Adverbial Phrases Research Articles

Are traversal objects objects?

Abstract Although usually considered intransitive as a class, motion verbs in Japanese and English appear to take direct objects. These ‘traversal objects’ do behave as direct objects in many tests of objecthood, including particle deletion, passiviza‐tion, case marking, and Quantifier Floating in Japanese and passivization in English. Other considerations, however, indicate that they are adverbial phrases located immediately below direct and indirect objects in an accessibility hierarchy to which the tests for objecthood are subject and are treated as direct objects only when no true direct objects are present.

Pragmatic markedness and syntax

A distinction is made between two types of pragmatics: the pragmatics of concrete sentence contents on the one hand, and the pragmatics of construction types on the other. The latter type is severely underdeveloped, also in work within the generative framework; despite the theoretical recognition that grammars have only a limited domain of explanation, there is in practice a strong preference for explanations in terms of grammatical structure. It is proposed to consider the question of the relation between grammar and pragmatics as an entirely empirical one. In this spirit, the distribution of adverbial phrases in Dutch is considered, with respect to several interpretive factors that are related to word order. An explanation of the phenomena involved is offered in terms of pragmatic markedness conventions, and some general properties of such conventions are established. Finally, some conclusions are drawn with respect to the relations between conversational maxims and the markedness conventions, in terms of the difference between functional and theoretical explanations. The results confirm the general idea of human cognitive competence as consisting of several relatively autonomous and relatively simple subsystems.

A Grammatical Description of the Engenni Language

This thesis presents a systematic description of the grammar of the Engenni language. The first chapter gives a general introduction to the Engenni people and language and describes the linguistic model which is used for the analysis. The phonology of the language including the main features of the tonal system, and the transcription used in the thesis are outlined in Chapter Two. Chapter Three describes the features of the largest unit in the grammar, the discourse. Chapter Four is an account of the sentence, and Chapters Five and Six an account of the clause. Chapters Seven to Nine describe the three phrase classes. Chapter Seven is an account of the verbal phrase; Chapter Eight an account of the nominal phrase; and Chapter Nine an account of the adverbial phrase. The major word classes are described in Chapter Ten, and the minor word classes in Chapter Eleven. Chapter Twelve contains an analysed text. The thesis ends with a list of abbreviations, a bibliography and an index.

Tussen Vier en Acht

Some preliminary results from a normative study on spontaneous speech from children between four and eight years are presented. The study is part of a project to develop a standardized and normalized method of analysis of spontaneous speech samples to be used in the assessment of developmental language disorders. From four groups of 30 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-year olds respectively, spontaneous speech samples have been collected from adult-child conversations. The groups are heterogeneous but comparable to each other with respect to social background. The samples have been segmented into -units. To reduce interviewer-effects, a distinction was made between elliptical answers (answers to previous questions, without finite verb) and free utterances (all other utterances). 50 consecutive free utterances per child have been analyzed on several variables with regard to length (9), fluency (22), grammatical, semantic and pragmatic accept-ability (18) , and syntactic and semantic complexity (43) . The resulting frequency curves (mean frequencies per 50 free utterances per age group) have been analyzed with respect to the following questions: (1) do the groups differ in the relative frequencies for these variables? (2) if so, can these differences be fitted into a model of gradual increase or decrease? (3) or, if there are sudden decreases and/or increases in frequency, how can they be explained? Differences between the age groups were found on many of the variables, and several of these differences indeed do not fit the gradual model. Sudden dips and jumps in the frequency curves do occur. Examples of non-monotonic frequency curves are given for fluency (fig.3 and 4.), prono-minalization (fig.5), coordination and past tense (fig.7), and for adverbial phrases of time (fig.8). Some explanations are suggested for these non-gradual developments. The stability of these frequency patterns is now being tested on a second group of 120 children. If developmental frequency curves prove to be fairly stable, intensive frequency pattern analysis on both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, taking into account situational variability, might be a way to trace the more subtle developments in the later stages of language acquisition.

Editorial: Words about words.

Some readers of editorial, A Word Fitly Spoken (230:1436, 1974), were compelled to comment. For example, Hobart A. Reimann, MD, of Philadelphia, wrote: enjoyed reading your editorial about words. have always used words other than marked, markedly and parameter. You could have included dramatic. The patient made a dramatic recovery, etc. also object to the patient wasput on or taken offdigitalis. On rounds, usually turn patient over to look. On two occasions students reciting a patient's record stated, I did a urine on him! Most copy editors split my unsplit adverbial phrases. Henry Christian was a stickler in matter, and always corrected my lapses. In quotation from Proverbs, would it not have been better to say Wordsfitly spokenarelike apples....? But who am to question biblical language? Another reader of earlier editorial took issue with an

