Syntactic and semantic aspects of Romance complementizers

Fagard, Benjamin; Pietrandrea, Paola; Glikman, Julie

doi:10.1515/9783110416619-006

Cited by 26 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…DET.VOC', lup.ul.ui 'wolf.DET.GEN/DAT). This specificity of French on the one hand (see e.g., Koch 2002) and Romanian on the other can also be observed in the case of complementizers: while in 'Central' Romance there is a two-way distinction (if vs that complementizers), with a clear opposition between indicative and subjunctive complementation, Romanian is set apart by its three-way distinction and French by the higher degree of grammaticalization of the subjunctive (Fagard et al 2016).…”

Section: Romance Languages -Major Typological Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 86%

1 Complex adpositions in Romance: Emergence and variation

Fagard

Stošić

Lima

2020

Complex Adpositions in European Languages

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In this paper, we describe the systems of complex adpositions in modern Romance languages, and discuss their status and definition. We do so with a corpus-based analysis focusing on three Romance languages, French, Portuguese and Romanian, and show that some features of complex adpositions are common to most if not all varieties, while some seem to be specificities of one or more of these languages. One case in point is the way such constructions can be tested, for instance with possessives-a test which does not seem to affect French and Portuguese (Catalan, etc.) CAs in the same way: the clear contrast found in French between non-lexicalized constructions and CAs on account of their intolerance of the possessive is not to be found in Portuguese. Finally, we formulate a hypothesis as to the development of CAs in various Romance languages, suggesting it may not have been parallel.

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Section: Romance Languages -Major Typological Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 86%

1 Complex adpositions in Romance: Emergence and variation

Fagard

Stošić

Lima

2020

Complex Adpositions in European Languages

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“…'2.2.2 Points of variationInterestingly, the counterparts of doubt in many Romance languages (with a possible exception of Spanish) do not readily allow a PolQ complement. This is pointed out byFagard et al (2016), who mention the following examples:(15) Fagard et al…”

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confidence: 92%

The "doubt-whether" puzzle

Uegaki¹

2021

Preprint

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The English predicate doubt is known to exhibit a distinctive selectional restriction: it is compatible with declarative as well as whether- complements but is incompatible with constituent wh-complements. The interpretation of a whether-complement under doubt is also puzzling, as ⌜doubt whether p⌝ is almost—but not completely—synonymous with ⌜doubt that p⌝. I will argue that these behaviors of doubt can be given a semantic account, by making use of the mechanisms of HIGHLIGHTING and EXHAUSTIFICATION. Doubt expresses an existential doxastic attitude toward the negation of the highlighted content of the complement while having pre- suppositions that are sensitive to the ordinary content of the complement. Given that ⌜that p⌝ and ⌜whether p⌝ are equivalent in the highlighted con- tent but non-equivalent in the ordinary content, the semantics explains fine-grained differences in interpretations between ⌜doubt whether p⌝ and ⌜doubt that p⌝. Furthermore, given the lack of a stronger scalemate, the interpretation of ⌜doubt that/whether p⌝ undergoes strengthening due to exhaustification, akin to the behavior of ‘scaleless’ modals reported in the literature.

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Negation in complement clauses of fear-verbs

Dobrushina

2020

FOL

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Complement clauses of verbs of fear often contain expletive negation, which is negative marking without negative meaning. Expletive negation in fear-complements regularly co-occurs with non-indicative moods, such as subjunctive, conjunctive, or conditional. The aim of this paper is to provide a diachronic explanation for the phenomenon of expletive negation in complement clauses of fear-verbs. Based on data from various languages, I will show that cases of expletive negation after verbs of fear can be divided into several groups, each with a different origin. Fear complement clauses can derive from embedded polar questions, paratactic constructions expressing a wish, or from negative purpose clauses. Complement clauses with polar questions usually contain an indicative verb form, while clauses based on the expression of a wish often have non-indicative verb forms. The paper also discusses cases in which expletive negation is lost.

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Syntactic and semantic aspects of Romance complementizers

Cited by 26 publications

References 39 publications

1 Complex adpositions in Romance: Emergence and variation

1 Complex adpositions in Romance: Emergence and variation

The "doubt-whether" puzzle

Negation in complement clauses of fear-verbs

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