Direct Object Research Articles

The dominance of spatial information in object identity judgments: A persistent congruency bias even amidst conflicting statistical regularities.

Previous studies have posited that spatial location plays a special role in object recognition. Notably, the "spatial congruency bias (SCB)" is a tendency to report objects as the same identity if they are presented at the same location, compared to different locations. Here we found that even when statistical regularities were manipulated in the opposite direction (objects in the same location were three times more likely to be different identities), subjects still exhibited a robust SCB (more likely to report them as the same identity). We replicated this finding across two preregistered experiments. Only in a third experiment where we explicitly informed subjects of the manipulation did the SCB disappear, though the lack of a significantly reversed bias suggests the ingrained congruency bias was not completely overcome. The inclusion of catch trials where the second object was completely masked further bolsters previous evidence that the congruency bias is perceptual, not simply a guessing strategy. These results reinforce the dominant role of spatial information during object recognition and present the SCB as a strong perceptual phenomenon that is incredibly hard to overcome even in the face of opposing regularities and explicit instruction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Referential Expression Type and Definiteness as Factors in Asymmetrical Object Marking in Modern Hebrew

The subject of this study are the referential expressions that encode the O-participant in a transitive clause in the Modern Hebrew language. The goal of this study is to establish the significance of “definiteness” as a factor in asymmetric object marking for different types of referential expressions used by the Modern Hebrew speakers. For this purpose, the author considers the ways of expressing the category "definiteness" in various Modern Hebrew referential expressions that encode the O-participant in a transitive clause, and carries out a quantitative and comparative analysis of the ways of formalizing these expressions, using two research corpuses with a total volume of about 101 000 words. As a result of the analysis, it is concluded that, despite the clear correlation between the “definiteness” and the way noun phrases in the direct object role are constructed, “definiteness” is the only factor licensing asymmetric object marking for only one category out of the four considered, for proper names that are obligatorily marked. The remaining categories (definite noun phrases with other indicators of determination, indefinite noun phrases and pronouns) are all optionally marked within one or more types of referential expressions within each category. Of particular importance are the conclusions about the optional marking of referents encoded with the kol quantifier (55% of referential expressions with a quantifier and a relative pronoun are marked), partitive constructions (75% are marked), demonstrative and relative pronouns (48% and 66-85% are marked, respectively). It is proposed that for these types of referential expressions, there are additional factors that license asymmetric object marking in Modern Hebrew and that to determine them it would require further study of the discourse-pragmatic characteristics of referent-encoding expressions, including their referential status, status of animation, activity in discourse and degree of topicality.

Penerapan Metode Pengamatan Objek Langsung di Kelas dalam Meningkatkan Kemampuan Menulis Puisi Bebas di Sekolah Menengah Pertama

Abstract: Application of Direct Object Observation Method in the Classroom in Improving Free Poetry Writing Skills in Junior High School. This study aims to determine the implementation of the method of observing objects directly in class in improving the ability to write free poetry in junior high school. This research approach uses a qualitative approach with the type of classroom action research using research procedures including: planning, implementing actions, observation and reflection. The location of this research was carried out at SMP Negeri 5 Mandai. The results showed that there was an increase in student learning activities from cycle I to cycle II, namely the increase in the number of students in listening to teacher explanations, asking questions, answering questions, student learning outcomes also increased, namely the total score obtained in cycle I of 555 and in cycle II of 958. So that the application of the direct object method can improve student learning outcomes in junior high school.

Chinese EFL Learners’ Perception of English Resultative Constructions

This paper delves into some syntactic and semantic properties of English and Chinese resultative constructions and examines how Chinese EFL learners perceive English RCs via a survey among 32 Chinese college students. The subjects were asked to identify whether 14 RCs of seven different types are grammatical and translate them into Chinese. The findings of the survey reveal that they have difficulties in comprehending English RCs due to cross-linguistic differences between the two languages in terms of the resultative phrase, word order, direct object restriction, dynamic restriction, and animate instigator constraint. These differences are reflected on the seven RC types, which exhibit different accuracy rates in their highest order as follows: selected transitive RCs with AP (STRC-AP, 100%), unselected transitive RCs with PP (UTRC-PP, 100%), intransitive RCs with PP (IRC-PP, 100%), selected transitive RCs with AP (STRC-AP, 75%), unselected transitive RCs with AP (UTRC-AP, 68.75), fake reflexive RCs with AP (FRRC-AP, 45.3%), and intransitive RCs with AP (IRC-AP, 31.5%). We argue that the subjects’ errors in their grammatical judgment are triggered by their L1 transfer into their target language.

