Attitude Verbs Research Articles

Third person accusative clitic pronouns as object agreement marks in Brazilian Portuguese

Even though Brazilian Portuguese (BP) has replaced its third person accusative clitic pronouns (ClA3) for strong pronouns, they have not completely disappeared: although they are not acquired during the first years of BP native speakers’ linguistic development, they are a topic taught in Brazil classrooms. However, they seem to behave differently from the other clitics (which occur in proclisis to the main verb). Nunes (2015) suggests that they have been reanalyzed as object agreement marks, given their tendency to be placed in post-verbal position of verb forms that can independently carry subject agreement marks, to occur in proclisis with verbs whose subject agreement mark is occupied, and not to occur next to verbs in the past participle or in the gerund, since they do not have a position for agreement. In order to control some linguistic and sociolinguistic variables, this study had the objective to gather experimental data regarding the idiosyncrasies the ClA3 have using a sentence rewriting task including the ClA3 “o” and the clitic “me”. There were differences between the use of these two pronouns, having the clitic “me” followed the general tendency of BP, being placed, almost exclusively, in proclisis to the verb it is an argument of. Enclisis, on the other hand, was more productive with the ClA3, namely with non-inflected infinitive verbs. However, proclisis to the main verb was also a widely used option by the participants, including in contexts Nunes (2015) did not predict it to occur. It is concluded that, at first sight, Nunes’s (2015) hypothesis was not backed by the data obtained here. Nevertheless, the difference in the speakers’ behavior regarding the two pronouns used in this study cannot be disregarded, what suggests they are likely to have a different nature, although they do not seem to be object agreement marks.

Just Simulating? Linguistic Support for Continuism About Remembering and Imagining

AbstractMuch recent work in philosophy of memory discusses the question whether episodic remembering is continuous with imagining. This paper contributes to the debate between continuists and discontinuists by considering a previously neglected source of evidence for continuism: the linguistic properties of overt memory and imagination reports (e.g. sentences of the form ‘x remembers/imagines p’). I argue that the distribution and truth-conditional contribution of episodic uses of the English verb remember is surprisingly similar to that of the verb imagine – even when compared to the distribution of other experiential attitude verbs like see, hallucinate, or dream. This holds despite the presence of some remarkable truth-conditional differences between remember and imagine. I show how these differences can be explained by a continuist account of remembering, on which remembering is past-directed, referential, and accurate experiential imagining.

Neg-raising in Russian Sing Language

The article is devoted to the primary search for neg-raising in Russian Sign Language. Neg-raising is a phenomenon of syntactic or pragma-semantic nature that occurs when a matrix verb takes over the negation from a dependent clause, while semantically negation pertains to a dependent verb. Neg-raising has been thoroughly studied in sound languages, but sign languages were not previously included in a typological review: there are only four studies that consider the neg-raising phenomenon. A corpus analysis revealed the neg-raising verbs of the propositional attitude want, love, need. During the experiment, consisting of two diagnostic tests and a questionnaire, the results of the corpus study were confirmed, and think was also identified as a verb that can take over the negation from a dependent clause.

The Nature and Structure of Reflexive Verb Constructions

Based on a summary of the features of reflexive verb constructions (ReVCs), this paper proposes that the internal structure of reflexive verb constructions is [VP Spec[V` V R]]. Whether it occurs overtly or covertly, the reflexive constituent is base-generated in the position of the complement of V. Its occurrence in other positions results from movement of the reflexive constituent. Due to the existence of the covert pronoun, the whole reflexive verb constructions cannot assign accusative case to other constituents. Therefore, reflexive verb constructions cannot be followed by an object. The reflexive pronoun introduces reflexive interpretation, as a consequence of which the verb is characterized by reflexivity. A reflexive verb construction operates in the syntax as a complete syntactic object and hence occupies a syntactic position. The whole reflexive verb construction can function as the object in the specifier position of VP and move to the position of the light verb to function as the predicate, followed by a tense or aspect marker.

