French Noun Phrases Research Articles

Actual decomposition of the L2 French noun phrase in the predicate construction in the final written examination

The noun phrase (NP), one of the key elements of a sentence, can reveal the characteristics of a learner’s linguistic competence. The present study focuses on actual decomposition of NP in the predicate construction. This is when the attribute elements of a noun phrase are included in the predicate construct as factor-actualized determinants. In this position, the copula verb is merely a grammatical means of allowing the attribute to become a predicate (Gaulmyn, Basset 1991: 177).The aim of the study being a more thorough investigation of the criteria and peculiarities of producing this type of predicate constructs in learner language, the present research is based on the empirical material from the Lithuanian learner corpus. The paper briefly discusses the concept of the predicate construction and describes the process of compiling the learner corpus as well as the principles of data selection. The analysis of the NP in a predicate construction is then presented, and the characteristic cases from the corpus data are examined. The main limitation of the present study is related to the scope of the learner corpus. Having summarized the results of the quantitative and qualitative research, the following conclusions were formulated. The learner language is dominated by NP predicate constructions with an adjective more often than a noun. As to the verb conjunction, the typical attribute verb être ‘to be’ was the only one widely used in the corpus under investigation. The analysis of the corpus data also revealed a number of specific errors that are typical of the learners’ written language. In general, the predictive constructions in the learners’ language are characterized by the omission of redundancy tags in the grammatical categories of gender and number. The analysis of the learner corpus provided a broader look at the NP in a predicate construction, highlighting the simplicity, conciseness and repetition of this construct. The results of the study are important for a more comprehensive description of the learners’ language, for solving problems in foreign language analysis, and for contributing to the quality of teaching and learning the French language.

Proper name-marking vialiaisonin French

AbstractTheliaisonconsonant [z] in French noun phrases has traditionally been assumed to function as a plural marker. The realization of “plural [z]” in N(oun)-A(djective)-combinations is becoming, however, very rare in naturalistic data – except for contexts which allow a proper-name reading. On the one hand, one might think that we are dealing with a recent phenomenon, the beginning of a potential linguistic change in French in the sense ofexaptation, reuse of former morphophonological material such as plural markers to signal proper-namehood in the sense of ‘frozen morphology’. If this turns out correct, we expect the productivity of the new synchronic function to increase: New NA-combinations which function as proper names should be realized systematically withliaison, and proper name-marking vialiaisonshould also become possible with otherliaisonconsonants. On the other hand, we may be dealing with a (completed) diachronic process, in that only those NA-combinations which allowedliaisonat the relevant point in time may have aliaisonconsonant in their univerbalized form. That is, new NA-combinations, even though they are used as proper names, do not display aliaisonconsonant, becauseliaisonis no longer possible. The purpose of this paper was to investigate, based on empirical studies, whetherliaisonproductively marks NA-combinations which function as proper names and distinguishes them from NA-combinations that count as common nouns, or whether we are dealing with a completed diachronic process. In view of the poor productivity observed, we argue that we are dealing with cases of univerbation.

Over desemantisering en interne conflicten

Abstract On semantic bleaching and internal conflicts: the interaction between definite determiners and speech act related referential adjectives in the Dutch and French noun phrase In this paper, we present the results of a corpus-based contrastive study of the way in which definite determiners, in particular definite articles and demonstratives, and a specific type of adjectives, namely ‘speech act related referential adjectives’, contribute to the establishment of definite reference in the Dutch and French noun phrase. Speech act related referential adjectives express a primarily temporal (e.g. de huidige situatie), spatial (e.g. de aanwezige menigte) or deictic textual (e.g. onderhavig boek) meaning. We focus on two grammaticalization processes which allow to explain most of the quantitative and qualitative divergences observed for this topic between both languages: the semantic bleaching of the referential force of the French demonstrative noun phrase in comparison with the Dutch demonstrative noun phrase and the presence of Dutch speech act related referential adjectives in the determiner position of the noun phrase.

Tracking the time course of multi-word noun phrase production with ERPs or on when (and why) cat is faster than the big cat.

