The Russophone diaspora is one of the most established and well-studied diasporas across the world; however, the events of the past decade, especially since the start of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, and the intensification of political and social persecutions in the Russian Federation, began to significantly contribute to the reshaping of the Russian-speaking communities by a) prompting an intensified large-scale movement of Russian speakers across the globe and b) raising new questions about the future of Russophone communities in the world and the development of Russian as a heritage language. This paper provides a brief overview of the formation of Russophone diasporas and then focuses on the new wave of immigrants from the Russian Federation as well as refugees from Ukraine. It considers new sociolinguistic ecologies that are being shaped by this most recent movement of Russian-speaking migrants and the effect newcomers may have on more established Russian-speaking communities around the world. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible directions that Russian as a heritage language may take.
This paper provides a comprehensive cross-linguistic overview of overcounting, whereby a target numeral is expressed by counting toward the next-higher multiple of the base. I identify three major morphological patterns in overcounting numerals: P-connector, V-connector and no overt connector. I then zoom in on the structure of overcounting numerals in Ch’ol (Mayan). I argue that these numerals are construed with a covert, latively interpreted P, whose silence is due to P-drop.
Two important claims about modals have been proposed in the past few decades. The first claim is that modals have uniform lexical semantics, but are interpreted as epistemic when located structurally above temporal elements and as root when located below them. The second claim is that, across languages, items that express root ability have episodic, non-ability-attributing interpretations in addition to generic, ability-attributing interpretations. With these two claims as background, this study examines verbal expressions of modality in Japanese. The study shows that (i) there are only three verbal expressions of modality in Japanese: the ability suffix -e/rare, the possibility suffix -e/uru, and the negative possibility suffix -kane; (ii) while these three expressions’ syntactic positions with respect to tense do not contradict the first claim, they do not provide strong support for it either; and (iii) Japanese sentences with the ability suffix -e/rare can have an episodic, non-ability-attributing interpretation and a generic, ability-attributing interpretation, providing novel evidence for the second claim. What makes the ability suffix -e/rare different from the ability expressions analyzed in previous studies is that the availability of the two interpretations with -e/rare is tied to two different syntactic structures it occurs in: while sentences with -e/rare in a dative-nominative structure only have the generic, ability-attributing interpretation, similar sentences in a nominative-accusative structure only have the episodic, non-ability-attributing interpretation. It is argued that these two alternative case-alignments are reflections of two different underlying structures of complements of -e/rare, making -e/rare a unique case of an ability expression with syntactic reflexes of episodic-generic ambiguity.
In the Mandan (Western Siouan) complex verb, the makeup of the prefixal field features two loci for φ-feature marking, separated by what the Siouanist literature calls “preverbs” (PV). The pre-PV φ-slot is for marking first person plural (1PL); the post-PV φ-slot is for markers of speech-act participants. The question central to this paper is what explains the positioning relative to the preverbs of the 1PL marker and the other φ-morphology of Mandan. The Mandan 1PL prefix, which has a morphologically transparent dual inclusive reading, is syntactically represented in the form of a comitative phrasal structure involving the asyndetic coordination of a plural pronoun and a combination of the first person singular and second person pronouns: ‘we, viz., I with you’. While 1PL is a morphosyntactic complex occupying SpecTP (preceding preverbs), the first and second person markers are agreement inflections (following preverbs), linked to pro’s in A-positions.
The COMP-trace phenomenon has long resisted easy explanation or even consensus as to whether it is ultimately due to the syntax or something else. Two analyses are examined here, one based on a principle of syntax (Anti-locality) and the other based on a principle of sentence planning (Principle of End Weight; PEW). Three cases are presented in which the Anti-locality analysis predicts that a COMP-trace effect will arise, while the PEW analysis does not. In all three cases, involving inversion in matrix clauses, inversion in embedded clauses, and clauses headed by prepositional complementizers, the COMP-trace effect does seem to occur, suggesting that the Anti-locality analysis is correct. This result is compared to earlier evidence that suggested that the PEW analysis was empirically superior, and a new way of understanding these results is proposed that is compatible with the evidence presented here in favor of Anti-locality.
