Grammatical Relations Research Articles

Differentiation of the Subject and the Complement in French Sentences: Difficulties of Translation

This article deals with the problem of the non-prepositional members of the French narrative sentence. The main goal is to clarify the basic principles of the positioning of the subject and the complement, their interchangeability, the principles of localization in written speech. Within the framework of the work, descriptive, comparativehistorical, comparative and semantic-stylistic methods of language research were used. The results of the analysis of grammatical reference books and fiction of the XVIII-XX centuries made it possible to prove the connection of the position of the subject and the complement with their syntactic function. The semantic component in the expression of syntactic relations is analyzed. Advanced hypothesis were verified with the examples of four translations of the classic Russian novel of the XIX century. The research will expand the comprehension of subject and complement in the French narrative sentence and, perhaps, encourage linguists to further study this phenomenon not only in analytical, but also in inflectional languages.

Motivating a Morphome Albanian Case Syncretism as a Case Study

This paper discusses case syncretism patterns in Albanian, arguing for an underlyingly syntactic (i.e. functional) motivation for seemingly ʻmorphomicʼ (i.e. purely formal) metasyncretism patterns in its nominal inflection. It is argued that the distribution of syncretized and non-syncretized forms in the Albanian nominal paradigm is motivated by language economy in such a way that syncretism is used to produce an ʻoptimalʼ distribution of formally distinct case forms, so that the syncretized forms are always in complementary distribution w. r. t. their syntactic functions, and only the minimal necessary number of morphologically different forms remains in the paradigm. From a purely morphological point of view, this creates seemingly ʻmorphomicʼ patterns, in which, as a rule, syncretized forms do not form a natural class. However, these particular syncretism patterns are motivated in fact by the underlying functional ʻneedsʼ (or the lack thereof) of the nominal morphosyntax, so that the distribution of syncretized and non-syncretized forms in the Albanian nominal inflectional paradigm is, in fact, entirely motivated by the division of labour between case and definiteness in the syntax.

The Grammatical Meaning of Prefix Basi- in Minangkabau

Prefix basi- functions grammatically and semantically based on the specific instance it is used. The concept of prefixes pertains to how prefixes have varying meanings based on their grammatical function and context. This study aims to analyze the grammatical functions used by Minangkabau speakers through the advanced analysis method. This method involves word class testing through synonym search, testing verb functions in sentences with continuous events, and testing nouns for acceptability as subjects, objects, and complements. The objective of this study is to provide an objective analysis of Minangkabau speakers' grammar, using clear and concise language, and following conventional academic structures while adhering to grammatical correctness and balanced language with the method of qualitative research by observing the speaker. The findings reveal that the prefix basi- possesses grammatical functions such as 1) indicating ongoing events, 2) expressing excessive actions or speech through expressions or phrases, 3) indicating the present condition and health of a person, 4) functioning as a causative and imperative, and 5) functioning as an adverb and 6) functioning as a noun.

Syntactical Error Made by EFL Learners’ in Writing Descriptive Text

This study aims to identify the syntactical errors in the descriptive text writing of 10 elementary-level students at Al-Ikhlas Boarding School. This study applied a qualitative-descriptive approach. The source of data was taken from the students writing. Those descriptive texts were analyzed by classifying the errors as types of syntactical errors. From this study, the researcher found syntactical errors, namely errors in pronouns, be, plurals, and the use of the verb tense. This finding shows that EFL learners cannot completely master and apply the grammar of English in terms of syntactical function to their writing. It is influenced by factors such as interlingual and intralingual transfer. But the dominant factor in these results is interlanguage transfer. This study is supposed to be a reference for another researcher, linguist, and educator for their further study on error analysis.