Vocabulary and expressive morpho-syntax in individuals with Down syndrome: Links to narration

BackgroundNarrative ability is crucial for social participation in everyday and school life but involves different language abilities such as vocabulary and morpho-syntax. This is particularly difficult for individuals who display both language and cognitive impairments. Previous research has identified productive vocabulary as a possible key factor for narrative performance in individuals with Down syndrome. Considering a close connection between lexical and morpho-syntactic performance within language acquisition and the distinct impairments that individuals with Down syndrome display concerning their morpho-syntactic skills, the nature of a relation between vocabulary and narrative skills under the influence of grammatical deficits requires further investigation. MethodsNarrations were obtained from 28 children and adolescents with Down syndrome (aged 10;0–20;1) using a non-verbal picture book. Narrative abilities were rated using the Narrative Scoring Scheme across seven narrative aspects (including macro- and microstructure). Vocabulary analyses and morpho-lexical context analyses including verb and conjunction enumerations, evaluation of verb position and MLU were conducted. Findings from the transcript analysis have been supplemented with data from standardized language measures evaluating expressive lexical and morpho-syntactic development. A multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify significant predictors for narrative outcome in the participants with Down syndrome. ResultsLexical analyses revealed a high heterogeneity in production of subordinating conjunctions as a link between lexical and morpho-syntactic abilities. Comparisons of standardized and narrative data demonstrated differences in subordinate clause production depending on the elicitation setting. A multiple regression analysis identified the number of different verbs in the narrative task as the most significant predictor for narrative performance in individuals with Down syndrome. Discussion and implicationsThe findings of this study contribute to the knowledge regarding factors that influence narrative performance in individuals with language impairment. A differentiated verb lexicon can be identified as the key ability for reaching advanced narrative skills in participants with Down syndrome. These findings are of clinical relevance for therapeutic and educational support and contribute to an understanding of the relation between strengths in vocabulary and morpho-syntactic weaknesses in individuals with Down syndrome within communicative participation.

Hyperraising, evidentiality, and phase deactivation

AbstractThis paper investigates an interaction between locality requirements and syntactic dependencies through the lens of hyperraising constructions in Cantonese and Vietnamese. We offer a novel piece of evidence from subject displacement in support of the claim that phasehood can be deactivated by syntactic dependencies during the derivation. We show that (i) hyperraising (to subject) constructions are attested in both languages, and that (ii) only attitude verbs that encode an indirect evidential component allow hyperraising constructions. We propose a phase deactivation account for hyperraising, where the phasehood of a CP is deactivated by an Agree relation in terms of an evidential feature with the embedding verb. The findings of this paper suggest that locality requirements in natural languages are less rigid than previously thought, and that there is a non-trivial semantic dimension to hyperraising phenomena.

Mandarin posture verbs

Abstract Posture verbs have attracted considerable interest within Cognitive Linguistics. This study continues this line of research by investigating usage-based patterns associated with these verbs when used in their literal posture senses. The data for the study comes from the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese and the CALLHOME Mandarin Corpus. We investigate the frequencies and distributions of the Mandarin posture verbs 坐 zuò ‘sit’, 站 zhàn ‘stand’, and 躺 tǎng ‘lie’ in four construction types: directional constructions, aspectual suffixes, serial verb constructions, and locative constructions. The analysis confirms the primacy of zuò, zhàn, and tǎng and, among other results, reveals a significant absence of locative phrases with the dynamic forms of the verbs as used with directionals.

The presumption of realism

AbstractWithin contemporary metaethics, it is widely held that there is a “presumption of realism” in moral thought and discourse. Anti-realist views, like error theory and expressivism, may have certain theoretical considerations speaking in their favor, but our pretheoretical stance with respect to morality clearly favors objectivist metaethical views. This article argues against this widely held view. It does so by drawing from recent discussions about so-called “subjective attitude verbs” in linguistics and philosophy of language. Unlike pretheoretically objective predicates (e.g., “is made of wood”, “is 185 cm tall”), moral predicates embed felicitously under subjective attitude verbs like the English “find”. Moreover, it is argued that the widespread notion that moral discourse bears all the marks of fact-stating discourse is rooted in a blinkered focus on examples from English. Cross-linguistic considerations suggest that subjective attitude verbs are actually the default terms by which we ascribe moral views to people. Impressions to the contrary in English have to do with some unfortunate quirks of the term “think”.

