Determiner Phrases Research Articles

Pronouns beyond phi-features: the speaker–addressee relation in Japanese pronouns and its implications for formal pronouns

Abstract Greenberg’s Universal 42 states that all languages have pronominal categories involving at least three persons and two numbers. However, this characterization fails to capture the properties of pronouns in Japanese, which are not bundles of person, number and gender features (so-called phi-features); rather, they contain sociolinguistic information about the interlocutors. We propose that these properties are structurally determined. Following Ritter and Wiltschko, we assume that the highest layer of structure in nominals is interactional structure. As for phi-features, we adopt the standard assumption that they are represented internal to the determiner phrase (DP). We propose that the distinctive properties of Japanese pronouns follow from the hypothesis that they spell out elements of the interactional structure and not the DP. We show that the lack of phi-features in Japanese pronouns correlates with other properties of this language’s grammar. Support for this analysis comes from languages where pronouns with phi-features can optionally be used to encode formality (e.g. German and French). We propose that in these languages, formal pronouns originate within the DP but are interpreted in the interactional structure. Finally, we suggest that this analysis may extend to imposters and vocatives in that they may also be interpreted in the interactional structure.

Syntax and the brain: language evolution as the missing link(ing theory)?

This paper provides proof of concept that neurolinguistic research on human language syntax would benefit greatly by expanding its scope to include evolutionary considerations, as well as non-propositional functions of language, including naming/nicknaming and verbal aggression. In particular, an evolutionary approach can help circumvent the so-called granularity problem in studying the processing of syntax in the brain, that is, the apparent mismatch between the abstract postulates of syntax (e.g. Tense Phrase (TP), Determiner Phrase (DP), etc.) and the concrete units of neurobiology (neurons, axons, etc.). First, we decompose syntax into its evolutionary primitives, identifying one of the earliest stages as a simple, flat combination of just one verb and one noun. Next, we identify proxies ("living fossils") of such a stage in present-day languages, including compounds and small clauses, lacking at least some layers of structure, e.g. TPs and DPs. These proxies of ancestral language have been subjected to fMRI neuroimaging experiments. We discuss the finding that less hierarchical small clauses, in contrast to full sentences with TPs and DPs, show reduced activation in the left Broca's area (BA) 44 and the right basal ganglia, consistent with the hypothesis that more recent, more elaborate syntax requires more connectivity in the Broca's-basal ganglia network, whose neuronal density has been significantly enhanced in recent evolution, implicating mutations in FOXP2 and other genes. We also discuss the finding that the processing of ancestral verb-noun compounds, which are typically used for (derogatory) naming and nicknaming, shows enhanced activation in the right fusiform gyrus area (BA 37), the area that is implicated in the processing of metaphoricity and imageability, but also in naming and face recognition, opening up an intriguing possibility that the enhanced face recognition in humans was facilitated by the early emergence of a simple syntactic strategy for naming. The considerations in this paper are consistent with the hypothesis of a gradual gene-culture co-evolution of syntax and the brain, targeting cortico-striatal brain networks. It is also of note that a sound grounding in neurobiology of language should in turn inform syntactic theories themselves.

Determinante e doppio determinante nel code-switching arabo-italiano

This article explores the phenomenon of code-switching, specifically focusing on bilingual Arabic-Italian determiner phrases which consist of a determiner, such as an article or a demonstrative, followed by a noun phrase as a complement. The data examined were selected from a corpus of Arabic-Italian spontaneous speech with the aim of (1) comparing and describing the characteristics and differences of the determiner systems of the two languages; (2) illustrating the features of code-switching in determiner phrases and the various types found in the collected data; and (3) studying the mutual influence of the two languages in contact contexts. The data analysis revealed two types of code-switching: switching at the beginning of a determiner phrase, where both the determiner and its complement are in the same language, and switching within a determiner phrase, where the determiner and the head noun are from different languages. This latter category also includes determiner phrases with double determiners, which will be analyzed in detail in this article to discuss the features of this linguistic structure in Arabic-Italian bilingual phrases.

Structural Contrast of Determiner Phrase Items in English and Ọgba Languages

Structural Contrast of Determiner Phrase Items in English and Ọgba Languages

Exclamativas encubiertas en español

Abstract Since Bosque (1982; 1984a) extrapolated to Spanish grammar the concept of concealed exclamation introduced by Elliot (1971; 1974) and Grimshaw (1979), the analysis of determiner phrases (DPs) such as los libros que le gustan in Ya te imaginas los libros que le gustan and la altura del edificio in Me sorprendió la altura del edificio has not been homogeneous. While some authors agree in analyzing both DPs as concealed exclamations (DPs semantically equivalent to indirect exclamative clauses and arguments of an explicit predicate), others confine this analysis to the latter DP. They analyze the former either as a clause with exclamative import subordinate to an explicit predicate (a quantified clause or a complement clause) or as a DP with exclamative import providing the argument for an explicit predicate which they do not consider a concealed exclamation, but a nominal exclamative structure or a nominal emphatic relative construction. Our goals are: 1) to review the analyses proposed so far for this type of structures, and 2) to put forward an analysis of these DPs characterizing them not as arguments of an explicit predicate, but as genuine DPs that are remnants of grammatical ellipsis. Specifically, they are argued to be subjects of elliptical clauses that are simultaneously indirect exclamatives and predicational copular clauses.

