Agreement Morphology Research Articles

A homogenization model for multiple buckling response of axially compressed cellular cylindrical shells

Pattern transformation in periodic cellular structures induces significant property changes under specific external stimuli, resulting in unusual mechanical behavior. This paper proposes an efficient homogenization method for predicting multiple buckling responses of cellular cylindrical shells composed of such pattern-transformation metamaterial. FEM simulations reveal four distinct buckling modes and three kinds of post-buckling processes, achieved through controlled adjustments in the ratio of cylindrical shell thickness to the radius and structural porosity. An efficient homogenization method with the local buckling in the cellular cylindrical shell modeled as an equivalent plasticity in the homogenized shell enables us to predict the critical buckling stress and the post-buckling morphology in good agreement with FEM simulations, analytical analysis, and experiments. The derived solution for the critical buckling load of the cellular cylindrical shells provides practical insights for designing and applying such cylindrical cellular structures.

D-features or ellipsis in null subject licensing? Evidence from Brazilian and European Portuguese

Abstract Holmberg (Holmberg, Anders. 2005. Is there a little pro? Evidence from Finnish. Linguistic Inquiry 36(4). 533–564) and its revised version in Holmberg et al. (Holmberg, Anders, Aarti Nayudu & Michelle Sheehan. 2009. Three partial null-subject languages: A comparison of Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, and Marathi. Studia Linguistica 63(1). 59–97) derive the availability of null subjects in a given language from the interaction between T with/without a D(efiniteness)-feature and the features of subject pronouns. Their theory predicts the existence of consistent null subject languages, whose T has the D-feature, and partial null subject languages, whose T lacks the D-feature. This paper examines this D-feature approach to null subjects against the empirical evidence provided by Brazilian Portuguese, a partial null subject language, and European Portuguese, a consistent null subject language, showing that it cannot account for the range of microvariation observed with respect to different null subject pronouns and the type of T (finite vs. participle vs. gerund). We argue that, in comparison, the ellipsis account of null subject licensing put forward in Martins and Nunes (Martins, Ana Maria & Jairo Nunes. 2021. Brazilian and European Portuguese and Holmberg’s 2005 typology of null subject languages. In Sergio Baauw, Frank Drijkoningen & Luisa Meroni (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2018. Selected papers from “Going Romance” 32, Utrecht, 171–190. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins) fares better. It retains from Holmberg (Holmberg, Anders. 2005. Is there a little pro? Evidence from Finnish. Linguistic Inquiry 36(4). 533–564 et seq.) the insight that the licensing of null subjects depends on the interaction between the features of T and the features of subject pronouns but resorts only to ϕ-features and Case. Crucially, it relies on the (theoretically and empirically) plausible assumption that the relation between abstract ϕ-features and verbal agreement morphology need not be transparent.

Modal polyfunctionality and German modals revisited

This paper points out that there is presently no consistent definition of German modals, nor is there any agreement as to which verbs should be categorized as modals. The paper suggests that modals should be defined based on modal polyfunctionality, i.e. the ability to express both root and epistemic readings. Applying this definition, the paper states that besides canonical dürfen ‘beallowed to’, können ‘can’, mögen ‘may’, müssen ‘must’, sollen ‘should’, wollen ‘want’, verbs werden ‘will’ and brauchen ‘need’ are to be considered modals as well, since they semantically behave as standard modals. More specifically, they are both capable of expressing both root and epistemic modalities. Furthermore, the paper proposes that the absence of agreement in 1st and 3rd person singular in modals such as in ich/er mussØ ‘I/he must’ cannot be solely attributed to their preterite-present origin of modals, but is related to the synchronic definition of modals, i.e. their polyfunctionality as a result of paradigmatic coherence. In addition to exploring the central modals, the paper investigates the paradigms of brauchen ‘need’, as well as werden ‘will’, suggesting that they might be aligning with the central modals in terms of their agreement morphology as well. Since being theoretical, the paper’s arguments are supported by the examples from the texts referenced in literature or produced by native speakers of German.

