Inflectional Phrase Research Articles

Exploring the Meaning-Making Process in Conceptual Mathematics: The Case of Linguistic Markers in Algebraic Equations

As research established, linguistic features are essential to understanding mathematical word problems, and these features are seen as a significant factor of students’ difficulty in word problems. Students are unable to translate the words into numbers or formula to work on the needed mathematical operations. This present study’s aim is two-fold. First, the analysis of the syntactic features of mathematical language is hoped to contribute to the understanding of mathematical sentence by making its lexis, syntax and semantics explicit. Second, by focusing on the linguistic markers in algebraic equation, the meaning￾making process in the mathematical language was described by determining how these linguistic markers prompted the mathematical conditions in the expressions and statements. Results show that algebraic sentences of equalities were characterized by inflectional phrase (InflP) projection, and ‘if…then’ syntax, which are considered in lexico-grammatical precision. Predication in algebraic sentence of equalities was signified essentially by the linking verb ‘is’ in definition, description and illustration frames.

The Syntax of Anaphors in Ki-Imenti: A Bantu Language Spoken in Kenya

This paper is an investigation of the distribution of anaphors in Ki-Imenti. Ki- Imenti is a Bantu language spoken in Meru Central, North Imenti and Buuri sub-counties, Meru County. It is one of the dialects of Kimeru. The objective of this paper is to determine the syntax of anaphors in Ki- Imenti. The study is guided by Chomsky’s Binding Theory. The binding theory divides noun phrases into three basic categories anaphors, pronouns and R-expressions. This theory develops three binding principles to explain the distribution of these noun phrases. These are the binding principle A, binding principle B and binding principle C. This study is only limited to the distribution of anaphors. The study adopts a qualitative study research design as it gives detailed descriptions and explanations of the phenomena studied. The researcher generated the data for the study herself using self-introspection and the data was corroborated by ten native speakers who were purposively sampled. The paper has established that Ki-Imenti conforms to the binding principles. Anaphors are bound in their binding domain, whereby the binding domain is the inflectional phrase or the noun phrase containing the anaphor. This paper will make a contribution to the knowledge of the syntax of anaphors in Ki- Imenti and the description of the syntax of Bantu linguistics in general.

Derivational Grammar Model and Basket Verb: A Novel Approach to the Inflectional Phrase in the Generative Grammar and Cognitive Processing

Generative grammar was a true revolution in the linguistics. However, to describe language behavior in its semantic essence and universal aspects, generative grammar needs to have a much richer semantic basis. In this paper, we took a novel morpho-syntactic approach to the inflectional phrase to account for the very diverse inflectional phrase qualities in different languages. Some languages show a very different surface verbal inflection, providing evidence of a different mental processing at the semantic level. In fact, the inflectional phrase is a great representative of the mental and semantic processing layers in mind. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed the inflectional phrase with a novel approach to take into account this rich verbal inflectional configuration in languages, and to describe why some languages behave in a different way in the spatial and temporal aspect. In this study, we analyzed and discussed the verbal inflectional structure of several languages, including German, Swahili, Persian, English, and Indonesian, and our result is the introduction of a semantic model which provides a much richer insight to the semantics/syntax interplay.

A Feature-Based Analysis of the Derivation of Word Order and Subject-Verb Agreement in Arabic Varieties

The derivation of common clause-type constructions like negation, interrogation (involving wh-elements) and declarativity (including sentences that involve topics) is a universal of sentence structure that involves a number of functional elements/items for the expression of negation, interrogation, or declarativity, cross-linguistically. However, as the present study on the derivation of syntactic word order (including subject-verb agreement configurations) in Arabic varieties shows, such functional elements/items can take a particular functional dimension within the functional domain they are part of. This study relies on sample examples from the literature on Arabic (the standard variety in particular, but also other varieties such as Tunisian Arabic and Moroccan Arabic – see Jouini, (2014) for typical sentences from these varieties) to demonstrate how functional elements can project as functional nodes or be merged as head or specifier (Spec) elements in the structure of sentences. In the inflectional domain of sentences – or Inflectional Phrase (IP) –, variation in subject-verb agreement configurations in Arabic rests on the premise that a Subject node variably projects giving rise to differing subject-verb agreement configurations. The same is true of the projection of the complementizer domain of sentences – or Complementizer Phrase (CP) – in Arabic, which splits into dedicated functional nodes in the standard variety of Arabic, but not in the modern spoken dialects. These differences in the projection of the IP-CP continuum establish functional relations upon which agreement and movement operations are derived and such notions as ‘topic’, ‘subject’ and ‘focus’ can be represented at the interface.

