Feminine Nouns Research Articles

(048) Proposal to amend Article 60.8 and Example 17, and add an associated new Glossary entry

The current International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (Shenzhen Code; Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 159. 2018) prescribes how to form the genitive case for personal names that are not of Latin form and that end in a consonant other than er. Article 60.8(b) specifies that the genitive for masculine nouns is formed by adding ii (singular) or iorum (plural), and for feminine nouns by adding iae (sing.) or iarum (pl.). Thus, one would render the genitive of the personal name “Smith” as, depending on the gender and number, smithii or smithiorum, or as smithiae or smithiarum. Latin grammar books (e.g. LaFleur, Wheelock's Latin, ed. 7. 2011), however, prescribe a slightly different set of genitive endings for these nouns: namely, for masculine, i (sing.) or orum (pl.), and for feminine, ae (sing.) or arum (pl.). As many taxonomists have probably noted, these endings are used by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ed. 4, International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 1999), resulting in names such as Paramecium woodruffi (honouring Woodruff, masculine) and P. grohmannae (honouring Grohmann, feminine). Therefore, by comparison, it would appear that the Shenzhen Code requires an extra i between the noun and its genitive case ending. This interpolated i is called a “stem augmentation” in Art. 60.8(b) and (d). Why does the Shenzhen Code apparently use different endings than those of classical Latin and the zoological Code? Actually, the Shenzhen Code uses the same endings as in classical Latin and the zoological Code. The difference is how the Shenzhen Code creates the stem of the noun to which the genitive endings are added. The process is thus: the surname “Smith” is first put into Latin form by adding ius, resulting in smithius. Note that this process gives rise to stem augmentation because the interpolated i is part of the newly latinized stem. The genitive is then formed by the normal rules of Latin grammar: the us is dropped, resulting in smithi, and then the appropriate genitive ending is added. If the word is a masculine singular noun, i is added, resulting in smithii; or if plural, orum is added, resulting in smithiorum. Nowhere is this process explained in the Code. It should be. Without an explanation, taxonomists will not understand how a stem augmentation arises. Also, they will not readily appreciate why names already of Latin form lack a stem augmentation and end in a single i, as when, for example, Hieronymus (meaning “Jerome”) is inflected with only one i, resulting in hieronymi. To address this deficiency in the Code, we propose the following amendments to Art. 60.8 clauses (b) and (d) and Ex. 17, and a new entry in the Glossary defining “stem augmentation”. “(b) If the personal name ends with a consonant (but not in -er), substantival epithets are formed by latinizing them with -ius, then dropping the -us and adding -i- (stem augmentation) plus the genitive inflection appropriate to the gender and number of the person(s) honoured (e.g. Lecard-ius, lecard-i-i for Lecard (m), Wilson-ius, wilson-i-ae for Wilson (f), Verlot-ius, verlot-i-orum for the Verlot brothers, Braun-ius, braun-i-arum for the Braun sisters, Mason-ius, mason-i-orum for Mason, father and daughter).” “(d) If the personal name ends with a consonant, adjectival epithets are formed by latinizing the personal name with -ius, then dropping the -us and adding -i- (stem augmentation) plus -an- (stem of adjectival suffix) plus the nominative singular inflection appropriate to the gender of the generic name (e.g. Rosa webbi-ana for Webb, Desmodium griffithi-anum for Griffith, Verbena hassleri-ana for Hassler).” “Ex. 17. In Rhododendron ‘potanini' Batalin (in Trudy Imp. S.-Peterburgsk. Bot. Sada 11: 489. 1892), commemorating G. N. Potanin, the epithet is to be spelled potaninii under Art. 60.8(b) because Potanin is first put in Latin form by adding -ius to create potaninius; then the genitive is formed by first dropping the -us to yield potanini- (the final -i- is the stem augmentation) and then adding the masculine genitive singular ending -i, resulting in the epithet potaninii). However, in Phoenix theophrasti Greuter (in Bauhinia 3: 243. 1967), commemorating Theophrastus, it is not spelled ‘theophrastii' because Rec. 60C.1 applies.” “stem augmentation. [Not defined] – the -i- at the end of the stem of a specific or infraspecific epithet derived from a personal name not already of Latin form and ending in a consonant. It results from latinizing the personal name by adding -ius (e.g. Smith to smithius), then dropping the -us to yield the stem (smithi-), to which is added the appropriate genitive ending (smithi-i, masc. sing.; smithi-orum, masc. pl.; smithi-ae, fem. sing.; smithi-arum, fem. pl.) (Art. 60.8(b) and (d)). Similarly, adjectival epithets are formed by first latinizing the personal name by adding -ius, then adding an adjectival suffix (-an-) to which is attached the appropriate nominative singular inflection.”

