Sentential Complements Research Articles

Sentential complements and false belief understanding in Chinese Mandarin-speaking preschoolers: A training study

We conducted a training study to better understand how Chinese Mandarin-speaking preschoolers’ facility with sentential complement grammatical constructions affects performance on false belief tasks. Eighty-four Mandarin-speaking Chinese 3–4-year-olds who were initially unsuccessful on false belief tasks were randomly assigned to four training conditions. Two involved training on sentential complement structures, one involved training on understanding of false representations, and one was a control condition that involved no specific training. Participants who received training on sentential complements with communication verbs performed significantly better on false belief posttests than those in the control group. Children in the false representation training group did not show improvement in the sentential complement tests. The findings suggest facility with sentential complement grammatical structures can promote false belief reasoning. However, explicit false belief understanding can emerge even when children have little competence with sentential complement constructions.

Effects of verb bias and syntactic ambiguity on reading in people with aphasia

Background: The Lexical Bias Hypothesis claims that people with aphasia (PWA) have difficulty understanding sentences when the verb’s argument structure bias conflicts with the sentence structure. This hypothesis can account for comprehension deficits that affect simple sentences, but the role of verb bias has not been clearly demonstrated in temporarily ambiguous sentences.Aims: This study examined how verb bias affects comprehension of temporarily ambiguous and unambiguous sentences using self-paced reading.Methods & Procedures: PWA and controls read sentences that contained sentential complements (e.g., The talented photographer accepted (that) the fire could not have been prevented). The main verb was biased to take a direct object (e.g., accepted) or a sentential complement (e.g., admitted). In addition, the sentential complement was either introduced by the complementiser that (i.e., unambiguous) or unmarked (i.e., ambiguous).Results: The reading times of PWA were affected more by verb bias than by the presence of the complementiser, whereas the control group’s reading times were more affected by the presence or absence of the complementiser.Conclusions: The results were generally consistent with the Lexical Bias Hypothesis, and showed that a mismatch between verb bias and sentence structure affected the processing of unambiguous and temporarily ambiguous sentences in PWA.

Propositions and higher-order attitude attributions

An important objection to sententialist theories of attitude reports is that they cannot accommodate the principle that one cannot know that someone believes that p without knowing what it is that he believes. This paper argues that a parallel problem arises for propositionalist accounts that has gone largely unnoticed, and that, furthermore, the usual resources for the propositionalist do not afford an adequate solution. While non-standard solutions are available for the propositionalist, it turns out that there are parallel solutions that are available for the sententialist. Since the difficulties raised seem to show that the mechanism by which sentential complements serve to inform us about attitudes and about sentence meaning does not depend on their referring to propositions, this casts doubt on whether talk of propositions should retain a significant theoretical role in the enterprise of understanding thought, language and communication.

More onKena‐passives in Singapore English

ABSTRACTIn the so‐calledkena‐passive construction in Singapore English (Bao and Wee), the morphosyntactic realization of the passive feature of irregular verbs is optional (John kena caught/?catch) in contrast to the obligatory realization of the same feature within the English‐derivedbe‐passive (John was caught/*catch). We propose that this asymmetry follows from the hybrid syntactic structures of thekena‐passive construction. Specifically, we argue that the verbkenaallows not only the standard passive structure of the type discussed by Bao and Wee but also the active structure which embeds a sentential complement comprised ofproand the active verb. This analysis is supported by a variety of arguments regarding thekena‐active complement structure independently available in Singapore English (Yap and Lim) as well as Chinese (Feng; Huang) and Baba Malay (Ansaldo and Matthews), which have been hypothesized in the literature as the two major substrate languages of Singapore English.

Language and false belief in Korean-speaking and English-speaking children

The link between language and false belief (FB) understanding has been the focus of considerable debate regarding which language component (semantics, general language, or complementation) is necessary for FB development. We examined the relative roles of complementation and receptive vocabulary in FB development in Korean-speaking and English-speaking children. FB understanding, memory for complements involving the verbs think, say and want, and receptive vocabulary were measured at three time points in 59 Korean-speaking children and 72 English-speaking children. A multi-level growth model indicated that the development of receptive vocabulary and separately the development of think understanding uniquely predicted the development of FB understanding. Neither say nor want was associated with FB understanding. The same pattern was found for Korean- and English-speaking children. The results provide evidence for the role of general language in FB understanding and against the unique role of sentential complementation.

Labelling Improves False Belief Understanding. A Training Study

A total of 104 children aged between 41 and 47 months were selected to study the relationship between language and false belief understanding. Participants were assigned to four different training conditions: discourse, labelling, control (all with deceptive objects), and sentential complements (involving non-deceptive objects). Post-test results showed an improvement in children's false belief understanding in the discourse and the labelling conditions, but not in the sentential complements with non-deceptive objects or the control group. Furthermore, the most remarkable improvement in false belief understanding occurred in the labelling group. These results suggest that some types of linguistic experience promote the development of false belief understanding, provided that differing perspectives are confronted.

