Syntax Interface Research Articles

Conference Report: Challenging Construction Grammar: New Insights from Morphology (8–12 April 2024; Monte Verità, Switzerland)

As reflected in its title, this workshop, which took place from the eighth to the twelfth of April 2024 at Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland, focused on constructional perspectives in their application to morphology (Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013). As Construction Grammar has become an important theoretical framework within linguistics, it has been applied in morphological studies from both synchronic (e.g., Booij 2010; Jackendoff & Audring 2020) and diachronic perspectives (Hartmann 2019; Van Goethem & Norde 2020). Nevertheless, Construction Morphology is a comparatively young branch of Construction Grammar that poses many open questions and challenges. The questions that were asked within this workshop relate to the connection between morphology and Construction Grammar as a framework, the handling of phenomena situated at the interface of morphology and syntax, and how phenomena that are specific for the scope of morphology can be captured from a constructional point of view. To address this issue, young and early career researchers were invited to present their current work. These contributions were complemented by the contributions of the invited plenary speakers Muriel Norde (Humboldt University of Berlin), Francesca Masini (University of Bologna), Livio Gaeta (University of Turin), Kristel Van Goethem (University of Louvain) and Steffen Höder (University of Kiel). The workshop was organised by Elena Smirnova (University of Neuchâtel), Martin Hilpert (University of Neuchâtel) and Jenny Audring (University of Leiden), and made possible with the generous support of SCF (Congressi Stefano Franscini, https://csf.ethz.ch), the SNF (Swiss National Science Foundation, Programm Scientific Exchanges, Grant Nr IZSEZ0_221843) and the FLSH (Faculty of Arts and Humanities) of the University of Neuchâtel.

Between You and I: A Methodological, Mixed-method Corpus-pragmatic Approach to Hypercorrect Uses of Subject Pronouns in Object Position

The present paper takes a corpus-pragmatic approach to an issue traditionally situated at the interface of sociolinguistics, grammatical prescriptivism and syntax: the use of the hypercorrect structures <X and I> and <I and X> in object position and British and American English speakers’ usage of such pronoun binomials as prestige constructions. Here, we dedicate significant space to the meta-methodological level pertaining to the corpus-linguistic challenges entailed in systematically identifying relevant occurrences of coordinated noun phrases that feature at least one nominal component unambiguously case-marked. We use a self-compiled corpus of 14,165,810 words of transcribed telecinematic discourse in order to not only establish the extent of any hypercorrect usage, but also to see it in relation with unmarked and both grammatically correct and incorrect uses of the subject and object forms.

Lexicon over Syntax: L2 Structural Processing of Chinese Separable Verbs

This study used online and offline tasks to examine whether proficient Korean learners of Chinese can analyze the syntactic structure of separable verbs in a native-like manner during real-time processing. Separable verbs are considered a unique grammar in Chinese, involving an interface of lexicon and syntax. Despite their lexical status, separable verbs occur in the form of syntactic phrases, with constituents modified by phrase-level rules in syntax. The present study demonstrates that despite native-like offline judgments on the syntactic analysis of separable verbs, the same grammatical information was not utilized in the L2 real-time processing. The results of the experiments indicate that the structural information of separable verbs was employed less in the L2 online processing due to overreliance on the lexical representations of these compounds. In contrast, it was shown that L1 speakers could access both syntactic and lexical information associated with separable verbs during real-time processing. It is suggested that when processing a construction involving an interface of syntax and lexicon, L2 speakers rely heavily on lexicon storage and underutilize structural information.

Online processing of the grammatical aspect marker by L2 Chinese learners

The perfective aspect marker in Chinese is partly functionally similar to inflectional suffixes in Indo-European languages but is non-inflectional and lexical in nature, lying thus at the semantics–syntax interface. This provides us with the opportunity to compare directly the syntactic and semantic constraints during second language (L2) sentence processing. The present study explored how L2 Chinese learners with Indo-European languages as their first languages (L1s) process the Chinese perfective marker. The Competition Model prioritizes syntactic processes entailed by cross-linguistic transfer from the participants’ L1s, but this prediction might be challenged by the concurrent functioning of semantic processes. In an event-related potentials (ERP) experiment, 22 European language-speaking L2 Chinese learners with low to intermediate proficiency level and 20 native Chinese speakers (i.e. the control group) participated. An aspectual agreement paradigm was used for materials. Results showed that in the aspect marker mismatch condition, L2 Chinese learners with a shorter learning experience were more likely to show a P600-like component, indicating a morpho-syntactic routine, supporting thus the predictions of cross-linguistic transfer based on the Competition Model. Those with a longer L2 learning experience were more likely to show an N400-like component similar to native Chinese speakers. This shift from P600 to N400 for more advanced learners suggests that L1–L2 syntactic similarity may exert much stronger influence than semantic constraints for learners with shorter L2 experience.

