Morphosyntactic Phenomena Research Articles

Acquiring plurality in directional verbs

Little is known about when and how children acquire plurality for directional verbs in ASL and other signed languages. This paper reports on an experimental study of 11 deaf native-signing children’s acquisition of ‘plural verb agreement’ or plural forms of directional verbs in American Sign Language. Eleven native-signing deaf adults were also tested. An elicitation task explored how children (aged 3;4 to 5;11) and adults marked directional verbs for plurality. The children also participated in an imitation task. Adults marked directional verbs for plurality significantly more often than children. However, adults also omitted plurality from directional verbs, utilizing alternative strategies to mark plural referents significantly more often than did children. Children across all ages omitted plurality, suggesting that the omission is attributable to both the conceptual complexity of plural markers and the optionality of number-marking. Directionality may not be best analyzed as a morphosyntactic phenomenon analogous to verb agreement morphology in spoken languages.

Approaches to Deponency

AbstractThe aim of this article is to give an overview of theoretical approaches to (generalized) deponency, i.e., morpho‐syntactic phenomena in the world's languages that resemble deponent verbs in Latin (where passive morphology accompanies active syntax) in that a ‘wrong form’ is apparently used. The paper has three parts. First, the concept of deponency is introduced. Second, a new taxonomy of approaches is developed that extends Stump's original classification by adding two further groups: (i) form deponency, (ii) property deponency, (iii) spurious morpho‐syntactic deponency, and (iv) spurious morphomic deponency. The discussion yields interesting results concerning preferred choices among (i)–(iv) in the literature (with (i) emerging as surprisingly rare and (iv) as surprisingly widespread), and concerning potential correlations between analysis type and overall grammatical framework (there aren't any). In the third part, I sketch a version of what is arguably a fairly straightforward approach to deponency (even though an actual instantiation so far appears to be outstanding): an optimality‐theoretic analysis that takes the hypothesis that deponency involves ‘wrong forms’ literally.

Transitivity of Spanish perception verbs: a gradual category?

<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB">This article examines to what extent perception verbs occurring in a syntactically transitive scheme are also semantically transitive. Indeed, since the perception process represents a mental rather than a physical contact between the perceiver/subject and the stimulus/object, it should be distinguished from the prototypical transfer of energy. It is shown that the semantic and conceptual differences between the perception modalities influence on the linguistic behaviour of Spanish perception verbs. In this perspective, the verbs <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ver</em> (<em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to see</em>), <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">oír </em>(<em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to hear</em>), <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mirar </em>(<em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to look at</em>) and <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">escuchar </em>(<em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to listen to</em>) are ranged on a scale of transitivity. The validity of the elaborated hierarchy of transitivity is verified by means of empirical data. Based on a large corpus of infinitive constructions, it will be examined to what extent the position of a perception verb on the scale of transitivity correlates with the preferred case markings of its stimulus/object. A specific morphosyntactic phenomenon is studied, namely the special marking of the DO by the prepositional accusative.</span> <!--[endif] -->

La expresión del tiempo en las variedades hispanoamericanas del español

A pesar de su unidad, el español como lengua multinacional y multicultural ofrece una gran cantidad de diferencias en todos los planos lingüísticos, ante todo en el léxico y la fonética, que reflejan más intensamente que otros niveles de la lengua los rasgos característicos de cada una de las variedades hispanoamericanas. Sin embargo, en la diferenciación diatópica, así como la diastrática, no es posible omitir los fenómenos morfosintácticos que se proyectan, por ejemplo, en el sistema de los tiempos verbales o paradigmas pronominales, relacionados con el sistema de tratamiento, en los que se ofrece una serie de peculiaridades. La variación de la lengua española causa una marcada distinción policéntrica en la que influyen numerosos aspectos de índole geolingüística, sociolingüística, extralingüística, etc.En la contribución se analizan los distintos enfoques de la problemática de la categoría de tiempo en las variedades hispanoamericanas, que representan las cuestiones más importantes desde el punto de vista de la norma pluricéntrica y el uso de variedades geolingüísticas, tomándose en cuenta tanto el nivel diacrónico como el sincrónico.

