Adjunct Phrases Research Articles

Compositionality in Pablo Picassos Poetry

Pablo Picassos poetry expands the expressive power of language through syntactic mechanisms provided in natural grammar. His poems often consist of adjunct phrases, following a technique that recalls his cubist collages. The relation between the nuclei of those phrasal constituents as they come in contact remains open, so that readers are free to establish multidirectional semantic associations between them. His poetry is primarily word-oriented. As Picasso once stated, he wanted to compose his poems with a palette of words, leaving those words free to fight it out among themselves to attain any possible meaning. Such a combinatorial approach to language could be interpreted from the perspective of linear grammars as proposed by Culicover and Jackendoff, Jackendoff and Wittenberg and Culicover.

Politeness Strategies in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC): An Issue of University Professors and Students.

This paper examines the politeness theory in the light of Austin & Searle’s speech act theory as reflected in CMC between students and their lecturers or supervisors. Thus politeness aspects were analyzed as enacted in the five categories such as: Assertives, commisives, directives, expressives, and declaratives. The paper also examined politeness in other language aspects that are usually present in any form of communication, such as: Address phrases, meeting requests, request for reply, and adjunct phrases. The objective of this article was to shed light on the politeness strategies employed by the lecturers and students in their e-communication through Whatsapp and SMS (short messages or text messages) platforms. Fifty communications were downloaded from the lecturers’ phones through their permission and the students’, which were used as data for this study. Five lecturers and seven postgraduate students made the population of this study. The findings indicated that students seem to be comfortable using this mode of communication, and it is important to understand how students and lecturers make choices and how these choices affect the perception of the cultural appropriateness of CMCs. The results also revealed that elements of politeness greatly decrease in the follow-up messages, that is, messages that require some kind of response. From the study, lecturers adhered to formal language use as compared to the students in their communication.

Analysis of Participants’ Agent Role in the Two Major Divisions of Leviticus

This paper progresses the research on Leviticus, giving the first priority to syntax and results in a text-hierarchical structure, and the second priority to the analysis of participants’ roles and results in the discourse functions between the syntactic divisions. This study considers the ETCBC linguistic inventory that includes the annotated linguistic database of the Hebrew Bible at all linguistic levels such as grapheme, morpheme, phrase, and clause,49) together with the text-hierarchical structure constructed on the basis of the annotation of all clause relationships that occur in a text, using the text-linguistics of Eep Talstra. This methodology stems from the linguistics of Wolfgang Schneider, who adopted the linguistic model of Weinrich who had defined syntax as a means of communication. Schneider viewed that syntax is a description of the linguistic forms that conduct the process of communication, and that word order is a form that has its own function. In the same line, Talstra observes the verb form and its placement in the clause as well as the adjunct phrases in the clause, and describes the function of the word order. I call this an Elaborate Divine Speech Formula [divine speech formula + locative or time phrase]. In my conjecture, the EDSFs in the four books of the Pentateuch except Genesis demarcate the major divisions as follows: Exod 1:1-4:18, 4:19-11:10, 12:1-40:38; Lev 1:1-24:23 (subdivided into 1:1-15:33 and 16:1-24:23), 25:1-27:23; Num 1:1-8:26 (subdivided into 1:1-3:13 and 3:14-8:26), 9:1-36:13 (subdivided into 9:1-20:22, 20:23-33:49, 33:50-34:29 and 35:1-36:13); Deut 1:1-32:46 and 32:47-34:12.BR This paper focuses on the demarcations in Leviticus, which might be different from the demarcations of scholars who made thematic divisions. For example, most scholars propose Lev 17:1-26:46 as one literary unit with a holiness code. This paper does not seek to present syntactic division in competition with semantic divisions, but rather as an alternative way of looking at the text that puts Leviticus in the context of the Pentateuch in a different light and of the discourse functions between the syntactic divisions.

