Vol. XXI Nr. 1

DOI: 10.31178/BWPL.21.1

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Editors’ note: After twenty years

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Gabriela Alboiu
Syntactic case and DP (in)visibility

Abstract: This article argues for a dependency between structural Case and phasal domains and against Case values as intrinsic properties of (C)-T and (v*)-V. Rather, Nominative or Accusative values are derived compositionally from properties of the entire Probing domain: (i) Nom occurs whenever the Probing domain is specified as [uD, uf/p], while (ii) Acc is assigned if the Probing domain is specified as [uD]. The presence of a [uCase] feature is assumed on all DP arguments, whether null or overt. However, after Case valuation, DPs with inherent intensions and extensions will be lexicalized but variables, such as PRO, will not. The analysis focuses on DP subjects (both lexical and PRO) in non-finite CPs, and relies on availability of null expletive pro as a UG primitive. It assumes Chomsky’s Feature Inheritance Model (Chomsky 2007, 2008, Richards 2007), default Case as in Schütze (1997, 2001), as well as Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993, Embick 2007). It aligns with views where the Case Filter, while syntactically relevant (Legate 2008), is a PF constraint (Lasnik 2008, Sigurðsson 2008).

Keywords:Case, phases, agreement, expletive pro, PRO, non-finite CPs, lexical subjects

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Elena Soare
N and D nominalizations

Abstract: This paper addresses deverbal nominals denoting events (Complex Event Nominals or AS-Ns, Grimshaw 1990 and Borer 1999, respectively), that have been argued to convey aspectual information. I focus on French –age and –ée  nominals, which have been argued to encode grammatical (im)perfective Aspect (Ferret et al. 2010, Knittel 2011). The aim is to contribute to a general syntactic theory of nominalizations involving aspectual projections, and to investigate their interaction with other, in particular categorizing, layers of structure. The analysis distinguishes between n-nominalizations which involve derivational affixes introducing categorial information, and default D-nominalizations in which the Determiner embeds aspectual (im)perfective morphology. I demonstrate that outer Aspect (an inflectional layer selecting verbalized structure) is only expected in the latter type of nominalizations, and that in the other cases, a relevant analysis should derive effects on the aspectual calculus by entailments at the level of a Classifier projection, specified in terms of +/-bounded, +/-count.

Keywords: nominalizations, mixed projections, categorization, aspect, plurality

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Virginia Hill and Alexandru Mardale
The internal structure of a differentially marked DP in Romanian

Abstract: This paper starts from the observation that clitic doubling and DOM-pe in Romanian may alternate as differential marking mechanisms for direct objects. Our hypothesis is that the clitic and pe are able to substitute each other for the object marking purpose. We propose that the clitic and pe compete for merging in the same functional head at the left periphery of nominal phrases in Old Romanian, and eventually co-occur, in different functional heads in the same domain in Modern Romanian. This analysis clarifies the locus of the DOM particle insertion (in the nominal versus the verbal extended projection), its combinatorial possibilities (e.g. with clitic doubling), and how these syntactic properties correlate with changes in interpretation.

Keywords: clitic doubling, differential object marking, Old Romanian, Modern Romanian

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Emil Ionescu
Exception Phrases as fragments: The case of Romanian

Abstract: The paper proposes a formal account for Exception Phrases (EP) in Romanian. The analysis is expressed within the HPSG framework. We firstly show that an approach that treats EPs as structural ellipses faces multiple drawbacks. We then introduce the concept of fragment and we show that EPs meet the conditions of fragments. Finally, we formalize the concept of exceptive fragment, which results in an account that is free from the drawbacks identified in the case of the structural approach.

Keywords: Exception Phrase, Romanian, fragment, ellipsis, HPSG

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Petra Sleeman and Sanne Berends
The acquisition of the quantitative pronoun by English and French learners of L2 Dutch: An experimental study based on an elicited imitation task

Abstract: It has been argued that an elicited imitation task gives better insights into the L1 acquisition of the Dutch quantitative pronoun er than a picture elicitation task. In this paper the results of an elicited imitation task submitted to adult L1 French and L1 English learners of L2 Dutch are presented and compared to earlier results of a grammaticality judgment task. Like Dutch and unlike English, French uses a quantitative pronoun in noun ellipsis constructions with a numeral. Earlier results revealed that in the grammaticality judgment task there was no significant difference between the two groups of L2 learners in their acceptance of er, although this was predicted on the basis of possible transfer from their L1. In the elicited imitation task, however, the L1 English learners repeated er significantly less often than the L1 French learners. This can be attributed to the different nature of the two types of test.

Keywords: quantitative pronoun, L2 acquisition, elicited imitation, Dutch

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Ruxandra Vişan. 2018. Landmarks in the History of the English Language. (Reviewed by Daria Protopopescu)

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