Deictic Verbs Research Articles

The Aspectual Deictic Verbs with the Path Verbs in Korean

The Aspectual Deictic Verbs with the Path Verbs in Korean

Motion Deixis, Indexicality, and Presupposition

No abstract.

Vectors, viewpoint and viewpoint shift

Cognitive Linguistics has developed many insights into language but no systematic formalism. This article proposes that the discipline can benefit from standard geometrical formalisms. It outlines an approach called Discourse Space Theory (DST) that uses coordinate geometry and vector spaces. It describes how vectors have been used by several scholars to characterise the semantics of spatial prepositions, extending this approach to an abstract, deictically centred discourse space. Vector geometry comes with standard properties and operations that can serve to describe many linguistic and discourse phenomena. One of these is transformation of axes, which can be used to represent the phenomenon of viewpoint shift in discourse. The paper illustrates how DST can systematically describe viewpoint shift in foreground-background shifts, deictic verbs, tense, complement clauses and conditional constructions, especially counterfactuals.

L’analyse des constructions du verbe venir avec l’infinitif

Summary The object of this paper is to explore the constructions of the French verb venir with a infinitival complement, through the analysis of a large corpus. We conclude that differences between verbs and auxiliaries are a matter of degree. Contrary to the cases of the movement verb venir (Table 2 in M. Gross, 1975, ex. Pierre est venu voir Marie), the subject, in some constructions of «venir + infinitive» is an inanimate noun. We propose to distinguish, among the constructions mentioned above, the aspectual use of venir (ex. Cet incident est venu compliquer encore la question). This use of venir is to be analyzed as an intermediate state between movement verbs and auxiliaries. In this aspectual construction, whose subject can be caracterized as an abstract noun, the verb venir does not take a locative complement, contrary to any other constructions of «venir + infinitive» (with the exception of the auxiliary use venir de). Such aspectual constructions do not exist with the verb aller, the counterpart deictic verb of venir. If venir in aspectual use is on the way to becoming an auxiliary, aller without this use can be considered as more advanced in the axe of auxiliarity.

In Cinderella's slippers? Story comprehension from the protagonist's point of view.

Research on text comprehension shows that readers construct a model of the situation described in a narrative. A major factor in constructing a situational model is the perspective from which the action of the narrative is imagined. J. B. Black, T. J. Turner, and G. H. Bower (1979) found that adults recall a deictic verb of motion more accurately if it is spatially consistent with the point of view of the main protagonist. Recall is more accurate for the verbs come and bring if they describe a movement toward the protagonist; recall is more accurate for go and take if they describe a movement away from the protagonist. Thus, adults interpret movements in a narrative from the perspective of the protagonist. This study indicates that 3- and 4-year-old children show the same pattern of recall. They accurately recall verbs of motion that are consistent with the protagonist's perspective but make substitution errors on verbs inconsistent with that perspective.

Grammar Notes on Siraya, an Extinct Formosan Language

This is an attempt to unravel the grammar of a gospel text in Siraya, an extinct West Formosan language. It includes a discussion of the historical setting, the spelling, phonological features, function words, relation markers, morphosyntax of the verb, and the use of deictic verbs as prepositions. Regarding verbal morphosyntax, special attention is given to case marking suffixes, verbal classifiers, compound verbs, and anticipating sequences. Verbal classifiers are lexical elements prefixed to a root (a verb, adverb, or noun) with which they constitute the overall meaning of the resulting verb (mattdy- 'talking, saying' + vli 'reciprocating, doing in return'-< mattdy-vili 'to answer'; mattdy- + rx 'mind' -X mattdy-rtx 'talk to oneself'). Compound verb constructions are constructions in which auxiliaries assume the functions of adverbs in English. These auxiliaries form an open class and are in fact the head of the verb phrase, as they carry most of the marking. An anticipating sequence is an element of a verb that is prefixed to the preceding auxiliary. 1. INTRODUCTION. This article is a report on work in progress on the linguistic analysis of Siraya. Together with Favorlang, another extinct Formosan language, Siraya was used for missionary purposes during the occupation of West Formosa by the Dutch East India Company between 1624 and I66I. Section 2 presents a historical background against which Siraya was used by Calvinist missionaries; section 3, an account of the language materials that the latter collected and that have survived time, as well as an account of previous linguistic work on Siraya; section 4, an outline of the procedure that I am following for their analysis; section 5, a treatment of some of the orthographic and phonemic difficulties involved in their analysis; and section 6, a short outline of Siraya grammar. 2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND.2 In the early seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company tried to establish trade relations with China. It wanted to monopolize trade between China and Europe. It also hoped to be able to monopolize trade between China and Japan, as the Chinese emperor prohibited direct trade contacts between the Japanese and the Chinese. But the Chinese, who were not particularly interested in opening up their economy to western countries