Yoruba ni and si: An asymmetry in the class of prepositions

This paper examines two grammatical elements ní and sí which have been considered as prepositions in the grammar of Yoruba (Benue-Congo). We argue that these two elements belong to different word classes; ní is a preposition, while sí is a verb. We present novel data that show syntactic asymmetries that exist between the two elements: behavior under extraction, the possibility of pseudocleft formation, the order of the phrases in a clause, iteration, formation of complex prepositions, and subcategorization. The ní-phrase acts like an adjunct phrase but this is not so with the sí-phrase. The adjunct phrase is a prepositional phrase headed by ní. It is demonstrated that the preposition constitutes a phase head in Yoruba, thus movement out of the PP is banned which explains the lack of preposition stranding with ní. The element sí, on the other hand, can be stranded. It is argued that sí is the non-initial verb in a serial verb construction.

Establishing a Sprachbund in the Western Lingnan region: conceptual and methodological issues

AbstractIt is well-known that Tai-Kadai languages have affected the typological profiles of Southern Sinitic varieties. For example, compared with their northern sisters, Southern Sinitic varieties display a stronger tendency towards head-initial structures, as in theN–Ncompounds for expressing the sex of animals and in post-verbal temporal adverbs. Given that the Tai-Kadai languages in China have been in contact with Sinitic for over two millennia, it is quite natural to find signs of Sinitic influence therein. Most remarkably, pre-verbal adjunct phrases and pre-nominal relative clauses, which are extremely atypical ofVOlanguages but distinctive of Sinitic, are attested in some Tai-Kadai languages in Southern China. The prevalence of such typologically unusual traits among different linguistic groups in the Lingnan region of Southern China provides strong support for its status as a linguistic area. Devising and adopting a ‘mutualist’ approach, we analyse the typological data of over 280 language varieties, which we believe illustrates and strongly supports the idea that Western Lingnan qualifies as a linguistic area in its own right according to criteria widely recognized by areal linguists. The approach proposed in this study can be applied to other putative linguistic areas around the world to study the mechanisms and outcomes of contact-induced change under a specific set of ecological conditions.

Category-free complement selection in causal adjunct phrases

In English there are a variety of causal adjunct phrases such asbecause of,as a result of,on account ofandin spite of.It was reported recently that a new structurebecause Xis thriving in colloquial registers including conversations and blogs. The complementXis not only restricted to nominals but also includes other lexical categories such as adjectives, adverbs and even verbs. This article delves into the history of this usage and its reasoning, and conducts a survey on other causal adjuncts to determine whether the same kind of innovation is observed with other adjunct phrases. The survey shows that the new usage started from NP complements and has been extended to include complements of other lexical categories, and that the new usage attested inbecause Xis also observed within case X. The truncation of the final preposition is verified with all the adjunct phrases in the survey, but the category of the complement is basically restricted to nominals in the case of other phrases. We will look into the factors segregating the two groups of adjuncts, namelybecause/in case X, and other causal adjuncts.

Rare Constructions Are More Often Sentence-Initial.

Main clause phenomena (MCPs) are syntactic constructions that occur predominantly or exclusively in main clauses. I propose a processing explanation for MCPs. Sentence processing is easiest at the beginning of the sentence (requiring less search); this follows naturally from widely held assumptions about sentence processing. Because of this, a wider variety of constructions can be allowed at the beginning of the sentence without overwhelming the sentence-processing mechanism. Unlike pragmatic and grammatical accounts of MCPs, the processing account predicts avoidance of MCPs in non-initial main clauses (non-initial coordinate clauses and premodified clauses). A corpus study supports these predictions, but it is somewhat inconclusive. A further corpus study examines another type of syntactic construction, premodifying adjunct phrases ("openers"); the prediction here is that less common types of opener will be especially avoided in non-initial contexts. The prediction is confirmed, supporting the processing view of rare constructions.

