Centre de Recherche sur la Langue et les Textes Basques

This study analyzes gender assignment in Spanish–Basque mixed nominal constructions with nouns in Basque (a language that lacks gender) and determiners in Spanish (a language that marks gender) by using a multi-task approach: (i) naturalistic data, (ii) an elicitation task, and (iii) an auditory judgment task. Naturalistic data suggest cross-language effects under which a morphological marker of Basque (-a determiner) is interpreted as a morphophonological expression of gender marking in Spanish. A preference for feminine determiners was observed in the judgment task, which differs from the masculine default trend observed in Spanish–English bilinguals (Jake, Myers-Scotton & Gross, 2002). Our results point to feminine gender as default in Spanish–Basque mixed DPs, indicating that the resources that bilinguals use for gender assignment can be different from those of monolinguals. We argue that this is an outcome of interacting processes which take place at the interfaces (lexicon, phonology, morphosyntax) of both languages, resulting in cross-language effects.

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Although contemporary linguistic studies routinely use unacceptable sentences to determine the boundary of what falls outside the scope of grammar, investigations far more rarely take into consideration the possible interpretations of such sentences, perhaps because these interpretations are commonly prejudged as irrelevant or unreliable across speakers. In this paper we provide the results of two experiments in which participants had to make parallel acceptability and interpretation judgments of sentences presenting various types of negative dependencies in Basque and in two varieties of Spanish (Castilian Spanish and Basque Country Spanish). Our results show that acceptable sentences are uniformly assigned a single negation reading in the two languages. However, while unacceptable sentences consistently convey single negation in Basque, they are interpreted at chance in both varieties of Spanish. These results confirm that judgment data that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable negative utterances can inform us not only about an adult's grammar of his/her particular language but also about interesting cross-linguistic differences. We conclude that the acceptability and interpretation of (un)grammatical negative sentences can serve linguistic theory construction by helping to disentangle basic assumptions about the nature of various negative dependencies.

Language, apart from its cultural and social dimension, has a scientific side that is connected not only to the study of 'grammar' in a more or less traditional sense, but also to disciplines like mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. This book explores developments in linguistic theory, looking in particular at the theory of generative grammar from the perspective of the natural sciences. It highlights the complex and dynamic nature of language, suggesting that a comprehensive and full understanding of such a species-specific property will only be achieved through interdisciplinary work.

The analysis focuses on those varieties of Basque that admit the participial dependent to occur either before or after the modal verb. It is shown that in these varieties, the syntactic position of the participial dependent correlates with differences in its internal structure: whereas participial dependents can correspond to TPs when they are located to the right of the modal verb in Basque (a typically SOV language), they cannot correspond to anything more complex than a small v structure when they surface to the left of the modal verb. Our analysis of the internal structure of participial dependents also extends to issues concerning the basic word order of Basque. It is claimed that the analysis presented here requires the auxiliary to be generated to the left of the verb phrase, as the antisymmetry hypothesis would posit.

This paper reviews a series of experimental studies that address what we call "interface judgment," which is the complex judgment involving integration from multiple levels of grammatical representation such as the syntax-semantics and prosody-semantics interface. We first discuss the results from the ERP literature connected to NPI licensing in different languages, paying particular attention to the N400 and the P600 as neural correlates of this specific phenomenon and focusing on the study by Xiang et al. (2016). The results of this study show evidence that there are two distinct NPI licensing mechanisms, i.e., licensing and rescuing, in line with Giannakidou (1998, 2006). Then we discuss an acceptability judgment task on Greek NPIs which supports the negativity as a scale hypothesis (Zwarts, 1995, 1996; Giannakidou, 1998). For the semantics-prosody interface judgment, we discuss two types of findings on two different phenomena and languages: (i) the study by Giannakidou and Yoon (2016) on scalar and non-scalar NPIs in Greek and Korean, which serves as the foundation for Chatzikonstantinou's (2016) study of production data showing distinct prosodic properties in emphatic (scalar) and non-emphatic (non-scalar) Greek NPIs; (ii) a (production and perception) study by Etxeberria and Irurtzun (2015) on the prosodic disambiguation of the scalar/non-scalar readings of sentences containing the focus particle "ere" in Basque. The main conclusion of the paper is that experimental methods of the kind discussed in the paper are useful in establishing physical, quantitative correlates of interface judgment.