Глагольная синонимия в тексте: пунктуация, синтаксис, орфография

This article attempts to examine the repetition of verbal synonyms in written texts at the interface of punctuation, syntax, and orthography in Russian. Synonymous verbs in this article are understood extensively, with reference being made to contextually synonymous verbs as well. All the examined examples represent repetitions of synonymous verbs, which are used as homogeneous parts of the sentence and mediated by punctuational (commas and parentheses), syntactic (conjunctions i ‘and’ and ili ‘or’), and orthographic (slash and hyphen) means. The syntactic property of repetition causes mutual replaceability of those components and synonymise verbs whose semantics may differ by their strict lexical definitions. While the most common means to connect synonymous verbs is a comma, conjunctions seem to structure repetition in the best manner. Orthographic means, especially a hyphen, show their functional extension in relation to synonymous verbs, which have not been canonical in Russian orthography and punctuation guidebooks. Repetition of synonyms is one of the characteristics of spoken language. However, it can also be widely observed in written texts. Although repetition of synonyms may not be a desirable phenomenon owing to its semantic redundancy, it helps the speaker/writer to modify, gradate, and formulate his/her utterances. While it is a communicative strategy for the speaker/writer, it may represent a communicative challenge to the listener/reader, who is expected to grasp the meaning of the repeated synonyms.

A Prototypical Model on Hakka Serial Verb Constructions

This research paper provides a meaning-based account to examining Hakka syntactic constructions that comprise multiple verbs in their scope. The investigation is based on an interdisciplinary approach from the interface of syntax and semantics. The paper is organized into two main parts. The first part of this paper claims that the prototypical construction of the serial verb construction is a syntactic configuration that contains two verbs in the same clause, indicating two interdependent subevents happening at close time intervals. In addition, the paper proposes that greater distance in structural and semantic interdependence between the two verbs forms a gradation deviating from the prototype. In this part, a prototype model, rather than a criterial attribute model, is adopted to define the Hakka serial verb construction (SVC). The second part of paper provides a typological study that classifies the Hakka SVCs into subtypes based on the syntactic structure and the semantic relationship of the component verbs. Syntactic tests are used to test the clausehood of the multi-verb constructions identified in this part.

한국어 Wh-구문에서의 통사론과 음운론의 접합영역 -경북 방언을 중심으로-

이 논문의 목적은 한국어 경북 방언에서의 wh-구문에서 관찰되는 운율 구조 및 작용역이 통사 구조에 영향을 미칠 수 있다는 견해와 통사 표지가 운율 구조 및 작용역을 결정한다는 견해에 대해 알아보고 통사 표지만이 운율 구조에 영향을 미치는 것이 아니라 운율 구조도 통사에 영향을 줄 수 있음을 밝히는 데 있다. 전통적으로 생성문법에서 wh-운율은 통사부에서 결정되는 것으로 알려져 있으나 Richards(2010)에서는 음운론적 경계(운율 경계)의 설정에 의해서도 wh-운율이 결정될 수 있음이 제안된다. 이 논문에서 경북 방언에서의 wh-구문에 대한 발화 실험을 통해 wh-운율 패턴을 분석하고 wh-운율 구조 및 작용역은 음운·음성학적 측면에서 더 잘 설명될 수 있다는 것을 증명한다.

