<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?><rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[LingBuzz]]></title><description><![CDATA[archive of linguistics articles]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 21:17:03 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/LingBuzz" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 21:17:02 GMT</pubDate><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[mitcho@mitcho.com (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine)]]></webMaster><ttl>60</ttl><category><![CDATA[linguistics]]></category><xhtml:meta content="noindex" name="robots" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"/><item><title><![CDATA[Sentiment-linked quantification among adjectives]]></title><description><![CDATA[Yoon (1996) observed that "The cups are clean" is taken by default to describe all the cups, while "The cups are dirty" might describe only some of them. This paper grounds Yoon’s clean/dirty contrast in the sentiment (valence) of these adjectives: "clean" is desirable, "dirty" undesirable. Sentiment is linked to quantification through the longstanding idea, known as the Anna Karenina Principle, that a good situation must be all good, while any bad element makes it bad. Assuming that “Is the current situation okay?” is a common Question Under
Discussion across contexts, positive-sentiment adjectives are easily taken to answer this question affirmatively, conveying that the current situation is all okay; while negative-sentiment adjectives are taken to answer it negatively, conveying that there is at least something wrong. Using quantitative data, this analysis is argued to explain not just Yoon’s clean/dirty contrast, but also further instances of variable quantificational force among adjectives in the domains of degrees and dimensions. This paper breaks new ground in deriving (a priori emotionless) logical inferences from sentiment, a relatively less-explored topic in formal semantics.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010022</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010022v1</guid><category><![CDATA[sentiment]]></category><category><![CDATA[adjectives]]></category><category><![CDATA[homogeneity]]></category><category><![CDATA[quantification]]></category><category><![CDATA[anna karenina principle]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Glass, Lelia]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[on the proper use of commutation]]></title><description><![CDATA[Thanks to the foundational work of Saussure and Troubetzkoy, further developed by Hjelmslev and Martinet, linguists today possess a highly effective tool for language description: commutation. However, these great pioneers did not provide clear methodological guidelines for applying this tool to the study of significant linguistic units. In this article, I would like to help young researchers use commutation correctly and avoid some common mistakes.Indeed, deploying this analytical method requires some precautions. Above all, it is essential to begin by carefully preparing the field—identifying and selecting relevant contexts in which commutation can be meaningfully applied and lead to  convincing results. The examples I draw upon come from various studies I have published on French and Berber.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010021</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010021v1</guid><category><![CDATA[commutation]]></category><category><![CDATA[relevant contexts]]></category><category><![CDATA[verbal systems]]></category><category><![CDATA[enunciation]]></category><category><![CDATA[discourse]]></category><category><![CDATA[narrative]]></category><category><![CDATA[cardinal numbers]]></category><category><![CDATA[oaths.]]></category><category><![CDATA[syntax]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Bentolila, Fernand]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Spanish subject-verb agreement as cliticization: A Merge-based approach]]></title><description><![CDATA[In this paper, I evaluate the claim that cliticization and “true” phi-agreement are technologically distinct from one another (Zwicky & Pullum 1983; Kramer 2014; Preminger 2014; Yuan 2021, a.o.) against the argument clitic and subject-verb inflectional paradigms from Spanish, showing that argument clitics and subject-verb agreement morphemes in this language display a striking number of formal and distributional similarities that cast doubt on the idea that these two phenomena are underlyingly distinct. Motivated by these similarities, I unify these phenomena by reducing subject-verb agreement to the technology involved in cliticization (e.g., Taraldsen 1992; 1993; Barbosa 1995; Ordóñez 1997; Ordóñez & Treviño 1999). Here, I adopt a view of clitics as functional heads that license particular features of certain arguments (Sportiche 1996), which I cast in terms of the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT) (Chomsky et al. 2019; Chomsky 2021; Chomsky 2024, a.o.), showing that this unified analysis does not require any computational stipulations in the narrow-syntactic component of grammar other than simplest Merge. This analysis is able to explain various clitic/agreement interaction effects in Spanish, and I additionally connect it to discussions of subject licensing and crosslinguistic variation within Romance.