3rd Person Research Articles

Does empirical data from bilingual and native Spanish corpora meet linguistic theory? The role of discourse context in variation of subject expression

Abstract The goal of this study is to shed light on how empirical data on the discourse constraints of null and overt third person subject pronouns in L1 and bilingual Spanish meet linguistic theory. A (semi)spontaneous production task was administered to 34 Moroccan Arabic (MA)/Spanish early sequential bilinguals and 30 L1 Spanish controls. All 3rd person subject positions were coded: (1) morphosyntactic form (null pronoun vs. overt pronoun); (2) discourse function ([-Topic Shift] vs. [+Topic Shift]); (3) sentence relation (intrasentential vs. intersentential); (4) clause order within intrasentential contexts (main-subordinate vs. subordinate-main); and (5) access to the antecedent (clear vs. ambiguous antecedent). The results reveal general patterns of use in both L1 and bilingual Spanish: null pronouns express topic maintenance both in inter- and intrasentential contexts (both clause orders) and overt pronouns, especially in intersentential contexts, are generally used for topic change. However, additional analyses provide evidence that null pronouns in L1, but not in bilingual Spanish, are often used in change of reference contexts where the antecedent is not ambiguous. This reveals patterns that have gone unreported by most previous descriptive and theoretical studies. Finally, a higher use of ambiguous null pronouns is attested among bilingual speakers, which suggests a lower control of the mechanisms by which reference is established in discourse and supports, to some extent, the predictions derived from the Interface Hypothesis.

When Fiction Is Just as Real as Fact: No Differences in Reading Behavior between Stories Believed to be Based on True or Fictional Events.

Experiments have shown that compared to fictional texts, readers read factual texts faster and have better memory for described situations. Reading fictional texts on the other hand seems to improve memory for exact wordings and expressions. Most of these studies used a “newspaper” vs. “literature” comparison. In the present study, we investigated the effect of reader's expectation to whether information is true or fictional with a subtler manipulation by labeling short stories as either based on true or fictional events. In addition, we tested whether narrative perspective or individual preference in perspective taking affects reading true or fictional stories differently. In an online experiment, participants (final N = 1,742) read one story which was introduced as based on true events or as fictional (factor fictionality). The story could be narrated in either 1st or 3rd person perspective (factor perspective). We measured immersion in and appreciation of the story, perspective taking, as well as memory for events. We found no evidence that knowing a story is fictional or based on true events influences reading behavior or experiential aspects of reading. We suggest that it is not whether a story is true or fictional, but rather expectations toward certain reading situations (e.g., reading newspaper or literature) which affect behavior by activating appropriate reading goals. Results further confirm that narrative perspective partially influences perspective taking and experiential aspects of reading.

Mood choice in complements of Spanishcomprenderand Portuguesecompreender(‘understand’) – distribution and meaning

AbstractThe present paper analyzes the occurrence of indicative and subjunctive complements of the verbscomprender(Spanish) andcompreender(Portuguese) in European Spanish and European Portuguese. A quantitative analysis based on 400 occurrences of the complements randomly selected from the newspaper genre shows that the indicative mood occurs more frequently than the subjunctive mood in both languages, although the subjunctive mood is more frequent in the Portuguese corpus than in the Spanish one. The analysis also shows that the occurrence of the subjunctive complement is highly restricted to contexts in which the subject of the main clause verb is either 1st person or 3rd person singular. From the theoretical perspective of Cognitive Grammar, the mood alternation is explained by the concept ofdominion, i.e. the indicative complement designates an event that is located within the conceptualizer’s epistemic dominion, whereas the subjunctive complement designates an event that is located outside the conceptualizer’s dominion of effective control.

Mother of her son: The literary scheme of the Adad-guppi Stele

The inscription on the Adad-guppi Stele is an unusual literary work due to both its innovative structure and its contents describing Adad-guppi as the intercessor for Nabonidus. The literary structure of the inscription was the combination of the three-tier royal inscription (theological 1st person narrative) and a memorial text at her mother’s funeral (secular 3rd person narrative). It is a literary invention of Nabonidus’s scribes to meet the need of the occasion, and is surely a creative attempt. The mother’s role is described as an intercessor for her son: First, she gave birth to Nabonidus and provided an opportunity for him to have a court career. Secondly, the mother led her son to the sincere faith to Sîn and became the source of his blessings. Thirdly, she worked hard to build a bridge between Nabonidus and the ancient Mesopotamian political ideology, to achieve the legitimisation of her son’s ascension to the Babylonian throne. His line of propaganda seemed to work very well for 17 years, which is 8 more years after the death of the queen mother, but it lost its leverage at the appearance of Cyrus, king of Persia.

