36.3108, Reviews: Empirical issues in syntax and semantics: Gabriela Bîlbîie, Gerhard Schaden (eds.) (2025)

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Subject: 36.3108, Reviews: Empirical issues in syntax and semantics: Gabriela Bîlbîie, Gerhard Schaden (eds.) (2025)

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Date: 15-Oct-2025
From: Chloé Debouzie [cdebouzie at gmail.com]
Subject: Semantics, Syntax: Gabriela Bîlbîie, Gerhard Schaden (eds.) (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-1783

Title: Empirical issues in syntax and semantics
Subtitle: Selected papers from CSSP 2023
Series Title: Empirically Oriented Theoretical Morphology and Syntax
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Language Science Press
           http://langsci-press.org
Book URL: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/519

Editor(s): Gabriela Bîlbîie, Gerhard Schaden

Reviewer: Chloé Debouzie

SUMMARY
The book contains an edited collection of papers from the “Colloque de
Syntaxe et Sémantique à Paris” (CSSP) conference, which took place at
the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 2023. After a short preface
by the editors, the 231-page volume comprises eight chapters, each
presenting a distinct paper. The chapters are preceded by a dozen-line
preface by the editors (Gabriela Bîlbîie and Gerhard Schaden)
contextualising the volume as a “curated selection of papers” from
CSSP 2023. The book’s aim is to present a “snapshot of contemporary
linguistic research” in several areas of syntax and semantics,
grounded in empirical studies (corpus and experimental) and branching
into various theoretical approaches and generalisations.
Broadly speaking, the papers focus on novel methodologies and
theoretical approaches by addressing a diverse range of topics
regarding syntax (focus structures, rising declaratives, discourse
markers), noun phrases (polysemous nouns, nominal complexes, null vs.
pronominal subjects), verbs (subjective attitudes verbs,
experiencer–object verbs), within a variety of theoretical approaches
(Role and Reference Grammar, frame-semantic representations,
Head-Functor Approach, Lewisian conversational scoreboards) and
languages (mostly English, but also Mandarin Chinese (Chapters 2 and
3), Romanian, German, and French).
This review presents each chapter in turn.
In the opening chapter entitled “A novel representation of focus
structure and non-constituent focus”, the three co-authors, Kata
Balogh, Laura Kallmeyer, and Rainer Osswald, propose a new formal
grammatical model to represent focus structure and specifically
analyse “non-constituent focus” domains, such as the examples in (1).
(1) a. What happened to the book? Pete sold the book.
b. What did Pete do with the book? Pete gave the book to Kate.
In (1), the Information Structure (IS) does not correspond to the
syntactic structures. In (1a), the focus is on the NP subject “Pete”
and the verb “sold”, which do not constitute a single constituent in
the sentence. In (1b) the focus is on the main verb “gave” and the PP
“to Kate”, which are two non-consecutive constituents. Within the
authors’ approach, focus structure is not determined by the nodes of
the constituent structure; rather, IS (which contains focus structure)
is captured in a distinct module and is linked to syntax and
semantics. Information units (IUs) are the core components of focus
structure. Their combinations make the content of focus to account for
the representation of “non-constituent focus”, whether the sets of IUs
correspond to the focus or non-focus of the IS-domains, and whether
the main verb (or predicate) constitutes a part of the focus.
The second chapter, “Primary vs. secondary meaning facets of
polysemous nouns” by Long Chen, Laura Kallmeyer, and Rainer Osswald,
presents a contrastive analysis of English and Mandarin Chinese
polysemous nouns, i.e., nouns with several meaning facets related to
each other in copredication constructions. The authors’ approach is
grounded in semantic frames as a formalisation of their semantic
representations. The authors propose two approaches to model
restrictions on copredication: one based on top and bottom feature
structures on nodes, and a second one based on a default logic
allowing for the removal of defeasible facets and which requires only
a single feature structure for each syntactic node.
Within the first approach (developed in Section 3.3), building on
Kallmeyer & Osswald’s (2013) and Chen et al.’s (2022) syntax–semantic
interface framework, the authors distinguish between “facet-picking”
predication, where a predicate picks one facet only and prevents other
facets from being activated in subsequent predications, and
“facet-addressing” predication, where a predicate addresses one
specific facet while maintaining other facets available for further
predication.
