Optional elements and variant structures in the productions of bei2 ‘to give’ dative constructions in Cantonese-speaking adults and three-year-old children

Rules have been formulated on how adverbials are used. Such rules as stated by Quirk and Greenbaum (1973), Hornby (1975) and Swan (1995) are silent on how a few adverbials that have no restrictions regarding their position and order in sentences should be used. This paper, relying on language variation in the second language setting as a theoretical framework, explored how undergraduate students used these kinds of mobile adverbials. The quantitative research design and a simple random sampling were applied to select a total of 100 essays and exercises from fresh undergraduates of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Analysing these essays and exercises, we concluded that although the adverbial is an optional clausal element, the undergraduate students used it in providing further information on the other clausal elements. In addition, the undergraduate students often placed the adverbials in the mid position of their sentences.
 Keywords: Adverbials, GE, Undergraduate students, Clausal elements, Effective communication

According to usage-based, constructionist accounts the linguistic input in general and input frequencies in particular play an important role in children's language learning. English-speaking children have been shown to be able to learn entirely novel, invented word order constructions from their input. This book aims to extend this line of research to the area of morphology. Two experimental studies investigate German-speaking and English-speaking children's ability to learn novel morphological constructions from the input. The effects of input frequencies on this learning process are examined in detail. A corpus study provides the morphological background data for the invented constructions and presents additional support for frequency effects from naturalistic language learning. By combining two empirical methods and by exploring morphological learning in two different languages this book provides new insights into the cognitive processes that are assumed to be involved in children's language learning and reveals how these processes are affected by different kinds of input frequencies. According to usage-based, constructionist accounts the linguistic input in general and input frequencies in particular play an important role in children's language learning. English-speaking children have been shown to be able to learn entirely novel, invented word order constructions from their input. This book aims to extend this line of research to the area of morphology. Two experimental studies investigate German-speaking and English-speaking children's ability to learn novel morphological constructions from the input. The effects of input frequencies on this learning process are examined in detail. A corpus study provides the morphological background data for the invented constructions and presents additional support for frequency effects from naturalistic language learning. By combining two empirical methods and by exploring morphological learning in two different languages this book provides new insights into the cognitive processes that are assumed to be involved in children's language learning and reveals how these processes are affected by different kinds of input frequencies.

This paper is the comparative study of ‘-ko’ and ‘-Ne’ markers in dative construction of Delhi-Hindi. Although it is well known that ‘-ko’ is the dative marker and ‘-ne’ is the ergative marker in Delhi-Hindi like Hindi-Urdu (Standard Hindi) but Delhi-Hindi also has another kind of construction i.e. ‘dative-substitution’. In dative-substitution construction, ergative ‘-ne’ marker is used in dative construction instead of dative ‘-ko’ marker. This paper explores the specific domains where this construction would be acceptable with respect to morpho-syntactic point of view. It also highlights the possible environment where ‘-Ne’ marker has shown similarities or differences with dative ‘-ko’ marker in Delhi-Hindi. Even it provides evidences to analysis whether this ‘-Ne’ marker is (un)able to substitute already existing ‘-ko’ dative marker in dative constructions. This type of construction is also available in Urdu (Butt, 2006).

We analyzed the three main types of English dative constructions – the double-object dative, the to dative, and the for dative – in the spontaneous speech of seven children from the age of 1;6 to 5;0. The main findings were as follows. First, the double-object dative was acquired by most of the children before either of the prepositional datives; this was attributed to the greater frequency with which children heard this construction with individual verbs. Second, the verbs children used with these constructions were not only the adult prototypical ones, but also a number of the less prototypical ones; again, this was very likely due to their frequency and saliency in the language children heard. Third, no support was found for Ninio's (1999) analysis of the emergence of constructions in terms of a single “pathbreaking” verb; rather, children began using the double-object dative with many different verbs and did not follow the trajectory proposed by Ninio (i.e., a single verb is used for some months before an “explosion” of new verbs is introduced in the construction). Finally, most of the verbs initially used in the three dative constructions were first used in other constructions (e.g., a simple transitive); this was even true for some obligatory datives, such as give and show. The current results provide a starting point for determining the underlying representations for the different kinds of dative constructions and for explicating how children understand the interrelations among these and other constructions.

