Matrix Verb Research Articles

A corpus-based study of a Chinese-speaking child’s acquisition of English transferred negation

Native speakers of English have a strong preference for transferred negation as opposed to non-transferred negation. The present study aims to examine whether young Chinese-speaking ESL learners have a target-like preference for transferred negation and whether they have a system-wide representation of transferred negation in their early English development. Based on the corpora compiled with longitudinal data of a Chinese-speaking child learning English as a second language, the present study analyzed the child’s collocation of matrix verbs with transferred negation and non-transferred negation, the distribution of matrix verbs in transferred negation, and the distribution of negation types in terms of different matrix verbs. The findings show that the verb THINK predominates the matrix verbs of the child’s transferred negation. The imbalanced distribution of matrix verbs in his transferred negation is related to the skewed input of verbs. In sentences with the matrix verb THINK, the child has a target-like preference for transferred negation as opposed to non-transferred negation. However, he does not show a target-like preference for transferred negation in sentences with the matrix verb LOOK LIKE. Hence, we argue that young ESL learners’ generalizations about constructions are focused around particular verbs that occur frequently in those constructions. Young ESL learners do not have an abstract system-wide representation at the earliest stage of second language acquisition. Instead, their ESL acquisition is based on specific verbs.

신경망 언어 모델과 인간 언어 사용자의 주어와 목적어 관계절 처리 비교 연구

This paper is to investigate the distinct aspects of processing subject and object relative clauses (SRC and ORC) in neural language models (LMs) and humans using the materials, which are constructed by manipulating two RC types (SRC vs ORC) and two intervening PP types (locative vs temporal). Surprise values are collected from the transformer GPT-2 and BERT language models. Reading time data for humans are taken from Lowder and Gordon’s (2021) eye-tracking experiment. According to Lowder and Gordon (ibid.) that take as a critical region the matrix verb after the RC in the subject position, for humans the locative PP contained in the RC register longer reading times ORCs than SRCs, while the temporal PP does so for SRCs than ORCs. By contrast, for the two neural LMs, surprisals are higher for ORCs than SRCs regardless of whether the PP in question is locative or temporal. There was no statistically significant linear fit between human and the LMs’ responses. The result shows that to the extent that the distinction between locative and temporal PPs in RCs is syntactico-semantic, neither of the two neural language models is able to acquire human-like sensitivity to such a distinction.

Lexical factors in non-finite complementation of continue

The study examines the usage of two non-finite complements of the verb continue: the -ing form and the to-infinitive, arguing for the importance of low level generalizations in accounting for the complement choice. The semantic import of complement constructions may vary with specific lexeme classes of both the matrix verb and the complement verb, as well as be conditioned by more general features associated with the verbs’ lexical aspect. The determinants of complement choice are characterized in terms of the aspectual construal of the complement event imposed by the two alternative constructions: conceptual proximity and distance associated respectively with the -ing form and the to-infinitive. The study relies on distinctive collexeme analysis: a statistical technique which compares the lexemes distinctive for the two constructions in order to describe the semantics of the construction by examining its most characteristic collocates.

Subject Control Infinitive Constructions in Early Modern English

This study aims to analyze and describe infinitive sentences with verbs of volition such as desire, wish, want, hope, intend, promise, determine, command in Early Modern English within a generative framework. It is argued that the infinitival clauses have a thematic subject PRO controlled by the matrix subject. It is proved that complex sentences with infinitive complements of matrix predicates of volition obtain subject control function. The findings show syntactic peculiarities of infinitive complementation of monotransitive verbs of volition as subject control infinitive constructions in the studied period of English. Having taken into consideration subject control properties of matrix verbs of volition, direct object monotransitive infinitive function, complementary nature of infinitives, it has been assumed that an infinitive clause generates in a complementizer phrase CP domain, putting forward three possible variants of syntactic analysis of the infinitive types’ configurations as: SVOd (to / bare INF clause), SVOd (NP to / bare INF clause), SVOd (wh- to INF clause) with ‘two-argument arrangement’ of matrix verbs and the infinitive clause as an object predicative complement.