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010023</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010023v1</guid><category><![CDATA[clitics]]></category><category><![CDATA[agreement]]></category><category><![CDATA[spanish]]></category><category><![CDATA[smt]]></category><category><![CDATA[merge]]></category><category><![CDATA[licensing]]></category><category><![CDATA[variation]]></category><category><![CDATA[morphology]]></category><category><![CDATA[syntax]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Storment, John David]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A challenge to unified accounts of non-canonical belief reports]]></title><description><![CDATA[This paper is concerned with two observations about belief attribution. The first is Fauconnier’s (1984) observation that we can felicitously ascribe to  belief in a proposition , even when our pre-theoretical intuitions suggest that  does not really believe , as long as  would have believed  if he shared some of our presuppositions. The second is to Szab ó's (2010) observation that when  believes , of  individuals, that they bear a property , we can attribute to  the belief that “ things are ” even if  claims not to know how many relevant  beliefs she has. In other words, we can “sum up” 's distinct  beliefs in a single belief report. These two observations have been introduced in isolation of each other, but have recently been offered a unifying account (Mayr and Schmitt 2026). This note posits empirical challenges to unification, and discusses the potential theoretical implications that arise if, indeed, the two observations cannot be successfully unified.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010024</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010024v1</guid><category><![CDATA[belief reports]]></category><category><![CDATA[summative readings]]></category><category><![CDATA[qud-sensitivity]]></category><category><![CDATA[attitudes]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Benbaji-Elhadad, Ido]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Cognitive Grammar analysis of Compromise Forms in Bilingual Speech at an Idiolectal level ]]></title><description><![CDATA[This paper presents evidence against matrix-language approaches to code-switching by applying Ronald Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar framework to bilingual pedagogical discourse. Analyzing seven classroom lectures from a multilingual Indian instructor, the study examines non-standard compromise forms, focusing integration of construction schemas through extension relations at the level of the individual structured inventory. Rather than demonstrating a shift between bounded linguistic systems as separate mental spaces, the data reveals a fluid, integrated structured inventory where constructions are selected based on cognitive economy and conceptual negotiation. The results show that non-standard syntax emerges from the convergence of entrenched structures across languages, serving to reduce processing cost during spontaneous delivery. Ultimately, this study supports a usage-based, construction-driven model of bilingual competence.  

Keywords: code switching, bilingualism, cognitive grammar, compromise forms, integration]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010020</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010020v1</guid><category><![CDATA[code switching]]></category><category><![CDATA[bilingualism]]></category><category><![CDATA[cognitive grammar]]></category><category><![CDATA[compromise forms]]></category><category><![CDATA[integration]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Mukherjee, Atrayee]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Note on the Syntax and Semantics of Chinese Classifiers]]></title><description><![CDATA[We examine the structure of classifier constructions in Mandarin Chinese in light of Little et al.’s (2022) proposal on the semantics of two kinds of classifier constructions and Zhang's (2011, 2013) analysis of classifiers in Chinese. Little et al. propose that classifiers either compose first with nouns (classifiers-for-nouns) or compose first with numerals (classifiers-for-numerals). The semantic denotation of numerals is different in both cases. Zhang proposes that Chinese has both structures. Taking both proposals at face valve would require us to assume that numerals are listed twice in the lexicon in Chinese (once for each denotation in Little et al.’s models). We critically examine Zhang's diagnostics and conclude that Chinese has only the classifier-for-nouns structure. A tentative semantic analysis is provided.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010019</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010019v1</guid><category><![CDATA[numeral classifiers]]></category><category><![CDATA[chinese]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantic composition]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><category><![CDATA[syntax]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Barrie, Michael]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Brief Discussion of Free Merge, Markovian Merge, and Non-Markovian Merge]]></title><description><![CDATA[This paper is principally concerned with the principle of Free Merge, arguably one of the central commitments of the Minimalist Programme. It first traces the relevant theoretical developments, before turning to a more gradual analysis of three notions: Free Merge, Markovian Merge, and Non-Markovian Merge. The discussion will then consider what kinds of problems this theoretical apparatus may be able to address, while also offering an exposition and interpretation of Chomsky’s most recent proposals.