This article analyses Locating Adverbials (LAs) such as un peu plus tard , ce matin , deux kilomètres plus loin (‘a little later’, ‘this morning’, ‘two kilometers further’) when they are dislocated to the left of the sentence (IP Adjuncts cases). Although not discourse connectives, in such a position, they seem to play an important part in structuring discourse. It is this contribution of LAs to discourse that we tackle, providing a descriptive analysis and a formal account grounded on Segmented Discourse Representation Theory. In particular, we deal with the frame introducer role of the LAs and with spatio-temporal interpretations of these markers occurring in trajectory descriptions.

1. Dans cet article, je voudrais tenter de pousser jusqu'à ses limites une argumentation réduisant le grand foisonnement des formes conjuguées, simples et complexes, du basque à un schéma linéaire vieux aujourd'hui de plus de 40 ans, l'analyse du complexe verbal anglais proposée par Chomsky (1957). L'idée de base est la suivante : à un niveau relativement peu abstrait, le basque présente une image miroir de la structure du CV anglais, qui, si l'on fait abstraction de divers facteurs, s'analys...

In colloquial speech, main clauses in Iberian Spanish can be headed by an overt complementizer. This paper develops the idea that such structures in Spanish involve an extra speech eventuality, and that this speech eventuality is syntactically mapped as a complex verbal predicate. This complex predicate is composed by a light verb and a quotative dependent. It is thus akin to what in other languages are called “Quotative Verbs” framing direct or semi-direct speech (Güldemann 2001). Several types of evidence are brought to bear on issues such as the semantic primitives involved in the quotative predication, and the syntactic configurations giving rise to the complex predicate.

Background Standardised aphasia assessment tools may not always be available in a variety of languages, posing challenges for speech and language therapists to adequately assess and diagnose aphasia in speakers of those languages. In 2013, Working Group 2 (WG2) Aphasia Assessment & Outcomes, part of the Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists network, was formed with the purpose of developing reliable and valid aphasia assessment tools and their cross-linguistic adaptations. Over the past decade, WG2 has undertaken important adaptation projects, including the cross-linguistic adaptation of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT; Swinburn et al., 2004).Aims This review aims to achieve three objectives: (a) describe the adaptation procedure of the CAT within WG2, (b) summarise common guidelines and recommendations for future adaptations, and (c) provide concrete solutions for specific cross-linguistic and cross-cultural challenges encountered during the adaptation and validation procedures of the CAT.Methods Between 2013 and 2023, WG2 employed a committee approach and fully adapted the CAT into Catalan, Croatian, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Turkish. Further adaptations are in progress for Arabic (Moroccan), Basque, Cantonese Chinese, German, Greek, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovenian and Swedish. The review comprehensively addresses the linguistic/cultural adaptation and validation procedure for the three components of the battery: the Cognitive screening, the Language battery and the Aphasia Impact Questionnaire. Critical outcomes and some best practice recommendations from psychometric norming and piloting are also discussed.Outcomes and results This review builds upon prior work (Fyndanis et al., 2017) and serves as a practical guide for researchers and clinicians undertaking cross-linguistic adaptations of the CAT, with specific conclusions and recommendations drawn from WG2’s adaptations in 19 languages with diverse typological properties. Building on the work exemplified in this paper, future initiatives can direct their efforts towards adapting the CAT for PWA from different linguistic backgrounds for whom validated assessment instruments may be unavailable. This can be achieved through rigorous systematic adaptation procedures for the establishment of comparable language versions of this tool, valuable for various clinical applications. Such endeavours have the potential to provide access to valuable shared datasets for their use across international aphasia trials, and for comparable clinical work within the aphasiology community.

