While sound glosses from the Six Dynasties and early Tang provide direct evidence for morphological alternations in Archaic Chinese, studies on the syntax of this language generally disregard these data. This neglect is due in part to perceived unreliability of these sound glosses. In this paper, I first argue that the arguments against their reliability do not stand scrutiny, and that they are not a simple philological curiosity, but have the potential to enrich studies on Archaic Chinese syntax, and plead for more collaboration between syntacticians and historical phonologists.

Linguistic ontologists and antilinguistic, ‘serious’ ontologists both accept the inference from ‘Fido is a dog’ to ‘Fido has the property of being a dog’ but disagree about its ontological consequences. In arguing that we are committed to properties on the basis of these transformations, linguistic ontologists employ a neo-Fregean meta-ontological principle, on which the function of singular terms is to refer. To reject this, serious ontologists must defend an alternative. This paper defends an alternative on which the function of singular terms is not generally to refer and on which they are generally ontologically noncommittal. This is the best way to reject linguistic, ‘easy’ arguments for the existence of properties. The account recommends neutralism about quantification (drawing on Barcan Marcus and Meinongianism), coherently bringing together two important yet uncombined meta-ontological movements. Moreover, it employs Ramseyan insights about the transformations to provide a nonreductionist, non-error-theoretic redundancy approach to explicit talk about properties.

In this article we explore the range of aspectual and quantificational readings that are available to two kinds of deverbal nominalizations in English, conversion nouns and -ing nominals. Using data gathered from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC), we examine the range of readings available for the conversion and -ing forms of 106 English verbs in context. We distinguish eventive versus referential readings, looking at instances of both count and mass quantification for the two kinds of nominalizations. Within the eventive readings we also distinguish bounded versus unbounded aspectual readings, and within bounded readings two types that we call ‘completive’ and ‘package’. We argue that the quantificational properties and aspectual intepretation of both conversion and -ing nominalizations are not rigidly or even loosely determined by the form of the nominalization, but that the lexical aspect of the base verb (state, activity, accomplishment, achievement, semelfactive) plays some role in circumscribing aspectual readings. We argue that the strongest role in determining quantificational and aspectual readings is played by factors arising from the context in which conversion forms and -ing nominalizations are deployed. The aspectual interpretation of conversion and -ing nominalizations can be influenced by the presence of temporal and quantificational modifiers, by surrounding tenses, as well as by encyclopedic knowledge. We conclude with a consideration of the theoretical implications of our findings.

Blackfoot verbs are marked with nominal agreement morphology in relative clauses, in place of verbal inflection. These relative clauses have previously been analyzed as nominalizations. The present study shows that a nominalization analysis makes incorrect predictions about the morphological composition of relative clauses, as well as the availability of non-agentive and possessive constructions, and adjectival modification. This study demonstrates that relative clauses can relativize subjects, direct objects, and indirect objects. Based on observations about obviation, recursion, long-distance extraction, inflection, and word order, I propose that relative clauses are participles: clausal entities with a nominal superstructure. This accounts for their mixed clausal and nominal properties, and provides an analysis of Blackfoot relative clauses similar to those proposed for related Algonquian languages.

In this paper, I show that Embick's (2010) cyclic head approach to regular morphology alone cannot account for the freely available variations in the realization of nominalizers in English nominalizations involving overt verbalizers. Instead, I offer an account of the regularity effects using the technology of Local Dislocation (Embick and Noyer 2001, Embick and Marantz 2008, Embick 2007a, 2007b). Using this analysis, I derive both the variable nominalization patterns and the restrictions on particles and results in derived nominals from Sichel (2010). By treating regularity as the by-product of extant morphosyntatic operations, we can better explain the distribution of regular and irregular nominalizers and account for particle/result restrictions in English derived nominals.

The standard view concerning Case assignment or valuation is that Case is valued to determiner phrases (DPs) in syntax. Recently, Kayne has proposed an alternative model, in which Case is valued to lexical elements rather than to phrases. This article cites several facts from Finnish in support of this model. A detailed Kaynean model of Case is developed. According to this model, abstract Case is valued to lexical elements by the highest ranking c-commanding Case assigner when each phase (CP, vP) is sealed, where ranking is based on a particular Case Hierarchy and a simple notion of locality. Configurations in which Case is seemingly assigned under a spec–head relation are provided with an alternative interpretation.