Words are rarely produced in isolation. Yet, our understanding of multi-word production, and especially its time course, is still rather poor. In this research, we use event-related potentials to examine the production of multi-word noun phrases in the context of overt picture naming. We track the processing costs associated with the production of these noun phrases as compared with the production of bare nouns, from picture onset to articulation. Behavioral results revealed longer naming latencies for French noun phrases with determiners and pre-nominal adjectives (D-A-N, the big cat) than for noun phrases with a determiner (D-N, the cat), or bare nouns (N, cat). The spatio-temporal analysis of the ERPs revealed differences in the duration of stable global electrophysiological patterns as a function of utterance format in two time windows, from ~190 to 300 ms after picture onset, and from ~530 ms after picture onset to 100 ms before articulation. These findings can be accommodated in the following model. During grammatical encoding (here from ~190 to 300 ms), the noun and adjective lemmas are accessed in parallel, followed by the selection of the gender-agreeing determiner. Phonological encoding (after ~530 ms) operates sequentially. As a consequence, the phonological encoding process is longer for longer utterances. In addition, when determiners are repeated across trials, their phonological encoding can be anticipated or primed, resulting in a shortened encoding process.

Perception of prosody in normal and whispered French.

The current study explored perception of prosody in normal and whispered speech using a two-interval, two-alternative forced-choice psychophysical task where listeners discriminated between French noun phrases pronounced as declaratives or interrogatives. Stimuli were either presented between 50 and 8000 Hz or filtered into one of three broad frequency regions, corresponding to harmonic-resolvability regions for normal speech (resolved, partially resolved, unresolved harmonics). Normal speech was presented against a speech-shaped noise masker, whereas whispered speech was presented in quiet. The results showed that discrimination performance was differentially affected by filtering for normal and whispered speech, suggesting that cues to prosody differ between speech modes. For whispered speech, evidence was mainly derived from the high-frequency region, whereas for normal speech, evidence was mainly derived from the low-frequency (resolved harmonics) region. Modeling of the early stages of auditory processing confirmed that for whispered speech, perception of prosody was not based on temporal auditory cues and suggests that listeners may rely on place of excitation (spectral) cues that are, in contrast with suggestions made by earlier work, distributed across the spectrum.

Apposition détachée ou liée ?

The article compares the use of the so called close apposition (e.g. le Premier ministre israélien Benjamin Netanyahou) with that of the two types of loose apposition (le Premier ministre israélien, Benjamin Netanyahou and Benjamin Netanyahou, le Premier ministre israélien) in a corpus consisting of French and Swedish newspaper articles. It is suggested that, in many cases, rather than being a result of any particular information structure, the choice of apposition depends to a large extent on the form of the expansion in the common noun. There is a clear difference in the use of the close and loose types between French and Swedish texts. In French, the loose appositions are more common. In Swedish, the close apposition is the most frequent construction. This is due to the fact that, prototypically, the expansion of the French noun phrase is positioned after its head, whereas in Swedish, it is normally positioned before its head.

The French noun phrase in preschool children with SLI: morphosyntactic and error analyses

We studied spontaneous speech noun-phrase production in eight French-speaking children with SLI (aged 5 ; 0 to 5 ; 11) and controls matched on age (4 ; 10 to 5 ; 11) or MLU (aged 3 ; 2 to 4 ; 1). Results showed that children with SLI prefer simple DP structures to complex ones while producing more substitution and omission errors than controls. The three groups also showed distinct error patterns. Children with SLI appeared to have difficulty with phonological processes involved in liaison, elision, and contraction, whereas control children tended to make more lexical errors. These data support models of reduced morphosyntactic and syntactic abilities in this population, and suggest that morphophonological processes should also be integrated into descriptive models of SLI.

Efficiency of Pregroups and the French Noun Phrase

We study mathematical and algorithmic properties of Lambek's pregroups and illustrate them by the French noun phrase. An algorithm of complexity n3 to solve the reduction problem in an arbitrary free pregroup as well as recognition by a pregroup grammar is presented. This algorithm is then specified to run in linear time. A sufficient condition for a language fragment that makes the linear algorithm complete is given.

