Subproject 9: Animacy features and the flexibility of pronouns

PI: Assoc. Prof. Dr Steffen Heidinger 

Project Postdoc

• Dr Yanis da Cunha

Cooperation partner

• Michelle Troberg (Toronto)

Former member

• Alina Schwarzenberger, BEd (10.2024-07.2025)

Output:

Publications

• Da Cunha, Yanis; Gibson, Edward. 2025. Syntactic Complexity Phenomena Are Better Explained Without Empty Elements Mediating Long-Distance Dependencies. In: Cognitive Science: a multidisciplinary journal. 49,8. 2025. 1-39. doi:10.1111/cogs.70088
• Da Cunha, Yanis; Heidinger, Steffen. 2026. Animacy restrictions without animacy features: The case of strong pronouns in French and Spanish. In: Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 11(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.23551
• Da Cunha, Yanis; Heidinger, Steffen. accepted. Competition effects on animacy restricts: French and Spanish PPs as a case. In: Romanische Forschungen.
• Heidinger, Steffen; Troberg, Michelle. accepted. Spatial expressions with implicit (and overt) arguments: A comparative study of French and Spanish. In: Herbeck, Peter & Natascha Pomino (eds.). Null or nothing: Zero elements in Romance syntax and morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (preprint available at ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009458)
• Heidinger, Steffen. 2024. Types of zero complements in French and Spanish prepositional phrases: New evidence from acceptability judgment experiments. In: Isogloss. 10,1. 1-29. doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.371

Presentations

• Heidinger, Steffen; da Cunha, Yanis. Definiteness restrictions on null complements in Spanish and French PPs. LIV Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística (Workshop: Ellipsis and the Architecture of Language: When and Why Can an Element Be Elided?). Madrid. 26.29.1.2026.
• Heidinger, Steffen; da Cunha, Yanis. Animacy restrictions without animacy features: The case of strong pronouns in French and Spanish. Going Romance 2025. Venice. 3.-5.12.2025.
• Heidinger, Steffen; da Cunha, Yanis. Argument drop and competition effects: An experimental study on French and Spanish PPs. 58th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. Bordeaux. 26.–29.8.2025.
• Da Cunha, Yanis & Heidinger, Steffen “Competition-driven animacy mismatches in anaphoric relations.” Referential Expressions in Discourse 2025: Mismatches in Anaphoric Relations. University of Graz. 29.05.2025.
• Heidinger, Steffen; Arsenijevic, Boban "SFB: Language between redundancy and deficiency". Linguistic Colloquium. University of Graz. 19.06.2024.
• Heidinger, Steffen "Types of zero complements in French and Spanish prepositional phrases: New evidence from acceptability judgement experiments". Helsinki. 57th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. 24.08.2024.
• Da Cunha, Yanis; Heidinger, Steffen; Schwarzenberger, Alina " Competition and animacy restrictions: French and Spanish PPs as a case". Online Workshop Pronouns in PPs: Orphan Prepositions and Pronoun Types. Graz. 05.12.2024.
• Da Cunha, Yanis; Heidinger, Steffen; Schwarzenberger, Alina " Competition and animacy restrictions: French and Spanish PPs as a case". Online Workshop Pronouns in PPs: Orphan Prepositions and Pronoun Types. Graz. 05.12.2024.
• Da Cunha, Yanis; Heidinger, Steffen "Redundancy, deficiency and competition: animacy and pronouns in French and Spanish". Advanced Seminar Romance Studies. Regensburg. 13.01.2025.
• Da Cunha, Yanis "Competition effects on animacy restrictions in French and Spanish PPs". LingLunch. Université Paris Cité. 20.02.2025.
• Heidinger, Steffen "Aceptabilidad y frecuencia: El caso de las preposiciones huérfanas". German Hispanic Studies Day. Hamburg. 12.03.2025.
• Da Cunha, Yanis; Heidinger, Steffen "Competition-driven animacy mismatches in anaphoric relations" Poster. Mismatches in anaphoric relations (RED 25). 29.-30.05.2025.

Conferences

• Online workshop "Pronouns in PPs: Orphan Prepositions and Pronoun Types", Dec 5, 2024 (https://homepage.uni-graz.at/de/steffen.heidinger/forschung/animacy-features/pronouns-in-pps/)