Regional Variation and Syntactic Derivation of Low-frequencyneed-passives on Twitter

This paper examines constructions formed by the verb need taking a passivized complement. While previous dialectological, sociolinguistic, and micro-syntactic analyses have focused primarily on the past-participle complement (need+ED) as a regional syntactic variable, this study expands the purview of need-passives to examine gerund-participle (need+ING) and infinitival (need+TO) complements. It also looks beyond purported need+ED regions to examine need-passive variation in Englishes spoken around the world. Data from Twitter confirm previous findings that need+ED is a productive feature of the US Midland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Tyneside, England. However, tweets also show that need+ING is produced disproportionately frequently in England and Wales. These results reveal a more complex pattern of need-passive variation in global Englishes than has previously been reported. Additionally, a transitive construction formed with need as a matrix verb is examined and found to co-vary regionally with need+ING. Syntactic analyses of tweets reveal similarities in the ways that need+ED and need+ING vary with need+TO. These findings lead to a proposed syntactic analysis that need+ED and need+ING share the same derivational structure. More generally, the work argues for greater attention in linguistic research to low-frequency features.

The Island Is Still There: Experimental Evidence For The Inescapability Of Relative Clauses In English*

AbstractIt is standardly assumed that relative clauses are islands for extraction in English, and that constraints on extraction from syntactic islands are universal. However, it has been shown that the Mainland Scandinavian languages provide a large variety of counterexamples. This study investigates the island status of English relative clauses in the light of these counterexamples. 190 native speakers provided acceptability judgments on a 5‐point Likert scale of 48 target sentences. The results show that, unlike in Danish, acceptability of extraction is not correlated with frequency of occurrence of the matrix verb or with exposure over time. Furthermore, there is no difference in acceptability between moving a topic or a wh‐element out of a relative clause. We argue that this supports the traditional analysis of English relative clauses as strong islands, and that the results are compatible with a parametric account of language variation.

Portuguese infinitives: their pieces and their meaning

Traditionally taken as one of the nominals forms of the verb, infinitives in Portuguese, in spite of their morphophonological homogeneity (-r), appear in a range of morphosyntactic contexts. This paper argues that all these contexts can be reduced to three, namely, a nominal, a verbal and a “mixed” – in the sense of Chomsky (1970). Specifically, by assuming Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993), it proposes a step-by-step morphosyntactic and semantic derivation of the contexts where the /R/-morpheme appears, also addressing the issues involving tense and aspect in these forms. In summary, we argue that nominal, verbal and mixed infinitives share the same derivational path up to AspP, which – we claim – is underdetermined, thus competing with (perfective) participles and (imperfective) gerunds. Above AspP, the first bifurcation is between no and T. Projecting no generates a predicate of events. By projecting T (in verbal and mixed infinitives), the system has a three-way path: T[+tense], where T will be futurate in relation to the finite matrix verb; T[–tense], where T will be simultaneous /anaphoric in respect to the finite matrix verb; or T[ ], where there is no c-commanding T and then, as last resort, the grammar will change this phrase into a predicate of events.

Same Root, Different Categories: Encoding Direction in Chinese

The complexity of the directional construction in Chinese involves the following factors: (a) it can take a single directional item as the predicate; (b) two directional items can cooccur to serve as the predicate; (c) one or two directional items can be attached to a matrix verb in a single clause; (d) if more than one directional item is involved, their linear order can differ. I propose that the leading factor behind this complexity is that in Chinese a single Root can take different categories when merged in different syntactic positions. Therefore, the same directional item may in fact have the phonological form of a verb, a preposition, a part of a single preposition, or even a spatial aspectual marker in different directional constructions. I then place this account within the context of parametric studies of motion event constructions, showing that two new dimensions can be added: the special property of Roots in a language and the existence of Spatial Aspect in at least some languages.

Relative Clause Effects at the Matrix Verb Depend on Type of Intervening Material.