The second approach (Section 3.4) establishes a distinction between
“primary facets”, whose meanings are typically more salient and
consistent, and which can be targeted in any type of copredication
pattern without a predication blocking any of their facets, and
“secondary facets”, modelled as a default attribute that can be
retracted in case of conflicting frame constraints, thereby becoming
unavailable or blocked in some predication patterns.
The two approaches are developed using empirical evidence from the
English Web 2021 corpus (enTenTen21) and the corpus of the Center for
Chinese Linguistics of PKU. The authors focus on three types of
polysemous nouns in the two languages: “book” (which has two primary
facets: physical object and information facet), “food” such as lunch
or dinner (also with two primary facets: object and event facet), and
“speech” or “lecture” (an event and an information facet, both facets
being secondary in English, but primary in Chinese).
In the third chapter, “Unifying modifiers, classifiers and
demonstratives”, the three co-authors, Chenyuan Deng, Antonio Machicao
y Priemer, and Giuseppe Varaschin, introduce the Head-Functor Approach
(HFA) to account for the distributional properties of demonstratives
(DEMs) and modifiers (MODs) in Mandarin Chinese nominal complexes that
pose a problem within Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)
(Pollard & Sag 1994). The authors analyse numeral–classifier–noun
sequences as left-branching Noun Phrases (NPs), whereas the
numeral–classifier sequence forms a Classifier Phrase acting as a
functor over the noun. The notion of functor refers to “non-head
daughters that impose selectional requirements on their sisters” (p.
58) and differs from the head-complement DP and the head-specifier NP
approaches by rejecting the traditional distinction between lexical
and functional categories and by replacing the division between
specifiers and modifiers with a unified account of the properties of
classifiers, modifiers and demonstratives. The theory is further
exploited to offer a two-way typology of languages, distinguishing
languages with head–functor phrases (e.g., Mandarin Chinese) and
head–specifier languages (e.g., English, German).
The fourth chapter, “Using belief–perception mismatch to assess the
meaning of Subjective Attitude Verbs” by Achille Fusco, Cristiano
Chesi, and Valentina Bianchi, focuses on two Subjective Attitude Verbs
(SAVs), “find” and “consider”, which typically express first-person
judgements or opinions that are relevant to the judgements or opinions
expressed in their complement clause. However, “find” and “consider”
differ in regard to their doxastic status, as shown by empirical
observations presented in Section 2 and developed in the literature
review in Section 3. To investigate the asymmetry of the doxastic
components, the authors use the “Potential Doxastic Conflict” (PDC) to
separate belief from first-person perception. PDC refers to contexts
in which subjective perception conflicts with a belief over that
experience (Section 4). In an experimental study (Section 5),
participants are asked to judge the acceptability of sentences
containing “find” or “consider” in either PDC or no-PDC contexts. The
results show that in no-PDC situations, both SAVs receive similar
ratings, while in PDC contexts, which trigger lower acceptability
ratings overall, “find” significantly rates as less acceptable than
“consider”. These findings seem to confirm previous analyses by
Stephenson (2007) and Muñoz (2019) regarding the lack of doxastic
component in “find”, which may explain why “find” is specifically used
to express a first-person experience, whereas “consider” seems to
require less subjective experience.
In the fifth chapter, entitled “Paradigms and discourse effects of
English rising declaratives”, Junseon Hong presents a predictable
model for rising declaratives (RDs) in English. RDs are non-canonical:
they are syntactically declarative sentences, which are prototypically
associated with informative speech acts, but their rising intonation
is typically associated with interrogative sentences (i.e., questions
used to request information). The author distinguishes two types of
RDs: (i) assertive rising declaratives (ARDs), which function as an
assertion (i.e., fulfilling an informative function), and (ii)
inquisitive rising declaratives (IRDs), which are used for questioning
speech acts (i.e., fulfilling an inquisitive function). ARDs typically
have a weaker rise in intonation, which indicates that the content is
more informative than inquisitive, whereas IRDs typically show a
steeper rise, indicating that the content is more inquisitive than
informative.