Evidence for a constituent order boost in structural priming

The study investigates the role of constituent order in structural priming. We report the results from a PO/DO priming experiment in German, in which we experimentally manipulated verb position in primes and targets. Significant structural priming effects occurred irrespective of whether verb position was the same in prime and target or not. However, additional similarity in constituent order was able to boost structural priming effects, with significantly stronger priming when the verb occurred in the same position in prime and target. We argue that existing one-stage and two-stage accounts of formulation struggle to account for the entire data pattern and propose an alternative account of formulation which can explain our results.

Non-doxastic Attitude Reports, Information Structure, and Semantic-Pragmatic Interface

AbstractTruth conditions of sentences ascribing non-doxastic propositional attitudes seem to depend on the information structure of the embedded clause. In this paper, we argue that this kind of sensitivity is a semantic phenomenon rather than a pragmatic one. We report four questionnaire studies which explore the impact of the information structure on the truth conditions of non-doxastic attitude ascriptions from different perspectives. The results of the first two studies show that the acceptability of those ascriptions can be affected by some structural modifications of the embedded clause, in particular, when we replace a simple form by an equivalent complex conjunctional form (‘p and q’). However, it is possible that different evaluations of such ascriptions have a pragmatic source, namely, the ascriptions with embedded conjunction imply that the agent’s attitude transfers to both conjuncts. In the second pair of studies, we further investigate the nature of this implication which can be classified as ‘Conjunction Elimination’ (CE) in the scope of an attitude verb. The results show that CE-inferences in the context of non-factive non-doxastic attitude ascriptions are not easily cancellable and hence of a semantic rather than pragmatic nature. The results are not conclusive when it comes to the factive non-doxastic attitudes. We conclude our findings by some considerations about a potential source of the observed difference between non-factive and factive attitude verbs and the significance of our general findings to the semantic theory of non-doxastic attitude ascriptions.

SPECIFICS OF VERBAL VALENCE IN TERMS OF ITS PERCEPTION BY SPEAKERS (PSYCHOLINGUISTIC EXPERIMENT)

The article provides an in-depth study of the valence of verbal vocabulary in terms of selection of positions that are open to distributors. The purpose of the article is to outline the specifics of valence of actional and processual verbs in and out of context, to establish the minimum and maximum number of open verb positions in different contexts through a targeted associative experiment. The object of analysis are the verbs of actional and processual semantics, which appear in personal and impersonal meanings or combine these properties: вирувати (to eddy), заливати (to flood), зацвітати (to bloom), икати (to hiccup), казати (to say), клекотіти (to roar), котитися (to roll), переконувати (to persuade), ревіти (to howl), розливатися (to spill), свистіти (to whistle), сніжити (to snow), чавкати (to smack). It has been established that verbs of processual semantics require more dependent components, and this trend is observed with verbs that have lost their actional seme and moved to the class of processual ones. A small number of open valence positions has been established, which corresponds to the traditional scientific division, in particular, of the verb світати (to dawn), but most reactions suggest the presence of an additional number of distributors compared to the scientific division by valence characteristics. Verbs that scientists mainly classify as monovalent with a wide potential for transformation into divalent, respondents ranked as divalent or trivalent, which makes it possible to finally change the traditional division of verbs into groups based on valence features. A small number of the identified open fourth position of verb lexemes indicates the inconsistency of its allocation for direct communication.

Neural correlates of processing active and passive sentences: proficiency-dependent event-related potential evidence in Chinese English foreign language learners.