No longer an orphan: evidence for appositive attachment from sentence comprehension

In this paper, we investigate the comprehension of appositive relative clauses and nominal appositives. First, we present experimental evidence that suggests that nominal appositives and appositive relative clauses behave like other adjunct phrases with respect to ambiguity resolution (Experiment 1). Second, we show that an ambiguous nominal appositive can modify a distant syntactic head as easily across an appositive relative clause as across a restrictive relative clause (Experiment 2). Last, we show that syntactic repair is as successful across an appositive relative clause or parenthetical as it is across an at-issue restrictive relative clause (Experiment 3). Taken together, our results suggest that i) appositive relative clauses and nominal appositives are syntactically sited in a fashion comparable to restrictive relative clauses and ii) appositive phrases do not substantially reduce the availability of the syntactic material that precedes the appositive phrase as might have been expected if processing an appositive involved shifting attention to a higher structure, away from local preceding constituents. These results constitute an argument from sentence comprehension for a local syntactic attachment of appositive relative clauses and nominal appositives (cf. Jackendoff 1977; Potts 2005; de Vries 2006), and against so-called orphan analyses of appositive content (e.g. Ross 1967; Haegeman 1988).

Object and subject Heavy-NP shift in Arabic

In order to examine whether Arabic has Heavy Noun Phrase Shifting (HNPS), I have extracted from the Prague Arabic Dependency Treebank a data set in which a verb governs either an object NP and an Adjunct Phrase (PP or AdvP) or a subject NP and an Adjunct Phrase. I have used binary logistic regression where the criterion variable is whether the subject/object NP shifts, and used as predictor variables heaviness (the number of tokens per NP, adjunct), part of speech tag, verb disposition (ie. whether the verb has a history of taking double objects or sentential objects), NP number, NP definiteness, and the presence of referring pronouns in either the NP or the adjunct. The results show that only object heaviness and adjunct heaviness are useful predictors of object HNPS, while subject heaviness, adjunct heaviness, subject part of speech tag, definiteness, and adjunct head POS tags are active predictors of subject HNPS. I also show that HNPS can in principle be predicted from sentence structure.

It's hard to offend the college: effects of sentence structure on figurative-language processing.

Previous research has given inconsistent evidence about whether familiar metonyms are more difficult to process than literal expressions. In 2 eye-tracking-while-reading experiments, we tested the hypothesis that the difficulty associated with processing metonyms would depend on sentence structure. Experiment 1 examined comprehension of familiar place-for-institution metonyms (e.g., college) when they were an argument of the main verb and showed that they are more difficult to process in a figurative context (e.g., offended the college) than in a literal context (e.g., photographed the college). Experiment 2 demonstrated that when they are arguments of the main verb, familiar metonyms are more difficult to process than frequency-and-length-matched nouns that refer to people (e.g., offended the leader), but that this difficulty was reduced when the metonym appeared as part of an adjunct phrase (e.g., offended the honor of the college). The results support the view that figurative-language processing is moderated by sentence structure. When the metonym was an argument of the verb, the results were consistent with the pattern predicted by the indirect-access model of figurative-language comprehension. In contrast, when the metonym was part of an adjunct phrase, the results were consistent with the pattern predicted by the direct-access model.