A Feature-Based Analysis of the Derivation of Word Order and Subject-Verb Agreement in Arabic Varieties

The derivation of common clause-type constructions like negation, interrogation (involving wh-elements) and declarativity (including sentences that involve topics) is a universal of sentence structure that involves a number of functional elements/items for the expression of negation, interrogation, or declarativity, cross-linguistically. However, as the present study on the derivation of syntactic word order (including subject-verb agreement configurations) in Arabic varieties shows, such functional elements/items can take a particular functional dimension within the functional domain they are part of. This study relies on sample examples from the literature on Arabic (the standard variety in particular, but also other varieties such as Tunisian Arabic and Moroccan Arabic – see Jouini, (2014) for typical sentences from these varieties) to demonstrate how functional elements can project as functional nodes or be merged as head or specifier (Spec) elements in the structure of sentences. In the inflectional domain of sentences – or Inflectional Phrase (IP) –, variation in subject-verb agreement configurations in Arabic rests on the premise that a Subject node variably projects giving rise to differing subject-verb agreement configurations. The same is true of the projection of the complementizer domain of sentences – or Complementizer Phrase (CP) – in Arabic, which splits into dedicated functional nodes in the standard variety of Arabic, but not in the modern spoken dialects. These differences in the projection of the IP-CP continuum establish functional relations upon which agreement and movement operations are derived and such notions as ‘topic’, ‘subject’ and ‘focus’ can be represented at the interface.

Does Javanese have Inflectional Phrase?

Abstract In generative grammar, especially in the X-bar theory, all syntactic constructions are claimed to be endocentric. This principle enforces a sentence or a clause to be treated as an inflectional phrase, with the inflectional category as the head. This principle has been attested for many languages and it has become a general rule. However, some languages like Javanese may behave differently from languages having the inflection system like English. This paper aims to discuss whether Javanese has Inflectional phrase or not. The data used in this study was taken from a Javanese magazine Panjebar Semangat, collected using an observation technique. The result of the analysis shows that Javanese lexicons expressing tense, aspect, and modals belong to inflections and they have the maximal projection as Inflectional Phrase. Keywords: inflectional phrase, Javanese, X-bar theory

A Value Classification of Electronic Product Reviews Based on Maximum Entropy

Reviews of electronic product are important resources for manufacturers to gather feedbacks from customers. They provide an important reference for customers to make a decision on product purchase. Electronic product reviews with high quality is valuable, and reviews analysis is becoming an open issue. Based on the binary feature function, a maximum entropy classification of electronic product reviews is proposed to identify the valuable reviews. Considering the simpleness of the theme in reviews, a text classifier integrated with the features of descriptive anaphor is provided to enhance the model's fitting degree. Furthermore, the feature library is constructed by the Term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) algorithm to locate the description, and the descriptive anaphors are identified by means of the minimum Inflectional phrase (IP) parsing tree. The experiment shows the proposed classifier has the relatively high stability and precision, which makes the reviews much more usable for manufacturers to make product strategy and for customers to make a decision.

IP PATTERNS OF MOVEMENTS IN VSO TYPOLOGY: THE CASE OF ARABIC

The aim of this article is to explore a particular instantiation of the order in Arabic and to demonstrate that VSO and SVO are frequent alternatives for the language. The article will offer a range of views that have been expressed on the subject in order to give a comparative orientation to this study and will include and cover a range of empirical data in an attempt to discover and to understand the interaction of the IP (Inflectional Phrase) components of the languages underlying system. There will be two kinds of arguments advanced in support of the claim we make with regard to such movement: empirical arguments based on the data provided and theoretical or conceptual arguments based on the internal consistency of the system and the literature that deals with similar issues elsewhere.

