Overt Subjects Research Articles

Controlling overt subjects in Mandarin

Controlling overt subjects in Mandarin

Towards a Typology of Zero Aboutness: Expletive A in Fornese and Chiru in Cilentano

This paper investigates the syntactic–pragmatic behavior of two expletive-like elements, namely a and chiru, in Fornese and Cilentano, two Romance varieties spoken in Northern and Southern Italy, respectively. We argue that a and chiru are not bona fide expletive subjects but discourse-pragmatic expletives, which mark zero aboutness or the absence of an aboutness referent in an utterance. The investigation of Fornese and Cilentano points towards the existence of a sub-class of null-subject languages where aboutness as a discourse feature must be structurally satisfied by merging an overt or null topic in the syntactic spine of the clause. In the absence of such an element—for example, in thetic clauses—a discourse-pragmatic expletive is externally merged as a last-resort strategy to satisfy [uAboutness]. We argue that, in these null-subject languages, the satisfaction of the discourse feature [uAboutness] is an LF requirement, which is subject to a parametric choice. We show that, in Fornese, “default” [aboutness] is satisfied in SubjP, which is the canonical syntactic position for overt subjects within a cartographic approach. In Cilentano, on the other hand, [aboutness] is satisfied in a higher position within the C-domain, namely ShiftP, the canonical syntactic position that hosts overt aboutness/shift topics.

Ghost riders: Kelly Reichardt, certain women, certain men

ABSTRACT Kelly Reichardt pays attention to women’s actions and subjectivities, often when they are alone, but not at the expense of men. It takes seeing her films more than once to understand how intricately her characters are pieced together through unexpected shot progressions, a non-linear sensibility and the overall logic of Reichardt’s mise en scène. That so many points in her films lead to ‘not knowing’ may have something in common with her preference for a-sexuality, a much more radical, subtle project than sex role reversal. Reichardt’s body of work, as a whole, operates through a mise en scène of sexual difference that is irreducible to a theme or an overt subject.

Overt and null subjects in Bulgarian: comparing monolingual adults and children to child heritage speakers in Germany in their use of Bulgarian

ABSTRACT This study investigates the use of overt and null subjects in Bulgarian in child heritage speakers with L2 German. The alternation of overt and null pronominal subjects in null-subject languages like Bulgarian depends on grammatical and discourse conditions and contrasts with German. Oral narratives were elicited in Bulgarian, comparing the performance of the heritage children to that of monolingual children and adults. Overall 68 Bulgarian narratives of 39 speakers were analysed as to the use of overt and null pronominal subjects in topic-continuity and topic-shift contexts. The results reveal similar subject realisation for all speakers, supporting early acquisition of null-subject grammars. Analyses of topic-continuity and -shift contexts showed similar overall patterns in children’s and adults’ subject use, with children producing somewhat more overt subjects in topic-continuity and ambiguous overt pronouns in topic-shift contexts than adults. However, the bilinguals used significantly more ambiguous null subjects than monolinguals. These results suggest that fine-grained discourse constraints of null-subject grammars are more difficult for bilinguals to acquire and maintain. The near adult-like performance of the bilinguals in some contexts can be attributed to the fact that most of them were Bulgarian-dominant and received non-attrited parental input. Differences are also attributable to cross-linguistic influence.

Overt and Covert Subjects in Uyghur: Not the same thing

Overt nominative-marked indexicals in Uyghur attitude reports are known to undergo obligatory shifting and trigger matching agreements. This paper challenges the prevailing view that the covert subject is parallel to its overt nominative counterpart. We evaluate several hypotheses that consider covert subjects to be true indexicals, but we find that none of them can fully explain all the observed readings. Drawing inspiration from previous studies on null subject licensing in Partial Null Subject languages, we suggest that the covert subject in Uyghur functions as an anaphor, while the overt subject is an indexical. The recognition of their differences opens up the possibility of associating Uyghur covert subjects with other non-indexical elements, thereby contributing to our understanding of indexical shift.

Infinitival clauses with dative subjects: goal-oriented directedness in space and time

Abstract Infinitival clauses are known to represent a caseless domain for the subject. Nevertheless, Russian is often cited as an exception to this property. It has a so-called “dative-infinitive construction” (DIC), in which an overt subject appears in dative case. Dative morphology also appears in certain control environments, resurfacing on a semi-predicate, which has been taken as evidence of case presence on PRO. This paper scrutinizes various types of DIC and proposes their unified analysis, relying on two theoretical tools: the framework of Distributed Morphology and the Universal Spine Hypothesis. Examining the building blocks of the infinitival clause in Russian, this paper argues against a covert-modal hypothesis. The dative case is attributed to a to-like functional head, Goal, which anchors the infinitival clause to a contextually salient point in time or a world of evaluation. Within the clausal spine, GoalP can either immediately dominate VoiceP or be immediately dominated by CP. The proposed analysis builds upon the concept of “goal-oriented directedness”, borrowed from the cognitive-functionalist literature and formalized in a generative perspective. Application of this analysis to control environments leads to a conclusion that two types of infinitival domains should be differentiated in Russian: full-fledged (GoalP-containing) CPs and bare infinitival phrases.

