Frame setters and microvariation of subject-initial Verb Second

The chapter focuses on V3 patterns in West Flemish in which a subject-initial non-inverted V2 clause is preceded by an adverbial adjunct which modifies temporal or modal coordinates of the associated clause, in apparent violation of the V2 constraint. The pattern is not available in many other varieties of Dutch, including Standard Dutch. The chapter summarizes the main distributional and interpretive properties of the initial constituent, focusing on, among other things, the fact that for its interpretation, the initial adjunct cannot be reconstructed to a clause-internal position. On the basis of the distributional and interpretive properties of the initial constituent, it is argued that these V3 patterns are in line with V2 syntax because the initial constituent is extrasentential. The chapter develops the discourse syntax for main clause external constituents and argues that the micro-variation observed can be captured by the hypothesis that there is micro-variation between Standard Dutch and West Flemish in terms of the derivation of subject-initial V2 root clauses.

Topic, Focus and null subjects in Old French

Old French subject pronouns (Spro) were omissible if postverbal (Foulet 1928), but not freely so (Vance 1997, Zimmermann 2014). This article addresses their partial omissibility in discourse-syntax terms, following work on partial null subject languages by Holmberg and Nikanne (2002) and Modesto (2008). An observational study of dialogic responses in 13th century prose romances is first reported, finding strong indications of covariation between the Topic/Focus status of an initial non-subject constituent and the expression/omission of post-verbal Spro. A quantitative investigation, in such texts, of preposed discourse-linked anaphoric constituents and preposed intensifiers, taken as diagnostic of Topichood and Focushood respectively, confirmed this analysis. We take null Spro to be available (i) when a null Topic operator targets left-peripheral TopicP, and (ii) with a left-peripheral Focused expression. When a discourse-linked non-subject constituent occupies TopicP, however, Spro must be overt.

New information subjects in L2 acquisition: evidence from Italian and Finnish

Recent work on second language acquisition within the generative framework has pointed out interfaces (syntax-discourse, syntax-semantics, etc.) as a residual domain of vulnerability in L2. Rather than in core syntax, it is at the interface level that the divergence between native and non-native grammars has been shown to be more prominent. In this book the investigation of answering strategies and the focalization of new information subjects, which require access to the syntax-discourse interface, will be pursued. Data is collected through an oral elicitation task on Finnish and Italian, a rather unexplored language pair, in various stages of language development: advanced and intermediate L2 acquisition, L1 under L2 attrition, early bilingualism, child monolingual L1 development.

Media Discourse Syntax

In this article we have emphasized the role of media discourse syntax, so necessary to avoid any misinterpretation. Therefore, understanding the message conveyed by journalists is and will be influenced by word order, sentence type, but also by providing logical links between concepts and ideas play in their own way original. It was found that a contemporary media discourse seeking new concepts to describe functions, meanings and uses of concepts in a particular field, which gradually integrate with older visions through a generality extending existing concepts.