Bare Verb Research Articles

Evidence from bare verbs for the future versus non-future split in Creoles

Abstract Vincentian Creole makes a future/non-future temporal distinction on the basis of the categorisation proposed in several studies, according to which languages combining present and future make a past/non-past distinction and those using the same form for past and present make a future/non-future tense opposition. In Vincentian Creole examples of absolute tense, underspecified (or unmarked) predicates do not generally obtain a future interpretation: only readings in the past tense (for dynamic predicates) or the present (for non-dynamic predicates) are available. Thus, predicates in the future tense are unambiguous regardless of the lexical aspect of these predicates, unlike the context of past and present tense interpretations which I explored in my previous column. Evidence from other English-related creoles supports this claim.

A categorisation solution to the incompleteness puzzle in Mandarin

Abstract This paper means to re-examine the source of incompleteness for a clause with a bare verb as predicate and no other markings in Mandarin. I propose that the reason comes from the need for categorial labels at the syntax-semantic interface to produce a clear interpretation. Since there are no grammatical affixes marking category V available in Mandarin, it has to make use of functional morphemes which shape their complement space categorially. The result is that overt (or at least inferable) morphemes from the extended projections of VP must occur to assign category V for the predicate phrase, while a root needs merge with degree morphemes to be a predicate adjective. The analysis shows that some issues traditionally related to finiteness may have a pure syntactic account.

Denominal conversion verbs and the ‘verb + it’ construction in English

In English, a number of verbs enter a noteworthy, though understudied, combination with a morpheme it, which evidently lacks a referential function. Among these verbs, there are quite a few which were formed from nouns by means of conversion (e.g. to bus it, to au pair it, to verse it, to newspaper it). While some authors assume that the expletive morpheme it in direct-object position functions to enhance a verb’s transitivity, the most recent diachronic study has shown that its influence on transitivity is rather marginal. If transitivization is not the driving force behind the use of the ‘verb + it’ construction, the question as to other functions arises. The aim of this article is to present a new proposal according to which the expletive element is primarily (though not exclusively) an aspectual marker, which, in contrast to the bare verb, expresses telicity (e.g. to bus vs. to bus it). In this function, this element provides the verb it complements with a temporal endpoint. Proceeding from a distinction between (a)telicity and (un)boundedness drawn in the pertinent literature, it will be shown that this endpoint may or may not actually be reached. The aspectual function of the expletive element it is assumed here to co-exist with other functions identified in the few previous works and in the present study. These functions, which are independent of telicity, comprise the expression of necessity, the intensification of activities, the preservation of the verse metre especially in literary texts, and the support of the verbal status of innovative or weakly established denominal conversion verbs.

Characterization of agrammatism in Tagalog: Evidence from narrative spontaneous speech

ABSTRACT Background Agrammatism in agglutinative languages exhibits preservation of verb morphology due to their rich morphological paradigms. Tagalog, an agglutinative language mainly spoken in the Philippines, remains uncharacterized in agrammatism yet holds potential for future research that can challenge existing theories and help advance novel ones. Aims The purpose of this study is to quantify and describe the characteristics of agrammatism in Tagalog in narrative spontaneous speech, to examine whether these patterns resemble those reported in other agglutinative languages, and to compare the results obtained to those emerging in literature for non-agglutinative languages. Methods & Procedures Narrative spontaneous speech was elicited from 10 individuals with non-fluent Broca’s aphasia and 12 matched controls. A series of parameters, both conventional and language-specific measures, were selected for analyses. Outcomes & Results Tagalog-speaking individuals with agrammatism exhibited slow and fragmented speech, with a strong preference for minor and simple constructions resulting to decrease in overall grammaticality and sentence complexity. Verb deficits were also found specifically in verbal predication, lexical diversity, and finiteness. There is a prevalent use of bare verb forms, consequently resulting to the decline of verb finiteness and inflections. Code-mixing is found to be extremely variable and statistically non-prominent between groups but patterns may be attributed to personal and sociolinguistic factors. Conclusion Patterns of agrammatism in Tagalog majorly mirror the trends reported in other agglutinative and non-agglutinative languages. Where Tagalog agrammatism departs from other agglutinative languages is the increased use of bare verbs as opposed to the obligatory inflected forms. Although still many questions are unresolved, Tagalog offers an interesting testing ground for variety of topics and issues in agrammatic aphasia.