Towards a null theory of the passive

1 The typology of passives as a theoretical problem The Principles and Parameters approach aimed to eliminate syntactic rules and constructions in favor of general movement processes and principles, and to account for language-specific syntax by construction-independent parameters. Disappointingly, much systematic syntactic variation, including the cross-linguistic variation in passives that is the topic of this article, turned out not to be reducible to construction-independent parameter settings. Subsequent work dealt with this residue by annotating individual functional heads with lexically specified uninterpreted features to encode their grammatical behavior. Completing the retreat from the parametric program, features of specific lexical items began to be made responsible for language-specific syntax. Differences between passives across languages were attributed to the different features of their passive morphemes or voice heads, in some cases even involving stipulations that de facto apply only in passives. The passive construction and the language-specific passive rules of pre-P&P days returned, albeit within a more ambitious theoretical framework. A wholesale return to construction-specific syntax may be premature, however. Although the parametric program is mainly identified with GB and its successors, it can be pursued in other frameworks as well, and arguably with better results. Here I make this case for constraint-based theories which eliminate NP-movement and rely instead on argument structure representation, specifically on Lexical Decomposition Grammar (LDG, Wunderlich 1997, 2006, MS., Stiebels 2002).1 A base-generated syntax driven by OT constraints can minimize construction-specificity by capitalizing on the parallel syntactic structure of different diatheses. I will be arguing for the null hypothesis that a language’s passive clauses have no passivespecific syntactic properties. Their syntax is predictable from the language’s active sentences and the argument structure of passive predicates, which is derived from the argument structure of the basic predicate by an invariant operation triggered by the passive morpheme. This operation demotes (existentially binds) the most prominent Theta-role that is not already demoted. The affix is morphologically specified for whether it forms verb stems or adjectival/participial stems which combine with a finite auxiliary to form a periphrastic passive. Thus, the grammar of a language need not specify anything about the passive morpheme except its existence and its phonological and morphological properties (sections 3-6). The distribution of the adjunct phrases that express the logical subject of passives is governed by syntactic and semantic properties of the case or preposition that heads them (section 7, shared with non-passive constructions such as nominalizations.

An expectation-based account of subject islands and parasitism

Subject phrases impose particularly strong constraints on extraction. Most research assumes a syntactic account (e.g. Kayne 1983, Chomsky 1986, Rizzi 1990, Lasnik & Saito 1992, Takahashi 1994, Uriagereka 1999), but there are also pragmatic accounts (Erteschik-Shir & Lappin 1979; Van Valin 1986, 1995; Erteschik-Shir 2006, 2007) as well as performance-based approaches (Kluender 2004). In this work I argue that none of these accounts captures the full range of empirical facts, and show that subject and adjunct phrases (phrasal or clausal, finite or otherwise) are by no means impermeable to non-parasitic extraction of nominal, prepositional and adverbial phrases. The present empirical reassessment indicates that the phenomena involving subject and adjunct islands defies the formulation of a general grammatical account. Drawing from insights by Engdahl (1983) and Kluender (2004), I argue that subject island effects have a functional explanation. Independently motivated pragmatic and processing limitations cause subject-internal gaps to be heavily dispreferred, and therefore, extremely infrequent. In turn, this has led to heuristic parsing expectations that preempt subject-internal gaps and therefore speed up processing by pruning the search space of filler–gap dependencies. Such expectations cause processing problems when violated, unless they are dampened by prosodic and pragmatic cues that boost the construction of the correct parse. This account predicts subject islands and their (non-)parasitic exceptions.

The Correlation between Aspect and Transitivity Alternation in Dagbani

This paper attempts to describe and analyze the relation between aspect and transitivity in Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in the Northern Region of Ghana by the Dagbamba. The author does this by focusing on the fact that there are different (perfective and imperfective) aspectual markers that correlate with the presence or absence of NP objects or adjunct phrases, such as adverbs. I conclude that pronouncing any syntactic element after a Dagbani verbal phrase or otherwise is determined by the aspectual suffixes of that verbal phrase.In an attempt to find explanations to this transitivity alternations, I make two hypothesises; the incorporated pronouns hypothesis and the focus hypothesis. None of these however, seems to adequately address the problem and I leave the working out of this to future research. It is shown that the correlation between aspect and transitivity in Dagbani sounds (at least superficially), very similar to the so-called “conjoint/disjoint” or “short/long” verb phenomenon that is found in a number of Bantu languages.

