Bare nominals and reference to capacities

In many Romance languages, negative expressions exhibit a robust distributional asymmetry.When in post-verbal positions, they require theco-presence of negation; when in pre-verbal positions,they are incompatible with it. In the same languages, bare nominals exhibit a distribution that parallels the negativeone in some striking respects. They are possible in post-verbal positions, but infelicitous as pre-verbal subjects. Similar distributionalparallelisms between these expressions are shown toobtain cross-linguistically and diachronically and are argued to derive from their common internal syntactic and semantics properties. Both expressions have a 'deficient' DP, lack quantificational force, and are unable to check the D feature of EPP. Bare nominals may lack D0, but negative expressions contain a null D0syntactically licensed under DP internal Spec Headagreement or head movement. As these operations result from parametricoptions in DP syntax and have consequences on the semantic nature of these expressions, the central result of the paper isto derive cross-linguistic variations in negative concord from independentchoices in DP syntax.

In research on information structure and discourse cohesion, contrast has been defined in different ways, depending on the pragmatic/semantic relation established between the propositions involved in the contrast, on the text types and on other discourse conditions. As a whole, despite – or possibly because of – its vagueness, contrast has proved to be a useful heuristic tool for characterizing discourse cohesion phenomena. This paper focuses on results from our research concerning cohesion phenomena in elicited discourse in Romance (Italian, French) and Germanic (German, Dutch) languages and aims to offer a more precise characterization of contrast against several variation parameters. We take into consideration earlier work on three tasks (Finite Story, Polarity-Switch Dialogues, Map Task) and add a new one (Spot the Difference). The comparison between the results allows us to disentangle the following variables: information units involved in the contrast relation; discourse conditions (monologue vs. dialogue); speakers’ access to information (shared vs. non-shared); effect of contrast on information in the common ground (alternative maintained vs. rejected). The aim is to achieve a more fine-grained definition of contrast relations, which allows us to identify and characterize the divergent behavior of Romance and Germanic languages, and to relate intra- and crosslinguistic differences revealed by speakers’ preferences in speech with structural specificities of the two language groups.

The study explores how translation can be used as part of pedagogical translanguaging to facilitate multilingual learners’ understanding of the way tempo-aspecutal meanings are conveyed. Two sets of data are analysed, focusing on tense-aspect marking: (1) a novel excerpt originally written in Italian is compared with its professional translations in Romance (French, Spanish) and Germanic (English, German) languages; (2) retranslations from these languages to Italian, provided by L1 speakers of Italian and learners of Italian with French, Spanish and German as their L1 are compared with each other and with the original Italian text. Professional translations provide a window to crosslinguistic variation in the use of tense-aspect marking and to complex linguistic phenomena such as the aoristic drift in Romance languages. Retranslations from these languages back to Italian capture some differences in the way speakers develop a tempo-aspectual representation of situations. Similar analyses, guided by the teacher, can be conducted in multilingual classrooms as part of pedagogical translanguaging. Analysing the same text passage in multiple languages and engaging in its retranslations fosters crosslinguistic awareness and promotes joint exploration and co-construction of linguistic knowledge.

The aim of the article is to investigate the non-coreferential uses of the Latin reflexive pronoun se/sibi in the Romance languages. In prepositional phrases, the stressed form of this pronoun replaces the outcomes of illu(m) in Ibero-Romance, Gallo-Romance and Gallo-Italic, whereas its unstressed form is used in place of illu(m) as the Indirect Object in Castilian and Sardinian (as part of a clitic cluster) and in southernmost Calabrese (as isolated pronoun). Furthermore, the outcomes of se/sibi also convey Direct and/or Indirect Objects of 1st and 2nd person plural in several areas of the Romance domain. We argue that this multifunctionality is related to the morphological gender and number neutrality characterising this pronoun, whose syntactic role is clarified by either prepositions or verbal valency. Moreover, as a 3rd person marker, it also develops the so-called «non-person» feature (as claimed by Benveniste), designating a generic reference, of which plurality represents only one of its possible realisations.