The neural substrate of noun morphological inflection: A rapid event-related fMRI study in Italian

The present research investigated the neural correlates of nominal inflection and aimed at disclosing their possible link with the frequency distribution of noun inflectional features: grammatical gender, inflectional suffixes and inflectional classes. The properties of the Italian nominal system were exploited since it allows to explore exhaustively fine-grained phenomena in the inflectional processing.An event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment was carried out where Italian masculine and feminine nouns were visually presented to 50 healthy participants in an overt inflectional task: the generation of the plural from the singular and vice versa. The grammatical gender and the citation form suffix of nouns were manipulated in a factorial design.Functional data showed that inflectional operations for nouns activate an extensive cortical network involving the left inferior and right superior frontal gyri, the left and right middle temporal gyri, the posterior cingulate cortex and the cerebellum. Activations were variably modulated by the distributional features of gender-dependent properties of nouns. Particularly, cortical activity increased during inflectional operations for small and/or scarcely consistent inflectional classes.These findings demonstrate the relevance of specific morphological (inflectional suffixes) and distributional features (size and consistency) shared by groups of words (inflectional classes) in a language, particularly when implementing cognitive operations required for language processing.

Slavic *ljuby and the heterogeneity of the inflectional class in *‑y

Abstract The inherited Proto-Slavic feminine nouns in nom. sg. *‑y, oblique *‑ъvare conventionally thought to go back to one source only, namely Proto-Indo- European stems in *‑uh‑. However, a handful of previous studies have already demonstrated the possibility that other inherited items could join this paradigm by phonologically developing a nom. sg. in *‑y from other sources (particularly *‑ōs). Accordingly, in the present article, it is hypothesized that the well-known PSl. noun *ljuby *ljubъve f. ‘love’ may go back to an amphikinetic s‑stem *lewbʰ‑ōs. Such a reconstruction makes it possible to explain a number of otherwise problematic features of the complex of *ljuby, such as: 1) the enigmatic OCS acc. sg. ljuby (for expected ljubъvь) in the collocations (prě)ljuby (sъ)tvoriti or (prě)ljuby dějati ‘commit adultery’; 2) the unexpected presence of *‑s‑ in the Balt. cognate, Lith. liaupsė̃ f. ‘praise, adoration’; 3) the occurrence of PSl. *‑y as an abstract marker (a function in which PIE amphikinetic s‑stems in *‑ōs are securely, even if marginally, found, particularly in the domain of emotions and mental states - cf. Gk. αἰδώς αἰδόος f. ‘reverence, awe’, ἔρως *ἔροος m. ‘love, desire’, Ved. bhiyás‑, Av. biiah‑ m. ‘fear’ - while no such function can convincingly be reconstructed for a formation in *‑u‑h₂).

Primi appunti sulla manipolazione dell’assegnazione del genere in sanvalentinese

"Preliminary Notes on Gender Assignment Manipulation in Sanvalentinese. This contribution draws attention on a peculiar feature of the Italo-Romance dialect spoken in San Valentino in Abruzzo Citeriore, where a subgroup of feminine nouns displays both feminine and masculine plural options. Gender shift to masculine in the plural seems to be exploited to obtain semantic differences related to countability and evaluation, namely to refer respectively to weak differentiation and pejorative meaning. This phenomenon, known as recategorization or gender assignment manipulation, is rather common in African languages of different families, but less pervasive and systematic in Romance. Gender and recategorization in Sanvalentinese are discussed in relation to inflectional classes, of which this contribution provides a sketch. Keywords: gender, number, recategorization, inflectional class, overdifferentiation, collective plural, Romance dialectology, metaphony."