Although a large literature demonstrates that object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) are harder to process than subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs), there is less agreement regarding where during processing this difficulty emerges, as well as how best to explain these effects. An eye-tracking study by Staub, Dillon, and Clifton (2017) demonstrated that readers experience more processing difficulty at the matrix verb for ORCs than for SRCs when the matrix verb immediately follows the relative clause (RC), but the difficulty is eliminated if a prepositional phrase (PP) intervenes. A careful examination of Staub etal.'s materials reveals that the types of PPs used in the experiment were a mixture of locative and temporal PPs. This is important in that locative PPs can modify either a noun phrase or a verb phrase (VP), whereas temporal PPs typically modify VPs, resulting in systematic differences in PP attachment across ORCs versus SRCs. In the current eye-tracking experiment, we systematically manipulated RC type and PP type in the same sentences used by Staub etal. The manipulation of PP type resulted in a crossover pattern at the matrix verb such that there was a trend for reading times to be longer for ORCs than SRCs when the PP was locative, but reading times were longer for SRCs than ORCs when the PP was temporal. These results provide important information regarding the locus of RC-processing effects and highlight the importance of carefully considering how intervening material might unintentionally alter the structure or the meaning of a sentence.

When factivity meets the conjoint/disjoint alternation

This paper examines the conjoint/disjoint alternation in matrix verbs which take clausal complements in Zulu. It shows that the typical verbs which by default take the disjoint form with a clausal complement are factive verbs, though it is also clear that other attitude verbs can also undergo the conjoint/disjoint alternation. The paper explores the connection between focus and the conjoint/disjoint alternation in Zulu under the Question Under Discussion (QUD) approach, to help understand the interpretations associated with the alternations in combination with clausal complements.

Processing similarities between native speakers and non-balanced bilinguals

Aims and objectives: The study investigates human sentence processing and argues that information from multiple sources is considered equally in native and non-native languages. Non-syntactic information does not overrule the parsing decisions prompted by syntactic cues. Methodology: The experiment used ambiguous relative clauses (RC) in a self-paced reading task with 20 native and 45 non-native adult speakers of English and Russian. The software Linger recorded participants’ answers to comprehension questions and the time they spent reading each word. Data and analysis: Mixed linear analysis performed in R checked for the effect of a matrix verb, RC length, social conventions, the native language and the language of testing on RC processing and interpretation. Findings: Both native and non-native speakers followed social conventions in deciding on the interpretation of the RC. However, this information never overruled the attachment decision prompted by the matrix predicate or by the length of the RC which entails certain sentence prosody. Originality: The study is innovative in investigating the extent to which each factor affected RC processing. It shows that social conventions enhance processing when they conspire with the structural parse prompted by linguistic cues. When they do not, syntactic information governs sentence parsing in both L1 and L2. Significance/implications: The study provides evidence that sentence processing uses linguistic structure as a first parsing hypothesis, which can then be adjusted to incorporate the incoming information from multiple sources. Limitations: The findings need further support from testing L2 learners of Russian in various socio-cultural contexts.

Aspect as an indicator of a clausal size in Involuntary State Constructions in BCS

Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) has a productive ‘involuntary state construction (ISC) with a modal interpretation. There is an ongoing debate concerning the syntactic complexity of this construction. According to one account – the “mono-clausal analysis”, ISCs have only one (overt) lexical verb, and the modal interpretation stems from the imperfective operator (Rivero and Milojević-Sheppard 2003,Rivero 2009, Tsedryk 2016). There is also a “bi-clausal account” which argues in favor of a covert matrix verb of involuntary disposition feel-like, which takes a clausal ModP complement, giving the modal interpretation (Marušič & Žaucer 2005 [henceforth M&Ž]). In this paper, I provide additional evidence in favor of the bi-clausal approach and in so doing, account for a previously unresolved aspectual restriction on the construction, namely that it is ungrammatical with a perfective lexical verb. The main claim is that the unavailability of perfective in the ISC is due to selectional properties of covert feel-like, which results in the violation of requirements on perfective.