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010018</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010018v1</guid><category><![CDATA[free merge; markovian merge; non-markovian merge]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[kangjie, CHANG]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The temporal semantics of proximate futures in English and Turkish]]></title><description><![CDATA[Proximate futures, like English 'be about to' or Turkish 'üzere', are a type of future expression which entails that an eventuality will hold at a future time that is close to the reference time (RT) from tense. While past work on the semantics of future expressions has primarily focused on contrasts between WOLL, 'be going to', and their cross-linguistic counterparts (e.g., Copley 2002, Klecha 2014), less work has investigated the semantics of proximate futures (for an exception, see Hill 2025). What is the core semantic contribution of proximate future expressions, and to what extent does the meaning of proximate futures vary cross-linguistically? In this paper, I discuss a set of properties that hold for proximate futures in both English and Turkish, focusing on their temporal contribution: both express temporal closeness, require that the relevant eventuality has not yet started, and, like the perfect aspect, interact with temporal adverbials/viewpoint aspect. Additionally, the forms 'about' and 'üzere' can both be used elsewhere to express spatial closeness, based on which I hypothesize that forms that denote spatial proximity are able to be recruited for temporal proximity during the process of grammaticalization. In my analysis, I argue that the interval introduced by proximate futures serves as its own RT and is thus a parallel of the perfect time span (PTS) (McCoard 1978, Dowty 1979, Iatridou et al. 2001). Rather than stretching into the past, proximate futures “extend the now” into the future, with an additional restriction of proximity to the RT from tense. In this way, the current analysis positions proximate futures as a mirror of the “hot news” perfect (McCawley 1971). I conclude by discussing the status of proximate futures as (non-)modal operators.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010016</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010016v1</guid><category><![CDATA[proximate future]]></category><category><![CDATA[high aspect]]></category><category><![CDATA[perfect aspect]]></category><category><![CDATA[english]]></category><category><![CDATA[turkish]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Knick, Emily]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[It May or May Not Be Relevant: Testing the Relationship Between Relevance and Informativeness]]></title><description><![CDATA[The dominant view in cognitive science and formal pragmatics is that relevance is a matter of informativeness: a sentence is relevant if it is informative, and irrelevant otherwise. We provide experimental evidence against this thesis. For polar questions (e.g. ‘Is Mary coming to the party?’), we constructed two kinds of uninformative replies: replies that clearly violate relevance (uninformative-off-topic condition; e.g. ‘Mary lives in an old house’) and replies that are equally uninformative yet do not intuitively incur a relevance violation, such as uncertainty or disagreement reports (target condition; e.g. ‘Her parents disagree about that’). In a within-subject study (N = 100; 12 scenarios), participants judged both kinds of replies uninformative, but a forced-choice continuation diagnostic revealed a sharp dissociation in perceived relevance: target replies were judged relevant 95%, versus 3% for the uninformative-off-topic condition. These results show that informativeness is not a necessary condition for relevance.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010017</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010017v1</guid><category><![CDATA[relevance; informativity; question answering; maxim of relation]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Feinmann, Diego; Ramotowska, Sonia]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pictures and Figures: Golding, Halliday, and the Stratum Closest to Being]]></title><description><![CDATA[This paper advances a convergence argument across phenomenological linguistics, narrative
enactment, and embodied cognitive science. M. A. K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar
describes a stratum of meaning — the content plane of figures — that precedes grammaticalization:
experience organised as configurations of process, participants, and circumstances before any
lexicogrammatical structure captures it. This stratum is structurally identical to what William
Golding’s Neanderthal protagonists enact as “picture-thinking,” and to what enactivist cognitive
science identifies as the sensorimotor coupling through which organisms constitute meaning prior
to representation. Clark (2009) concludes that what previous analysis read as communicative
