Adverbial Markers Research Articles

The Effect of Prefixation on Syllable Structure in Najdi Arabic

This study investigates the effect of prefixation on the syllable and syllabification in Najdi Arabic. It mainly addresses the role of prefixation on the syllable in this variety of Arabic, providing a prosodic representation of it within the context of rule-based phonology. The paper provides a review of the phonological processes that deal with prefixation phenomena in Najdi Arabic, whose domains of application are somewhat subject to syllabification processes and the syllable structure. To achieve this, the paper discusses the three types of prefixation in Najdi Arabic: (a) nominal prefixes, i.e., the definite article /ʔal/ and prepositional prefixes (predominantly fi- ‘in’, and bi- ‘in/at’), (b) the agreement-related prefixes, i.e., verbal prefixes and (c) the adverbial prefix /ʔib-/ ‘with’, which is prefixed to the host noun and changes its grammatical category to an adverb. The results show that each type of prefixation has its own functions, which are essentially related to the type of the host it attaches to. For instance, the prefix /ʔib-/, which is the Najdi Arabic adverbial marker, is a stress-bearing morpheme, given that it is a heavy syllable on its own, which attaches to the initial position at the very beginning of its nominal host.

New derivations with the adverbial marker -mente: The case of enrealidadmente

Esta nota gramatical describe una nueva derivación léxica en español actual, el “adverbio” enrealidadmente, registrado en el habla coloquial desde la década del 70 del siglo XX como expresión idiomática lexicalizada. El interés por este tipo de formas es doble en la gramática del español, ya que ejemplifican un caso de extensión del elemento -mente a otras categorías distintas del adjetivo y, además, aparecen precedidas por una preposición. Tras la caracterización de las bases que lo forman (en realidad y realmente) y la revisión de su documentación, se presenta una serie de consideraciones teóricas sobre los adverbios en -mente, el cruce de palabras o fusión, los procesos de analogía, la lexicalización y los universales vernáculos, que ayudan a comprender un poco mejor esta nueva formación.

Prehistory of Verbal Markers in Hmong: What Can We Say?*

AbstractHistorical reconstruction of verbal modification in the Hmong‐Mien family remains largely untouched in the literature. The current work explores, in light of comparative data and fieldwork, the history of four verbal markers in Laotian Hmong: 1)ʃi55–/ʃi22–‘associative‐reciprocal’, 2)ti55–/tɵɐ̯55–‘single, only’, 3)ʈʂɑ̤͡ɵ̤42/t͡ʃɑ̤͡ɵ̤42‘pseudo‐passive’, and 4)tɑ͡ɵ22/tɑ̤͡ɵ̤42‘be physically able’. The verbal markerʃi55–/ʃi22–likely appeared in Proto‐Hmongic with a reciprocal meaning, whileti55–/tɵɐ̯55–is reconstructible to Proto‐Far Western Hmongic as an adverbial marker. The formʈʂɑ̤͡ɵ̤42/t͡ʃɑ̤͡ɵ̤42originates in a primary verb in Proto‐Hmongic, and later developed into a pseudo‐passive marker and copula. Finally,tɑ͡ɵ22/tɑ̤͡ɵ̤42is reconstructible to Proto‐Far Western Hmongic as a verb meaning ‘(be) strong, physically able’ that also marked ability to perform an action. This chapter should be of interest not only to Hmong‐Mienists and those working in Southeast Asia, but also to those developing working methodologies for language families lacking a long written history.

Dressed, undressed, or both; The case of Ewaw in Southeast Maluku

This article discusses complexity and simplification in Ewaw (also known as Kei or Keiese), an Austronesian language in Southeast Maluku. Section 1 provides an introduction to the genetics, spelling, and phonology of this language, which is related to the Austronesian languages of Timor. There are two main dialects which subdivide into two variants each. Section 2 provides an overview of the productive inflection in Ewaw and its derivational morphology, of which only reduplication is still productive. It has two noun classes and four verb classes, seventeen derivational prefixes and four derivational suffixes. Section 3 is a sketch of Ewaw syntax and deixis. It has twenty-four adverbial markers to encode direction and manner, which can all be analysed as serial verb constructions. Section 4 compares Ewaw grammar to languages in the region. Whereas Ewaw’s petrified morphology is more complex than in any other language in the region, it now has the simplest morphology. Section 5 concludes that Ewaw’s simplification without “shedding” its morphology is problematic.

