Intransitive Sentences Research Articles

Transitive and Intransitive Sentences in Savu Language

Language is a communication tool that is seen as a channel for delivering information or messages to others. Language is expressed through sentences that composed of several words in order to form a certain meaning. To form a certain sentence which is apply in a language must follow its rules. For example, Indonesian has a main element that must exist in a sentence, namely predicate or verb. The verb forms become the basic of forming the various sentences, including in determining the types of transitive and intransitive sentences. Predicate or verb is one characteristic that determines whether the sentence is transitive or intransitive in language skills. This reason is one of the authors' interests in discussing more details about the transitive and intransitive sentences of Savu language, which is one of the local languages in the East Nusa Tenggara Province, with speakers of the Savu tribe. Transitive and intransitive sentences in Savu have the most flexible additional elements which can be accompanied by various kinds of objects and adverb. Transitive sentences have two core arguments that are broadly called actors and undergoers, as in the following sentence: (1) ana no era do due do; (2) ta ngedi ke no pidu bue moto; these two transitive sentences of Savu have two core arguments. The predicate on transitive sentences, namely: era 'having' in data (1): ngedi 'see' in data (2), with two core arguments, they are ‘ana no’ ‘his son’ 'and due do 'two people' in data (1), then, no ‘he’ and pidu bue motto ‘seven stars’ in data (2).. Whereas the intransitive sentence has no object. Then, the arrangement of functional elements is Subject + Predicate and Predicate + Subject. The following is an example of the intransitive sentence of Savu: (3) ta mari ina; (4) ro kako la rae; the intransitive sentence of Savu language indicates that they do not have objects. In data (3) ta mari 'laugh’ is the verb; ina ‘lady' is the subject. As well as in data (4) ro 'they’ is the subject, while kako la ‘go to' and rae ‘adverb of place’.

The interplay of information structure, semantics, prosody, and word ordering in Spanish intransitives

A production experiment was run to examine how information structure and verbal semantics affect word ordering and nuclear stress placement in intransitive sentences in Venezuelan Spanish. Unaccusative verbs in Spanish are said to be more likely to be subject final (VS order) than unergative verbs, while in languages like English, this is marked with stress shift (i.e., Sv, caps show the nuclear stress). It has long been contended, however, that the semantic factors underlying split intransitivity actually affect information structure, rather than syntax directly. If so, then the effect of verbal semantics on word ordering/nuclear stress placement should be able to be overridden by information structure. Venezuelan Spanish speakers described pictures using a printed unaccusative or unergative verb in response to a question manipulating the information structure type of the subject, i.e., broad focus, theme, QUD-focus, or contrastive focus. Results showed that QUD- and contrastively focused subjects were more likely to carry nuclear stress. Subject stress was also more likely for unaccusatives, but this effect was weaker. Overall stress shift was much more frequent than subject final placement, with neither information structure type nor verb type affecting the likelihood of either response type. These results raise challenges for standard assumptions about the relationship between information structure and unaccusativity, and between final subject placement and stress shift.

Existential unaccusativity and new discourse referents

It is well-known that new information strongly disprefers subject position in English (Horn 1986; Prince 1981; 1992; Beaver et al., 2005), even though English allows indefinite subjects. English is therefore seen as one of the many languages that adheres to the given-new contract (Clark & Haviland, 1977). This paper argues that a subset of intransitive sentences in English readily establishes new discourse referents in subject position—in an apparent breach of the given-new contract. These sentences, exemplified by A fancy lady waltzed in, are analyzed as syntactically unaccusative and semantically as having an existential proposition. These sentences are termed existential unaccusative: in the proposed VP structure, a verbal root that (typically) denotes manner of motion selects for a headed small clause whose subject is interpreted as a Path to a contextually-determined location. The analysis adapts McCloskey’s (2014) analysis of Irish existentials to English, and I argue that sentences with this structure establish discourse referents by the same means as existential there BE sentences. The analysis is discussed in the context of claims made by Du Bois (1987) that languages organize information such that new discourse referents are established as objects of transitive sentences and subjects of intransitive sentences. This analysis suggests that Du Bois’s generalization holds for a structurally distinct subset of intransitives in English in sharing the discourse function of introducing new discourse referents.

