Constructions In Other Languages Research Articles

A collostructional approach to Japanese noun-modifying clause construction use and acquisition: a learner corpus study

Abstract Japanese features a general noun-modifying clause construction (NMCC) with a more versatile range of semantic and pragmatic interpretations than equivalent constructions in other languages. Motivated by the learning challenge NMCCs pose to Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) learners, this article examines speech data from the International Corpus of Japanese as a Second Language (I-JAS) to compare learner use of NMCCs against a large L1 Japanese corpus. Instances of the construction from both corpora were analyzed to identify high-frequency part-of-speech categories and subcategories in the modifying clause predicate and head noun slots. A simple collexeme analysis was then employed to identify strongly attracted and repelled lexical items among those identified in realizations of the construction. Taken together, findings from these analyses revealed an important connection between the semantic weight of head nouns in NMCCs and the idiomaticity of the construction, with learner productions demonstrating a tendency toward heavy head nouns. This study lays the groundwork for future research seeking to explore the NMCC at different levels of granularity and to improve its treatment in JFL pedagogical materials.

IMENICE SA PREPOZITIVNIM ČLANOM U ALBANSKOM JEZIKU KOJE SE IZDVAJAJU U OBLASTI RODBINSKE TERMINOLOGIJE

The main goal of this study is to highlight the role of prepositive articles in nouns related to kinship terminology in the Albanian language. Within nouns with a prepositive article, special attention is given to nouns that denote kinship relationships. Given their nature, these nouns are prevalent in both written and spoken language. Al- though these nouns today have equivalents without any article, they still hold a significant place in the structure of the Albanian language because they stand out due to the unique function of the prepositive article, which signifies possession. Many grammarians have studied the origin of this article, and it has been estab- lished that it originated from the demonstrative pronoun, which over time acquired the function of a possessive pronoun. Today, the article is associated with the possessive pro- noun for the third person. Through comparative analysis of similar constructions in other languages, the Al- banian language is recognized for its distinctive characteristics in the Indo-European lan- guage family, especially with respect to these nouns. By providing examples where nouns from this group are used and conducting syntactical analysis, it is determined that they inflect in the same way as other nouns, changing their prepositive article. This type of nouns plays a significant role in the study of the historical and morphological structure of the Albanian language, mainly because they have both a prepositive and postpositive article in a specific context.

Serial Verb Constructions in Saudi Arabic

Serial Verb Constructions have obvious implications for both descriptive and theoretical linguists (e.g., Newmayer, 2004; Aikhenvald & Dixon 2006; Haspelmath 2016). One fundamental question is whether the criteria of Serial Verb Constructions are universal (Déchaine 1993; Newmayer 2004; Muysken & Veenstra 2006) or language-specific (Stewart 2001). This paper aims to investigate this debate by examining data from Saudi Arabic (Semitic language family), which has not been examined or compared as a serializing code with other constructions in other languages. Based on the most noticeable features of Serial Verb Constructions such as descriptive facts, syntactic and semantic features, the present study concluded that Verb + Verb combinations in Saudi Arabic could satisfy the relevant criteria of Serial Verb Constructions.

Decomposing Perfect Readings

The previous literature established the set of ‘perfect’ readings, including experiential/existential, resultative, recent past, hot news, the Present Perfect Puzzle, the lifetime effect, and the lack of narrative progression. On the other hand, it has been noted that the present perfect in some languages other than English, as well as similar tense/aspect constructions in other languages, falls into the category of a ‘general-purpose past perfective’, namely a tense-aspect constructionsharing some properties with the English present perfect while not being subject to constraints such as the lifetime effect and the Present Perfect Puzzle. In this paper, I propose that the general-purpose past perfectives are presuppositionally neutral tense/aspect constructions that allow the standard past perfective reading. If a language has presuppositionally stronger alternatives for the past perfective (presupposing anaphoricity, uniqueness, etc.), by the Presupposed Ignorance Principle (PIP), the presuppositionally neutral past perfective form will be felicitous only if the presuppositionally stronger alternatives cannot be used. Otherwise, the presuppositionally neutral past perfective will behave like a general-purpose past perfective in the above sense. I argue that this competition is the source of many of the perfect readings observed. I further argue that the cross-linguistic variation in this respect follows from the available alternatives languages have. I illustrate this idea with three groups of languages: (i) English; (ii) French, German, Italian; and (iii) Mandarin Chinese, each illustrating a different set of alternatives available, in both the temporal and aspectual domains. This analysis allows me to decompose various perfect readings that come from different sources and make better predictions regarding which of these readings a tense/aspect construction in a given language has.