ORA ESTÁ, ORA NÃO ESTÁ: INPUT VARIÁVEL E AQUISIÇÃO DA FLEXÃO VERBAL DE 3ª PESSOA DO PLURAL NO PB

Este artigo investiga a percepcao do morfema flexional de 3a pessoa do plural em verbos e a compreensao da informacao de pluralidade veiculada por tal morfema por criancas adquirindo o PB, tendo em vista que a realizacao da flexao de numero mostra-se variavel nessa lingua, tanto no âmbito nominal quanto verbal. Estudos previos em diferentes linguas sugerem que, embora essa flexao seja produzida por volta dos tres anos de idade, ate os seis anos, criancas apresentam dificuldades na sua interpretacao em tarefas de compreensao (JOHNSON; DE VILLIERS; SEYMOR, 2005; PEREZ-LEROUX, 2005; LEGENDRE et al., 2010; BLAHOVA; SMOLIK, 2014). Na presente pesquisa, foi conduzido um estudo experimental, por meio de uma tarefa de selecao de imagens, buscando verificar se, (i) apesar do carater variavel da marcacao de numero no PB, criancas aos seis e aos cinco anos de idade identificam a forma verbal de 3a pessoa do plural em sentencas com sujeito nulo ( Comeram doce ); (ii) associam essa forma a uma acao praticada por mais de uma entidade e (iii) se a forma verbal no singular e associada ao conceito de singularidade ( Comeu doce ). Enunciados contendo a informacao redundante de numero no sujeito e no verbo tambem foram testados ( As criancas comeram doce vs. A crianca comeu doce ). Os resultados apontam para uma sistematicidade na escolha pela imagem congruente com os estimulos linguisticos no plural, apesar da preferencia pela imagem plural tambem nas sentencas no singular. A variabilidade identificada no input parece nao interferir na percepcao e na compreensao do morfema verbal de plural na faixa etaria avaliada. --- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/matraga.2017.28498

(Under)specification of the person feature in relative clauses

By examining ϕ-agreement in relative clauses, this paper investigates the relation between syntax and morphology in terms of the person feature. English relativized subjects appear to have different phi-features for the purposes of subject-verb agreement and binding relations. The verbal morphology uniformly displays 3rd person whereas reflexive binding shows 1st/2nd person in addition to 3rd person. If subject extraction must trigger an invariable verbal form as Ouhalla (1993) argues, the binding alternations cannot be accounted for. This paper proposes dual properties of the person feature based on Harley and Ritter’s (2002) feature geometry, and argues that relativized subjects may not obtain both properties of the person feature from the head noun via Agree. This partial agreement causes morphosyntactic variation in English and cross-linguistically in Distributed Morphology (DM). The current analysis demonstrates that referential and morphological (under)specifications are kept separate under the cons...

聞いたのはこちらなのに… : 外国人と身体障害者に対する「第三者返答」をめぐって

聞いたのはこちらなのに… : 外国人と身体障害者に対する「第三者返答」をめぐって

Imagining possible selves across time: Characteristics of self-images and episodic thoughts

Thinking about our possible selves can entail thinking about self-related imagined future events. When remembering and imagining, individuals can use both 1st person (field) and 3rd person (observer) perspectives. There is currently a paucity of research examining the visual perspectives of episodic future thoughts that represent possible selves. We hypothesised that temporally distant self-images would elicit more observer perspectives in episodic thoughts than temporally near self-images and current self-images. Utilising a repeated measures design, sixty-eight undergraduate students completed IAM, I Will Be near and I Will Be far conditions (Rathbone, Conway, & Moulin, 2011) to generate self-images and their related episodic thoughts. It was found that episodic qualities were reliably affected by different self-images. Specifically, observer perspective predilections increased with future temporal distance. Findings are discussed in relation to self-continuity with recommended practical applications of visual perspective utilisation for wellbeing.