deficit in Golding’s Neanderthals may be richness at a level the grammaticalized system cannot
register — a conclusion stratification theory reaches independently. Golding’s prose enacts the
content plane directly: transitivity suppressed, causality unencoded, likeness as figural identity
before predicated comparison. Mapping Halliday’s stratification model onto a companion paper’s
(a1)–(a2)–(b↔c) framework gives the argument structural precision: the history of representation
becomes a history of progressive grammaticalization, AI represents the completion of that history
by operating without any figural ground, and the a3 condition is the recovery of access to the
content plane. A further section distinguishes the lateral a2 convulsion from the outward a1-
touching convulsion, arguing that discriminating between them is the central practice of a3
existence. A final section identifies aging as a second and universal forcing condition, reading the
gerontolinguistic pattern of preserved transformed gist in healthy aging as empirical evidence of
outward movement through the strata.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010014</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010014v1</guid><category><![CDATA[being]]></category><category><![CDATA[representation]]></category><category><![CDATA[artificial intelligence]]></category><category><![CDATA[content plane]]></category><category><![CDATA[stratification]]></category><category><![CDATA[systemic functional grammar]]></category><category><![CDATA[figures]]></category><category><![CDATA[embodied cognition]]></category><category><![CDATA[enactivism]]></category><category><![CDATA[picture-thinking]]></category><category><![CDATA[golding]]></category><category><![CDATA[the inheritors]]></category><category><![CDATA[phenomenology]]></category><category><![CDATA[heidegger]]></category><category><![CDATA[pre-predicative]]></category><category><![CDATA[transitivity]]></category><category><![CDATA[figural vocalization]]></category><category><![CDATA[grammaticalization]]></category><category><![CDATA[aging]]></category><category><![CDATA[gerontolinguistics]]></category><category><![CDATA[transformed gist]]></category><category><![CDATA[fuzzy trace theory]]></category><category><![CDATA[mind-at-large]]></category><category><![CDATA[dissociation]]></category><category><![CDATA[practice]]></category><category><![CDATA[analogy]]></category><category><![CDATA[cognitive science]]></category><category><![CDATA[philosophy of language]]></category><category><![CDATA[philosophy of mind]]></category><category><![CDATA[continental philosophy]]></category><category><![CDATA[narrative enactment]]></category><category><![CDATA[literary linguistics]]></category><category><![CDATA[pragmatics]]></category><category><![CDATA[enaction]]></category><category><![CDATA[sensorimotor coupling]]></category><category><![CDATA[kastrup]]></category><category><![CDATA[chapman]]></category><category><![CDATA[brainerd]]></category><category><![CDATA[reyna]]></category><category><![CDATA[alzheimer]]></category><category><![CDATA[propositional content]]></category><category><![CDATA[sub-propositional]]></category><category><![CDATA[functional discourse grammar]]></category><category><![CDATA[hjelmslev]]></category><category><![CDATA[lateral analogy]]></category><category><![CDATA[outward movement]]></category><category><![CDATA[epochal arc]]></category><category><![CDATA[gestell]]></category><category><![CDATA[pre-socratic]]></category><category><![CDATA[ai epoch]]></category><category><![CDATA[convulsion of the understanding]]></category><category><![CDATA[likeness]]></category><category><![CDATA[shared picture]]></category><category><![CDATA[markov blanket]]></category><category><![CDATA[figural identity]]></category><category><![CDATA[metaphor]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Mcknight, Scott]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Back Jer as a Negative Marker: Jer Color in Slavic Liquid Contexts as an Etymological Diagnostic and Evidence for Syllabic-Resonant Coloring]]></title><description><![CDATA[Old Church Slavonic distinguishes two jer letters, ъ (back) and ь (front), whose
distribution in liquid contexts (CъrC/CьrC, CъlC/CьlC) has resisted phonolog-
ical explanation for over a century. This paper makes a coordinated empirical
and theoretical claim. Empirically, on the basis of a 128-word Proto-Slavic corpus
together with a reanalysis of Kuryłowicz’s (1956) survey of Trautmann’s (1924)
Balto-Slavic dictionary, jer color in these positions is shown to function as an ety-
mological diagnostic: front jer ь marks inheritance from a PIE syllabic resonant (*r̥,
*l ̥); back jer ъ marks every other source—loanwords, laryngeal sequences, substrate
vocabulary, full-grade roots. The diagnostic is categorical for unconditioned inher-
ited vocabulary in both directions: among confirmed inherited front-jer-plus-liquid
words (n= 60), none fails to trace to a PIE syllabic resonant; among back-jer-
plus-liquid words with no labial/round conditioning environment (n= 50), none
traces to a PIE syllabic resonant. Seven cases of PIE syllabic resonants yielding
back jer (*gъrdlo, *gъrnъ, *bъrzъ, *drъvo, *tъrkъ, *mъlva, *tъlkъ) are explained by
a unified labial/round conditioning environment (labiovelars, u-stems, labial *w).