Le lingála dans l’enseignement des sciences dans les écoles de Kinshasa. Une approche socioterminologique

In most African countries, former colonial languages are still used as languages of instruction in the school system, especially for science courses in secondary schools and in universities, although, ironically, proficiency in former colonial languages is dwindling. At the same time, however, African languages lack in specialized terminology to accommodate teaching. Empowering African languages is therefore becoming urgent, so that teachers can use them efficiently as languages of instruction. My PhD work strives to provide a solution to that problem by finding tools for the empowerment of the vocabulary and scientific discourse of Lingála, as well as its validation and diffusion among teachers and students of Kinshasa. This is why my PhD work aims at analyzing morpho-semantics of derivatives (verbs, deverbal nouns, nominals), since in Bantu languages, as widely established, derivation and compounding are very productive. I have systematically extracted general meanings from each combination of affixes (nominal prefix-verbal extension-final vowel). While doing so, I have created a derivative generator, i.e. a table where, by replacing a certain verbal stem, a list of nouns and verbs candidates is generated, alongside a brief definition allowing a terminologist to link a certain term to a certain scientific concept the specific definition of which best fits the general definition. The ultimate goal is the coinage of scientific terms. Creating specialty terms is useful, but fining those terms in a discourse also needs characterization of the language syntax requirements and limits. Therefore, I have then moved on to analyzing and describing noun phrases and verb phrases structures. Following that, I have then worked on verifying if the terms coined really fit in natural Lingála language, through tests designed to identify and distinguish verb and sentence complements. Having theorized the morpho-semantics and the syntax of Lingála, I have applied it in writing chemistry text in Lingála. I have conducted all of my PhD work in Lingála, which means I have conceived and written my PhD work in Lingála. Doing so has also allowed me to coin linguistics terms and discourse in Lingála.

De zin die wij merken dat ook voor linguïstische problemen zorgt

A recent social media upheaval on the grammaticality of a certain sentence from a popular song written on the occasion of the inauguration of the new Dutch king turns into an interesting linguistic discussion. The sentence appears to involve the extraction of a relative subject pronoun from a seemingly factive sentential complement, and in line with facts from other languages (a.o. whom in English), the relative subject pronoun seems to be interpreted by native speakers as an object, which is a problem for current syntactic theories.

Copy Raising Construction in English: A Usage-based Perspective

In accounting for the so-called copy raising (CR) in English, the movement perspective has assumed that the embedded subject of the CR verb`s sentential complement is raised to the matrix subject, leaving behind its pronominal copy. This kind of movement-based analysis raises both empirical and analytical issues, when considering variations in the pronominal copy constraint. This paper investigates the actual uses of the construction, using online-available corpora. Based on this corpus search, we classify two different types of copy raising predicates (genuine and perception), and discuss their grammatical properties in detail. We suggest that the simple copying rule couched upon movement operations is not enough to capture great variations in the uses of the construction, and show that interpretive constraints, e.g., perceptual characterization condition, play an important role in licensing the construction.

Sentential Complementation in Standard English

Sentential Complementation in Standard English

Hablando de emociones fingidas: la relación entre la sintaxis de la complementación y la comprensión de la simulación emocional

Title: Talking about pretend emotions: the relation between the syntax of complementation and the understanding of emotional simulation Abstract: This work aims at investigating the relationship between the use of the syntax of complementation and children's ability to understand emo- tional simulation. A total of 337 children from four to twelve years of age were administered four tasks in which the characters simulated an emotion, either to play or to deceive an observer. Participants were asked both about the external and the internal emotion of the protagonist, and also about the beliefs of the observer. Children were requested to justify their responses. Children's ability to understand simulated emotions and their use of differ- ent types of sentential complement sentences were analysed. The results uncovered a significant contingency between children's understanding of simulated emotions and their use of sentential complement sentences with cognitive or communicative verbs. However, the use of this type of sen- tences was not found necessary or sufficient for children to understand emotional simulation. The extent of the relationship between the under- standing of emotional simulation and the use of sentential complement sentences is discussed.

