Catalan Journal of Linguistics

Simplification or Complexification: Auxiliary Selection and Anti-agreement Effect in Brazilian Venetan

2022-02-15T00:28:06+01:00

In this paper we discuss a change in the auxiliary selectional pattern of Brazilian Venetan, a heritage Italo-Romance variety spoken in southern Brazil. Venetan varieties display a default form of the past participle in constructions with postverbal subjects and a fully agreeing form in constructions with preverbal subjects: this is true both for the homeland varieties of the language, spoken in northern Italy, as well as for the heritage variety under analysis in this paper, spoken in southern Brazil. A crucial difference emerges in unaccusative constructions: while Italian Venetan uses the same form of the auxiliary BE in presence of preverbal and postverbal subjects, Brazilian Venetan uses a specialized form of the auxiliary in the constructions with default agreement on the past participle, when postverbal subjects are present. We argue that the specialized auxiliary form emerges as a necessary resumption in the case of lack of agreement. The heritage variety becomes, therefore, morphosyntactically more complex than the non-heritage counterpart.

English/Spanish Relatives and Their Relative Information Structure: A View from Language Contact in Puerto Rico

2021-02-26T05:36:10+01:00

The goal of this paper is to analyse the impact of Main Clause Phenomena (MCP) such as Negative Preposing (NPr) in four types of relative clauses, namely definite restrictive, indefinite restrictive, non-restrictive and kind-defining relative clauses, establishing a contrast between English and Spanish and discussing the interconnection of the two languages in a language contact situation such as the one observed in Puerto Rico. To this end, I have carried out an experiment with monolingual native speakers of the two languages (control groups), where they have to judge the grammaticality/acceptability of the different types of relatives when NPr takes place. In addition, the same task is carried out by a bilingual group of Puerto Ricans (PR). The main purpose was to detect any interference of one language upon the other one regarding the licensing conditions of NPr in relative clauses. The main empirical result shows that English makes a distinction in terms of acceptability between types of relatives with NPr, whereas in Spanish NPr is licensed in all types of relatives, and this situation seems to be mimicked in the language contact situation in Puerto Rico, though some crucial differences are detected which suggest that PR bilinguals have an integrated I-language (sensu López 2020). The results support the idea that there are two big groups of relatives, namely asserted (very similar to root clauses) and non-asserted relatives. The latter include definite restrictive relatives, whereas the former include non-restrictive relatives, kind-defining relatives and indefinite restrictive relatives. Based on discourse-feature inheritance, intervention and the projection of a factive operator in non-asserted relatives (subject to parametric variation), I argue that the PR results show that when processing one specific language they may apply a syntactic rule of the other language, which I take to support the integrationist view of bilingualism.

Parameters and Language Contact: Morphosyntactic Variation in Dutch Dialects

2022-01-29T15:17:54+01:00

The central issue addressed in this paper is the formal linguistic notion of parameter as a predictor for the (non-)occurrence of multiple linguistic phenomena. We start from a parametric analysis of a microvariational data set and we introduce a way of gauging the success of that analysis. At the same time, we explore to what extent language contact—operationalized here as geographical proximity—can be seen as an explanatory factor that is complementary to the parametric analysis. Methodologically, the paper advocates for the use of k-nearest neighbors classification as an interesting new technique in the linguist’s toolkit.

Clitic Climbing and Presuppositional Negative Markers in Occitano-Romance Verbal Complexes. Exploring the Crossroads of Micro-Syntactic Phenomena

2022-02-15T18:31:58+01:00

In this paper we propose that verbal clusters with restructuring verbs contain a defective embedded clausal boundary. Additionally, this paper constitutes a methodological and empirical contribution to syntactic microvariation in Occitano-Romance varieties: we describe the synchronic variation in the expression of presuppositional postverbal negation and the position of clitics in infinitival complex structures. This empirical study contributes to the understanding of the micro-syntax of negation and clitics as independent phenomena. However, the interaction of both phenomena brings to light the structure of three types of verbal clusters: restructuring verbs, non-restructuring verbs and control predicates. Crucially, the data collected highlight that, although clitic climbing and embedded presuppositional negation are independent phenomena, they can both be explained by the transparency of the embedded clausal boundary. We claim that restructuring verbs select for a defective embedded C/T. Ultimately, the article shows how the comprehension of phenomena in closely related varieties allows us to better understand the architecture of grammar.

The ‘Big DP’ Hypothesis: New Evidence from Gender Agreement in a Shipibo-Spanish Language Contact Situation

2021-12-04T00:32:41+01:00

Previous evidence suggests clitics and determiners do not enter the same type of gender agreement relations in contact varieties of Spanish, despite proposals that treat clitics as determiners (big DP – Determiner Phrase – hypothesis) (Uriagereka 1995; Cecchetto 1999, 2000; Belletti 2005). We conducted a study on gender agreement between clitics and their antecedents, and determiners and nouns among adult Shipibo-Spanish bilinguals to answer the following question: Do Shipibo- Spanish bilingual speakers have similar patterns of local vs. long-distance gender agreement? Our results show gender agreement between D and N obtains categorically, but gender agreement between the clitic and its antecedent is at chance-level. We propose an alternative analysis for our data that does not assume the big DP hypothesis.

Preface

2022-12-19T05:31:59+01:00

Preface of the Catalan Journal of Linguistics 22: Language Contact in Theoretical Syntax.