I apply the model of semantic universals in terms of informativeness/complexity trade-off (Kemp, Xu, and Regier 2018) to Boolean connectives. The model explains the crosslinguistic absence of the connective , once theoretical insights from Horn 1972 an…
Replacive overwriting by morphological tone has been used as major evidence for cyclic construction approaches to phonology (Hyman 2013, Inkelas 2018, Rolle 2018). In this article, I show that this argument is unwarranted: tonal overwriting can be deri…
Wei and Walker (2020) and Zymet (2018) claim that derivational lookahead effects are attested in the interactions between reduplication and other phonological processes in Mbe and Logoori, respectively. On the basis of this evidence, they argue that re…
We argue, following Barros and Vicente (2011), that right-node raising (RNR) results from either ellipsis or multidominance. Four considerations support this claim. (a) RNR has properties of ellipsis and of multidominance. (b) Where these are combined,…
This article challenges the view that eventive and stative passive participles are verbs and adjectives, respectively. Instead, I argue that existing diagnostics are sensitive to the eventive/stative contrast and to independent restrictions on word ord…
Binding and ellipsis are empirically and theoretically symbiotic: each reveals otherwise hidden facts about the other. Here I investigate a case where a theory of binding is entwined with a problematic ellipsis- licensing mechanism, with the result tha…
On the basis of revised syntactic structures for the French faire-causatives, this article argues that the placement of various clitics in these causatives can be accounted for by making reference to the feature defectivity/completeness of clitics and …
We provide an account of clause-boundedness in multiple sluicing that also captures its exceptions. Clause-boundedness arises whenever an embedded clause’s subject is not coreferential with a topical discourse referent in the embedding clause. Our acco…
Across many languages, multiple sluicing obeys a clausemate constraint. This can be understood on the empirically well-supported assumption that covert phrasal wh-movement is clause-bounded and subject to Superiority. We provide independent evidence fo…
The article discusses person agreement in embedded reports in Aqusha Dargwa (Nakh-Daghestanian). In contrast to root clauses, which have obligatory person agreement matching the features of the controller, finite embedded reports allow pronoun-agreemen…