Young Minds Vs. Old Questions in Linguistics
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Young Minds vs. Old Questions in Linguistics Proceedings of the Fourth Central European Conference in Linguistics for Postgraduate Students Edited by Anna Bondaruk Anna Bloch-Rozmej Wojciech Malec Ewelina Mokrosz Sławomir Zdziebko Lublin 2015 Young Minds vs. Old Questions in Linguistics Young Minds vs. Old Questions in Linguistics Proceedings of the Fourth Central European Conference in Linguistics for Postgraduate Students http://cecils.webclass.co/proceedings/CECILS4.pdf Anna Bondaruk Anna Bloch-Rozmej Wojciech Malec Ewelina Mokrosz Sławomir Zdziebko John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin Institute of East-Central Europe PUBLISHED BY The Institute of East-Central Europe ul. Niecała 5, 20-080 Lublin The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin Poland TYPESETTING Wojciech Malec Copyright © 2015 by the editors and the authors of individual papers All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission from the copyright owners. This publication has been sponsored by The International Visegrad Fund ISBN: 978-83-60695-79-1 Table of Contents List of Contributors ...................................................................................................................... 5 Preface ............................................................................................................................................ 7 A Parallelism Between vP and DP in Partial pro-drop Languages: The Case of Number in Brazilian Portuguese ................................................................................................................ 9 Janayna Carvalho Word-Initial Clusters in Welsh: A Typological Analysis ........................................................ 29 Tomasz Czerniak An Alternative Representation of Schwa in English ................................................................ 47 Natalia Dudek Revisiting the Licensing Condition of the Aboutness Relation .............................................. 56 Dawei Jin Finnish Contrastive Topics Get Passports to the Left Periphery ............................................ 78 Dara Jokilehto ‘The Simplest and Most Proper’ English of the 14th-Century Richard Rolle’s Psalter Rendition ....................................................................................................................................... 98 Kinga Lis A Statistical Model of Learning Descriptive Grammar............................................................ 122 Richard Madsen Reciprocal Connection in French ............................................................................................... 139 Pascal Montchaud Personality Traits and Second Language Pedagogy ................................................................. 156 Katarzyna Nosidlak Is Unlike Coordination against the Law (of the Coordination of Likes)? .................................. 169 Anna Prażmowska [do not delete] List of Contributors Janayna Carvalho Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil; Universität Stuttgart, Germany [email protected]; [email protected] Tomasz Czerniak John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland [email protected] Natalia Dudek John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland [email protected] Dawei Jin State University of New York, Buffalo, USA [email protected] Dara Jokilehto University of Geneva, Switzerland [email protected] Kinga Lis John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland [email protected] Richard Madsen Aalborg University, Denmark [email protected] Pascal Montchaud University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland [email protected] 6 List of Contributors Katarzyna Nosidlak Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland [email protected] Anna Prażmowska John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland [email protected] [do not delete] Preface The volume Young Minds vs. Old Questions in Linguistics is a collection of ten papers selected from the presentations delivered at the Fourth Central European Conference in Linguistics for Postgraduate Students (CECIL’S 4). The conference was held on 21-22 August 2014 at the Institute of East-Central Europe in Lublin and the Institute of English of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. CECIL’S 4 covered the main areas of modern theoretical linguistics, both in its synchronic and diachronic flavors, as well as the significant aspects of applied linguistics, including ELT methodology. The special focus of the conference was on languages spoken in the Central European region, and the similarities and differences they show with respect to other languages. The conference participants presented 34 papers altogether, including 15 talks and 19 posters. There were two plenary talks delivered by Ángel L. Jiménez-Fernández (University of Seville, Spain) and Markus Alexander Pöchtrager (Boğaziçi University, Turkey). CECIL’S 4 was organized by the Institute of East-Central Europe and the Institute of English of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), together with three partner institutions: the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Piliscsaba, Palacký University in Olomouc and Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. We would like to express our special gratitude to Prof. Balázs Surányi of Pázmány Péter Catholic University, the founder of CECIL’S, for having chosen Lublin as the place to hold CECIL’S 4, and for providing invaluable guidance at various stages of the conference organization. We are also indebted to Prof. Ludmila Veselovská of Palacký University in Olomouc for the various forms of assistance she provided. We would like to thank the authorities of the Institute of East-Central Europe, in particular Prof. Mirosław Filipowicz, the Director of the Institute, and Andrzej Deryło, MA, the Deputy Director of the Institute, for their help with the organization of the conference, as well as for their enthusiasm and energy invested in this project. Thanks are also due to Prof. Hubert Łaszkiewicz, the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, for his whole- hearted support for this undertaking. We are also very grateful to all the anonymous reviewers of the conference abstracts for helping us choose the best papers to be presented at the conference. We would like to extend special thanks to the anonymous reviewers of the submitted manuscripts, whose expertise and critical remarks contributed to improving the quality of the papers. 8 Preface We would like to acknowledge the financial help of our sponsor, the International Visegrad Fund. The small grant no. 11410063 awarded by the Fund made it possible to organize CECIL’S 4 and to produce the present volume. Last but not least, we would like to thank Nigel Byford and Elżbieta Sielanko-Byford for having proofread this volume. Anna Bondaruk [do not delete] A Parallelism Between vP and DP in Partial pro-drop Languages: ∗ The Case of Number in Brazilian Portuguese Janayna Carvalho Abstract Bare singular nouns and null impersonals are two phenomena that exist alongside each other in a number of partial pro-drop languages. Prominent analyses of the co-existence of these properties argue for a null NP anaphora operation in this type of language. In this paper, I intend to show that this appproach is problematic when applied to Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and instead I offer an alternative analysis by claiming that a specific feature, which is in the process of disappearing from BP grammar, is responsible for these two properties. The absence of this feature results in nouns with cumulative reference and the disappearance of the clitic se, which is precisely the lexicalization of this feature. Thus, bare singular nouns and null impersonals are analyzed as a byproduct of this change and not as a reflection of a particular mechanism of anaphora present in some languages. Keywords: Brazilian Portuguese, partial pro-drop languages, number feature 1. Introduction It is well known that languages can be classified as either pro-drop or non-pro-drop. In general, the first group of languages presents a system of verbal morphology rich enough to make distinctions concerning person and number. For this reason, the use of pronouns can generally be dispensed with.1 Consider, for instance, the Italian paradigm illustrated below. Table 1 demonstrates that there is a distinct form for each pronominal person in the verbal morphology, which thus renders pronouns unnecessary.2 ∗ I would like to thank Ana Paula Scher, Artemis Alexiadou, the audience of the 4th Central European Conference in Linguistics for Postgraduate Students (CECIL’S 4) and – especially - Balázs Surányi for discussions of several aspects of this analysis. I also appreciate the comments and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers, which led to a substantial improvement of this paper. All errors and shortcomings are my own. CNPq scholarships, 229746/2013-6 and 142048/2012-7, are hereby acknowledged. 1 The use of full pronouns in pro-drop languages is restricted to emphasis, a shift of reference and stress. In neutral assertions, therefore, pronouns are not necessary. 2 The following abbreviations are used in this paper: 3SG=third singular agreement; 3PL=third plural agreement; ACC=acusative; FEM=feminine; GEN=genitive; MASC=masculine; PAST=past; PERF=perfective; PL=plural; SG=singular; TOP=topic. 10 Janayna Carvalho Table 1. Italian verb paradigm Italian conjugation of dicer in the present tense Dico I say