WHO WAS WALKING ON THE BEACH?

The position of antecedent strategy (Carminati, 2002) claims that speakers of null-subject languages prefer to resolve intrasentential anaphora by linkingproto an antecedent in the specifier of the inflection phrase and the overt pronoun to an antecedent lower in the clause. The present study has two aims: (a) to determine whether adult early Spanish-English bilinguals (Spanish heritage speakers) and late English-Spanish bilinguals (adult second language [L2] learners of Spanish) utilize the same antecedent assignment strategies as monolingually raised Spanish speakers, and (b) to determine whether early exposure to and use of Spanish confers advantages to Spanish heritage speakers relative to L2 learners. Spanish speakers raised without English contact (n= 19), Spanish heritage speakers (n= 25), and L2 learners of Spanish (n= 19) completed an offline questionnaire that comprised complex sentences such asJuan vio a Carlos mientraspro/él caminaba en la playa“John saw Charles while he was walking on the beach.” Comprehension questions probed participants’ preferences regarding the antecedent of null and overt pronouns. The results indicate that the monolingually raised Spanish speakers showed an antecedent bias, but the heritage speakers and the L2 learners did not. Furthermore, the two groups of bilinguals differed from the controls in different ways: The heritage speakers displayed a stronger subject bias for the overt pronoun, whereas the L2 learners did not exhibit any clear antecedent biases.

Verbal inflection, articles and object clitics in Italian specific language impairment

Morphosyntactic skills in spontaneous and elicited production of a 7-year-old boy with specific language impairment (SLI) were examined and compared to those of younger, mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched, typically-developing children. This study focused on inflectional phrase structures as well as complex constructions in order to investigate hypotheses which suggest verbal inflection is a key deficit underlying SLI. It analysed the most affected morphemes in Italian: articles and direct and indirect object clitics. A deficit was found in verbal inflection as well as in articles and object clitics. The difficulties with verbal inflection found were expected given the child's MLU. Problems with articles and clitics were unexpected for MLU, presenting a challenge for hypotheses that focus on verbal inflection.

Functional category production in English agrammatism

Background: Individuals with agrammatism show selective deficits in functional categories. The tree‐pruning hypothesis (TPH; Friedmann & Grodzinsky, 1997) suggests that this results from inability to project certain nodes in the syntactic tree. On this account, higher nodes in the tree are more vulnerable than lower ones. Other theories, however, suggest that functional category impairments can be explained in the context of a morphological deficit (e.g., Arabatzi & Edwards, 2002; Penke, 2003; Thompson, Fix, & Gitelman, 2002). Aims: This study examined production of complementisers, tense, and agreement morphology in four English‐speaking agrammatic participants to test the hierarchical nature of functional category deficits. The consistency of verb inflection errors was also tested under conditions examining a minimal set versus a full array of English inflected forms. Materials & Procedures: In Experiment 1 participants were asked to produce sentences by using a complementiser (i.e., whether, that, and if), a tense (‐ed), or agreement marker (‐s), in structured sentence elicitation tasks. In Experiment 2 the participants' production of both finite and non‐finite verb inflection forms was examined. Outcome & Results: All participants produced complex sentences successfully using a complementiser, indicating intact projection to the Complementiser Phrase (CP). As for tense and agreement—structures within the Inflection Phrase (IP)—the agrammatic speakers were impaired in both categories and they showed higher scores in non‐finite vs finite verb conditions. Further, their errors were dominated by substitutions, rather than omissions, with various non‐target morphemes. Conclusions: Our agrammatic participants' deficits are morphological, rather than syntactic. The participants were able to project to the uppermost structure, CP. They showed the ability to project verb inflection and to implement inflectional rules in their grammar. However, instantiation of grammatical markers sometimes failed to operate, resulting in incorrect inflectional forms. These findings suggest that within the domain of functional categories, IP‐ and CP‐level deficits may result from disruption of differing underlying mechanisms and, therefore, they may require separate treatment strategies.