Лексико-словотвірні типи нульсуфіксальних дериватів в українській мові ХІ–ХІІІ ст.

The structural and semantic analysis of null suffix of feminine and neuter gender nouns and pluralia tantum nouns in the Ukrainian language of the ancient Russian-Ukrainian period (XI–XIII centuries) is carried out through the prism of lexical word-forming types and subtypes. The vast majority of the described derivatives are formed from verbs that have the following general word-forming meanings: ‟carrier of a procedural feature” and ‟object movement or state”. The considered deverbatives are mainly of Proto-Slavic origin, the analysis of linguistic facts involves only those nouns that have retained structural and semantic correspondence with the creative bases at the time of their fixation in the texts of the first written memos of the Ukrainian language. In the group of derivatives with the general word-forming meaning ‟carrier of the procedural feature”, there are derivatives that name females and female derivatives with the meaning of summation of persons (хоть ῾wife’, роба ῾slave’). Nulsufixation is more widely represented in the derivation of the names of inanimate objects, namely: the name of natural phenomena, natural disasters, weather conditions (гроза, моча ῾rain’, поводь ῾flood’), natural objects, land allocations, water surfaces (истурга ῾water’, пожня ῾cornfield’), names of places of permanent or temporary location of someone (застава, оболость’), buildings, objects of various purposes (огорода, стел"), tools, household utensils (,мhра ῾a device for measuring weight, quantity’, перевhсa ῾net for catching birds’), food (пища, пита ῾bread with ritual use’), substances, materials (масть опока ῾of chalk limestone, gray-white clay’). Some names of diseases ("зва, грыжа), derivatives with seven results of intellectual action (заповhдь, повhсть), etc. are documented. In the circle of derivatives with the general word-forming meaning «objectified action or state» the names of actions are widely represented irrespective of duration and character of their course (осада, бесhда). Occasionally there are nouns that indicate the relationship between people (пр#, свада), their actions (оклевета ῾slander’, ослоуха ῾disobedience’), etc. Female adjective null suffixes are infrequently documented. These are only names of persons, locatives (неплодь, соуш", чащ") and some other nouns. Sights of the XI–XIII centuries document several deverbatives of the neutral gender (диво, вhче, ложе, право) and pluratives (ловы, постригы). Selected linguistic facts give grounds to assert that the zero-suffix creation of feminine nouns in the Old Russian Ukrainian language was a fairly common phenomenon, which laid a solid foundation for further activation of the zero formant in the noun derivation.

A long birth

AbstractThis article investigates the diachronic development of Russian numeral constructions consisting of a paucal numeral (dva“two”,tri“three”,četyre“four”) followed by an adjective and a noun. Based on statistical analysis of more than 6,000 corpus examples, it is shown that a split took place in the second half of the twentieth century when feminine nouns developed a different agreement pattern from that of masculine and neuter nouns. This split is argued to represent the final step in a long “birth process” of gender-specific paucal constructions that started with the loss of the dual in the Middle Ages. It is suggested that we are witnessing a cascading effect, whereby the feminine pattern develops when the pattern for masculine and neuter nouns is approaching stabilization. The article furthermore includes a discussion of the hypothesis that “S-curves” represent a template for language change. While the documented changes resemble S-curves, the proposed analysis also addresses some general problems with testing the S-curve hypothesis empirically.

Feminitives with Suffix ‘-shits(a ) /-chits(a)’

The feminitives (nouns denoting women) of the modern Russian language, formed with the help of the productive suffixal morpheme ‘-shits(a) /-chits(a)’ are considered. The views of scientists of the 19th-21st centuries on the process of derivation of feminine nouns are characterized. The relevance of the study is due to the stable productivity of the suffix formant and the insufficient development of the theory of word formation of feminitives. Structural-semantic and corpuscular methods are used. The novelty and scientific significance of the work is determined primarily by the research material: neologisms, which are included in the dictionaries of new words of 1971-2014, the Russian National Corpus (main and newspaper corps) used in media texts, are analyzed. The specifics of correlates of male and female gender fixing in the explanatory dictionaries of the last years of publication are shown. Particular attention is paid to the semantics of neoplasms, a classification of new feminitives by semantic properties is proposed. Motivating words, morphological features of the compound of the formant with the motivating basis are revealed. The author dwells on potential neologisms. The conclusion is made that the formation of feminitives with suffixes ‘-shits(a ) /-chits(a)’, as well as masculine nouns with value of a person, is carried out using verbs and deverbatives, nouns and adjectives.

