Features Of Lexical Items Research Articles

The Linguistic Features in Egyptian-Authored English Research Article Literature Reviews in Linguistics

The current study aims at investigating and comparing the linguistic features of lexical items, tense usage, and voice choice in a sample of ten Egyptian-authored linguistics research article (RA) literature reviews (LRs) in local and international English-medium journals between 2013 and 2019. The paper followed a combination of genre-based and corpus-driven approaches, analyzing the data qualitatively and quantitatively. It adopted the state-of-the-art #LancsBox. The analysis revealed interesting differences between both sub-corpora in the use of lexis, especially in Moves 2 and 3. It was found that lexis varied to reflect the different rhetorical functions of the LR. They also differed in the use of the past simple tense. However, both sub-corpora agreed on using the present simple tense and active voice the most. This paper contributes to the literature by providing a helpful guide for Egyptian and novice researchers to use the linguistic features more appropriately in their LRs. It has pedagogical implications for designing EAP and ESP courses. Further studies on larger corpora are needed to analyze the linguistic features and highlight variations across genres, disciplines, and languages.

Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling: A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months

ABSTRACTPrior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8, 10, and 12 months and found listeners could not detect ambient-language effects in the vast majority of infant utterances, but only in items deemed to be words or to contain canonical syllables that may have made them sound like words with language-specific shapes. Thus, the present research suggests the earliest ambient-language effects may be found in emerging lexical items or in utterances influenced by language-specific features of lexical items. Even the ambient-language effects for infant canonical syllables and words were very small compared with ambient-language effects for meaningless but phonotactically well-formed syllable sequences spoken by adult native speakers of English and Chinese.

Head-head relations in Problems of projection

Abstractargues that D of an external argument in Spec TP is in principle as close to C as T is. Assuming that “inversion depends upon locality independent of category,” T and D should therefore compete with each other as candidates for raising to C in English questions, yet only T so raises. Chomsky takes this to indicate that the external argument is in its base position, Spec, vP, when C is merged. Our paper argues that this approach cannot generalize to account for why only V+v and not D of an external argument can raise to T in V-v-to-T languages. It also has major difficulties accounting for a well-known asymmetry: T raises to C only in English non-subject questions. We conclude that head-movement is sensitive to categorial and other features of lexical items, contra the claims of

Morphosemantic Attributes of Meetei Proverbs

This study proposes to investigate the functions of morphosemantic in Meetei proverbs, particularly the attribution of different meanings of the lexical items in Meetei Proverbial verbs. Meetei society has been using proverbs in the all ages, stages of development, social changes, and cultural diversifications to mark their wisdom of social expertise . Meetei used proverbs as an important aspect of verbal discourses within the socio-cultural and ethno-civilization contexts in which skills, knowledge, ideas, emotion, and experiences are communicating. The language used in proverbs reflects the Meetei’s status of life, food habits, belief systems, philosophy, cultural and social orientations. At the same time, various meanings attribute in Meetei proverbs in the forms of figurative, witty, pithy, didactic etc. The construction of these forms are grammatically insightful thereby creating spaces for a whole range of possibilities for investigating the features, functions and structure of verbal inflectional markers occurred in Meetei proverbial sentences. Keywords : Proverbs, morphosemantics, features of lexical items, attributes of meanings and language

Constraints on displacement: A phase-based approach by Gereon Müller (review)