Remembering Complex Sentences

Recall of complex sentences at two retention intervals was examined, using sentences which varied simultaneously in three ways, being either active or passive, of low or high Yngve depth, and predictable or unpredictable. Recall of any particular sentence was cued with either the logical subject, logical object, verb or adverbial phrase noun. In general, unpredictable sentences were recollected better than predictable ones, low Yngve depth sentences were recalled better than high Yngve depth ones, and passive sentences were retained better than active ones. The most effective cue was the object, followed in turn by the subject and the adverbial phrase noun, with the verb being least effective. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Memory for Sentences and Noun Phrases of Extreme Depth

Memory for orally presented noun phrases and sentences was investigated in two experiments. Syntactic depth (D) of the phrases and sentences was varied with D approaching the values of 7 ± 2. Consistent with recent investigations, these studies found D not to be generally related to recall of sentences, phrases, or individual words within sentences. However, recall of individual words from an adverbial noun phrase apparently was related to D. The apparent relationship is accounted for not by depth of individual words, but in terms primarily of superior noun retention and its interaction with serial position effects. In addition, conditional recall probabilities for another type of phrase, a noun phrase with prenominal adjectives, indicate stronger relationships between adjectives and the noun than between successive adjectives. It is concluded that the Yngve grammar is deficient as a psycholinguistic model.

TWO STUDIES OF THE DEPTH HYPOTHESIS

Two experiments are reported which examine whether the memory load imposed by sentences of different syntactic forms is better predicted by measures derived from transformational generative grammar or from the phrase structure analysis of sentences (Yngve's measure of sentence depth). The first experiment shows that if an adverbial phrase is introduced into an active sentence, so that the phrase structure of the active sentence resembles that of a passive negative sentence, the memory requirements are also those of a passive negative. This supported the depth hypothesis. In the second experiment a subordinate noun clause was introduced into the sentence so that when an active sentence was made passive its phrase structure was less complex than the corresponding active. Here it was found that transformational complexity affected memory requirements but phrase structure complexity did not. It was concluded that both syntactic measures of complexity are reflected in performance, but, with content factors closely controlled, transformational complexity had the greater effect.

Comparative Constructions in English

The question 'What is syntax?' has been asked many times.* In the framework of traditional grammar it cannot be answered by a definition. Traditional syntax, the kind of syntax upon which all of us have been brought up, is not a theory but a craft. We were taught by practical example how to find (say) the subject or the predicate of a sentence and how to recognize a given form as a 3rd-person singular verb indicative present active. These technical terms were never properly defined; but with a sufficient number of examples for practice plus some rules of thumb, we soon acquired an intuitive grasp of what they meant, and were thus able to work with them satisfactorily. Sometimes classical grammar did offer definitions, but they were invariably poor and clumsy. Looked on as a theory, traditional grammar consists of primitive notions only. Its definitions are pseudodefinitions, mere embellishments, not taken seriously in practice. The same is true of the various interpretations of these primitive notions which have been popular from time to time, interpretations logical, psychological, metaphysical, functional, or mystical. All these cavalierly disregard the mode of existence (in the philosophical sense) of the primitive notions which they claim to interpret. It was fortunate that under the circumstances the discussion of these interpretations necessarily remained academic. It did not seriously interfere with the practice of grammatical analysis. Traditional syntax consists of two parts: (1) parsing and (2) the 'meaning' of grammatical form classes (such as adjectives or accusatives). PARSING means interpreting any given sentence as representing the single and universal sentence pattern of classical grammar. This pattern includes the elements SUBJECT and PREDICATE as obligatory, and optionally OBJECTS (direct and/or indirect), ADVERBIAL PHRASES, ATTRIBUTES, and APPOSITIONS. Each sentence contains at least one MAIN CLAUSE and may also contain SUBSIDIARY

A New Oracle in an Inscription

In JHS LXXIV (1954), 85–7, Mr. G. E. Bean publishes a mutilated inscription from Caunus (no. 21 of his collection) which contains the response of the Gryneian Apollo to an inquiry of the Caunians as to which god they must propitiate to obtain good harvests. Mr. Bean seems not to have noticed that the text of the oracle (which begins at 1. 12) consists of two hexameters; if he had, I do not think he would have thought a new sentence must begin with ἀρσρίσκετε or worried about the sense of δεσμοῑς. I suggest that τιμῶσιν agrees with ὔμμι and that ἀραρίσκετε is imperative. The word after δεσμοῑς will be an adjective agreeing with δεσμοῑς. I can think of no suitable one beginning with Λ, but Α is very like Λ and άλύτοισ will suit the sense; it is an epithet of δεσμοί at Od. 8. 275, Aesch. P. V. 155. At the end of the line I would supply an adjective agreeing with κλέος (e.g. ἀγήρων) an adverbial phrase (e.g. ἐς αἰέί) or perhaps a vocative (e.g. λαοί).

An elucidation of the adverbial phrase n mt n ś.t

An elucidation of the adverbial phrase n mt n ś.t