We explored whether and to what extent the neural mechanisms of second language sentence processing resemble those of native speakers by investigating the temporal dynamics of syntactic processing in terms of active or passive voice in reading English sentences by Chinese English Foreign Language (EFL) learners with high or low English proficiency. Participants were divided into two groups based on their proficiency levels in English. Three types of sentences (active, passive and ungrammatical) were presented to participants when their event-related potential responses were recorded at the verbs and the final words. The results showed that high-proficiency participants exhibited a greater anterior negativity at the verb position for ungrammatical sentences compared to active sentences. Furthermore, passive sentences elicited a larger frontal positivity than active sentences at the final word position. Additionally, greater P600 effects were observed for both passive and ungrammatical sentences than active sentences at the final word. The low-proficiency group exhibited a greater anterior negativity at the verb (but not the final word) position. In conclusion, these findings emphasize the role of proficiency as a modulating factor in the processing of English active and passive sentences among Chinese EFL learners. Furthermore, the processing of English active and passive sentences by these learners can be conceptualized as a three-stage process: prediction, correction and integration, representing the underlying cognitive mechanisms. This study provides novel insights into the understanding of the cognitive mechanism involved in second language sentence processing.

Generality, genericity and subjective predicates: What propositional attitude verbs, alien viruses, and COVID can tell us

In uttering a subjective opinion like Donuts are tasty, is a speaker expressing her own opinion or also making a generalization about people-in-general? While researchers largely agree that generic readings of subjective predicates exist, there is no consensus on how central genericity is for theories of subjective meaning. We report a psycholinguistic study that tests what influences the level of prevalence that comprehenders attribute to opinions, expressed with subjective predicates, about unfamiliar information. Specifically, if you overhear an alien expressing an opinion about an unfamiliar virus (e.g. The zorgavirus is dangerous), how many other aliens do you think share this alien's opinion? We find that the perceived generalizability of subjective predicates is modulated by the presence/absence of embedding under propositional attitude verbs (whether the speaker is explicitly mentioned with I think/consider) and by participants' extra-linguistic attitudes, namely their anxiety levels about COVID. This work uncovers a new link between subjective predicates and humans’ egocentric cognitive biases.

The Missing VP Illusion in Spanish: Assessing the Role of Language Statistics and Working Memory.

In English, double center-embedded sentences yield a so-called "missing VP illusion": When they are ungrammatical due to a missing verb, they are judged as equally or even more acceptable than their grammatical counterparts. The illusion is often attributed to working memory limitations. Additionally, it has been suggested that statistical differences across languages-e.g., the lower frequency of consecutive verb clusters in verb-initial languages-play a role, since languages with verb-final embedded clauses are less susceptible to the illusion than English. In two speeded acceptability experiments, we demonstrate that the illusion arises in Spanish, a verb-initial language. We also find that the strength of the illusion is modulated by the number of consecutive verbs, consistent with the involvement of language statistics. By contrast, we do not find that participants' working memory modulates the illusion, failing to support a role of memory limitations. Our results support the generalization that cross-linguistic variation in the missing VP illusion is associated with language statistics and verb position and they demonstrate that this is the case even in languages in which word order is not a reliable processing cue.

The Orientation of Evidentials in Attitude Contexts: A Case Study Based on Narratives in Paraguayan Guarani

This paper examines the orientation of evidentials in complements of attitude verbs, with Paraguayan Guarani evidential ra’e as a case study. It argues that embedded evidentials can be directed either towards the speaker or towards a matrix attitude-holder argument (e.g., the subject of the attitude verb) and that a syntactic representation of the evidence-acquisition event, with its pronominal subject, in the lower end of the CP field, is well-poised to capture this potential ambiguity. Language-particular properties can also play a determining role in the orientation of the embedded evidential, as is the case of the subordinator ha in Paraguayan Guarani. It is argued that this subordinator requires the presence of a Complementizer specified with a (strong) Modal component (which encodes certainty/commitment on the part of the attitude holder with respect to the embedded proposition) and that this property biases the orientation of ra’e towards the matrix attitude-holder argument.