The lexical semantics and syntax interface of anticausative alternations in Kiwoso

This paper examines argument alternation constructions in the Bantu language, Kiwoso. The data demonstrates that alternation is constrained by selectional properties of a root and its combination with different functional heads, which is language specific. The findings establish that external arguments of anticausative, passive and middle alternations are distinct in terms of syntax and semantics. The data indicates that external arguments appear as DPs in causative alternates but in anticausative, passive and middle sentences they surface as PPs, albeit with different interpretations. In passives, the PPs are introduced by a na-phrase and express event participants, while in anticausatives and middles they are introduced by a ko-phrase which denotes event modifiers. It is also established that anticausative, passive and middle verb constructions are related in that their sole subject argument is the object argument of their causative (transitive) variants.

Probabilistic indigenization effects at the lexis–syntax interface

Szmrecsanyiet al.(2016) define probabilistic indigenization as the process whereby probabilistic constraints shape variation patterns in different ways, which eventually leads to more heterogeneity in the constraints governing syntactic variation across different varieties of English. The present study extends our knowledge of the heterogeneity of probabilistic grammars by sketching a corpus-based variationist method for calculating the similarity between varieties thereby drawing inspiration from the comparative sociolinguistics literature. Based on linguistic material from theInternational Corpus of English, we ascertain the degree of regional variability of five probabilistic constraints on the genitive, dative, particle placement and subject pronoun omission alternations across three varieties of English, namely British, Indian and Singapore English. Our results indicate that, of the four alternations under study, the genitive alternation is the most homogeneous one from a regional perspective, followed – in increasing order of heterogeneity – by subject pronoun omission, dative and particle placement alternations. On the basis of these findings, we evaluate claims in the literature according to which the extent of probabilistic indigenization is proportional to the lexical specificity of the syntactic phenomenon under study, a hypothesis that is borne out by our data.

Interpretation of compound words by Greek-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder plus language impairment (ASD–LI)

ABSTRACT The language abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are highly variable. More insight is needed into the mechanisms that underlie co-morbid language impairments (LI) in children with ASD (henceforth, ASD–LI) across complex lexical and/or grammatical phenomena, particularly for languages beyond English. The present study tested the comprehension and production of two-constituent compound words at the single-word level for Greek (e.g., pondikopayiδa ‘mouse trap’). The Compound Word Test, measured on a range of psycholinguistic variables, was used to assess the (compound) constitutent recognition, comprehension/definition, and production of compositional noun–noun compounds in four school-aged children diagnosed with ASD–LI. Their results were compared to age-matched peers with typical language development as a group and as single cases. Comprehension was probed in relation to the word’s constituents, for which semantic interpretation involved explaining the meaning of the compound. Production of compound words was tested using a picture confrontation naming task. The results revealed that the four children with ASD–LI who participated had less difficulty recognizing the compound constituents but showed a significant deficit in deriving the compound meaning. Naming compounds was exceptionally difficult despite generally intact comprehension of the object pictures. This leads us to suggest a dissociation between linguistic and conceptual knowledge about the constituents and the compound word. Moreover, the children with ASD–LI produced semantically infelicitous responses when explaining the meaning of compounds, an error not evident in their typically developing peers. Generalizing over the four single clinical cases, we hypothesize that children with ASD–LI have difficulties at the interface of (morpho)syntax with semantics and pragmatics, that is, at the conceptual-intentional system.

A Contrastive Study of English and Chinese Synthetic Compounds

The current research compares the distributions of OV/VO patterns in English and Chinese synthetic compounds in a quantitative way and attempts to explain the mechanisms of the two patterns of compounds in English and Chinese. Both English and Chinese adopt SVO as their basic word order. However, the interface of syntax and morphology is more clear-cut in English than in Chinese. VO order prevails in English syntax. But VO order must be transformed into OV order in morphology. VO order is quite unproductive in English morphology. Compared with English, the boundary between morphology and syntax is rather vague in Chinese. The formation of Chinese compounds could be explained by the theory of “syntax-as-morphology”, i.e., the VO order of syntax is directly copied by morphology in Chinese. The mechanism of Chinese synthetic compounds provides evidence for the hypothesis of “syntax as morphology”.