Subject realization in Greek preschool learners of English

Languages differ in their realization of the subject argument: non-null-subject languages, like English, require subjects to be phonologically overt; rather, null-subject languages, like Greek, allow the subject to be overt or null. This cross-linguistic difference can lead to the transfer of grammatical properties across languages during bilingual language acquisition. The direction of crosslinguistic transfer is known to be affected by structural overlap and linguistic dominance. This exploratory study was conducted to establish whether structural overlap or linguistic dominance affect the production patterns of Greek children who acquire English at preschool. If structural overlap determines the direction of transfer, then children will overuse overt subjects in Greek; if dominance determines the direction of transfer, then children will overuse null subjects in English. Two groups of Greek children (between 3;6–4;5 and 4;6–5;8) attending a monolingual English immersion programme in Greece participated in a novel oral elicitation task that tested their use of null and overt subjects in both languages. Both groups produced significantly more null and fewer overt subjects in English than an English monolingual control group, but the same number of null and overt subjects in Greek as a Greek monolingual control group. This finding suggests that the preschoolers, who start learning English at 3;0 years, experience crosslinguistic transfer from Greek, their dominant language, to English – thus highlighting the role that dominance plays in determining the direction of crosslinguistic transfer among successive bilingual children.

Keep in touch, stay in sight: locally-interpreted overt subjects in 1QIsaa

This study discusses textual variants at the sentence level in 1QIsaa, in which syntactic phrases in MT, mainly objects, seem to have been interpreted as overt subjects in the scroll. These variants are attested in two syntactic contexts: (a) clauses with non-canonical word order; and (b) subjectless clauses with third-person masculine verbs. In both contexts, an overt subject does not appear in its expected linear position. Consequently, an unintentional interpretation of the first suitable syntactic phrase as an overt subject at the closest proximity to its predicate is sometimes observed in the scroll. This (mis)interpretation is evaluated from a sentence-processing perspective and explained by (a) economic processing; and (b) the probability of comprehenders’ interpreting linguistic input as a simpler and more plausible structure in their language. A preference for subject interpretation is well attested in other Subject-before-Object languages, indicating a general bias of comprehenders toward the simplest structure of the linguistic input, in which all syntactic phrases are realized in their canonical positions with no moved or absent elements.

Same or different? Subject realization in the majority and the heritage language of Polish-German bilingual children

Abstract The paper examines the extent to which bilingual children select lexical noun phrases and null and overt pronouns as referring expressions in their majority language German and their heritage language Polish. Both languages are similar regarding the availability of lexical noun phrases but differ in terms of the distribution of null and overt pronominal forms. Our focus lies on discourse contexts with a subject antecedent in the preceding clause, which require only light processing for both speaker and hearer due to the high accessibility of the intended subject referent. Drawing on experimental data from a picture story retelling task (MAIN) to investigate the distribution of referring expressions in the two languages compared to age-matched monolingual control groups, our results reveal that bilingual children are sensitive to crosslinguistic differences in the syntactic and discourse-pragmatic constraints that regulate the distribution of null and overt subjects in Polish and German, depending on the mode of speech (narrative or dialogic). Furthermore, there are no significant differences between the bilingual and monolingual children, irrespective of language and age group. Thus, our study cannot confirm findings of previous studies concerning the tendency of bilingual children to be either overspecific or underspecific in subject reference production.

Dominance, Language Experience, and Increased Interaction Effects on the Development of Pragmatic Knowledge in Heritage Bilingual Children

Abstract We investigate whether dominance, language experience, and increased interaction have an effect on the development of heritage bilingual children’s knowledge of the discourse-pragmatic constraints guiding null and overt subjects. A group of child heritage bilinguals (n = 18, mean age = 5;5) and comparison groups of adults: Mexican Spanish monolinguals (n = 15), heritage bilinguals in the United States (n = 16), and English monolinguals in the United States (n = 16) completed a language background questionnaire, a portion of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA) in English and Spanish, a forced-choice task (FCT) in Spanish, and two acceptability judgment tasks (AJT s): one in English and one in Spanish. Results showed that heritage children and adults pattern similarly and differently from adult monolinguals. Increased interaction at home has a positive effect on accuracy in the pragmatic conditions that license null subjects in Spanish without affecting overt subject patterns in English, the dominant language.