Is the Suppliance of L2 Inflectional Morphology Subject to Covert Contrasts? An Analysis of the Production of L2 English Third Person Singular Agreement by L1 Bengali Speakers

The cause(s) of missing inflectional morphology in obligatory contexts by adult speakers of second language (L2) English is subject to ongoing discussion. Whatever the specific theory, however, the apparent asymmetrical production of the morpheme ‘-s’ in the marking of number on plural nouns versus that on third person singular agreement has to be accounted for. This study adopts the theoretical approach put forward by the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis, whereby the prosodic representation of inflectional morphology in the first language (L1) can, to some extent, account for differences in the suppliance of inflectional morphology in L2 English within and across L1s. It is in this context that the production of third person singular agreement, and, for contrastive purposes, number on plural nouns, by L1 Bengali speakers of L2 English, is considered in relation to available prosodic representation in the L1, as well as against phonological processes attested in L1 acquisition. More specifically, covert contrasts. An inspection of spectrograms from instances of the omission of inflection by L1 Bengali speakers of L2 English at Beginner to Intermediate proficiency levels does not, however, indicate that learners are covertly supplying agreement on the third person singular (or plural number on nouns). This finding does not necessarily rule out the occurrence of covert contrasts in L2 production of inflectional morphology; alternative techniques may detect a systematic difference between bare verbs and non-audible (to the listener) inflection.

Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents

Abstract Distinct from English, Mandarin verbs are not inflected to encode Past Tense, but perfective aspect is typically marked by aspectual markers -le and -guo. Moreover, resultative verb compounds are often viewed as accomplishment verbs, denoting telicity of an event. This study attempts to examine whether such linguistic properties transfer to the acquisition of English. We tested 22 English learning Chinese adolescents in two experiments, respectively using a Story Restatements Task and an Elicited Production Task. Overall, the experiments generated three major findings. First, the participants marked irregular verbs 13 % higher than regular ones. Second, the participants used bare verbs to express English Past Tense 12 % of the situations. Third, the participants adopted Mandarin-like RVCs to denote English Past Tense 10 % of the cases. Taken together, the findings indicate that besides morphophonological transfer, English learning Chinese adolescents adopt Mandarin word-formation rules to encode English Past Tense, which is new evidence of cross-linguistic transfer. We discuss the implications of our findings.

Desire Predicates in Presence and Absence of the Light Verbs: Addressing their Embedded Clausal Structure in Bangla

The current study focuses on an intriguing dichotomy seen in the Bangla (Bengali: Indo-Aryan) language, which centers on the desire predicates expressed by the term itʃtʃʰe ‘desire’. In the Bangla language, the desire predicate itʃtʃʰe can be used independently or in conjunction with the light verb hɔwa ‘happen’ to form the NV conjunct itʃtʃʰe hɔwa, indicating the occurrence of the desire. According to the scholarly works of Dasgupta (1989), Chatterjee (2014), and Butt (2010) the Bangla language exhibits the presence of composite verb formations, whereby a nonverb is combined with a verb. These formations involve the occurrence of a light verb with a noun, adjective, or adposition. The primary focus of this study will be on the differentiation between the bare verb itʃtʃʰe ‘desire’ and its usage in conjunction with the light verb forming itʃtʃʰe hɔwa. The distinction between them pertains to their embeddability qualities, namely the clausal complements they choose.

Predicate doubling in Romanian

The current paper analyzes Romanian predicate doubling, a construction that features topicalization of a non-finite form, a supine, that surfaces either as a bare verb or as a vP complete with arguments and adjuncts and is immediately followed by a clausal structure whose fully inflected tensed verb is the lexical copy of the supine. Predicate doubling occurs in a large variety of languages and has been used in syntactic research to support various theoretical accounts such the multiple copy theory of movement developed in Nunes (2004) or late adjunction of the arguments of the fronted predicate (Landau 2007), to name just a few. , drawing upon the framework implemented in Mu information structure and the way in which discourse develops by answering relevant questions under discussion.

Acquisition of grammatical aspect by Mandarin-speaking preschool children with autism spectrum disorder.

Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties producing aspect markers. The difficulties were explained in terms of pragmatic deficits since these children demonstrated strength in the comprehension of aspect markers using the Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL) task. To verify whether this dissociation between production and comprehension could be replicated using another technique to the IPL, and if all children with ASD show difficulties in the production of aspect markers. A total of 34 children with ASD without cognitive delay, half with language impairment (ALI; mean age = 61.25 months old) and half with normal language (ALN, mean age = 61.52 months old), as well as 17 age-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age = 61.38 months old) participated in a sentence-picture-matching task and a priming picture-description task to investigate their comprehension and production of Mandarin aspect markers zai-, -le and -zhe. In the comprehension task, children in the ALN group performed similarly to their TD peers, but those in the ALI group were less accurate on zai- and -le than TD children; children in all groups received higher accuracy when zai- was combined with Activity rather than Accomplishment verbs, and those in the ALI group was also more accurate when -le occurred with Achievement verbs, in contrast to Activity verbs. In the production task, children in the ALI group produced fewer targets and more irrelevant sentences with zai- than their TD peers, and they tended to produce bare verbs for -le and -zhe than TD children; children in all groups tended to combine zai- with Activity verbs, and those in the ALN group also tended to combine -le with Achievement verbs. The comprehension and production of Mandarin aspect markers by children with ASD are linked to general language abilities, and interactions between lexical and grammatical aspect. Patterns of performance are similar to those of TD peers only for the subgroup with spared global language, while pragmatic deficits are pervasive throughout the spectrum. Therefore, training on formal language, with a specific emphasis on aspectual rather than pragmatic abilities, may be more effective at enhancing the production of aspect markers. What is already known on this subject Mandarin-speaking children with ASD have difficulties producing aspect markers but demonstrate strengths in aspectual comprehension via the IPL task. Therefore, it has been proposed that their 'specific' difficulties in aspectual production should be ascribed to their pragmatic deficits. However, pragmatic deficits are highly pervasive in children with ASD while only a subgroup of children with ASD who are impaired in language development (children with ALI) show difficulties in producing tense/aspect morphology. Pursuing this reasoning, pragmatic deficits might not be the critical factor impacting the performance of children with ASD in aspectual production. What this study adds Children with ASD were divided into one group with ALI and the other with normal language (ALN). Results of a sentence-picture-matching and a priming picture-description task illustrated that both groups preserved the comprehension of Mandarin aspect markers zai-, -le and -zhe. However, children with ALI performed worse than age-matched TD children, while children with ALN demonstrated similar performance to TD children in aspectual production. These findings, coupled with the fact that pragmatic challenges affect individuals throughout the spectrum, suggest that general language abilities rather than pragmatics better explain the performance of children with ASD on aspectual production. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Since general language abilities rather than pragmatic deficits of children with ASD determine their performance on the production of aspect markers, direct training on the use of aspect markers or more global language therapy could benefit children with ASD in the production of aspect markers.

The Uniqueness of Imperative Construction in the Balinese Language

This study describes the morphosyntax of imperative sentences in the Balinese language. From the morphological approach, the uniqueness of the imperative in Balinese can be seen when compared to some other languages. This study aims to clarify the typology of this matter. Imperative sentences show similarities and distinctions between certain languages. In many languages, imperative sentences commonly use base verbs or bare verbs with or without a second-person subject. However, imperative sentences in Balinese use verbs with different affixes depending on the category. This study discusses the morphological form of the imperative verb, the structure of the imperative, and examples of sentences that can be used in the imperative. We believe that this morphosyntax approach can best explain the uniqueness of the imperative found in Balinese. This study is unlike any previous studies done on the same topic, and it aims to give a comprehensive and conclusive view of the imperative construction in Balinese.

Use of Aspect Markers by Mandarin-speaking Children with High-Functioning Autism Plus Language Impairment and Children with Developmental Language Disorder