Contrastive Morphosyntax of the Direct Object in French

Bu çalışmada biçim-sözdizimsel tanımlama ve iki farklı dilde yer alan dilbilgisel bir öge olan nesne ulamı, dilbilimsel olarak karşıtsal ve biçim-sözdizimsel yönden incelenmiştir. Sözcük yapısı ve buna bağlı olarak sözcüklerin tümcedeki dizimi konusundaki ortak soruna, köken olarak farklı dillerin nasıl farklı çözümler getirdiklerini gösteren verilerin elde edilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Dilbilimin alt dalı olan biçim-sözdizimsel, biçimbilimini ve sözdizimini ayrılmaz ve birbirlerine bağlı iki dilbilimsel alan olarak ele alır. Bu alan, tümce oluşumunu düzenleyen biçimsel ve sözdizimsel özelliklere iye dilbilgisi ulamlarının veya dil birimlerinin ve bunların özelliklerinin biçimsel ve sözdizimsel ölçütlere göre tanımlanabilen dil birimlerini belirleyen birleşim kurallarının incelenmesidir. Bu çalışmada, Fransızca ve Türkçedeki dolaysız nesne ögesinin biçim-sözdizimsel yönden farklılıklarını ve benzerliklerini netleştirmek için, bu ögenin biçimsel ve sözdizimsel özellikleri karşıtsal inceleme yöntemiyle sunulmuştur. İki dilde bu ögenin geçişli eylemlerle işleve girdiği saptanmıştır. Biçimsel olarak Fransızcada bu ögenin değişmediği, ancak dilbilgisel ulam olarak adıla dönüşebildiği tespit edilmiştir. Türkçede ise, biçimsel açıdan belirtili nesnenin sonuna belirtme (yükleme) (ad) biçimbirimlerinin eklenmesinin zorunlu olduğu ve belirtisiz nesnenin sonuna bunların getirilmemesi gerektiği belirlenmiştir. Tümce içinde kullanımın zorunlu olmayan ve tümcede gerçekleştirilen eylemi gösteren bu öge, her iki dilde canlı veya cansız varlıkların yerine görev görebilir. Türkçede belirtili ve belirsiz nesne olarak iki türlü değerlendirilirken, Fransızcada böyle bir durumun olmadığı anlaşılmıştır. Ayrıca Fransızca bir tümcede bu ögenin konumu belirgindir ancak Türkçede belirtili nesnenin tümcedeki yeri belirsizdir ve belirtisiz nesnenin konumu daima yüklemin önüdür.

Complete acquisition in the heritage language: Evidence from indefiniteness in Turkish

This study investigates whether adult Turkish heritage speakers are able to refer to entities in discourse as required by semantic contexts. The focus is on the contrasting properties of Turkish (L1) and German (L2) with respect to semantics of indefiniteness, i.e., specificity and partitivity. Turkish morphologically distinguishes between specific/nonspecific and partitive/nonpartitive contexts on the indefinite direct object while German does not. We hypothesized that the Turkish heritage speakers would overgeneralize the unmarked form (bir noun) since this is the default form used in German regardless of the context and also acceptable in all contexts in Turkish. We further hypothesized that, if they ever opt for the case marked form (bir noun+acc), they would also do so incorrectly in nonpartitive and nonspecific contexts. Turkish heritage speakers living in Germany (n= 35) could dissociate semantic contexts and made similar preferences to those of monolingual native speakers of Turkish (n= 30). Our findings suggest that native language (L1) can develop despite early onset of the L2 and be maintained on a par with monolingual norms despite the presence of competing structures in the L2. We will discuss how insights from heritage language development can contribute to discussions about the bilingual’s ability in L1; and limits and possibilities of bilingualism.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ЮРИДИЧНОГО СКЛАДУ НЕЗАКОННОГО ПЕРЕМІЩЕННЯ ТОВАРІВ КОМЕРЦІЙНОГО ПРИЗНАЧЕННЯ ЧЕРЕЗ МИТНИЙ КОРДОН ЗА ЗАКОНОДАВСТВОМ УКРАЇНИ

