This paper describes three-participant 'give' constructions in ten Papuan languages of the Timor-Alor-Pantar (TAP) family. Generally lacking a class of simple ditransitive root verbs, TAP languages express 'give' events by means of biclausal constructions ('take X then give Y'), serial verb constructions ('take X give Y'), or particle-verb constructions originating in serial verb constructions....

In German, prosody interacts with quantifier scope. We investigate this interaction in inverse linking constructions. We present evidence from elicited production of linguistically naive speakers supporting the following two claims: 1) There are two kinds of inverse linking constructions of which only the prepositional type requires a marked intonation contour for inverse scope. 2) In the prepo...

In this paper, we focus on various methods for detecting verbal collocations, i.e. verb-particle constructions and light verb constructions in Wikipedia articles. Our results suggest that for verb-particle constructions, POS-tagging and restriction on the particle seem to yield the best result whereas the combination of POS-tagging, syntactic information and restrictions on the nominal and verb...

Abstract. This paper presents a proposal for the integration of information structure in a unification-based grammar of Danish. Three information structure features – topic, focus and background – are defined, and it is shown how they are instantiated in a number of different grammar constructions. Prosodic, syntactic and information structure constraints characterising the various construction...