Native Speaker Judgments Research Articles

Evidentials and dubitatives in Finnish: perspective shift in questions and embedded contexts

Abstract This paper investigates the reportative evidential kuulemma and the dubitative muka in Finnish (Finno-Ugric). Kuulemma typically indicates that the speaker reports information provided by someone else (hearsay) and is not committed to the truth of the proposition, while muka (roughly: ‘supposedly, allegedly, as if’) typically signals that the speaker doubts the truth of the proposition, leaving open the information source. This paper explores perspective-shifting and whether these forms can be anchored to someone other than the speaker. I use corpus data and native speaker judgments to test what happens in questions, under the speech verb ‘say,’ and in free indirect discourse. In questions, both forms appear to stay anchored to the speaker (no interrogative flip). However, when embedded under ‘say,’ dubitative muka remains speaker-oriented, whereas reportative kuulemma can shift to the subject. In free indirect discourse, both can shift to the character whose point-of-view is expressed. I propose that these differences are partially related to subjectivity: Whereas kuulemma can be described in objective terms, it has been suggested that muka can express more nuanced affect such as surprise and irony. I suggest this subjective nature of muka is related to its speaker-oriented nature, echoing the speaker-orientation default of affective expressions (e.g. predicates of personal taste, epithets, interjections).

A corpus analysis of Swahili’s dual-complementizer system

Abstract Tanzanian Swahili has two complementizers, kuwa and kwamba, both used to introduce finite embedded clauses. We explore whether the complementizers are in free variation, as reported in all descriptive and pedagogical work. Our study primarily relies on corpus data, which we supplement with native speaker judgments. We find that the complementizers are not in free variation, but in fact are affected by a number of factors known to affect embedded clauses cross-linguistically, including predicate class, person features of the main-clause subject, and mood in the embedded clause. We conclude that the complementizers ultimately reflect subtle, pragmatic factors concerning how the truth of the embedded clause should be evaluated. Our study expands on previous work on languages with so-called “dual-complementizer” systems.

Differential Object Marking, Scrambling and Choice Functions: The Case of Sinhala

This paper investigates the role of choice functions on specificity realization of indefinite noun phrases mainly by way of differential object marking, scrambling and pragmatics in Sinhala. Languages use different strategies to mark what is called specificity of noun phrases. Differential object marking and scrambling are some such operations employed by languages such as Spanish, Turkish, Hindi, and Japanese. Sinhala employs at least three strategies to mark specificity: scrambling; differential object marking and pragmatics. In the literature attempts have been made to establish a relationship between morphology (differential object marking) and syntax (short scrambling) with respect to specificity marking in languages. This paper, based on the evidence that short scrambling in Sinhala does not influence specificity marking, argues that such a link between morphology and syntax of specificity marking cannot be established cross-linguistically. It claims that an account based on choice functions is able to account for specificity marking of indefinites in Sinhala. Relevant data retrieved from the existing literature and new data introduced by the author based on native speaker judgements were considered for testing the hypothesis. The data were analyzed in light of the existing theories, frameworks and methods, thus following the deductive approach to draw the conclusions. The paper concludes that a choice functions-based analysis enables us to account for the specificity marking of not only the deferentially marked objects but also scrambled and pragmatically marked object noun phrases in Sinhala. As evident, the conclusions were drawn based on testing analysis, and evaluation of data from Sinhala, which is a less studied language in linguistics. It is suggested that the findings in this study be taken up for further investigation with similar data from other less studied languages in the world in order to make finer cross-linguistic generalisations.

Sind Sie noch bei der Arbeit oder schon am Arbeiten? Regionale Spielarten von Progressivität im Deutschen

Progressivity in German can be expressed not only by lexical means but also by various periphrastic structures, e. g. the am-periphrasis, the prepositions bei and in combined with nominalized infinitives or the periphrastic infinitival construction with the auxiliary verb tun. However, the use of these structures can vary considerably from region to region, especially in oral communication, often also in connection with significant diastratic, diaphasic and diamesic variation. This paper investigates native speaker judgments of different progressive markers in German (i. e. am-periphrasis, beim- and im-periphrases as well as tun-periphrasis) regarding their acceptability, use, familiarity and distribution in a particular geographical area or social group. The present study essentially focuses on regional differences between three distinct dialectal regions of the German-speaking area (Middle Bavarian, South Bavarian and Rhenish-Westphalian). Results indicate a tendency towards successive advancement of the am-peri-phrasis, even though the actual usage of this specific progressive construction still shows clear diatopic and diaphasic variation.

