This article investigates differences between Scottish Standard English (SSE) and Southern British (SBSE) in the semantic domain of strong obligation. Focusing on modal verbs must , have to need (have) got we use new corpus material from nineteen written spoken genres component International Corpus (ICE-SCO) corresponding texts ICE-GB. Data are analysed using a mixed-effect multinomial regressi...

This paper argues that the distribution of the two Chinese aspectual auxiliaries -Ie and -zhe in the locative inversion construction is determined by the semantics of the event, in particular the interaction of lexical aspect (telicity and stativity) and agentivity. The -le/-zhe alternation shows a gradient effect similar to the selection of perfective auxiliaries in Romance and Germanic (Sorac...

This paper develops an account of mood selection with attitude predicates in French. I start by examining the “contextual commitment” account of mood developed by Paul Portner and Aynat Rubinstein (P&R). I raise empirical and theoretical challenges for P&R’s analysis of contextual commitment and its role in P&R’s explanations of mood selection. There are indicativeselecting verbs that are felic...

The combination of a modal verb and a modal adverb that is similar in modal force (possibility/necessity) and flavor (epistemic/deontic, etc.) allows a concord interpretation in which the two modals somehow ‘fuse’ and communicate just a single modality. This paper presents a case study of modal concord, as it is exemplified in Dutch. It seems that speakers of this language tend to add modal adv...

J. L. Nicol and D. Swinney (1989) reported facilitation in a cross-modal lexical-decision task as evidence that implicit objects of verbs (WH-traces) are reinstated during comprehension. G. McKoon and R. Ratcliff (1994) found the same priming effects in the absence of implicit objects, suggesting that the effects are attributable to some factor other than a syntactic process that would fill in ...

This paper presents an analysis of sentences with the postverbal modal element DAK in Cantonese and Hakka. We argue that DAK is a verb, though in Cantonese and Hakka it is partly defective. It acquires different meanings depending on the position it occupies, which is either the position for modal verbs in the matrix clause or a modal position in the result denoting small clause. The analysis, ...

This paper looks at integrating dependency and constituency into a common framework, using the TAG formalism and a diierent perspective on the meta-grammar of (Dras, 1999) in which the grammar is viewed as a single yield function. This framework gives consistent dependency analyses of raising verbs interacting with bridge verbs, solving a problem in Synchronous TAG; and in a completely diierent...