Statistical Insignificance is not wholesale transfer in L3 Acquisition: an approximate replication of Rothman (2011)

Abstract This study was an approximate replication of Rothman (2011),examining the determiner phrase syntax of a large sample (n = 211) of L3 learners of Portuguese who spoke English and Spanish. Rothman (2011) investigated whether L3 Italian or Brazilian Portuguese speakers are differently impacted by another known Romance Language, if it was their L1 or L2. The original study concluded that groups did not perform differently on experimental tasks on the basis of a null effect, and that the typological similarity of Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian predicts transfer in the initial stages of L3 acquisition. The present replication recreated all materials, which were unavailable, and examined the same population and questions. However, rather than examining L3 Italian and L3 Brazilian Portuguese, the present work maintained a constant L3 Portuguese. Learners were divided into two groups in a mirror-image design (n = 96 L1 English-L2 Spanish, n = 115 L1 Spanish-L2 English), and data were collected online. Like the original study, there was no main effect of group in any of the two-way analyses of variance. However, results show that it should not be assumed that experimental groups behave equivalently based on a null effect: Of the four total post hoc tests of equivalence, only two were significant when the equivalence bounds were set at a small effect size (d = $ \pm $ .4). Ultimately, it is argued that determining the smallest effect size of interest and subsequent equivalence testing are necessary to answer key questions in the field of L3 acquisition.

The structure of DP and IZP in central Kurdish (Minimal approach)

The stages of Generative grammar complement each other and several different theories and hypotheses have been presented. This research aims to present the structure of Determiner phrase according to the stages of Generative grammar until the last stage of the grammar, which is the Minimal program we wanted to apply the assumptions in the MP in Kurdish also we tried to explain the structure of Dp and Izp in Kurdish move and checking its feature because in MP every Grammatical feature in the Derivation become a head of functional phrase so DP and IZP has a different feature so they are two Different phrase. The research consists of an introduction and five parts with results and sources.

A Minimalist Account of Free Relative Clauses in Zahrani Spoken Arabic

This paper explores the syntax of free relative clauses in Zahrani Spoken Arabic (henceforth ZSA). The paper shows that ZSA possesses two types of free relative clauses, viz., nominal free relative clauses and adverbial free relative clauses. The focus of the paper is on nominal free relative clauses. It is shown that nominal free relative clauses can appear in a subject position and a direct object position, and the range of relativization involves subject, direct object, indirect object, prepositional object and possessor relativization. The derivation of free relatives in ZSA involves resumption relativization strategy only where gaps are treated as null resumptive pronouns. As for distribution of null and overt resumptive clitics, there is an alternation between the use of null and overt resumptive pronouns/clitics in subject and direct object position. However, the utilization of overt resumptive pronouns/clitics is mandatory in indirect object, prepositional object and possessor position. It is argued that the free relative markers illi: and mi:n are complementizers. Furthermore, as null and overt resumptive clitics exhibit a big resemblance with respect to their behaviour in the coordinate structures and parasitic gaps, both free relatives with null or resumptive pronouns/clitics involve a null operator movement (in non-island contexts) from inside the free relative clause to the specifier of a complementizer phrase (spec CP). The CP is adjoined to a null antecedent occupying the head of a noun phrase (NP) which is a complement of a determiner phrase (DP) with an empty D.

Preschool Mandarin-speaking children’s comprehension of associative anaphora

Associative anaphora refers to a discourse operation that links a definite determiner phrase (DP) to an antecedent that acts as an indirect referent of the definite DP. For example, in the sequence ‘I bought a laptop. The keyboard was black’, the definite DP ‘the keyboard’ is linked to ‘a laptop’, meaning ‘the keyboard of the laptop’. The development of children’s knowledge of associative anaphora has long been investigated in child language research, as it provides a unique window into the interaction between linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive abilities. However, most prior research focused on Indo-European languages without looking at typologically distinct languages. To fill the gap, this study investigated children’s knowledge of associative anaphora in Mandarin Chinese, a typologically distinct language, thus allowing for a better cross-linguistic understanding of the phenomenon. Ninety-one 3- to 5-year-olds were investigated using a truth-value judgment task. The findings were that Mandarin-speaking children exhibited a similar developmental trajectory and were impacted by the same cognitive factors as observed in children speaking Indo-European languages. The implications of the findings were then discussed in relation to the role of processing factors and language-specific properties.