Quirky negative concord

This paper explores the interaction between connective negation (‘neither ... nor’) and negative concord, an issue that has not received much attention. It looks at different ‘negative concord’ languages, viz. Croatian, Spanish, and French. The approach is synchronic; the data come from existing descriptions and from native speaker judgments. The paper describes the many idiosyncrasies but also lays bare some of the similarities.

American Norwegian discourse marking: Convergence, detachability, pragmatic change

This paper provides a first picture of discourse marking in American Norwegian, drawing on word order data and native speaker judgments. Like many others since Salmons (1990), we see convergence between the systems of bilinguals, increasing similarities at the expense of differences. Matras (1988) and Fuller (2001) argue that more ‘pragmatically detachable’ material is more easily borrowed, like well / vel vs. you know / vet du. Our results partially align with this expectation, but with a wrinkle: less pragmatically detachable material appears to be borrowed where the two languages have similar pre-existing markers (namely vet du / you know). We find more convergence, regardless of detachability, at points of similarity than of difference (e.g. English anyhow, which has no close Norwegian parallel.) This suggests that convergence may play the bigger role here, so that less detachable forms may be more borrowable in converging systems.

Türkçenin İkinci Dil Olarak Ediniminde Gösterimsel Kaydırma Değiştirgeni

This paper investigates the L2 acquisition of a specific syntactic phenomenon known as indexical shift. Indexicals are lexical items that pick their referents in discourse. For instance, ‘I’ and ‘you’ refer to the speaker and addressee of the conversation. In some languages, however, indexicals may shift to pick a different referent in the matrix clause when they are embedded in a finite complement clause. In other words, languages are largely divided into two groups: shifting and non-shifting languages. Therefore, a natural question to ask is to what extent does L1 affect the L2 acquisition of indexical shift? To answer this question, I carry out an experiment with learners of Turkish from shifting and non-shifting languages and find that L1 has no effect on the learners’ level of native-like performance. Turkish strongly favours shift and learners fall behind native speakers. But the difference between learners from shifting and non-shifting languages is insignificant. The paper also reiterates and elaborates on the judgments of native speakers previously attained elsewhere.

Evaluativity in the Afrikaans Equative and Excessive Constructions

Afrikaans has two degree modifiers translatable as “much,” “many,” or “a lot,” namely veel and baie. However, the default excessive and equative constructions in Afrikaans are te veel (too much) and ewe veel (as much), not te baie and ewe baie. This article argues that veel is dominant in these constructions because the atypical/marked status of te baie and ewe baie can lend these formulations a marked meaning. Specifically, this marked meaning is argued to be one of evaluativity, where baie in these constructions makes reference to a high degree, whereas veel does not. Native speaker judgements support this interpretation, but also show that baie can have a bleached meaning in these constructions, serving as a neutral substitute for veel. This possibility is attributed to a process of markedness shift, where because of its ubiquity in other degree-modification contexts, baie is inserted in the equative and excessive as well.

Slavic languages in psycholinguistics: Chances and challenges for empirical and experimental research ed. by Tanja Anstatt et al.

