SUBCATEGORIZATION
See C-SELECTION

SUBJACENCY

1. (Syntax) Principle, as formulated by Chomsky in the late 1970s, by which the movement of a unit is blocked if it crosses the boundaries of two or more designated classes of constituent. | Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
2. (Syntax) 

   The Subjacency Condition
   In a chain formed by movement, the path connecting two neighboring links must not contain more than one barrier (in other words, on the path between A and B, there is at most one barrier C such that A c-commands C and C dominates B).

    The condition has the consequence that a wh-constituent can move out of an IP that dominates it just in case an empty local Spec(CP) is available or can be generated as an intermediate landing site. By local Spec(CP), we mean the specifier of a CP whose head is a sister of the IP in question. In the absence of such a landing site, wh-movement is correctly ruled out as ungrammatical. | Beatrice Santorini and Anthony Kroch, 2007

SUBJECT CHAIN
(Syntax) An A-chain with its tail in a subject position. | Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai, 2001

SUBJECT CLEFT CONSTRUCTION

1. (Syntax)
   1. E'
      it.is

      Gianni
      Gianni

      che
      that

      ha
      has

      parlato
      spoken
    As clearly evidenced by different languages, e.g. French, the postcopular subject DP of subject clefts can be the focus of new information. Typically, a subject cleft (with an often deleted/unpronounced predicate) can provide the answer to a question on the identification of the subject of the clause:
   2. Qui
      who

      (est-ce
       

      que
       

      qui)
       

      a
       

      parlé?
      spoke
   3. C'
      it

      est
      is

      Jean
      Jean

      (qui
      (who

      a
       

      parlé)
      spoke)
    This characteristic answering strategy of French shares a crucial property with the inversion strategy characteristically adopted in similar contexts in languages allowing for post-verbal new information subjects, such as, e.g., Italian:
   4. Chi
      who

      ha
       

      parlato?
      spoke
   5. Ha

      parlato

      Gianni

      has spoken Gianni
    | Adriana Belletti, 2008
2. (Syntax) Some languages provide evidence that agreement of the verb of the content clause with a clefted subject may develop very early in the history of a cleft construction. For example, contrary to modern Romance languages, Latin was certainly not among the languages in which cleft constructions are widely used to express focalization, but as illustrated in (1), subject cleft constructions in which the verb of the content clause agrees in person with the clefted subject are attested as early as in the plays of Plautus: In a plain cleft construction, the content clause in (1) would be expected to occur as qui te dudum conduxit '(the one) who hired.3SG you just now'.
   1. Latin (Plautus, Mercator – quoted by Dufter 2008)
      Non
      not

      ego
      I

      sum
      am

      qui
      who

      te
      you

      dudum
      just.now

      conduxi.
      hired.1SG

      'I'm not the person that hired you just now.'
    | Denis Creissels, 2021

SUBJECT DOUBLING

1. (Syntax) In which a subject is realized initially as a pronominal clitic followed by a lexical item or a personal pronoun, referring to the same participant. | ?
2. (Syntax) The first type of pronominal subject doubling, clitic doubling, has frequently been discussed in the literature on Dutch dialects (cf. de Geest 1995, Haegeman 1992, Zwart 1993). The main characteristics of this type of subject doubling are that the first subject element is always a clitic pronoun, while the second is necessarily a strong pronoun. Consider the examples in (1).
   1. Wambeek
      a. Subclauses
      da
      that

      me
      we_CLITIC

      ze
      them

      waaile
      we_STRONG

      nuir
      to

      ojsh
      home

      gojn
      go

      bringen.
      bring

      '... that we're going to take them home.'
      b. Inverted main clauses
      Nuir
      to

      ojsh
      home

      gon
      go

      me
      we_CLITIC

      ze
      them

      waaile
      we_STRONG

      bringen.
      bring

      'Home we're going to take them.'
      c. Subject-initial main clauses
      * Me
       we_CLITIC

      gojn
      go

      ze
      them

      waaile
      we_STRONG

      nuir
      to

      ojsh
      home

      bringen.
      bring
    The sentences in (1a-b) show that clitic doubling can occur in subclauses and inverted main clauses. Example (1c) on the other hand demonstrates that this construction is not allowed in subject-initial main clauses.
    So far, the second type of subject doubling, topic doubling, has—at least to our knowledge—gone unnoticed in the linguistic literature. In this type of subject doubling the first subject element can be a weak pronoun, a strong pronoun, a proper name or a definite DP (depending on the dialect), but never a clitic pronoun. The second subject element is always a strong pronoun. As the data in (2) show, the dialects under consideration here vary with respect to the first subject element they allow in this construction.
   2. a. Lapscheure
      { Ze
      { she_WEAK