Wörterbuch der Valenz etymologisch verwandter Wörter By Karl-Ernst Sommerfeldt and Herbert Schreiber (review)

BOOK NOTICES 431 arguing that these constructions also involve an empty noun but that this empty noun is present at the morphological/lexical level, where it is licensed again by partitivity. S's book is lucidly written and provides a good overview ofprevious work on ellipsis in French noun phrases (beginning with Mitsou Ronat's work from the 1970s). The account of ellipsis in DP which S proposes raises a number of interesting issues for those interested in ellipsis in general and in the phrase structure of DP more particularly. It would be interesting to investigate whether S's semantic licensing and identification strategy for pro extends to other ellipsis constructions (such as VP ellipsis and sluicing ) and to null subjects and objects in French and other languages (for example, the empty prepositional objects in French discussed by Anne ZribiHertz ). [Anne Lobeck, Western Washington University .] Wörterbuch der Valenz etymologisch verwandter Wörter. By Karl-Ernst Sommerfeldt and Herbert Schreiber. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996. Pp. vi, 298. This book is designed as a valence dictionary meant to give learners of German the opportunity to understand the combinatory possibilities of words they want to use. For this purpose the words are organized m word-fields These word-fields are not limited to single word classes, i.e. verb or noun or adjective fields, but contain various word classes and juxtapose words of different word classes that are derived from each other, i.e. gebären-Geburt. However , to talk of 'etymological kinship' ofthese words that are directly derived from each other, as Sommerfeldt & Schreiber do in their title, does seem odd, especially if the book is in fact directed at learners of German. But, as the introduction makes clear, the book is directed both at learners of German and at valence scholars interested in the possibility of using valence information to broaden a learner's understanding ofword use. This twofold goal in producing the book entails various problems for the design of the single word entries. The authors state in the introduction that they intend to consider pragmatic valence (i.e. contexts in which the word may be used, which also means giving register information) as well as systemic valence (grammatical possibilities of combining the word with other words and word classes). They also explain , in the last sentence of their introduction (14), that they are aware of the fact that, although the chosen examples may not always reflect normal usage in German, they exemplify the possible valence of an expression. Thus the examples at the beginning of an entry exemplify the valence scope, giving all three agents, even if the expression may sound odd in German. This seems to me a problematical decision if the dictionary is meant to improve word combination usage of learners of German. The biggest problem is the decision to include infinitives as nouns wherever grammatically possible, even if they are not used in German, because a noun not directly derived from the infinitive is used instead. Mere usage examples without realization of all agents at the end of each entry do not contain this error, but even they use infinitive-nouns unusual for everyday German usage. Although the authors do explain the abbreviations they use in their syntactic and semantic valence descriptions for each entry in a table preceding the actual dictionary, they do not explain the meaning of the words they use to give register information. They use words like pejorativ 'pejorative', salopp 'colloquial ', or vulgär 'vulgar' without explaining their hierarchical structure. Some entries do not contain register information, meaning that the word is standard usage, but this 'default' meaning may not be immediately clear to every reader. Thus true learners of German would have to check these register description terms in another dictionary before they could decide on the context in which they may use the word, unless they have been able to infer register information from the words in the context. Other problems are that the total number ofentries is too small, the word groups too limited and, unlike traditional dictionaries showing semantic affinity between words (such as the Stilwörterbuch, Vol 2 in the Duden Series or the Wehrle-Eggers...

Eléments pour une typologie des SN complexes en de en français

Inge Bartning : An Interpretation Typology of French complex nominals with de This paper presents a two level interpretation model of French noun phrases with de. On the basis of semantic and argumentai properties of the head noun and the interrelationship between the two nouns it is argued that there is a limited set of prototypical semantic interpretations at the level of the NP itself, the micro-level. These prototypical relations are covered by two essential meanings, namely possession and origin. Syntactic tests support this dichotomy. The second interpretation level is a textual one where the complex NP is interpreted by contextual clues (salient themes in the preceding discourse) or by extra-linguistic knowledge of the referents of the two NPs and their interrelations. In the last two cases the interpretation demands a larger context (at the macro-level) than that of the complex NP itself.