Effects of subject-case marking on agreement processing: ERP evidence from Basque

Previous cross-linguistic research has found that comprehenders are immediately sensitive to various kinds of agreement violations across languages. We focused on Basque, a verb-final ergative language with both subject–verb (SV) and object–verb (OV) agreement. We compared the effects of SV agreement violations on comprehenders' event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in transitive sentences (where OV agreement is present, and the subject is ergative) and intransitive sentences (where OV agreement is absent, and the subject is absolutive). We observed a P600 effect in both cases, but only violations with intransitive subjects elicited an early posterior negativity. Such a qualitative difference suggests that distinct neurocognitive mechanisms are involved in processing agreement with transitive subjects (which are marked with ergative case) versus intransitive subjects (which bear absolutive case). Building on theoretical proposals that in languages such as Basque, true agreement occurs with absolutive subjects but not with ergative subjects, we submit that the early posterior negativity may be an electrophysiological signature for true agreement.

Inanimate-Subject Passive Sentences, Intransitive Sentences, and Implicitness of Agent:Focusing On Japanese Literature in Modern Times

Inanimate-Subject Passive Sentences, Intransitive Sentences, and Implicitness of Agent:Focusing On Japanese Literature in Modern Times

佐藤琢三著, 『自動詞文と他動詞文の意味論』, 2005年6月15日発行, 笠間書院刊, A5判, 226ページ, 2,800円+税

佐藤琢三著, 『自動詞文と他動詞文の意味論』, 2005年6月15日発行, 笠間書院刊, A5判, 226ページ, 2,800円+税

Antipassive structure in Tenetehára (Tupi-Guarani family)

This article aims to describe and examine the antipassive construction in the Tenetehára language (Tupi-Guarani family). For this, it will be shown that the transitive verbs, on receiving the morpheme {puru-}, then exhibit the following properties of antipassive constructions: (i) they come to have an intransitive syntactic structure and (ii) the abstract Case of the internal argument is not valued by v, but by the postposition -ehe. Generally, such configurations behave essentially like intransitive sentences. Using a minimalist approach, we show that the main difference between an antipassive clause and a transitive one is that although the antipassive vP selects an external argument, its head is not able to value the abstract Case of the internal argument. For this reason, the object is dependent on the postposition -ehe for the oblique Case. Furthermore, unlike what happens in the derivation of transitive constructions, the φ-feature of the antipassive vP is lexically valued, which does not allow the agreement (nominative system) in terms of φ-feature, with its external argument. The result is that this external argument moves to the highest vP Spec position in the tree structure, whose head is instantiated by the verb {-wer} “want”, with which it establishes a relationship agreement in terms of φ-feature , triggering the second agreement paradigm (absolutive system).

Detransitivizing and Korean

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the notion of detransitivizing in line of linguistic typology, and try to explain Korean object case marker LUL in terms of a marker (=particle) that indicates one (or more) of the transitivity features of Hopper & Thompson (1980). Detransitivizing is a various kinds of non-typical transitive sentences that have been cross-linguistically found when transitivity features become disappeared or weaker.BR To define transitivity, this paper takes stance on prototypical transitivity, and it argues against markedness transitivity (Comrie’s generalization (de Swart 2003, Næss 2007), saying that the former can explain better about the transitivity and detransitivizing phenomena cross-linguistically than the latter can, based on which the long-term syntactic dichotomy between transitive and intransitive cannot be more retainable. According to prototypical transitivity, transitivity is defined as a bundle of 10 or so semantic features that composes transitivity. Basing on the various typological data and some Korean evidences dwelt with in this paper, we proposed that among 10 or so features 2 (or more) participants (A and O) appear to be most typical elements that compose prototypical transitivity, but other features are not given any different weight among them.BR In line of this foundlings, we propose that Korean objet case LUL can be better explained if we understand LUL as a particle indicating transitivity features, contrast to the Case or the special definitive markers. As a result, the LUL can appear whenever the one (or more) of the transitivity features occur in the given sentences, regardless of transitive or intransitive sentences.