      / * Zie
      / she_STRONG

      / * Da
      / that

      wuf
      woman

      / * Marie}
      / Mary }

      goa
      goes

      zie.
      she_STRONG

      'She is going.'
      b. Brabant
      { Ze
      { she_WEAK

      / Zij
      / she_STRONG

      / * die
      / that

      vrau
      woman

      / * Marie }
      / Mary }

      komt
      comes

      zij.
      she_STRONG

      'She will come.'
      c. Wambeek
      { Ze
      { she_WEAK

      / zij
      / she_STRONG

      / dei
      / that

      vrou
      woman

      / Marie }
      / Mary }

      gui
      goes

      zij.
      she_STRONG

      'She/that woman/Mary is going.'
    Example (2a) shows that in the Lapscheure dialect the first subject element can only be a weak pronoun. In the Brabant Dutch regiolect (2b) it can be both a weak and a strong pronoun, while the dialect of Wambeek has the largest set of possibilities. The first subject element in this dialect can be a weak pronoun, a strong pronoun, a proper name or a definite DP. There is no variation concerning the second subject element in these dialects: this is always a strong pronoun. Just like clitic doubling, topic doubling is restricted in its syntactic distribution. | Jeroen van Craenenbroeck and Marjo van Koppen, ?

SUBJECT REQUIREMENT
(Syntax) By which every clause consists of a subject and a predicate (independently of semantic requirements). The term predicate refers to what remains of a clause when its subject is removed.
 For clarity, we can use the term Aristotelian predicate for this sense, since the observation that all sentences consist of a subject and a predicate goes back to Aristotle. Predication is the relation between a subject and an Aristotelian predicate. So here are two alternative ways of stating the subject requirement:

1. Every clause has a subject.
2. Every clause is an instance of predication.

SUBJECTIVE NEGATIVE
(Grammar) Expressing something about what is desired or hoped. It rejects or deprecates. | Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek, 2019

SUBJUNCTIVE DISJOINT REFERENCE EFFECT
(Syntax) In Western Romance as in English, control predicates embed complement clauses in the infinitive mood, as in (1) and (3). Certain control predicates (e.g. desideratives, directives) may also take complements in the subjunctive mood; however, the coreference restriction known as obviation or the subjunctive disjoint reference effect (Farkas 1992) prevents an argument of a control predicate from corefering with the subject of its complement clause when that complement clause is in the subjunctive mood. This coreference restriction mainly arises between two subjects (see (2)), but in French, it may also occur between a matrix object and an embedded subject, as in (4) (B-Violette).

1. Édouard
   Édouard

   veut
   wants

   sortier
   go.out.INF

   avec
   with

   ses
   his

   amis
   friends

   ce
   this

   soir.
   evening

   'Édouard wants to go out with his friends this evening.'
   
   
2. Édouard_i
   Édouard

   veut
   wants

   qu'
   that

   il_*i/j
   he

   sorte
   go.out.SBJV

   avec
   with

   ses
   his

   amis
   friends

   ce
   this

   soir.
   evening

   Lit. 'Édouard wants that he go out with his friends this evening.'
   
   
3. Ton
   your

   père
   father

   t'
   you.SG.CL

   a
   AUX

   demandé
   asked

   de
   to

   ranger
   tidy.up.INF

   ta
   your.SG

   chambre.
   room

   'Your father asked you to tidy up your room.'
   
   
4. * Ton
    your

   père
   father

   t'
   you.SG.CL

   a
   AUX

   demandé
   asked

   que
   that

   tu
   you.SG

   ranges
   tidy.up.SBJV

   ta
   your

   chambre.
   room

   Lit. 'Your father asked you that you tidy up your room.'

