Resumption has been the object of lively research (Doron 1982; Sells 1984; McClauskey 1990; 2002; Shlonsky 1992; Cann 1999; Sharvit 1999; Alexopoulou 2006; Guilliot 2006; Malkawi 2009; Rouveret 2011) and various analyses consider it a form of agreement, a last syntactic resort or a special kind of ellipsis. On the theoretical side, I survey the issues that are the background of the research, such as the nature of the pronouns that are involved in resumption. I develop a syntactic analysis of resumptive pronouns in which they are clitics (Cardinaletti and Starke 1999; Dechaine and Wiltschko 2002; Roberts 2010) and they form a complex determiner phrase together with the relative pronoun or interrogative pronoun. I argue that when resumption is obligatory, it follows from requirements in the syntax and only when it is optional it is a phenomenon at the syntax-pragmatics interface. On the empirical side, I contrast and compare the pronominal paradigms of Arabic and Romanian, an Eastern Romance language which strikingly shows a similar pattern of resumption as Arabic: (i) obligatory resumption in relativization, (ii) designated relative pronoun. Though for Romanian nobody has disputed the nature of the clitic pronouns as clitic in the sense that I am adopting (Cardinaletti and Starke 1999), it has not been thoroughly documented either. I then discuss the pragmatics of resumption in contexts in which it is optional, such as D-linked questions in Arabic. The difference between obligatory resumption and optional resumption is not found in the syntax, because this same syntactic derivation is associated with different interpretive effects depending on whether it occurs in obligatory or in optional contexts. I argue that the presence of the pronoun when it is not required by the syntax triggers a change in interpretation: the module pragmatics assigns it a pragmatic feature.

In everyday conversation, we frequently express relationships between two entities by using attributive possessive NPs. Structurally, these consist of a possessor referent, a possessum nominal and a possessive marker which explicates said relationship. For example, if I want to enquire about a house owned by your friend Mary which you are currently decorating, I might feasibly say "How are you getting on with Mary’s house?". My utterance of the pre-nominal possessive NP Mary’s house allows you to represent a specific referent, ensuring that we mentally converge on the same house and are able to talk about it. This study investigates English pre-nominal possessive NPs from a pragmatic point of view. It does so with the aim of providing a cognitively plausible description of their interpretationwhich simultaneously serves to understand how they function as referring expressions in communication. In particular, I discuss some of the intricacies they pose to interlocutors when itcomes to their referential interpretation. One of these concerns the fact that pre-nominal possessives are semantically compatible with numerous different interpretations, yet reference aparticular possessive relation in concrete communicative situations. Thus, given that the Englishlanguage, quite in contrast to the majority of the world’s languages, does not render thepossessive relation that holds between two entities morphosyntactically explicit, the interpretation of pre-nominal possessive NPs falls entirely within the remit of a pragmatic theory. This should explain how Mary’s house, which is compatible with interpretations such asthe house that Mary is letting, the house that Mary wishes to buy, as well as various others,comes to denote the house that Mary owns in a communicative situation like the above. Fullyinterpreting this NP, as Peters & Westerståhl (2013) suggest, involves knowing what possibleinterpretations it gives rise to, selecting the most salient one to the detriment of any others, and, finally, representing a determinate referent denoted by the NP as a whole. While the first aspect has received much attention (e.g. Barker, 1995; Vikner & Jensen, 2002), the other two have been considered by only few researchers. This study represents the first holistic account of possessive interpretations which combinesall three questions to explain the various facets of their pragmatics. On the theoretical level, itsuggests that the currently dominant stance (advocated by Vikner & Jensen, 2002), accordingto which it is the lexical semantic content of the possessum nominal which largely exhausts theinterpretation process, is in need of rethinking. Contrary to existing insights, I attribute a greaterrole to context and pragmatic reasoning both at the level of possible and at the level of salientinterpretations. On the methodological level, the study is multimethodological in its approach,complementing theoretical argument by means of a psycholinguistic production study and alarge-scale corpus study. In this respect, the present study paves the way for a description of pragmatic aspects of theEnglish grammar which have hitherto been explained in terms of more descriptive possessivetaxonomies, including ones delineating alienable vs. inalienable (e.g. Nikolaeva & Spencer,2013), prototypical vs. non-prototypical (e.g. Langacker, 1995; Rosenbach, 2002) and lexicalvs. pragmatic interpretations (Vikner & Jensen, 2002). Ultimately, I suggest that construing referential interpretation as an addressee-dependent search for relevance (e.g. Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995) largely obviates the need for taxonomies of this kind at the descriptive level.

