Sank's Glossary of Linguistics 
 Np-Nz

NPI
See NEGATIVE POLARITY ITEM.

NUCLEAR SYLLABLE
(Prosody) A syllable that carries maximum prominence, usually due to being stressed.

  1. I will give you a permit.
    (Stress is on the nuclear syllable per of permit.)
  2. I will permit you to do it.
    (Stress is on the nuclear syllable mit of permit.)
 | Alphabetical Glossary of Linguistic Terms

NUCLEAR TONE
(Prosody) In the normal, unemphatic version of the sentence The lady saw the dog, the last word is nuclear, and will carry one of the possible nuclear tones in English. The "nuclear tone" is the most prominent pitch movement in a tone unit. In English, analyses of nuclear tones vary, but most recognize such contrasts as falling, rising, rising-falling, falling-rising, and level. Others are possible, including distinctions within these types, such as high vs. low fall. | David Crystal, 2008

NUCLEUS

  1. (Syntax) A (predicate) "nucleus" is a unit consisting of the syntactic predicate and its arguments (excluding adjuncts). | I Wayan Arka, 2003
  2. (Prosody; Phonology) Or, tonic syllable. Usually used in the description of intonation to refer to the most prominent syllable of the tone-unit, but also used in phonology to denote the centre or peak (i.e. vowel or syllabic consonant) of a syllable. It is one of the central principles of the "standard British" treatment of intonation that continuous speech can be broken up into units called tone-units, and that each of these will have one syllable that can be identified as the most prominent. This syllable will normally be the starting point of the major pitch movement (nuclear tone) in the tone-unit. | Peter Roach, 2011
  3. (Phonology) A rhyme is a term used to describe the unit of a syllable which contains both the nucleus and the coda. The "nucleus" of the syllable is the most sonorous part of a syllable and is obligatory in all languages.
    1. /səpíq/ 'yellow salmonberry' 
               Foot
         /  \
        /    \
       σ      σ
      /|     /|\
     / |    / μ \
    /  |   /  |  \
  (s   ə  p   í   q)
     The first syllable (σ) does not contain a coda and is characterized by only the onset and the nucleus being parsed into a single syllable (/sə/). Following, there is a second syllable which contain an onset (/p/) and a rhyme (nucleus /í/ + coda /q/), and it can be seen that all three segments are parsed into the second syllable (Dyck 2004). | INLP Linguistic Glossary, 2021

NULL ARGUMENT

  1. (Syntax) Or, missing argument, or, argument ellipsis. Refers to the omission from a clause of one or more of three types of nominals required by the main verb: the surface Subject, the Direct Object, and/or the Indirect Object. | Sigal Uziel-Karl, 2013
  2. (Syntax) Korean allows null arguments, as shown in (1), unlike English, as shown in (2).
    1. A:
       
      na-nun
      I-NOM
      John-uy
      J.-GEN
      hyeng-ul
      brother-ACC
      poa/manna-ss-ta.
      see/meet-PST-DEC
        'I saw/met John's brother.'
      B:
       
      na-to
      I-too
      __
      __
      poa/manna-ss-ta.
      see/meet-PST-DEC
        'Lit. I also saw/met.'
    2. A: I saw/met John's brother.
      B: I also saw/met *(him).
     | Hee-Don Ahn and Sungeun Cho, 2012