Movement in disguise: Morphology as a diagnostic for verb movement in Algonquian

AbstractThis paper argues for a unification of two seemingly unrelated phenomena from unrelated language families: Verb Second in Germanic, and Conjunct versus Independent Order in Algonquian. It is argued that both reflect the possibility of the verb moving to C. While in Germanic this results in word order differences, in Algonquian V‐to‐C movement is detectable only via morphological alternations in agreement morphology. Under this view, Conjunct/Independent agreement and V2 are merely distinct reflexes of the same underlying process. This opens up new avenues of research in relation to V‐to‐C movement, framing it as a parametric option with potentially very different surface results in different languages depending on the setting of other parameters.

Underpinning the On-Line Processing of (Non-)Canonical Sentences in German-Speaking Four-Year-Olds: The Interplay of Cognitive Control and Memory Capacity

ABSTRACT This study investigates the interpretation of object-initial sentences in German-speaking children. We addressed the following questions: (1) Which morphosyntactic cues do children deploy to process object-initial sentences? (2) Which executive function (EF) abilities support them during this task? This study examined the effect of case and number agreement morphology in 4;6-year-old German-speaking children (N = 27) on their interpretation of unambiguous S(ubject)-V(erb)-O(bject) and OVS sentences by combining an offline (sentence-picture matching) and an online (looking-while-listening) paradigm. Participants’ working memory and cognitive control abilities were assessed by means of a (forward) digit-span test and a flanker task. Case-marked OVS sentences were processed more accurately than number-marked ones, although both conditions were less accurate than SVO sentences. We found a comprehension facilitation driven by higher cognitive control skills that enhances, specifically the interpretation of the more demanding number cue in OVS structures already in 4;6-year-olds. Higher working memory skills are generally associated with children’s processing skills as they support the correct parsing of all online conditions and of both SVO and OVS in the offline case condition. We conclude that while case-marking appears to be processed more reliably than number by preschoolers, also number information alone can be processed, especially by children with higher cognitive control skills.

3/4 of a Monster: On Mixed Shifty Agreement in Telugu

Within the typology of embedded pronouns, there are languages that allow for non–first person pronouns to apparently control first person agreement morphology when in certain embedded contexts. This type of agreement displays some degree of optionality: it is also possible for the pronoun to control the expected agreement morphology given the pronoun’s own overt morphological features. This squib provides new data from the Dravidian language Telugu showing that when the embedded pronoun controls agreement on two separate targets, agreement may be uniform across the two targets or the two targets can mismatch in one direction, but crucially not the other. I show how this paradigm can be accounted for using the assumptions that the pronouns in question are similar to so-called hybrid nouns and that agreement features are restricted in principled ways.

Processing of grammatical gender agreement morphemes in Polish: evidence from the Visual World Paradigm

This paper presents a psycholinguistic study of the processing of grammatical gender agreement morphemes in Polish, which has three gender categories (masculine, feminine, neuter), as well as what language-internal factors impact this processing. Results from an eye-tracking study using the Visual World Paradigm show that, during real-time language comprehension, adult monolingual speakers of Polish use cues from gender agreement on a prenominal adjective to anticipate the upcoming noun. An exploration of language-internal factors affecting this anticipatory processing finds this effect in all three genders, suggesting that encountering the relevant nominative-case agreement morpheme during language comprehension leads to automatic activation of a gender node in the mental lexicon, consistent with the literature on other languages with grammatical gender. These results hold true for the neuter agreement morpheme, despite the fact that this morpheme also instantiates default gender agreement in the language and is syncretic with the nominative plural agreement morpheme in all three genders. Further investigation finds that, while agreement morphemes for each gender prompt anticipatory processing, the reliability of a masculine agreement morpheme as a cue to gender is reduced in the presence of a neuter distractor, and vice versa. This raises questions regarding phonological proximity between the realized suffix and the suffix that would cue the distractor, with implications for the acquisition and processing of gender agreement morphology in Polish.