Reviewed by: Constraints on displacement: A phase-based approach by Gereon Müller Hisatsugu Kitahara Constraints on displacement: A phase-based approach. By Gereon Müller. (Language faculty and beyond 7.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011. Pp. x, 339. ISBN 9789027208248. $158 (Hb). The central issue Gereon Müller addresses in this monograph is the existence of locality constraints on displacement in human language. Beginning with a careful evaluation of locality constraints based on notions such as simplicity, generality, efficiency, nonredundancy, and minimization of search space, M argues that every major locality constraint proposed in recent decades is incompatible with core minimalist assumptions. Such locality constraints include the (generalized) minimal link condition (where structure-building features are enclosed in bullets, as in [•F•]) and the condition of extraction domain (where proper-government is replaced by complement). 1. (Generalized) minimal link condition ((G)MLC): In a structure α[•F•]… [ … β[F] … γ[F] … ] …, movement to [•F•] can only affect the category bearing the [F] feature that is closer to [•F•]. 2. Condition of extraction domain (CED) a. Movement must not cross a barrier. b. An XP is a barrier iff it is not a complement. Thus, a new approach to the effects of the (G)MLC and CED is called for, and this monograph attempts to see to what extent such effects can be derived from more basic principles within a minimalist framework. The monograph begins with a brief introduction (1–8), which outlines key assumptions and new proposals, and it consists of the following seven chapters. Ch. 1, ‘Locality constraints’ (9–66), and Ch. 2, ‘(G)MLC and CED in minimalist syntax’ (67–118), provide an overview of the development of the (G)MLC and the CED, and argue that these two highly general, widely accepted constraints (as well as other existing minimalist accounts for CED effects) are not just empirically problematic but also conceptually questionable, as they are evaluated in terms of notions such as simplicity, generality, efficiency, nonredundancy, and minimization of search space. They are shown to be incompatible with such core minimalist assumptions in a strictly derivational model of syntax. Ch. 3, ‘On deriving (G)MLC effects from the PIC’ (119–64), and Ch. 4, ‘On deriving CED effects from the PIC’ (165–238), argue that the effects of the (G)MLC and CED are derivable from the phase impenetrability condition (introduced in Chomsky 2000) and the edge feature condition (revised from Chomsky 2000, 2001). 3. Phase impenetrability condition (PIC): The domain of a head X of a phase XP is not accessible to operations outside XP; only X and its edge are accessible to such operations. [End Page 655] 4. Edge feature condition (EFC; revised): The head X of phase XP may be assigned an edge feature before the phase XP is otherwise complete, but only if there is no other way to produce a balanced phase. These two principles are supplemented by the following four assumptions: (i) all phrases are phases, (ii) all syntactic operations are driven by features of lexical items, (iii) operation-inducing features are hierarchically ordered on lexical items (where only features on the top are accessible), and (iv) edge features can be assigned only if the phase head is active (meaning that it bears at least one feature to discharge). Given these assumptions, the PIC demands that successivecyclic movement takes place in a radically local manner (via every phrase edge); and under the EFC, the assignment of an edge feature (required for intermediate movement) is limited to an active head (bearing at least one feature to discharge), and such feature assignment takes place only when there is no other way to produce a balanced phase. Following Heck and Müller (2000, 2003), M takes a phase to be balanced if, for every structure-building feature in the numeration, there is a matching feature that is either part of the workspace of the derivation, or at the edge of the current phase. Given this much, the effects of the (G)MLC and CED are shown to follow from the PIC. First consider the effects of the (G)MLC. Suppose that two items are competing for movement, and one is higher (meaning it is merged later) than...

On Deriving CED Effects from the PIC

This article shows that a version of the Condition on Extraction Domain (Huang 1982) can be derived from the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC; Chomsky 2001, 2008) if the following assumptions are made: (a) All syntactic operations are driven by features of lexical items. (b) These features are ordered on lexical items. (c) All phrases are phases. (d) Edge features that trigger intermediate movement steps can only be added before the phase head becomes inert. Given (a–d), it follows from the PIC that extraction from XP is blocked if the operation that has merged XP is the final operation taking place in a phase: a last-merged specifier is a barrier because no edge feature can be inserted that might extract some item out of it; this induces a PIC violation on the following cycle. The analysis can be extended to cover freezing effects. Furthermore, it predicts the existence of the melting effect, illustrated in German and Czech: local scrambling in front of what would otherwise qualify as a last-merged specifier renders the specifier transparent for extraction. The most important assumption made here is that the timing of edge feature insertion is crucial (before vs. after in (d)). Accordingly, the analysis can be viewed as an argument supporting a strictly derivational organization of grammar.

Dependências morfossintáticas: a relação Verbo Auxiliar – Forma Nominal

In this paper I analyze the phenomenon by which an auxiliary verb selectsthe form of its complement, a morphossyntactic dependency. For myanalysis I will adopt the claim of Minimalist Program that derivation ofsyntactic structures is result of manipulations of features of lexicalitems. With this idea I will argue that morphossyntactic dependencyimposed by auxiliary verbs to their complements is a reflex ofinteraction of features of auxiliary verbs and features of theircomplements. To implement my analysis, I will propose that: (a) nonfiniteforms of verbs (infinitive, gerund and past participle), which occurin complement position of auxiliaries, are specified for features ofMood and Aspect and (b) auxiliary verbs select features of Aspect andMood from their complements.