a b s t r a c tIn this study we investigate how the human brain processes small clauses and finite clauses. Small clauses are instances of 'simpler' syntax in the sense that they do not involve operations such as Move and Tense, and have been argued to represent an earlier stage of syntactic evolution before the development of fully-fledged syntax (Bickerton, 1990;Jackendoff 2010;Uriagereka, 2008). Understanding how the brain processes instances of different levels of syntactic complexity may further our understanding of (i) the analytical functions of specific brain regions, and (ii) the distribution of labor in the interpretation or different levels of syntax. To pursue this hypothesis, we ask whether small clauses require different analytical processes than regular syntax. This report provides evidence that they do. In an fMRI study of syntactic processing in a group of Mandarin speakers, small clauses showed greater activation of areas involved in semantic processing. In addition, both small and finite clauses showed substantial activation of areas implicated in syntactic and semantic processing, including significant RH activation.

This paper reviews a number of specific features typical of analytic languages, in an attempt to investigate whether Creole languages can indeed be grouped, at least structurally, with other languages of the analytic (or isolating) type. Based on Sybesma et al. (forthcoming), a study of the nature of analyticity, we select eight features which constitute rather obvious structural parallels between two unrelated groups, namely Sinitic and Kwa. In terms of Creole languages, these eight features can be also clearly located within the APiCS (Michaelis et al. 2013). Contrary to works like Bakker et al. (2011) which argue for the existence of a “Creole Prototype”, our results show that Creole languages do not cluster with each other against other non-Creole languages. Instead, various Creoles clearly owe their grammatical profile to the languages that dominate the typological environment in which they are formed.

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This paper revisits the often-claimed correlation between the restrictive/appositive distinction in Mandarin relative clauses (RC) and their pre-/post-demonstrative position (Chao 1968; Huang 1998; Lin 2003 a.o.). We show that different uses of the demonstrative should be controlled for in establishing the correlation, a novel perspective which reconciles the conflicting claims noted in the literature. In particular, we argue that (i) only when the demonstrative is used deictically, the pre-/post-demonstrative position makes a difference such that pre-demonstrative RCs can only be appositive while post-demonstrative RCs can be either appositive or restrictive; and (ii) when the demonstrative is used anaphorically, the position of RCs does not determine its appositive/restrictive status. The new patterns can be accounted for by extending some analyses of strong definites (Elbourne 2005; Schwarz 2009; Jenks 2018) to Mandarin demonstratives, recognizing a structural distinction between the deictic use and the anaphoric use. The current proposal has implications for studies on demonstratives.