Quantified numeral subjects in Russian may famously trigger plural or singular verb agreement. Generative accounts (Pesetsky (1982), Franks (1995), Bošković (2006)) tie the variation to Case and the DP/QP distinction. Corpus-based accounts (Revzin (1978), Corbett (2000), Robblee (1993)), in addition to precedence and definiteness/specificity, note a strong correlation between agreement choice and the animacy of a QNP subject. In this paper, I attempt to reconcile the original generalizations in both linguistic traditions by proposing an account whereby (i) the animacy condition on agreement is an argument structure effect (ii) the connection between Nom case and agreement with QNP subjects is captured by Case as accessibility condition for agreement (Marantz (1991), Bobaljik (2008), Baker (2010) Baker and Vinokurova (2011) but contra Chomsky (2000), (2001)) (iii) definiteness/specificity effects with agreement follow from Diesing’s (1992) Mapping Hypothesis and a locality condition on semantic agreement.

In the present study, a corpus of more than 18,000 online dating ads (downloaded from Craigslist.com, ~ 1.4 million words) is used to investigate differences in language use between men and women in the online dating context. Few studies have investigated gender differences in written texts, Newman, Groom et al. (2008), Mulac and Lundell (1994) and Koppel, Argamon et al. (2002) being the notable exceptions. These papers, however, differ remarkably in methodology and results. In the dataset studied here, regression analysis reveals marked differences the use of linguistic features such as emoticons or abbreviations. Writer gender and addressee gender emerge as predictors of variation.

This paper proposes a unified treatment for Turkish embedded clauses headed by the complementizer 'ki,' an element known to be borrowed from Persian. Embedded ki-clauses are generally thought of as just another case of subordination, albeit with an 'Indo-European' pattern. However, arguments are provided that ki-clauses are'paratactic assertions,' that is, paratactic clauses with their own assertoric illocutionary force. The puzzling root-clause character of these clauses, as well as their characteristic syntactic/semantic behavior with respect to word order, NPI-licensing, WH-questions, binding, and focusing adverbs are explained by virtue of this paratactic-assertoric analysis. The presented account of ki-clauses is derivational, capturing the relationship that the ki-clause has with a position inside the matrix clause through an adaptation of Torrego and Uriagereka's (2002) analysis of parataxis used forcomo-clauses in Spanish, and Yoon's (2011) paratactic analysis of Korean subjunctive and evaluative negation constructions.

In this research, we explore the linguistic structure of the Spanish of Heritage Speakers, those who have acquired Spanish as the home language in a minority language context (Iverson, 2010). We contribute to the discussion of the properties of Heritage Languages here by examining Preposition Stranding in Heritage Speakers versus native monolingual speakers of Spanish. We claim that the distinct behavior of Heritage Speakers of Spanish supports the claim that Heritage Languages may differ from native monolingual language in the narrow syntax, affecting uninterpretable features of the grammar.

Basic spatial and temporal meanings of the preposition after in Standard American English and Highland Scottish English are accounted for in this proposed semantics of the preposition. In addition, two seemingly aberrant meanings in Highland Scottish English and Lowlands Scots/ Lowlands Scottish English are discussed; the proposed semantics accounts for these meanings as well. The meaning of after is related to the meanings of first and subsequent, which are given definitions in terms of points of reference.

In this paper I present evidence from Cherokee (Iroquoian, Southern Iroquoian) which refutes accounts of the distinction between process and result nominals based on the presence or absence of AspectP in the nominal’s functional structure. I argue that Cherokee has result nominals which contain aspect morphology, directly contradicting the proposal of Alexiadou (2001) that such nominals must lack an AspectP, and suggest that some other mechanism must be at play to account for the syntactic and semantic differences between result and process nominals.

This paper examines the Strong Resultative construction by comparing it with several path related constructions. It advances an analysis in which they all have a bounded path P. Its covert variant underlies some of the path related constructions and the Strong Resultative construction. We will see that the semantic property and the properties related with the phonetic emptiness of a bounded path P derive various characteristics of both of the constructions. I discuss implications and questions about the present analysis, one of which concerns the dual source of apparently the same meaning.

In this paper I propose and motivate a syntactic analysis of Hixkaryana (a Carib language spoken in the Amazon in Brazil), drawing on the extensive, linguistically-informed fieldwork of Desmond C. Derbyshire (1979, 1985, inter alia). Hixkaryana displays basic/unmarked Object Verb Subject (OVS) word order, which is found in very few languages of the world (Dryer 2008). There are three main components to the proposal presented here. I argue that the syntax of Hixkaryana involves (i) a marked hierarchy of agreement projections, AgrO over AgrS; (ii) movement of the subject to a high topic position; and (iii) fronting of the rest of the clause over the subject. This analysis accounts for a constellation of properties in Hixkaryana, including the surface order of constituents (OVSX, where X is an adjunct PP or AP), surface constituency (the object and verb form a constituent exclusive of the subject), verbal morphology (agreement is a prefix while all other inflectional affixes are suffixes), structural relations (the subject c-commands the object and obliques/adjuncts), the position of particles (which are either in second position or invariantly post-verbal), and exceptional OSV word order (triggered by the first person exclusive pronoun amna). OVS languages, like Hixkaryana, are important for syntactic theory because they likely have special insights to contribute, given how rare they are; however, OVS languages receive very little attention in the literature. This paper aims to call attention to OVS word order as a real linguistic phenomenon that must be accounted for in mainstream linguistic theory.

The paper accounts for a puzzling agreement behavior of disjunctions, namely the fact that in certain environments plural agreement with a subject-disjunction is possible, even though both disjuncts are singular. I argue that such behavior is driven by the theory of implicatures. In particular, I argue that disjunction is a predicate and it can have plural feature, which closes the predicate under sum formation; second, this plural feature triggers a multiplicity implicature along the lines of Zweig 2009. When this implicature is in conflict with an exclusivity implicature generated by the scalar item or, the plural feature is blocked, hence no possibility of plural agreement. In environments where such conflict does not arise, plural agreement is possible.

This paper pursues an analysis of prospective aspect and its similarity to the perfect. I adopt the term ‘prospective’ for any aspect whose semantics orders RT prior to ET, and propose a set of diagnostics for prospectivity. Then I discuss properties of perfects which might be shared by this aspect and propose tests for these properties within the prospective. Finally, I show that "going to" and "about to" in English, and "a’ dol do" and "gu" in Scottish Gaelic, pass tests for prospectivity and perfect-hood with varying degrees of success.