From rule-based explicit instruction to explicit knowledge

This pilot study investigated university-level intermediate Spanish learners’ (n=16) explicit knowledge about a contrast in grammatical aspect (preterite/imperfect) after they received rule-based explicit instruction. Prior studies have found that learners’ explicit knowledge about preterite and imperfect includes partially understood rules, which can have long-lasting effects on their performance, so it is important to investigate the disconnect between what is taught and what is learned. Learners completed a cloze test and then introspected about their performance. The data were analysed qualitatively and compared to verbalisations of L1 Spanish speakers (n=6). Four main themes emerged: learners failed to learn the concept of grammatical aspect, they demonstrated confusion about lexical aspect, they attributed the difference between preterite and imperfect to a binary system of lexical aspect feature complexes based on duration of the verb/predicate, and they relied on self-developed categorical rules about adverbial markers. Suggestions for modifications to the conventional pedagogical rules are offered.

Story-telling abilities of young Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian children across three protocols

Purpose: Little is documented about the story-telling skills of Indigenous Australian children. Therefore, this study explores the complexity of stories produced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian children in their first year of school.Method: An observational design allowed comparison across cultural groups and story protocols. Three stories were elicited from 49 Indigenous and non-Indigenous children aged 4;10 to 6;5. Stories were analysed using the Index of Narrative Complexity (INC) to generate scores for each story element. Story elements were further categorised and evaluated for level of use across participants. Story protocol and cultural group effects were explored using ANOVA.Result: Participant stories featured high use of characters, initiating events, attempts, and consequences; and little use of internal plans, formulaic markers, causal adverbial markers and evaluations. Story complexity scores did not differ between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous children, but significant differences were evident among the three, story protocols.Conclusion: Findings suggest that story elicitation protocols and analysis methods used in this study may be appropriate for use with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous children from urban contexts. However, caution is needed when making diagnostic decisions based on story complexity without well-developed, culturally appropriate protocols and normative data.

Cпецифіка структури давньоанглійських образних порівнянь рівності з компонентом gelice/onlice/anlice.

This article intends to characterise Old English simile of equality with the comparison marker gelice / onlice / anlice. It is a part of a large-scale systemic investigation of Anglo-Saxon similes, being done for the first time. This study is the attempt to systematise Anglo-Saxon poetic comparisons with the attributive / adverbial marker of comparison in positive degree, which are the predecessors of modern English simile with like. The empirical material of the investigation is the corpus of Old English manuscripts of University of Toronto. The criteria of the structural classification of the figurative comparisons under consideration are described in the paper. The scope of the analysed units is organised into two major groups, depending on the case of a noun that expresses the vehicle: Dative or Nominative. Eight structural models are distinguished, depending on the positioning and grammatical expression of the structure components (tenor, vehicle, ground and the comparison marker of the simile), with the further analysis of their statistics and chronological features. It has been estimated that the most productive structure of the similes in question is the combination of two nouns (the second one being the vehicle in Dative case) with the postpositional marker of comparison. The article deals with all existing Old English similes with the component gelice / onlice / anlice, harvested from surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts belonging to various text genres: riddles, poetry, Christian canonical texts. The research results contribute to the discussion of the date of composition of Christ and Satan, being an additional argument in favour of the version of a later period – the ninth century, during the reign of king Alfred.

The mirative and scalar meaning of even

The analysis I develop here draws on the concept of mirativity (DeLancey 1987) and on Kay’s (1990) insight into the scalar nature of even. I show that even calls for the reconstruction of an implicit scale, on which the element highlighted by this adverbial marker stands out as the most (or more) surprising in the set considered. This non-referential, non-propositional meaning of even is likely to trigger a series of inferences, whose status is duly discussed, and to strengthen or weaken other derived assumptions, and even to guide their derivation itself.

고대 중국어 而의 문법화 연구

The goal of this paper is to describe and explain the grammaticalization path of “而” in Ancient Chinese. In the PRE-Qin Dynasty, “而” was mainly used for two function: as a personal pronoun and a connective marker, but few people have been interested in the relationship between the two function. “而” is grammaticalized from a personal pronoun or a demonstrative pronoun, gradually becoming a connective maker and finally turning into a particle. The key point of this development is the position of “而” in the sentence. It was always located in the middle of two phrases. At first, “而” indicated the listener in a discourse situation; after that, “而” developed into a demonstrative in the text. Finally, “而” evolved into connectives, an adverbial marker and a particle. The grammaticalization paht of “乃” is similar to “而”.