Reviewed by: Slavic languages in psycholinguistics: Chances and challenges for empirical and experimental research ed. by Tanja Anstatt et al. Olga Parshina Tanja Anstatt, Anja Gattnar, and Christina Clasmeier, eds. Slavic languages in psycholinguistics: Chances and challenges for empirical and experimental research. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2016. 315 pp. [Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik, 554.] ISBN 978-3-8233-6969-1. This book is a result of the workshop on empirical psycholinguistic methods, "Slavic languages in the black box", which aimed to create a space for discussion of methodological problems in the field of Slavic psycholinguistics. The current volume goes beyond simple discussion. In 12 different contributions, it 1) offers an overview of the existing experimental designs, online and offline methods of investigation as well as various tasks that are employed in modern Slavic psycholinguistics research, 2) presents the key issues associated with these designs and methods, and, crucially, 3) suggests possible solutions to overcome the challenges. Below I briefly outline the content, summarize the takeaway message and provide a short review for each contribution of the volume. I conclude with a general evaluation of the book. In the first paper of the volume, Barbara Mertins discusses several online and offline methods used inside and outside psycholinguistic research. The chapter starts with a brief classification of experimental methods as online (e.g., eye-tracking, elicitation), offline (e.g., surveys), and true online methods (e.g., EEG, fMRI), along with an outline of the potential benefits and drawbacks of using one technique over another. Next, Mertins concentrates on the evaluation of several methods that she and her colleagues employed in her language-production research: 1) elicitation, 2) memory tasks, 3) eye-tracking, 4) speech onset times, and 5) preference/grammatical judgment tasks. Finally, Mertins presents three experimental studies (authored by Mertins and other colleagues) that implemented either one technique or a combination of these methods in language-production studies, enabling the reader to observe the application of the techniques in experimental contexts. In the overview of each study, Mertins provides detailed information as well as a critical evaluation of the design, materials, randomization procedures, and general protocol (e.g., sample size, language background of the participants, stimulus length, [End Page 183] amounts of fillers, coding procedure, etc.). Crucially, for each study, the contributor also points out benefits and issues that should be considered before planning to use one of the described methods in combination with a specific aspect of study design (e.g., elicitation method and intercultural suitability of the materials). The chapter also places an interesting focus (in study 2) on the importance of using a combination of linguistic and non-linguistic (e.g., memory) tasks to investigate the effects of language on cognition (i.e., language leads to differences in thinking). However, the link between these two types of tasks (especially the memory task) is not clear. It would be useful to provide researchers with more arguments for the necessity of adding non-linguistic tasks to the experiments. In general, the article, although likely not intended for this purpose, might serve as an excellent introduction for graduate students and early-career researchers to various psycholinguistic methods and advantages and caveats of the designs with the emphasis on language-production research. Chapter 2 (by Roumyana Slabakova) shifts the focus of discussion from details of the experimental design to issues of the inconsistency of results caused by the variability in linguistic judgments of native Russian speakers. First, Slabakova introduces the results of her study (2004) that examines how native Russian speakers interpret telicity based on the perfectivity of the verb. Specifically, the goal of study 1 is to confirm that perfectivity of verbs in Russian (as an example of a Slavic language) dictates the (non-) quantization of the objects they refer to, an association known as Event-Object Homomorphism. Counter to expectations, the findings of the study indicated that Russian native speakers marked sentences with perfective verbs as having two possible interpretations (as opposed to one, as was expected) almost half of the time (49%). Slabakova argues that other factors than perfectivity of the verb come into play, e.g., free word order in Russian and Information Structure associated...

Adult second language learners’ social network development and perceived fluency gain in an intensive English program abroad

Abstract This study investigated the social networks developed by language learners during 14 weeks of an intensive English as a second language (ESL) program using the Study Abroad Social Interaction Questionnaire (Dewey, Bown, Baker, Martinsen, Gold, & Eggett, 2014; Dewey, Bown, & Eggett, 2012). It also utilized native speaker judgments to evaluate ESL fluency development. Results showed that participants were successful in developing complex social networks, that their oral fluency increased significantly, and that fluency gains were related to L2 social networks. Density (average number of people in a social group) was the most important predictor of fluency gain when only social network variables were considered. In a hierarchical regression, initial proficiency level and percentage of native English speakers in one’s network were the most significant of the established variables in the first step, and overall network size and density were the most important of the added social network variables in the second step.

Examining agentivity in Spanish reverse-psych verbs

AbstractIn Spanish reverse-psychological verbs, the experiencer argument can have accusative or dative case marking. Transitivity-based approaches identify different factors that influence this accusative-dative alternation(Miglio, Viola G., Stefan T Gries, Michael J Harris, Eva M Wheeler & Santana-Paixão Raquel. A strong predictor for accusative case marking in Spanish r-psych verbs is the animacy of the stimulus. However, there are also instances where the stimulus is inanimate and the experiencer is case marked accusative. In this paper, I provide an analysis of such instances, drawing on corpus data and native speaker judgments. I argue that agentivity, measured on a scale, is a factor that better accounts for the accusative-dative alternation exhibited by Spanish reverse-psychological verbs. I first propose a definition of agentivity and diagnostics for it; then I present evidence that there is a correlation between higher degrees of agentivity and accusative case marking and lower degrees of agentivity and dative case marking. The agentivity scale presented is not unconditional as there are several factors that contribute to case marking. Nevertheless, the agentivity scale accounts for accusative case marking with inanimates and also serves to highlight some parallels between causative verbs and reverse-psychological verbs.