This paper examines the discourse function of locative inversion (LI) in Swahili in a sample of twelve literary texts of various kinds and genres, written by different writers from Zanzibar as well as the mainland (Tanzania as well as Kenya) and published between 1960 and 2007. In the sample, I was able to identify only 21 examples of LI altogether, which suggests that the frequency of LI in general may be quite low. My analysis shows that these examples of LI are mainly used in background descriptions, that is, in longer or shorter sections where mostly places and objects are described in some detail. Furthermore, most of the identified locative inverted constructions are agentless passives; however, my sample also contains LI with process verbs. As I shall argue, locative inverted constructions are primarily discourse-pragmatically motivated and context-dependent, and their information structure can generelly be captured by assigning topic and focus features. Most specifically, my analysis shows that in most cases the preverbal locative is topical in the sense that its referent is available from the preceding context by bridging inferences. However, a few of the examples also show that locative inverted constructions sometimes also have even more subtle pragmatic effects.

No description available.

<p>The present study aims to examine the grammar of Spanish heritage children in relation to the syntax-discourse interface by analyzing the distribution of subject pronouns in focus and topic contexts. Focus and topic are related to the information structure of a clause, the former refers to new information of the sentence and the latter indicates old or known information (Lozano-Pozo, 2003). Studies exploring this phenomenon in various combinations of languages and L2 populations have found a clear overextension and overuse of overt subject pronouns in topic contexts in pro-drop languages, where the preferred option is the null pronoun, due to cross-linguistic influence from the L1 (Pérez-Leroux & Glass, 1999; Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006; Belletti et al., 2007; Sorace et al., 2009). Considering the results of previous research, this study examines the extent to which Spanish heritage speakers exhibit knowledge of subject pronoun distribution in focus and topic contexts by comparing them to their monolingual counterparts.</p> <p>Thirteen child heritage speakers of Spanish and twenty-seven monolingual children completed a structured elicitation task which consisted of a story followed by a question asking about an embedded subject (Focus condition) or an embedded direct object (Topic condition). Results revealed no overextension of overt subject pronouns in topic contexts due to cross-linguistic influence from English. However, differences were found in the focus condition. Heritage children diverged from the monolingual group since they produced considerably fewer instances of overt subject pronouns. It is hypothesized that heritage children are opting for the null pronoun option as the default option, which suggests they are prolonging the Null Subject Stage (Hyams, 1986). This finding points to protracted development due to a lack of activation of the language. Further findings are discussed taking into consideration current approaches that examine the effects of language dominance, exposure, and use.</p>

[pt] Neste estudo investigam-se as habilidades linguísticas de indivíduos incluídos no chamado Transtorno do Espectro Autista (TEA) e as dificuldades de linguagem observadas nesse quadro. A análise de problemas de linguagem no autismo, com dados do Português Brasileiro (PB), sob uma perspectiva que articula Teoria Linguística, em seus pressupostos minimalistas, com a pesquisa psicolinguística, motivou esta pesquisa. O trabalho aqui conduzido teve como objetivos verificar em que medida estruturas de alto custo, que apresentam dificuldades no Transtorno no Desenvolvimento da linguagem (TDL) acarretam dificuldades nesse quadro e, em particular, se os problemas apresentados na linguagem desses indivíduos podem estar situados na interface gramáticapragmática. Um estudo preliminar foi conduzido com jovens com diagnóstico de TEA com idade entre 16 e 21 anos – com graus de desenvolvimento intelectual e capacidade de comunicação variados e que podem ser situados nos níveis 2 e 3 de gravidade no espectro autista (DSM 5) – e um segundo um grupo de mesma média de idade também com diagnóstico de TEA, mas homogêneo, no que diz respeito ao graus de desenvolvimento intelectual e capacidade de comunicação, podendo ser situado no nível 1 do TEA. Os grupos foram submetidos a testes de compreensão do Módulo 1 da bateria MABILIN (Módulos de Avaliação de Habilidades Linguísticas) desenvolvido no Laboratório