Algorithm Design and Application of Grammatical Structure and Function Learning in Chinese Writing for Intelligent Analysis

Abstract This study utilizes the Larsen-Freeman three-dimensional theory of grammar teaching to quantitatively analyze the grammatical attributes “form”, “meaning” and “usage” in the Chinese writing process. The study uses the PCFG model to extract the syntactic dependency tree and represents the features of the tree structure with the help of TF-IDF. Meanwhile, the Transformer model extracts the semantic and syntactic features of sentences. At the same time, the positional encoder is removed to ensure that the model obtains information from the syntactic level. Further, an unsupervised method for generating grammatical textual recapitulation for Chinese Writing is proposed, as well as a Grammar Tree Generator for generating recapitulated sentences, which efficiently extracts the features of the input grammatical sequences. In addition, the study also includes writing feature analysis based on grammatical function matching, using a hierarchical clustering algorithm to analyze the similarity of 60 grammatical functions. Finally, validation was performed on 30 Chinese writing text collections, each containing 10 compositions, and the results showed high accuracy of unlabeled grammatical function recognition. The LDA model determined the optimal number of writing topics to be 150. This study highlights the potential application of intelligent analysis techniques in improving the quality of Chinese Writing. It provides new perspectives for an in-depth understanding of the interplay between grammatical structures and functions in the Chinese writing.

Part of speech distributions for Grimm versus artificially generated fairy tales

ChatGPT is a chatbot tool that relies on GPT3 and later OpenAI transformer language models to generate responses to user prompts. In this study, we sought to investigate the statistical differences between naturally generated and artificially generated text due to the dramatic increase in quality of natural language generation from large language models, popularized by ChatGPT. To constrain our problem, we considered fairy tales as these texts have existed for centuries. To explore statistical differences, we focused on the distribution of words according to their parts of speech (POS), elements that characterize words based on their grammatical function. We generated a novel corpus of 101 fairy tales “authored” by ChatGPT. We compared this against 209 fairy tales written by the Grimm Brothers and made available freely online. Our hypothesis was that the distributions of POS for Grimm fairy tales and ChatGPT fairy tales would be different and that the POS distributions will vary among Grimm fairy tales more than among ChatGPT fairy tales. We performed appropriate preprocessing and computed total variation distances for individual fairy tales within and between authorship conditions. We found out that in fact, the distribution of POS in ChatGPT fairy tales is significantly different from the distribution of POS in Grimm fairy tales.

An Experimental Analysis on Degree Adverb “Hen” of Yuanjiang Dialect Xiang Chinese

This paper examines the phonetic properties of the degree adverb “hen” in Yuanjiang dialect (YJD hereafter) with empirical data from local people. Three sets of parameters, i.e. fundamental frequency (F0), duration and tone value (T-value), were analyzed. The degree adverb “hen” in YJD can be used as not only an adverbial but also a complement, and the sound of “hen” varies with syntactic functions and semantics. The results show that “hen” as an adverbial can be read as both “[xei45]” which means “very” and “[xei21]” which implies nearly no practical meaning, and that “hen” being a complement is uttered as “[xei41]”, indicating the meaning of “very” but carrying higher degree and stronger intonation than “[xei45]”. According to phonetic experiments, the sound change of “hen” in YJD lies in the change of tone value without transforming the initial consonant and vowel. Such phonetic phenomenon of ‘‘hen” in YJD is neither literal and colloquial readings nor tone sandhi, but a polyphonic phenomenon caused by internal inflexion.

ДІЄСЛОВО В МОВНІЙ ТА КОНЦЕПТУАЛЬНІЙ КАРТИНАХ СВІТУ НОСІЇВ АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ

The paper studies the peculiarities of mental representations of the verb in the conceptual worldview and their reflection in the linguistic worldview of English language native speakers. Special attention is paid to the etymology and meaning of the word “verb” in the English language. In particular, its connection with the meaning “word” in general, which is manifested in the corresponding derivatives, is clarified. A tendency to define the verb through its syntactic function in scientific literature has been revealed. The key role of the predicate-argument structure, which reflects the linguistic worldview of English language native speakers, has been established. At the same time, the conceptual structure of the verb meaning and its mental representations shed light on the place of the verb in the conceptual worldview of English language native speakers. In the naive worldview of the English speakers, a tendency to associate the verb with an action or an act can be observed. High productivity of verbification in present-day English, as well as the overall high saturation of verbs in the English language corpora, estimated at 10.86 per cent, testify to the significance of the verb in English. The corpus analysis has been conducted based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the British National Corpus (BNC), the Strathy Corpus of Canadian English, and iWeb Corpus of modern web communication. The total distribution of verbs across the aforementioned corpora does not reveal any substantial variation. Nonetheless, the corpus data provide illuminating insights into the worldview of the native speakers of English. The prospects of further research in this direction lie in the construction of a mental model of the English verb, which would integrate the approaches to verb semantics within different modern frameworks, employing both experimental findings and empirical corpus data.