This article addresses two issues that emerge from a close look at extraction out of Russian indicative čto-clauses – the first being that these clauses show unexpected weak-island behavior, and the second the generally problematic question of how it can be possible for weak islands to allow “marginal” extraction at all (in argument cases), a grammaticality status never traditionally explained in pre-minimalist literature and theoretically impossible on core minimalist assumptions. An approach is proposed for weak islands under Minimalism that eliminates the non-minimalist principles that were claimed to account for their behavior (especially Subjacency and the Empty Category Principle [ECP]) and also allows for an understanding of why Russian indicative čto-clauses show the partial opacity observed.
This chapter discusses the inner structure of superficially different manner-adverbial patterns in Dutch, with a special focus on the surface pattern A+P, as in hardop (loud-up; ‘aloud’). In the spirit of the generative linguistic quest for cross-constructional symmetry, it is proposed that these adverbial patterns are all manifestations of one and the same abstract, underlying syntactic configuration, namely the Extended Adpositional Phrase (XPP). After this in-depth, single-language study of manner adverbials, the chapter continues with a more global, cross-linguistic perspective on the inner structure of manner adverbials, starting from the hypothesis that, at a more abstract level, the adverbial patterns attested cross-linguistically all have an adpositional design. Finally, the chapter briefly discusses the relationship between inner structure and outer behavior (i.e., distribution) of manner adverbial expressions. Specifically, the question is addressed to what extent “being prepositional” or “being postpositional” matters for the distributional behavior of manner adverbials. More in general, this chapter aims to provide another illustration of the fruitful interaction between in-depth investigation of individual languages, and the comparative-linguistic study of a larger sample of languages.
Ch’ol is a Mayan language with verb-initial order and preverbal topic and focus positions (Vázquez Álvarez 2011; Clemens & Coon 2018). This paper presents the results of a systematic investigation of Ch’ol word order across various focus environments, including (i) broad focus, (ii) subject focus, (iii) object focus, (iv) contrastive subject focus, and (v) contrastive object focus. We analyze semi-spontaneous responses to questions designed to elicit these focus types from 31 Ch’ol speakers. Both verb-initial and subject-initial clauses are present across five focus conditions, revealing a more nuanced relationship between information structure and word order than previously reported. We also find that while contrastive focus is predominantly marked via fronting of the focused constituent, more variation is found with information focus, and fronting is found to be nonobligatory in every focus condition.
This article examines the judgment and interpretation of Mandarin relative clauses (RCs) by heritage speakers (HSs) and second language learners (L2ers) of Mandarin, using an acceptability judgment task (AJT) and a picture-based truth-value judgment task (TVJT), in order to examine whether there is dominant language transfer in this domain, and whether HSs and/or L2ers exhibit a subject-extracted RC (SRC) advantage. The HSs and L2ers were both English-dominant and matched on Mandarin proficiency. The AJT tested whether participants knew that Mandarin RCs are head-final, unlike head-initial English RCs. The TVJT tested whether participants correctly interpreted Mandarin RCs with two animate nouns. In the AJT, both HSs and L2ers rated head-final RCs significantly above head-initial RCs, overcoming English transfer of RC headedness with increased proficiency. In the TVJT, HSs performed similarly to L2ers; neither group showed a clear SRC advantage, contrary to the predictions of the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH) (Keenan & Comrie 1977). Compared to HSs/L2ers of Korean (O’Grady et al. 2001), HSs/L2ers of Mandarin in the present study acquire RCs more successfully, possibly due to high Mandarin proficiency, task format, and/or the lack of case markers in Mandarin RCs. While there was a slight HS advantage over L2ers in the AJT, there was no HS advantage in the TVJT, suggesting that Mandarin word order is not particularly difficult for either group, in contrast to case marking in Korean.
Legate (2021) deconstructs passive into three characteristic properties – agent demotion, theme promotion, and morphological marking – and shows that these properties vary independently across languages. She concludes that this range of variation supports an approach, such as Minimalism, in which universal grammar includes no information specific to voice. This brief note takes a similar approach to antipassive, a clause type whose typology has been investigated by Polinsky (2017). I first deconstruct antipassive into two characteristic properties – demotion of the internal argument, which comes in several subvarieties, and voice marking – and then suggest that these properties vary independently across languages. The data are drawn primarily from Austronesian languages.