The effect of phonological realization of inflectional morphology on verbal agreement in French: Evidence from ERPs

The present study examined the impact of the phonological realization of morphosyntactic agreement within the inflectional phrase (IP) in written French, as revealed by ERPs. In two independent experiments, we varied the presence vs. absence of phonological cues to morphological variation. Of interest was whether a graded ERP response to these different conditions could be found in native speakers (Experiment 1), and whether non-native learners would benefit from the presence of phonological cues (Experiment 2). The results for native French speakers showed that compared to grammatically correct instances, phonologically realized inflectional errors produced a significant P600 response, which was statistically larger than that produced by errors that were silent. German L1–French L2 learners showed similar benefits of the phonological realization of morphemes. Phonologically realized errors produced a robust P600 response whereas silent errors produced no robust effects. Implications of these results are discussed in reference to previous studies of L2 acquisition of morphosyntax.

Verb‐third in embedded clauses in Icelandic*

Abstract. This paper is a survey of the possibilities of having the so‐called Scandinavian or verb‐third (V3) order in Icelandic embedded clauses, namely the order where the finite verb follows a sentential adverb (like the negation for instance). It is shown that although this order is possible in most types of embedded clauses in Icelandic, it is severely restricted and heavily marked. It commonly requires an extra stress on the adverb and it is frequently more acceptable if the subject is an unstressed pronoun. The naturalness of the order also depends on the type of embedded clause involved, being most natural in relative clauses and indirect questions introduced by a wh‐pronoun but least acceptable in that‐complements. It is argued that the proper analysis of this order in embedded clauses in Icelandic involves exceptional adjunction of the adverb in question to the TP instead of the usual VP‐adjunction of such adverbs. Thus it is maintained that the Adv‐V order in these clauses is not due to exceptional lack of V‐movement in Icelandic but rather to exceptional AdvP‐adjunction. In the Scandinavian languages, on the other hand, the V3 order in embedded clauses is argued to be best analyzed as lack of V‐movement (lack of V‐to‐I), as usually assumed. The paper follows the analysis proposed by Bobaljik & Thráinsson (1998) in relating this difference between Icelandic and (Mainland) Scandinavian to the presence vs. absence of a split inflectional phrase.

The subject, it is here! The varying structural positions of preverbal subjects

This paper analyzes preverbal overt subjects, comparing Brazilian Portuguese to (other) null-subject languages, especially within Romance. It explores syntactic and semantic properties, including resumption, ellipsis, quantifiers and scope, variable binding, ordering restrictions, pronominal distinctions, minimality violations, bare nouns and definiteness. It concludes that preverbal subjects in Brazilian Portuguese can be realized both in argumental positions (Specifier of the Inflectional or Tense Phrase) and non-argumental positions (Topic Phrase specifiers), with the possibility that both types of positions are filled by the subject in the same clause, incorporating properties that have been argued not to be found together in other languages.

Functional category production in agrammatism: Treatment and generalization effects

Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, USAAccepted 6 July 2006IntroductionThe complexity account of treatment efficacy (CATE; Thompson,Shapiro, Kiran, & Sobecks, 2003) predicts that training complex languagestructures in agrammatism will result in generalize to less complex struc-tures, but only when they share similar derivations. For instance, trainingcomplex sentences derived by ‘wh’ movement, such as object clefts (e.g., Itwas the coach who the skater chased) results in generalization to less com-plex ‘wh’ movement structures such as object-extracted wh questions (Whodid the skater chase?), but not to ‘NP’ movement structures (e.g. passivevoice: The coach was chased by the skater). To date, CATE has been testedwith noncanonical sentence structures, which are particularly difficult foragrammatic speakers. In this paper, we examined the generalization pat-terns that result from training functional morphology in basic canonicalsentences. Specifically, we examined patterns of acquisition and general-ization of:(1) Complementizers: They wonder if the cat is following the mouse.(2) Past tense inflections: Yesterday the cat followed the mouse.(3) Presentagreement inflections: Nowadaysthe cat follows the mouse.While all three morphemes are considered functional category mem-bers, complementizers and tense/agreement are not equivalent with respectto their structural position in the syntactic tree. Complementizers are ele-ments generated in the complementizer phrase (CP); while tense and agree-ment inflections are both elements licensed by the inflection phrase (IP).Therefore, based on CATE, we predicted generalization between tense(2) and agreement (3), but NOT between complementizers (1) and tense(2) or between complementizers (1) and agreement (3), since they arelicensed by distinct functional projections.In contrast to CATE,the Tree pruninghypothesis (TPH; FriedmannG Thompson, 2005), and spontaneouslanguage patterns. Participants were between 36–68 years old, and hadbetween 12–20 years of education.Design and analysisA single subject multiple baseline design across behaviors and partici-pants was used. Pre- and post-testing measures included the Westernaphasia battery (WAB; Kertesz, 1982), the Verb Inflection Test (VIT;Bastiaanse & Thompson, 2005), and two neuroimaging (fMRI) tasksdesigned to examine neural patterns associated with production and com-prehension of the target morphemes. Baseline probes were also adminis-tered to assess production of all target morpheme using picture stimuli(line drawings).During each treatment session participants were asked to produce 15sentences containing the target morpheme. Three types of sentences weretrained: those with complementizers (1), past tense (2), and present tense(3). Training included: (a) thematic role training, (b) placement of writtensentence constituent cards in their surface structure position, (c) readingtarget sentences, (d) reassembly of scrambled written sentence constituentcards, and (d) re-reading sentences. Prior to each session probes, identicalto baseline, were administered to evaluate learning and generalizationpatterns.doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2006.06.049

Impairments of derivational word formation in agrammatic aphasia

Agrammatic aphasic production disorders are often considered syntactic in nature; for example, several theories of agrammatic production point to a mis-structured Inflectional Phrase (e.g., Friedmann & Grodzinsky, 1997; Grodzinsky, 1990; Wenzlaff & Clahsen, 2005) as the locus of the impairment. If agrammatic aphasia reflects this sort of syntactic deficit, production of inflectional morphology should be compromised, while derivational morphology should be intact. We tested agrammatic production of real derived forms and novel (pseudoword) derived forms. While production of real derived forms may involve whole-word lexical access rather than affixation, production of derived pseudowords by necessity involves word-formation rules.

Language Disorders as a Window on Universal Grammar: An Abstract Theory of Agreement for IP, DP, and V-PP

A new concept of Agreement (AGR) has been represented as a Formal Feature that can appear in a wide range of different configurations (Chomsky, 1998). A case study from language disorders supports and extends this abstract concept. The child shows no agreement in Inflectional Phrase me can and Determiner Phrase them eyes. We then extend the notion of AGR to include verb–Prepositional Phrase relations, where the child also systematically avoids certain prepositions (go beach). The analysis is supported by intuitional data from compounds (sweep with broom → broom-swept). We also define a systematic notion of Possible deficit as a premature fixation of functional items which normally require additional Phi-features. The notion of Maximization of Formal Features then emerges as a significant feature of learnability from both a normal and disordered perspective.

Clause Structure and Word Order in Hebrew and Arabic: An Essay in Comparative Semitic Syntax (review)