Specification predication: Unexpectedness and cleft constructions in Tagalog

Abstract English exhibits a large number of cleft constructions. Out of these constructions, the English it-cleft construction, which may express more than one information-structural packaging (Declerck 1988), is often taken to translate syntactically rather different constructions in other languages. In this paper, I will explore the morphosyntactic make-up and functional range of a construction in Tagalog that is often equated with, or translated by, but vastly more frequent, than the English it-cleft in our corpus. In a first step, the notion of cleft construction will be reviewed and critically investigated with respect to how appropriate it is for a language like Tagalog. In a second step, the discourse function of the ang-inversion construction in contrast to the English cleft constructions is explored on the basis of examples taken from the Tagalog version of the trilogy The Hunger Games Trilogy (Collins, 2008-2010; translated into Tagalog by Janis de los Reyes, 2012). A crucial goal is to gain a better understanding of those cases, in which the Tagalog ang-construction is used, but the English cleft construction is ruled out or at least dispreferred.

Numeral construct phrases in Biblical Hebrew

Abstract Construct phrases are nominal expressions consisting of a noun in the construct state, termed the construct, and an immediately adjacent nominal phrase, the annex. Biblical Hebrew has four kinds of construct phrases containing numerals: phrases with a definite nominal annex, complex numeral phrases, approximative phrases and phrases with an indefinite nominal annex. The first three constructions are found in Modern Hebrew, but not the fourth. In this paper we provide semantic interpretations for the four numeral construct phrase types, accounting for these constructions within a theoretical approach to the cross-linguistic properties of numeral phrases. Adopting the semantic analysis in Rothstein (2013, 2017b), which treats numerals as a type of property expression in the sense of Chierchia (1985), we show that the four constructions fall into two groups. In the first group, containing the complex numeral and the indefinite measure phrase, the construct numeral is an argument of a function. In the second group, containing the definite numeral phrase and the approximative, the construct numeral is a predicate that expresses intersectional modification. The numeral has a different semantic status in each group: as an argument, the numeral is a saturated property expression designating an individual, while as a modifier it is unsaturated. It is shown that definite numeral construct phrases and approximative phrases can be viewed as types of classifier expressions. The data and interpretations presented in the paper demonstrate that Biblical Hebrew numerals share fundamental semantic characteristics with numeral constructions in other languages, despite having various syntactic properties which are specific to this language.

Verb movement and the lack of verb-doubling VP-topicalization in Germanic

In the absence of a stranded auxiliary or modal, VP-topicalization in most Germanic languages gives rise to the presence of a dummy verb meaning ‘do’. Cross-linguistically, this is a rather uncommon strategy as comparable VP-fronting constructions in other languages, e.g. Hebrew, Polish, and Portuguese, among many others, exhibit verb doubling. A comparison of several recent approaches to verb doubling in VP-fronting reveals that it is the consequence of VP-evacuating head movement of the verb to some higher functional head, which saves the (low copy of the) verb from undergoing copy deletion as part of the low VP copy in the VP-topicalization dependency. Given that almost all Germanic languages have such V-salvaging head movement, namely V-to-C movement, but do not show verb doubling, this paper suggests that V-raising is exceptionally impossible in VP-topicalization clauses and addresses the question of why it is blocked. After discussing and rejecting some conceivable explanations for the lack of verb doubling, I propose that the blocking effect arises from a bleeding interaction between V-to-C movement and VP-to-SpecCP movement. As both operations are triggered by the same head, i.e. C, the VP is always encountered first by a downward search algorithm. Movement of VP then freezes it and its lower copies for subextraction precluding subsequent V-raising. Crucially, this implies that there is no V-to-T raising in most Germanic languages. V2 languages with V-to-T raising, e.g. Yiddish, are correctly predicted to not exhibit the blocking effect.