IntroductionThis study investigates the comprehension and production of four typical Mandarin aspect markers zai-, -le, -zhe, and -guo by preschool children with high functioning autism plus language impairment (HFA-LI) and those with developmental language disorder (DLD), by comparing them with typically developing age-matched (TDA) children. MethodsTwenty children with HFA-LI (M/F: 18/2; mean age: 5.20), 20 with DLD (M/F: 11/9; mean age: 5.25), and 20 TDA children (M/F:14/6; mean age:5.27) completed a picture-choice task and priming picture-description task. The results were analyzed using non-parametric methods. ResultsIn the comprehension task, the HFA-LI and DLD groups achieved lower accuracy than the TDA group on zai-, -le, and -guo. The comprehension of aspect markers in the HFA-LI and DLD groups was affected by lexical aspect. In the production task, the HFA-LI and DLD groups produced fewer sentences with the target aspect marker for all four aspect markers than the TDA group. However, they produced more sentences with bare verb forms for zai- and -guo than the TDA group. Furthermore, all three groups tended to combine aspect markers with their semantically inherent types of verbs (e.g, zai-+Activity verbs). The HFA-LI group produced more sentences irrelevant to the task than the other two groups for -zhe and -guo, and some children in the HFA-LI group produced ungrammatical sentences in which both the progressive zai- and perfective -le were used. ConclusionsChildren with HFA-LI and DLD demonstrate similarities in the comprehension and production of Mandarin aspect markers, given their poor comprehension of the aspect markers zai-, -le and -guo, and poor production of all four aspect markers compared to their TDA peers. Their performance was also impacted by lexical aspect.

Root infinitives in Jamaican Creole

This paper addresses the question of the existence and manifestation of Root Infinitives (RIs) in the acquisition of a creole language, Jamaican Creole (JC). It examines JC children’s omission of progressive and prospective aspectual markers in the clausal map in order to determine if early JC includes a root infinitive (RI) stage. Non-target-consistent bare verb structures in child JC are shown to have distributional properties which have been claimed to be hallmarks of RIs: in particular, they occur in declaratives (and in yes-no questions), but not in wh-questions, and they typically co-occur with null subjects, whereas overt subjects are required in clauses with fully specified aspectual markers. We argue that these properties are expected under a truncation approach (Rizzi 1993/4; De Lisser et al. 2016), rather than other approaches to RI. Additionally, truncation is compared to the “growing trees” approach introduced in Friedmann, Belletti and Rizzi (this volume), according to which learners’ productions start with minimal structures in a bottom up fashion, and then higher zones get added on top of the structure as development proceeds, following the hierarchical organization uncovered by cartographic work. We conclude that these approaches are compatible, and possibly reflect different stages in language development.

Subjuntivo en oraciones independientes

AbstractIn this paper, three cases of grammatical variation in Spanish are studied in which a subjunctive verb alternates with another verbal mood in a main clause: optative main sentences with a bare subjunctive verb (alternating with optative main sentences introduced by a conjunction or an adverb); declarative and interrogative sentences with a subjunctive verb (alternating with a conditional verb); and «retrospective imperative» sentences (where the subjunctive mood alternates with a perfect infinitive). It is proposed that, in the varieties where these main clauses with a subjunctive verb are possible, the subjunctive mood has a performative value and satisfies the illocutionary properties in Force associated with sentential modality. The performative value of subjunctive is associated with anirrealismodal base, which is provided by the lexical meaning of a modal verb or by the past perfect temporal anchoring of tense. The proposal shows that the same conditions constraint the three constructions under study and explains the coincidence between the varieties that allow the performative subjunctive (or use it more frequently).

Do Creoles conform to typological patterns? Habitual marking in Palenquero

AbstractIt is widely debated whether creole languages form a typological class; however, crosslinguistic generalizations from functional typology are seldom tested in creoles. Typological studies report a strong crosslinguistic tendency for asymmetries in habitual grammatical expressions across the present and past temporal reference domains (Bybee, 1994:245–8; Bybee, Perkins, & Pagliuca, 1994:151–60). This study analyzes two linguistic variants, preverbal asé and zero, which compete for habitual marking in Palenquero Creole (Colombia). I ask here: To what degree does the linguistic patterning of these forms conform to the crosslinguistic tendency? Results show that, despite Palenquero having widely cited creole features (e.g., preverbal markers and bare verb stems), the asymmetrical expression, distribution, and relative ordering of forms in the variable contexts closely align with crosslinguistic predictions for habituals, thus giving convincing evidence of typological markedness and not a Creole Prototype.

Errors and accuracy in the production of the English progressive by Korean elementary and middle school students

This study examines Korean EFL learners’ systematic production of errors and accurate responses. A total of one hundred and one participants (aged between 11 and 13) completed a picture elicitation task designed for the English progressive. The method of Error Analysis was employed to analyze the written production. The findings indicated that Korean learners produced intralingual errors most frequently. The most common errors involved the use of bare verbs without tense and aspectual marking (e.g., Dance, She dance). The next most frequent errors involved the use of be followed by a bare verb (e.g., She is dance). Omission of be alone was rare in the current study (e.g., She dancing). The middle school student group performed better than the elementary group (50% accuracy versus 8.82%). The difference can be attributed to the input frequency and classroom practices. Pedagogical implications of the results are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of English teaching and the necessity of explicit and implicit error corrections and grammatical instructions.