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 267 Reviews CLAUSE STRUCTURE AND WORD ORDER IN HEBREW AND ARABIC: AN ESSAY IN COMPARATIVE SEMITIC SYNTAX. By Ur Shlonsky. Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax. pp. x + 289. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. Cloth, $75.00. In this learned and carefully-written book, Ur Shlonsky adopts the Principles and Parameters model of Generative Grammar developed by Noam Chomsky to study key components of Semitic language systems. While most of his analysis is concerned with modem Hebrew, he devotes some attention to Arabic, a language rarely studied from the generative point of view. He is interested in the internal structure of the functional layer of the languages and attempts to address two related questions: 1) what is the actual content of this layer?; and 2) what is the hierarchy of functional projections within it? The fIrst of the book's three parts is concerned with verb movement and clausal architecture. It includes a fIne discussion of the place and function of the Benoni, or participial, form in Hebrew. Shlonsky offers a revision of the theory of participles by suggesting that their scope of movement is not limited to the lower part of clauses, but rather, they are hybrid forms as verbs whose agreement features are participial but which raise to tense status. He presents an informative treatment of negation of the present tense in both Hebrew and Arabic and explains well the more complex system of Arabic which has variants for the negative particle la in the future (Ian) and perfect (lam). His analysis of Arabic clause structure and its different forms of negation leads Shlonsky to conclude that, unlike Hebrew, two distinct participles exist in Arabic, one verbal/imperfect and the other nominal. Part Two begins with a study of null subjects (subject pronouns that must be understood because they are not phonetically expressed) and attempts to explain why differences in their use exist between Hebrew and Arabic. Hebrew seems to violate the general principle which holds that the richer the morphological system of a language is, the more likely it is to allow for null subjects. Its conjugation system is highly developed and yet null subjects are not allowed in the third person in Hebrew. To complicate matters, Palestinian Arabic, which has a conjugation system almost identical to that of Hebrew, does allow for null subjects. Shlonsky offers an explanation of this situation by discussing the distinction between the third person pronoun and the first and second person pronouns in Hebrew. While the former is inherently impersonal and therefore incompatible with referential interpretation, fIrst and second person pronouns cannot be impersonal and are fully referential. Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 268 Reviews Word order is treated in the book's second part in a chapter on subjectverb inversion. Drawing on work done previously by himself and others, Shlonsky distinguishes between triggered inversion, which is due to the presence of some preverbal element like a prepositional phrase or complement , and free inversion which requires no such trigger. In the former case, Hebrew subjects are not case-licensed in their thematic position, but when free inversion is found subjects are case-licensed. This difference is due to the fact that free inversion can only be present when the verb is intransitive and passive and, therefore, does not assign an external theta-role, that is, does not allow for a specific direct object. (Theta-role refers to the assignment ofspecific semantic content to a particular word. For example, the word "it" in the sentence "It was raining" would not occupy a theta, or thematic position.) Although he does not discuss evidence from Arabic in this section. Shlonsky does investigate the use of postverbal subjects in French and Italian. He does so in order to support his theory that postverbal subjects in Romance languages are in the Verb Phrase while clausal subjects in Hebrew occupy the highest available Specifier position within the Inflectional Phrase. The lack of attention to Arabic on this matter is unfortunate since the reader is left wondering if this phenomenon is one that is peculiar to Hebrew or is found elsewhere in the Semitic family. The third part of the book studies the pronominal...

A Typed Feature-based Grammar of Danish

This paper presents an overview of the first broad coverage grammatical description of Danish in a Typed Feature Structure (TFS) based unification formalism inspired by HPSG. These linguistic specifications encompass phenomena within inflectional morphology, phrase structure and predicate argument structure, and have been developed with a view to implementation. The emphasis on implementability and re-usability of the specifications has led to the adoption of a rather leaner formal framework than that underlying HPSG. However, the paper shows that the adoption of such a framework does not lead to a loss of expressibility, but in fact enables certain phenomena, such as the interface between morphology and syntax and local discontinuities, to be treated in a simple and elegant fashion.

On Continuity and the Emergence of Functional Categories in Bilingual First-Language Acquisition

A variety of positions have been proposed to explain the ontological development of functional categories. These positions follow either a Maturation or Continuity perspective. We examined the acquisition of inflectional phrase and determiner phrase in children acquiring French and English simultaneously in order to evaluate the descriptive adequacy of the two perspectives. Crosslinguistic comparisons are essential to testing Maturation versus Continuity, and bilingual children are excellent participants in crosslinguistic research because the two languages reside within one individual. We collected naturalistic production data from two bilingual children ages 1;9 to 2;11 and 1;11 to 3;0 who were at Brown's Stage I (mean length of utterance < 2.00). Our analyses indicate that the use of function morphemes associated with Inflection Oat) appeared at different times in the children's languages, whereas the use of determiners appeared at the same time. The between-language discrepancy in the emergence of Infl-associated items demonstrates the influence of external factors, such as specific language input, on the acquisition of functional categories. Thus, we argue that our results are most consistent with a Continuity perspective.