Real-time production of arguments and adjuncts in normal and agrammatic speakers

Two eyetracking experiments examined the real-time production of verb arguments and adjuncts in healthy and agrammatic aphasic speakers. Verb argument structure has been suggested to play an important role during grammatical encoding (Bock & Levelt, 1994) and in speech deficits of agrammatic aphasic speakers (Thompson, 2003). However, little is known about how adjuncts are processed during sentence production. The present experiments measured eye movements while speakers were producing sentences with a goal argument (e.g., the mother is applying lotion to the baby ) and a beneficiary adjunct phrase (e.g., the mother is choosing lotion for the baby ) using a set of computer-displayed written words. Results showed that the sentence production system experiences greater processing cost for producing adjuncts than verb arguments and this distinction is preserved even after brain-damage. In Experiment 1, healthy young speakers showed greater gaze durations and gaze shifts for adjuncts as compared to arguments. The same patterns were found in agrammatic and older speakers in Experiment 2. Interestingly, the three groups of speakers showed different time courses for encoding adjuncts: young speakers showed greater processing cost for adjuncts during speech, consistent with incremental production (Kempen & Hoenkamp, 1987). Older speakers showed this difference both before speech onset and during speech, while aphasic speakers appeared to preplan adjuncts before speech onset. These findings suggest that the degree of incrementality may be affected by speakers’ linguistic capacity.

The Chinese bi comparative

Chinese bi comparatives should be divided into two types: phrasal and clausal. In the former, the prepositional subordinator bi introduces as standard of comparison one syntactic constituent that does not involve comparative deletion; in the latter, however, a clause with more than one standard constituent is introduced and this clause obligatorily involves comparative deletion and a degree operator-variable binding relation in syntax. Among the conditions to which building a Chinese bi comparative is subject, two conditions interact to disallow comparative subdeletion: (A) the bi phrase occurs as an adjunct phrase adjoined to the left of the predicate of comparison and (B) the standard constituent must be minimally c-commanded by its corresponding main clause correlate.

On the Secondary Predication in Chinese

The secondary predication in Chinese involves two different modes, namely the de-constructions and the V-V compounds. First we analyze the three different kinds of de-constructions such as resultatives, depictives, and modifying constructions. Though the three functions of de-constructions are designated by different Chinese characters, they are homonyms and thus induce some confusion for foreigners. We differentiate them by their syntactic structures and identify three distinct functions: (i) the phrase before the -de is a complement to the primary predicate, (ii) an adjunct of the sentence, or (iii) an adnominal that modifies the following noun. Then, we analyze the structure of resultative and depictive constructions involving the V-V compounds. Unlike English, where resultatives and depictives are expressed by a complement or an adjunct phrase, Chinese employs V-V compounds and so-called de-constructions. We show that Chinese employ a lexical resultative formation unlike the analytic phrasal resultative formation in English. In particular, we show that there are three different structures for resultatives in Chinese such as [verb + adjective], [verb + verb], and [adjective + verb] forms. Finally, we show that the former two constructions can be used as resultatives and depictives, whereas the latter form can only be depictives.

Resultatives in Korean Revisited: Complementation versus Adjunction

Korean resultatives are divided into two types depending on whether the subject of a resultative secondary predicate is assigned accusative case or nominative case. The former is comparable to selected object resultatives (e.g., Mary wipe the table clean), and the latter to unselected object resultatives (e.g., John screamed himself hoarse) in English. Korean resultatives have received a great deal of attention in the literature due to different case markings on the subject of a secondary predicate. However, there has been no agreement regarding whether Korean resultatives should be analyzed as small clause complements, similar to English, or adjunct phrases. Some argue that both resultative types are small clause complements (e.g., Kim 1999, Chang and Kim 2001), but some argue that only the selected object resultatives are true small clause type resultatives while the unselected object resultatives are VP adjuncts (e.g., Song 2005, Yeo 2006). A recent proposal by Shim and den Dikken (2007), however, suggests that both types should be analyzed as TP adjuncts. This paper defends the second position, a split analysis for the two types of resultatives: a complementation analysis for selected object resultatives, and an adjunction analysis for unselected object resultatives. Supporting evidence for the split analysis is provided by a few syntactic and semantic facts that lead to the conclusion that the two resultatives must be structurally distinguished from one another in terms of their complementhood/adjuncthood.