NULL COMPLEMENT ANAPHORA

  1. (Syntax) We observe that certain verbs in Spanish and Italian allow their infinitival/clausal complements to be null. However, sentences containing them become ungrammatical when we try to extract an element that would have appeared inside the clausal complement in the non-null version, such as a clitic, a wh-phrase, etc., ... or when restructuring has occurred. We propose, and provide evidence that these null clausal complements in Spanish and Italian are instances of "Null Complement Anaphora", a type of deep anaphor in Hankamer and Sag's (1976) sense and not an instance of surface anaphor such as VP ellipsis in English. | Marcela A. Depiante, 2006
  2. (Syntax) Hankamer and Sag (1976) and Sag (1980) distinguish the constructions of NCA and VP ellipsis in English, on the basis of empirical evidence, and they claim that NCA, in opposition to VP ellipsis, is a deep anaphor.
     In NCA, (1), the null constituent presents either sentential or predicative content, whereas in VP Ellipsis, (2), the elided constituent corresponds only to the predicate:
    1. a. I asked Bill to leave, but he refused __.
       (__ = to leave) (H&S 1976)
      b. He said one of us had to give up his seat, so Sue volunteered __.
       ( __ = to give up her seat) (H&S 1976)
    2. I repeatedly asked Bill to leave, and he finally did __.
       ( __= leave)
     Also, in NCA the null constituent is licensed by a main verb, (1); while in VP Ellipsis in English an auxiliary or to infinitive licenses the gap, cf. (2) and (3).
    1. He said one of us had to give up his seat, so Sue volunteered to __.
       ( __ = give up her seat) (Sag 1980)
     Besides, NCA contrasts with VP ellipsis because in the former construction, the null constituent may be recovered by a pragmatic context (4), while in the latter the ellipsis must be recovered by a linguistic antecedent, (5).
    1. [Situation: indulgent father feeds baby chocolate bar for dinner]
      Mother: I don't approve __ !
       ( __ = that you feed him chocolate bar for dinner) (H&S 1976)
    2. [Hankamer attempts to stuff a 9-inch ball through a 6-inch hoop]
      Sag: # It's not clear that you'll be able to __.
       (H&S 1976)
     In addition, in NCA the null constituent may denote a linguistic antecedent structurally different from the one selected by the licensing verb. In VP Ellipsis, however, the linguistic antecedent must be lexically and structurally parallel to the elided constituent. Thus, in (6), where the omitted constituent must be recovered in the active voice although its antecedent is in the passive, NCA is grammatical, (6a), but VP ellipsis is marginal, (6b).
    1. The oats had to be taken down to the bin,
      a. so Bill volunteered __.
       ( __= to take the oats down to the bin)
      b. *so Bill did __.
       ( __ = take the oats down to the bin) (H&S 1976)
     Finally, the null constituent in NCA does not present internal structure; hence, it does not sanction the Missing Antecedent construction (Grinder and Postal 1971), while it does in VP ellipsis: it in (7a) does not have an antecedent in the complex sentence, contrary to what happens in (7a):
    1. a. *He said one of us had to give up his seat, so Sue volunteered __, because it was too narrow for her anyway.
       (H&S 1976)
      b. He said one of us had to give up his seat, so Sue did __, because it was too narrow for her anyway.
       (H&S 1976)
     | Sonia Cyrino and Gabriela Mato, 2004

NULL-SUBJECT
(Syntax) Or, pro-drop. One of the parameters of universal grammar. The concept arises from the permissible dropping, in some languages, of the subject pronoun of a sentence because of potential pragmatic recoverability from context. The content of null-subject is phonologically and morphologically covert but is recoverable in context by competent native speakers of the language. A null-subject is said to have grammatical and semantic properties but lacks overt phonetic form. Going by the parameter of null-subject, some languages are classified as null-subject or pro-drop languages while some are classified as non-null-subject or non-pro-drop languages. English, according to Chomsky (1995) and Radford (2004) is a non-pro-drop language, but Italian is a pro-drop language because it allows finite verbs to have null-subject in its syntax. | Odingowei Kwokwo Macdonald, 2016

NULL SUBJECT LANGUAGE

  1. (Syntax) As is well-known, Spanish is a language in which person and number information is explicitly realized in verbal morphology. Typologically, we say that the language is a consistent null subject language, not only because pronominal subjects are productively dropped, as in (2) but also because lexical subjects freely invert with respect to the position of the verb, as in (1) and (3).
    1. Nosotros
      we
      cantamos.
      sing.1PL
      'We sing.'
    2. Cantamos.
      sing.1PL
    3. Cantamos
      sing.1PL
      nosotros.
      we
     | Andrés Saab, 2023
  2. (Syntax) Greek (2), by contrast to English (1), is a "null-subject language", hence, subject pronouns most often remain without phonological content.
    1. *(She) loves Kostas.
    2. agapa
      love.3S
      ton
      the.ACC
      Kosta
      Kostas.ACC
      '(She) loves Kostas.'
     | Arhonto Terzi, Theodoros Marinis, Anthi Zafeiri, and Konstantinos Francis, 2019

NULL SUBJECT PARAMETER

  1. (Syntax) 
    The Null Subject Parameter
    Null subjects are permitted in all and only languages with morphologically uniform inflectional paradigms.
     | Osvaldo Jaeggli and Kenneth J. Safir, 2012
  2. (Syntax) The NSP can be plausibly conceived of as the theory of all predictable aspects of grammatical variation in the realm of subject realization across languages. A strong intuition is that there is a correlation between agreement richness in verbal morphology and the possibility of subject elision (Taraldsen 1978).