Ibibio Causative and Anti-Causative Verb Alternations

Causative and anti-causative verb alternations include the commonly attested cross-linguistic morphosyntactic phenomena and most languages have different ways of marking the alternations. Whereas in some languages, there is a clear morphological marking on the verb to indicate the causative/anti-causative distinction, in some others, there is no such morphological reflex or marker to indicate a verb’s status with respect to causativity. This paper provides a descriptive analysis of causative and anti-causative verb alternations in Ibibio. Following the categorizations of Haspelmath’s (1993) the paper highlights the two major ways by which the causative/anticausative verb alternation can be expressed in Ibibio. The first is through the directed (morphological) alternation, by which the distinction between the causative/anti-causative is indicated by a morphological reflex on the anti-causative verb. In Ibibio, the anticausative verb morphology can be expressed in three different ways; germinating the final consonant of the verb (root) of the lexical causative with a high tone vowel whose [ATR] value harmonizes with that of the final vowel of the root verb, suffixation (to causative verb root) of a harmonizing high tone vowel with a consequent weakening of the final consonant and by lengthening the first vowel of the causative verb root. The other option is the non-directed (lexical) alternation which is further divided into the suppletive and labile alternations (Haspelmath 1993). For the suppletive alternation, different verb roots are used for the causative/anti-causative alternations while the labile alternation is not yet observed in Ibibio The paper further observes that as has been noted in some languages, the anti-causative construction in Ibibio unlike its causative counterpart is characterized by a change in word order, absence of causative agentive noun phrase and an anti-causative affix (a morphological reflex of detransitivization and anti-causativization in the directed alternation. The data on which this study is based were collected from adult speakers of Ibibio by the author using an elicitation list. The database consists of acceptable words/expressions collected from standard Ibibio speakers within Uyo metropolis in Akwa Ibom, Nigeria.

Prominence Hierarchies

AbstractThis paper surveys the prominence hierarchy, a term which we use to refer to a ranking of person and other categories of reference for a variety of grammatical purposes. This kind of hierarchy has been referred to in the literature by various names, for example person hierarchy, empathy hierarchy, animacy hierarchy, indexability hierarchy, and so on. We exemplify the set of morphosyntactic phenomena accounted for by such hierarchies, and consider assumptions about how hierarchies are structured and how they work. We also discuss suggested motivations for the existence of the hierarchy, consider whether a universal statement of the prominence hierarchy can be made, and examine whether prominence hierarchies can be considered to be a typological universal. Finally, we discuss two examples of formal approaches to data described by prominence hierarchies.

Epilogue: dynamic morphosyntax in Functional Discourse Grammar

This epilogue addresses the most important topics and challenges for the Morphosyntactic Level in Functional Discourse Grammar that have been raised in the articles in this Special Issue. We begin by exploring the differences between the Morphosyntactic Level in FDG and the treatment of morphosyntactic phenomena in other linguistic frameworks. We then concentrate on the relevance of typological work to the construction of the formalism and to the organization of the Morphosyntactic Level. We conclude that one of its main advantages is its flexibility in accounting for the morphosyntactic diversity of the languages of the world. This flexibility is the result of three main aspects: the distinction between a configurational and a hierarchical ordering of units, the influence of external factors such as iconicity, domain integrity and functional stability, and compatibility with general observations on human language processing and production which result in a dynamic implementation of the Morphosyntactic Level.

On Transitivity

This paper critically discusses and contrasts some of the different conceptualisations of transitivity that have been presented in the literature, and argues that transitivity as a morphosyntactic phenomenon and effectiveness of an event as a semantic concept should be separated in discussions of transitivity, and also, like many other aspects of grammar, transitivity should be seen as a constructional phenomenon, and so each construction in a language needs to be examined separately, in natural contexts. An Appendix presents some general questions one can consider when analysing language data.

The Morphosyntax of Prenominal Relative Clauses in Korean

This paper deals with an exceptional morphosyntactic phenomenon occurring in prenominal relative clauses in Korean and consequences caused by it. Korean relative clauses exhibit several morphosyntactic peculiarities; they cannot be an independent due to a missing sentence ending, and a tense affix and the adnominalizer, which is an outside element of IP, are collapsed and become an inseparable morphosyntactic entity. The latter is a rare instance violating the typical one feature-one affix pattern in Korean inflection. This paper will show that such a violation occurs as a result of eliminating a sentence ending in relative clauses in order to optimize a modifier clause. It further shows that it brings about an obligatory or optional appearance of -ten in relative clauses depending on their predicates. It represents not only the past tense but adds an aspectual sense such as noncontinuity or imperfectivity. The aspectual marking by -ten is a unique consequence of the morphosyntactic exception occurring in the IP structure of relative clauses. Finally, it will show that the morphosyntactic pattern of a certain agglutinative language determines the perfect clause versus the less than clausal form by comparing Korean and Japanese prenominal relative clauses.