The article is devoted to defining the peculiarities of the legal structure of the illegal commercial goods movement across the customs border according to the legislation of Ukraine. It was found that violation of customs rules is an administrative offense for which administrative liability is provided. Each of the violations of customs rules defined by the Customs Code of Ukraine is characterized by a special legal structure that includes an object, an objective side, a subject and a subjective side. It was determined that the object of illegal movement of commercial goods across the customs border needs to be specified. In addition to the general object of violation provided for in Article 482 of the Customs Code of Ukraine, which is the procedure established by law for the movement of goods across the customs border of Ukraine, specific, generic, main direct and additional objects are distinguished. It has been established that a feature of the legal composition of the illegal movement of commercial goods across the customs border of Ukraine is the presence of the object of violation, which is commercial goods. The subject can be a citizen who has reached the age of 16, as well as company officials. It was found that the objective side of the specified violation is characterized by its commission in the form of an active action, and the subjective side is characterized by the mandatory presence of guilt in the form of direct intent. It was concluded that the illegal movement of commercial goods across the customs border of Ukraine is distinguished among other violations of customs rules precisely by the peculiarities of the legal structure, the understanding and proof of which is the key to the correct qualification of the committed act. Key words: violation of customs rules, commercial goods, customs border, administrative responsibility.

Testing the Interpretability Hypothesis: Evidence from acceptability judgments of relative clauses by Persian and French learners of L2 English

Many studies have explored the second language (L2) acquisition of relative clauses (RCs) and whether L2 speakers transfer a resumptive strategy from first language (L1) to L2. While evidence seems to suggest that there are significant L1–L2 differences in the processing of RCs, relatively little is known about the source of non-target-like L2 behaviour. The present study investigates the grammatical acceptability of different RC types in L2 English and whether reliance on a resumptive strategy is a syntactic or processing issue. The participants included 71 L1-Persian L2-English, 52 L1-French L2-English, and 44 native English speakers, who completed a proficiency c-test, a grammaticality judgment task, and a reading span working memory (WM) task. Unlike French, which is similar to English in the syntactic derivation of RCs, Persian is a structurally wh-in-situ language that syntactically allows resumption in direct object and object-of-preposition RCs. The results showed that unlike L1-French speakers, L1-Persian speakers were more likely to accept resumptive pronouns in L2-English RCs; however, both L1 and L2 groups overwhelmingly preferred a gap over a resumptive strategy. The results suggest that given sufficiently high proficiency and long immersion experience, L2 speakers can match native speakers in terms of RC syntactic representations, suggesting that the issue faced by learners is a processing issue rather a representational one as suggested by the Interpretability Hypothesis.

Production, acceptability, and online comprehension of Spanish differential object marking by heritage speakers and L2 learners.

We analyzed the production, acceptability and online comprehension of Spanish differential object marking (DOM) by two groups of bilingual speakers living in the U.S.: heritage speakers and L2 learners. DOM is the overt marking of direct objects that are higher on the animacy and referentiality scales, such as animate and specific objects in Spanish, marked by the preposition a (Juan ve a María 'Juan sees DOM María'). Previous studies have reported variability and high omission rates of obligatory DOM in bilingual situations where Spanish is in contact with a non-DOM language.Our study combined different methodologies to tap knowledge of DOM in the two groups. The results showed that heritage speakers and L2 learners (1) exhibited variability with DOM in production (in two oral tasks), comprehension (in an acceptability judgement task), and processing (in an eye-tracking reading task); (2) can integrate DOM into their production, judgments and processing, but they do so inconsistently, and (3) type of task and type of sentence each have an effect on speakers' use of DOM.

REGULATIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL INFRINGEMENT IN THE PROJECT OF THE CRIMINAL LAW OF UKRAINE AND CRIMINAL LEGISLATION OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: COMPARATIVE LEGAL ANALYSIS

The relevance of the article is explained by the need to resolve the unresolved issue in the doctrine of how liability for encroachment on the environment should be regulated in the draft of the new CC. The purpose of writing this article is to study the approaches used in the criminal codes of European countries regarding the location in the system of their special parts of norms devoted to the regulation of responsibility for encroachment on the environment, to compare these approaches with the option embodied in the Project, as well as to develop, on this basis, scientifically based recommendations regarding improvement of the relevant provisions of the Project. A wide range of scientific methods was used during the research, in particular when proving the stated hypotheses and substantiating the conclusions, among which the following should be highlighted: comparative-legal, formal-logical, philosophical, methods of system analysis and modeling. Based on the results of writing the article, a conclusion is made about the need to allocate a separate book on criminal offenses against the environment, to which the sections devoted to criminal offenses against environmental safety and the procedure for the use and protection of natural resources, which are currently not in “their” books, would be “transferred”, respectively. The advantages of this approach are that it makes it possible to ensure the specificity of criminal offenses against the environment as much as possible; absolute correlation between generic, specific and main direct objects of specific criminal offenses included in their composition; continuity of the criminal legislation of Ukraine; and also takes into account the best foreign practices. The obtained results can be used in scientific and law-making activities, as well as in the work on further improvement of the project of the new Criminal Code.

Linguistic Variation and Grammatical Complexity in Child Heritage Speakers

This exploratory study addresses variation along the animacy scale in the bilingual first language acquisition of Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM). Through the analysis of elicited narratives by child heritage speakers (HSs) and monolingual children, we report evidence that both groups distinguishbetween human and nonhuman animate direct objects (DOs) based on their DOM use. The results, albeit tentative given the data examined, suggest that variable contexts can offer new insight into the complex nature of HS grammars in order to test hypotheses of structural simplification.

Stem configurations, lexical items, and phonological words in Maltese

Maltese is the 'national' language of the people in the sister-islands of Malta and Gozo. Originally Arabic, Maltese vocabulary has been massively expanded by borrowings from Romance (Sicilian/Italian), and more recently English. Influential contributions in (post)generative phonology and Optimality Theory claim that Maltese phonology is based on the interaction of (Palestinian Arabic type) stress assignment with syncope, and cyclic application of rules/constraints. This approach fails in some cases for Arabic Maltese, and is inoperative for borrowed vocabulary. I argue for distributing morphological constituents in three domains. The stem-domain heads a radical base, to which a preformative morph may be incorporated, and inflectional circumfixes. The Lexical-item domain heads the stem-node to which (in)direct pronominal objects may be concatenated. Clitics are adjoined to the phonological-word domain. All exponents are mapped on the linearized segmental tier. Trochaic stems satisfying morpho-lexical constraints are built in a pre-lexical phase. Vocalism is underlyingly specified or assigned by default, including ‘reverse-imāla’. In a lexical phase, OCP and Licensing shape syllabic stem-profiles to satisfy morpho-prosodic constraints. In the post-lexical phase, surface forms are generated by application of phonological processes: stress assignment, vowel length and quality, voice alteration in obstruents. A model of 'Weak CV Phonology', distantly related to Strict CV Phonology, is drawn up. Segmental representations are analyzed in monovalent elements. Maltese has often been presented as a 'mixed' language with two strata of vocabulary and two morphologies: root-and-pattern, non-concatenative for template-bound vocabulary, concatenative for loan-words. I claim that Maltese consistently requires templatic, concatenative and word-based morphology.