Minimizers in Azerbaijani from a comparative perspective

AbstractAzerbaijani, like many other languages, has a class of negative polarity items denoting minimal measures (along dimensions such as size, length, duration, value, weight etc.), called minimizers. This paper presents an overview of this group of expressions, compares them to minimizers in the western European languages, in particular English and Dutch, identifies the various domains in which these minimizers may be used, and discusses their distribution across polarity-sensitive contexts such as negation, conditional clauses, questions, etc. The distribution we found, on the basis of both corpus data and native speaker judgments, is very similar to that of minimizers in English or Dutch, especially when differences are factored out which are due to the fact that Azerbaijani has strict negative concord, whereas English and Dutch do not. To this end, we distinguish two types of minimizers for Azerbaijani, negated minimizers preceded byheç bir‘not one’, and minimizers preceded bybironly.

Speech Errors as a Window on Language and Thought: A Cognitive Science Perspective

We are so used to speaking in our native language that we take this ability for granted. We think that speaking is easy and thinking is hard. From the perspective of cognitive science, this view is wrong. Utterances are complex things, and generating them is an act of linguistic creativity, in the face of the computational complexity of the task. On occasion, utterance generation goes awry and the speaker’s output is different from the planned utterance, such as a speaker who says “Fancy getting your model renosed!” when “fancy getting your nose remodeled” was intended. With some notable exceptions (e.g. Fromkin 1971) linguists have not taken speech error data to be informative about speakers’ linguistic knowledge or mental grammars. The paper strives to put language production errors back onto the linguistic data map. If errors involve units such as phonemes, syllables, morphemes and phrases, which may be exchanged, moved around or stranded during spoken production, this shows that they are both representational and processing units. If similar units are converged upon via multiple methods (e.g. native speaker judgments, language corpora, speech error corpora, psycholinguistic experiments) those units have stronger empirical support. All other things being equal, theories of language that can account for both representation and processing are to be preferred.

A new look at the ‘Generic Overgeneralisation’ effect

While generic generalisations have been studied by linguists and philosophers for decades, they have only recently become the focus of concentrated interest by cognitive and developmental psychologists, who propose the generics-as-default view. In this paper we focus on the ‘Generic Overgeneralisation’ (GOG) effect proposed by Leslie and colleagues and the native speaker judgments that have been used to support it, and by extension, the generics-as-default view. We take a step back to look at the history of the GOG effect in order to contextualise it. We review existing experimental evidence and discuss four non-mutually exclusive explanations for the GOG effect: ignorance, subkind interpretation, atypical behaviour of all and quantifier domain restriction. We conclude that a closer look at the semantics and pragmatics of generics and universal quantifiers may provide a more nuanced explanation for the pattern of judgment data than that proposed by the generics-as-default view.

Making new ideophones in Siwu

Ideophones are found in many of the world’s languages. Though they are a major word class on a par with nouns and verbs, their origins are ill-understood, and the question of ideophone creation has been a source of controversy. This paper studies ideophone creation in naturally occurring speech. New, unconventionalised ideophones are identified using native speaker judgements, and are studied in context to understand the rules and regularities underlying their production and interpretation. People produce and interpret new ideophones with the help of the semiotic infrastructure that underlies the use of existing ideophones: foregrounding frames certain stretches of speech as depictive enactments of sensory imagery, and various types of iconicity link forms and meanings. As with any creative use of linguistic resources, context and common ground also play an important role in supporting rapid ‘good enough’ interpretations of new material. The making of new ideophones is a special case of a more general phenomenon of creative depiction: the art of presenting verbal material in such a way that the interlocutor recognises and interprets it as a depiction.