<b>Argument structure in L2 acquisition: language transfer re-visited in a semantics and syntax perspective</b><br>DOI:10.5007/2175-8026.2011n60p153

Interlanguage studies tend to be dominated by investigationsof strictly morphosyntactic phenomena. Issues of argumentstructure and argument realization are shown to be a potentiallyinnovative theoretical approach to the study of L2 learners’knowledge of target language grammar, as they are framedas an interface between semantics and syntax. In this article,evidence of language transfer effects in Brazilian L2 learners’representation of transitivity alternations in verbs of mannerof movement are presented to support the view that secondlanguage research on the acquisition of argument structurerealization patterns is a promising line of enquiry.

A plea for syntax and a return to first principles: monstrous agreement in Tamil

The paper focuses on an interesting form of (person) indexical shift in the Dravidian language Tamil which surfaces as 1SG agreement marking in a clause embedded under a speech predicate. I show that this agreement is an instance of indexical shift and label it "monstrous agreement". However, I demonstrate that its full range of empirical properties cannot be adequately explained by the major analyses of indexical shift in the literature. The bulk of these, I argue, in addition to being predominantly semantic in spirit, and thus ill-equipped to deal with a morphosyntactic phenomenon like agreement, also involve two core misconceptions regarding indexicality vs. logophoricity on the one hand and speech vs. attitude predicates on the other. I propose that these core assumptions be strongly re-evaluated from first principles and that syntactic and typological clues on the subject be paid more heed. I propose a new analysis of the Tamil paradigms which derives indexical shift within an enriched grammatical model involving contextual features instantiated in a structurally articulated cartographic left periphery.

AN EMERGENTIST PERSPECTIVE ON HERITAGE LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

It is widely recognized that the processor has a key role to play in creating and strengthening the mapping between form and meaning that is integral to language use. Adopting an emergentist approach to heritage language acquisition, the current study considers the extent to which the operation of the processor can contribute to an account of what is acquired, what is subsequently retained or lost, and what is never acquired in the first place. These questions are explored from two perspectives. First, morphosyntactic phenomena for which there is apparently substantial input are considered, with a focus on the relevance of salience, frequency, and transparency to the establishment of form-meaning mappings. Second, a phenomenon for which there appears to be relatively little input (i.e., scope) is examined with a view to understanding its fate in heritage language acquisition. In both cases, the emergentist perspective appears to offer promising insights into why heritage language learners succeed—and fail—in the way that they do.

Morphological Structure in Native and Nonnative Language Processing

This article presents a selective overview of studies that have investigated how advanced adult second language (L2) learners process morphologically complex words. The studies reported here have used different kinds of experimental tasks (including speeded grammaticality judgments, lexical decision, and priming) to examine three domains of morphological processing (regular and irregular inflection, derived word forms, and morphosyntactic phenomena) in L2 learners from typologically different first language (L1) backgrounds. The results from these studies demonstrate clear differences between native and nonnative processing in all three domains, indicating that adult L2 learners are less sensitive to morphological structure than native speakers and rely more on lexical storage than on morphological parsing during processing.

La interpretación del Präteritum en la traducción al español

AbstractThe systemic differences between German and Spanish verb forms, and their values and uses, often pose a problem in translation. This is the case of the interpretation of temporal meaning in the German Präteritum (in literary texts) for a correct selection of tense in Spanish. The contrastive study of temporal expression in the German Präteritum and the possible Spanish equivalents of pretérito perfect simple (simple past) and pretérito imperfecto (imperfect) reveal the need to study temporality from two perspectives: tenses as time expressions together with other textual elements, and tenses as morphosyntactic and semantic phenomena in the sentence.

