The pragmatics of demonstratives in Germanic

Light, Caitlin

doi:10.1093/oso/9780198747840.003.0012

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 108 publications

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“…The idea that specifier positions of conflated heads are 'multifunctional' in cases of syncretism, in the sense that they can be used to satisfy the criterial requirements of any one of the heads conflated, is the tacit assumption in the literature on conflation (e.g., Giorgi and Pianesi 1997;Hsu 2016). A reviewer raises the question of why an XP in such a specifier position is able to 'pick one' Criterion to fronted with no interpretive effects ('formal movement'; Fanselow 2003Fanselow , 2004Frey 2004;Light 2013). This type of account derives the differences between subjectinitial and non-subject-initial main clauses that prompted the two-structure analyses of Travis (1984) and Zwart (1991Zwart ( , 1993, by appealing to different motivations for movement rather than different structural positions: see Frey (2004: 6-14) for the details.…”

Section: A Split-cp Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and old

Walkden

2017

J Comp German Linguistics

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Certain recently-attested varieties of Germanic V2 languages are known to deviate from the strict V2 requirement characteristic of the standard. This is the case, for example, for Kiezdeutsch, a new German dialect, as well as urban vernacular varieties of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish: descriptively speaking, in these varieties, subject-verb inversion may be absent under certain well-defined conditions. In this article I outline those conditions and the type of syntactic analysis required to account for them, claiming that an articulated left periphery is needed to account for the findings. The similarity of the V3 patterns found in these new varieties, which are geographically isolated from each other but which share a characterization in terms of the demographics of their speaker groups, invites a diachronic account in terms of language contact. I argue that transfer cannot account for V3, but that a scenario of sequential simplification and complexification is able to do so. Finally, turning to Old English, which exhibits similar (though not identical) V2/V3 alternations, I argue that a similar synchronic analysis can be upheld and that its diachronic origins may well also have been similar-a case of using the present to inform our approach to the past.

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Section: A Split-cp Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and old

Walkden

2017

J Comp German Linguistics

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“…Chomsky (1995) and ( 2001)), or else, in a broader, context it has been posited that Topicalization can affect various information structural categories (for a survey of some recent accounts q.v. (Light) 2013). The analysis in 12) above lies more in line with Chomsky (2008), where the head C with its edge position/s is a strictly minimalist version of Rizzi's Split CP, resulting in feature spread from one functional head.…”

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confidence: 60%

“Giving Someone Freedom” in Old Icelandic in Minimalist Syntactic Terms

Chankova

2023

Ezikov Svyat (Orbis Linguarum)

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The present paper discusses the word order alternatives attested with OIce double object constructions of the type gefa einhverjum frelsi ‘give someone freedom’ found in the ONP (https://onp.ku.dk/onp/onp.php) within a largely Minimalist syntactic framework (Chomsky (1995) and beyond). Specifically, this study draws on theoretical assumptions borrowed from sources in the area of the movement approach to modified word order types in the early Germanic languages (e.g. Eythórsson (1995); Haugan (2001)). The paper starts off with an analysis of base-generated post-VP indirect object (Dat) – frelsi (Acc) order and proceeds to an account of modified orders derived by VP-internal Scrambling, short-distance Scrambling, and Topicalization, wherein the direct object frelsi is claimed to have moved leftwards from its base position. The author of the paper argues that leftward dislocation takes frelsi to various target positions, i.e. an adjunction position in the left periphery of VP (resulting from VP-internal Scrambling), an adjunction position in the left periphery of vP (as a result of shortdistance Scrambling), the specifier position of CP (consequent upon Topicalization). The objective of the paper is to analyze the conditions, under which the above displacement operations apply, the structural configurations, derived by leftward movement and the properties of the ex-situ positions, targeted by frelsi.

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“…CTs are in TopP and CFs are in FocP, whereas KP-a projection that has by hypothesis disappeared in MP-is reserved to delimitators. The latter elements are usually expressed by demonstratives, whose contrastive features can be explained in terms of their pragmatic context (Light 2012). In the following section we further explore how demonstratives are connected to V2-like grammars and, consequently, to boundedness.…”

Section: The Frequency Of XV and Of Vsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrast and word order: A case study on the history of Portuguese

Andrade

Galves

2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Several studies have observed that older Romance languages had more frequent object-verb order than their modern counterparts. This article explores the idea that contrast is crucial to understand the shift to verb-object order, as part of a more encompassing notion of boundedness, which has been frequently associated with the V2 parameter. To do so, we first show that some fronting constructions involving demonstratives were available in Old and Classical Portuguese, but not in Modern Portuguese, as a consequence of the existence of a KP projection hosting contrastive items of different sorts acting as delimitators. Second, we present some changes between Old and Classical Portuguese: (i) a decrease in fronted objects with demonstratives; (ii) an increase in the frequency of null subjects; and (iii) a small decrease in the frequency of frame setters. We propose that these shifts are to be attributed to an information-structural change correlated with a syntactic change concerning the position of complementizers and verb movement in subordinate clauses. To wit, while Old Portuguese was a symmetrical relaxed C-V2 language, Classical Portuguese was an asymmetrical one, which is reflected in terms of a reduced left periphery of subordinate clauses in the latter, in which KP cannot be projected. The article presents some implications of this account for the derivation of basic word order patterns and of clitic interpolation in Old Portuguese and for the loss of V2 in the history of Portuguese. These results suggest that the connection between boundedness, contrast and V2 grammars can be profitably explored in Old Romance languages.

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The pragmatics of demonstratives in Germanic

Cited by 3 publications

References 108 publications

Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and old

Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and old

“Giving Someone Freedom” in Old Icelandic in Minimalist Syntactic Terms

Contrast and word order: A case study on the history of Portuguese

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