Head Noun Phrase Research Articles

A Grammatical Sketch of Herero (Otjiherero) (review)

Reviewed by: A grammatical sketch of Herero (Otjiherero) by Wilhelm J. G. Möhlig, Lutz Marten, and Jekura U. Kavari Benji Wald A grammatical sketch of Herero (Otjiherero). By Wilhelm J. G. Möhlig, Lutz Marten, and Jekura U. Kavari. (Grammatical analyses of African languages 19.) Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 2002. Pp. 127. ISBN 3896450441. $26. This book is a grammatical sketch of Herero, a major Bantu language of Namibia, which is also spoken across the northern border in Angola. The book is organized in a manner typical of sketch grammars, in the present case as follows: Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’ (11–16); Ch. 2, ‘Phonology’ (17–28, including sections on lexical and grammatical tone); Ch. 3, ‘Morphology of the noun phrase’ (29–70, including separate sections on all parts of speech that have some kind of nominal morphology, for example, numerals, adjectives, pronouns, and demonstratives); Ch. 4, ‘Morphology of the verb phrase’ (71–96, with sections on derivational suffixes before sections on concordial and tense-aspect prefixes); Ch. 5, ‘Syntax’ (97–104); Ch. 6, ‘Texts’ (105–10); and Ch. 7, ‘List of words’ (111–18, divided into three sections—one to and one from English, and one of useful phrases). The book concludes with a bibliography (119–22) and an index (123–27), which refers to various grammatical and lexical features, for example, ‘Body parts with two sides’, ‘Juxtaposed compounds’, and ‘Syllabic structure of morphemes’. Unlike some recent sketch grammars, the present one does not represent a point of departure for more extensive grammars, since some older work, more detailed in many respects, has long been available and is even referred to by the authors. No particular reason for creating the sketch grammar is given by the authors, but it is clearly useful for the usual quick comparison of Herero with other Bantu languages with respect to the most commonly researched and described linguistic features of Bantu. Thus, the relatively large size of the chapter on nominal morphology [End Page 224] reflects the attention that has been customarily paid, since the inception of Bantu linguistic studies, to the complexity of the Bantu noun class system, and to its ramifications for other categories included in the noun phrase. In any case, some of the Herero features treated here are striking enough to be readily noticed by readers familiar with more distant Bantu languages. Particularly interesting and explicitly emphasized by the authors is the very last feature treated in the grammatical sketch, the structure of the object relative clause (103). In such clauses, the ‘relative concord’, based on an independent demonstrative theme and referring to the preceding head noun phrase, immediately follows rather than precedes the subject noun phrase of the embedded clause, that is, ‘the teacher [the boys WHO/M they-see] he-is-dancing’. Most Bantu languages that form the relative clause on an independent demonstrative theme would avoid such violation of the integrity of the relative clause, having the ‘relative concord’ (e.g. WHO/M) precede the entire clause, as in ‘the teacher WHO/M [the boys they-see] he-is-dancing’. The authors leave this contrast with other Bantu languages implicit, but it exemplifies the utility of this grammar for comparative use by other Bantuists. Somewhat confusing is that the authors translate the exemplar object relative clause as a fragment equivalent to ‘the teacher whom [the boys see dancing (])’ rather than as ‘the teacher whom [the boys see] is dancing’, so that it is not minimally contrastive to their preceding example of a subject relative clause, equivalent to ‘the teacher who [sees (how)] the boys are dancing’. The authors should clarify this lapse. Among other uses, the grammar provides a coherent outline of topics to explore in a field methods course on a Bantu language. And indeed, it is noted in the preface that the sketch evolved out of a field methods course (5). Benji Wald New York, NY Copyright © 2007 Linguistic Society of America

The Distribution of Relative Clauses in Chinese Discourse

Abstract The particular forms of relative clauses (RCs) in Mandarin Chinese lead to particular cognitive, semantic, pragmatic, and discourse constraints on speakers and writers. In this study, analyses of oral and written Mandarin Chinese narratives demonstrate that SS structures (subject head noun phrase [NP] modified by a subject RC) are produced more frequently than OS (object head NP modified by subject RC) and OO structures (object head NP modified by object RC), which are more frequent than the rare SO (subject head NP modified by an object RC) structure. These patterns can be explained by the interaction of cognitive strategies of closure and the semantic and discourse functions of RC constructions. In particular, the center-embeddedness of Mandarin Chinese RCs likely leads to greater cognitive load for speakers than writers, and the fact that head NPs are more likely to refer to humans helps predict the predominance of the SS pattern.