An Experimental Approach to Basic Word Order in Turkish Intransitives

Abstract This study offers an experimental perspective to investigate the word order and animacy effects of intransitives in Turkish, an agglutinative language with a canonical, flexible Subject-Object-Verb order. Four experiments were conducted to investigate a total of 528 Turkish speakers’ acceptability judgments using rating scales (Experiments 1 and 3; 7-point Likert scales) and forced choice tasks (Experiments 2 and 4; choosing one of two sentences) for various orders of linguistic forms in a simple intransitive sentence. Results from scalar acceptability judgments showed that there were significant main effects of order and subject, indicating that participants gave significantly higher ratings to SV sentences than VS sentences and that their ratings changed significantly according to the animacy of the subjects. Results from the forced choice tasks showed that participants preferred SV sentences to VS sentences. These findings suggest that Turkish speakers prefer SV order over VS order even though both are readily available.

Stress Pattern System in Central Sarawani Balochi

The present article investigates the stress pattern system of Central Sarawani Balochi (CSB), spoken in Sarawan located in Sistan and Baluchestan province of the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on metrical theory as developed in Hayes (1995). Correspondingly, the present research illustrates the position of primary and secondary stress in mono-morphemic words, verbal paradigms, compound words, complex words, pair words and simple transitive as well as intransitive sentences. The linguistic data are mostly based on the purposeful recording of speech gathered through interview and elicitation from the speech of 10 male and female language consultants with different social backgrounds. CSB data highlight that the stress pattern system in this language variety is almost totally systematic; it is a language variety with iambic feet. Further, CSB data show up that stress is culminative at phonological level. It is also rhythmically distributed. The absence of stress assimilation is supported by CSB data as well. Since the location of stress is predictable, its stress pattern is fixed. The data, likewise, confirm that stress system in CSB is a mixture of morphological and rhythmic. Meanwhile, stress pattern in complex words indicate the suffixes attract the primary stress. Besides, in negative and prohibitive forms, prefixes m{- and n{- get the primary stress.

Semantic Ambiguity and Syntactic Bootstrapping: The Case of Conjoined-Subject Intransitive Sentences

ABSTRACTWhen learning verb meanings, learners capitalize on universal linguistic correspondences between syntactic and semantic structure. For instance, upon hearing the transitive sentence “the boy is glorping the girl,” 2-year-olds prefer a two-participant event (e.g., a boy making a girl spin) over two simultaneous one-participant events (a boy and a girl separately spinning). However, 2- and 3-year-olds do not consistently show the opposite preference when hearing conjoined-subject intransitive sentences (“the boy and the girl are glorping”). We hypothesized that such difficulties arise in part from the indeterminacy of the mapping between intransitive syntax and events in the world: a conjoined-subject intransitive sentence can be matched by the one-participant event (if “glorp” means “spin”), both events (“play”), or even the two-participant event (“fight”). A preferential looking study provided evidence for this hypothesis: sentences that plausibly block most non-target interpretations for novel verbs (“the boy and the umbrella are glorping”) eliminated the asymmetric difficulty associated with conjoined-subject intransitives. Thus, while conjoined-subject intransitives clearly pose some special challenges for syntax-guided word learning (“syntactic bootstrapping”) by novices (Gertner & Fisher, 2012), children’s difficulties with this sentence type also reflect expected performance in situations of semantic ambiguity. In discussion, we consider the interacting effects of syntactic- and message-level indeterminacy.