The ARDs are further distinguished between Epistemic Uncertainty ARDs,
which question the truth value of the proposition, and Metalinguistic
Uncertainty ARDs, which question the contextual relevance of the
proposition. Regarding IRDs, the author distinguishes two paradigms:
Confirmative IRD or Contradictory IRD, with Mirative IRD as a subtype
of the latter. In Confirmative IRDs, the speaker expresses a high
degree of certainty regarding the proposition, whereas a high degree
of suspicion or disbelief is expressed with Contradictory IRDs.
Mirative IRDs are used to express the speaker’s surprise.
Finally, the author argues that the rising intonation projects
discourse commitment, instead of indicating some lack of commitment,
as previously suggested (Rudin 2018, 2022), and affects both the
semantic content of the proposition through the level of steepness of
the rise and the discourse components, through the interaction with
the context.
The sixth chapter, “Next mention biases predict the choice of null and
pronominal subjects” by Fabian Istrate, Ruxandra Ionescu, and Barbara
Hemforth, examines the choice between null and pronominal subjects in
Romanian, a pro-drop language. First, a corpus study (Section 2) of
written and spoken Romanian shows that the salience of the referent
(such as agentivity, voice, maleness) increases the likelihood of a
null subject in subordinate clauses. Moreover, null subjects are
preferred in writing (vs. spoken), and in adverbial temporal
subordinate clauses. Pronominal subjects are more prevalent in main
clauses. The corpus study shows no preference between pronominal and
null subjects with the following variables: animacy of the subject,
female antecedents, in subordinate clauses with non-subject
antecedents, and in causal subordinates. In sum, semantic and
pragmatic factors influence the production and interpretation of null
or pronominal subjects.
Next, the authors used an experimental study (Section 3) in the form
of a completion task to investigate the production of null vs.
pronominal subjects after implicit causality verbs (subject–biased vs.
object–biased causality verbs). The experimental study confirmed that
null subjects were favoured when referring to more salient and
explicit antecedents (in subject and non-subject position).
In conclusion (Section 4), both studies concur in showing that a
higher referent predictability significantly leads to null subjects. A
complex interaction of semantic and pragmatic factors plays a role in
the next mention biases that predict the choice between null and
pronominal subjects.
In the seventh chapter, “Discourse markers are not special (but they
can be complicated)”, Jacques Jayez examines two broad classes of
discourse markers (DMs), connective DMs (developed in Section 3) and
Hic et Nunc Particles (HNPs) (in Section 4), using examples of French
DMs such as “parce que”, “après”, “donc”, “bien que”. The author
focuses on three main functions of DMs: (i) to suggest discourse
relations (DRs) between semantic objects, (ii) to refer to speakers’
affective or epistemic states, and (iii) to refer to different
interactions between conversational agents. The author establishes
general, unifying semantic categories of DMs by distinguishing three
semantic kinds: (i) modifiers which contribute to the propositional
content, (ii) presupposition (PSP) triggers, and (iii) conventional
implicature triggers.
Connective DMs express various DRs (e.g., causality, consequence,
concession, opposition) between two semantic objects. Despite
typically expressing one meaning at a time, connective DMs can be
pragmatically ambiguous: for instance, they can refer to states of
affairs (SOA) or belief states (BEL). Connective DMs can be PSP
triggers, as they express DRs such as relations with an antecedent and
speaker-hearer interactions.
HNPs are closer to interjections but are not all categorised as
expressives. They are typically outside the propositional content, but
they are usually more radically anchored to the situation of utterance
than expressives. HNPs can be semantically vague and are context
dependent. They are linguistic signs used to express an internal
reaction to external events. As such, they are indexical and depend on
context and intonation.
The last chapter of the book, “On the (im-)possibility of reflexive
binding into the subject of German experiencer-object verbs” by Simon
Masloch, Johanna M. Poppek, and Tibor Kiss, focuses on
experiencer-object (EO) verbs, that is, when the experiencer of a
psych verb is syntactically realised as an object. The authors focus
on the acceptability of reflexive binding into the subject of German
EO verbs in an experimental study testing acceptability judgement
(using a 5-point scale of naturalness). The study assesses two
possible word orders (subject–object (SO), where the subject
containing the reflexive precedes the object, and object–subject (OS),
where the antecedent precedes the reflexive) and two possible cases
(accusative–object or dative–object).