Background: Improving aphasic sentence production is a challenging endeavour, both for the speaker who must recover the linguistic skill and for the therapist who attempts to guide the process. Studies have demonstrated that treatment can often improve the sentence production ability of aphasic speakers, but with limited generalisation to new lexical content and untrained sentence structure. One factor that limits the outcome of production therapy may be the complexity of the relationship between the form and the meaning of a sentence. This is confounded by a limited array of diagnostic approaches for revealing what linguistic resources remain available to the aphasic speaker. Aims: In this study we tested a new format for eliciting sentence production in aphasia. Our goal was to reveal whether or not individual aphasic speakers were sensitive to certain semantic and syntactic elements of sentences that are believed to influence the sentence production process. Methods & Procedures: Using a modified sentence repetition format we explored the sentence production abilities of five fluent aphasic speakers under different conditions of lexical and/or structural manipulations. Lexical manipulations required substitution of a semantically related verb; structural manipulations required reordering of the post‐verbal arguments in different dative constructions (double object and prepositional) that express essentially the same message. Outcomes & Results: Response patterns obtained from the five aphasic participants revealed individual patterns of skill and sensitivity based on residual language ability. The implications of these results are discussed with reference to the potential for revealing elements of normal production patterns in aphasic speech, and the assumption that such information is important for developing more effective therapy for individuals with aphasia. Conclusions: Patterns of sentence production elicited in a modified sentence repetition task may reveal syntactic flexibility and residual syntactic knowledge in speakers with aphasia.

The script frameworks model (R. Schank, 1975) and causal network model (T. Trabasso & L. Sperry, 1985) were used to assess script-based story retellings of children with and without language impairments (LI). When retelling scripts and stories, children developing typically include (a) more obligatory than optional elements, with few temporal sequencing errors, and (b) story elements having several versus few causal connections to other story elements. The purpose of this study was to determine whether children with LI demonstrated a similar pattern of recall. A script-based story retell was collected from 22 children with LI and 22 age-matched peers (AM). Retells were analyzed for inclusion of obligatory and optional elements, elements with high and low causal connectivity, and temporal sequencing accuracy. Retells from both groups contained more obligatory elements and elements with high causal connectivity. However, groups differed on the specific elements included. Children in the AM group appeared to utilize script and causal connectivity elements when retelling a script-based story. Children in the LI group appeared to focus more on script elements than causal connectivity. Their deficiencies may reflect difficulties with flexible application of scripts and accessing relevant knowledge, and/or generalized difficulties organizing information and extracting patterns.

The article addresses the issue of developing grammatical competence in foreign students learning Ukrainian at the intermediate (B2) level, with particular focus on the acquisition of the semantics and functional load of the dative case forms. It is substantiated that successful mastery of the case system is a necessary condition for the transition from reproductive to productive language use, as grammatical confidence directly influences learners’ communicative autonomy. The dative case is interpreted as a cross-level grammatical category with high semantic and syntactic potential, capable of realizing addressee, object, subject, and evaluative meanings across different types of constructions. The article provides an analysis of contemporary linguistic studies and linguodidactic approaches to the interpretation of the case category, with particular attention to the dative case, and identifies existing methodological gaps. Typical difficulties encountered by foreign students in mastering dative case forms and meanings are outlined and explained by both interlingual interference and the form-centered nature of traditional instruction at the initial stages of learning. Special attention is paid to governing words in dative constructions, verbal valency, and the activation of adjectival and nominal patterns, which are frequent in actual language use but remain challenging for foreign learners. The study proposes a linguodidactic model for teaching the dative case at the B2 level, integrating analytical-activational, cognitive-comparative, and instructional-communicative stages. The model is based on a gradual progression from understanding the semantic nature of the dative case in Ukrainian through comparative analysis of the means used to represent semantic roles in the learners’ native (or another familiar) language and in Ukrainian, to its functionally motivated and free use in speech. The system of exercises and instructional scenarios presented in the article demonstrates effective ways to develop stable grammatical skills and reduce interference-related errors in spontaneous communication. The results of the study may be applied in the teaching of Ukrainian as a foreign language and in the development of modern instructional materials.

Interspecific patterns of trace elements in sea ducks: Can surrogate species be used in contaminants monitoring?

This chapter explores construction types and the frequency of the use of optional syntactic elements in French motion descriptions. In Talmy’s typology on Satellite- vs. Verb-framed languages, French is characterized as using the construction type of verb-framed languages for motion events, and according to his principles on the correlation between the fore- and backgroundedness of semantic components of motion and the cognitive cost of expressing them, manner and other concepts are expected to occur less frequently in foregrounded positions outside of the main verb than in backgrounded position in the main verb. This chapter shows, through an experimental method, that facts in French are more complex, and that the attraction of attention in perceived motion events has an impact on the choice of construction types and motivates manner and deixis to be expressed more frequently in optional syntactic elements under certain circumstances than Talmy’s principles would predict.

Using conversation analysis and usage-based linguistics, I focus on a beginning L2 user in an ESL classroom and trace his use of a “family of expressions” which, from the perspective of linguistic theory, are instantiations of either the ditransitive dative construction (e.g., “he told me the story”) or a prepositional dative construction (e.g., “he told the story to me”). The semantics of both constructions denotes transfer of an object, physically or metaphorically, from one agent to another. Therefore, I investigate them as one type of object-transfer construction. The instances of the construction are found predominantly in instruction sequences, and I show how the L2 user co-employs talk and recycled embodied work that elaborates the deictic references of the talk and the relation of agent-object-recipient roles among them. Through my analyses, I will showcase the embodied nature of linguistic categorization (Langacker, 1987) but take the argument further and suggest that the semiotic resource known as “language” is a residual of embodied social sense-making practices (aus der Wieschen and Eskildsen, 2019). The study draws on the MAELC database at Portland State University, a longitudinal audio-visual corpus of American English L2 classroom interaction.