Valenzbindung oder Konstruktionsbindung? Eine Grundfrage der Grammatiktheorie

Abstract If signs of type X regularily cooccur with signs of type Y, this can be explained in two ways: (i) X is required by the valency of Y, or (ii) there is a complex construction Z that requires both X and Y. I argue that, when deciding between (i) and (ii), grammarians should consider, among other things, whether the cooccurence of X and Y resembles prototypical instances of (i). This recommendation is based on the fact that the properties of the prototype of (i) show that valency is a morphosyntactic feature of word forms (like plural). Therefore, if the cooccurence of X and Y does not resemble the prototype of (i), treating it as an instance of (i) would establish a wrong parallel to morphosyntactic phenomena. And, on the other hand, if it does resemble this prototype, treating it as an instance of (ii) would miss this parallel. – In the perspective of this proposal, I discuss some phenomena whose status between (i) and (ii) is controversial.

Deixis and alignment: Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas (review)

Reviewed by: Deixis and alignment: Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas Denis Creissels Deixis and alignment: Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas. By Fernando Zúñiga. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. Pp. 309. ISBN 9027229821. $180 (Hb). The treatment of inverse systems constitutes a particularly challenging issue in morphosyntactic typology. They are crucial for the discussion of typological hierarchies, which have been a major concern for typologists in the last decades, but their status in alignment typology is controversial. This book includes detailed descriptions of the relevant subsystems of five Amerindian languages or language groups, and a thorough discussion of the theoretical implications of the data presented for a general typology of direction marking and its interactions with other morphosyntactic phenomena. The book includes: an introduction; two chapters addressing general issues in the study of alignment, hierarchically based morphosyntactic mechanisms, and direction (Ch. 1, 'Alignment and direction'; Ch. 2, 'A theory of direction'); five chapters devoted to case studies (Ch. 3, 'Algonquian languages'; Ch. 4, 'Kutenai'; Ch. 5, 'Sahaptian languages'; Ch. 6, 'Kiowa-Tanoan languages'; Ch. 7, 'Mapudungun'); a conclusion (Ch. 8); three appendices on Algonquian paradigms, analysis of Kiowa personal prefixes, and optimality-theoretic syntax of inverses respectively; references; and language, author, and subject indices. The central part of the book provides precise and detailed descriptions of a variety of systems involving direction marking. The morphological intricacies that often make it difficult to choose [End Page 492] between two alternative analyses of the same data are presented as clearly as possible, but without any oversimplification. The accounts given by other linguists are thoroughly analyzed, and when the data allows for alternative interpretations (which is often the case), the competing analyses are carefully compared. After summarizing the basics of alignment typology as exposed in works such as Comrie 1981, Dixon 1994, Harris & Campbell 1995, and Dixon & Aikhenvald 2000, Ch. 1 discusses the way the classic model of alignment can accommodate various types of splits, and in particular the proposals to recognize a 'hierarchical type' (Nichols 1992) or an 'inverse type' (Klaiman 1992) as distinct from the basic types commonly recognized. The indexability hierarchy (Bickel & Nichols 2007)—also known as Silverstein's hierarchy, the empathy hierarchy, the animacy hierarchy, and so on, and omnipresent throughout the book—is described as involving an invariant core 'SAP [speech-act participant] > 3rd person pronouns > [+human] > [+animate] > [-animate]', but allowing for considerable crosslinguistic variation in further details, for example, the possibility to rank SAPs relative to each other as 1 > 2 or 2 > 1, or to leave them unranked. Most importantly, a single language may exhibit distinct variants of an indexability hierarchy with respect to different construction types, as discussed in detail for Algonquian: contrary to the commonly received opinion, the 2 > 1 ranking accounts for one particular aspect of Algonquian indexation systems only (access to prefix slot), but is contradicted by some aspects of the behavior of suffixed person marks. Direction is defined as reflecting 'the alignment between the indexability hierarchy and a relational hierarchy where A's outrank O's' (28), and Zuñiga insists that direction marking (direct vs. inverse) is a possible manifestation of the indexability hierarchy, logically independent from other possible manifestations such as access to marking slots or access to syntactic function. The emphasis on the necessity to clearly distinguish these notions in analyzing the morphosyntax of individual languages, and to consider the question of their interactions not as a theoretical but as an empirical and typological issue, is certainly one of the strongest points of this book. Some confusion may arise, however, from the fact that 'direction' is not always used in conformity with the clear and precise definition formulated on p. 28—which is somewhat surprising, given that, in general, Z is very careful with terminology. On p. 31, DIRECTION is defined as 'dynamic actional deixis', that is, the deictic status of couples of entities encoded as the A and P arguments of transitive verbs: 'he-me', 'you-us', and so on. The concept of DIRECTION2 (formulated on p. 31) involves no reference to any hierarchy, and the relationship between direction2 (defined on p. 31) and direction1 (defined on p. 28...