Literacy overrides effects of animacy: A picture-naming study with pre-literate German children and adult speakers of German and Arabic.

Animacy plays a key role for human cognition, which is also reflected in the way humans process language. However, while experiments on sentence processing show reliable effects of animacy on word order and grammatical function assignment, effects of animacy on conjoined noun phrases (e.g., fish and shoe vs. shoe and fish) have yielded inconsistent results. In the present study, we tested the possibility that effects of animacy are outranked by reading and writing habits. We examined adult speakers of German (left-to-right script) and speakers of Arabic (right-to-left script), as well as German preschool children who do not yet know how to read and write. Participants were tested in a picture naming task that presented an animate and an inanimate entity next to one another. On half of the trials, the animate entity was located on the left and, on the other half, it was located on the right side of the screen. We found that adult German and Arabic speakers differed in their order of naming. Whereas German speakers were much more likely to mention the animate entity first when it was presented on the left than on the right, a reverse tendency was observed for speakers of Arabic. Thus, in literate adults, the ordering of conjoined noun phrases was influenced by reading and writing habits rather than by the animacy status of an entity. By contrast, pre-literate children preferred to start their utterances with the animate entity regardless of position, suggesting that effects of animacy in adults have been overwritten by effects of literacy.

Verboten reflexivization and hidden meaning in German reflexive inchoative, zu-excessive and particle verb structures

The paper presents a compact yet comprehensive analysis of the systematically arising change of state or mod-al meanings of reflexive inchoative constructions, zu-excessive constructions and particle verb constructions in German (Brandt 2019). Verboten reflexivization links a lower thematic role to a higher grammatical function and associated lesser marking illegally. As a consequence, the negation (complement) of a property that is in-depend-ently coded in the verbal projection cannot be locally interpreted. The corresponding logical form banks off the interface and is interpreted in the structurally next higher syntactic-semantic cycle where indexi-cal information regarding anchoring to times, worlds or thresholds is dealt with. The intransparent semantics of the constructions under discussion is thus the effect of literally recycling a logical form the ex situ interpre-tation of which provides an economical alternative to a more transparent coding.

Conditionals in Mandarin: A Corpus-based Study from A Semantic Perspective

This corpus-based study delves into the expression of conditional constructions in Mandarin Chinese, employing a detailed analysis of both written and spoken data derived from four commonly used Mandarin corpora. Utilizing a mixed qualitative method, the research focuses on four widely-used conditional markers: rúguǒ, jiǎrú, yàoshì, and yàobushì. The investigation aims to understand the syntactic function of these markers in initiating basic conditional statements, as well as to explore their varied use across different genres. The study reveals that while these markers share a common role in forming conditional sentences, they exhibit significant differences in terms of frequency of use and semantic nuances. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of Mandarin syntax and semantics, highlighting the complexity and diversity of language use in different communicative contexts. The findings offer insights into the intricate ways in which Mandarin speakers express conditionality, enhancing the comprehension of this aspect of the language.