In the Germanic languages, verbs of manner of movement can regularly be used in construction with a directional prepositional phrase in order to denote a telic movement event (e.g. The hunters walked into the forest). We show that the Romance languages, allow such a construction, too, but only with a limited group of verbs (e.g. the verbs for slide or jump) but not for the verbs corresponding to float or march, for instance. The syntactic limitations observed with the latter verbs have given rise to the idea of a "lexicalisation parameter" (Talmy 1985), while the former group has rather been dismissed as idiosyncratic lexical exceptions from this general pattern. In this paper, we develop the hypothesis that there is in fact a parameter in the area of semantic composition that distinguishes movement verb constructions in e.g. French and German. It is proposed that in Romance, a telic construction with a PP can only be based on manner of movement verbs whose lexical meaning makes reference to a homomorphic mapping between manner and progression on the path. It is shown that such a regularity falls out naturally from the theory of telicity in Rothstein (2004). The paper moreover addresses a very curious observation in the area of manner of movement verbs : in the Germanic languages, the verb climb can be combined with different directions (climb up or climb down) while in Romance (specifically, French), only upward direction is possible. This effect is argued to be another regular consequence of the same proposed parameter.

The nature of preverbal nominals and their relation to the verb have been the focus of much debate in languages with a productive complex predication process. For Persian, certain analyses have argued that the bare nominals in complex predicate constructions are distinct from bare objects, while others have treated the two types of bare nominals uniformly. This paper argues that the two categories of preverbal nouns cannot receive the same analysis since they display distinct syntactic and semantic behavior: the preverbal nominals, unlike the bare object nouns, cannot be questioned, are modified differently, have different interpretations, give rise to distinct case-assignment contexts, and can co-occur with a non-specific object. The distinct properties of the two nominal categories are captured by positing distinct structural positions for these nouns. Non-specific bare nouns are internal arguments of the thematic verb, while the nominal element of the complex predicate construction is part of the verbal domain with which it combines through a process of conflation, as defined in Hale and Keyser (2002), to form a single predicate.

Article Wiltrud Mihatsch / Inga Hennecke / Anna Kisiel / Alena Kolyaseva / Kristin Davidse / Lieselotte Brems (eds.): Type Noun Constructions in Slavic, Germanic and Romance Languages. Semantics and Pragmatics on the Move was published on December 1, 2025 in the journal Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana (volume 23, issue 46).

This paper focuses on a problem which has been the object of numerous studies centered mainly on Germanic languages, and which concerns general linguistics : determining to what extent the meaning of a derivative can be predicted from the meaning of the base. The author attempts to answer this question by taking the Romagnese dialect as an example. By observing 232 Romagnol deverbatives (corresponding to pairs of verbs derived from a single noun with variations in the prefix), it was possible to establish that the meaning of 76% of them can be predicted from the base noun. The main causes of idiosyncrasy are : flaws in the lexical system (homonymy, polysemy), the phenomenon of transference of denomination (metaphor, metonymy), chance events linked to the history of lexicon (modification of originally regular meaning, introduction of units from other systems, etc.). This relatively high rate of readability seems to correct the somewhat chaotic view on derivation proposed by English and American linguists and to accord with the conclusions of scholars (Rainer, Corbin) who have measured the semantic predictability of derivatives in Romance languages

Cross-linguistic differences in gender congruency effects: Evidence from meta-analyses

The research aims to explore the etymology and semantic field of the zoonym “cow” in the linguocultural contexts of the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic language families. The article analyzes the origin of the word “cow” in Slavic, Turkic, Romance and Germanic languages, identifying its core and additional meanings, commonalities and specific features. This analysis makes it possible to determine the national characteristics in the expression of knowledge about people, animals, and the world in mythological and religious beliefs by the native speakers. The scientific novelty of the research lies in considering the zoonym “cow” not only as a linguistic object, but also as a cultural phenomenon intertwined with history, mythology, religion, and human lifestyle. This zoonym is studied for the first time in a comparative aspect using data from Slavic, Turkic, Romance and Germanic languages, with the aim of identifying, analyzing, and describing national cultural features, similarities, and differences. As a result, the study proves that the etymology and semantics of the word “cow” in the contexts of the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic language families display shared roots, dating back to a distant past, and indicate profound connections between the peoples. Despite some differences among the peoples who speak Slavic and Turkic languages, such as national specificity of worldview, varying living conditions, traditions, history, and religion, the words designating the cow in various linguocultures are part of a unified history, connected to the use of this animal in human life.

