We present a quantitative model of word order and movement constraints that enables a simple and uniform treatment of a seemingly heterogeneous collection of linear order phenomena in English, Dutch and German complement constructions (Wh-extraction, clause union, extraposition, verb clustering, particle movement, etc.). Underlying the scheme are central assumptions of the psycholinguistically ...

We argue that the C-element que, following fronted wh-elements and focused elements more generally in Brazilian Portuguese, is realized as Fin, rather than Foc (MENDES KANDYBOWICZ, 2021; pace MIOTO, 2001; MIOTO KATO, 2005). put together three observations from literature: (i) appearance of que contingent on wh/focus fronting; (ii) introduces a finite clause, (iii) disappears under sluicing. pre...

The present paper presents a unified analysis of free and embedded indirect speech, with a specific focus on German. First we need a context-based analysis of indexicals (rigid/shiftable) which can capture their orientation in uses in indirect speech. The analysis includes a treatment of the German reportative subjunctive as a shiftable indexical tense. Indirect speech in embedded clauses of th...

They all describe events of an apple’s being on the tray and Tom’s eating it. But, there exist several intriguing differences between the two constructions. One crucial difference between the IHRC and EHRC comes from the fact that the semantic object of mekessta ‘ate’ in IHRC examples like (1)a is the NP sakwa ‘apple’ buried inside the embedded clause followed by kes. It is thus the subject of ...

We conducted a large-scale corpus analysis indicating that pronominal object relative clauses are significantly more frequent than pronominal subject relative clauses when the embedded pronoun is personal. This difference was reversed when impersonal pronouns constituted the embedded noun phrase. This pattern of distribution provides a suitable framework for testing the role of experience in se...

A series of self-paced reading time experiments was performed to assess how characteristics of noun phrases (NPs) contribute to the difference in processing difficulty between objectand subject-extracted relative clauses. Structural semantic characteristics of the NP in the embedded clause (definite vs. indefinite and definite vs. generic) did not influence the magnitude of the processing diffi...

This paper investigates the development of relative clauses in the speech of one German-speaking child aged 2 ; 0 to 5 ; 0. The earliest relative clauses we found in the data occur in topicalization constructions that are only a little different from simple sentences: they contain a single proposition, express the actor prior to other participants, assert new information and often occur with ma...

Th is paper reviews evidence from recent research on Japanese sentence prosody, in particular Kawahara and Shinya (2008) on coordinated clauses and Kubo (1989) et seq, Deguchi and Kitagawa (2002) et seq, Ishihara (2002) et seq and Hirotani (2003) et seq on matrix and embedded wh-questions, which suggests that syntactic clauses correspond to a domain for certain of the phonological and phonetic ...

An auditory sentence comprehension task investigated the extent to which the integration of contextual and structural cues was mediated by verbal memory span with 32 English-speaking six- to eight-year-old children. Spoken relative clause sentences were accompanied by visual context pictures which fully (depicting the actions described within the relative clause) or partially (depicting several...

Motivations for final position and for enclitic position: On the placing of the inflected verb in historical Basque Modern Basque (and historical Basque as a whole; generalized attestations start in the 16 century) is a XXIV-type language in Greenberg’s (1966) classification; that is, a non-rigid SOV language with Gen-N order and postpositions, but with N-Adj order. In the present work, I exami...