Romanian (subject-like) DPs attract more than bare nouns: Evidence from speeded continuations

This paper investigates whether agreement attraction is modulated by distributional properties determining subject-likelihood by examining the degree to which bare nouns and full determiner phrases (DPs) cause agreement attraction effects in Romanian. Romanian represents an ideal testing ground for this, given two distributional constraints making bare nouns less subject-like: Locative Determiner Omission, preventing locative prepositions from taking nouns with definite articles (unless modified by adjectives), and the Naked Noun Constraint, disallowing bare nouns as preverbal subjects. We predicted that bare nouns should be less likely to trigger agreement attraction than overt DPs. We conducted four speeded forced-choice sentence continuation tasks on Romanian native speakers to test this prediction. We observe that overt DPs cause significantly more attraction than bare nouns. We suggest that the results are consistent with a cue-based retrieval mechanism for forming agreement dependencies, where cues that determine subjecthood are used to reactivate elements in working memory upon processing a verb. These cues can be language specific, and in Romanian, this means that agreement attraction is sensitive to the morphophonological overtness of the determiner.

A quantificational-determiner analysis of EST in relative superlatives

The goal of this paper is to reconcile the definite marking with the indefinite-like semantics of those superlatives that take a relative/comparative reading. Following Szabolcsi (1986) and Heim (1999), we will assume that the difference between absolute and relative readings of superlatives is represented at the syntactic level of semantic representation, LF (Logical Form). We will however depart from Heim’s hypothesis that what raises at LF is the superlative operator itself (EST). We will instead assume a quantificational-determiner analysis of EST, which involves two raising operations at LF: EST-raising to Spec,DP and raising of the whole superlative DP (Determiner Phrase) to a scope position in the sentence. We will examine the relative readings ofqualitysuperlatives. The generalizations and the proposed analysis are not assumed to extend to quantity superlatives.

A quantificational-determiner analysis of EST in relative superlatives

The goal of this paper is to reconcile the definite marking with the indefinite-like semantics of those superlatives that take a relative/comparative reading. Following Szabolcsi (1986) and Heim (1999), we will assume that the difference between absolute and relative readings of superlatives is represented at the syntactic level of semantic representation, LF (Logical Form). We will however depart from Heim’s hypothesis that what raises at LF is the superlative operator itself (EST). We will instead assume a quantificational-determiner analysis of EST, which involves two raising operations at LF: EST-raising to Spec,DP and raising of the whole superlative DP (Determiner Phrase) to a scope position in the sentence. We will examine the relative readings of quality superlatives. The generalizations and the proposed analysis are not assumed to extend to quantity superlatives.

Names are not (always) predicates

A main selling point of predicativism is that, in addition to accounting for predicative uses of proper names, it can successfully account for their referential uses while treating them as predicates, thus providing a uniform semantics for proper names. The strategy is to postulate an unpronounced determiner that is realised with names when they appear to function as singular terms, making them effectively a concealed determiner phrase. I argue against the thesis that names are really predicates in referential uses. I discuss four different environments where names do not behave like the determiner phrases that are thought to embed them.

A Formal Approach to Spanish ‘Genitive’ Pronouns in Non-Nominal Domains

This paper examines the distribution of ‘genitive’ pronouns in non-nominal domains in Spanish. These pronouns can alternate with constructions headed by the item de ‘of’ and a pronoun or other Determiner Phrases (DPs). In general Spanish, this alternation between a synthetic (nuestro ‘our’) and an analytic (de nosotros ‘of us’) option is found in the nominal domain. However, when looking at variation, this alternation appears in adverbial, verbal, and adjectival domains too. We discuss this phenomenon from a neo-constructionist approach, which assumes the late insertion of phonological exponents. We propose that the analytic and the synthetic options have almost the same syntactic structure, the only difference being the nature of the nominalizer’s φ-features. When the nominalizer values its φ-features, it can be lexicalized alone, and the ‘genitive’ pronoun lexicalizes the rest of the structure, including the introducer p/Place. Otherwise, when the nominalizer cannot (or needs not to) value its features, a ‘non-genitive’ pronoun lexicalizes the pronominal structure, and the head p/Place is lexicalized by the item de. Our proposal explains the complementary distribution between agreement/nominal morphology and the item de observed in many Spanish constructions. Different consequences are advantageously deduced.

