http://hdl.handle.net/10900/73437 2026-09-26T01:25:59Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/73959 The Somali Microscope: Personal Pronouns, Determiners and Possession Özyıldız, Deniz; Ivan, Rodica This paper describes aspects of the morpho-syntax and the semantics of lexical nouns, pronouns, and possessives in Somali, with a focus on the expression of (in)definiteness. Novel data supports the claim that nominals marked with morphemes -KA and -KII, thought to be overt definite determiners, indeed pattern like definite descriptions. The core contribution is that there are nominals that do not bear -KA or -KII, which are interpreted as definites. Therefore, a phonologically null, definiteness encoding device must be available in Somali, either alongside, or instead of the morphemes -KA and -KII. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/73937 Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Discontinuous Noun Phrases in Vietnamese Duong Phu, Sarah In this paper, I analyse two aspects of the syntax and semantics of discontinuous noun phrases in Vietnamese. The first aspect deals with the syntax of discontinuous noun phrases. It is discussed whether split constructions in Vietnamese involve movement as proposed by Trinh (2011) or base gereration as put forward by Fanselow & Féry (2006). It turns out that both analyses have their weaknesses and that most likely a mixture of them (as adopted by Fanselow 1988 and Ott 2012 and is necessary in order to account for the facts. The second aspect deals with classifiers and discontinuous noun phrases. It is helpful to distinguish between three types of nouns: 1) nouns that need a classifier to be countable, 2) nouns that take an optional classifier, and 3) nouns that do not take any classifier at all. Discontinuous noun phrases are not so well accepted by native speakers when involving nouns that take no classifier. Nouns with optional classifier in sentences containing discontinuous noun phrases are better when they occur with a classifier. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/73934 (Un-)Restricting Tense in Awing Mucha, Anne; Fominyam, Henry Zamchang In recent years, formal semantic research on the meaning of tense and aspect has benefited from a number of studies investigating languages with graded tense systems. This paper contributes a first sketch of the temporal marking system of Awing (Grassfields Bantu), focusing on two varieties of remote past and remote future. We argue that the data support a "symmetric" analysis of past and future tense in Awing. In our specific proposal, Awing temporal remoteness markers are uniformly analyzed as quantificational tense operators, and both the past and the future paradigm include a form that prevents contextual restriction of this temporal quantifier. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/73933 Determining (In)definiteness in the Absence of Articles Dayal, Veneeta This paper addresses the view that bare nominals in languages without articles can be definites or indefinites. In particular, it challenges the status of bare nominals as indefinites, providing contexts in which English uses the indefinite article but an article-less language like Hindi must resort to a numeral construction. The empirical generalization based on Hindi is that bare nominals are ambiguous between definites and kind terms and that bare plurals, but not bare singulars, can have kind derived indefinite readings. The indefinite readings available to bare singulars can be traced to NP external factors. The paper then provides an explanation for these facts within a Neo-Carlsonian approach to bare nominals. The last section of the paper extends the insights gained from the case study of Hindi bare nominals to other languages, highlighting empirical and theoretical issues of relevance in determining whether bare nominals in a given language are definites or indefinites. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z