Comparative study of Na0.67Ni0.25Co0.17Mn0.58O2 P-Type cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries: Combustion synthesis and combined analysis of structural, electrical, and dielectric properties

In this study, we present a promising sodium-ion cathode material, Na0.67Ni0.25Co0.17Mn0.58O2, which was synthesized by combustion method, and subsequent heat treatment at various calcination temperatures (700 °C, 800 °C, and 900 °C). The samples underwent analysis using various techniques, including Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) combined with Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDS), Specific Surface Area Measurements (BET), and Impedance Spectroscopy Measurements (EIS). The XRD pattern of the sample prepared at 700 °C reveals that the lower annealing temperature induces the formation of a new phase, P3. Indeed, the phase transition from the rhombohedral P3-phase to hexagonal P2-phase at 900 °C via mixed phases (P3/P2) yielded at 800 °C. Furthermore, Rietveld refinement using the hexagonal unit cell leads the calculation of the network parameters and the structural stacking, showing that the P2-phase exhibits a more pronounced two-dimensional character compared to the P3-phase. FT-IR spectra reveal that the lattice structures of the samples consist of NaO6 and MeO6 (Me = Ni, Co, Mn) octahedra. SEM-EDS analysis shows a homogeneous surface morphology in good agreement with the theoretical and experimental proportions of the elements constituting the three P-type phases. Subsequently, we extensively investigated the effect of our P-type materials on the electrical and dielectric properties of the cathodes using EIS measurements. Our findings suggest that the low-cost and eco-friendly P2–Na0.67Ni0.25Co0.17Mn0.58O2 phase shows promise as a cathode material for sodium-ion batteries and represents a competitive alternative to the P3/P2- and P3–Na0.67Ni0.25Co0.17Mn0.58O2 phases.

Noun Classes and Agreement in Lutsotso

One of the most noticeable grammatical features of Bantu languages, is the presence of noun classes. Although each noun (or noun stem) in the majority of Bantu languages is classified into one of 15–18 noun classes, Lutsotso language captures 21 classes. While it is frequently hard to distinguish between noun classes semantically, basic meanings or semantic trends of subsets of members may frequently be identified. Lutsotso nouns consist of a noun prefix and a root. The two elements of the Lutsotso nominal are crucial because the prefix, for example, denotes the class. Complex agreement morphology in the noun phrase and the sentence is controlled by class membership, which is indicated morphologically on the noun by a class prefix. As such, the prefix functions as a classifier. Agreement is a type of syntactic connection in which a word's or phrase's inflectional behaviour is dictated by the features of a nominal element to which it is closely connected. Number, person, case, and gender are examples of agreement markers. The class to which the head noun belongs must be reflected throughout the phrase in Bantu languages. This is accomplished through the use of concordial prefixes, which have distinct forms for the parts of speech to which they are attached. There is no discrete number morphology in Bantu languages, but the noun class system mediates number; numerous noun classes are paired according to number, forming singular-plural pairs. The Noun (N) component element of the simple sentence exists as a complex Noun phrase (NP) with nominal qualities indicated by affixes. Accordingly, concord prefixes control and impact the words connected with them in the Lutsotso noun phrase. The study discovered that concord prefixes sustain the grammatical relationship between the head noun and the rest of the noun phrase.

Verb agreement production in Arabic-speaking children with developmental language disorder

ABSTRACT Verb morphology difficulties have been widely attested in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) who speak English and other languages. This research contributes data on a variety of Arabic, a richly inflected Semitic language. The current study examined the production of subject-verb agreement morphology in three groups of 30 monolingual Kuwaiti Arabic-speaking children. Ten preschoolers diagnosed with DLD (M = 4;4 years) were compared to two groups of typically developing (TD) controls —10 language-matched (TD-LA) (M = 2;7 years) and 10 chronological age-matched (TD-CA) (M = 4;5 years). To elicit target productions, an action video depicting a total of 33 randomly ordered third-person verb stimuli (12 feminine singular, 9 masculine singular, and 12 plurals) was presented. The results confirmed significant differences in the correct use of third-person verb (gender and number) agreement between the children with DLD and the two comparison groups. The DLD group was more proficient with masculine forms than with feminine or plural markings. Qualitative error analyses revealed that this group had a proclivity to overgeneralize the masculine for other agreement markings. The findings are discussed in relation to relevant theories of typical and impaired language acquisition. The implications for assessing and treating verb morphological deficits are highlighted.

