Intervention effects induced by sentence negation can be found in many languages. In this paper, we discuss the scope interpretation of quantifiers in English, and in-situ wh-phrases in French single questions, as well as those in German scope-marking constructions. Our claim is that intervention effects should be explained syntactically. In order to capture the relevant phenomena, the framework of Chomsky (2000) and subsequent work is adopted. This paper proposes that NegP, headed by sentence negation, should be identified as a phase. It is further assumed that quantifier raising (QR) and quantifier lowering (QL), whether applied covertly or overtly, are subject to the Phase Impenetrability Condition just like other operations. Under these assumptions, intervention effects in quantifier scope phenomena can be obtained. We also argue that local agreement must hold between a wh-phrase and a scope marker in C in French single in-situ questions, as well as German scope-marking constructions. The locally limited scope of wh-phrases in these constructions follows from phase theory.

This paper attempts to provide a systematic description of reported discourse (RD) categories in Southern Hokkaido dialects of Ainu from syntactic, discourse-functional, historical and typological perspectives. While RD has been analysed in the previous literature either as “quotations” or as direct vs. indirect discourse, I argue, based on a continuum approach, that Ainu has three main RD-constructions distinguished by person deixis as a core principle in determining the orientation of RD: (i) direct discourse (DRD) with the author’s perspective, (ii) indirect discourse (IRD) with the reporter’s perspective, and (iii) semi-direct discourse (SRD) with the combined perspective of the author and reporter. In the case of SRD, use of the so-called “indefinite person” in the case of coreference of the third/second person author with a participant in the quote indicates a consistent reporter-oriented shift in pronominal reference, while the other references occur as they would have been used in the original discourse. I propose to identify Tamura’s (2000: 74) ‘first person in quotes’ usage of the indefinite person as logophoric in the sense of Hagège (1974). In this analysis SRD, DRD, and IRD are regarded as stylistic and discourse-organizing options, though some of them have been conventionalized as primary styles in certain folklore genres.

This research statistically investigates the recent synchronic variation in Japanese causative forms involving a process called Sa-insertion, which adds an extra -as- to the causative morpheme, as in yar-asase-ru vis-à-vis the standard yar-ase-ru ‘let someone do’ and hair-asase-ru vis-à-vis the standard hair-ase-ru ‘let someone enter’. Although previous studies have elucidated the language-internal properties of this phenomenon especially with respect to the length of stem verbs and the types of the following elements (Sano 2008, among others), language-external factors such as gender and style, as well as the interaction of those language-internal factors, remain to be explored.

The present paper aims to verify the claims of the previous studies and reveal the language-external factors as well as the effects of the interaction of major factors governing the distribution of Sa-insertion. For this purpose, Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ) is employed which has rich annotations concerning language-external factors. An exhaustive examination of CSJ brought forth a total of 42 causative forms with Sa-insertion, as opposed to a total of 1,498 standard causative forms; thus, the rate of Sa-insertion amounts to 2.73%. The data are then subjected to a factor by factor analysis, followed by a multivariate analysis.

The result shows that the distribution of Sa-insertion is significantly affected by language-external factors in addition to language-internal factors, and that the factors that govern the distribution interact with each other in an intricate way.

Matengo is a Bantu language spoken in the south-west part of Tanzania. Its word order is determined by information structure. The principles of sentence formation in Matengo are (i) the topic of the sentence occurs in sentence-initial position, and (ii) non-topical elements occur post-verbally, and the focus of the sentence (if there is one) occurs immediately after the verb. The position of each element is determined according to these principles. However, there is one case which does not follow them. When a verb has two or more arguments and none of them is topicalized, the subject is placed in the topic slot even though it is not topicalized. It is suggested that this happens because of the high topicality which the subject has inherently. Thus, the element which can be placed in topic slot is not exactly a topic, but rather an “element high enough in the topicality.” that is, a non-focused subject.

In many Bantu languages, agreement of subject marker is related to both the topicality of the subject and its position in the sentence. In Matengo, however, topicality relates only to word order. The subject marker in this language strictly agrees with subject, regardless of its topicality and the position in the sentence. This means that grammatical relation is shown by grammatical agreement and information structure is shown by word order.

Nonsense words involving German voiceless fricatives [f] or [x] (or [ç]) were used to test Japanese subjects’ perception of gemination, and the friction durations were measured. Results showed that, similar to existing loanwords in Japanese, subjects were overall more likely to perceive gemination for stimuli involving [x] (or [ç]) than for those involving [f], despite the fact that no significant difference between the durations of these voiceless fricatives was found. In addition, the relationship between fricative environment (i.e. CVC, CCVC, CVCən, where C is the voiceless fricative) and rate of gemination was examined. Similar to existing loans, results indicated that fricatives were more likely in the environment CCVC than CVC to be adapted into Japanese as geminates. Opposite of the existing loanword trend, however, fricatives were less likely to be geminated if followed by a syllabic nasal (i.e. CVC vs. CVCən). Comparing friction duration across the different word environments, [f] and [x] (or [ç]) were found to have a shorter duration word-medially (CVCən) than word-finally (CVC, CCVC). Thus, a shorter difference in frication duration, controlled by word environment, was correlated with lower perception of gemination in the test words. Concerning the quality of the preceding short vowel (e.g. [lax] vs.[lox]), no influence on fricative geminate perception was observed.

This paper provides data on the intervocalic consonant clusters of Warrongo (Australia), and offers the following observations: (a) The liquids /|, l/ should be considered more sonorous than the semivowel /w/; (b) The liquid /|/ should be considered more sonorous than the semivowel /j/; (c) Among the nasals, the alveolar /n/ should be considered more sonorous than the bilabial /m/ and the velar /N/; (d) Among the nasals, the palatal /−/ should be considered more sonorous than the velar /N/; (e) Among the stops, the alveolar /d/ should be considered more sonorous than the velar /g/; and (f) Among the nasals and stops, the alveolars may possibly be the most sonorous, and the velars possibly the least sonorous. In terms of (a) and (b), Warrongo diverges from most of the languages discussed in the literature, where semivowels are considered more sonorous than liquids.*