Laboratoire de linguistique formelle

The paper provides evidence for a more articulated structure of the comparative as compared with the one in Bobaljik (2012). We propose to split up Bobaljik's cmpr head into two distinct heads, C1 and C2. Looking at Czech, Old Church Slavonic and English, we show that this proposal explains a range of facts about suppletion and allomorphy. A crucial ingredient of our analysis is the claim that ad-* The authors are listed in alphabetical order. We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for Studia Linguistica, Anna Szabolcsi, Edwin Williams, the ComForT research group at KU Leuven, as well as the audience at the 2018 Olinco conference in Olomouc for their feedback. Pavel Caha's work on this paper was supported by a grant from the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) number GA17-10144S. 2 Caha, De Clercq & Vanden Wyngaerd jectival roots are not a-categorial, but spell out adjectival functional structure. Specifically, we argue that adjectival roots come in various types, differing in the amount of functional structure they spell out. In order to correctly model the competition between roots, we further introduce a Faithfulness Restriction on Cyclic Override, which allows us to dispense with the Elsewhere Principle.

van Heuven & Haan (2000; 2002)'s experimental work on the prosody of Dutch question types found that the prosodic signalling of in-terrogativity is stronger for Dutch declarative questions, less so for yes/no-questions and even less so for wh-questions. This paper shows how the sequence established on prosodic grounds (declarative questions > yes/no questions > wh questions > statements) is mirrored in the functional hierarchy in syntax. Prosody therefore provides an argument for a detailed left periphery (Rizzi 1997; 2001; Haegeman & Hill 2013)

We present a novel account of root suppletion in comparatives and superlatives, and show how it accounts for the presence of ABB and ABC patterns, as well as the absence of ABA patterns. The account assumes that suppletive roots, despite appearances to the contrary, are not contextual allomorphs, but portmanteaus spelling out two distinct features, one belonging to the lexical root, and another one belonging to the comparative. The regular comparative affix then spells out an additional feature relating to the comparative domain. In other words, we show that the comparative (CMPR) head that enters into the morphological makeup of the comparative (Bobaljik 2012) is to be split up into two distinct heads, C1 and C2 (see also Caha 2016). We extend this idea to SPRL, which we show is likewise to be split up into S1 and S2, in order to account for suppletive ABC patterns. These four distinct heads receive empirical support from facts of the degree morphology in Czech and Latin. The new a...

This paper aims at describing Q(uantity)-words, i.e. many/much and few/little, from a typological perspective, and presenting typological generalisations based on it. The typological sample provides support for a mass-count and positive-negative dimension in the domain of Q-words. Both dimensions also intersect. Along the negative dimension, it seems that languages fall into two groups: those having an opaque strategy for few/little and those having only an analytic strategy (not-much/many). Four patterns can be discerned on the basis of the sample, which are each exemplified by means of one language, i.e. English, Dutch, Wolof and Western Armenian. In addition, I make an attempt at developing a nanosyntactic analysis of the data, which aims to show how language variation in the domain of Q-words can be accounted for in terms of varying the size of lexically stored trees (Starke 2014). Finally, I show how one missing type of pattern is underivable on the basis of the analysis proposed.

This paper discusses the well-known dichotomies between sentence negation and constituent negation on the one hand and external negation and internal negation on the other hand. It explains how the notions differ and where they show overlap. Crucial in this discussion is the presentation and critical review of some of the most relevant tests for negation as discussed by Klima (1964). The discussion leads to the observation that both sentence negation and constituent negation are umbrella terms for multiple scopal types of negation. The paper further shows how a careful analysis of negative morphology can be insightful in putting up a more fine-grained classification that does better justice to the reality of negative markers than captured by the well-known

With this short paper I want to pay tribute to Dany and his extremely inspiring dissertation Operators in the lexicon (henceforth OiL). In my own dissertation I did not refer to his work explicitly but the impact his work had on my thinking cannot be underestimated. In 2011, I started exploring the idea that Dany’s OiL is actually morphologically reflected in how quantifiers are built in Malayalam, a Dravidian language spoken in India. Moreover, I realized how Jaspers’ decomposition of the lexicon in terms of operators meshes well with a nanosyntactic approach, a framework that I learned about in the course of that same year. At the time, I wrote a 2-page abstract on this, but never submitted it to any conference, because I considered the ideas immature. The present paper takes a stab at developing these ideas from years ago a bit further and most importantly, wants to show that the abstract formal operators presented in Jaspers (2005) are a morphological reality in some languages s...

This article proposes a Nanosyntactic approach to root suppletion. We show that within this theory, there is a straightforward way to account for root suppletion within a strictly modular theory of grammar. As a starting point, we first focus on the architectural difficulties that arise in the Distributed Morphology approach to Late Insertion. We then show how Nanosyntax circumvents these problems, and address two potential empirical issues for the Nanosyntactic treatment (multiple exponence and locality), showing how they provide support for the approach proposed.

We present a theory of conversion in terms of phrasal spellout. In this approach, there are no zero morphemes. Instead, the ‘silent’ meaning components are pronounced cumulatively within overt morphemes. As an empirical case, we discuss adjective/verb ambiguity as in narrow. As verbs, these roots have both an inchoative and a causative sense. Following Ramchand (2008), we assume that such de-adjectival causatives contain three parts: the adjective denoting a state, a changeof-state component PROC, and a causative component INIT. Adopting a Nanosyntax approach, we propose that verbs like narrow spell out a complex node with all these abstract heads. The ambiguity between the inchoative, causative and adjective falls out as a consequence of the Superset Principle (Starke 2009), which states that a lexical entry can spell out any subtree it contains. Since both the inchoative sense and the adjective sense correspond to proper parts of the causative one, we derive these readings without...

In varieties of English, the combination of would and rather (also: sooner/as soon/as well) can be followed not just by a bare infinitive (as in they would rather leave) or by a finite clause (they would rather (that) I (would) leave), but alsobyan infinitivewithanaccusative subject (as in they would rather me leave), which can even be coreferent with thematrix subject (Iwould ratherme leave). This short paper focuses on this AcI-infinitival construction. It shows that the infinitival clause is a fully clausal complement of rather, capable of harbouring sentential negation and constituting a local binding domain for its subject, whose accusative is not an assigned case. The paper closes on some remarks about the evolution of this construction, against the background of the form and distribution of the subjunctive. Sentences of the type in (1) feature a degree-modified dispositional adjective or adverb (rather, sooner, as soon, as well) followed by a bare infinitival clause with an a...

This article proposes a Nanosyntactic Late­Insertion approach to root suppletion. We show that this theory allows us to account for root suppletionwithin a strictlymodular theory of grammar, which makes no syntactic distinction between different roots. As a starting point, we first focus on the architectural difficulties that arise for amodular theory of roots in the DistributedMorphology approach. We then show how Nanosyntax circumvents these problems, and address two potential empirical issues for the Nanosyntactic treatment (multiple exponence and locality), showing that they in fact provide support for the approach proposed.

We look at the internal structure of the English analytic comparative marker more, arguing that it spells out nearly all the features of a gradable adjective. When this marker is merged with an adjective in the positive degree, it creates a situation of feature recursion or overlap, where more duplicates certain features that are also present in the adjective that it modifies. We argue that such overlap must be disallowed as a matter of principle. We present an empirical argument in favour of such a restriction, which is based on the generalization that comparative markers which occur to the left of the adjectival root are incompatible with suppletion. This generalization can be shown to follow from a restriction against overlapping derivations. In order to achieve such nonoverlapping derivations, an Unmerge operation may remove previously created structure.