SUBREGULAR HYPOTHESIS

1. (Phonology) 

   Subregular Hypothesis (Weak Version; Heinz et al. 2011)
   Phonology is properly included in the class of regular languages:

   • All local dependencies can be described by n-gram grammars.
   • Non-local dependencies are local on phonological tiers.

    | Thomas Graf and Jeffrey Heinz, 2015
2. (Phonology) States that only patterns with specific subregular computational properties are phonologically learnable (Heinz 2010). | Enes Avcu and A. Hestvik, 2020
3. (Phonology) Computational analysis reveals that phonological patterns are subregular. That is, in addition to the universal, restrictive regular properties of phonological patterns, there are even more restrictive properties shared by all phonological patterns no matter how diverse. In particular, the kinds of distinctions that phonological patterns make (the kinds of blocks) are sharply limited. Taken together, these contributions show computational phonology is identifying stronger and stronger universal properties of phonological patterns and identifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for a logically possible pattern to be a phonological one. | Jeffrey Heinz, 2010

SUBSTRATE LANGUAGE
(Sociolinguistics) Or, substratum, or, substrate. A language which has lower power or prestige than another. | Wikipedia, 2016

SUCCESSIVE-CYCLIC WH-MOVEMENT

1. (Syntax) Suppose that when a wh-word moves, it has to move to the closest [Spec,CP]. It can't skip a [Spec,CP].

   C_[+Q] you I hear [that they bought what]

   The wh-phrase moves first to the intermediate [Spec,CP].

   C_[+Q] you I hear [what_i that they bought t_i]

   Then, the wh-phrase moves from the intermediate [Spec,CP] to the main clause [Spec,CP].

   what_i C_[+Q]+I_j you t_j hear [t_i' that they bought t_i]
   What did you hear that they bought?

    | Paul Hagstrom, 2003
2. (Syntax) As has been known at least since Ross (1967), A'-movement can relate two syntactic positions arbitrarily far from each other, as shown by paradigms like (1-4).
   1. Who_i did John see ___i?
   2. Who_i did Mary say that John saw ___i?
   3. Who_i did Bill hear that Mary said that John saw ___i?
   4. Etc.
    However, as predicted by Chomsky (1973)'s Strict Cycle Condition and Chomsky (1977)'s Subjacency Condition, there has accumulated a significant amount of evidence that A'-movement does not merely involve the position at which the moved element in is externally merged and the position at which it is pronounced, but also the specifiers of all of the intervening phase heads between those two positions. If the C and v heads are the only phasal ones in the clausal spine, the movement path of the wh-word in (3) is really as in (5).
   5. [_CP Who did Bill [_vP __ hear [_CP __ that Mary [_vP __ said [_CP __ that John [_vP __ saw __ ]]]]]]?
    The successive cyclicity of movement was first proposed as a way of capturing the island effects discovered in Ross (1967). | Rafael Abramovitz, 2020

SUPER-FACTIVE
(Semantics) The "strict" predicates, like (it's) amazing, incredible, seem to presuppose the embedded proposition (and not just, like know, the rectified complement proposition):

1. "It's incredible what he has done today," said Armstrong's team coach, ...
    It's incredible what he has done today ⇒
    'I (we) know what he has done today'

SUPER-RAISING

1. (Syntax) A subject raised to a higher subject position cannot skip an intervening subject position; the banned configuration has been called "Super Raising":
   1. It seems that it is likely that John will win.
   2. It seems that John is likely t to win.
   3. John seems t to be likely t to win.
   4. * John seems that it is likely t to win.
    | Luigi Rizzi, 2001
2. (Syntax) A construction in which a subject position is skipped in applying Subject Raising. The result is ungrammatical.
    Next to (1), which is an ordinary case of subject raising, (2) is impossible, since the subject position taken by it is skipped in moving Vitesse to the subject position of seems.
   1. Vitesse seems [ t to win ]
   2. * Vitesse seems [ that it is certain [ t to win ] ]
    (Chomsky 1981, 1986, 1995, 1998) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

SUPERFINITE
(Semantics) A superfinite class of languages is a class containing all finite languages and at least one infinite language. | Nina Gierasimczuk, 2007

SUPERORDINATE NEGATION
(Syntax) While a negator may structurally belong to a main clause in a complex sentence involving a subcategorized clause, its scope is interpreted as disjunct. For instance, in (1a), the clitic =nt structurally belongs to the main clause, but can be logically interpreted as belonging to the dependent clause by virtue of having the same semantics as (1b) where =nt occurs in the dependent clause. Pragmatically, of course, the uses of the construction types are not identical.