Discourse Analysis of Short Story 'The Man of the House'

Discourse analysis is considered as an instrument in analyzing elements which influence on our understanding of a particular text. Thus, discourse analysis is a highly coherent model in analyzing any spoken, like conversation, or written, like short story text. The aim of this study is to analyze the discourse analysis of a short story, to show how the discourse is initiated, developed and terminated. How the characters participate, interact and what are the relationships among them, how those characters are introduced in the story; how they interrupt, ask questions, and how turns are distributed. The study also aims at counting the number of topics and how they are interrelated. To know whether the sequence of events is logical or not, and to know the fillers (Ah, Oh) and their functions. Further, the study tries to analyze a short story fro the grammatical point of view for stylistic characterization relying on (A Practical English Grammar) (1986) (Fourth Edition) by A. J. Thomson and A. V. Martinet. Also, to determine the speech acts and their percentages. In order to achieve these aims, the study adopts the discourse analysis of a written text of a short story namely, The Man of the House, by analyzing and describing the different strategies like initiating, developing, and terminating. In this study, the model of discourse analysis is eclectic, comprising of three models; Hymes model (1972) who suggests the category of "speech event", and Sacks model (1968) which proposes interaction analysis based on four categories "conversation", "topic", "sequence", and "turn". Finally Sinclair-and Coulthard’s model (1975) of speech acts classification. The present study hypothesizes that discourse analysis is conducted depending on the text and context and how the two terms complete each other. The meaning of the text is completed by action. Analysis is to be achieved structurally and linguistically. It is also found that the discourse is composed of the cooperating of acts, interaction of the participants, sequence of events, topics, and other units. Throughout the analysis, it has been found that the participants perform different speech acts such as nomination which is the most frequently used. The frequency of nomination is 1156 which represents 52.3% of the total acts, reaction forms 555 which represents 25.1%. Evaluation records 198 which represents 8.9% of the total number of acts. There are other speech acts like comment, obligation, manner, and metastatement mentioned in the story. These acts vary according to their usages and functions, and percentages. In the analysis of speech events, the number of major events is 22 which forms (24.5%), while the number of minor events is 68 which forms (75.5%). It is worth mentioning that the participants in the aforementioned story are of different social classes. The participants sometimes address each other by using terms of address in order to show respect, especially some of them are of higher status. The story is narrated in the first person pronoun ( I ), which means that the writer talks about his personal life. Sullivan did most of the turns, (41) which represents 47.6% of the total turns as he is the protagonist and the most important participant in the story. Dooley had (14) turns so that she came second in order that represents 16.2%. The mother came third in rank and did (13) turns which represents 15.5%. Some of the participants participated in conversations more than others, Dooley and Sullivan for instance participate in 12 turns which represents 29.2%, while Minnie and Sullivan participate in 9 turns which forms 21.9%. Within the grammatical analysis, it is found that the number of content words are 4632 which represents 76.5%, the number of content words is 1420 which represents 23.4%, the number of definite articles is 290 which represents 73.9%, the number of indefinite articles is 102 which represents 26.0% of the total number of articles. The total number of nouns, such as countable nouns, singular nouns, feminine nouns, used by the story author is 2439. Discourse analysis shows when and where the turns and topics are shifted, and changed. The use of fillers, such as (Ah) and (Oh), is important and related to the use of discourse; (Ah) occurs 8 times that is 72.7%, whilst (Oh) occurs 3 times that is 27.2%. Finally, the linguistic analysis of literature has many implications and benefits for language teaching.

Epík, keramík og klassík: Gerð og beyging fleirkvæðra orða sem enda á -ík

Greinin fjallar um gerð og beyging fleirkvæðra orða sem enda á -ík eins og t.d. epík, keramík og klass´ík.

