Null or Nothing : Zero Elements in Romance Syntax and Morphology.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Herbeck, Peter, Author.

Contributor:

Peter Herbeck, Herbeck

Natascha Pomino, Pomino

Series:

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today Series

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today Series ; v.291

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Romance languages--Syntax.

Romance languages.

Syntax.

Genre:

Essays

Physical Description:

1 online resource (391 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam/Philadelphia : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2026.

Summary:

This volume aims at getting a more complete picture of zero elements as a theoretic construct, its empirical necessity and its nature in different components of grammar by focusing on Romance languages. The volume presents multi-facetted viewpoints and methodologies.

Contents:

Intro

Table of contents

Preface

References

Part I Zero in morphology and its interfaces

Zero morphemes in the morphophonology of Catalan

1. Introduction

2. Zero morphemes in verbal morphology

3. Zero morphemes in nominal morphology

4. Proposal

4.1 No phonological epenthesis in 1.sg.prs.ind and nominal morphology

4.2 Other instances of alleged phonological epenthesis

5. Conclusion

Funding

Acknowledgments

Spanish VN compounds and the source of valued gender and number features

1. The problem

2. Why postulating zero nominals in VN compounds causes greater problems than it solves

2.1 The distribution of 'uno' and 'cualquiera'

2.2 Prenominal possessives

2.3 Languages without articles

2.4 Enforcing that affixes are also null

2.5 No correlation with pro-drop

2.6 Three phonologically null affixes, not one

2.7 A derivational affix with a unique behaviour

3. The nature of agreement

3.1 Agreement as feature copying and its problems

3.2 Agreement as feature matching

4. VN compounds

4.1 VN compounds as unsaturated predicates

4.2 Advantages of the approach

4.3 Prefixed words

5. Putting all together

5.1 Extension to all nominals

5.3 A problem for extended projections?

6. Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Exocentric compounding and implicit heads

2. Deverbal compounds

2.1 V-N compounds as V nominalizations

2.2 V-N compounds as VP nominalizations

2.2.1 The VP approach

2.2.2 The relative clause approach

3. A uniform account for exocentricity

4. The case of deverbal compounds derived from VP-idioms

5. Final remarks

Abbreviations used in this chapter

V-N compounds in French

2. Some previous analyses of exocentric compounds.

3. Nominalized infinitives and V N conversions

4. V-N compounds in French

4.1 An analysis of V-N compounds without nulls

4.2 The gender of V-N compounds

4.3 P-N compounds

Zero affixes in verbal derivation

2. Null elements in Generative Syntax and Distributed Morphology

3. Prefix and parasynthetic verbs in Generative Syntax and DM

3.1 Parasynthetic verbs

3.2 Verbalization by prefixation

3.3 Syntactic input structures and Vocabulary Items

3.4 Interim summary

4. Designing an experiment

4.1 Experimental approaches

4.2 Experimental approaches

4.3 Proposal for an experimental protocol

4.3.1 Experimental design

4.3.2 Expected outcomes

Getting rid of zeroes

2. The data

2.1 (C)overt verbalisers in Italian

2.2 Causative/inchoative alternation

3. No zero, no cry

4. Lexicalising deadjectival verbs

4.1 Internal structure of deadjectival verbs

4.2 Nanosyntax

5. Analysis

5.1 'Zero'-marked verbs

5.2 Suffixed verbs

6. Beyond the verbal core

6.1 Theme vowel a

6.2 TAM and agreement markings

7. Conclusion

The simple and the periphrastic past in spoken (Valencian) Catalan as evidence against zero in inflectional morphology

2. The simple and the periphrastic past in spoken Valencian Catalan

2.1 The past perfective in spoken Catalan

2.2 Corpus study of spoken Central Valencian Catalan

2.3 How morphological transparency is related to the past tense alternation

3. Ways of implementing non-transparent structures in DM

3.1 Zero exponence

3.1.1 Against zero exponence for conceptual reasons

3.1.2 Further evidence against zero exponence

3.2 Fusion

3.3 Obliteration.

3.4 Spanning

4. A spanning approach for the past tense alternation in Valencian Catalan

4.1 Transparency

4.2 Analyticization

4.3 Restructuring (and lack thereof)

5. Conclusions

Part II Zero in syntax and its interfaces

Indefinite object drop in Spanish

1.1 Constraints on Indefinite object drop

1.2 Motivating the issue

2. Some tentative proposals

2.1 Null pronominals

2.2 Nominal ellipsis

2.3 Verb-stranding VP-ellipsis

3. Interim summary

4. Indefinite null objects as argument ellipsis

4.1 How is argument ellipsis derived?

4.2 Predictive capability

Non-coordinated null objects in Medieval French

2. Null objects in medieval French

2.1 The nature of anaphoric null objects (ANOs)

2.2 Previous studies on ANOs in medieval French

3. A corpus study of non-coordinated ANOs

3.1 Methodology

3.2 The different contexts of ANOs in the corpus

3.3 The distribution of non-coordinated ANOs

4. Anaphoric Null Objects in competition with overt objects

5. Missing objects and pro

5.1 Preliminary considerations

5.2 The data in light of different syntactic structures

5.2.1 Non-finite adjuncts and (Parasitic) Gaps

5.2.2 Écrasement of 3rd person clitic clusters

5.3 Summing up

Appendix A. Absolute numbers for figures

Appendix B. CQP Queries for overt objects

Comparing null subjects and null objects

1.1 Distinguishing different types of null objects

2. Factors influencing antecedent selection of null subjects

2.1 Syntactic function of the antecedent

2.2 Sentential domain of the antecedent

2.3 Animacy of the antecedent

3. The current study.

3.1 Research questions and predictions

3.1.1 Syntactic function of the antecedent

3.1.2 Sentential domain of the antecedent

3.1.3 Animacy

3.2 Methodology

3.2.1 The corpus

3.2.2 Data coding

3.2.3 Corpus findings

3.3.4 Statistical analysis of the corpus findings

4. Discussion of the findings

The inverse vocative in Sicilian regional Italian

2. Inverse vocatives in central and southern Italy

2.1 Context, function, and origins of Inverse vocatives

2.2 Syntactic properties

2.3 Comparison

2.4 Previous accounts

3. Inverse vocatives in Western Sicily Italian

3.1 Motivation for this investigation and research questions

3.2 Methods and participants

3.3 Results

3.4 Compatibility of the Palermo data with the previous analyses

4. Discussion

4.1 Fake vocatives

4.2 From fake vocatives to inverse vocatives

4.3 Proposed analysis

Spatial expressions with implicit (and overt) arguments

2. Types of implicit arguments in PPs

3. Orphan prepositions

3.1 French

3.1.1 Decomposing P

3.1.2 Weak prepositions

3.1.3 Strong prepositions

3.1.4 Axial part complexes

3.2 Spanish

4. SPEX

4.1 French

4.1.1 Simple prepositions

4.1.2 Axial part complexes

4.1.3 Obligate orphans

4.2 Spanish

4.2.1 Simple prepositions

4.2.2 Axial part complexes

4.2.3 The a- series

Author index

Subject index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

90-272-4399-9

9789027243997

OCLC:

1577548835