Acedo-Matellán & Real-Puigdollers (2025). Boundedness in locative prepositions: Evidence from Catalan

Autors:

Acedo-Matellán & Real-Puigdollers

Títol:

Boundedness in locative prepositions: Evidence from Catalan

Editorial: Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
Data de publicació: 02-01-2025
Pàgines: 39

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This paper provides evidence from Catalan for the existence of bounded and unbounded locative prepositions, and proposes that boundedness in the adpositional domain is derived similarly to boundedness in the verbal, nominal or adjectival domains. Our contribution is both empirical and theoretical. First, we show that Catalan has two simple locative prepositions, a and en, which form a minimal pair as far as boundedness is concerned and exhibit, correspondingly, different selection patterns: while bounded a only selects DPs with a quantity interpretation, unbounded en can combine with both NPs and DPs, which receive a homogeneous interpretation. Second, we develop a syntactic and semantic theory to account for these facts that relates them to the crosscategorial property of boundedness: a-PPs, but not en-PPs, contain an aspectual projection that imposes the interpretation that the otherwise homogeneous region denoted by the preposition is delimited. Moreover, we show that the difference between the structures licensed by a and en has consequences for the interpretation of quantifiers within PPs. Specifically, we set eyes upon a particular context in which a and en take a universally quantified singular DP as complement and form a minimal pair. We propose that while the bounded preposition a allows for the interpretation of the quantifier tot ‘all’ as a universal quantifier of parts, the unbounded preposition en does not. Instead, with en the quantifier behaves as an adjective of sorts associated to a maximality operator. Our paper contributes to furthering our understanding of boundedness across categories in human language.

Fernández-Sánchez & Ott (2020). Dislocations

Autors:

Javier Fernández Sánchez & Dennis Ott

Títol:

Dislocations

Editorial: Language and Linguistics Compass, Vol.14 issue 9 (John Wiley & Sons Ltd)
Data de publicació: Setembre 2020

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Dislocation is a kind of construction in which a phrasal constituent (the dislocate) appears at the outer left or right edge of a gap-less clause (its host) that contains a pronominal correlate of the dislocate. Dislocations are widely attested and presumably universally available across languages. The construction raises a number of problems for core assumptions of syntactic theory, in that these assumptions appear to thwart any coherent resolution of the question of how the dislocate relates to the internal structure of its host. This contribution is divided into two parts. In Part 1, we review central empirical properties of dislocation, which, taken together, appear to defy the laws of syntax as commonly assumed. In Part 2, we review key proposals that have emerged over the last decennia to resolve this paradox and restore dislocations to normalcy.

Pagliarini, Vernice, & Guasti (2025). Online processing of wh-questions in Italian: evidence from eye tracking

Autors:

Pagliarini, Vernice, & Guasti

Títol:

Online processing of wh-questions in Italian: evidence from eye tracking

Editorial: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
Data de publicació: 12-05-2025
Pàgines: 14

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This study investigates the processing of subject and object direct questions headed by wh-elements such as chi (i.e. who) and quale-NP (i.e. which-NP) in Italian, a pro-drop language that allows post-verbal subjects. In Italian, chi and quale-NP questions are ambiguous: they can be interpreted as either subject or object, in the absence of morphological or pragmatic disambiguation. Using eye tracking techniques, we explore how different types of wh-elements (chi vs. quale-NP) and extraction sites (subject vs. object) are processed when disambiguated by number verbal agreement. A distinct processing pattern emerges between chi and quale-NP questions: while quale-NP questions generally demand more cognitive effort when encountering the verb, chi questions necessitate increased processing during post-verbal NP integration. Additionally, a wh-subject extraction preference is observed, which reflects an active gap filling strategy across types of wh-elements. These findings are discussed in terms of the processing mechanisms underlying the elaboration of wh-questions.

Pagliarini, E., Lungu, O., van Hout, A., Pinter, L., Balázs, S., Crain, S. & Guasti, M.T. (2022). How children interpret disjunction under negation in Dutch, French, Hungarian and Italian: a cross-linguistic comparison.

Autors:

Pagliarini, E., Lungu, O., van Hout, A., Pinter, L., Balázs, S., Crain, S. & Guasti, M.T.

Títol:

How children interpret disjunction under negation in Dutch, French, Hungarian and Italian: a cross-linguistic comparison. Language, Learning and Development

Editorial: Language Learning and Development
Data de publicació: 2022

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