At the interface of syntax and prosody: differentiating Left Dislocated and Tripartite Verbless Clauses in Biblical Hebrew

The so-called tripartite verbless clause in Biblical Hebrew consists of two nominal phrases and a pronominal element. Three analyses of the pronominal element have been advanced, each with implications for understanding the structure of the sentence. A first approach has been to view the pronominal element as a copular constituent, which serves only to link the two nominal constituents in a predication (Albrecht 1887, 1888; Brockelman 1956; and Kummerouw 2013). A second approach has been to view the pronominal element as the resumptive element of a dislocated constituent (Gesenius, Kautzsch and Cowley 1910; Andersen 1970; Zewi 1996, 1999, 2000; Jouon-Muraoka 2006). A third approach combines the first and second approaches and is represented by the work of Khan (1988, 2006) and Holmstedt and Jones (2014). A fourth approach views the pronominal element as a “last resort” syntactic strategy—the pronominal element is a pronominal clitic, which provides agreement features for the subject (Naude 1990, 1993, 1994, 1999, 2002). The pronominal element is obligatory when the nominal predicate is a referring noun phrase—the pronominal clitic is used to prevent ambiguity in the assignment of subject and predicate (see Doron 1986; Borer 1983). As is well-known in the linguistics literature, cross-linguistically left dislocation involves a “gap” at the boundary between the dislocated constituent and the matrix sentence. In spoken language, this gap may be realized by a small pause or an interjection (Berman and Grosu 1976). In this paper we consider the prosodic evidence that is available from the Masoretic accentual tradition. The Masoretes were Jewish scribes who attempted to preserve the precise reading tradition of the biblical text through the addition of a complex system of “accents” which were superimposed on the traditional Hebrew text between the sixth and the tenth centuries CE. Although the accentual system also was used for cantillation purposes, its complex system of conjunctive and disjunctive accents provides important evidence for prosodic phrasing, which can be utilized for differentiating the role of the pronoun in these two types of sentences which are otherwise structurally identical.

The Lexicon–Syntax Interface in Language Development

The Lexicon–Syntax Interface in Language Development

'Ver' como marcador pragmático em português brasileiro

Este trabalho discute construções ambíguas do português brasileiro com o verbo ver em que esse verbo pode ser um verbo pleno com o signifcado de verifcar ou pode ser um marcador pragmático. A hipótese defendida no trabalho é a de que essas leituras estão associadas a duas estruturas sintáticas distintas: as sentenças em que ver tem sentido de verifcação são bioracionais, ao passo que as sentenças em que ver funciona como marcador pragmático são mono-oracionais. Com base nas propostas de Speas e Tenny (2003) e de Hill (2007, 2014) acerca da existência de uma projeção associada ao ato de fala (denominada Speech Act Phrase – SAP) e visível para a computação sintática, propomos que, quando funciona como um marcador pragmático, ver é uma expressão que sofreu um processo de mudança linguística denominado pragmaticalização (Erman e Kotsinas 1993; Dostie 2004; Dievald 2011) e, em consequência disso, é inserido diretamente no núcleo de SAP, projeção que faz a interface da sintaxe com a pragmática conversacional.

Second language acquisition of pragmatic inferences: Evidence from the Frenchc'est-cleft

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the extent to which second language (L2) speakers of French acquire the semantic and pragmatic (or interpretive) properties associated with thec'est-cleft, specifically the exhaustive inference. This phenomenon is relevant to theories of language acquisition because it is situated at the interface of syntax and pragmatics. The results from a forced-choice task challenge the empirical adequacy of the interface hypothesis (Sorace, 2011, 2012; Sorace &amp; Filiaci, 2006), which claims that external interfaces between a linguistic module and a cognitive module remain problematic even at the highest levels of L2 acquisition. The results from 40 L2 learners at three proficiency levels reveal development from nontargetlike to nativelike behavior. In particular, the high-proficiency group interprets thec'est-cleft, as well as canonical subject–verb–object sentences and sentences with exclusives (i.e.,seul(ement)“only”), in a statistically identical way to the French native speaker control group.