Readers select a comprehension mode independent of pronoun: Evidence from fMRI during narrative comprehension

Perspective is a crucial feature for communicating about events. Yet it is unclear how linguistically encoded perspective relates to cognitive perspective taking. Here, we tested the effect of perspective taking with short literary stories. Participants listened to stories with 1st or 3rd person pronouns referring to the protagonist, while undergoing fMRI. When comparing action events with 1st and 3rd person pronouns, we found no evidence for a neural dissociation depending on the pronoun. A split sample approach based on the self-reported experience of perspective taking revealed 3 comprehension preferences. One group showed a strong 1st person preference, another a strong 3rd person preference, while a third group engaged in 1st and 3rd person perspective taking simultaneously. Comparing brain activations of the groups revealed different neural networks. Our results suggest that comprehension is perspective dependent, but not on the perspective suggested by the text, but on the reader’s (situational) preference.

Serious Game Leverages Productive Negativity to Facilitate Conceptual Change in Undergraduate Molecular Biology

We designed a serious game, MolWorlds, to facilitate conceptual change about molecular emergence by using game mechanics (resource management, immersed 3rd person character, sequential level progression, and 3-star scoring system) to encourage cycles of productive negativity. We tested the value-added effect of game design by comparing and correlating pre- and post-test misconceptions, interaction statistics, and engagement in the game with an interactive simulation that used the same graphics and simulation system but lacked gaming elements. We tested first-, second-, and third-year biology students' misconceptions at the beginning and end of the semester (n = 526), a subset of whom played either the game (n = 20) or control (n = 20) for 30 minutes prior to the post-test. A 3x3 mixed model ANOVA revealed that, while educational level (first-, second-, or third-year biology) did not influence misconceptions from pre-test to post-test, the intervention type (no intervention, simulation, or game) did (p<.001). Pairwise comparisons showed that participants exposed to the interactive simulation (p = .007), as well as those exposed to the game (p<.001), lost significantly more misconceptions in comparison to those who did not receive any intervention, while adjusting for educational level. A trending difference was found between the simulation group and the gaming group (p = .084), with the gaming group resolving more misconceptions. Quantitative analysis of click-stream data revealed the greater exploratory freedom of the control simulation, with greater accessibility to individuals who do not play games on a regular basis. However, qualitative analysis of gameplay data showed that MolWorlds-players experienced significantly more instances of productive negativity than control-users (p<.001) and that a trending relationship exists between the quality of productively negative events and lower post-test misconceptions (p = .066).

Korean EFL Learners’ Development of Inflectional Morphemes

This paper examines English inflectional morpheme development among Korean EFL learners. Two groups of children, fourth graders (N=20) and sixth graders (N=19) were given both real-word sentence completion tasks and pseudoword sentence completion tasks. The task materials measuring the students’ knowledge of inflectional morpheme include six types of morphemes (plural -s, regular past -ed, 3rd person singular -s, progressive -ing, comparative -er, and superlative -est). Twenty four sentences (four sentences for each morphology) were created and children were asked to complete the sentences using a given base form of a word. The results indicated that, in learning of the regular past tense -ed, learners using L2 for communication do not seem to override EFL learners accustomed to the function of a written task, and that the grammatical morpheme, which does not exist in Korean L1, has a strong effect on the acquisition. This study concluded that Korean L1 absent morphemes seem to be difficult for Korean English learners to acquire regardless of language learning environments: namely natural language learning and classroom language learning.

