http://hdl.handle.net/10900/142681 Wed, 13 May 2026 11:18:00 GMT 2026-05-13T11:18:00Z https://publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de:443/xmlui/bitstream/id/ef80e779-e3c8-4576-a1c5-62967da4e2c0/ http://hdl.handle.net/10900/142681 http://hdl.handle.net/10900/143397 On the Zero-Change Construal of Causative Simple Verbs in Mandarin Chinese Martin, Fabienne; Sun, Hongyuan; Liu, Jinhong; Demirdache, Hamida In a tradition going back to Tai and Chou (1975) and defended by Talmy (1991, 2000) or Chen (2005, 2017) among others, Mandarin simple verb (henceforth SV) counterparts of English lexical causatives such as TO BURN, TO CLOSE do not have a causative meaning. Rather these SVs are taken to denote a set of activities performed in order to trigger a certain result state in the theme’s referent, though, crucially, the result state itself is not part of the SV’s denotation. In this paper, we contest the position that Mandarin SVs have a radically different meaning from their English counterparts and should be collapsed into one class with Result-State (RS) oriented activity verbs. Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/143397 2023-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/143396 Definiteness and Indefiniteness in Burmese Lim, Meghan; Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka We report on the interpretation of different forms of singular argument nominals in Burmese, a language without articles, from original fieldwork. Like in Mandarin Chinese (Jenks, 2018), bare nouns are unique definites, with demonstratives used for anaphoric definites. Indefinites use the numeral ‘one’. We develop an analysis based on Jenks’ analysis of Mandarin Chinese definites, extended with a novel proposal for ‘one’-indefinites. Indefinites introduce an anti-uniqueness inference, which we derive from a Non-Vacuity constraint rather than Maximize Presupposition a` la Heim (1991), with crucial evidence from anaphoric definites with ‘one.’ We also describe the availability of bare noun indefinite objects, which we analyze as a form of (pseudo) noun incorporation. Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/143396 2023-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/143395 The Combination of Indefinite and Definite Determiners in Akan Duah, Reginald Akuoko; Grubic, Mira; Renans, Agata This paper discusses the co-occurrence of the choice-functional indefinite determiner BÍ and the definite determiner NÓ in Akan. The resulting DP refers to an individual that is mutually known to be unique (i.e., this is a definite interpretation), but there is also an epistemic component, indicating that the addressee has to make an effort to retrieve the referent. We propose that this interpretation is similar to the reading found with the so-called recognitional use of demonstratives (Himmelmann 1996, Bombi et al. 2019), and suggest an account that attributes this component to the indefinite determiner (following research by Owusu 2019). Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/143395 2023-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/143394 Epistemic Marking on Nouns in Nyala East Gluckman, John; Bowler, Margit We describe and analyze cases of epistemic marking on nouns in Nyala East (Bantu, Luhya; Kenya). In Nyala East, certain nouns may indicate the perspectival source of the information referred to by the noun. We analyze this pattern as an expansion of a more pervasive pattern in Bantu languages, that of marking nouns with speaker-oriented meaning (Gambarage, 2019). Our analysis extends this idea to include cases of perspectival shift, where the perspective is not (just) speaker-oriented. Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/143394 2023-07-01T00:00:00Z