Typological Differences between English and Chinese Multi-verb Constructions

English and Chinese are different in the composition of Multi-verb Constructions (MVCs), which refer to a series of verbs appearing in a mono-clause, without pauses or conjunctions. English MVCs contain a finite verb which inflects with tense, combined with non-finite forms (e.g., The boss encouraged Jerry to attend the meeting). Chinese MVCs are in the form of bare verbs or verbs with aspectual morphemes. From the perspective of finiteness, this article analyzes the typological differences of morphological finiteness in English and semantic finiteness in Chinese.

The Prospective Construction in Q’eqchi’

This paper examines one specific syntactic construction in Q’eqchi’ (Mayan, K’ichean group). This construction involves a bare intransitive verb stem (with the suffix -k/-Vk that is optional in mos...

THE CORE-OBLIQUE DISTINCTION IN SOME AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES OF INDONESIA AND BEYOND

This paper explores the nature of core-oblique distinctions in some Austronesian languages of Indonesia, focusing on the intermediate status between core and oblique categories. It proposes a core index, a novel method to determine the core status of an argument. Core index evidence shows that there is a cline running from syntactically core to non-core (oblique), and that the degree of coreness in Indonesian and Balinese shows striking parallelism. The proposed core-index-based analysis allows us to claim syntactic transitivity with confidence and to resolve successfully the controversial transitivity problem of the Indonesian bare verb construction. The analysis advances our understanding of the nature of semi-core arguments, syntactic transitivity, symmetricality of voice system, and alternative argument realisations, not only in Indonesian and Balinese, but also in other typologically different Austronesian languages of central and eastern Indonesia and beyond. Importantly, the core-index study also provides a means for cross-linguistic comparative analysis of the unusual alternative pattern of applicativisation whereby no core promotion is involved. The paper also discusses how the gradient nature of the core-oblique distinction, particularly semi-coreness of arguments, poses a challenge for any theory that posits discrete classes of relations.

Morphological variability in L2 Italian

Abstract Key accounts of morphological variability in L2 acquisition posit either deficits in the representation of abstract morphosyntactic features or the mapping between morpho-phonological forms and syntactic features due to computational limitations. This study extends previous research to L2 Italian, a richly inflected language. The production and grammatical intuitions of suppletive and affixal verb inflection were elicited from a cross-section of instructed adult L2 learners with L1 Spanish and L1 English. Although a clear production-intuition gap was found, supporting computational views, a strong regularity in the degree of variability across test conditions, L1s, and proficiency levels was also attested, supporting representational accounts. The findings suggest morphological development in L2 Italian is consistent with structure-building models that assume no L1 transfer of functional features. Imperative verb forms in L2 Italian are proposed as defaults equivalent to the bare verb forms of L2 English and non-finite defaults of L2 French and German.

How strong is the ban on non-finite verbs in V2? Evidence from early second language learners of German with and without SLI

Abstract Using the standardized test LiSe-DaZ across four test rounds, we collected elicited production data from 22 typically developing early second language learners (eL2 TD) of German (mean age at T1: 3;7) and 11 older eL2 children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (mean age at T1: 7;1). Focusing on the relation between verb placement and verbal inflectional morphology two questions were addressed: Do eL2 children obey the ban on non-finite verbs in verb-second position (V2) in German, and do eL2 SLI children differ from their eL2 TD peers in their morpho-syntactic behavior? This is the first study on this issue to systematically differentiate between V2 and verb-final position (Vf) and between bare verb forms and infinitives, based on a large sample of elicited production data. Results show that from the first test round onwards verbal inflectional morphology and verb placement were strongly related in the TD and the SLI group. Bare verb forms occurred in V2 only and are argued to be finite; en-infinitives were restricted to Vf. We conclude that a) the restrictions for morphological markings are inextricably tied to specific syntactic positions, b) that this knowledge is still accessible when L2 acquisition starts around age 3, and c) that the ban on non-finite verbs in V2 is invulnerable in eL2 TD and in SLI, indicating that SLI is matter of severe delay.