Acquiring Lexical Contrast

Production of the deictic verbs bring and take was evaluated among 88 normally functioning children (grades K-6). Theoretical approaches and assumptions concerning a working definition of word mastery were contrasted and found to influence (a) the evaluative scheme chosen to assess lexical knowledge and (b) conclusions concerning the development of lexical contrast. Results, which revealed a developmental order unlike that reported elsewhere, are related to the broad issue of interpretation of lexical overextension behavior. A model of antonym learning is proposed that assigns a prepotent role to the second-to-emerge term in a contrastive pair.

Studies in the Acquisition of Deictic Terms

1. The Acquisition of Deictic Terms 2. Deictic and Nondeictic Spatial Relations 3. In Front of and In Back of: Are they learned in backwards order? 4. Personal Pronouns 5. Demonstratives and Deictic Locatives 6. Deictic Verbs of Motion: Easy Come? Easy Go? 7. Conclusions Appendices Bibliography Index.

The allative bias in three-year-olds is almost proof against task naturalness.

ABSTRACTAn allative bias has been noted in children's comprehension of deictic verbs and directional prepositions. This study investigates the allative bias and its susceptibility to contextual modification. Three-year-olds were asked to act according to requests to move one object to or from another, and to identify where an object had come from or gone to. A reliable bias was found whereby ‘to’ was easier than ‘from’. Attempts to make the utterance more naturally related to the task, by using movement and fronted objects, modulated the bias to a small extent, but did not abolish it. An analysis of directional expressions in terms of the components SOURCE, PATH and GOAL is presented in relation to the task-demands.

Towards a Universal for Deictic Verbs of Motion

Towards a Universal for Deictic Verbs of Motion

Come and go reconsidered: Children's use of deictic verbs in contrived situations

A production-based method of investigating children's understanding of deictic verbs is described. Use of come/go and bring/take by 4- to 7-year-olds in experimentally controlled deictic situations is compared with the results of Clark and Garnica's (1974) comprehension method with the same verbs. The production data indicate that (1) age of acquisition of these verbs is considerably younger than previously reported, (2) bring and take are acquired later than the come/go pair, and (3) acquisition of these verbs involves mapping the appropriate words onto preconceived features of situations, rather than the abstraction of the semantic features underlying each verb.

Movement and location in the acquisition of deictic verbs

ABSTRACTSamples of spontaneous speech from seven two-year-olds were scanned for utterances containing the verbs go and come. Their distribution was extensive, and included many non-motional uses. No clear case of the wrong use of either verb was found and the children seemed to have a basis for discrimination. As verbs of motion, they were used in the context of describing the contour of movement rather than as means of relating end-points of a journey. This relation between systems of movement and location was taken to be crucial in explaining the child's long-standing difficulty in discriminating the verbs in experimental tasks.

Is he coming or going? On the acquisition of deictic verbs

The present study examined the acquisition of deictic verbs by asking children (5; 6–9; 5) to identify the speaker or the addressee of utterances containing come, go, bring, and take. The results showed that the youngest children appeared to understand come and bring, but not go and take. Analysis of the strategies used showed that children go through several stages: (a) they identify both speaker and addressee with the goal of the motion; (b) they identify only the addressee with the goal; (c) they identify the addressee of go with the goal, but are otherwise correct; (d) they give adult-like responses. These data provided further evidence that strategies play an important role in the acquisition of word meanings.

Memory for deictic elements in sentences

The deictic elements of a language are the linguistic forms relating the utterance to a particular time, place, speaker, or discourse context. In the present study subjects memorized sentences containing words from one of five deictic categories (Deictic Place Adverbs, Demonstrative Adjectives, Articles, Deictic Verbs, Temporal Adverbs). When the sentences were presented in the usual experimental setting in which they are isolated from the actual time, place, person, and discourse context, the deictic words were much more difficult to remember than the nondeictic words. In sentences with appropriate context the deictic words were little different from the nondeictic words. The results support the hypothesis that deictic elements have limited meaning in sentences without deictic context and are therefore hard to remember.