Wild Things: Animal Rights in EU Conservation Law

The concept of animal rights is highly topical in animal legal scholarship. There is much debate on whether or not animals can and do hold rights, although there does seem to be consensus that animals currently do not have such legal rights that would grant them any foundational protection in the way that human rights do for humans. This article challenges that assumption through a discussion on the legal rights of wild animals under the European Union (EU) Habitats Directive. The article establishes a theoretical framework on animal rights and analyses the Habitats Directive according to the rights framework. It subsequently argues that preliminary fundamental legal rights for certain wild animals can be found in EU conservation law. However, through a discussion on the scope and objective of the Habitats Directive, the article finds that the legal rights that are found are not grounded in the interests of the animals themselves. Instead, the preliminary fundamental animal rights are a by-product of the anthropocentric value of biodiversity and do not support a rights-based approach to animal rights. The article concludes with a discussion on the interpretation that follows from these findings and how an instrument such as the Habitats Directive could implement rights-based wild animal rights.

A baseline for the monitoring of Mediterranean upper bathyal biogenic reefs within the marine strategy framework directive objectives

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD, 2018) was adopted to achieve a Good Environmental Status (GES) in the EU's marine waters and to protect resources and ecosystem services, including the deep-sea waters and seafloor. The deep sea (below 200 m) is the largest biome on Earth, and its biodiversity plays a key role, despite being strongly threatened by several anthropogenic stressors, potentially affecting some ecosystem functions. Among the main deep-sea structuring species, the habitat-forming cold-water corals (CWCs) are known to form Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs). In the Mediterranean Sea, in the last two decades, a significant effort has been devoted to unveiling the distribution, extension and ecological role of scleractinian CWCs (Madrepora oculata and Desmophyllum pertusum), but quantitative data on their conservation status are very limited. Because of their ecological importance and vulnerability, Italy has extended the implementation of the MSFD to the deep sea, carrying out specific monitoring programmes on these scleractinian CWCs. In this regard, this study established, for the first time, an extensive standardized baseline for national monitoring programmes focusing on two recently discovered upper bathyal areas dominated by scleractinian CWCs (Dohrn Canyon and Corsica Channel). The goal was to evaluate the ecological status of the bathyal biogenic reefs using traditional diversity and impact variables as well as the innovative photogrammetry tool. In both areas, the investigations have increased the knowledge about the extent of the habitat and new CWC assemblages in good health conditions were discovered. The pressure extent is limited with respect to the total extent of the CWC habitat, accounting for approximately 32% and 63% of the fishing-related items entangled on structuring species. The photogrammetric approach showed a deviation of about 33% in the measurement of the population size structures. Moreover, the use of a standardised operative protocol has been proposed to obtain reliable, coherent, and comparable data for future monitoring activities. This approach improved scientific knowledge for the two studied areas and it is pivotal in defining long-term monitoring activities useful to assess the effectiveness of specific protection measures, for these VMEs.

Grammatical Relations Hierarchy in English

The grammatical relations are one part of traditional grammar that deals with important concepts such as subject, direct object, and indirect object. The main aim of this paper is to give a descriptive account of the term "grammatical relations hierarchy" in the English language depending on the theory of “Relational Grammar” as it demonstrates the relationship between these syntactic categories. Relational grammar predicates the hierarchy of these syntactic phenomena as subject > direct object > indirect object > non-terms. This paper attempts to describe the importance of these concepts and the hierarchy in the occurrence of these arguments in different constructions in order to identify the most privileged syntactic phenomena. This paper is concerned with giving general information about the concept of grammatical relations and the grammatical relations hierarchy. Then it attempts to show whether the word order of the grammatical relations in the English language obeys this hierarchy. Various constructions have been investigated for the purpose of demonstrating the position of these grammatical relations and the syntactic environments they are privileged to occur. The research has concluded that in the majority of the analyzed linear orders, the subject lies at the top of the hierarchy, and is the most privileged syntactic argument in English sentence constructions. However, in certain syntactic transformations like reflexivization and extraction constructions, it loses this privilege and shares it with other syntactic arguments like direct and indirect objects