1. a. I don't believe [ that education cuts are necessary ].
   b. I believe [ that education cuts aren't necessary ].

• OPINION
 think, believe, suppose, imagine, expect, reckon, feel
• PERCEPTION
 seem, appear, look like, sound like, feel like
• PROBABILITY
 be probable, be likely, figure to
• INTENTION / VOLITION
 want, intend, choose, plan
• JUDGEMENT / (WEAK) OBLIGATION
 ought, should, be desirable, advise, suggest

SUPPLETION
(Morphology) Suppletion is the replacement of one stem with another, resulting in an allomorph of a morpheme which has no phonological similarity to the other allomorphs. Examples:

1. Stem suppletion
   1. Regular: walk-walked; Suppletion: go-went.
   2. Regular: big-bigger-biggest; Suppletion: good-better-best.
2. Affix suppletion
   1. Regular: cat-cats; Suppletion: cherub-cherubim, ox-oxen.

SUPPORT VERB CONSTRUCTION

1. (Grammar) Combinations of a verbal and a nominal element filling the predicate slot in the f-structure of a sentence and the verb and object slots in the c-structure of a sentence.
    Support-verb constructions sit at three interfaces (lexicon-syntax, syntax-semantics, and syntax-pragmatics). | Victoria Beatrix Fendel, 2023
2. (Grammar) Or, light-verb construction. A word combination that consists of a support or light verb and a predicative noun. A verb-complement pair in which the verb serves as the syntactic head but contributes no lexical meaning (is "light")—only person, number, tense, and morphological aspect. The semantic content of the construction is obtained from the complement, being the semantic head of the structure.
   1. V + Npred
   2. V + Prep + Npred
   3. V + Adj
    | Voula Giouli, 2023
3. (Grammar) A universal category with the following general characteristics:
   1. They are formed by a verb and its argument containing a noun. The argument is usually a direct object (to give a lecture) but sometimes also a prepositional complement (to come into bloom) or a subject (the problem lies in something).
   2. Both the verb and the noun (included in the complement) are lexicalized.
   3. The verb is light, i.e. it contributes to the meaning of the whole only to a small degree (e.g. aspectual information).
   4. The noun has one of its regular meanings (which can be retrieved even in the absence of the verb).
   5. The noun is predicative, i.e. takes at least one syntactic argument, and, when used with the light verb, one of its arguments becomes also a syntactic argument of the verb (e g. in to pay a visit to a friend the prepositional phrase to a friend is an argument both of pay and of visit). Also, the subject is usually an argument of the noun (here, the one who pays is also the one who visits).
   6. The noun typically refers to an action or event.
    As in most other verbal multi-word expressions, the nominal and the verbal component of such constructions can be separated from each other in context (e.g. in passive sentences: a decision was made by the committee).
    Many authors make a distinction between support verbs and light verbs; still others differentiate between true light verbs and vague action verbs. | Veronika Vincze, Agata Savary, Marie Candito, and Carlos Ramisch, 2016
4. (Grammar) Or, light verb construction, or, function verb construction, or, nominalization verb construction, or, verbo-nominal construction. SVCs like to take a risk or to set into motion are composed of a verb component (to take, to set) and a noun component (risk, motion). The noun component is typically a nominalization of a verb or an adjective. The verb component is semantically reduced, when compared to its main verb meaning. The construction as a whole is closely related to the derivation basis of the noun component (to risk or to move); this base verb or adjective mainly determines the semantics and the argument structure of the whole construction. This specific type of complex predicate formation has always been a challenge for natural language processing and machine translation. | Angelika Storrer, 2007

SUPRAGLOTTAL CONSONANT
(Phonetics) A consonant characterized by oral constriction or closure, e.g., [d], as opposed to a glottal consonant (consonant characterized only by laryngeal constriction or closure; e.g. [h]). | Mary K. Fagan and Jana M. Iverson, 2008

SURFACE SCOPE
See INVERSE SCOPE.

Page Last Modified April 14, 2024

 

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