Syntactic and morphosyntactic phenomena in Modern Greek dialects: The state of the art

AbstractIn this paper I give an overview of several syntactic and morpho-syntactic phenomena applying to a range of Modern Greek dialects. I present a descriptive account of these phenomena, and refer to some possible theoretical analyses put forward by a number of well-known linguists. In certain cases, I offer evidence for the cross-dialectal occurrence of a phenomenon as a contribution to the establishment of syntactic isoglosses, and report some hints of its diachronic development when the available sources permit. <br /> My data are drawn not only from written sources, but also from the oral material that has been collected in the last six years from several Greek areas, and stored in the Modern Greek Dialects Laboratory (MGDL) of the University of Patras. <br /> The paper has the following structure: Section 1 contains some general observations with respect to the study and development of Modern Greek dialects. Dialectal word order is presented next (Section 2), followed by certain observations on the use of complementizers (Section 3), negation (Section 4), and sentential particles (Section 5). The issues of infinitival forms and periphrastic tenses (perfect and future) are examined in Section 6, while elements appearing in wh-questions constitute the topic of Section 7. The case form of the indirect object is tackled next (Section 8), and the paper ends with the well-described topic of verbal clitics, which is presented in Section 9. The paper concludes with remarks stressing the importance of research in the field of Modern Greek dialectology.

Spécificités morpho-syntaxiques des constructions à verbe support en allemand

In this article, we give evidence for a detailed morpho-syntactic description of support verb constructions (SVCs); we claim that SVCs must be described at the same level of detail as single word items. We give examples from French and German, concerning both, morphosyntactic specificities of the nominal and of the verbal element of a SVC. Furthermore we show that methods of corpus analysis are well suited or the extraction of such data form large amounts of text; the corpus-based aproach is all the more necessary, as most morphosyntactic phenomena within SVCs are preferences rather than categorical features. We describe a range of extraction methods, and we argue for a robust syntactic analysis as a basis for extraction. The article ends with a small case study on preferences of German support verbs with respect to active vs. passive.

Morphological Analysis of the Qur'an

We present a computational system for morphological analysis and annotation of the Qur'an, for research and teaching purposes. The system facilitates a variety of queries on the Qur'anic text that make reference not only to the words, but also to their linguistic attributes. The core of the system is a set of finite-state based rules which describe the morpho-phonological and morpho-syntactic phenomena of the Qur'anic language. Using a finite-state toolbox we apply the rules to the Qur'anic text and obtain full morphological analysis of its words. The results of the analysis are stored in an efficient database and are accessed through a graphical user interface which facilitates the presentation of complex queries. The system is currently being used for teaching and research purposes; we exemplify its usefulness for investigating several morphological, syntactic, semantic, and stylistic aspects of the Qur'anic text.

The Interpretation of Pronouns in Spanish Language Acquisition and Breakdown: Evidence for the "Principle B Delay" as a Non-Unitary Phenomenon

It is well known that English and Dutch children often allow pronouns to refer to local c-commanding antecedents, the so-called Principle B Delay. A similar observation has been made for English agrammatics. This phenomenon, which we call the Pronoun Interpretation Problem (PIP), has been argued to be due to children's and agrammatics' difficulties with the application of a Pragmatic Principle regulating intrasentential coreference. In this article, we present experimental evidence from Spanish language acquisition and agrammatism showing that (i) in both Spanish children and Spanish agrammatics, the PIP is limited to Exceptional Case Marking constructions; (ii) the PIP is not a unitary phenomenon in the sense that it is partly a pragmatic and partly a morphosyntactic phenomenon; (iii) the PIP is not the result of incomplete acquisition or the loss of linguistic knowledge; and (iv) the results support a modular approach to Binding Theory as proposed by Reinhart and Reuland (1993) and Reuland (2001).