Future conditionals in Lycian

Lycian funerary inscriptions, being overall legal statements regarding the correct management of the tomb after the death of its owner, comprise many future conditional clauses consisting of two types, paratactic and hypotactic. In the latter a preposed relative clause precedes a resumptive main clause, while in the former two adjoining main clauses are interpreted as protasis and apodosis without any obligatory subordinator. In the last case, the general rule is that some constituent pertaining to the preceding prohibition clause against unauthorized burial undergoes left dislocation, the contrastive topic pointing to the conditional character of the sentence. The lack of an overt subordinator in the paratactic type - the odd modal particle e͂‘if’ is at best optional - points to an archaism in Lycian, as opposed to Hittite and Luwian. This paper aims at providing a critical description of the future conditionals in the corpus, accounting for how they are formed and used.

Differential object marking in Modern Romanian

Chapter 4 focuses on DOM in Modern Romanian, for both direct and indirect objects. The data are organized according to the type of DOM mechanisms, with separate sections for CD, DOM-p, and CD+DOM-p. The pragmatic effects noticed for Old Romanian DOM are re-assessed, considering that the contrasting interpretation of CD versus DOM-p is neutralized. The major changes concern the loss of CD with direct objects and its recycling in conjunction with DOM-p. While DOM-p declines and becomes more specialized for the end of the specificity scale, CD+DOM-p turns into the default option for DOM with direct objects, as opposed to CD, which becomes the default option for DOM with indirect objects. Increased productivity for CD+DOM-p coincides with the parallel expansion of Clitic Left Dislocation in the language, which completely replaces the constituent fronting through Topicalization.

Object clitic use and intuition in the Spanish of heritage speakers from Brazil

The present study examines the production and intuition of Spanish clitics in clitic left dislocation (CLLD) structures among 26 Spanish heritage speakers (HSs) born and raised in Brazil. We tested clitic production and intuition in contexts in which Spanish clitics vary as a function of the semantic features of the object that they refer to. Results showed overextension of object clitics into contexts in which null objects were expected. Furthermore, we found higher levels of overextension among the HSs with lower patterns of heritage language use. Results are discussed along the lines of the model of heritage language acquisition and maintenance.

Topicalization in the Romance Languages

Topic and topicalization are key notions to understand processes of syntactic and prosodic readjustments in Romance. More specifically, topicalization refers to the syntactic mechanisms and constructions available in a language to mark an expression as the topic of the sentence. Despite the lack of a uniform definition of topic, often based on the notions of aboutness or givenness, significant advances have been made in Romance linguistics since the 1990s, yielding a better understanding of the topicalization constructions, their properties, and their grammatical correlates. Prosodically, topics are generally described as being contained in independent intonational phrases. The syntactic and pragmatic characteristics of a specific topicalization construction, by contrast, depend both on the form of resumption of the dislocated topic within the clause and on the types of topic (aboutness, given, and contrastive topics). We can thus distinguish between hanging topic (left dislocation) (HTLD) and clitic left-dislocation (ClLD) for sentence-initial topics, and clitic right-dislocation (ClRD) for sentence-final dislocated constituents. These topicalization constructions are available in most Romance languages, although variation may affect the type and the obligatory presence of the resumptive element. Scholars working on topic and topicalization in the Romance languages have also addressed controversial issues such as the relation between topics and subjects, both grammatical (nominative) subjects and ‘oblique’ subjects such as dative experiencers and locative expressions. Moreover, topicalization has been discussed for medieval Romance, in conjunction with its alleged V2 syntactic status. Some topicalization constructions such as subject inversion, especially in the non-null subject Romance languages, and Resumptive Preposing may indeed be viewed as potential residues of medieval V2 property in contemporary Romance.

Non-Wh Internal and External Topics in Classical Chinese and Their Similarity to Equivalent Constructions in Modern Mandarin

In this paper I argue that non-wh internal and external topics in Classical Chinese can be analysed in parallel with their counterparts in modern Mandarin. I first scrutinise pronoun fronting in the context of negation in Classical Chinese, and propound that it is on a par with object preposing in modern Mandarin that is argued to be internal topics (Paul 2002). I then discuss non-interrogative elements base-generated and moved to the CP domain and illustrate their topical properties. Base-generated topics in Classical Chinese are Aboutness topics which permit DPs exclusively. In terms of moved external topics, they are constituted of preposed objects and preposed predicates: the former allow DPs and TPs, whereas the latter allow DPs and AdjPs. Moreover, moved topics can be further divided into Hanging Topics and Left Dislocation Topics, similar to those in modern Mandarin.

Topic marking in Kusaal and selected Mabia (Gur) languages of West Africa

This article looks at topic marking strategies in Kusaal and related Mabia (Gur) languages: Dagaare, Buli, Moore, Dabgani, and Gurene, spoken in Ghana, Togo, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. It is generally observed that these languages use left dislocation as a topic coding strategy. They either use topic phrases or particles, which may be obligatory or optional. It is argued that the languages under discussion cannot be fully classified as subject prominent languages alongside other Niger-Congo languages. It is shown that these languages demonstrate features that put them in between subject prominent and topic prominent languages. To identify a topic constituent in these languages, three tests are suggested: the if+be test, the “aboutness test” and the use of left dislocation accompanied by a resumptive pronoun.

Clitic-Doubled Left Dislocation in Heritage Spanish: Judgment versus Production Data

This project examines whether heritage speakers of Spanish distinguish when Spanish clitic-doubled left dislocation (CLLD) is discursively appropriate via an acceptability judgment task (AJT) and a speeded production task (SPT). This two-task experimental design is intended to determine whether heritage speakers diverge from an L1 Spanish/L2 English baseline and, if so, whether such divergence is due to their grammatical knowledge, processing constraints, or other task effects. The baseline group accepted and produced CLLD significantly more than other constructions in anaphoric contexts, with the opposite pattern in non-anaphoric contexts, as expected for Spanish. The heritage speakers showed the same significant differences in production in both conditions and in the AJT’s anaphoric condition; in the non-anaphoric condition, however, they did not show any differences between CLLD and the other relevant constructions. We argue that this group of heritage speakers knows the discursive distribution of CLLD just as the baseline speakers do, as attested by the similar performance pattern in production. Furthermore, we posit that their AJT performance, which shows evidence of overextension of CLLD beyond its anaphoric context and into non-anaphoric contexts, may be due to the metalinguistic nature of AJTs.

From topic to object: Grammaticalization of differential object marking in Romanian

In this paper, we provide new evidence for the hypothesis that in some languages, differential object marking (DOM) may have evolved from marking of the information structural category of topicality. While Iemmolo (2010) suggested that topic left-dislocation might have facilitated the evolution of DOM, and Dalrymple and Nikolaeva (2011) argued for systematic marking of secondary topics as the source of DOM, we suggest a third possible grammaticalization source within the topical domain: the prepositional marking of embedded topics. In particular, we show that the Romanian DO (Direct Object) marker pe had a function as marker of embedded topics in Old Romanian. Moreover, we show how DOM in Old Romanian may additionally have been facilitated by the re-analysis of embedded topics as themes in certain constructions.