A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement

Objectives:This study investigates (a) whether child heritage speakers produce more gender mismatches in Spanish ( un piedra “a-masc. stone-fem.”) than monolingual children, (b) whether older child heritage speakers mismatch more than younger ones, and (c) linguistic contexts in which mismatches occur.Methodology:3893 agreement forms were extracted from corpora of Spanish spoken by six monolingual children, ages 5–6 years, and three groups of US child heritage speakers: ten 5–6-year-olds, fifteen 7–8-year-olds, and twenty-one 9–11-year-olds.Data and analysis:Logistic regressions measured the impact of agreement form type, noun gender, noncanonical noun ending, and noun frequency on gender matching. One regression included 5–6-year-olds only (monolingual and heritage); the second included child heritage speakers only (5–11-year-olds).Findings:There were no significant differences between monolingual and heritage 5–6-year-olds; for these children, adjectives, direct object clitics, noncanonical nouns, and feminine nouns increased the likelihood of mismatches. Among the 5–11-year-old heritage speakers, direct object clitics referring to feminine nouns and noncanonical nouns increased the likelihood of mismatches. The 9–11-year-olds produced more gender mismatches referring to feminine nouns than the younger child heritage speakers, especially with direct object clitics.Originality:This corpus study provides evidence for high rates of gender matching and clarifies the contexts that increase the likelihood that children will mismatch.Implications:Gender matching remains an intact part of child heritage speakers’ Spanish grammars. The distribution of mismatches found provides evidence of a strong article–noun association and a weaker noun–direct object clitic association. The oldest child heritage speakers’ use of masculine clitic lo to refer to feminine nouns may reflect an association between English “it” and Spanish lo. More generally, the finding that mismatches tend to involve masculine forms referring to feminine nouns supports the idea that masculine is the default, unmarked form in Spanish.

A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible

A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible

A Diagnostic Chomskian View to Arabic Asymmetry

Agreement asymmetry is one of the significant linguistic phenomena that Arab and Western linguists (Ghaly,1995; Parkinson, 1995; Benmamoun,1998; Collins, 2001; Dayf, 1986) and Aoun, 1994) have tried to account for within the framework of the Government and Binding theory. They focused upon the number asymmetry in different varieties in Arabic. Most linguists assert that in different types of Arabic there is always gender agreement between the subject and the verb. This study aims at giving much evidence for the lack of gender agreement in Modern Standard Arabic(MSA), and at accounting this gender asymmetry within the framework of the Minimality Program (Chomsky, 1995). The sample consists of 37 sentences collected from some Arabic textbooks. To analyze the data collected, a qualitative diagnostic research design was adopted. One of the essential findings of this study is that there is no gender agreement in Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) sentences between the post-verbal subject and the verb if the subject is (a) an unreal feminine Noun Phrase (NP), (b) a broken plural NP, (c) an inanimate collective NP, (d) a collective NP, (e) a regular sound feminine plural NP, (f) an irregular sound feminine plural NP, (g) an irregular sound masculine plural NP, and (h) a real feminine NP separated from its verb by any category. This study concludes that the head C in VSO sentences in MSA carries a weak gender feature represented as [-Strong]. Therefore, in VSO sentences, if the verb disagrees with its subject in gender, it will move from V to I and then to C because C is [-Strong]. A final conclusion is that the head I in VSO sentences in MSA carries a strong gender feature, represented as [+Strong]. Therefore, in VSO sentences, if the verb and its subject agree in gender, the verb will move from V to I; it will not move further

Judging Hebrew adjective agreement across development: syntactic and morpho-syntactic awareness