Effects of Semantic Features on the Intonational Patterns of Intransitive Verb Sentences: acoustic analysis of speeches of English natives and Korean learners

Effects of Semantic Features on the Intonational Patterns of Intransitive Verb Sentences: acoustic analysis of speeches of English natives and Korean learners

Learning Verb Syntax via Listening: New Evidence From 22-Month-Olds

Children recruit verb syntax to guide verb interpretation. We asked whether 22-month-olds spontaneously encode information about a particular novel verb’s syntactic properties through listening to sentences, retain this information in long-term memory over a filled delay, and retrieve it to guide interpretation upon hearing the same novel verb again. Children watched dialogues in which interlocutors discussed unseen events using a novel verb in transitive (e.g., “Anna blicked the baby”) or intransitive sentences (“Anna blicked”). Children later heard the verb in isolation (“Find blicking!”) while viewing a two-participant causal action and a one-participant action event. Children who had heard transitive dialogues looked longer at the two-participant event than did those who heard intransitive dialogues. This effect disappeared if children heard a different novel verb at test (“Find kradding!”). These findings implicate a role for distributional learning in early verb learning: syntactic-combinatorial information about otherwise unknown words may pervade the toddler’s lexicon, guiding later word interpretation.

Processos de causativização na língua Karitiana

O artigo descreve os processos de causativização em Karitiana, língua do tronco Tupi, localizada no estado de Rondônia. Todos os verbos intransitivos podem ser afetados pela causativização sintética ou morfológica (transitivização) através de um morfema causativo {m-}, que permite a adição de um argumento externo (o sujeito agente ou causa) a uma sentença intransitiva, tornando-a transitiva. A causativização perifrástica ou análitica dá-se por meio do auxiliar causativo typoong. Este auxiliar causativiza verbos biargumentais de base transitiva ou intransitiva. O auxiliar perifrástico seleciona apenas uma estrutura na qual pré-exista um argumento externo na sentença (agente ou causa), por isso um verbo intransitivo entrará nessa estrutura apenas se antes foi causativizado/transitivizado pelo causativizador morfológico {m-}.

On expressions of agent de-topicalized intentional events: A contrastive study between Japanese and Russian

Abstract In this paper differences in the depiction of the same event are described, setting forth the hypothesis that naturality of language or any language-likeness is due to differences in the construal of the objective world. As a case study, this paper considers how we express intentional events involving an agent that is unspecified or not important. To answer this question, data were collected from the same scene of a parallel corpus translated from Japanese to Russian (and vice versa). I then quantified the differences between the languages in the distribution of the constructions used, i.e., passive, indefinite-personal or active, intransitive, V-te aru construction or transitive, perfective or imperfective; and then determined what expressions are favored in each of the two languages. The data were then analyzed in detail to determine why these differences occur. The study yielded the following results. I. In expressing a process, in Japanese, a passive construction is used, whereas in Russian, a passive indefinite-personal sentence is often used. In addition, in Russian, an active construction is sometimes used. II. In expressing the results, in Japanese, an intransitive sentence tends to be used more often. In Russian, various expressions are used, including passive and intransitive sentences. III. The difference between Japanese and Russian lies in the different ways of construal, that is, whether or not a speaker seizes and depicts events subjectively from the vantage point of the patient.

The semantic effects of the Subject Genitive of Negation in Lithuanian

The paper is aimed at investigating the semantic and pragmatic effects of the alternations between the Nominative and the Genitive cases in intransitive negated sentences in Lithuanian. Particular attention is paid to the uses of the Subject Genitive of Negation in constructions with verbs of perception. The use of Subject ɢᴇɴ.ɴᴇɢ in Lithuanian depends on the semantics of the predi-cate verb, on the perspective structure of the sentence, and on whether the sentence is existential or locative. In terms of meaning, the subjects marked Nominative are committed to exist, whereas the subjects marked Genitive carry no such commitment. In fact, in our proposal the use of Genitive case in negated intransitive sentences implicates a lack of existential commitment or, depending on the available contextual information, the non-existence of a subject referent in the location in question or in the world itself. These implicatures are cancellable and calculable, and display the properties of gen-eralised conversational implicatures of quantity. A proposal for mapping the scale of existential commitment onto the sentence types—locative sentences, conventional existential sentences and sentences of localised existence—is also laid out.