Evidential and epistemic adverbials in Lithuanian: evidence from intra-linguistic and cross-linguistic analysis

In the recent decade the realisations of evidentiality and epistemic modality in European languages have received a great scholarly interest and resulted in important investigations concerning the relation between evidentiality and epistemic modality, their means of expression and meaning extensions in various types of discourse. The present paper deals with the adverbials akivaizdžiai ‘evidently’, aiškiai ‘clearly’, ryškiai ‘visibly, clearly’, matyt ‘apparently, evidently’ and regis ‘seemingly’, which derive from the source domain of perception, and the epistemic necessity adverbials tikriausiai/veikiausiai/greičiausiai ‘most probably’, būtinai ‘necessarily’ and neabejotinai ‘undoubtedly’. The aim of the paper is to explore the morphosyntactic properties of the adverbials when they are used as evidential or epistemic markers and compare the distribution of their evidential and epistemic functions in Lithuanian fiction, news and academic discourse. The data have been drawn from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language, the Corpus of Academic Lithuanian and the bidirectional translation corpus ParaCorpEN→LT→EN (Šolienė 2012, 2015). The quantitative findings reveal distributional differences of the adverbials under study across different types of discourse. Functional variation of the evidential perception-based adverbials is determined to a great extent by the degree of epistemic commitment, evidenced not only by intra-linguistic but also cross-linguistic data. The non-perception based adverbials tikriausiai/veikiausiai/greičiausiai ‘most probably’, būtinai ‘necessarily’ and neabejotinai ‘undoubtedly’ are the primary adverbial markers of epistemic necessity in Lithuanian, though some of them may have evidential meaning extensions. A parallel and comparable corpus-based analysis has once again proved to be a very efficient tool for diagnosing language-specific features and describing an inventory used to code language-specific evidential and epistemic meanings.

Adverbial Markers of Modality in Norwegian L1 and L2 Conversations

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to investigate how second language speakers of Norwegian (henceforth Norwegian L2 speakers) differ in their use of modality expressions from native speakers (L1 speakers). As modality is a very broad subject, the main focus of the study is limited to one-word modal adverbs, such askanskje‘maybe’, and modal particles such asjo. The study compares the frequency of using different types of modal adverbials by L1 and L2 speakers, and their syntactic position. The implications of the study are two-fold. First of all, it is to contribute to the studies of the field of modality in Norwegian. The second implication is didactic, as describing the use of modal adverbials in Norwegian conversation can help devise right teaching materials to allow second language users achieve a more native-like competence in this respect.

Adverbial Markers of Epistemic Modality Across Disciplinary Discourses: A Contrastive Study of Research Articles in Six Academic Disciplines

AbstractEpistemic adverbs, like other markers of epistemic modality, are concerned with the speaker’s assessment of the truth value of the proposition. In other words, they indicate that the speaker considers certain situations as possible, impossible, probable, certain, or uncertain. At the same time, they signal the author’s presence in the text, and invite the reader to make his/her own conclusions and interpretations. The use of modal markers has been demonstrated to differ across academic disciplines, but the specific differences concerning the use of epistemic adverbs have not been studied systematically. This paper investigates the use of epistemic adverbs in research articles representing six disciplines belonging to three different branches of science: the humanities (linguistics and literary studies), the social sciences (law and sociology), and the natural sciences (physics and medicine), with the aim of establishing discipline-specific tendencies in their use. The study is based on a corpus of 160 research articles compiled by the author. It begins with an attempt at delimiting the category of epistemic adverbs in English. After that, a list of the most frequent epistemic adverbs in the subcorpora of all the disciplines is established and discussed. The study demonstrates that frequent use of epistemic adverbs is largely a property of research articles in the humanities and social sciences. Medical and physics research articles use them significantly less often. The most frequent epistemic adverbs in the research articles under analysis include indeed, perhaps, clearly, certainly, of course, arguably, possibly, and reportedly. Some adverbs appear to be associated with specific disciplines, e.g., clearly (physics, linguistics, sociology, medicine), indeed (linguistics, literary studies, sociology), possibly, reportedly (medicine), arguably (law). The association of individual adverbs with specific disciplines may serve as an important clue to the understanding of their functions, in particular in the case of the less frequent ones, such as arguably and reportedly, which remain significantly understudied. The findings may also prove useful in teaching English for academic purposes.

Adverbial stance marking in the introduction and conclusion sections of legal research articles

Although scientific research articles have traditionally been taken as examples of an objective style of writing that aims to minimise researchers’ voices in their texts (Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984:42), authors inevitably adopt stances towards the information presented and the target audience when writing their papers. This article explores authorial stance as expressed by adverbial markers in the introduction and conclusion sections of legal research papers. Following Biber et al. (1999), and Conrad and Biber (1999), our aim is to identify the most frequent adverbial markers of stance present in each section as indicators of (i) epistemicity, (ii) attitude, and (iii) style. We will try to show whether or not there are functional differences in the use of adverbial stance markers, and whether or not these are derived from the different communicative purposes of these sections .