Partitivity and case marking in Turkish and related languages

The paper discusses the conditions for case marking on partitive constructions in direct object position in Turkish and some related languages. We focus on Turkish and then turn to some details of corresponding constructions in some other Turkic languages and in Standard Mongolian. Turkish exhibits Differential Object Marking, which primarily depends on the semantic-pragmatic factor of specificity. Partitive constructions with the ablative for the superset in Turkish come in different forms, depending on how the subset expression is realized: (a) by a lexical noun as head, (b) by the classifier tane ‘item’, functioning as a “dummy noun”, and (c) by a numeral, quantifier or adjective. Case marking of the direct object is optional for (a), and obligatory for (most instances of) (c). This type of obligatory case marking is dependent on the obligatory marking of the adjective, quantifier or numeral with a default 3rd person singular agreement suffix, which then requires case marking. Construction (b) does not allow for case marking, when the classifier is bare; when the classifier is followed by the default 3rd person singular agreement marking, that marking requires obligatory case morphology, just like in construction (c). We hypothesize that structural case marking can either express the semantic-pragmatic condition of specificity in terms of referential anchoring or it must obey a formal condition, namely the requirement of the agreement suffix to be followed by overt case. The languages we have studied show an interesting micro-variation. They differ (among other properties) with respect to classifiers – in particular, with respect to whether they have [+human] classifiers or not. In addition, one language among the languages under investigation, namely Kirghiz, substitutes the agreement marker in its function as a filler of the partitive’s nominal head by a different marker: a morpheme expressing a set. Here, the agreement marker is used to express specificity, given that its presence is not required for formal reasons. In direct object partitive constructions with subset expressions that are expressed as full noun phrase/lexical noun heads (option (a) above), overt accusative case indicates specificity in most of the investigated languages. In options (b) and (c), the investigated languages provide different patterns when marking the referential status of the partitive heads, thus indicating the variation among these languages with respect to the nominal category feature of the partitive heads involved.This article is part of the Special Collection: Partitives

Two types of the 3rd person feature in English?!

This paper aims to investigate the morphosyntactic properties of the person feature in the English imposter construction studied by Collins & Postal. In this construction, the same definite DP can select a 1st person reflexive or a 3rd person reflexive. Moreover, despite of the distinct person feature value, a 3rd person (non-reflexive) pronoun can have the reference to a speaker in the given contexts like a 1st person pronoun. This use of a 3rd person argument differs from that of a 3rd person argument that refers to the 3rd party. The present paper analyzes the mechanism of the person feature and its morphological realization (particularly 3rd person) in English, and proposes the dissociation of notional person (the semantics of the person feature) and grammatical person morphological realization. Both notional and grammatical person are not always uniquely associated with each other nor always equally encoded into a definite DP as well as a pronominal DP. The paper also argues that 3rd person is always a neutral/invariable form in English. Despite of it, a 3rd person argument is shown to have a feature specification. This paper demonstrates that the morphosyntactic variation associated with 3rd person agreement in English pronoun-antecedent relations is attributed to the lack of the uniform relation between the semantics of the person feature and its morphology, not to the syntactic operations.

Pronominal vs. anaphoric pro in Kannada

Kannada licenses a pronominal pro and an anaphor pro in root and subordinate clauses. In the subordinate clauses, pro’s person feature largely determines its pronominal/anaphoric status. Accordingly, there are four types of pro, each with a distinct referential property. The 1st and 2nd person pros allow pronominal and anaphoric interpretations. In their pronominal reference, they refer to the speaker and the listener, respectively. In their anaphoric reference, they refer to the matrix subject and the object, respectively, irrespective of the latter’s person feature, which results in a feature mismatch between pro and its antecedent. The 3rd person pro allows only pronominal interpretation. Kannada quotative verbs report direct speech. The null subjects in the embedded clauses of reported speech are basically pronominal because they are ‘copies’ of the pronominal subjects in direct speech. Accordingly, the embedded verbal inflection corresponds to inflection in direct speech, which results in a feature clash between pro and its antecedent. The fourth type, a null anaphor, occurs in non-argument endu-clauses. It is bound by an NP in the matrix with which it shares its F-features. It is the semantic relation between the non-argument and main clauses that explains the presence of an anaphoric pro here.

The perspective of health professionals on the factor of 3rd persons in assisted reproductive techniques

The perspective of health professionals on the factor of 3rd persons in assisted reproductive techniques

Agent-defocusing constructions from nominalized VPs

Nominalized verb phrases have been identified as a possible source of passive and impersonal constructions by Langacker & Munro (1975), Langacker (1976), and Givón (1981), with exemplification drawn almost exclusively from Uto-Aztecan languages, but have received relatively less attention than other sources (reflexive markers, generalized subject constructions, 3rd person plural constructions, inactive auxiliaries + resultative participles, etc.). The aim of this article is to review the available evidence concerning passive and impersonal constructions derived from nominalized VPs, with a view to establishing whether they are cross-linguistically recurrent and robust as a type. Such a review reveals that there are overall a few instances of passive/impersonal constructions that are likely to derive from nominalized VPs. In many of the other cases in which a nominalized VP has been hypothesized to be the source of a given passive or impersonal construction there is no conclusive evidence for reconstructing such a source, and in some cases even an alternative source can be posited. Even in this unfavourable situation, however, a tentative scenario of how nominalized VPs might evolve into passive and impersonal constructions may be sketched, in order to account for the few cases in which such a development is likely to have taken place. The onset stage of this development, in particular, capitalizes on the possibility offered by nominalized VPs to manipulate the argument structure of the verb by keeping the initiator of the event off the stage.