Agreement asymmetries in Arabic varieties dissolved: A feature inheritance-based account

The paper revisits the issue of the structural representation of subject-verb agreement in Arabic varieties with a particular reference to Standard Arabic and seven Arabic dialects, i.e., Saudi Arabic, Yemeni Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Jordanian Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Lebanese Arabic. The paper recasts agreement asymmetries proposed in the literature of Arabic syntax: partial agreement in VSO but full agreement in SVO. Empirical evidence shows that such proposed asymmetries should be dissolved as all language varieties display agreement between the verb and the subject in all features except the number feature in the VS order of standard variety. Even in the VS order of this variety, the verb fully agrees with the subject when the latter is a pronoun. Based on empirical observations, the puzzling phenomenon of agreement can receive a straightforwardly unified account based on the Feature Inheritance model of syntax (FI). Irrespective of the possible order used in Arabic, full agreement morphology is always predicted as a result of an Agree relation, via FI, between the probe T and the subject generated at Spec; vP. However, the number feature alternation in the VS order of Standard Arabic is attributed to the PF interface rather than the narrow syntax, i.e., the possibility to spell out the number feature periphrastically rather than affixially.

How frequent are these verbs?

In monolingual (L1) acquisition, children produce target-like subject-verb agreement early in development in both Spanish (Grinstead 1998) and English (Guasti 2002). However, in heritage simultaneous bilinguals (2L1) and child second language acquirers (L2), agreement morphology shows variability (Goldin 2020; Herschensohn & Stevenson 2005) due to age of acquisition (AoA) effects. Lexical frequency is another factor that has been shown to play a role in modulating L1 (i.e. Ambridge et al. 2015) and heritage acquisition (i.e. Giancaspro 2017, 2020), but little is known about its effect in child L2. This study explores the extent to which verb lexical frequency plays a role in the acquisition of verb morphology for bilingual children with differing AoA, comparing 42 2L1 heritage children with 46 L2 Spanish learners with AoA of 5;0. They participated in a Spanish fill-in-the-blanks production task. The results of an analysis focused on singular correr and comer (chosen because they differ in only one phoneme) indicated that responses to comer, the more frequent verb, were more target-like for both groups, and that frequency showed a stronger effect for heritage 2L1 children than for L2 children, while also modulating non-target-like responses. We discuss these findings with implications for bilingual development and education.

Variation and change in Swiss German agreement morphology: Spatial, social, and attitudinal effects

AbstractThis paper investigates the occurrence of inflected predicative adjectives, an optional yet distinguishing feature of German dialects spoken in southern Switzerland. We provide an in-depth analysis of the patterns of change of this morphosyntactic marker with a particular focus on extralinguistic factors. Historical records from 1950 were compared to contemporary data collected from 192 speakers across 49 localities in 2020–21. Our results corroborate previous reports indicating a substantial, real-time decline in inflected forms. Logistic mixed-effects modeling suggests that the inflection of predicative adjectives occurs more frequently among speakers who report tight social networks, have a strong local dialect identity, and regularly use one or more Romance languages. These findings support the claim that tight social networks and local dialect identity construction may lead to the preservation of conservative grammatical forms. Additionally, the effect of Romance languages highlights the role of transfer phenomena induced by language contact.

On agreement-drop in Singlish: topics never agree

This paper examines the distribution and properties of agreement-drop constructions in Singlish, which are distinguished by the absence of overt subject agreement morphology. I demonstrate that these constructions are distinct from their minimally different fully-agreeing counterparts in that they (i) bleed object topicalisation, (ii) block the extraction of adjuncts which are lower in the structure, (iii) are scopally frozen, (iv) are unable to be embedded under regret-class predicates, and (v) impose a specificity condition on their subjects. I argue that these properties rule out prior characterisations of the alternation as the output of free variation in the PF. On the basis that agreement-drop constructions in Singlish consistently parallels topicalisation structures cross-linguistically, I sketch a syntactic account that unifies the two constructions within the syntax.

