Nazzal, Zhu, & Gavarró (2025). Early knowledge of word order in Palestinian Arabic: An eye-tracking study

Autors:

Nazzal, Zhu, & Gavarró

Títol:

Early knowledge of word order in Palestinian Arabic: An eye-tracking study

Editorial: Language Acquisition
Data de publicació: 19-02-2025

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This paper addresses the underexplored realm of early parameter setting in language acquisition before the two-word stage, in a less researched language, Palestinian Arabic. Building on Franck et al.’s (2013) exploration of the verb–direct or indirect object/direct or indirect object–verb (VO/OV) parameter in infants exposed to French, we investigate the acquisition of the VO order (as opposed to OV) in 17-month-old native Palestinian Arabic infants using a combination of the preferential looking paradigm, the weird word order paradigm, and pseudo-verbs. The results from our study show that Palestinian Arabic infants have established VO by the age of 1;5 and ignore sequences of ungrammatical OV. This pattern is different from that of the adults, who do not ignore ungrammatical sequences. Additionally, we find no correlation between the infants’ performance and vocabulary size or age within the range tested. The infants in the study constitute, with Mandarin infants in a similar study, the youngest age group to show sensitivity to the VO/OV contrast.

Espinal & Cyrino (2025). Experiencers at the syntax-pragmatics interface. The case of the jo ‘I’ – construction in Catalan

Autors:

Espinal & Cyrino

Títol:

Experiencers at the syntax-pragmatics interface. The case of the jo ‘I’ – construction in Catalan

Editorial: Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
Data de publicació: 18-04-2025
Pàgines: 33

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This paper aims to support the thesis that Speech Act related operators have landing sites in syntax, specifically at the syntax-pragmatics interface. In order to attain this goal, it presents the first formal analysis of a construction, dubbed the jo ‘I’ – construction, that shows an overt first person strong pronoun sitting in sentence-initial position of declarative sentences both in pro-drop and partial pro-drop languages of the Romance family. Taking Catalan as a case in point, it is shown that, prosodically, this first person strong pronoun has a particular intonation (a rising pitch accent followed by a high boundary tone). Syntactically, it corresponds not to a subject but to a (kind of) hanging topic that requires a resumptive element in the clause, while semantically it introduces a reference to the speaker who at the time of uttering the sentence is performing a subjective declaration speech act.

Recasens (2025). The diachronic evolution of syllable-onset /Cl/ clusters in Romance revisited. An integrated account

Autors:

Daniel Recasens

Títol:

The diachronic evolution of syllable-onset /Cl/ clusters in Romance revisited. An integrated account

Editorial: Diachronica
Data de publicació: 23 de setembre de 2025
Pàgines: 53

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This paper deals with the historical development of the syllable-onset clusters /kl gl pl bl fl/ in Romance languages and dialects and with their articulatory and/or perceptual motivations. Several diachronic pathways are identified which depart from articulatory unstable [Cʎ] sequences, most distinctively lateral vocalization (e.g., [kʎ] > [kj]) and obstruent lenition (e.g., [kʎ] > [çʎ]). Most sound changes are attributed to articulatory variation insofar as they require adjustments in constriction degree and location. In a few cases the replacement of one consonantal sound by another appears to have been induced by acoustic-perceptual equivalence, as for example the substitution of [θ] by [f] in Franco-Provençal and of palatalized labial stops by palatal stops in southern Italy. Of special interest is the one-to-many derivation problem by which a given phonetic outcome may be achieved through more than one pathway as exemplified by the two phonetic developments /kl/ > [kʎ] > [kj] > [c] > [tʃ] > [ʃ] and /kl/ > [kʎ] > [çʎ] > [çj] > [ʃj] > [ʃ].

Russo Cardona & Villalba (2025). The interaction between clause size and Voice: Evidence from Catalan and Italian

Autors:

Russo Cardona, L. & Villalba, X.

Títol:

The interaction between clause size and Voice: Evidence from Catalan and Italian

Editorial: Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 10(1)
Data de publicació: 18 de setembre de 2025

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We argue that in certain reduced embedded clauses Voice behaves differently from most other contexts, on the basis of tough-constructions (TCs) and modal passives (MPs) in Catalan and Italian. These constructions involve an A-dependency targeting only internal arguments of morphologically active transitive infinitives (unlike control, raising, and restructuring dependencies) because they involve a C/I-less VoiceP complement with a defective Voice layer (no accusative, no passive morphology, passive-like implicit agent). Thanks to the existence of a resumptive variant of TCs/MPs in Catalan, we propose a way to derive the distribution of defective Voice, which must be directly selected by a suitable lexical category, with regard to active/passive Voice, which must be directly selected by a functional head (at least in the languages at issue). Our findings bear on the broader theoretical debates about the typologies of Voice, clausal complements, and on the syntactic correlates of clause size.

Repiso-Puigdelliura (2025). Effects of language dominance in Catalan-Spanish-English trilinguals’ vowel-initial glottal marking: A Principal Components Analysis approach

Autors:

Gemma Repiso-Puigdelliura

Títol:

Effects of language dominance in Catalan-Spanish-English trilinguals' vowel-initial glottal marking: A Principal Components Analysis approach

Editorial: Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
Data de publicació: 8 de setembres de 2025

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Crosslinguistic influence (i.e., CLI, henceforth) in trilingual speakers is multidirectional and shaped by factors such as the amount of exposure to, and use of, each of the speaker’s languages. This study investigates whether relative dominance explains progressive and regressive CLI in trilingual speakers. To this purpose, we examine the production of word-external vocalic sequences (i.e., /V#V/) in L3 English speakers who are Catalan-Spanish bilinguals. Participants completed a reading task in English, Spanish, and Catalan that elicited vowel-to-vowel sequences along four levels of stress (i.e., stressed-stressed, unstressed-stressed, stressed-unstressed, unstressed-unstressed). Alongside the production task, they filled out a trilingual version of the Bilingual Language Profile (i.e., BLP, henceforth) (Birdsong et al. 2012). The resulting vocalic sequences were classified as instances of glottal marking (i.e., creaky phonation or complete glottal stop) or modal phonation. To examine the role of dominance, we ran a Principal Component Analysis on the questionnaire data, identifying four principal components that explained 57.9% of the variance. We compared L3 English vowel-to-vowel sequences with those of Spanish-English bilinguals who speak Catalan as an L3, as well as with L1 English monolinguals. We ran dominance-based logistic regressions for each language. In English, our results show that L3 English speakers differ from their L3 Catalan Spanish-English bilingual counterparts in unstressedstressed vowel sequences, but differ across all four stress levels when compared to L1 English monolinguals. Dominance-related principal components do not predict the rate of glottal marking in L3 English. In L1 Catalan and L1 Spanish, the use of glottalization is predicted by the average rate of glottal marking in the speakers’ L3 English productions, as well as by higher scores on the principal component associated with L3 English dominance. In Spanish, vowel-initial glottal marking is predicted by scores associated with low Spanish dominance. These findings highlight that dominance mediates CLI in trilingual speakers, which in turn reflects the dynamic nature of CLI in multilingual speakers.