Instruction of Spanish Direct and Indirect Object Pronouns through Task-Supported Videoconferencing Instruction

Task-supported videoconferencing instruction emphasizes learner centeredness and experientiallearning in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Still, relatively few studies have addressed the useof specific linguistic structures in online courses from a task-based perspective. The present studyexamines the effects of an online task-supported module on the acquisition of direct and indirect objectpronouns in Spanish. These pronouns are used very frequently by proficient Spanish speakers,but are less used by Spanish learners because of their morphological and syntactic complexity. Theresults of this study demonstrate the benefits of using an online task-supported module speciallydesigned to promote the use of direct and indirect object pronouns in Spanish through videoconference.Participants used the target structures on many occasions without being prompted to doso. The results suggest that the task-supported module is a promising approach to the teaching ofgrammar.

When and where did it happen? Systematic differences in recall of core and optional sentence information.

This article reports on four experiments aiming to examine immediate post-sentential recall of core sentence information (conveyed by direct objects), and optional/additional information (conveyed by temporal or locative adjuncts). Participants read simple and unambiguous Czech sentences such as Starší důchodce velmi pečlivě pročetl noviny v neděli v knihovně: "An older retiree read the newspaper very carefully on Sunday in the library." Sentences always appeared as a whole after pressing a space bar. Immediately after the sentence disappeared, an open-ended (free response) question was presented targeting either the direct object (e.g., newspaper), temporal adjunct (e.g., on Sunday), or locative adjunct (e.g., in the library). Altogether, it was found that the core information (conveyed by the direct object) was recalled almost perfectly, whereas additional information, conveyed by temporal and locative adjuncts, was recalled with significantly lower accuracy rates. Information structure also played a role: if the temporal or locative adjunct was focused, it was recalled better than if it was unfocused. The present article thus shows systematic differences in recall success for different pieces of information. These findings suggest the presence of selective attention mechanisms during early stages of sentence processing. Factors such as syntactic function or information structure influence the degree of attention to different pieces of information conveyed by a sentence. In turn, certain pieces of information may not be consciously accessible already after the sentence is processed.

Notes on the Functions of the L-Stem (Stem III) in Quranic Arabic


 
 
 In this article it is argued that the L-stem (stem III) in Quranic Arabic is a pluractional derivation of the G-stem (stem I) and that it expresses distributive participant plurality. With direct objects that refer to a plurality of nonvolitional entities, the verb form describes a plurality of situations conceptualized distributively among the objects. With direct objects that refer to volitional participants, the situations are typically conceptualized as inversely distributed between the subject participant and the object participant. When the verb form is used antipassively, the object participant is syntactically omitted but semantically implied.
 
 

DOES RUSSIAN ATTEST SYNTACTIC RAISING? PART 2: SMALL CLAUSES

I propose a raising analysis for a number of Russian constructions based on non-verbal predication: (1) constructions with nominal predicates and semi-lexical verbs; (2) constructions with transitive attitude verbs; (3) constructions with transitive perception verbs; (4) constructions with transitive causative verbs. What they all have in common is that their predicate can take a small clause as an internal argument. The small clause’s subject is assigned structural case in the matrix clause and attests all structural properties of the matrix subject / direct object, which signals raising. The peculiarity of raising in Russian is thus its restriction to small clauses.

On the argument structure realization of result verbs: A syntactic approach

AbstractManner/Result Complementarity (Rappaport Hovav & Levin 2010) has been argued to have consequences for argument realization: only manner verbs permit object deletion and non-selected objects. In contrast, result verbs always co-appear with their object, because they are required to express the undergoer of the change that they entail. We discuss new data involving result verbs in constructions where the undergoer of the change encoded by the result verb is not realized as the object of the predicate. We argue these data display result verbs whose root is integrated into the argument structure of the predicate in such a way that it is interpreted as specifying a co-event of the main event denoted by the predicate, whereby the result entailed by the root is not necessarily intended to hold of the direct object. This follows if verb roots do not come with a syntactically relevant specification for manner or result from the lexicon, but acquire it on the basis of their association with the syntactic structure.