Language separation and stable syntactic knowledge: verbs and verb phrases in bilingual children’s narratives

The present study analyses written narratives of 60 Portuguese-German bilingual children between 8 and 15 years living in Switzerland, in both their languages. Portuguese is the children’s heritage language (HL) and German the environmental language. The analysis focusses on the children’s lexical, morphological and structural knowledge in the verb domain (verb types, agreement morphology, verbal tense, word order within the VP, orthography) and aims to determine the role of language dominance, general proficiency, current age and age of onset of bilingualism (AoO) in bilingual language acquisition at later stages of development (i.e., at school-age). The results show that the bilingual children display stable syntactic and morphological knowledge in both their languages. Lexical knowledge is positively correlated with age and proficiency. Morphological and syntactic deviations are residual in both languages and not correlated with AoO. No effects of cross-linguistic influence are observed. We only find performance differences between the Portuguese and the German corpus at the level of orthography. We conclude that in the analysed age span children have received enough exposure to both languages to develop stable morphological and syntactic knowledge, at least in the verb domain.

Agents Strongly Preferred: ERP Evidence from Natives and Non-Natives Processing Intransitive Sentences in Spanish.

Are non-native speakers able to process their second language in a native-like way? The present study used the Event-Related Potentials’ (ERPs) method to address this issue by focusing (1) on agent vs. agentless intransitive sentences and (2) on person vs. number agreement morphology. For that purpose, native and high proficiency and early non-native speakers of Spanish were tested while processing intransitive sentences containing grammatical and ungrammatical subject–verb agreement. Results reveal greater accuracy in the agent (unergative) condition as compared with the agentless (unaccusative) condition and different ERP patterns for both types of verbs in all participants, suggesting a larger processing cost for the agentless sentences than for the agentive ones. These effects were more pronounced in the native group as compared with the non-native one in the early time window (300–500 ms). Differences between person and number agreement processing were also found at both behavioral and electrophysiological levels, indicating that those morphological features are distinctively processed. Importantly, this pattern of results held for both native and non-native speakers, thus suggesting that native-like competence is attainable given early Age of Acquisition (AoA), frequent use and high proficiency.

Hydrogen-bond mediated and concentrate-dependent NaHCO3 crystal morphology in NaHCO3–Na2CO3 aqueous solution: Experiments and computer simulations

Adding Na2CO3 to the NaHCO3 cooling crystallizer, using the common ion effect to promote crystallization and improve product morphology, is a new process recently proposed in the literature. However, the mechanism of the impact of Na2CO3 on the crystal morphology is still indeterminate. In this work, the crystallization of NaHCO3 in water and Na2CO3–NaHCO3 aqueous solution was investigated by experiments and molecular dynamics simulations (MD). The crystallization results demonstrate that the morphology of NaHCO3 crystal changed gradually from needle-like to flake structure with the addition of Na2CO3. The simulation results indicate that the layer docking model and the modified attachment energy formula without considering the roughness of crystal surface can obtain the crystal morphology in agreement with the experimental results, but the lower molecules of the crystal layer have to be fixed during MD. Thermodynamic calculation of the NaHCO3 crystallization process verifies that the common ion effect from Na+ and the ionization equilibrium transformation from CO32– jointly promote the precipitation of NaHCO3 crystal. The radial distribution function analysis indicates that the oxygen atoms of Na2CO3 formed strong hydrogen bonds with the hydrogen atoms of the (0 1 1) face, which weakened the hydration of water molecules at the crystal surface, resulting in a significant change in the attachment energy of this crystal surface. In addition, Na+ and CO32– are more likely to accumulate on the (0 1 1) face, resulting in the fastest growth rate on this crystal surface, which eventually leads to a change in crystal morphology from needle-like to flake-like.