Psicolinguística e Aquisição da Linguagem (LAPAL/PUC-Rio). Trata-se de um teste de identificação de imagens associadas a estruturas que demandam alto custo de processamento, tais como passivas, relativas e interrogativas QU e QU+N. Os resultados obtidos apontam desempenho sugestivo de comprometimentos na linguagem no primeiro grupo, nas estruturas consideradas mais custosas, como passivas reversíveis e relativas/interrogativas de objeto, como também dificuldades em estruturas de menor custo, como relativas e interrogativas de sujeito. O segundo grupo TEA não apresentou dificuldades fora do esperado nodesenvolvimento típico. A continuidade da pesquisa foi feita com crianças autistas, com idade entre 7 e 13 anos, com grau de desenvolvimento intelectual e capacidade de comunicação compatíveis com o nível 1 de gravidade no espectro (DSM 5), com necessidade de apoio, e um grupo controle com desenvolvimento típico de linguagem. Todos os participantes (TEA e Controle) foram submetidos ao primeiro módulo do MABILIN. Os resultados da avaliação indicam pior desempenho do grupo TEA comparado ao grupo controle, embora não sejam sugestivos de comprometimento de linguagem no domínio da sintaxe. Para a interface gramática-pragmática foram concebidos cinco experimentos de compreensão de sentenças e/ou pequenos segmentos discursivos, incluindo uma tarefa interativa que também visou avaliar Teoria da Mente. Os testes focalizaram o reconhecimento/acesso de traços formais de elementos de categorias funcionais que interagem com sistemas intencionais da cognição mais ampla e codificam na língua a referência a entidades e eventos, constituindo uma interface entre gramática e pragmática: modo, aspecto e definitude. Questões pertinentes à ambiguidade na referência pronominal em posição de sujeito, e à interpretação de reflexivos e pronominais acusativos foram particularmente investigadas. O grupo TEA teve desempenho abaixo do grupo controle, no conjunto das tarefas, e se diferencia do grupo controle particularmente na compreensão de modo, de reflexivos e pronominais acusativos. / [en] This study investigates the linguistic abilities of individuals included in the so-called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the language difficulties observed in this cases. The analysis of language problems in autism, with data from Brazilian Portuguese (BP), from a perspective that articulates Linguistic Theory, in its minimalist assumptions, with the psycholinguistic research, motivated this research. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the linguistic abilities of BPspeakers in the autistic spectrum in order to verify the extent to which high costly structures cause them processing difficulties and, in particular, if their language difficulties can be related to problems in the Grammar-Pragmatics interface. A preliminary study was conducted with a adolescents diagnosed with ASD between 16 and 21 years of age, with varied degrees of intellectual development and communication skills and a age-matched group of ASD individual, homogeneous, with regard to degrees of intellectual development and communication skills Module 1 of MABILIN (Modules of Evaluation of Linguistic Abilities), developed in the Laboratory of Psycholinguistics and Acquisition of Language (LAPAL/PUCRio). It is a battery of picture-identication tasks for the assessment of the comprehension of highly costly structures: passives, relatives and WH/WH+N interrogatives. The results obtained indicate below-average performance in the first group in the most demanding sentences, such as reversible passives, object relative and WH+N questions, though lower cost structures, such as subject relative clauses, also presented difficulties for them. The performance of the second ASD group was compatible with typical development. The investigation continued with 7-13 year old autistic children with high degree of intellectual development and communication skills and an age-matched group of typically development children (TD). The scores of the ASD group were below those of the TD children in MABILIN 1, though the results were not indicative of syntactic impairment. Five experiments were conducte with these groups of children making use of pictureidentication tasks and an interactive task, in which Theory of Mind was alsoevaluated. The expreiments focused on children s knowledge/access to formal features of functional categories at the grammar-pragmatics interace: aspect, mood, definiteness. Ambiguity in pronominal reference and the comprehension of reflexives and accusative pronominals were also investigated. The ASD group showed lower scores than the TD group in all tasks taken together. These groups differed particularly in the comprehension of mood, reflexives and accusative pronominals.