Awareness of verb subcategorization probabilities with polysemous verbs: The second language situation

Different meanings of a verb are associated with different argument structures (subcategorization), which in this study are sentential complements (SC) and direct object (DO) arguments. Interaction between verbal meaning and argument structure is investigated at the production level using polysemous verbs in the absence (Norming Experiment) and presence of sense-promoting context (Main Experiment) with participants that are university students and teachers of English. Next, the main experiment is replicated in the participants' native language to look for L1 effects on results. Speakers of English as L2, whether students or teachers, were found to be capable of making sense-contingent verb subcategorization distinctions between DO and SC arguments following priming context, with DO context making the stronger contribution to DO-biased verb meanings. Unlike native speakers of English, non-native participants showed a greater tendency to use SC arguments irrespective of verb bias requirement and priming context. When the study was replicated in the participants' own language, native-like preferences for SC and DO subcategorization frames were observed, which led the researcher to conclude that the dominance of SC arguments and the underuse of DO arguments in participants' L2 productions were not governed by influences from their L1. Discussion of the implications of these results is extended to language learning classroom contexts.

Single and Multiple Sluicing in Persian

This article discusses the syntax and LF properties of the phenomenon of sluicing as ellipsis of the sentential complement to an interrogative complementizer hosting a wh-phrase in Persian. The main purpose of this paper is to explore sluicing in Persian as a real wh-in-situe language that displays optional wh-movement, with a special focus on multiple sluicing. Built on focus movement analysis rather than wh-movement, we examined the movement-plus-deletion approach and the role of focus fronting in moving the remnant out of the deleted constituent in Persian sluicing to a position where it can be stranded. Finally, we also looked into possibility of non-interrogative sluicing and non-d-linked wh words and briefly put forward our proposition about wh the hell phrases in Persian.

The Syntactic Structure of the VP in Kihema

The Verb Phrase consists of a predicate and argument(s). Predicates attribute to individuals or things relations, actions and so on whereas arguments identify individuals, things, etc. The number of arguments, usually NPs, depends on the idiosyncratic property of the verb involved, that is, the verb’s inherent lexico-semantic properties or valencies. Valencies reflect a language-specific way of conceptualizing the class or processes denoted by a given verb. This article provides an account of the syntactic properties of arguments that appear within the VP in Kihema, a Bantu language spoken in the north-eastern province of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Kihema data show that Kihema is, like English and many Bantu languages, a VO-language in that, on the surface, objects, prepositional phrases, sentential complements, etc. follow the verb. Furthermore, the data show that Kihema is a symmetrical object type language in that all post-verbal NPs are true direct (or, primary) objects. This means that in Kihema multiple post-verbal NPs may display ‘primary object’ syntactic properties. A primary object is one that shows syntactic properties of cliticization, passivizability, extractability (relativizability), etc. For example, cliticization, or object marking, takes place when primary objects are replaced by a corresponding clitic pronoun infix in the verbal complex, or “Object Clitic Pronoun” (OCP), while passivizability allows the object of an active sentence to become the subject of the corresponding passive sentence, and the subject optionally becomes the oblique PP introduced by the preposition na (the so-called by-phrase). In Kihema, the passive suffix w- is attached to the verb. Finally, relativization means that an empty operator is able to move from object position to SpecCP of the relative clause.

Language, Cognitive Flexibility, and Explicit False Belief Understanding: Longitudinal Analysis in Typical Development and Specific Language Impairment

The hypothesis that language plays a role in theory-of-mind (ToM) development is supported by a number of lines of evidence (e.g., H. Lohmann & M. Tomasello, 2003). The current study sought to further investigate the relations between maternal language input, memory for false sentential complements, cognitive flexibility, and the development of explicit false belief understanding in 91 English-speaking typically developing children (M age = 61.3 months) and 30 children with specific language impairment (M age = 63.0 months). Concurrent and longitudinal findings converge in supporting a model in which maternal language input predicts the child's memory for false complements, which predicts cognitive flexibility, which in turn predicts explicit false belief understanding.

Processing Temporary Syntactic Ambiguity: The Effect of Contextual Bias

This paper reports two experiments using sentences with a temporary ambiguity between a direct object and a sentence complement analysis that is resolved toward the normally preferred direct object analysis. Postverbal noun phrases in these sentences could be ambiguously attached as either a direct object or the subject of a sentence complement, whereas in unambiguous versions of the sentences the subcategorization of the verb forced the direct object interpretation. Participants read these sentences in relatively long paragraph contexts, where the context supported the direct object analysis ("preferred"), supported the sentence complement analysis ("unpreferred"), or provided conflicting evidence about both analyses ("conflicting"). Self-paced reading times for ambiguous postverbal noun phrases were almost equivalent to the reading times of their unambiguous counterparts, even in unpreferred and conflicted context conditions. However, time to read a following region, which forced the direct object interpretation, was affected by the interaction of verb subcategorization ambiguity and contextual support. The full pattern of results do not fit well with either an unelaborated single-analysis ("garden path") model or a competitive constraint-satisfaction model, but are consistent with a race model in which multiple factors affect the speed of constructing a single initial analysis.