Two Places for Causees in Productive IsiXhosa Morphological Causatives

AbstractProductive morphological causatives in isiXhosa exhibit a case alternation with respect to the causee: it can be unmarked or instrumental. Much recent literature on similar alternations in causative constructions in other languages analyzes them as involving differences in the size or category of the constituent selected by the causative morpheme. We show that such an analysis cannot be extended to isiXhosa and that both alternants are verb‐selecting causatives. We propose instead that the alternation actually concerns the place in the structure in which the causee is introduced: in the specifier of the causative head itself in the unmarked‐causee construction, in a PP adjoined to the embedded verb phrase in the instrumental‐causee construction. This article thus adds to a growing body of evidence that the same thematic roles are not always assigned in the same syntactic positions.

From turn-taking to stance-taking: Wenti-shi ‘(the) thing is’ as a projector construction and an epistemic marker in Mandarin conversation

The noun-copula-clause (NCC) construction is a well-studied topic in English linguistics yet underexplored in languages like Mandarin. By investigating the use of wenti-shi (WTS) ‘(the) thing is/(the) problem is’ in Chinese conversation, this study aims to contribute to this literature. Drawing on natural spoken data and the framework of Interactional Linguistics, I argue that WTS can serve in conversation as a retrospective projector construction that foreshadows upcoming content while connecting the content to the previous discourse and an epistemic stance marker that signals a shift in perspective and helps form a (counter-)informing act, allowing speakers to upgrade their epistemic rights in the process of pursuing agreement. The structural and functional features of WTS both demonstrate commonalities with NCC constructions in other languages and reflect the influence of its component parts and language-specific tendencies.

Квазиусловные конструкции в каталанском языке

This article aims to single out quasi-conditional constructions in Catalan and describe their main types. The author proceeds from the hypothesis that Catalan quasi-conditional constructions must show considerable similarity with quasi-conditional constructions in Russian, English, French, and other languages. The number of the constructions addressed is about 1 000 examples from Catalan texts by native Catalan authors and about 2 000 examples from Catalan texts by non-Catalan authors, selected by total sampling. The paper shows that quasi-conditional constructions, although formally similar to conditional constructions, differ on certain points from them. Their protasis does not express hypothetical condition, apodosis doesn’t imply consequence, the condition-consequence meaning is often missing from them altogether. In contrast to conditional constructions, transformation of quasi-conditionals ones into formally narrative constructions doesn’t change their meaning. Quasi-conditional constructions can be split into five major groups: presumptive constructions, constructions with protasis in the function of parenthesis, conditional-evaluative constructions, conditional-causal constructions, and logical conclusion constructions. The observables selected as criteria for this classification include: Construction meaning (comparative, existential, evaluative, causative constructions etc.); Changeability of the main dependent clause order; Use of markers. Both my analysis and literature on conditional constructions in other languages confirm that the structure of Catalan quasi-conditional constructions is similar to their counterparts in other languages. The findings can be used for teaching purposes as well as for research in Catalan, other Romance languages, or in typology/syntax.

An Innovative Main Clause Construction with Ergative Patterns in Kari’nja (Cariban, Suriname)

This paper presents an analysis of an innovative finite main clause construction in Kari’nja (Cariban, Suriname). Although mentioned briefly in previous works, there has to date been no principled description of the construction. Nevertheless, it appears with some frequency in texts of procedural narratives based on documentation videos.The construction is unique in Kari’nja in that it exhibits ergative patterns of morphosyntax. This is typologically significant in that it represents a counter-universal, tense/aspect-based ergative split. This claim is validated based on the construction’s consistence with an imperfective aspectual value and non-past tense.In addition to describing formal and functional properties of the synchronic construction, this paper examines potential source constructions, situates it among cognate constructions in other languages in the family, and posits a mechanism by which it entered main clauses. In addition, an examination of the genres in which it appears addresses why the construction has not been described to date.