Cet article analyse les questions à syntagme-wh (qu-) in-situ en espagnol. Il montre que la position de surface de ces syntagmes est le résultat d’un mouvement visible vers une position focale dans la péripherie gauche. La position post-verbale dans laquelle les syntagmes-wh apparaissent résulte d’un mouvement postérieur par-dessus la position focale, dans l’esprit des propositions récentes de Kayne (1998, 2000). L’analyse défendue ici conduit à distinguer le phénomène in-situ en espagnol des phénomènes correspondants rencontrés dans les autres langues romanes, dont le français (Chang, 1997; Cheng et Rooryck, 2000; Bo‡koviç, 2000). Il est ainsi démontré que les mécanismes syntaxiques supposés déterminer la distribution des syntagmes-wh-in-situ dans ces langues doivent être modifiés dans le cas de l’espagnol. Dans une perspective comparative, les données de l’espagnol étayent une approche ‘pluraliste’ des stratégies in-situ (Cheng et Rooryck, 2003), selon laquelle la notion descriptive de syntagme in-situ recouvre un domaine grammatical non homogène. D’un point de vue théorique, notre analyse appuie l’idée que beaucoup de phénomènes analysés comme mouvement abstrait (en Forme Logique) dans la tradition du Gouvernement-Liage doivent être réanalysés comme cas de mouvement visible (masqué).

In this chapter, I provide an overview of the different strategies employed for Wh -questions and focalizations across Basque dialects. I argue that a core property of Basque syntax is the fact that both Wh - and focus phrases undergo syntactic (A′-type) displacements, and that they exhibit the main characteristics of syntactic displacements (locality, successive cyclicity, sensitivity to islands, etc.). After analysing the “standard strategy”, which is available across all dialects, I provide an overview of the new in situ Wh -question strategy of the young speakers of Navarro-Labourdin and two different strategies that are employed across different dialects to generate reinforced foci: the highly contrastive rightward focus constructions (specific to Southern dialects, and particularly common in High Navarrese), and the ‘reinforced movement’ strategy of Navarro-Labourdin (a Northern variety). I finish with a brief description of some other constructions involving foci: the mirative focus constructions of substandard Basque, and the dialectal distribution of different types of split interrogatives.

The main goal of this dissertation is to contribute to the understanding of the internal structure of Basque quantification in particular and natural language quantification in general within the framework of Generalized Quantifier Theory. The proposal put forward in it demonstrates that the standard analysis of Generalized Quantifiers is correct and that it can account for quantification in natural languages, pace alternative analyses that argue for a revision. Assuming that quantification in natural languages must always be contextually restricted and that quantificational domain restriction is always encoded syntactically, this dissertation proposes a novel compositional structure for Basque quantifiers where the quantifier internal definite determiner is taken to act as the overt quantificational domain restrictor. This proposal leads to a particular analysis of the Basque article: this element will be the definite determiner everywhere, but very flexible in its ability to “type shift”, which accounts for the various interpretations that the Basque definite determiner can get.

Basque people have received considerable attention from anthropologists, geneticists, and linguists during the last century due to the singularity of their language and to other cultural and biological characteristics. Despite the multidisciplinary efforts performed to address the questions of the origin, uniqueness, and heterogeneity of Basques, the genetic studies performed up to now have suffered from a weak study design where populations are not analyzed in an adequate geographic and population context. To address the former questions and to overcome these design limitations, we have analyzed the uniparentally inherited markers (Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA) of ~900 individuals from 18 populations, including those where Basque is currently spoken and populations from adjacent regions where Basque might have been spoken in historical times. Our results indicate that Basque-speaking populations fall within the genetic Western European gene pool, that they are similar to geographically surrounding non-Basque populations, and also that their genetic uniqueness is based on a lower amount of external influences compared with other Iberians and French populations. Our data suggest that the genetic heterogeneity and structure observed in the Basque region result from pre-Roman tribal structure related to geography and might be linked to the increased complexity of emerging societies during the Bronze Age. The rough overlap of the pre-Roman tribe location and the current dialect limits support the notion that the environmental diversity in the region has played a recurrent role in cultural differentiation and ethnogenesis at different time periods.

This remark argues for the Case-theoretic concept of Case as a syntactic licensing requirement of DPs related to their case morphology, against alternatives where DPs need no syntactic licensing, or where their case morphology is unrelated to it. The argument is made from constraints on combining exceptional Case marking (ECM) and the double object construction, where there is a single object Agree/Case locus for two DPs. The mechanisms and nature of Case are briefly examined. The appendix sketches an extension to wager-class ECM.

Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis that can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time. Even greater flexibility is to be expected in fields in which the primary data lend themselves to a variety of possible operationalizations. The multidimensional, temporally extended nature of speech constitutes an ideal testing ground for assessing the variability in analytic approaches, which derives not only from aspects of statistical modeling but also from decisions regarding the quantification of the measured behavior. In this study, we gave the same speech-production data set to 46 teams of researchers and asked them to answer the same research question, resulting in substantial variability in reported effect sizes and their interpretation. Using Bayesian meta-analytic tools, we further found little to no evidence that the observed variability can be explained by analysts’ prior beliefs, expertise, or the perceived quality of their analyses. In light of this idiosyncratic variability, we recommend that researchers more transparently share details of their analysis, strengthen the link between theoretical construct and quantitative system, and calibrate their (un)certainty in their conclusions.

Au départ, le lien entre les notions de "langue régionale" et de "langue et culture régionales" est examiné en partant des textes à caractère juridique dans lesquels elles sont apparues et ont évolué depuis le milieu des années 1960. La notion de "langue régionale", à partir et autour de laquelle se sont maintenues les orientations de politique linguistique en France à l'égard des langues minoritaires qui y sont historiquement implantées, est approchée à travers un certain nombre de propriétés définitoires et afférentes. Celles-ci renvoient à la configuration proprement française où le sème subordonnant "régional" prend tout son sens. Par ailleurs, une relation particulière entre la langue régionale et le couple culture - patrimoine se dégage, comme dans d'autres pays d'Europe, quoiqu'avec une affirmation réitérée de la fusion dans le patrimoine national. De là, le passage, au début des années 2000, vers la notion de "langues de France", plus large car s'appliquant également à des langues "sans territoire" historiquement présentes en France et, à ce titre, également constitutives de son patrimoine, a attesté une lecture critique du lien territorial au vu de la dynamique moderne des populations. Pour autant, l'introduction en 2008 dans la Constitution d'une mention à ces langues minoritaires de France a consacré la référence aux notions de langue régionale et de patrimoine national.

After offering a brief survey of the features of causative sentences in Basque, mainly onthe basis of Dixon's (2000) criteria, the paper deals with Basque lexical causatives, whichcan be used as either causative or unaccusative verbs. The proposed analysis assumes that lexical decomposition is carried out directly according to syntactic principles (Hale & Keyser 1993, Baker 1997, McGinnis 2000), and that different types of causative sentence(morphological vs lexical causatives) correspond to different types ofphrase (VoiceP vs VP) selected by the Cause head (Pylkkannen 2001, 2002; Meggerdoomian 2002). The paper shows that in Basque lexical causatives the Cause head selects one of the predicates BECOME or GO only. Other intransitive verbs are excluded from lexical causativization, even those which are superficially similar verbs of change because they are absolutive monadic verbs (reflexive verbs like orraztu 'comb', verbs of happening like gertatu 'happen', or verbs of activity like jostatu 'play'). Three types of lexical causative are distinguished and analyzed following lexical decomposition: verbs of change of (physical) state, verbs of change of place and psychological causatives. Since Basque, unlike Finnish or Japanese, shows a strict correlation between causation and the existence of an external argument, it is assumed that in Basque as in English, the Cause and Voice heads conflate in lexical causatives (Pylkännen 2002).

Abstract We sought to describe the strategies used by 2L1 and L2 Basque-French bilingual children and monolingual Basque children to express subject-agent function in a free elicitation context in Basque. Based on a three-year longitudinal study, the analysis focused on transitive constructions requiring a subject-agent noun marked for ergative case. The results showed that the children mastered production of the ergative case marker at different ages, and used different psycholinguistic strategies to refer to the subject-agent. The majority of the bilingual children favoured topological strategy (i.e., marking of the subject-agent in the first position through subject-verb-object word order). However, the children with L1 Basque seemed to engage more in morphological strategy, through the use of the nominal ergative suffix. These data allowed us to discuss variations in the performance of bilingual children in light of the cue cost and cue validity concepts elaborated by the Competition Model applied to language production.