Differential indexing in Kamang: a viewpoint alternation

Abstract In Kamang (Alor-Pantar, Indonesia), some verbs alternate between indexing the S or P argument with a prefix (from several different series) and occurring unprefixed; that is, Kamang has differential argument indexing. Through a qualitative study of a spoken-language corpus, this paper investigates the alternation between one of the prefix series and zero-marking. Previously described as indicating increased patientivity on intransitive motion and posture verbs, the alternation is here analysed in terms of a shift in event view: unprefixed verbs express events holistically, while prefixed verbs shift the viewpoint towards the “elaboration phase”, the temporal and causal middle and end of an event. Elaboration constructions are associated with resultative and completive semantics and, relatedly, greater affectedness of the undergoer argument. Cross-linguistically, such constructions (e.g., resultatives and middles) are frequently subject to lexical restrictions, and the same applies to the Kamang alternation.

Lexico-syntactic constraints influence verbal working memory in sentence-like lists.

We test predictions from the language emergent perspective on verbal working memory that lexico-syntactic constraints should support both item and order memory. In natural language, long-term knowledge of lexico-syntactic patterns involving part of speech, verb biases, and noun animacy support language comprehension and production. In three experiments, participants were presented with randomly generated dative-like sentences or lists in which part of speech, verb biases, and animacy of a single word were manipulated. Participants were more likely to recall words in the correct position when presented with a verb over a noun in the verb position, a good dative verb over an intransitive verb in the verb position, and an animate noun over an inanimate noun in the subject noun position. These results demonstrate that interactions between words and their context in the form of lexico-syntactic constraints influence verbal working memory.

Looking differently at locative events: the cognitive impact of linguistic preferences

Abstract While the Talmian dichotomy between satellite-framed and verb-framed languages has been amply studied for motion events, it has been less discussed for locative events, even if Talmy considers these to be included in motion events. This paper discusses such locative events, starting from the significant cross-linguistic variation among Dutch, French, and English. Dutch habitually encodes location via cardinal posture verbs (CPVs; ‘SIT’, ‘LIE’, ‘STAND’) expressing the orientation of the Figure, French prefers orientation-neutral existence verbs like être ‘be’ and English – unlike for motion events – straddles the middle with a marked preference for be but the possibility to occasionally rely on CPVs. Through the analysis of recognition performances and gazing behaviours in a non-verbal recognition task, this study confirms a (subtle) cognitive impact of different linguistic preferences on the mental representation of locative events. More specifically, they confirm the continuum suggested by Lemmens (2005, Parcours linguistiques. Domaine anglais (pp. 223–244). Publications de l’Université St Etienne.) for the domain of location with French on the one extreme and Dutch on the other with English in-between, behaving like French in some contexts but like Dutch in others.

Non-canonical structures in locative and existential predication in the Ob-Ugric languages

The study at hand deals with different structures applied for expressing locative and existential predication in Khanty and Mansi, analysing a comparably large amount of data from various databases. Apart from the “expected” and traditionally described pattern “figure (theme) + ground (location) + copula”, the paper also accounts for posture verbs and transitive habeo-verbs playing a role in the named functional domain. Additionally, it is shown that a significant number of relevant clauses are structurally ambiguous between a locative and an existential reading. Finally, the paper underlines that the Ob-Ugric languages show a clear polarity split in the expression of locative and existential predication since the observed variation mainly touches affirmative clauses. In contrast, negative clauses are, as a rule, formed with negative existential particles.

Pseudo-Coordinated Sitzen and Stehen in Spoken German: A Case of Emergent Progressive Aspect?

This paper investigates the aspectual potential of posture verb pseudo-coordination in spoken German. In a corpus study of sitzen ‘sit’ and stehen ‘stand’, it is shown that despite a preference for activity verbs, verbs of all aspectual classes occur in the second conjunct. The posture verb imposes its durative meaning component on the second verb, thus making a progressive interpretation of the construction possible. Apart from this emergent aspectual function, German posture verb pseudo-coordination has a subjective function (conveying the speaker’s beliefs about the subject referent’s stance), and a discourse pragmatic function (information packaging).*