{"title":"Romanian adjectives at the syntax-semantics interface","authors":"A. Cornilescu, Alexandru Nicolae","doi":"10.1556/064.2016.63.2.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2016.63.2.3","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we argue for the existence of two local domains (phases, cf. Chomsky 2001; 2009; Legate 2003, among others) inside the DP: the n*-phase, parallel to the vP (as in Svenonius 2004), and the d*-phase, parallel to the CP. Two acknowledged phasal properties are discussed. (i) The n*/d*-phases define their own peripheries: peripheries are essentially modal-quantificational spaces, as shown by the decomposition of Topic—Focus features recently proposed (Butler 2004; McNay 2005; 2006). (ii) Phases are assumed to be domains of linearization: after (internal or external) merge, syntactic objects are hierarchical, but not linear, so phases must be linearized before they are sent to PF. The distribution and interpretation of DP-internal adjectives is taken to be indicative of these two domains.","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"63 1","pages":"197-240"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67635010","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":"French “quantifiers” in questions: interface strategies","authors":"L. Baunaz","doi":"10.1556/064.2016.63.2.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2016.63.2.1","url":null,"abstract":"Building on an experimental study, I show that homophonous wh-phrases like qui ‘who’ in French correlate with prosodic differences when specificity and partitivity come into play, something not found with bare Universal Quantifiers like chacun ‘each’ and tous ‘all’. Rather than homophony I claim that these wh-phrases are syncretic. I show that (a) wh-phrases and bare Universal Quantifiers are complex phrases, lexicalizing structures of different sizes; (b) partitivity and specificity are syntactic features. This last claim is supported by intervention effects: the interventions observed with negative and scope islands with wh-phrases in-situ are accounted for in terms of a feature-based Relativized Minimality (Starke 2001; Rizzi 2004).","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"63 1","pages":"125-168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67634966","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":"The syntactic position and quantificational force of FCIs in Hungarian","authors":"T. Halm","doi":"10.1556/064.2016.63.2.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2016.63.2.4","url":null,"abstract":"The topic of my paper is the syntax and the quantificational force of free-choice items (FCIs) in Hungarian. FCIs such as any have been at the forefront of research interest in the past decades (e.g., Ladusaw 1979; Kadmon & Landman 1993; Giannakidou 2001). The close interdependence of syntactic, semantic and even pragmatic considerations makes the study of FCIs one of the most interesting research programmes. Earlier investigations of the syntax and semantics of FCIs in Hungarian include Hunyadi (1991; 2002), Abrusan (2007) and Szabo (2012). In my paper, I show that FCIs in Hungarian occupy the syntactic position associated with distributive quantifiers (E. Kiss 2010). Furthermore, I examine the quantificational force of FCIs by the well-known battery of quantification tests (for a previous application for Hungarian, cf. Suranyi 2006): almost-modification, modification by exceptive phrase, donkey anaphora, predicative use, is-modification, incorporation and split reading with modals. My findings of mixed ...","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"63 1","pages":"241-276"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67635017","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":"Features and affix-hop","authors":"E. Gelderen","doi":"10.1556/064.2016.63.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2016.63.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I review how formal features are currently regarded and used in the Minimalist Program. Although features are the cornerstone in Minimalism, they are used in many different and conflicting ways. Features may seem particularly relevant to affix-hop because the affix has to be checked against a higher verb or auxiliary. Chomsky’s (1957) analysis of affix-hop has the affix connected with an auxiliary, e.g., the -en of have-en, move to a verb on its right, as in have see-en. This analysis is one of the high points of early generative grammar but, with each new instantiation of the generative model, it has needed adjustments and the phenomenon is still debated. I will elaborate on a proposal made in van Gelderen (2013) who argues that interpretable tense, mood, or aspect are in a low position being probed by the relevant uninterpretable features in a high position. This view I claim is consistent with data from change and acquisition. I also discuss the implications of this reliance on features ...","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"63 1","pages":"1-22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1556/064.2016.63.1.1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67634921","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":"The pronoun interpretation problem in child Hungarian","authors":"György Rákosi, Enikő Tóth","doi":"10.1556/064.2016.63.1.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2016.63.1.3","url":null,"abstract":"In a number of languages, children have problems with the interpretation of pronouns if a potential local antecedent is present. There is an intensive debate on whether this effect is due to a delayed acquisition of Principle B, or it is the result of pragmatic or processing difficulties that children face in interpretation tasks. We conducted two experiments involving a picture-sentence verification task to investigate whether the Pronoun Interpretation Problem exists in Hungarian child language. We found that the Problem is present if the test sentences are given in isolation, but it disappears if a minimally coherent discourse is created. We argue that our results support the view that the binding principles are innate and do not need to be acquired, but children have problems with computing coreference options in certain contexts (Reinhart 2004; 2006; 2011). Coherent discourse allows children to accommodate pronouns with close to adult-like success because in this case they do not calculate local core...","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"63 1","pages":"63-96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1556/064.2016.63.1.3","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67634958","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":"Sustainable bilingualism and language shift : Longitudinal research in Romanian–Hungarian bilingual Kétegyháza (Hungary)","authors":"A. Borbely","doi":"10.1556/064.2016.63.1.