Prosodic profile of American Aviation English

Aviation English (AE) is under scrutiny due to miscommunication between international pilots and controllers. To enhance public safety, since 2011, aviation professionals must prove technical and practical English proficiency. Previous studies measure AE speech accuracy by task performance and repeated elements (Barshi and Healy, 2011), and speech comprehensibility using native speaker judgments (Farris et al., 2008). The current study develops a quantifiable index for evaluating AE production based on prosody. Reasonably fluent prosody is critical to language comprehensibility generally, but since AE has no predictable intonation due to signal limitations, lack of function words, standard phraseology and rapid speech rate, we are specifically developing a rhythm profile of Native Speaker AE (NSAE) to evaluate Non-native Speaker AE production and model training methods for different first language (L1) prosodic types. We are training a speech aligner on tapes of US controllers to calculate a baseline for American NSAE. Our index will be generated using known metrics such as delta-V/C, %V (Ramus, 2000), PVI (Low et al., 2000), and varcoV/C (Dellwo, 2006). Since AE is derived from “stress-timed” English to be standardized and predictable, we predict that AE will exhibit a rhythmic signature comparable not only to English but to “syllable-timed” languages.

The setting of the Split-IP parameter in Afrikaans: Evidence from transitive expletive constructions and object shift constructions

Bobaljik and Thrainsson (1998) showed how the Split-IP parameter (SIP) (Thrainsson 1996) could account for the cross-linguistic clustering of a number of superficially unrelated properties: multiple inflectional morphemes, transitive expletive constructions (TECs), object shift constructions (OSCs), and verb movement in non-V2 environments. This paper investigates the setting of the SIP in Afrikaans. It will be shown that the only two diagnostics that can be used to determine the setting of the SIP in Afrikaans are the presence/absence of TECs and the presence/absence of OSCs. Although it has been claimed that Afrikaans allows neither TECs nor OSCs (see, for example, Donaldson 1993; Bobaljik and Jonas 1996; Koeneman 2000), this paper provides arguments, as well as evidence from native speaker judgments, that show that both of these constructions are indeed allowed in Afrikaans. In so doing, the paper provides evidence for a [+SIP] setting in Afrikaans. The paper is organized as follows: section 2 provides a brief discussion of the SIP; section 3 provides evidence for the existence of TECs in Afrikaans; section 4 provides evidence for the existence of OSCs in Afrikaans; and section 5 provides a brief conclusion.

Morphosyntactic variation and syntactic constructions in Czech nominal declension: corpus frequency and native-speaker judgments

Data from the Czech National Corpus and a large-scale survey of acceptability judgments are used to investigate the scope of morphosyntactic variation in two cases (genitive singular and locative singular) of a Czech declension pattern. The syntactic construction in which a form is found is shown to have a significant interaction with its frequency in the corpus and with its acceptability rating. We conclude that the pattern of acceptability preferences lends support to the entrenchment hypothesis and in general to emergentist approaches to language.

Denominal Verbs in Brazilian Portuguese: distinguishing between diachronic and synchronic structures within Distributed Morphology approach

Recent work on argument structure has shown that there must be a synchronic relation between nouns and derived verbs that can be treated in structural terms. However, a simple phonological/morphological identity or diachronic derivation between a verb and a noun cannot guarantee that there is a denominal structure in a synchronic approach. In this paper we observe the phenomenon of Denominal Verbs in Brazilian Portuguese and argue for a distinction between etymological and synchronic morphological derivation. The objectives of this paper are 1) to identify synchronic and formal criteria to define which diachronic Denominal Verbs can also be considered denominal under a synchronic analysis; and 2) to detect in which cases the label "denominal" can be justifiably abandoned. Based on results of argument structure tests submitted to the judgments of native speakers, it was possible to classify the supposed homogenous Denominal Verbs class into three major groups: Real Denominal Verbs, Root-derived Verbs, and Ambiguous Verbs. In a Distributed Morphology approach, it was possible to explain the distinction between these groups based on the ideia of phases in words and the locality of restriction in the interpretation of roots.

A phase theoretic account of coreference relations in picture DPs

An experimental study of native speaker judgments by Keller & Asudeh (2001) demonstrated that in picture DPs, pronouns and anaphors are in complementary distribution in some cases (e.g., "Hannah_i found a picture of ?*her_i/herself_i"), but not in others (e.g., "Hannah_i found Peter's picture of her_i/herself_i"). We demonstrate that these facts result from two factors: 1) whether or not a pronominal and antecedent originate in a strong phase, 2) the availability of a process whereby an element with an uninterpretable feature can be reinserted into a subnumeration as a Last Resort, in order to avoid being sent to Spell-Out.