“Infinitival clauses” are constructions with a clausal status whose predicate is an infinitive. Romance infinitive clauses are mostly dependent clauses and can be divided into the following types: argumental infinitival clauses (such as subject and object clauses, the latter also including indirect interrogatives), predicative infinitival clauses, infinitival adjunct clauses, infinitival relative clauses, and nominalized infinitive clauses (with a determiner). More rarely, they appear as independent (main) clauses (root infinitival clauses) of different types, which usually have a marked character. Whereas infinitival adjunct clauses are generally preceded by prepositions, which can be argued to be outside the infinitival clause proper (i.e., the clause is part of a prepositional phrase), Romance argumental infinitive clauses are often introduced by complementizers that are diachronically derived from prepositions, mostly de/di and a/à. In most Romance languages, the infinitive itself is morphologically marked by an ending containing the morpheme {r} but lacks tense and agreement morphemes. However, some Romance languages have developed an infinitive that can be inflected for subject agreement (which is found in Portuguese, Galician, and Sardinian and also attested in Old Neapolitan). Romance languages share the property of English and other languages to leave the subject of infinitive clauses unexpressed (subject/object control, arbitrary control, and optional control) and also have raising and accusative-and-infinitive constructions. A special property of many Romance languages is the possibility of overtly expressing a nominative subject in infinitival clauses, mostly in postverbal position. The tense of the infinitive clause is usually interpreted as simultaneous or anterior to that of the matrix clause, but some matrix predicates and infinitive constructions trigger a posteriority/future reading. In addition, some Romance infinitive clauses are susceptible to constraints concerning aspect and modality.

This paper studies the reliability and validity of naturalistic speech errors as a tool for language production research. Possible biases when collecting naturalistic speech errors are identified and specific predictions derived. These patterns are then contrasted with published reports from Germanic languages (English, German and Dutch) and one Romance language (Spanish). Unlike findings in the Germanic languages, Spanish speech errors show many patterns which run contrary to those expected from bias: (1) more phonological errors occur between words than within word; (2) word-initial consonants are less likely to participate in errors than word-medial consonants, (3) errors are equally likely in stressed and in unstressed syllables, (4) perseverations are more frequent than anticipations, and (5) there is no trace of a lexical bias. We present a new corpus of Spanish speech errors collected by many theoretically naïve observers (whereas the only corpus available so far was collected by two highly trained theoretically informed observers), give a general overview of it, and use it to replicate previous reports. In spite of the different susceptibility of these methods to bias, results were remarkably similar in both corpora and again contrary to predictions from bias. As a result, collecting speech errors "in the wild" seems to be free of bias to a reasonable extent even when using a multiple-collector method. The observed contrasting patterns between Spanish and Germanic languages arise as true cross-linguistic differences.