The Distribution of Relative Clauses in Chinese Discourse

The particular forms of relative clauses (RCs) in Mandarin Chinese lead to particular cognitive, semantic, pragmatic, and discourse constraints on speakers and writers. In this study, analyses of oral and written Mandarin Chinese narratives demonstrate that SS structures (subject head noun phrase [NP] modified by a subject RC) are produced more frequently than OS (object head NP modified by subject RC) and OO structures (object head NP modified by object RC), which are more frequent than the rare SO (subject head NP modified by an object RC) structure. These patterns can be explained by the interaction of cognitive strategies of closure and the semantic and discourse functions of RC constructions. In particular, the center-embeddedness of Mandarin Chinese RCs likely leads to greater cognitive load for speakers than writers, and the fact that head NPs are more likely to refer to humans helps predict the predominance of the SS pattern.

Matching and raising unified

For nearly 30 years it has been assumed that some English relatives require a movement relationship between the external head noun phrase and its clause-internal position (the raising analysis) whereas other relatives do not allow such a relationship (the matching analysis). This division has largely been motivated by reconstruction facts. This paper argues that the matching analysis is eliminable if one assumes vehicle change is a general property of A-bar movement, and if one accepts that sentence construction and movement are derivational while chain formation is representational. This allows a uniform raising analysis for English relatives that eliminates difficulties with previous raising analyses, allows relative clauses to be uniformly treated as adjuncts, and accounts for otherwise mysterious extraposition facts. The conclusions also have implications for the idea that adjuncts may be merged acyclically in a derivation.

Neural basis for sentence comprehension deficits in frontotemporal dementia

Many patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) have impaired sentence comprehension. However, the pattern of comprehension difficulty appears to vary depending on the clinical subgroup. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the neural basis for these deficits in FTD. We studied patients with two different presentations: Three patients with Progressive Non-Fluent Ahasia (PNFA), and five non-aphasic patients with a dysexecutive and social impairment (EXEC). The FTD patient subgroups were compared to a cohort of 11 healthy seniors with intact sentence comprehension. We monitored regional cerebral activity with blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects read sentences featuring both a grammatically complex object-relative center-embedded clause and a long linkage between the head noun phrase (NP) and the gap where the NP is interpreted in the center-embedded clause. Subjects decided whether the agent of the action is a male or a female. Healthy seniors activated both ventral portions of inferior frontal cortex (vIFC) and dorsal portions of IFC (dIFC) in the left hemisphere, often associated with grammatical and working memory components of these sentences, respectively. PNFA patients differed from healthy controls since they have reduced activation of left vIFC, while EXEC patients have less recruitment of left dIFC. We conclude that FTD subgroups have distinct patterns of sentence comprehension difficulty in part because of selective interruptions of a large-scale neural network for sentence processing.

Subject–Verb Agreement Processes in Comprehension

Studies of elicited sentence production show that the occasional subject–verb agreement errors that speakers make are more likely to occur when a singular head noun is followed by a plural, as inThe producer of the adventure movies have arrived,than when a plural head is followed by a singular (e.g., Bock & Miller, 1991). The significance of this asymmetric pattern of errors depends on whether interference from plurals arises only during the production of sentences, or whether it also occurs in sentence comprehension tasks. Five reading experiments revealed the following: (1) patterns of reading times mirror the production error asymmetry; (2) a phrase which isconceptually pluralbut grammatically singular (e.g.,The label on the bottles) produces no more reading difficulty than one which is conceptually and grammatically singular, a result which mimics Bock and Miller's 1991 production results; (3) interference from an intervening plural depends on a close syntactic link to the head noun phrase (e.g.,The ownerof the house whocharmed the realtors). These results suggest that although the computation of agreement may be accomplished differently in the two systems, interference may arise whenever a structure containing a singular head and intervening plural is computed, whether during production or comprehension.