Theoretically, the conditioning is uniformly consonantal and glide-based, with no
vowel-quality features as conditioners; this argues that the segment being condi-
tioned was a colored syllabic consonant rather than a reduced vowel, and that OCS
ъ/ь in liquid contexts function as notational conventions for that syllabic resonant.
The argument converges with the Havlík’s-law vocalization asymmetry developed
in a companion preprint (Jevremović 2026) and reframes the etymological diagnos-
tic as a downstream consequence of a structural account in which inherited PIE
material and loaned or substratum material feed the same Slavic syllabic-resonant
slot through two distinct channels.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010011</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010011v1</guid><category><![CDATA[proto-slavic]]></category><category><![CDATA[jers]]></category><category><![CDATA[yers]]></category><category><![CDATA[syllabic resonants]]></category><category><![CDATA[liquid contexts]]></category><category><![CDATA[old church slavonic]]></category><category><![CDATA[slavic historical phonology]]></category><category><![CDATA[common slavic]]></category><category><![CDATA[balto-slavic]]></category><category><![CDATA[pie syllabic resonants]]></category><category><![CDATA[etymological diagnostic]]></category><category><![CDATA[loanword phonology]]></category><category><![CDATA[havlík's law]]></category><category><![CDATA[winter's law]]></category><category><![CDATA[comparative reconstruction]]></category><category><![CDATA[phonology]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Jevremović, Marko]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Knowledge as Conventionalized Arbitrary Relations: Toward a Theory of Epistemology]]></title><description><![CDATA[This paper proposes that encyclopedic knowledge — what we know about the world, as distinct from what follows from definitions or logical structure — consists fundamentally of conventionalized arbitrary relations. Drawing on Saussurean sign-arbitrariness, Kripkean modal semantics, and the gradient conventionalization framework developed in prior work on lexical meaning, the paper argues that every empirical claim depends on a contingent carving of reality into concepts and a contingent act of reference-fixing that anchors those concepts to worldly entities. Both operations are arbitrary in the Saussurean sense and require intersubjective stabilization before they can function as publicly warranted knowledge rather than as private epistemic state. The thesis is tested against apparent counterexamples — Kripke's necessary a posteriori, scientific laws, mathematical truths, and perceptual beliefs — each reducing to either a system-internal relation or a conventionalized arbitrary relation not necessary in any world-independent sense. The degree to which a claim qualifies as publicly warranted knowledge corresponds to its degree of conventionalization within a specified epistemic community, operationalized through the alpha coefficient developed in prior work. The framework remains agnostic about inaccessible first-person standpoints, a stance illustrated through wrongly convicted defendants, deceased persons, and the Cartesian cogito. Philosophy, on the resulting picture, is not a producer of α-scorable knowledge but the generative substrate through which the conceptual carvings over which conventionalization operates are invented, contested, and revised.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010012</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010012v1</guid><category><![CDATA[epistemology]]></category><category><![CDATA[arbitrary relations]]></category><category><![CDATA[conventionalization]]></category><category><![CDATA[saussure]]></category><category><![CDATA[kripke]]></category><category><![CDATA[necessary a posteriori]]></category><category><![CDATA[two-dimensional semantics]]></category><category><![CDATA[gradient framework]]></category><category><![CDATA[encyclopedic knowledge]]></category><category><![CDATA[alpha coefficient]]></category><category><![CDATA[intersubjective agreement]]></category><category><![CDATA[publicly warranted knowledge]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Mozahid, Tariq]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Etymology of Albanian dorë: PIE *de-r- “hand, open palm,” the *ĝhʰesr--side reading, and the ARM → HAND grammaticalization pathway]]></title><description><![CDATA[Albanian dorë "hand" (consonantal plural duar) has been derived in two competing ways since the nineteenth century. The *der-side reading, originating with Gustav Meyer's Albanesische Studien I (1883) and running through La Piana (1937, 1942), Belardi (1948), Pokorny (1959), and Frisk (1960–72), groups dorë with PIE *der- "Spanne der Hand" (Pokorny IEW 203) using only regular Albanian sound changes. The *ǵʰesr-side reading, canonicalized by Demiraj (1990, 1997) and inherited by Orel (1998), Vermeer (2008), and Beekes (2010), groups dorë with PIE *ǵʰesr- "hand" (IEW 447) but requires positing the irregular shift *ǵʰ → d in Albanian, where the regular reflex of PIE *ǵʰ is dh.