From movement into action to manner of causation: changes in argument mapping in the into-causative

Abstract Over the last 300 years, the into-causative (he talked his father into giving him money) increased in frequency and lexical diversity. Changes of this kind are often taken as evidence of functional expansion. From a Construction Grammar (CxG) perspective, this paper argues that what appears to be a loss of restrictions on the verbal slot results from changes in argument mapping links. As the construction provides the argument roles by mapping semantics (causer, causee, result) onto syntax (subject, object, oblique), stronger mapping links increasingly facilitated the use of verbs that are semantically and syntactically atypical for the expression of causation. Data from the Corpus of Historical American English confirm three predictions of this hypothesis with respect to shifts in (i) the semantic classes of matrix verbs, (ii) their general argument structure preferences, and (iii) voice-marking. The results provide evidence for a subtle semantic change from movement into action to manner of causation. The increase in frequency and productivity are hence explained as the consequence of the syntactic form becoming a more reliable cue for causative meaning. We discuss implications for models of language change against the background of current issues in Diachronic Construction Grammar (DCxG) pertaining to constructionalization vs. constructional change.

The Subjunctive Mood in Giryama and Tanzanian Nyanja

This paper presents a study of the Subjunctive in the Bantu languages of Giryama in Kenya (E72a) and Nyanja in Tanzania (N201), and explores its distribution in the two languages. As in other Bantu languages, the Subjunctive is a morphological feature characterized by a verbal suffix -e, an obligatory subject marker, and the absence of tense. Syntactically, the Subjunctive appears in independent clauses, as well as dependent clauses with a certain class of predicates and adverbial subordinators. Independent clauses that may carry the Subjunctive are those that express exhortations or suggestions, and sentences marked with the future tense. Dependent clauses with Subjunctive verbs include: (a) complement clauses containing directive, volitional, and causative verbs, and (b) adverbial clauses such as clauses of purpose. Studies of the subjunctive have often associated its semantic distribution with irrealis, in contrast with the Indicative, which is associated with realis or assertion. We present evidence showing that the irrealis reading may sometimes appear to be absent. We argue that irrealis may not be a necessary and sufficient condition for the Subjunctive. However, the onstructions that give irrealis readings provide the best exemplars of Subjunctives in these two languages. Independent clause Subjunctives are shown to be clearly non-factive. Matrix verbs that take subjunctive complements are described as presupposition triggers of events that are non-factive relative to the matrix event.

통제동사 구문의 국면 삭제 분석

This paper proposes a new analysis of the structure of the Spanish control verb construction in which the matrix verb selects the infinitival clause. Starting from the fact that there is a difference in syntactic phenomena, that is, clitic climbing, between control verb constructions, it turns out to be related to the type of matrix verb. It is argued that both infinitival clause selected by the volitional verb and infinitival clause selected by the non-volitional verb project CP category. I suggest that syntactic difference captured in these two constructions is due to Merge applied in the derivation process. Following Epstein et al.(2016), I assume that internal Merge and external Merge are freely applied. Under the concept of phase cancellation proposed by Chomsky(2015) and Epstein et al.(2016), I argue that C becomes visible in the derivation for infinitival clause selected by non-volitional verb and C becomes invisible in the derivation for infinitival clause selected by volitional verb.

The Development of Exceptional Case Marking in Romance with a Particular Focus on French

Abstract This paper traces the development of so-called Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) under perception, permissive and causative verbs in Romance. Synchronically, we can observe various patterns in the distribution of ECM complements under these verbs. In Portuguese and Spanish, ECM is often possible under all permissive and causative verbs, whereas in French, Catalan and Italian it is usually restricted to perception and permissive verbs. A detail that has not been much discussed is the fact that, for many speakers, ECM with a given verb is often restricted to contexts in which the embedded ‘subject’ is a clitic. Some speakers of Modern French display this pattern with the verb faire ‘make’, for example (Abeillé, Anne, Danièle Godard & Philip Miller. 1997. Les causatives en français : Un cas de compétition syntaxique. Langue Française 115. 62–74. https://doi.org/10.3406/lfr.1997.6222). In this paper, I claim that laisser ‘let’ probably also displayed this pattern in Middle French. In Old French, however, what appears to be the opposite pattern is observed. Following (Pearce, Elizabeth. 1990. Parameters in Old French syntax: Infinitival complements. Dordrecht: Kluwer), I attribute this to the morphological variability of dative case in Old French. I propose a case-based analysis of the clitic ECM pattern, whereby ECM complements in Romance are phases unlike clause union complements (see Sheehan, Michelle & Sonia Cyrino. 2018. Why do some ECM verbs resist passivisation? A phase-based explanation. In Sherry Hucklebridge & Max Nelson (eds.), Proceedings of NELS 48 (vol 3), 81–90. University of Massachusetts). Where such complements are embedded under light verbs, the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) prevents accusative case from being assigned to the lower subject except in instances of cliticization. When the matrix verb is reanalysed as a full verb, however, v becomes the case-assigning head and so ECM becomes generally available, regardless of the clitic/non-clitic status of the causee.