Estudo sobre aquisição de complementação sentencial em PB: Traços semânticos de modalidade na aquisição de primeira língua

Este artigo apresenta resultados parciais sobre os padrões de complementação sentencial, tanto as completivas finitas (indicativo e subjuntivo) quanto as não finitas (especificamente o infinitivo), na aquisição do Português Brasileiro. Tomamos como base a Teoria de Princípios e Parâmetros (Cf. CHOMSKY, 1981) e partimos da hipótese de que a oposição Realis/Irrealis é marcada por distintos padrões de complementação, ou seja, o infinitivo e o indicativo, por serem adquiridos antes do subjuntivo, tendem a expressar os traços [+- realis]. Nesse sentido, o marcador morfológico de infinitivo assume o traço [- realis] (que será posteriormente assumido pelo subjuntivo) e o indicativo, em orações finitas, expressa o traço [+ realis]. Para tanto, tomamos como base a Hipótese da Oposição Semântica, segundo a qual há uma hierarquia semântica no que se refere aos modos verbais no período da aquisição. Foram analisados dados de três crianças, duas pertencentes ao CEALL, do Rio Grande do Sul, com idade entre 1;08 e 3;07 e uma pertencente ao CEDAE, da UNICAMP, com idade entre 1;0 e 3;02.

The effect of syntax on reading in neglect dyslexia

Individuals with text-based neglect dyslexia omit words on the neglected side of the sentence or text, usually on the left side. This study tested whether the syntactic structure of the target sentence affects reading in this type of neglect dyslexia. Because Hebrew is read from right to left, it enables testing whether the beginning of the sentence and its syntactic properties determine if the final, leftmost, constituent is omitted or not. The participants were 7 Hebrew-speaking individuals with acquired left text-based neglect dyslexia, without syntactic impairments. Each participant read 310 sentences, in which we compared 5 types of minimal pairs of sentences that differed in the obligatoriness of the final (left) constituent. Complements were compared with adjuncts, obligatory pronouns were compared with optional resumptive pronouns, and the object of a past tense verb was compared with the object of a present tense verb, which can also be taken to be an adjective, which does not require an object. Questions that require a verb were compared with questions that can appear without a verb, and clauses that serve as sentential complements of a verb were compared with coordinated clauses, which are not required by the verb. In addition, we compared the reading of noun sequences to the reading of meaningful sentences, and assessed the neglect point in reading 2 texts. The results clearly indicated that the syntactic knowledge of the readers with neglect dyslexia modulated their sentence reading. They tended to keep on reading as long as the syntactic and lexical-syntactic requirements of the sentence had not been met. In 4 of the conditions twice as many omissions occurred when the final constituent was optional than when it was obligatory. Text reading was also guided by a search for a “happy end” that does not violate syntactic or semantic requirements. Thus, the syntactic structure of the target sentence modulates reading and neglect errors in text-based neglect dyslexia, suggesting that the best stimuli to diagnose mild text-based neglect dyslexia are sentences in which the leftmost constituent is optional, and not required by syntax. Another finding of this study is dissociation between neglect dyslexia at the text and at the word levels. Two of the participants had neglect dyslexia at the text level, manifested in omissions of words on the left side of text, without neglect dyslexia at the word level (namely, without omissions, substitutions, or additions of letters on the left side of words).

A Minimalist Interpretation of In Seok Yang's Ideas

This paper discusses the main points of In?Seok Yang’s ground-breaking work, Korean Syntax(1972), which can be viewed as an monumental work in Korean syntax within the early Chomskyan framework, and evaluates its significance within the recent minimalist theory. As it turns out, Yang’s arguments about Multiple Case Constructions can be re?illuminated as a cartographic structures of Specs within IP, similar to the cartographic structures recently suggested by Rizzi(1997, 2004). Other important aspects of Yang’s theory concern sentential complementation constructions, in which he argued for clausal reduction and verbal compounding, and some of which provide significant dilemma in modern GB or minimalist frameworks. Some other Korean constructions involving so?called Equi?subject constructions offer other dilemmas, but some of them may in fact be shown to support little υ analysis within recent minimalist framework.

Linguistic Practice and False-belief Tasks

Jill de Villiers has argued that children's mastery of sentential complements plays a crucial role in enabling them to succeed at false-belief tasks. Josef Perner has disputed that and has argued that mastery of false-belief tasks requires an understanding of the multiplicity of perspectives. This paper attempts to resolve the debate by explicating attributions of desires and beliefs as extensions of the linguistic practices of making commands and assertions, respectively. In terms of these linguistic practices one can explain why desire-talk will precede belief-talk and why even older children will have difficulty attributing incompatible desires.