The German Definite Article and the ‘Sameness’ of Indices

The German definite article may contract with a preceding preposition under certain circumstances; the contracted form is referred to in the literature as weak, while the non-contracted form is referred to as strong. Schwarz (2009) gives an analysis of this contrast according to which the weak form is required when the referent of an NP is unique, while the strong form is required when it is also anaphoric, i.e., when it refers back to an antecedent. However, as Schwarz himself points out, anaphoric uses in which the anaphoric NP is modified by the adjective same surprisingly surface with the weak form, and not the strong. The use of the weak form with the clearly anaphoric uses of same pose a challenge to the generalization that anaphoric uses of the definite article always require the strong form. I provide an account of the strong/weak distinction in the German definite article that explains the puzzling use of the weak form in anaphora involving same by proposing the following. P-D contraction in the general case is achieved through P-D Lowering (Embick and Noyer 2001). In the strong form however, D selects for the index-hosting head idx, to which it may lower and bleed the environment for P-D contraction. However, D may optionally not lower to idx, in which case P-D contraction freely occurs while idx spells out as same. Same in this account is therefore treated as an allomorph of an otherwise non-exponed anaphora-encoding head that is usually occupied by D. This account draws support from cross-linguistic evidence from English and Hebrew that same may undergo alternations with pronominal expressions

Explicit comparison in Fijian

Across languages, comparative constructions vary according to whether they are morphologically explicit or implicit, a cut based largely on the availability of a degree morpheme corresponding to English -er/than (Kennedy, 2007). Based on diagnostics from that work, it has been claimed that Fijian comparatives are always of the implicit type and, more strikingly, that the language therefore lacks degrees in its ontology (Pearson, 2009). I argue that neither of these are the correct conclusions to be drawn for Fijian. First, Fijian does in fact make use of an explicit comparative that makes use of a dedicated degree morpheme. Second, Fijian passes a variety of diagnostics for degreefulness that are not specific to comparatives, but whose presence are generally believed to require degrees in their semantics (Beck et al., 2009). In addition to presenting these arguments for the status of Fijian as a degreeful language, I also propose a preliminary direct phrasal analysis to account for the language’s explicit comparative

Possession in categorization across language and category

Menon & Pancheva (2014) conjecture that the roots of all property concepts (words expressing the semantic content of adjectives in English; Dixon 1982, Thompson 1989), independent of syntactic category, have an abstract mass noun semantics in the spirit of Francez & Koontz-Garboden (2015, 2017). According to this conjecture, variation in the morphosemantics of categorization masks this underlying universality, leading to superficial variation in the morphosyntax of predication within this class of words. Supporting this line of analysis, we show that morphologically transparent behavior of nouns, verbs and adjectives in Ulwa, Wá·šiw, and English reveals that despite variation in category, property concepts in these languages receive a unified analysis on the view that mass-denoting roots are categorized by nominalizing, verbalizing, and adjectivizing heads, respectively, that introduce a possessive semantics

Postsyntactic inflection of the degree phrase in German

Recent treatments of concord contend that adjectival inflection occurs postsyntactically through the insertion of Agr nodes onto individual, concord-bearing heads after Spell-Out (i.a. Norris 2012, 2014). I examine these claims through the lens of degree modification in German, which demonstrates that current formulations of this approach are untenable. I argue however that a postsyntactic treatment of (adjectival) concord can in fact be maintained if Agr node insertion occurs phrasally at DegP, and not at adjectival heads. This account explains i) an observed difference between the inflection of analytic vs. synthetic degree expressions in both simple and complex modifiers, and ii) a puzzle involving across-the-board inflection of coordinated adjectives, which I argue to involve pointwise attachment of Agr