This paper develops the case for the *der-side reading on three grounds. Phonologically, the derivation *der-s → *dḗr → *dḗr-eh₂- → *dḗr-ā → dorë uses only sound laws all parties accept: Szemerényi's Law on the e-grade r-stem nominative, the *-eh₂- feminine extension, regular Albanian *ē → o, and unstressed final *-ā → -ë. Historiographically, the post-1990 consolidation rests in its foundational citation (Demiraj 1997: 140 → Tagliavini L'albanese di Dalmazia p. 101) on a page whose content does not address Albanian dorë; Pokorny's own text at IEW 447 had already stated, in his own voice, that *ǵʰesr- could not produce dorë. Comparatively, the post-2000 specialist reconstruction (Vermeer 2008) has independently moved to *ǵʰēr- — a sibilant-less form differing from the framework's *dēr- by one phoneme — and Vermeer describes the sound law underlying Huld's dismissal of La Piana's *dōrom as having no reliably agreed example.
The paper further addresses the deeper question of where PIE *de-r- itself comes from, developing the ARM → HAND grammaticalization hypothesis with reference to Heine and Kuteva (2002), Matasović's published Proto-Celtic parallel (*dowsant-, 2009), Sanskrit doṣ-/dor- with its rich compound system and metrological attestations, and the morphological frame of Lipp (2009), Bauhaus (2019), and Kahl (2024). A formal constraint qualifies the deeper hypothesis: the well-attested IE arm-root carries o/u-vocalism (*dóws-), not e-vocalism, so the deeper unification requires Pre-PIE compositional analysis developed in the companion papers. Probability: *de-r- → dorë etymology, 55–70%; deeper ARM → HAND hypothesis, 15–25%.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010008</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010008v1</guid><category><![CDATA[albanian dorë]]></category><category><![CDATA[phantom citation]]></category><category><![CDATA[tagliavini]]></category><category><![CDATA[belardi argument]]></category><category><![CDATA[*ǵʰesr-]]></category><category><![CDATA[szemerényi's law]]></category><category><![CDATA[*-eh₂- feminine]]></category><category><![CDATA[irregular sound change]]></category><category><![CDATA[demiraj]]></category><category><![CDATA[vermeer]]></category><category><![CDATA[la piana]]></category><category><![CDATA[iew 203]]></category><category><![CDATA[arm → hand grammaticalization]]></category><category><![CDATA[proto-celtic *dowsant-]]></category><category><![CDATA[sibilant-less reconstruction]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><category><![CDATA[morphology]]></category><category><![CDATA[phonology]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Chavis, J. M.; Claude, A.I.]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[LENGUA, DIALECTO Y DESCRIPCIÓN GRAMATICAL: EL CASO DEL ESPAÑOL RIOPLATENSE]]></title><description><![CDATA[This chapter offers an overview of the phonology, the lexicon, the morphology and the syntax of Rioplatense Spanish.