Old Norse Heimr ʻWorldʼ and its Toponymic Derivatives in the Poetic Edda

The article examines the mythopoetic concept of the ‘world’ (Old Norse heimr) and its derivatives — toponyms with the suffix -heimr in the Poetic Edda. It involves a thorough analysis of their meanings and their significance in the Eddic mythopoetic framework. The methodology for studying this lexical unit and its derivatives is based on a thesaurus description of folk terminology, alongside an exploration of polysemy within epic texts and lexicological investigations of key concepts in the Rigveda. Employing an integrated approach, the analysis considers various factors such as statistical distribution, grammatical case paradigms, syntactical functions of predicates, etymology to understand semantic motivations, mythology to reveal connections to mythological elements, poetic devices like alliteration and repetitions, and the relationship between linguistic signs and referents in the extralinguistic world. The predominance of singular forms (28) over plural forms (8) suggests two significant points: the existence of multiple worlds in the Eddic mythopoetic model initially, and an evolutionary progression from a collection of similar objects towards a unified whole. This semantic evolution is exemplified by the transition from ‘dwellings of giants’ (plural iǫtna heimar) to ‘Dwelling of giants’ = ‘World of Giants’ (singular Iǫtun-heimr). The Old Norse term heimr is associated with the universal world model depicted as a world tree (nine worlds = nine roots of Iggdrasill in Völuspá). It contributes to the construction of the Eddic chronotope in which the world tree, along with its roots (representing worlds), is described as located “under the earth,” signifying its origin. It also demonstrates temporalization, being linked with the temporal concept of age (Old Norse ƍld) and exhibits anthropocentric orientation.

Syntactic and Pragmatic Functions of Chinese-English Bilingual Children’s Code-Switching

Based on the bilingual children’s and adults’ code-switching (CS) dependency treebanks, this paper investigates the syntactic features and pragmatic functions of the Chinese-English bilingual children’s CS and compares them with bilingual adults’. It is mainly found that (1) As to the bilingual children, the mixed sentences present the longest mean sentence length (MSL), followed by those of the dominant language and the weak language. Similarly, Chinese-English adults’ mixed sentences present longer MSL than monolingual Chinese and English; (2) Subjects, objects, adverbials, and attributives are four major syntactic functions. Regarding bilingual children’s CS, objects are the most frequently switched dependency relations and subjects are the least. Differently, as to bilingual adults, attributives are most frequently switched, and subjects are the least. (3) Nouns, pronouns, determiners, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions are the top word classes involved in four major syntactic relations; (4) The adverbial dependency relations present the longest mean dependency distance (MDD), and the attributives present the shortest for both bilingual children and adults; (5) The major causes that make different MDDs are the CS peripherality, the distributions of top word classes and adjacent dependency relations; (6) Six major pragmatic functions are performed by bilingual children and adults: filling lexical gaps, emphasis or expressing the intense feelings, explaining, giving “orders” or requirements, quotation, reiteration. The results syntactically and pragmatically suggest that there exist great similarities between bilingual children’s and adults’ code-switching.

The Effect of Subordination on Antecedent Prominence in Anaphora Processing

One important factor affecting anaphor resolution is the prominence of its antecedent in the discourse. Discourse Prominence Theory (Gordon & Hendrick, 1998) defines antecedent prominence in terms of its height in the phrase structure tree. Two reading time experiments were conducted to test this theory by investigating the effect of subordination on antecedent prominence both within and between sentences. Both experiments had a 2×2 design with Structure (intra- vs. inter-sentential) and Anaphor (pronoun vs. repeated name) as independent variables, and differed in the degree of subordination of the antecedent. The results of the experiments show a main effect of Anaphor such that clauses/sentences containing pronouns were read faster than those containing repeated names, but no interaction between Structure and Anaphor. These results indicate that the repeated name penalty occurs no matter how deeply the antecedent is embedded within subordinate clauses. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that antecedent prominence is not determined by its height in the phrase structure as claimed by Discourse Prominence Theory but rather may be related to the syntactic function (subject) and status (head noun) of antecedents.

ODNOS PREFIKSACIJE, KOMPOZICIJE I KOMBINOVANE TVORBE U SRPSKOM JEZIKU

The paper focuses on the analysis of some disputable examples from grammar books and relevant literature. The paper proposed how to establish the criteria in the analysis of word formation. The greatest number of the interconnectedness of word formation models can be found in the processes of prefixation, derivation, and compounding. The goal of the paper was to underscore controversial examples based on the selected examples and to provide a unique word-formation model justified by relevant criteria. One and the same example may result in two or even three word formation options with inconsistent analytical criteria. The selected examples confirm that the semantic criterion is predominant, but also that, by applying the crite- rion the last stage of word formation, unique and logical word formation models can be derived.