Cette thèse est consacrée à l’étude de trois faits de langue du créole martiniquais (CM) et aborde ainsi certains aspects de l’interface syntaxe-sémantique/pragmatique. Le premier fait de langue concerne la périphérie gauche nominale du CM pour laquelle nous proposons de scinder la projection fonctionnelle DP en deux projections, Def(initeness)P et Specif(icity)P. La première de ces couches encode la définitude, tandis que la seconde marque la spécificité. Cette analyse permet de rendre compte de deux des propriétés des propositions relatives restrictives du CM. Il s’agit en l’espèce du fait qu’elles comportent deux occurrences du déterminant défini et que la présence ou absence de sa seconde occurrence résulte en une lecture spécifique ou non spécifique. Bien qu’ils ne puissent comporter qu’une seule occurrence du déterminant défini (motivée par une haplologie), les DP simples sont soumis à la même analyse. On peut ainsi rendre compte de leurs différentes interprétations. Le second fait de langue concerne les interrogatives partielles définies (IPD). Ces constructions se distinguent des interrogatives canoniques par les conditions de leur légitimation. Elles nécessitent l’inclusion dans le common ground d’une proposition existentielle qui partage avec l’IPD sa restriction et sa portée nucléaire. De ce fait, on ne peut ni commencer une conversation par une IPD ni y apporter une réponse du type rien. Les IPD se caractérisent donc par une présupposition forte que nous attribuons à la présence en position finale d’un déterminant clausal. Ce dernier est engendré dans la périphérie gauche de la phrase et prend pour restriction une proposition. En raison de son homophonie avec le déterminant défini nominal, nous suggérons qu’il est la réalisation d’un trait acatégoriel [+DEF]. Autrement dit, nous apportons ici de nouvelles preuves au point de vue selon lequel la définitude n’est pas une propriété exclusivement nominale. Le troisième fait de langue concerne l’interaction des verbes modaux du CM avec le temps. Qu’ils soient épistémiques ou radicaux, les modaux du CM sont des verbes à montée. Quelle que soit leur lecture, ils participent donc à des structures biclausales et sont sous la portée du temps. On observe cependant que l’interprétation temporelle des épistémiques est soumise à des contraintes qui ne s’appliquent pas aux radicaux. Ce contraste trouve son origine dans une différence d’orientation. Les radicaux sont orientés vers le sujet, alors que les épistémiques sont orientés vers le locuteur (ou le Siège de la Connaissance). Cela se traduit par une dépendance interprétative des épistémiques vis-à-vis de la couche fonctionnelle abstraite Sen(tience)P située dans la périphérie gauche de la phrase. Nous proposons un trait [sen] pour traduire cette dépendance. Les conséquences interlangagières de cette analyse sont évaluées. Les trois faits de langue à l’étude confirment l’importance capitale de la périphérie gauche nominale et phrastique dans l’interface syntaxe-sémantique/pragmatique. / This dissertation investigates three linguistic phenomena in Martinican Creole (MC) and addresses some aspects of the syntax-semantics/pragmatics interface. The first phenomenon concerns the nominal left periphery. I argue that the MC DP layer should be split into two distinct functional projections, Def(initeness)P and Specif(icity)P. The former projection encodes definiteness, while the latter marks specificity. This analysis accounts for two properties of MC restrictive relative clauses. First, they manifest determiner doubling. Second, the presence/absence of the second occurrence of the definite determiner is correlated with a specific/nonspecific reading. The proposed analysis can be applied to simplex DPs even though, owing to a haplology, they cannot feature more than one occurrence of the determiner. This allows for a straightforward account of their interpretational properties. The second phenomenon concerns definite wh-questions (DWQs). These non-canonical wh-questions are characterized by their peculiar licensing conditions. They can only be uttered if the common ground includes an existential proposition which shares its restriction and nuclear scope with the DWQ. As a result, they cannot be uttered out of the blue and do not tolerate nothing-type answers. In other words, DWQs are associated with a hard presupposition triggered by the clausal determiner which appears in the final position of DWQs. This determiner is base-generated in the left periphery of the clause and takes a proposition as its restriction. Because of its homophony with the nominal definite determiner, we suggest that it spells out an acategorial [+DEF] feature. This can be adduced as further evidence for the view that definiteness is not restricted to the nominal domain. The third phenomenon under study concerns the interaction of MC modal verbs with tense. Whether they receive a root or an epistemic reading, MC modals are raising predicates. Both epistemic and root modals are inserted in biclausal structures and are under the scope of tense. Nevertheless, the temporal interpretation of epistemic modals is subject to constraints which do not apply to their root counterparts. This contrast correlates with a difference in orientation. Root modals are subject-oriented, while epistemic modals are oriented toward the speaker (or the Seat of Knowledge). This results in their interpretational dependence on the abstract Sen(tience)P functional layer. To reflect this dependency, I argue for a [sen] feature. The cross-linguistic implications of this proposal are evaluated. The three phenomena under study confirm that the nominal and clausal left periphery plays a crucial role in the syntax-semantics/pragmatics interface.