The Baltic *-ā́-illative

The Lithuanian-Latvian illative was formed from the IE accusativus directivus and the local postposition *-ā́. Traces of the postponed *-ā́ have been preserved in yrà ‘is, are; OLith. there is, there are’ < *ī-r-ā́, and Lith. čià ‘here’ < *tj-ā́. Typologically, the Baltic illative can be compared to Greek derivatives with -δε, e.g. οἴκα-δε ‘homewards; at home’. As for the origin of the postponed *-ā́, two hypotheses can be formulated: 1. *-ā́ comes from the IE allative postposition *-eh₂ (see Hajnal 1992); 2. *-ā́ boils down to the instr. sg. of the anaphoric pronoun *h₁o-h₁. The primary illative plural ended in -s-ā́, e.g. OLith. (debesisa) ‘into heaven’. The postposition -na, which can be found e.g. in the ill. pl. miškúosna ‘into forests’, is an innovation resulting from reanalysis of the acc. sg. *-n + *-ā́ → *-nā́. The neutralisation of the privative opposition inessive : illative originally comprised an area much larger than today’s and included the West Aukštaitian dialect. The starting point of this neutralisation was plural forms. This primary state of affairs has remained until the present day in East Aukštaitian in the north from the line Raguva-Ukmergė-Molėtai-Salakas, where inessive sg. and illative sg. are distinguished, but inessive pl. and illative pl. are not, due to apocope of the final vowel, i.e. píevos ‘on meadows’ (= iness. pl. píevose) alongside píevos ‘onto meadows’ (= ill. pl. píevosna) (Zinkevičius 1966: 201). In the privative opposition inessive : illative, the illative form derived from the IE accusative of direction is the marked member of the opposition.

Li-per-els[i] o la despronominalització del clític datiu en català: un fenomen incipient

This contribution aims to study a phenomenon which has recently emerged in Catalan and which seems to contradict the foundations of referential cohesion. It is a phenomenon parallel to what in the Spanish linguistic tradition has been dubbed le-for-les, that is to say, the use of a singular dative clitic when doubling a plural indirect object, as in Li[sg.] he donat el llibre als nens[pl.] ‘I have given the book to the kids’. I will show that this phenomenon, which is more and more present in Valencian varieties as well as in the Catalan spoken in the area of Barcelona, can be accounted for as an instance of depronominalization of the dative clitic pronoun, as a result of the generalization of dative clitic doubling which has occurred, precisely, in the mentioned varieties. As doubling becomes systematic, li looses its status of anaphoric pronoun and, deprived of any trace of agreement, it becomes just a grammatical marker in the verb, a sort of verbal affix whose sole function is to indicate the presence of a prominent argument in the sentence, the indirect object. I present a variety of factors that may create the conditions where such a verbal affix (the non-agreeing dative clitic) becomes necessary. Finally, I provide a formal analysis based on the assumption that doubling clitics are the realization of an applicative head, which is responsible of introducing the IO in the structure.

Problematic pronominal anaphora

In this paper I will analyse some problematic cases of pronominal anaphora, such as the famous donkey-sentence: Every man who owns a donkey beats it. The issue is to provide a satisfactory semantic analysis of pronouns ?he? or ?it?, which is challenging when the anaphoric pronoun in question depends on an indefinite. I will compare solutions provided by dinamic semantics, such as Discourse Representation Theory and Dinamic Predicate Logic, with new solutions using Game Theorethical Semantics (GTS) and Constructive Tipe Theory (CTT). I will scketch a dialogical account of anaphora, making use of CTT. I will argue that the game theoretical approach, which puts emphasis on expressing the dependence relations in terms of choices resulting from interaction, is in fact the best way to deal with anaphora. Moreover, the ?outside-in? semantics seems to be much more promising in the analysis of a natural language then the classical Tarskian ?inside-out? approach. However, I will argue that the dialogical approach has the advantage over GTS because it provides a clear first-order solution that does not require any devices other than those of constructive or classical logic.

„Figur“, „Grund“ und narrative Kontinuität in der Grammatikalisierung des gotischen Protoartikels

The author investigates the use of proto-article with locative nouns in the Gothic Bible and shows that the choice in Gothic among the anaphoric pronoun sa (proto-article) and Ø is pragmatically/functionally motivated. The locative nouns are mostly inherently definite and unmarked because of being elements of the frame in natural discourse. However, the anaphoric pronoun is used with unexpected locative objects or locative objects in surprising situations. It also marks the change NomLoc as ground > NomLoc as figure and serves as a highlighting device and as an attention-getter. When the topic-continuity is violated, the anaphoric pronoun is used as an invitation addressed to the hearer to mobilize previous knowledge in order to retrieve the referent. The investigation sheds light on the process of language change that led to the shift from demonstrative to article and the overall spread of anaphoric article.

Cohesive substitution in the Qurʼān

This article describes the use of cohesive substitution in the Qurʼān. In Halliday and Hasan’s model of cohesion, this term refers to the replacement of one syntactic item by another; this article asks several questions in this regard: How is cohesive substitution realized in the Qurʼān? What items does it replace? Why is it used? The study finds that there are only a few cases of cohesive substitution in the Qurʼān, and the nominal and verbal substitution operate in the Qurʼān as they do in English. In that language, the forms one and the same are employed for nominal substitution. In the Qurʼān the forms ʼaḥad “one” (sg. masc.), ʼiḥdā “one” (sg. fem.) and miṯlu ḏālika “the same” can be considered equivalent to the English form one and the same. Verbal substitution in Arabic is realized by the verb yaf’alu “he will do,” “he does” (and is not followed by the anaphoric pronoun ḏālika “that”), replacing only the verb without its complement. No occurrences of clausal substitutions were found because usually variations of anaphoric reference (e.g., ḏālika “that” or ka-ḏālika “like that”) were used instead. From a pragmatic viewpoint, cohesive substitution is used to prevent repetition of the same word found in the immediately preceding clause.

The Comparative Method, Internal Reconstruction, Areal Norms and the West Germanic Third Person Pronoun

The paradigms of the third person anaphoric pronoun in West Germanic show a split between Ingvæonic and non-Ingvæonic languages. The Ingvæonic dialects have numerous forms with initialh-, in contrast to non-Ingvæonic, where—corresponding toh-—vocalic ors-onsets are found. This divergence makes it difficult to envisage what the Proto-West Germanic set of forms looked like. The aim is to explore whether it is possible to reconstruct a common West Germanic paradigm from which both types developed. The answer turns out to be ‘yes’, thanks to the crucial evidence of Frisian. The article also rejects the view that Germanic attests the alleged Indo-European pronominal stem *syo-/*tyo-.

Choosing between zero and pronominal subject: modeling subject expression in the 1st person singular in Finnish conversation

The variability of subject expression has been extensively investigated across languages. We present a large-scale multivariate statistical analysis of the choice of subject expression in the 1st person singular in spontaneous Finnish conversation, with a focus on the choice between pronominal and zero subject. Spoken Finnish represents an interesting case, as the dominant type of subject expression is double marking, i. e. the combination of a pronominal subject marker (subject pronoun) and a verbal subject marker (person marking). Siewierska (1999, From anaphoric pronoun to grammatical agreement marker: Why objects don’t make it.