Full Description
Twenty-one articles from the 31st LSRL investigate cutting-edge issues and interfaces across phonology, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, semantics, and syntax in multiple dialects of such Romance languages as Catalan, French, Creole French, and Spanish, both old and modern. Research in Romance phonology moves from the quantitative and synchronic to cover issues of diachrony and Optimality theory. Work within pragmatics and sociolinguistics also explores the synchronic/diachronic link while topicalizing such issues as change of non-pro-drop Swiss French toward pro-drop status, scalar implicatures, speech acts, word order, and simplification in contexts of language contact. Finally, debates in linguistic theory are resumed in the work on syntax and semantics within both a Minimalist perspective and an Optimality framework. How do Catalan and French children acquire AGR and TNS? Can Basque Spanish be compared to topic-oriented Chinese? If Spanish preverbal subjects occur in an A-position, can Spanish no longer be compared to Greek?
Contents
1. Table of contents; 2. Introduction and acknowledgment (by Nunez-Cedeno, Rafael); 3. Phonology and morphology; 4. Pronominal clitics in Picard revisited (by Auger, Julie); 5. Spanish /s/:: A different story from beginning (initial) to end (final) (by Brown, Esther L.); 6. Consonant intrusion in heterosyllabic cosonant-liquid clusters in Old Spanish and Old French:: An Optimality theoretical account (by Martinez-Gil, Fernando); 7. A constraint interaction theory of Italian raddoppiamento (by Saltarelli, Mario); 8. Pragmatics and sociolinguistics; 9. Ground/Focus:: A perspective from French (by Beyssade, Claire); 10. The subject clitics of European Conversational French:: Morphologization, grammatical change, semantic change, and change in progress (by Fonseca-Greber, Bonnie B.); 11. A scalar propositional negative polarity item in Spanish (by Gutierrez-Rexach, Javier); 12. A pragmatic analysis of Imperfect Conditionals (by Ippolito, Michela); 13. Indirect objects in ditransitive constructions in Brazilian Portuguese (by Lima-Salles, Heloisa Maria M.); 14. Pragmatic variation in Spanish:: External request modifications in Peninsular and Uruguayan Spanish (by Marquez Reiter, Rosina); 15. Clitic simplification in a contact variety of Spanish:: Third person accusative pronouns in the Mexican-American community of Houston (by Mrak, N. Ariana); 16. The expression of topic in spoken Spanish:: An empirical study (by Ocampo, Francisco); 17. An adaptive approach to noun gender in New York contact Spanish (by Otheguy, Ricardo); 18. Syntax; 19. Properties of the double object construction in Spanish (by Bleam, Tonia); 20. Spanish perception verbs and sequence of tenses:: Aktionsart effects (by Cipria, Alicia); 21. Defaults and competition in the acquisition of functional categories in Catalan and French (by Davidson, Lisa); 22. Constraints on the meanings of Bare Nouns (by Deprez, Viviane); 23. Null objects revisited (by Franco, Jon A.); 24. Auxiliary choice and pronominal verb constructions:: The case of the passe surcompose (by Paesani, Kate); 25. The lexical preverbal subject in a Romance Null Subject Language:: Where are thou? (by Suner, Margarita); 26. Intervention effects in the French wh-in-situ construction:: Syntax or interpretation? (by Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa); 27. Index