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010007</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010007v1</guid><category><![CDATA[rioplatense spanish]]></category><category><![CDATA[morphology]]></category><category><![CDATA[lexicon]]></category><category><![CDATA[syntax]]></category><category><![CDATA[morphology]]></category><category><![CDATA[syntax]]></category><category><![CDATA[phonology]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Muñoz Pérez, Carlos; Saab, Andrés]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Huautla Mazateco Complex Segments as Single Phonemes: A Multi-layered Subsegmental Structure Approach]]></title><description><![CDATA[This paper proposes a novel approach to the analysis of consonantal phonetic sequences in Huautla Mazatec. These sequences comprise a large inventory of both simple and complex phonemes, including typologically unexpected contrasts such as pre- vs. post-aspirated consonants like /ht/ vs. /th/ or /hnd/ vs. /nth/. This paper argues that the primary phonological contrast between these phonemes does not reside in temporal anchoring or linearity, but rather in a distinct arrangement within a subsegmental hierarchical binary structure. This approach adapts Pike & Pike's (1947) 'Immediate Constituents' proposal to the representational framework of Q-Theory (Garvin et al. 2018; Inkelas & Shih 2016; Shih & Inkelas 2019).]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010013</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010013v1</guid><category><![CDATA[mazatec]]></category><category><![CDATA[consonantal sequences]]></category><category><![CDATA[complex consonants]]></category><category><![CDATA[secondary articulation]]></category><category><![CDATA[pre-aspiration]]></category><category><![CDATA[post-aspiration]]></category><category><![CDATA[q-theory]]></category><category><![CDATA[phonological recursion]]></category><category><![CDATA[phonology]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Wagner Oviedo, Carlos]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Etymology of Albanian dorë: PIE *de-r- “hand, open palm,” the *ĝhʰesr--side reading, and the ARM → HAND grammaticalization pathway]]></title><description><![CDATA[Albanian dorë "hand" (consonantal plural duar) has been derived in two competing ways since the nineteenth century. The *der-side reading, originating with Gustav Meyer's Albanesische Studien I (1883) and running through La Piana (1937, 1942), Belardi (1948), Pokorny (1959), and Frisk (1960–72), groups dorë with PIE *der- "Spanne der Hand" (Pokorny IEW 203) using only regular Albanian sound changes. The *ǵʰesr-side reading, canonicalized by Demiraj (1990, 1997) and inherited by Orel (1998), Vermeer (2008), and Beekes (2010), groups dorë with PIE *ǵʰesr- "hand" (IEW 447) but requires positing the irregular shift *ǵʰ → d in Albanian, where the regular reflex of PIE *ǵʰ is dh.
This paper develops the case for the *der-side reading on three grounds. Phonologically, the derivation *der-s → *dḗr → *dḗr-eh₂- → *dḗr-ā → dorë uses only sound laws all parties accept: Szemerényi's Law on the e-grade r-stem nominative, the *-eh₂- feminine extension, regular Albanian *ē → o, and unstressed final *-ā → -ë. Historiographically, the post-1990 consolidation rests in its foundational citation (Demiraj 1997: 140 → Tagliavini L'albanese di Dalmazia p. 101) on a page whose content does not address Albanian dorë; Pokorny's own text at IEW 447 had already stated, in his own voice, that *ǵʰesr- could not produce dorë. Comparatively, the post-2000 specialist reconstruction (Vermeer 2008) has independently moved to *ǵʰēr- — a sibilant-less form differing from the framework's *dēr- by one phoneme — and Vermeer describes the sound law underlying Huld's dismissal of La Piana's *dōrom as having no reliably agreed example.