Root, Thematic Vowels and Inflectional Exponents in Verbs: A Morpho-Syntactic Analysis

A long-time generative tradition treats the functional domains of the verb and noun as a result of motion and affixing; however, assuming a close correspondence between the order in syntax and morphology, as in the Mirror Principle proposed by Baker seems to be too strong a hypothesis and empirically unsustainable. Distributed Morphology (DM) incorporates this idea by translating it into rules manipulating syntactic nodes. The morphological phenomena we will investigate essentially concerns the thematic vowel (TV) and its interaction with agreement morphology. A complex micro-variation emerges, which provides us with a test bench in order to account for the word-internal morphological organization. We question the idea that morphology is an auxiliary and expensive post-syntactic component, DM, that conveys information separated from its original locus as assumed by Embick and Noyer. On the contrary, we think that a more adequate account is reached assuming that the morphology is governed by the same computational rules as the syntax, where the operation Merge combines fully interpretable sub-word elements forming complex inflected words.

On feature-based vocabulary selection mechanisms in late insertion: third person number agreement in the French future tense

We propose that feature bundles in syntactic computations coactivate subset vocabulary items in content-based access. Thus, in French, an inflectional node for the future tense bearing [Number: Plural] activates third-person singular -a underspecified for [Number: Ø] and third- person plural -ont specified for [Number: Plural]. These activations compete in externalization. [Number: Ø/Plural] defines a <-ont, -a> scale where plural-marked -ont carries more information than -a, allowing scalar inferencing in form selection. Given an activated Plural-marked -ont, -a (3ps.sg) is automatically interpreted as [–Plural] via scalar inferencing and becomes unsuitable for insertion. Thus, -ont (3ps.pl) must be selected when -a (3ps.sg) is eliminated. We tested our model assuming an interaction of cross-domain inferencing with morphological selection, using two experiments. In forced-paced reading and listening tasks, 19 native speaker subjects per task classified picture probes accompanying matching and mismatching subject-verb future tense agreement. Classification times for pictures semantically linked to the verb probed for an interaction between the processing of agreement morphology and the ongoing conceptual processing of the sentence. Classification times were modulated by the type of morphological mismatch. Singular verb form mangera (eat-fut.3ps.sg) in plural contexts slowed down picture classifications, whereas plural verb form mangeront (eat-fut.3ps.pl) in singular contexts did not. This specific interaction between purely formal agreement and conceptual-structure processing is unexplained by superset models of late insertion, or by interface relations, frequency, load of stored information, and phonological cohort activation. It suggests that domain-general principles of inference enrich domain-specific feature-based computations accessing vocabulary items through the coactivation of features.

Inference-based form selection in native and non-native speakers: Evidence from subject-verb agreement error detection in French

This study examines native and non-native retrieval of the third person number agreement morphology for the French future tense (e.g. mangera (eat-fut.3ps.sg) vs. mangeront (eat-fut.3ps.pl), ‘will eat’), in the light of subset and superset-based late-insertion models. We present evidence for the coactivation of subset vocabulary items where selecting the more specified item -ont (3ps.pl) in third-person plural agreement requires eliminating the less specified item –a (3ps.sg). The lack of plural specification for –a is interpreted as [-Plural] by a real-time inference on a < -ont, -a > information scale defined by [Number: Ø/Plural]. Using picture classification time differences during a grammaticality judgment task, we argue that i.) subset vocabulary items are activated and that ii.) domain-general inferencing enables form selection in multiple activations. Hence, picture-probes related to the ongoing interpretation of the sentence presented immediately after a mismatching singular verb form (subset item error) took longer to classify in L1-English L2-French learners and in French natives tested with a speeded task. This interaction of form with meaning construction justifies subset access triggering domain-general inference-based selection in multiple activations over a superset-based model of vocabulary item activation or information-load and frequency-based approaches. This model provides an understanding of temporary irretrievability in L2 acquisition.