인지지도를 통한 어휘 의미 변화 고찰

This paper aims to explore the evolving patterns of cognitive concepts reflected in the linguistic expressions of ‘Shui(水)’ and ‘Mul(물)’, tracing the evolution from traditional to contemporary perspectives on water in Chinese and Korean languages. Upon classifying the types of lexical meanings for the polysemy ‘Shui(水)’ and ‘Mul(물)’, a conceptual space was constructed to depict the cognitive thought process, and a semantic map was drawn to investigate the development path of semantic changes. The results of this study revealed that, in the process of deriving and developing lexical meanings, both ‘Shui(水)’ and ‘Mul(물)’ initially shared the semantic feature of [stream of water] in their original meaning but gradually diversified their developmental types of lexical meaning. In particular, semantic development was most active through the ‘word meaning shift’ type, with the ‘shape meaning domain’ being concrete and visual, playing a central role in the differentiation and development of meanings into ‘functional’ and ‘property’ domains. Furthermore, the overall emotional color were shifted towards a more negative direction. Differences were identified in the grammatical functions and morphological structures of ‘Shui(水)’ and ‘Mul(물)’. In terms of semantic extensions, ‘Mul(물)’ in modern times demonstrates a broader spectrum of semantic features compared to ‘Shui(水)’ in ancient times.

Semantic Shift in the Meaning of the Arabic word tamma

Grammaticalisation of lexical items takes place gradually, and to track the changes a word undergoes, a historical corpus is needed. This paper investigates the changes the Arabic word “tamma” underwent. The corpus provided by King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST Arabic Corpus) is used in this study because the search engine for this corpus offers the ability for searches to be time-restricted. Thus, the development of the verb “tamma” was tracked. It was found that this verb is used in the corpus in two ways: as a polysemous lexical verb with three meanings: “to be completed,” “to occur,” and “to remain.” The second use of the verb is as an auxiliary that indicates the completion of the action of the verbal noun it precedes. An important finding is that this use, contrary to common belief, occurred in Arabic during the period between 1101 AD and 1200 AD and is not a modern introduction into Arabic. In order to explain this change, the paper investigates how this verb is translated to English and what grammatical function it has in recent use. This paper also suggests that the verb “tamma” could be defective.

Raising to object

Abstract In this paper we provide an introduction to a set of tools for syntactic analysis based on graph theory, and apply them to the study of some properties of English accusativus cum infinitivo constructions, more commonly known as raising to object or exceptional case marking structures. We focus on puzzling extraction asymmetries between base-generated objects and ‘raised’ objects and on the interaction between raising to object and Right Wrap. We argue that a lexicalised derivational grammar with grammatical functions as primitives delivers empirically adequate analyses.

The Use of the Pronoun En in the Written Corpus of Allophone Learners

The pronoun en is usually described in the literature as an adverbial pronoun, although the adverbial value is only one of several functions in which it can appear. It is a pronoun whose use is very diverse and complex, which is best seen based on numerous syntactic functions that we will present first in this paper. Then we will emphasize the analysis of examples of its use in the corpus, which includes student works divided into three stages (PI / INT / AH). Our goal is to determine to what extent this pronoun is represented in the mentioned corpus and in which syntactic functions it appears most often, i.e., to what extent students master its use. The analysis will also include those examples in which the use of this pronoun was absent as well as those in which its use is unacceptable.

Syntax and Morphology Interface: A Study within Lexical- Functional Grammar

The present paper is aimed at providing information on the interaction of syntax and morphology within Lexical-Functional Grammar (hereinafter LFG). It is to introduce how c-structure and f-structure as levels of representation in LFG are assigned to sentences in English Language. This paper is also an investigation of how distinct syntactic relations are obtained when changing words or phrases in sentence structures. This is obviously shown in c-structure and f-structure. The former denotes the constituent structure of sentences which entails the composition of words into phrasal constituents hierarchically. Whereas, the latter represents the grammatical relations between the units of a sentence, which includes subject, object, complement, adverbial, and so forth. Further, the aim of the paper is to cast light on different important phenomena that are the principal concern of LFG viz head mobility, passive, and wh-movement. Finally, how changes of lexical forms of processes and participants assign verbs with different functions and changes the structure of sentences.