This article critically scrutinizes the perceived view that the emergence of non-core dative constructions in Modern Hebrew is due to a Slavic-Yiddish influence. It studies the Biblical and Mishnaic sources, showing that these language strata contain highly similar constructions to the ones in Modern Hebrew. It additionally shows that parallel constructions existed in languages spoken in the Jewish communities at the time of the revival, revealing that this linguistic phenomenon is typologically widely attested. We therefore claim that this could be an example of an internalization of the old grammar in the new spoken language, enhanced by the fact that similar constructions are reflected in the non-Hebrew native languages of the revival era speakers. These speakers, at the same time, imported into their colloquial Hebrew a sub-type of non-core dative—the discursive dative—to which they could not have been exposed through the ancient written texts, since this type of dative construction occurs only in the spoken language.

Abstract. This article examines A‐movement (a)symmetries in the double object construction in Modern Greek. Two types of double object constructions are attested in this language, the “dative construction” and the “double accusative construction”. These constructions, which are analysed as low applicatives, differ with regard to (i) the Case marking of the Goal, (ii) A‐movement properties of Themes and (iii) formation of adjectival passives with Goal externalisation. The article shows that (i)–(iii) are interrelated phenomena in Greek and that they can be accounted for by exploiting recent findings on phases, namely phase extension whereby a phase expands as a result of movement of the phase head. The phase extension approach to double object constructions illustrates that head movement interacts with locality as a narrow syntactic operation and that locality‐violating passives can be licensed without phase EPP‐features or multiple Specifiers. The article also dwells on the controversial issue concerning the quirky Subject status of fronted dative Goals in Greek and shows that the phase extension approach, in which dative clitics are analysed as phonetic realizations of applicative heads, supports the quirky Subject status of dative Goals.

This paper shows that French non-core datives introduced by applicative heads may attach at two different positions above the VP. If the Appl head attaches in the thematic domain, above V but below v, a new event participant is added; we refer to this configuration as the Benefactive Dative Construction. If the Appl head is attached above v, in a non-thematic environment, it does not introduce a new event participant, hence its deficient realization as se, to which configuration we refer as the Coreferential Dative Construction. We provide arguments against a low-applicative analysis (below VP), and show how to distinguish between the two types of applicative constructions (above VP) both semantically and syntactically.

Dative alternation between prepositional and double object datives has been a popular topic in second language (L2) acquisition, but only few studies deal with discourse constraints such as the given-before-new principle, or given-new (GN) ordering, which describes the tendency to place given information before new information. The present study investigated Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners at different proficiency levels on their ability to instantiate the GN order in English dative constructions to account for their difficulty regarding the discourse constraint that is expected to stem from structural differences between the two languages. In this study, 140 Chinese EFL learners were divided into 4 groups according to their proficiency levels, with ten native speakers in the control group. In a written elicited production task, six dative verbs were presented both in the given-theme and the given-recipient conditions so that the alignment of two objects and the errors in their responses could be probed. Results demonstrated that sensitivity to the GN principle tended to increase as the participants’ English proficiency increased. More specifically, the GN order is more frequently instantiated in prepositional datives so that learners with high proficiency behave similar to native speakers while even advanced learners have difficulty producing as much GN order in double object datives as native speakers. A combination of two factors concerning the type of dative constructions and information structures is suggested to account for the results. Additionally, it was observed that Chinese learners of English would rather drop the given argument than produce new-given (NG) order, which violates the GN principle, probably due to their first language (L1) allowing topic drop.

The present study examines five types of dative constructions in heritage Spanish in the Netherlands. Elicited production data from first generation bilinguals and heritage speakers were analyzed and compared to those of monolingual controls. The results indicate that the first generation is not different from the monolingual baseline in their use of datives. The heritage group showed a remarkable subdivision: those with a history of relatively high exposure to Spanish in childhood, move away significantly from the use of dative experiencers and datives of interest, while they are native-like regarding the other constructions. Those who grew up with only one Spanish speaking parent and/or did not productively use Spanish in childhood, however, appear to avoid or restructure all dative constructions. Moreover, the observed innovations correlate with speech rate. It is hypothesized that, whereas influence of Dutch may be one of the factors at play, particularly in the case of dative experiencers and datives of interest, a principal underlying factor to all observed innovations is a Spanish-internal optimization mechanism of omitting dative verbal clitics, which serves to free up processing resources in the less-automatized systems of those who had low childhood exposure to Spanish.