approximant [β], as in la vaca, or occlusive [b] consonant, as in cien vacas ‘one hundred cows’ [sjẽm.'ba.kas].
The aim of the current paper is to establish if the Texas Spanish speakers from the corpus (1) produce an auditorily and visually perceptible distinction between [v] and [β]/[b], and (2) make an acoustic distinction between [v] and [β]/[b] that correlates with the perception of different categories. Furthermore, this investigation (3) analyzes the linguistic and social factors that condition the use of [v] versus [β] and [b]. The influence of the English language is a fundamental factor that must be taken into account; on the other hand, the realization of /b/ as the voiced labiodental allophone [v] might be an archaism inherited from Old Spanish and preserved in West Texas dialects.
In pursuing these research aims, 850 tokens from video-recorded interviews with 17 participants were submitted to auditory, visual, and acoustic analysis. The results will inform that there are two perceptible categories, labiodental vs. bilabial, and that these also constitute separate acoustic categories.