Reviewed by: Null pronouns Henrik Rosenkvist Null pronouns. Ed. by Melani Wratil and Peter Gallman. (Studies in generative grammar 106.) Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011. Pp. 270. ISBN 9783110238709. $140 (Hb). The possibility of omitting referential subject pronouns from a finite clause has been a popular topic for generative grammarians for quite some time. Following a couple of influential works by Rizzi (1982, 1986), a substantial part of the research has been concerned with null subjects in the Romance languages and in languages such as Greek, Mandarin, and Finnish, while the Germanic languages have been absent from the scholarly debate. Indeed, since all standard Germanic languages require referential subject pronouns to be overt, some linguists have claimed that referential null subjects as such are incompatible with the V2-property. As shown by the articles in Null pronouns, however, that conjecture is erroneous. Referential null subjects in both Old and Modern Germanic languages are discussed in depth in the book, and it is therefore an important addition to this field of research. Null pronouns is a collection of five articles from a 2006 workshop in Jena, plus an introduction by the editors. In the introduction, Melani Wratil and Peter Gallman provide a background to the research on null subjects in the framework of principles and parameters, discussing PRO, pro, the pro-drop parameter, and the much-debated relation between null subjects and verbal inflection. Throughout the introduction, problems with previous approaches to null subjects are highlighted, including the notion of a particular pro-drop parameter, null subjects and V2, null subjects and rich inflection, the identification of null subjects, and the historical development of null subjects. Although the introduction is relatively brief, it provides a useful outline of generative research about null subjects. In some places, however, one might have wished for a more complete set of references. For instance, the notion of I-subject (i.e. the idea that the inflectional affix on the finite verb may function as the subject of a clause) goes back to Borer (1986), and as shown by Roberts and Holmberg (2010:3), the correlation between rich agreement and null subjects was probably first observed by Apollonius Dyscolus, a second-century grammarian in Alexandria. Following the introduction, Katrin Axel and Helmut Weiß explore the emergence of null subjects in some Modern Germanic vernaculars in ‘Pro-drop in the history of German—from Old High German to the modern dialects’. In early Old High German (OHG), null referential subjects varied quite freely with overt subjects, but null subjects only appeared in clauses where the finite verb moved to C, that is, main clauses and embedded clauses with V-to-C movement. They claim that this requirement indicates that OHG null subjects needed to be c-commanded by agreement features in C. While OHG verb inflection was distinct in parts of the paradigm, however, the forms for first- and third-person singular show no agreement at all, and hence one would expect that such subject pronouns should always be overt in OHG. That is not the case; third-person null subjects were very frequent. To deal with this problem, Axel and Weiß evoke Sigurðsson’s (1993) concept of free discourse coindexing, without going into details. In a number of Modern Germanic vernaculars, such as Bavarian and Frisian, first- and second-person (but not third-person) null subjects can also be found, in main clauses as well as in embedded clauses of all types. Another conspicuous, and typologically rare, feature of these language varieties is complementizer agreement. The complementizer wenn ‘if’ in Bavarian, for instance, may be inflected for second-person singular. In the clause wennst willst ‘if you.sg want to’, there are two instances of -st, the affix for second-person singular (but no overt subject). The analysis presented by Axel and Weiß is that the OHG licensing condition still applies, and that null subjects in Modern Germanic vernaculars may appear in nonroot contexts because complementizer agreement, not present in OHG, can c-command and identify a null subject also in a verb-final embedded clause. This idea, which is also presented in Axel & Weiß 2010, is appealing, but other Germanic...

The paper discusses ways of expressing temporal relations of simultaneity in the German language. Although the relations can be expressed by participle phrases, noun phrases, prepositional phrases and infinitive phrases, the adverbial clause is the most frequent means of expressing the relations. The temporal adverbial clause has an almost unlimited range of application, which stretches from a vaguely hinted relation to absolute necessity, and from general statements and clarifications to definite emotionally motivated utterances. Wherever there is an obvious connection between facts, events, actions, relations as well as personal will and feeling, it can be expressed by means of a temporal structure. The subject of the paper is the influence of conjunctions während, als, wenn, seit(dem) and solange on the time arrangement of situations introduced into the time clause and the main clause with regard to morphological, syntactic and semantic elements and dependence on the relation of the correspondence between events in the time clause and events in the main clause in German.

This report presents an overview of the changes that occur when a preposition in a prepositional phrase functions as a sentence complement (Wechselpräpositionen) in German sentences. The aim of this overview is to directly translate the discovered mechanisms of these changes into the didactics of German sentence syntax for Polish students. Instead of relying solely on scientific descriptions from textbooks or lexicons, the principles governing this mechanism are explored by posing appropriate questions to a selected chatbot. By engaging with Artificial Intelligence, we hope to obtain the most up-to-date and systematic information regarding the correct choice of a dative or accusative complement in a prepositional phrase to indicate movement or stillness. The responses provided by Artificial Intelligence allow us to conclude that the correct choice of a dative or accusative complement in a prepositional phrase to express movement or stillness in German does not depend solely on the preposition itself but must also consider the meaning of the verb in the predicate. Failing to acknowledge this fact in German language teaching in Poland is likely not only the source of errors but also contributes to a misunderstanding of sentence construction methods.