Grammatical awareness of syntax and morphology is important in children’s literacy development for both reading and writing. Hebrew, a language with rich inflectional morphology, marks nouns for plural number in conjunction with gender. Hebrew attributive adjectives agree with noun number and gender in the same noun phrase, while predicative adjectives are in agreement with the grammatical subject in the same clause. Since adjectives are dependent on nouns, regularity or irregularity of plural marking on nouns directly affects plural agreement marking on adjectives. Given the importance of word order to Hebrew syntactic acquisition, the syntactic positions and functions of adjectives should also play a role in learning to inflect them. The current study examined Hebrew speakers’ developing ability to correctly identify adjective agreement with plural nouns given noun (ir)regularity and adjective syntactic position in children, adolescents, younger and older adults. Accuracy and reaction time were the measures used to trace this development. Findings showed that judgment increased in accuracy and decreased in RT, with feminine noun gender in conjunction with suffix irregularity challenging acquisition. Processing factors associated with the position and syntactic function of the adjective enhanced this difficulty sometimes even in adults. These results shed light on the psycholinguistic mechanisms used in syntactic and morphological judgment and on the ways they change with age and schooling.

(022) Proposal to modify Article 60.8(a)

In Latin, nouns ending in -er belong to the second declension. For these nouns, i is added after the -er to form the genitive singular. Some examples are bakeri, engleri, hookeri, palmeri, wagneri, and weberi. In classical Latin, with few exceptions, nouns of the second declension are either masculine or neuter (Stearn, Bot. Latin. 1973). Botany, however, has feminine nouns ending in -er for epithets honouring women. For instance, one may find in the International Plant Names Index (IPNI; https://www.ipni.org/; accessed 31 Mar 2020) 41 records for walkerae, 18 for carterae, 18 for barkerae, 14 for barberae, 6 for alexanderae, 5 for bucherae, 6 for canterae, 3 for rennerae, and 2 for weberae. Other examples exist, as a search of IPNI will reveal. Thus, the practice in botanical Latin has been to add -ae to the -er termination for women's names. This was not done in classical Latin. It is one way that botanical Latin differs from the classical. Currently, the Code (Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 159. 2018) does not provide an example of this different usage. It should. The Code should also provide an example of the plural when a name ends with -a. To address these matters, we propose the following two additions to Art. 60.8(a). “(a) If the personal name ends with a vowel or -er, substantival epithets are formed by adding the genitive inflection appropriate to the sex and number of the person(s) honoured (e.g. scopoli-i for Scopoli (m), fedtschenko-i for Fedtschenko (m), fedtschenko-ae for Fedtschenko (f), glaziou-i for Glaziou (m), lace-ae for Lace (f), gray-i for Gray (m), hooker-i for Hooker (m), hooker-ae for Hooker (f), hooker-orum for the Hookers (m)), except when the name ends with -a, in which case adding -e (singular) or -rum (plural) is appropriate (e.g. triana-e for Triana (m), pojarkova-e for Pojarkova (f), orlovskaja-e for Orlovskaja (f), espinosa-rum for the Espinosas (m)).”

Italian Grammatical Gender: A Corpus Study from a Second Language Acquisition Perspective

Abstract The three objectives of this corpus study are first to describe how the gender of inanimate nouns is morphologically expressed in Italian, then determine the extent and reliability of contextual cues to Italian gender by analyzing 5,038 contextualized determiner phrases (DPs) drawn from 40 current newspaper and magazine articles and finally, consider learnability implications for Anglophone learners of Italian as a second language. A detailed descriptive account of gender morphology characterized by vocalic endings as portmanteau morphemes reveals several idiosyncrasies and complexities while the results of the written corpus showing that 33.4% of ambiguous feminine nouns and 31.0% of ambiguous masculine nouns are not gender-marked at all are argued to present significant difficulties for second language learners particularly for those who have a low tolerance for ambiguity.

How do Spanish heritage speakers in the US assign gender to English nouns in Spanish-English code-switching?

Abstract Previous studies have observed different gender assignment strategies for English nouns in Spanish-English code-switching (CS). However, these studies have not investigated the role of noun gender canonicity of the Spanish equivalent, they have only examined participants in bilingual speaker mode, and most studies have not explored the role of bilingual language experience. The current study compares gender assignment by heritage speakers of Spanish in a monolingual speaker mode and a bilingual speaker mode, considering the role of noun gender canonicity and CS experience. Results revealed a language mode effect, where participants used significantly more masculine determiners with the same feminine nouns in the CS session than those in the Spanish monolingual session where they used a feminine determiner. Further evidence of a language mode effect was found in the effect of noun canonicity and bilingual language experience. Noun canonicity was only significant in the Spanish monolingual session, where participants used significantly more masculine determiners with non-canonical nouns. Bilingual language experience was only significant in the CS session, where regular codeswitchers used more masculine default determiners than infrequent codeswitchers and non-codeswitchers, while in Spanish-only, all these groups behaved similarly.