Causatives in Uyghur

The present study is intended to provide a descriptive analysis of canonical causative constructions in modern Uyghur. Lexical, morphological and analytic causative constructions are employed in modern Uyghur. Lexical causative is less productive, and its use seems to be restricted to very specific domains without a morphological marker. By contrast, morphological causatives are undoubtedly the most frequent means of expressing causatives,nand they are highly productive with both transitive and intransitive verbs. These productive single causatives are mostly regular; the choice of the suffixes is phonologically determined. Double causatives derived from intransitive and transitive bases in Uyghur result in different surface realizations. No more than two different causative morphemes can be iterated in the causative construction. Therefore, Uyghur does not permit any iteration of the triple causative. In this sense, the double causative in Uyghur is different from that of genetically related languages (for example Turkish) with respect to the nature and amount of causative morpheme reduplication. This study shows that the morphological causatives in Uyghur share universal tendencies in terms of causative devices and valence increasing operations in the argument structure of causative verbs in canonical situations. Although the scope of this paper is limited to one individual language, its findings would be relevant for studying causative constructions in other languages.

Independent complement constructions in Swedish and Danish: Insubordination or dependency shift?

The aim of this paper is to analyze the grammatical status of independent complement constructions in Swedish and Danish, i.e. constructions introduced by the complementizer att or at but without an accompanying main clause. These constructions can be used with two main functions: to express the speaker's evaluation of a presupposed state of affairs, or to elaborate on an aspect of the preceding discourse. In recent literature on these and similar constructions in other languages, both types have been analyzed as instances of the category of insubordination (Evans, 2007), i.e. constructions that combine subordinate marking with main clause use. We will argue that this analysis works well for the ‘expressive’ type, but that it cannot account for some of the typical properties of the ‘elaborative’ constructions, like the fact that they are pragmatically dependent and inconsistent in their use of subordinate marking. As an alternative, we will show that elaborative constructions can be dealt with much more naturally in terms of an existing model of dependency shift in clause combining, like the subordinate–coordinate shifts observed for many other types of subordinators.

Kalmyk causative constructions: case marking, syntactic relations and the speaker’s perspective


 
 
 This study is primarily concerned with the syntactic organisation of Kalmyk clauses headed by verbs that contain a morphological causative marker. The data reported here have been compiled during the summers between 2006 and 2008 in the Republic of Kalmykia. The fieldwork was organised by St. Petersburg State University and the Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.
 This fieldwork has been conducted in several villages in the North-Western part of the Republic of Kalmykia. This region is supposed to be the area where the Dörböt dialect of the Kalmyk language is spoken; however, there is no clear indication that the data discussed below are different from the facts found in standard Kalmyk in any relevant respect.
 The main objective of the study reported here is two-fold. First, there is a descriptive goal. Available descriptions of Kalmyk causatives are mostly concerned with morphological issues and case assignment in canonical causative constructions, whereas a deeper analysis of syntactic properties of causative constructions, especially of their non-canonical uses, is generally lacking. The present study is intended to partially fill this gap.
 Second, there is a more theoretical goal. It will be shown that there are essential properties of Kalmyk causatives that can be hardly captured by the usual derivational approaches to causatives. Rather, causative verbs in Kalmyk will be viewed as a device for establishing a more or less direct correspondence between an event’s participants and syntactic slots. Although the scope of this paper is limited to one individual language, its findings can have broader typological relevance. In particular, I believe that taking the speaker’s perspective into account can deepen our understanding of causative constructions in other languages as well.
 