Ergative gender agreement in Dargwa ˋˋbackward control'' or feature sharing?

Dargwa languages have two types of agreement at clause level: gender and person agreement. In the general case, person agreement is hierarchical (speech act participants prefered to 3rd persons), while gender agreement is with the absolutive (S/P) argument. Two exceptions to this pattern have been observed in some dialects: first, some auxiliary verbs have a gender agreement slot which can be controlled by both ergative and absolutive arguments; second, adverbials agreeing in gender can agree with either ergative or absolutive if they are located at clause edges. A proposed explanation of this behaviour is through effectively splitting each clause into two layers, with the top layer having its own zero absolutive position, coreferential with either the subject or the direct object of the lower layer. In this way, the general rule that gender agreement is with the absolutive can be preserved. In this paper, I argue that the data of Ashti Dargwa do not support the Backward Control theory. Peripheral adverb agreement and auxiliary gender agreement are independent phenomena, while auxiliary agreement can be explained by splitting the 3rd person based on topicality, as in proximateobviative systems. This allows us to preserve the conventional account of clause structure while framing the data of Dargwa in a wider typological context.

When Bad Things Happen to a Protagonist Like You: The Role of Self in Resistance to Negatively Framed Health Narratives

This study examines when and how shared risk-relevant experience (autobiographic similarity) influences resistance to negatively framed health narratives. We conducted a 2 (narrative perspective: 1st vs. 3rd person) × 2 (processing motive: experiential vs. analytical) randomized experiment with a short narrative depicting the negative effects of an illicitly used study drug. For those autobiographically similar to the study drug user, a 1st-person narration (vs. 3rd-person) produced greater transportation only when participants processed to understand the story (experiential condition), whereas the reverse was found when participants processed for the persuasive message (analytical condition). Transportation was a significant mediator that transferred these interactive effects onto greater perceived risk only among those with autobiographic similarity. This study highlights the active role played by the audience’s self-concept in narrative persuasion and addresses boundary conditions for overcoming defensive resistance.

Cliticization feeds agreement: a view from Quechua

Recent years have seen a surge in work on Person Hierarchy Effects (Bejar and Rezac 2009; Georgi 2011; Lochbihler 2009; Nevins 2007, 2011; Oxford 2014; Walkow 2009; Wiltschko 2008). In this paper, I analyze a curious case of such an effect which has been widely discussed in theoretical and descriptive work on the Quechua family (van de Kerke 1996; Lakamper and Wunderlich 1998; Milliken 1984; Muysken 1981; Weber 1976, 1989). In many Quechua languages, objects bearing the feature [Addressee] interact with subject agreement, but 1st person exclusive objects do not, even in the presence of a 3rd person subject. I dub this effect the [Addressee]-driven Subject Marking Anomaly (A-SMA), adapting the terminology of Weber (1976). After showing that object markers in Quechua languages are in fact object clitics, I argue that the A-SMA emerges from the interaction of cliticization with subject agreement: [Addressee] clitics raise above the subject in the clausal hierarchy, thus feeding agreement, but non-[Addressee] clitics do not. The analysis is extended to a related agreement effect involving plural objects in certain Bolivian and Argentine varieties of Quechua.

Third person singular -sand event marking in child African American English

This paper discusses 3rd person singular -sin the language of three- to six-year-old developing AAE speakers, in relation to early stages of zero 3rd person singular -s(Øs) and overtsmarking. Data include a sentence repetition task and a story retell task. The speakers’ 3rd person singular -s and Øs marking are examined as a function of age, verb type, allomorph, and verb coordination. Analyses are presented to support the claim that the 3rd person singular marker -sis not part of the AAE grammar although children produce the marker in certain contexts. The speakers’ 3rd person singular -sand Øs marking are also discussed in relation to the optional root infinitive stage and the Multiple Grammars approach.