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Abstract This article shows that the deontic modals must, should and sup-posed to are all Positive Polarity Items which can raise in order to avoid being in an anti-licensing environment; it also establishes that should has a dual nature, i.e., it is not just a PPI, but it is also a neg-raising predicate, which can achieve wide scope through a homogeneity inference, and that supposed to, also a PPI, exhibits a neg-raising behavior under certain pragmatic conditions which shed new light on the neg-raising phenomenon.

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There appears to be a systematic difference in the reconstructabil-ity of noun phrases and predicates. In this paper I show that recon-structing the A/A-bar distinction in terms of slash-feature percolation and movement allows for a simple derivational formulation of the prin-ciples of binding and scope which derives a generalization very much along the lines of the one presented by Huang (1993). 1

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Abstract. This article centers around two questions: (i) what is the relation between movement and structure sharing?, and (ii) how can complex syntactic structures be linearized? It is shown that regular movement involves internal remerge, and sharing or ‘sideward movement ’ external remerge. Without ad hoc restrictions on the input, both options follow from Merge. They can be represented in terms of multidominance. Although more structural freedom ensues than standardly thought, the grammar is not completely unconstrained: arguably, proliferation of roots is prohibited. Furthermore, it is explained why external remerge has somewhat different consequences than internal remerge. For instance, apparent non-local behavior is attested. At the PF interface, the linearization of structures involving remerge is non-trivial. A central problem is identified, apart from the general issue why remerged material is only pronounced once: there are seemingly contradictory linearization demands for internal and external remerge. This can be resolved by taking into account the different structural configurations. It is argued that the linearization is a PF procedure involving a recursive structure scanning algorithm that makes use of the inherent asymmetry between sister nodes imposed by the operation of Merge.

‘Verb floating ’ and VP-ellipsis Citation for published version: Thoms, G 2010, '‘Verb floating ’ and VP-ellipsis: Towards a movement account of ellipsis licensing ' Linguistic Variation Yearbook, vol 10, no. 1, pp. 255-300. Link:

The Grammar of Q: Q-Particles and the Nature of Wh-Fronting, as Revealed by the Wh-Questions of Tlingit by

The present study presents the initial results of the documentation and (tentative) analyses of some aspects of the grammar of Istro-Romanian (IR), an understudied seriously endangered dialect from the Eastern Romance family, spoken in Croatia. The study is based on data which I collected throughout 2009 and 2010. Chapter 1 offers a brief overview of present-day IR, with references to the community and the linguistic identity. Chapter 2 discusses the properties that IR has in common (or according to which it differs) from languages belonging to the Balkan Linguistic Area, with a systematic comparative look at the three other Eastern Romance languages/dialects. Chapters 3 and 4 present original data on the Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase in IR, in the framework of recent generative studies. Finally, Chapter 5 takes a step further into possible formal comparative analyses – with either Romanian or Slavic, by looking at the behavior of clitic elements in IR. Estratto per riassunto: Questo studio presenta i risultati iniziali del lavoro di documentazione e dell’analisi di alcuni aspetti grammaticali del dialetto istro-romeno. L’istro-romeno è una varietà romanza precedentemente poco studiata, parlata in Croazia, appartenente alla famiglia delle lingue romanze orientali, seriamente a rischio d’estinzione. Lo studio è basato su dati

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