 

Warlpiri Wh‐Scope Marking

Abstract.  This article analyses the wh‐scope‐marking construction in Warlpiri. The literature on wh‐scope‐marking constructions in other languages debates the relative merits of two types of analyses—the direct‐dependency account, which posits covert movement of an embedded wh‐phrase to replace a matrix expletive, and the indirect‐dependency account, which treats the embedded question as the restriction of a matrix wh‐phrase. I argue that an explanation of the Warlpiri data can only be achieved through a variant of the indirect‐dependency approach.

The syntax–semantics interface of multi-morpheme motion constructions in Chinese

This study analyzes semantic constraints affecting the order of motion morphemes in Mandarin Chinese multi-morpheme motion constructions (MMMCs, e.g. zǒu-jìn fángjiān ‘walk into the room’ (lit.) ‘walk-enter room’ vs. *jìn-zǒu (lit.) ‘enter-walk’). We classify Chinese motion morphemes into four types based on recent study on “scale structure”. Then, we propose an implicational scalar hierarchy formed by the four types of morphemes that can be used to predict the order of motion morphemes in Chinese MMMCs. Our corpus studies demonstrate that the hierarchy can explain the morpheme order of MMMCs for a comprehensive range of existing natural Chinese data. We anticipate that our scalar hierarchy may be extensible to serial-verb motion constructions in other languages as well.

Appendix: question types questionnaire

This questionnaire is intended as an aid to eliciting different question types, including yes/no questions, alternative questions, and wh-questions on a range of constituents. We have taken care to include examples that allow one to test for common Bantu phenomena, such as a subject/non-subject asymmetry in wh-questions and an obligatory immediately after the verb (IAV) position for questioning verb complements. The questionnaire is intended as a guide, only, as every language will have its own set of possibilities and complications. At the end of the questionnaire is a checklist. While we had Bantu languages in mind in devising the questionnaire, we hope it will also be useful to linguists with an interest question constructions in other languages.
  

The growth of the written lexicon in Catalan

The lexicon, a complex storage device of units of language use, is a central component of linguistic knowledge closely tied to grammar and has a strong influence on demanding cognitive tasks and academic achievement. This study aims at tracking the growth of the Catalan written lexicon of children and adolescents throughout compulsory schooling, a time when the lexicon is assumed to experience an exponential growth. 2,436 participants from 5 to 16 years attending compulsory school in Catalonia took part in the study. They were asked to write as many linguistic expressions as possible in five different semantic fields: Food, Clothing, Leisure activities, Personality traits, and Natural phenomena. Although both the task and the provided examples primed the production of single words, participants produced a variety of constructions. The 242,404 lexical forms that were produced were lemmatized into 8,498 different lemmas and coded according to different linguistic dimensions. The size and the conceptual underpinning of the lexicon grow significantly throughout compulsory school and show an increase in the use of correct Catalan forms, a reduction in deviant forms, and a steady use of words and constructions in other languages. The use of multiword constructions as a mechanism for word generation questions the separability between lexicon and syntax. The corpus, which is of public access (http://clic.ub.edu/es/cesca), provides a picture of the state of a language developing in a multilingual environment in terms of frequency of use of words and constructions and range of orthographic and linguistic variants in five semantic fields.

Origin and development of the Iatmul focus construction: Subordination, desubordination, resubordination

In the Papuan language Iatmul, the subordinate predicate in a cleft construction has been desubordinated; synchronically, the resulting focus construction shares biclausal and monoclausal characteristics. What sets the Iatmul case apart from similar constructions in other languages is the possibility to resubordinate the predicate. This constitutes an alternative way to complete the path from bi- to monoclausal status. Rather than continuing the ‘de-marking’ of the originally subordinate verb in the direction of main clause functions, the available marking is exploited so that the previously desubordinated verb can be used in a cross-linguistically unusual type of focus relative clause. There, focus marking is lost on the obligatorily overt subject when the latter is a lexical noun, but is maintained on pronouns. In this case, both nominal and verbal morphology are formally those of a cleft construction, but syntactically the structure is monoclausal.

Modification within a Noun Phrase in Sidaama (Sidamo)

n/a