L2 acquisition of English present perfect interpretations

The present study investigates the role of first language (L1), in our case Cypriot Greek (CG) or Standard Greek (SG), in the second language (L2) acquisition of English present perfect in terms of form and meaning possibilities. With respect to native speakers of CG in particular, the primary goal is to determine whether transfer from the mother-tongue, in which present perfect has only a resultative reading and simple past a resultative, an existential or a definite reading, influences the acquisition of the English present perfect. It is assumed that L2 acquisition involves establishing connections between the semantic properties/overt markers for each reading and the English present perfect. Diagnostic tests proposed by Agouraki (2006) are employed in this study, based on the (in)compatibility of certain types of adverbial markers with the existential reading and the resultative reading, respectively, as well as on the distinct semantic properties of the two readings. Almost 400 participants took part in this research. The results show that there is a certain effect of L1 on the L2 acquisition of English present perfect by CG- and SG-speaking pupils, which is argued to be mainly due to the different patterns of meanings and forms in CG, SG and English.

Sociolinguistics

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Adverbial markers and tone in L1 and L2 students' writing

In the past several decades, analyses of large corpora of published written texts in English have allowed for new insights into the meanings, uses, and functions of adverbials of all types. However, far less is known about the uses of adverbials in second language (L2) text. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of deictic, modifying, and intensifying adverbials, as well as several semantic classes of adverb clauses, and compares their median frequency rates in academic essays written by first-year NS and academically-advanced NNS students. The analysis focuses on NS and NNS uses of twelve semantic and syntactic classes of adverbials. The greatest pronounced differences between the essays of NSs and those of NNSs are identified in the frequency rates of amplifiers and emphatic adverbs, both of which are very common in informal conversations. Because for most NNS academically-oriented learners, the greatest amount of exposure to L2 usage takes place in conversational discourse, the frequency rates of adverb clauses in L2 texts is determined by the frequency of a particular clause type in the conversational genre, i.e. the more common certain types of adverb clauses in conversational discourse, the greater the likelihood of their high frequency rates in L2 academic essays.

Preterite Loss in Early Afrikaans

This paper attempts to shed light on a unique configuration of factors causing the virtual disappearance of the preterite tense form in the history of Afrikaans. At the outset factors such as apocope and creolisation are discounted on various grounds, though the latter cannot be ruled out completely. However, while the Cape Dutch record of mainly L1 speakers suggests a gradual disappearance of the preterite during the first half of the 19th century, the virtual absence of the preterite in texts written in the early Afrikaans vernacular, as soon as they start appearing in this period, is conspicuous. It is hypothesised that the preterite had disappeared much earlier in the vernacular, especially as spoken by L2 speakers or those belonging to groups of former L2 speakers, amongst whom the influence of the Dutch norm was probably less marked. A scrutiny of the extant, though scant, utterances and writings of such speakers or representing such speakers reveals a situation close to that of modern Afrikaans as far as preterite usage and replacement by the perfect, in particular, is concerned. The main factors appear to be mnemonic, systemic and pragmatic. The basic mechanism was imperfect learning, a corollary of which is the retention, to the present day, of the most salient preterite forms. The language system contributed to preterite loss in that the perfect - an important competitor - was itself simplified in several respects, one of which is (again) the elimination of the mnemonic factor through the regularisation of the past participle. From a pragmatic point of view, other tense marking alternatives beside the perfect also remained available, e.g. the historical present and an adverbial marker such as toe. Several of these factors were indeed found to co-occur in texts of L2 speakers and individuals from former L2 groups

The Past Tense and Temporal Verb Meanings in a Contextual Frame

The learning of English past tense meanings and uses has been recognized as a complex issue in the acquisition of an L2. Temporal discourse frames require particular verb tenses, but if the contextual linguistic features of a discourse event are framed differently by members of various cultures, different interpretations of the meanings situated in the frame may result. Based on students' writing and responses to cloze passages framed for past tense, this study examines how speakers of American English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Indonesian establish and maintain contextual temporality in discourse. The findings of this study indicate that what represents a past-time discourse frame is not always obvious and that emphasizing the past-time adverbial markers may not be sufficient to effectively teach the uses and contexts of the past tense. Although it is probably true that nonnative speakers (NNSs) need to acquire new ways of expressing temporal relationships, it appears that NNSs may also need to develop new conceptualizations of the extent and boundaries of time and tense within contextual frames.