A special case of long distance agreement in Marathi

This paper discusses an unexplored case of long distance agreement (LDA) in Marathi in which agreement takes place across an embedded subjunctive clause. In this construction, three distinct heads- an embedded verb, a matrix verb and what appears to be a clause-introducing complementizer-like morpheme- agree with the embedded object. The paper demonstrates that the subjunctive clause embedded in the LDA construction is a restructured clause lacking several functional projections such as TP, NegP and the entire CP layer. Further, it argues that the complementizer-like agreeing morpheme is a clause-linker attached lower than the CP-layer (à la den Dikken 2006). LDA in this construction is mediated by this clause-linker and the restructured nature of the clause it introduces. The analysis in this paper is based within the Minimalist framework of probe-goal mechanism of Agree.

한국어 의문사 작용역을 나타내는 운율 단서: 경북 방언을 중심으로*

A wh-phrase in an embedded sentence may have either an embedded or a matrix scope. Interpretation of a wh-phrase with a matrix scope has tended to be syntactically unacceptable unless the sentence reads with a wh-intonation. Previous studies have found two differences in prosodic characteristics between sentences with matrix and embedded scopes. Firstly, peak F0s in wh-phrases produced with an F0 compression wh-intonation are higher than those in indirect questions, and peak F0s in matrix verbs are lower than those in sentences with embedded scope. Secondly, a substantial F0 drop is found at the end of embedded sentences in indirect questions, whereas no F0 reduction at the same point is noticed in sentences with a matrix scope produced with a high plateau wh-intonation. However, these characteristics were not found in our experiment. This showed that a more compelling difference exists in the values obtained from subtraction between the peak F0s of each word (or a word plus an ending or case marker) and the F0s at the end of the word. Specifically, the gap between the peak F0 in a word composed with an embedded verb and the F0 at the end of the word, which is a complementizer in Korean, is large in embedded wh-scope sentences and low in matrix wh-scope sentences.

Action and agency in complex sentences from present-day Romanian

Starting from Alanen’s remark that “actions (exercises of capacities) are found throughout the natural world; and so is agency” (2018, 2), the present paper aims at describing the influence of these two fundamental concepts – action and agency – on the structure of Romanian complex sentences. More precisely, I am interested in providing evidence of a linguistic phenomenon that has received far less attention in the literature, i.e. the semantic restrictions imposed by the matrix verb over the embedded adverbial clause. As concerns the methodology, both qualitative and quantitative analyses will be conducted on an extensive online Romanian corpus (CoRoLa), and will be based on the semantic typologies of the verb included in some of the reference Romanian grammars (GALR 2008, 326; GBLR 2010, 279). One of the most important results of the analysis was the phenomenon of agentivity

Lexical frequency and morphological regularity as sources of heritage speaker variability in the acquisition of mood

The present investigation examines intra-speaker variability in heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish by focusing on the potential effects of two variables in their acquisition of mood: lexical frequency and morphological regularity. To do so, this study tested participants’ interpretation and use of early-acquired mood alternations conveying either assertive or jussive meanings. Results from a truth-value judgment and a picture-based sentence completion task revealed that HSs’ performance was significantly modulated by the lexical frequency of the matrix verb introducing the modal alternation, as well as by the regularity of the embedded verbal form. In particular, frequent matrix verbs and irregular forms yielded higher rates of accuracy across most of the experimental tasks, suggesting that the degree of variability in HSs’ outcomes is determined, to a certain extent, by these two factors. These results favor an account of heritage language acquisition and loss focused on the effects of lexical activation on bilinguals’ grammatical representations (Perez-Cortes, Putnam and Sánchez, 2019; Putnam and Sánchez, 2013).