The paper further addresses the deeper question of where PIE *de-r- itself comes from, developing the ARM → HAND grammaticalization hypothesis with reference to Heine and Kuteva (2002), Matasović's published Proto-Celtic parallel (*dowsant-, 2009), Sanskrit doṣ-/dor- with its rich compound system and metrological attestations, and the morphological frame of Lipp (2009), Bauhaus (2019), and Kahl (2024). A formal constraint qualifies the deeper hypothesis: the well-attested IE arm-root carries o/u-vocalism (*dóws-), not e-vocalism, so the deeper unification requires Pre-PIE compositional analysis developed in the companion papers. Probability: *de-r- → dorë etymology, 55–70%; deeper ARM → HAND hypothesis, 15–25%.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010009</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010009v1</guid><category><![CDATA[albanian dorë]]></category><category><![CDATA[phantom citation]]></category><category><![CDATA[tagliavini]]></category><category><![CDATA[belardi argument]]></category><category><![CDATA[*ǵʰesr-]]></category><category><![CDATA[szemerényi's law]]></category><category><![CDATA[*-eh₂- feminine]]></category><category><![CDATA[irregular sound change]]></category><category><![CDATA[demiraj]]></category><category><![CDATA[vermeer]]></category><category><![CDATA[la piana]]></category><category><![CDATA[iew 203]]></category><category><![CDATA[arm → hand grammaticalization]]></category><category><![CDATA[proto-celtic *dowsant-]]></category><category><![CDATA[sibilant-less reconstruction]]></category><category><![CDATA[semantics]]></category><category><![CDATA[morphology]]></category><category><![CDATA[phonology]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Chavis, J. M.; Claude, A.I.]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Learnability of Bridge Effects]]></title><description><![CDATA[The distinction between bridge verbs, which allow long-distance questions out of their CP complement, and non-bridge verbs, which do not, is found in a range of languages. In the previous literature, this distinction has been variably attributed to the lexical semantic/discourse properties of the CP-embedding verbs, or the syntactic positioning of the dependent CP. In this study, we provide evidence for an alternative, learning-based account, whereby positive input evidence is needed for children to acquire the possibility of wh-dependencies across a CP-embedding verb, and to further generalize this property to all such verbs.  We examine the bridge/non-bridge distinction in English and Mandarin, with a corpus analysis of child-directed speech and experimental evidence provided for each language. We demonstrate that while English shows a clear bridge/non-bridge distinction, Mandarin CP-embedding verbs are all bridge verbs for both argument and adjunct wh-dependencies. These findings are predicted by a difference in the structure of the input data available to English versus Mandarin children as they acquire long-distance wh-dependencies, along with the proposed learning-based account of the bridge effect.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010005</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010005v1</guid><category><![CDATA[bridge effect]]></category><category><![CDATA[learnability]]></category><category><![CDATA[long-distance dependency]]></category><category><![CDATA[island effect]]></category><category><![CDATA[the tolerance principle]]></category><category><![CDATA[syntax]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Lu, Jiayi; Legate, Julie; Yang, Charles]]></dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Geometry of the Accusative]]></title><description><![CDATA[This paper challenges the existence of structural Case as an independent syntactic primitive within the Minimalist Program, arguing against both the Case-by-Agree mechanism and Dependent Case Theory. Adopting a strictly spatial-relational framework, we argue that unmarked core arguments are inherently caseless roots that saturate the eventive core through topological fusion, or pseudo-incorporation. Consequently, the Case Filter and Burzio's Generalization are revealed to be theoretical artifacts. We propose that marked alignments, such as Differential Object Marking (DOM) and the Ergative case, are not the result of abstract feature valuation or phase-mate competition, but the overt materialization of elementary spatial boundaries. Highly individuated internal arguments are shielded from eventive fusion via the Zonal Inclusion operator (⊆), mapping them as topological targets or possessors, while active external arguments are anchored to the event perimeter via the Origin/Reverse Inclusion vector (⊇). By replacing abstract functional heads with directly interpretable topological relators, this architecture captures cross-linguistic syncretisms, aspectual splits, and global case splits without resorting to invisible probes or the stipulative geometric hierarchies of Nanosyntax.]]></description><link>http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010006</link><guid isPermaLink="false">010006v1</guid><category><![CDATA[accusative]]></category><category><![CDATA[differential object marking]]></category><category><![CDATA[dependent case theory]]></category><category><![CDATA[pseudo-incorporation]]></category><category><![CDATA[zonal inclusion.]]></category><category><![CDATA[morphology]]></category><category><![CDATA[syntax]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Franco, Ludovico]]></dc:creator></item></channel></rss>