{"title":"Questions with definite markers in (Old) Romance, with focus on Old Spanish","authors":"Olga Kellert","doi":"10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.56","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.56","url":null,"abstract":"We will depart from the observation that Romance languages can be subdivided into two groups with respect to free relatives under question-embedding predicates (Kellert 2017). One group has grammaticalized the definite element (e.g. Pt. [1] o , Fl. i’ ‘the’) and que/che into one question pronoun (e.g. Pt. o que ‘what’ and Fl. icche ‘what’); the other group has not (e.g. Spanish and French). We will show that in one group free relatives that are embedded under question predicates resemble more complex nouns (as in Spanish and French), whereas in the other group they are clausal and have the structure of ordinary questions as in Portuguese and Florentine. We will look at the evolution of lo que sentences in Old Spanish and demonstrate that they were used as relative clauses under non-question predicates such as ser ‘be’ and factive predicates such as ‘know’ with much higher frequency than under genuine question predicates such as preguntar ‘to ask’. We will suggest that the interrogative interpretation of lo que - relative clauses has its source in the ambiguity of factive predicates. Factive predicates can select both DPs interpreted as definite descriptions and CPs interpreted as interrogatives. Lo que -relatives can thus be interpreted as definite descriptions and as interrogatives under factive predicates. As we will argue, this ambiguous interpretation was the precondition for the use of lo que -sentences to be used in non-ambiguous question contexts. However, the reanalysis of lo que -sentences as questions has not been fully accomplished in Modern Spanish in contrast to Modern Portuguese, as these sentences still show syntactic and semantic differences from ordinary questions. [1] Fl. stands for Florentine, Sp. for Spanish, Pt. for Portuguese, and Fr. for French. Mo. for Modern and O. for Old and Mi. for Middle languages.","PeriodicalId":344793,"journal":{"name":"Isogloss. A journal on variation of Romance and Iberian languages","volume":"6 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124934602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the movement analysis of null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese: Experimental results from extraction of embedded subjects","authors":"Cláudia Coelho, Jairo Nunes, L. Santos","doi":"10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.55","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.55","url":null,"abstract":"There is an on-going debate on the empirical adequacy of the movement approach to definite null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese, BP (cf. Ferreira 2000, Rodrigues 2004, and Nunes 2009). On the one hand, Modesto (2000) observes that the null subject of finite embedded clauses associated with object control verbs like convencer ‘to convince’ is subject-oriented, rather than object-oriented and this is unexpected from a movement perspective. On the other hand, Rodrigues (2004) claims that these embedded clauses are actually adjuncts in BP and the observed subject orientation can be accounted for in terms of Hornstein’s (1999, 2001) movement analysis of adjunct control. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by presenting the results of an experiment on grammaticality judgments by BP speakers on the extraction of embedded subjects out of complement and adjunct clauses, as well as finite embedded clauses associated with convencer. The results show that when a distinctive pattern could be observed, finite clauses associated with convencer behaved like adjunct clauses rather than complement clauses. The experiment thus provides confirming evidence for Rodrigues’s (2004) adjunct analysis, invalidating Modesto’s (2000) argument against the movement approach to definite null subjects in BP.","PeriodicalId":344793,"journal":{"name":"Isogloss. A journal on variation of Romance and Iberian languages","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130555467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of The Meaning of Space in Sign Language: Reference, Specificity and Structure in Catalan Sign Language Discourse","authors":"Raquel Veiga Busto, S. Peña","doi":"10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.76","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.76","url":null,"abstract":"Review of The Meaning of Space in Sign Language: Reference, Specificity and Structure in Catalan Sign Language Discourse","PeriodicalId":344793,"journal":{"name":"Isogloss. A journal on variation of Romance and Iberian languages","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122850176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
P. González, Margarita Jara Yupanqui, Carmen Kleinherenbrink
{"title":"The microvariation of the Spanish perfect in three varieties","authors":"P. González, Margarita Jara Yupanqui, Carmen Kleinherenbrink","doi":"10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.60","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.60","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the variability in the use of the Preterit cante (‘I sang’) and the Present Perfect he cantado (‘I have sung’) across three Spanish dialects: Peninsular (PEN), Peruvian (PER) and Argentinian (AR). For this purpose, we analyze the effect of type of context and temporal adverbials on the selection of these two forms. The corpus has been obtained through online questionnaires, comprising a total of thirty-two exercises that evaluate the use of the two verb forms in the following contexts: continuative, relevance of present, life experience, prehodiernal context and without temporal adverbs. The results of this research seek to contribute to the description of dialectal differences with respect to the use of the Preterit and the Present Perfect from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective.","PeriodicalId":344793,"journal":{"name":"Isogloss. A journal on variation of Romance and Iberian languages","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131890707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spanish non-continuants at the phonology-phonetics interface","authors":"Karolina Broś","doi":"10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.52","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.52","url":null,"abstract":"This paper takes a series of lenition phenomena from Gran Canarian Spanish as a point of departure to discuss the influence of phonology on the phonetics component. Based on phonetic and phonological data, it can be concluded that a blocking effect ensues between the process of coda deletion and post-vocalic voicing, giving rise to phonetic opacity. Against the assumption that the latter process is phonological in nature, acous-tic data suggest that it is highly gradient, coarticulatory and variable, in which case it is inexplicable why it is blocked by phonological segment deletion. The proposed solution set forth in this paper is that the phonetic component has access to deep structure beyond featural specifications of sounds. What is more, evidence from prosody indicates that structural information concerning prosodic boundaries is also transposed into phonetics and influences production. Thus, the type and amount of information computed at the phonetics-phonology interface needs to be revised and supplemented by turbid structures in order to account for surface variability and both inter- and intra-speaker differences.","PeriodicalId":344793,"journal":{"name":"Isogloss. A journal on variation of Romance and Iberian languages","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129485905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts by Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garboden","authors":"Josep Ausensi","doi":"10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.77","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.77","url":null,"abstract":"Review of Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts by Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garboden","PeriodicalId":344793,"journal":{"name":"Isogloss. A journal on variation of Romance and Iberian languages","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124912378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Question particles in Basque","authors":"Sergi Monforte","doi":"10.5565/rev/isogloss.48","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.48","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes separate analyses for the question particles -a and al in Basque, which occur only in polarity questions, within the framework of Generative Grammar. I will propose that the former one, used in the eastern dialects, is the head of FiniteP and that the latter one, used in the central dialects, occupies the head of Particle Phrase located between TP and the CP field. I provide the following evidence in support of this dual analysis: 1) -a can be used with ote but no other particle can appear at the same time with al; 2) al is compatible with allocutivity but -a is not; 4) and, finally, al can be used in embedded clauses, whereas -a cannot. The fact that -a is not allowed to occur in indirect questions and that it is incompatible with the allocutive verbal paradigm shows that it is in complementary distribution with the head of CP and, therefore, that -a occupies such a head; on the other hand, the impossibility of al to appear with other particles suggest that they must occur in the same position and, since it can appear in embedded questions and with allocutive forms, it does not occupy the head of the CP, but the head of a phrase below.","PeriodicalId":344793,"journal":{"name":"Isogloss. A journal on variation of Romance and Iberian languages","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130105900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An interview on linguistic variation with Josep Quer","authors":"J. Quer","doi":"10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.78","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/REV/ISOGLOSS.78","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":344793,"journal":{"name":"Isogloss. A journal on variation of Romance and Iberian languages","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115079183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}