Cross-linguistic influence at the discourse–syntax interface: Insights from anaphora resolution in child second language learners of Italian

This paper reports the results of an experimental study on the resolution of intra-sentential anaphora in Italian by two groups of 13–14-year-olds: monolingual native Italian speakers and highly proficient child second language (L2) learners of Italian whose native language is Croatian. In a picture selection task the participants were asked to identify antecedents of null and overt subject pronouns in ambiguous forward and backward anaphora sentences. Our assumption in the paper was that Italian and Croatian do not differ with respect to the antecedent biases of null and overt subject pronouns in the contexts under investigation. As predicted, the L2 learners expressed pragmatically appropriate antecedent preferences in all conditions. They even selected the pragmatically inappropriate subject antecedent for the overt pronoun less often than the native speakers, especially in backward anaphora. The L2 learners’ antecedent preferences closely mirror those established in previous research for their age-matched monolingual Croatian peers. We take this as evidence for our position that cross-linguistic influence is operative at the discourse–syntax influence in child L2 acquisition and that it might be the main cause of non-target-like behaviour of some groups of highly proficient bilinguals concerning certain properties pertaining to this interface.

Discourse particles in Chinese–Japanese code switching: Constrained by the Matrix Language Frame?

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The purpose of this paper is to clarify the grammatical constraints on discourse particles in Chinese–Japanese intra-sentential code switching in light of the general framework of the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model augmented by the 4-M model. Design/methodology/approach: This study retrieves data collected for three years from three Chinese–Japanese bilingual children aged between 2;1 and 5;0. Data and analysis: The database consists of nearly 300 hours of spontaneous conversations that are audio-recorded from the families of the three bilingual children, as well as diary entries. It shows that a large number of code switching utterances involve discourse particles. Findings/conclusions: Qualitative analyses of the data indicate that discourse particles are generally constrained by the MLF, yet they do not fit into any category of the 4-M model. Morphologically bound, discourse particles represent the information structure of a sentence (as in the Japanese topic marker - wa) or encode constraints on the inferential processes (as in the Japanese complementizer - kara) rather than truth-conditional information. They manifest some idiosyncrasy at the interface of syntax and pragmatics, and set up the MLF at a discourse level. Thus, the MLF model is extended from a merely syntactic level to the syntax–discourse interface. Originality: The present work has contributed empirical evidence from a hitherto undocumented language pair of Chinese and Japanese, and made theoretical explorations on the linguistic constraints of discourse particles. Significance/implications: On one hand, it is work that provides support for the robust nature of universality of the MLF constraints on code switching. On the other hand, discourse particles exhibit typological features that need further theoretical exploration in order to make a more comprehensive account for the grammatical constraints on Chinese–Japanese code switching.

The Interface of Syntax with Pragmatics and Prosody in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

In order to study problems of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with morphosyntax, we investigated twenty high-functioning Greek-speaking children (mean age: 6;11) and twenty age- and language-matched typically developing children on environments that allow or forbid object clitics or their corresponding noun phrase. Children with ASD fell behind typically developing children in comprehending and producing simple clitics and producing noun phrases in focus structures. The two groups performed similarly in comprehending and producing clitics in clitic left dislocation and in producing noun phrases in non-focus structures. We argue that children with ASD have difficulties at the interface of (morpho)syntax with pragmatics and prosody, namely, distinguishing a discourse prominent element, and considering intonation relevant for a particular interpretation that excludes clitics.

Phasal Syntax = Cyclic Phonology?

AbstractThis paper addresses three central questions in the phonology–syntax interface: What does phonology know about syntax? Does phrasal phonology “know” about syntax directly or indirectly (i.e., mediated by prosodic constituents such as Intonation Phrase)? When does the phonology–syntax interaction take place? Most current phase‐based theories of the interface assume a strict cyclic model of derivation, in which the output of each spell‐out domain directly feeds the phonology. We argue instead for an indirect model in which phonology is mainly conditioned by phase edges and accesses syntax only when the syntactic derivation is complete. We motivate the model mainly with data from Bantu languages that have played a leading role in the development of current theories of the phonology–syntax interface.

Narrow presentational focus in heritage Spanish and the syntax‒discourse interface

AbstractThe grammars of bilinguals have been found to differ from those of monolinguals especially with regard to phenomena that involve the interface of syntax and discourse/pragmatics. This paper examines one syntax‒discourse interface phenomenon – presentational focus – in the grammars of heritage speakers of Spanish. The results of a contextualized acceptability judgment task indicate that lower proficiency heritage speakers show some variability in the structures they accept to realize focus, whereas higher proficiency heritage bilinguals pattern with monolinguals. These results suggest that some explanations of domain-specific vulnerability in bilingual grammars, including the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2011), may need to be revised.