In this paper we discuss Slovenian ditransitive sentences with respect to the two possible word orders of the objects found with neutral intonation, DAT≫ACC and ACC≫DAT. We follow the idea in the Gračanin-Yuksek (2006) paper on Croatian that these two word orders instantiate different structures. In Slovenian, the DAT≫ACC order has an applicative structure (either high or low), while the ACC≫DAT is a prepositional dative construction. The applicative analysis provides a novel argument for this type of analysis. Other supporting arguments examined are scope properties, binding of possessives, the possibility of the causative reading, non-contrastive focus and heavy NP shift, and properties of idioms.

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Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) affects the cognitive performance of elderly adults. However, the level of severity is not high enough to be diagnosed with dementia. Previous research reports subtle language impairments in individuals with MCI specifically in domains related to lexical meaning. The present study used both off-line (grammaticality judgment) and on-line (lexical decision) tasks to examine aspects of lexical processing and how they are affected by MCI. 21 healthy older adults and 23 individuals with MCI saw complex pseudo-words that violated various principles of word formation in Slovenian and decided if each letter string was an actual word of their language. The pseudo-words ranged in their degree of violability. A task effect was found, with MCI performance to be similar to that of healthy controls in the off-line task but different in the on-line task. Overall, the MCI group responded slower than the elderly controls. No significant differences were observed in the off-line task, while the on-line task revealed a main effect of Violation type, a main effect of Group and a significant Violation × Group interaction reflecting a difficulty for the MCI group to process pseudo-words in real time. That is, while individuals with MCI seem to preserve morphological rule knowledge, they experience additional difficulties while processing complex pseudo-words. This was attributed to an executive dysfunction associated with MCI that delays the recognition of ungrammatical formations.

Ever since Perlmutter’s (1978) Unaccusative Hypothesis, intransitive verbs have been treated as comprising of two subclasses (i) unergatives, and (ii) unaccusatives. Evidence from sundry languages has shown that even though the unergative/unaccusative dichotomy is a universal property, there appears to be some language specific parametric variation as to the criteria for differentiating the two classes as well. In line with this claim, the present paper examines different diagnostic tests for unaccusativity/unergativity with a special focus on their (in)applicability to Slovenian data. Our analysis singles out three fairly reliable tests for determining the unaccusative status of Slovenian predicates: (i) the reduced relatives test, (ii) the impersonal passives test, and (iii) the secondary imperfectivization test. The discussion, however, also points out that none is flawless, as they also constitute false positives and false negatives.

This paper discusses the syntax and semantics of Active Past Participles in restrictive reduced relatives (RRs). The distribution of Active Past Participles is compared with respect to verb classes in Bulgarian, English, Italian, Slovenian and Spanish. We see that presumably the same surface participial structure has different distributional properties in these languages: in Bulgarian, Past Participles of all classes of verbs appear in RRs, while in other languages only those of unaccusative verbs do so. The differences in the distribution are accounted for by referring to the syntactic structure of the participle and semanticfea­tures on participial heads.