    Null Subject Parameter

    case/agreement dependency between T0 and the subject?
               ╱╲
              ╱    ╲
    [no: Japanese, Chinese]  [yes: dissociated agreement?]
                   ╱╲
                  ╱    ╲
     [no: English, Standard German]  [yes: generalized person dissociation?]
                       ╱╲
                      ╱    ╲
           [no: Brazilian Portuguese]    [yes: subject clitics?]
                           ╱╲
                          ╱    ╲
            [no: Spanish, European Portuguese]  [yes: Trentino]

     | Andrés Saab, 2023


See Also PRO-DROP PARAMETER.

NUMBER AGREEMENT

  1. (Grammar) Agreement in number between words in the same construction, e.g., between adjectives and the nouns they modify. | Free Dictionary, 2017
  2. (Grammar) Agreement based on grammatical number can occur between verb and subject, as in the case of grammatical person. In fact the two categories are often conflated within verb conjugation patterns: there are specific verb forms for first person singular, second person plural and so on. Some examples:
    1. I really am (1st pers. singular) vs. We really are (1st pers. plural)
    2. The boy sings (3rd pers. singular) vs. The boys sing (3rd pers. plural)
     Again as with person, there is agreement in number between pronouns (or their corresponding possessives) and antecedents:
    1. The girl did her job vs. The girls did their job
     Agreement also occurs between nouns and their specifier and modifiers, in some situations. This is common in languages such as French and Spanish, where articles, determiners and adjectives (both attributive and predicative) agree in number with the nouns they qualify:
    1. le grand homme ('the great man') vs. les grands hommes ('the great men')
    2. el hombre alto ('the tall man') vs. los hombres altos ('the tall men')
     In English this is not such a common feature, although there are certain determiners that occur specifically with singular or plural nouns only:
    1. One big car vs. Two big cars
    2. Much great work vs. Many great works
     | Wikipedia, 2023

NUMBER PHRASE

  1. (Syntax) Abbreviated NumP. A functional projection between D and NP, which we call "Number Phrase". In a full noun phrase, the head of this projection is, among other things, the locus of number specification (singular or plural) of a noun phrase. Pronominal noun phrases are distinguished from full noun phrases by the fact that they lack a lexical projection, i.e. they lack a NP. The existence of two distinct functional categories predicts the existence of at least two classes of pronouns, those of the category D, and those of the category Num. In both Modern Hebrew and Haitian, there is evidence that this prediction is borne out.
     Specification of the nominal features person, number and gender varies across languages. | Elizabeth Ritter, 1992
  2. (Syntax) I will motivate the following hierarchical representation that, moving top-down, consists of a Determiner Phrase (DP), a Cardinal Number Phrase (CardP), an Agreement Phrase (AgrP = Julien's αP), the proposed article Phrase (artP), a Number Phrase (NumP), a light noun Phrase (nP) and NP:
    [ DP D [ CardP Card [ AgrP Agr [ artP art [ NumP Num [ nP n [ NP N ]]]]]]]
     | Dorian Roehrs, 2009

NUMERATION

  1. (Syntax) A formal device used in the Minimalist Program. A "numeration" is a set that contains pairs of
    1. the lexical items that will be used in a syntactic derivation and
    2. an index that indicates how often each lexical item will be used in the derivation.
    E.g., (2) is the numeration for the sentence in (1):
    1. The women built the airplanes.
    2. {<the,2>, <women,1>, <built,1>, <airplanes,1>, <T(ense),1>}
     Chomsky (1995) argues that derivations using the same numeration constitute the reference set for a derivation; these derivations are candidates for comparison with respect to economy conditions, and only the "cheapest" candidate, i.e. the one that violates the least economy conditions, is grammatical. With the arisal of local economy, the usefulness of numerations is less clear. | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics 2001
  2. (Syntax) In current minimalist theory, a linguistic expression is a pair (π, λ) consisting of a PF representation (i.e., sound) associated to an LF representation (i.e., a meaning). Under this view, the role of the computational system CHL is to map some array of lexical choices to the pair (π, λ). The array of lexical choices is referred to as the "numeration" (N), which Chomsky (1995) defines as:
    A set of pairs (LI, i), where LI is an item of the lexicon and i is its index, understood to be the number of times that LI is selected.
     Each time a lexical item is selected from the numeration (N), its index is reduced by one so that the converging derivation (i.e., the one that forms a linguistic expression) is the one for which N is reduced to zero. | Enoch O. Aboh, 2010

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