Le conseguenze grammaticali della perdita di -s in ladino

After briefly presenting and commenting on Saussure’s concept of diachronic change, the study shows the validity of one of his intuitions through the analysis of lazy concord phenomena in some Ladin dialects: a phonetic change, the loss of final -s before a consonant inside the noun phrase, not only restructured the rules for plural concord in feminine noun phrases, but also permitted the morphological expression of such syntactic relations that formerly had remained implicit, and introduced agglutinative features in a basically flectional language.

Grammatical gender-marking ability of multilingual children in French immersion

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: We explored the advantage of bilingualism and the effect of linguistic proximity on the acquisition of determiner-noun agreement, an aspect of inflectional morphology, in a French immersion setting. To our knowledge, third language acquisition literature has yet to provide evidence of a bilingual advantage in learning a particular feature of morphology in an additional language among young children. Design/methodology/approach: We compared accuracy in determiner-noun agreement on a narrative task in three groups of grade 1 and 2 students ( n = 15 in each group): a group of third language French learners whose first language marked gender, a group of third language French learners whose first language did not mark gender, and a group of English learners learning French as a second language. Data and analysis: If the determiner and the noun agreed in gender, gender on the determiner was considered correct. A repeated measures factorial ANCOVA was carried out to compare the performance among the three language groups on the proportion of correctly marked masculine and feminine nouns. Findings/conclusions: All of the children achieved high levels of accuracy on masculine nouns with no difference among the three language groups on the proportion of correctly marked masculine nouns. There was a significant difference in the proportion of correctly marked feminine nouns in favour of the group whose first language marks gender compared to the other two groups. Originality: The current study supports transfer in the domain of morphology among primary-school-aged children (who are first language speakers of diverse minority languages) in the early stages of third-language French acquisition. Significance/implications: This finding provides preliminary evidence of a bilingual advantage in the domain of morphology among young, emergent trilinguals whose first language and third language share gender marking as a linguistic feature, supporting the linguistic proximity model.

Strictly Local Impoverishment: An Intervention Effect

Strictly Local Impoverishment: An Intervention Effect

A Diagnostic Chomskian View to Arabic Asymmetry

Agreement asymmetry is one of the significant linguistic phenomena that Arab and Western linguists (Ghaly,1995; Parkinson, 1995; Benmamoun,1998; Collins, 2001; Dayf, 1986) and Aoun, 1994) have tried to account for within the framework of the Government and Binding theory. They focused upon the number asymmetry in different varieties in Arabic. Most linguists assert that in different types of Arabic there is always gender agreement between the subject and the verb. This study aims at giving much evidence for the lack of gender agreement in Modern Standard Arabic(MSA), and at accounting this gender asymmetry within the framework of the Minimality Program (Chomsky, 1995). The sample consists of 37 sentences collected from some Arabic textbooks. To analyze the data collected, a qualitative diagnostic research design was adopted. One of the essential findings of this study is that there is no gender agreement in Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) sentences between the post-verbal subject and the verb if the subject is (a) an unreal feminine Noun Phrase (NP), (b) a broken plural NP, (c) an inanimate collective NP, (d) a collective NP, (e) a regular sound feminine plural NP, (f) an irregular sound feminine plural NP, (g) an irregular sound masculine plural NP, and (h) a real feminine NP separated from its verb by any category. This study concludes that the head C in VSO sentences in MSA carries a weak gender feature represented as [-Strong]. Therefore, in VSO sentences, if the verb disagrees with its subject in gender, it will move from V to I and then to C because C is [-Strong]. A final conclusion is that the head I in VSO sentences in MSA carries a strong gender feature, represented as [+Strong]. Therefore, in VSO sentences, if the verb and its subject agree in gender, the verb will move from V to I; it will not move further