On the quantified determiner phrase and quantifier float in Modern Standard Arabic

On the quantified determiner phrase and quantifier float in Modern Standard Arabic

A Study of Demonstrative Determiners in Pashto

The existence of determiner phrases and their different manifestations in number, gender, and case have been studied and proved in English in many research studies. Many languages other than English need this investigation to establish a sound hypothesis about the universal language structure. This study was an attempt to find out the structure of the determiner phrase in the Pashto. It also investigated the equivalents of the English determiner phrase in the Pashto. It used the spoken corpus of Pashto as primary data. In addition, short stories and novels written by literary writers in the Pashto have been used as secondary data. Moreover, intensive group discussion with native speakers of Pashto has also been utilized as another secondary data source. The minimalist program was used to guide and understand the syntactic structure of languages. It was followed by the determiner phrase hypothesis. The hypothesis states that a noun is headed by its determiner in a noun phrase. Data were analyzed within the framework of the determiner phrase hypothesis. The study shows that a noun in the determiner phrase is not determined by a definite or indefinite article in Pashto. The determiner phrase is inflected for number, gender, and case in Pashto. Furthermore, the Pashto determiner phrase is different from English in terms of medial demonstrative determiners. The study is significant as it provides insight into the structure of the Pashto determiner phrase.

Phrase of cultural expression in Sulaimani dialect

This research is entitled (Lexical Determiner Phrase in Sulaimani Sub Dialect), It is an attempt to illustrate the views of phrase recognition in general and project of lexical determiner phrase in Kurdish-Sulaimani sub dialect in particular. The significance of the research is, (a) on the one hand. It depends on the identification of lexical items like (the project-making head) that are considered to be the mechanisms of producing the lexical determiner phrase project. (b) the essence of the research itself provides evidence for the existence of another type of determiner phrase, which is (the functional determiner phrase), The distinction, depends on the structure type\ component of the project-making items. The content of the research is to identify the lexical items, based on the principles of (X-bar) Theory, determined as lexical head for producing (lexical phrase), among these types of phrases, (lexical determiner phrase) has been taken into account concerning the project-making item and its mechanisms of production, has been working on. The result of research of cusses on type of information and the content of project managers from the perspective of (X-bar) theory, reason of recognition and acceptance of (lexical determiner phrase), and the phrases have their own structure, function and construction range.

The ‘Big DP’ Hypothesis: New Evidence from Gender Agreement in a Shipibo-Spanish Language Contact Situation

Previous evidence suggests clitics and determiners do not enter the same type of gender agreement relations in contact varieties of Spanish, despite proposals that treat clitics as determiners (big DP – Determiner Phrase – hypothesis) (Uriagereka 1995; Cecchetto 1999, 2000; Belletti 2005). We conducted a study on gender agreement between clitics and their antecedents, and determiners and nouns among adult Shipibo-Spanish bilinguals to answer the following question: Do Shipibo- Spanish bilingual speakers have similar patterns of local vs. long-distance gender agreement? Our results show gender agreement between D and N obtains categorically, but gender agreement between the clitic and its antecedent is at chance-level. We propose an alternative analysis for our data that does not assume the big DP hypothesis.

On the Impact of Mode of Presentation and Age on Parsing Structurally Ambiguous Relative Clauses

The relative clause Attachment preferences of female Persian learners of English were investigated regarding their age and modes of presentation (online/offline and holistic/segmented). 50 female native speakers of Persian ranging in age from 15 to 25 participated in the study. The instruments used in the present research included two tests of ambiguous sentences: 1) a grammaticality judgment test, and 2) the main test which was presented in three separate forms: a) Offline, b) online complete presentation (timed) and c) online segment by segment sentence (Self-Paced). This study used the method employed by Kim and Christianson (2013) for determining the attachment preferences of the participants. The results revealed that the participants' age affected the attachment preferences significantly in that adolescents had a clear determiner phrase 1 preference. There was also a statistically significant difference among the three modes of presenting the materials. The findings revealed that learners transferred their attachment strategies from their mother tongue to English, which provided support for transfer hypothesis. The research findings on whether L2 learners can achieve native like patterns of ambiguity resolution is still less than conclusive and findings seem to suggest that L2 learners apply parsing strategies which are less automatized than native speakers and even at odds with some studies reporting no transfer of L1 parsing strategies. Language teachers should make their learners cognizant of relative clause attachment preferences in English to avert their transfer of their mother tongue strategies in determining the antecedents of the relative clauses.

Scheme and projection of Georgian and Mengrelian determinative phrase X'

Generative grammar is one of the leading syntactic theories today which aims to describe the universal principles of language and explain how all languages are generated from a set of basic rules and principles. It is a natural language processing mechanism that models languages based on formal grammatical rules. This paper is built upon our research which seeks to adapt the theory and procedures of the formal universal grammar to the Georgian and Mingrelian languages. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the X’ theory, more specifically, the determiner phrase hypothesis, on the one hand, and corresponding material from the Georgian traditional grammar, on the other. The objective of the paper is to: (1) identify determiners in Georgian and Mingrelian; (2) define intermediate constituents of the determiner phrase and three levels of projections of the determiner phrase (DP). (3) define formal rules of the DP for Georgian and Mingrelian.