Lexicalization of Light Verb Structures and the Semantics of Nouns

In this study I shall focus on two Romance idiomatic patterns and the semantics of nouns. It is shown that idioms, in addition to having distinct basic argument structure representations, are formed in syntax by various instantiations of Merge. It is argued that there is a lexicalization pattern reflecting semantic conflation (Talmy 1985, 2000) between cause and degree. This pattern, in syntactic terms, is the output of subsequent Merge operations (Chomsky 1995) between the object noun of a monadic argument structure, an indefinite quantifier and an adjunct phrase. The study of this lexicalization pattern is of interest with regard to the semantics of bare nouns, especially of bare count singular nouns in object position; it is proved that bare nouns are interpreted as properties, and, because of this, they permit quantification over degrees. By contrast, there is a second lexicalization pattern starting from a composite argument structure which licenses an individual or a kind denoting reading for the DP object.

Sobre sintagmas sustractivos: preposiciones, focalizadores y marcadores discursivos

Different kinds of prepositional phrases are usually included in the grammar of Spanish, obviously as a result of a grammaticalization process. The aim of this paper is to deal with the problems that arise from the categorial, pragmatic and informative status of these elements. I have recently analyzed some of these structures (a propósito de, en cuanto a, en lo que se refiere a, etc.) as discourse markers of topicalization (Cifuentes, 2001b). For this reason I will complete my research on this elements with what is called substractive phrases (excepto, salvo, menos, a excepción de, con la excepción de, aparte de, fuera de, etc.), which obviously will lead us to take into account the additive ones too. These elements have been traditionally considered —at least the most representative ones— imperfect prepositions, and it is said that they are imperfect because they can function as conjunctions as well. And, at this point, the analysis turns more difficult to understand, because their discourse analysis as markers remains undetermined with their categorial analysis —allegedly adverbial—. The synchronic analysis of these structures from the point of view of grammaticalization offers us new paths for their analysis. On the other hand, we will show how all these particles point out the sentence focus, which turns out to be, particularly, a contrastive focus. This explanation can be enriched with another perspective, that of the semantic relationship that the adjunct phrase holds with the considered expressions and the main sentence. We will consider this a quantifying relationship. The categorial status of all these elements is quite difficult to determine, since some of them come from a reanalysis of prepositive elements (aparte, fuera de, hasta), so they allow other similar constructions to appear in the scheme (a excepción de, con la excepción de); and others are a result of a grammaticalization process —mainly from absolute participle constructions— which make possible Sancho Cremades’ idea to consider them hybrids. As a conclusion, I will propose an analysis of the mentioned structures as substractive quantifiers that function as grammatical markers. From the point of view of their informative value, they point out the sentence focus; and their categorial status is a hybrid, as a result of the different, persistent stages of grammaticalization.

Comprehending noun phrase arguments and adjuncts.

Two experiments investigated how readers comprehend noun phrase (NP) arguments and adjuncts. Previous research suggested that argument phrases are processed more quickly than adjunct phrases (Clifton, Speer, & Abney, 1991; Kennison, 1999; Schütze & Gibson, 1999; Speer & Clifton, 1998). The present experiments investigated whether the type of verb in the sentence context could influence how NP arguments and adjuncts were processed. Reading time was measured on sentences containing NP arguments and adjuncts preceded either by verbs occurring most frequently with NP arguments (biased transitive verbs) or by verbs occurring most frequently without NP arguments (biased intransitive verbs) (e.g., "Meredith read/performed every play/week."). In Experiment 1, reading time was measured using a self-paced phrase-by-phrase moving window. In Experiment 2, reading time was measured using eye tracking. The results of both experiments indicated that, following biased transitive verbs, NP arguments were processed more quickly than NP adjuncts. When NPsfollowed biased intransitive verbs, there was no significant difference between the processing time of NP arguments and adjuncts.