The results of the experimental study show that SO sentences received
low ratings overall, yet those with accusative-object verbs received
slightly better ratings. OS sentences, overall, were rated as more
natural, especially those with dative–object verbs; yet a large number
of sentences also received low ratings.
In conclusion, these results show that in German reflexive binding
into the subject of EO verbs is only licit in the midfield area if the
antecedent is before the reflexive “sich” in the surface structure,
and thus c-commands it. This is found with accusative–object and with
dative–object EO verbs. The authors were surprised to find low levels
of acceptability overall and high levels of variation among the
participants, requiring further research regarding predicate-based
binding theories.
EVALUATION
Throughout the eight chapters of this volume, readers are invited to
engage with a variety of methodological and theoretical topics in
syntax and semantics.
Each chapter provides a well-researched and well-presented novel
approach to the issues addressed. Moreover, all are well structured:
each introduction starts from an existing issue raised either from
empirical observation (e.g., non-constituent focus in Chapter 1,
asymmetry in copredication in Chapter 2) or from ongoing debate (e.g.,
discourse markers in Chapter 7, backward binding into the subject of
an EO verb in Chapter 8). After exposing the issues at stake, the
authors clearly state their aims and scope. All introductions (except
in Chapter 2) end with an outline of the paper, which usefully guides
the reader. Typically, the second section (or third in Chapters 4 and
5) contains the theoretical background or state of the art. The
chapters are all grounded in a strong theoretical framework (Role and
Reference Grammar (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997, Van Valin 2005),
frame–semantic representations, Tree Adjoining Grammar and
Tree-Wrapping Grammar (TWG), Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar,
conversational scoreboards) that is well presented and explained, with
references to further readings for anyone not well-versed in these
approaches. For instance, in Chapter 2, where semantic frames are
used, in a footnote (p. 38), the authors refer the reader to Kallmeyer
& Osswald (2013) and Chen et al. (2022) in case the reader wants to
get more acquainted with frames, logic of attribute-value descriptions
and formulas (which I did, and it helped me better understand the rest
of the chapter).
The papers based on corpus or experimental studies (i.e., Chapters 2,
4, 6 and 8) provide a clear description of their methodology, followed
by the results of the analyses, then a discussion, and a conclusion
with the mention of further avenues of research. The data in the
studies in Chapters 4, 6 and 8 are analysed using advanced statistical
methods (logistic regressions in Chapter 4 and 6, a Bayesian model in
Chapter 8). In these chapters, the results are presented in various
tables and figures (some of them in colour, as in Chapter 6), which
greatly help visualising the findings.
The other chapters rely primarily on the analysis of a few phrases
(such as “a blue book” “sold” “in London” in Chapter 1, “She’s home?”
as an example of rising declarative in Chapter 5, and a selection of
half a dozen French discourse markers analysed in Chapter 7). The
figures in Chapter 1 contain syntactic trees used in TWG and RRG.
Chapter 3 contains fifteen figures to represent the different analyses
(NP/DP/Head-Functor Approach). Chapter 5 uses tables from the
conversational scoreboard model to provide formal analyses of the
different types of rising declaratives, while Chapter 7 uses Dialogue
Game Boards to represent the different discourse markers.
Overall, the book is a valuable resource for researchers in these
topics as it presents novel, present-date and state-of-the-art
research. The authors provide their observations, analyses and new
findings in various areas that are open for further research, which
are clearly stated in each chapter. The use of new frameworks and
approaches helps better explain some interesting, yet puzzling
linguistic phenomena. Some studies confirm existing findings, while
others contradict (at least partially) existing theories (e.g.,
Chapters 4 and 8). Chapter 6, on null vs. pronominal subjects in
Romanian, offers valuable insight into cross-linguistic analyses of
and comparisons with other pro-drop languages such as Italian and
Spanish. Most contributions require a high degree of familiarity with
specialised issues and techniques.