Syntactic generalization with novel intransitive verbs

To understand how children develop adult argument structure, we must understand the nature of syntactic and semantic representations during development. The present studies compare the performance of children aged 2;6 on the two intransitive alternations in English: patient (Daddy is cooking the food/The food is cooking) and agent (Daddy is cooking). Children displayed abstract knowledge of both alternations, producing appropriate syntactic generalizations with novel verbs. These generalizations were adult-like in both flexibility and constraint. Rather than limiting their generalizations to lexicalized frames, children produced sentences with a variety of nouns and pronouns. They also avoided semantic overgeneralizations, producing intransitive sentences that respected the event restrictions and animacy cues. Some generated semantically appropriate agent intransitives when discourse pressure favored patient intransitives, indicating a stronger command of the first alternation. This was in line with frequency distributions in child-directed speech. These findings suggest that children have early access to representations that permit flexible argument structure generalization.

Processing Facilitation Strategies in OV and VO Languages: A Corpus Study

The present corpus study aimed to examine whether Basque (OV) resorts more often than Spanish (VO) to certain grammatical operations, in order to minimize the number of arguments to be processed before the verb. Ueno & Polinsky (2009) argue that VO/OV languages use certain grammatical resources with different frequencies in order to facilitate real-time processing. They observe that both OV and VO languages in their sample (Japanese, Turkish and Spanish) have a similar frequency of use of subject pro-drop; however, they find that OV languages (Japanese, Turkish) use more intransitive sentences than VO languages (English, Spanish), and conclude this is an OV-specific strategy to facilitate processing. We conducted a comparative corpus study of Spanish (VO) and Basque (OV). Results show (a) that the frequency of use of subject pro-drop is higher in Basque than in Spanish; and (b) Basque does not use more intransitive sentences than Spanish; both languages have a similar frequency of intransitive sentences. Based on these findings, we conclude that the frequency of use of grammatical resources to facilitate the processing does not depend on a single typological trait (VO/OV) but it is modulated by the concurrence of other grammatical features.

Klasifikasi Kalimat Pasif Intransitif dalam Bahasa Jepang Berdasarkan Peran Semantisnya

A predicate of a passive sentence in Japanese can be filled in by a transitive,ditransitif, and intransitive verb. Passive sentences with intransitive verbs as the predicates commonly express oppositive meaning. Linguists commonly classify this type of passive sentence regarding only to its syntactical function and category. This study however investigates passive intransitive sentences regarding not only their syntactical function and category, but also their semantic construction. The study finds five types of syntactical construction of passive intransitive (I~V). Each type of the passive is distinguished by the semantic information of its modifiers.

Verb transitivity bias affects on-line sentence reading in people with aphasia

Background: Studies of sentence comprehension in non-disordered populations have convincingly demonstrated that probabilistic cues influence on-line syntactic processing. One well-studied cue is verb argument structure bias, which refers to the probability that a verb will occur in a particular syntactic frame. According to the Lexical Bias Hypothesis people with aphasia have difficulty understanding sentences in which the verb's argument structure bias conflicts with the sentence structure (e.g., a transitively biased verb in an intransitive sentence). This hypothesis may provide an account of why people with aphasia have difficulty understanding both simple and complex sentences. Aims: The purpose of this study was to test the Lexical Bias Hypothesis using an on-line measure of written sentence comprehension, self-paced reading. Methods & Procedures: The participants were 10 people with aphasia and 10 non-brain-damaged controls. The stimuli were syntactically simple transitive and intransitive sentences that contained transitively or intransitively biased verbs. For example, the transitively biased verb “called” appeared in sentences such as “The agent called (the writer) from overseas to make an offer.” The intransitively biased verb “danced” appeared in sentences such as “The couple danced (the tango) every Friday night last summer.” Outcomes & Results: Both groups' reading times for critical segments were longer when the verb's transitivity bias did not match the sentence structure, particularly in intransitive sentences. Conclusions: The results were generally consistent with the Lexical Bias Hypothesis, and demonstrated that lexical biases affect on-line processing of syntactically simple sentences in people with aphasia and controls.