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2016.63.1.2","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I introduce the longitudinal method in general, and more specifically, the method applied in a two-decade-long language shift research project conducted in a Romanian–Hungarian bilingual village, Ketegyhaza (hereinafter LongBiLing: longitudinal study on bilingualism). I will primarily present the language choice changes occurring in the first decade (1990–2001) but I will also give a short review of the findings comparing the two decades. The aim of the project is to find out at what stage the Romanian-Hungarian language shift process is in the Hamers and Blanc’s (1989) unidimensional model of language shift and to what extent the process can be considered gradual (Mesthrie 2001). In a previous article I sought to find out in which bilingual national minority (out of the six) in Hungary sustainable bilingualism was the strongest (Borbely 2015). In this paper, I discuss language use domains (25 language choice situations) in a local community of Hungary’s Romanian national minority investiga...","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"596 1","pages":"23-61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1556/064.2016.63.1.2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67634954","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":"What are you afraid of? The construction of meaning in X-(o)phobie lexemes","authors":"M. Lasserre","doi":"10.1556/064.2015.62.4.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2015.62.4.5","url":null,"abstract":"French neoclassical compounds X-(o)phobie display two distinct meanings : ‘fear’ and ‘hostility’. In order to determine which meaning is involved in a given complex word, X-(o)phobie lexemes are studied according to the contexts they are used in. In fact, in a non-compositional analysis, complex words cannot be studied in isolation since they construct their meaning whenever they are employed. The distributional hypothesis offers a new way to examine the semantics of complex words. Two methods make it possible to investigate the variation of meanings in X-(o)phobie lexemes. Moreover, the use of Google data enables an analysis of the construction of neologisms meaning.","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"62 1","pages":"477-495"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67634919","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 syntactic category of Akan compounds: A product-oriented perspective","authors":"Clement Kwamina Insaidoo Appah","doi":"10.1556/064.2015.62.4.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2015.62.4.1","url":null,"abstract":"In accounting for the properties of morphological constructions, one may adopt a source-oriented view where every property of the whole emanates from the parts or a product-oriented view where the whole may have properties that do not come from the parts. Such properties are called holistic constructional properties. Studies on Akan compounds have been invariably source-oriented, assuming that every property in a compound, including the syntactic category, has to come from its constituents. I show that compounding in Akan is blind to the syntactic category of the constituents. Thus, notwithstanding the syntactic category of the constituents the Akan compound is invariably nominal. This paper, therefore, provides evidence of holistic properties of morphological constructions in the form of the syntactic category of Akan compounds. I also present a Construction Morphology modelling of the syntactic category of the Akan compound as a holistic constructional property which is inherited from a constructional meta-schema that is pre-specified to be nominal. Finally, I posit and exemplify four schemas which inherit the category N from the meta-schema but differ in terms of the presence and position of a head constituent.","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"62 1","pages":"361-394"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1556/064.2015.62.4.1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67634445","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":"Exploring the meaning and productivity of a polysemous prefix","authors":"Angeliki Efthymiou, Georgia Fragaki, Angelos Markos","doi":"10.1556/064.2015.62.4.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2015.62.4.4","url":null,"abstract":"This paper follows a corpus-based approach to the meaning and productivity of the Modern Greek prepositional prefix para-. A semantic categorization of the prefix is proposed and its productivity is measured across semantic categories, registers, text types and grammatical categories. Para- was found to be more productive in non-locational and evaluative meanings. Its most productive meaning is excess, while the locational meaning of proximity still remains strong. It is also more productive in written than spoken registers and the grammatical category of nouns. The findings of the study can have implications about the prefix’s ongoing grammaticalization and its affixal status.","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"62 1","pages":"447-476"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1556/064.2015.62.4.4","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67634855","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":"Nominals with the suffix -ač in Croatian","authors":"M. Birtić","doi":"10.1556/064.2015.62.4.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2015.62.4.3","url":null,"abstract":"The paper presents an analysis of Croatian agentive nominals with the suffix -ac within the Distributed Morphology approach, adopting and applying Alexiadou & Schafer’s (2010) model. The internal morphological structure of the -ac nouns, and their eventive properties were considered in detail. The analysis has shown that the eventive/non-eventive properties of -ac nouns do not depend on animacy, but rather on the episodic vs. dispositional distinction. However, instrument nominals are distinguished from animate nominals in some respects. Croatian -ac nouns exhibit properties that cannot be completely captured by the framework adopted.","PeriodicalId":54157,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hungarica","volume":"62 1","pages":"415-445"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67634746","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}