The volume is not without limitations, some of which being seemingly
unavoidable in a volume which gathers a selection of papers from a
conference proceedings covering a wide variety of issues. The book
lacks both an introductory and a conclusive chapter, maybe because it
does not try to present a unified view of the field. Each chapter
deals with a specific issue in a highly specialised manner, which
makes it difficult to evaluate the readability of the volume as a
whole or to determine precisely whom it is targeted at. Although key
concepts are consistently and rigorously defined and explained, it
seems that each chapter is addressed to specialists in each theory
(e.g., frame-semantic representations, Head-driven Phrase Structure
Grammar, conversational scoreboards). As a result, students and
early-career scholars may struggle with some chapters if they are not
experts in these theoretical frameworks. Moreover, the chapters based
on experimental studies use advanced statistical calculations, which
may not be easily accessible to everyone (however, I found the figures
very useful to make sense of the results when I did not understand the
maths, as in Chapter 6). Overall, the content and discourse of the
volume is best suited for a specialised audience, as previous
knowledge of the terminology and concepts is required (for instance to
understand the conversational scoreboards in Chapters 5 and 7).
Finally, the book is well produced on high-quality paper with coloured
figures, comprehensive tables and graphs, and a clear layout; yet a
few misprints were noted. Most regrettably, the name of the conference
itself is misspelt (the -e at the end of “syntaxe” in French is
missing in the preface and on the back cover). Another typographic
error occurs on p. 58, where the word “modififiers” appears instead of
“modifiers”. A couple of careless errors can be found: in the first
chapter, p. 9, the text mentions the adjective “red” while the Figures
3 to 6 use the adjective “blue”; on page 185, we read “The fanttype
function (for ‘fetch antecedent of type type’) function provides a
black box for general antecedent recovery procedures”, with “function”
unnecessarily repeated before the brackets. Lastly, in the second
chapter, Section 2 lists “three facets” (“event”, “information”, and
“object”), but then Section 2.1 uses the label “food” as a facet in
the subtype “event food” to describe nouns referring to meals such as
“lunch”, “buffet”, and “dinner”. Reading the description in Section
2.1, we understand that meals are types of “event object”, as they
have an event and an object facet. The authors do not explain why the
label “event food” is used to describe meals in Section 2.1, and not
“event object”, which we understand from the explanation on page 31.
As the chapter is already quite technical for anyone not familiar with
this approach, this confusion between “event food” or “event object”
is unfortunate.
REFERENCES
Chen, Long, Laura Kallmeyer & Rainer Osswald. 2022. A frame-based
model of inherent polysemy, copredication and argument coercion. In
Michael Zock, Emmanuele Chersoni, Yu-Yin Hsu & Enrico Santus (eds.),
Proceedings of the Workshop on Cognitive Aspects of the Lexicon,
58–67.
Kallmeyer, Laura & Rainer Osswald. 2013. Syntax-driven semantic frame
composition in lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammars. Journal of
Language Modelling 1(2). 267–330. DOI: 10.15398/jlm.v1i2.61.
Muñoz, Patrick Joseph. 2019. On tongues: The grammar of experiential
evaluation. The University of Chicago. (Doctoral dissertation).
Pollard, Carl J. & Ivan A. Sag. 1994. Head-Driven Phrase Structure
Grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rudin, Deniz. 2018. Rising above commitment. UC Santa Cruz. (Doctoral
dissertation).
Rudin, Deniz. 2022. Intonational commitments. Journal of Semantics
39(2). 339–383. DOI: 10.1093/jos/ffac002.
Stephenson, Tamina. 2007. Towards a theory of subjective meaning. MIT.
(Doctoral dissertation).
Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 2005. Exploring the syntax-semantics
interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI:
10.1017/cbo9780511610578.
Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. & Randy J. LaPolla. 1997. Syntax: Structure,
meaning, and function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Chloé Debouzie holds a PhD in Linguistics from Université Lumière Lyon
2, France. Her doctoral work investigates morphological competition in
the formation of new verbs in present-day English. Her research
interests include derivational morphology, semantics, onomasiological
approaches, morphological competition, contrastive studies
(French–English), sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. She has
taught widely across linguistics, applied linguistics, TESOL,
translation, and French as a foreign language.



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