Overt Subject Pronoun Use in Switch-Reference Contexts in Child Spanish Developmental Language Disorder: A Discriminant Function Analysis.

Our study analyzes probabilistic constraints on subject expression previously found in adult Spanish in the speech of typically developing (TD) Spanish-speaking children and children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Previous work shows that children with DLD produce fewer overt subjects than typically developing children, and that the latter acquire constraints on subject expression as they age into adolescence. Our study complements these findings and provides further substance to the grammatical profile of children whose morphosyntactic development diverges from that of typically developing children. Data are drawn from unstructured spontaneous production data from a sample of 19 monolingual Mexican, Spanish-speaking children, collected in 2006-2007. This sample includes 19 children diagnosed with DLD and 19 age-matched, typically developing children. We collected all instances of finite verbs that either did or could have occurred with a subject personal pronoun uttered by the child participants and coded them for several factors including tense-mood-aspect, switch reference, and person and number. We find that children with DLD produce fewer overt subject pronouns in switch reference contexts than typically developing controls, with a significant interaction of group and switch reference. Furthermore, a discriminant function analysis shows that overt pronoun use in switch reference contexts can form part of a useful diagnostic discriminant function, with high levels of sensitivity and specificity. Overall, we find important differences between TD Spanish-speaking children and those diagnosed with DLD regarding rates of overt subjects and sensitivity to the probabilistic constraint of switch reference. This finding contributes to our understanding of the morphosyntactic profiles of children with DLD, as well as the utility of factors such as switch reference in the identification of language disorders.

Is L1 Transfer Operative at the Syntax-Discourse Interface? The Acquisition of Null and Overt Subjects in L2 Turkish

Recent studies on L2 acquisition focus on how interface-related properties are acquired at the end state grammars. Proposed as part of this theme, the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace & Filiaci, 2006; Sorace, 2011) claims that the syntax-discourse interface is particularly challenging to acquire, irrespective of the L1 and L2 of the speakers. On the other hand, the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996) predicts that L2 acquisition is L1-constrained and UG is directly accessed. This study tests these assumptions on the acquisition of null and overt subjects in L2 Turkish to understand whether L1 transfer operates in the domain that needs the mapping of syntax on the discursive knowledge. This was tested in a study on advanced Korean and Japanese L2 Turkish speakers (n=27) by employing contextualized grammaticality judgment task (CGJT). In this task, participants were asked to judge whether the contextualized sentences they read were pragmatically odd or not (for each condition n=4). The discursive constraints (topic continuity and topic shift) on the use of null and overt subjects were not violated in the first two conditions. However, the latter two conditions violated the discursive constraints, rendering unacceptable null and overt subject constructions. The results of the CGJT revealed that the L2 participants were insensitive to the discourse of null and overt subject distribution. Since the very same constraints that regulate the null and overt subject distribution hold both in the L1 and L2 of the speakers, this finding suggests that L1 transfer is not operative at the syntax-discourse interface, which is in line with the claim that the properties at this interface cannot be fully acquired as postulated by the Interface Hypothesis.

Dependency resolutions of null and overt subjects in English speakers’ L2 Chinese: Evidence for the cue-based model

This study investigates whether there are different first-language–second-language (L1–L2) dependency resolutions by focusing on less-studied crosslinguistic variances in L2 acquisition of Chinese, a null-subject language, by speakers of English, a non-null-subject language. The overt subject pronoun of a Chinese main clause has free orientation and its antecedent can be the subject or object of the preceding causal subordinate clause, depending on pragmatic biases. The null subject of a Chinese main clause, however, is subject-oriented, and this subject orientation is not affected by any pragmatic bias. English does not allow null subjects and, like Chinese, overt subject pronouns in English have free orientation. An acceptability judgement task and an interpretation task were adopted, and the results suggest that only the free orientation of overt subjects, but not the subject orientation of null subjects, is acquirable for English-speaking learners; they are found to be influenced by the pragmatic bias. This provides evidence for the cue-based model (Cunnings, 2017), which states that L1–L2 differences in dependency resolution can be explained in terms of L1–L2 differences in susceptibility to interference and L2ers’ over-reliance on discourse-based/pragmatic cues. It is also observed that in L1 Chinese, competition between the target antecedent and distractors occurs during the reading of the sentence, while in L2 Chinese, this occurs after the reading of the sentence. These findings add to our growing understanding of different mechanisms in L1 vs. L2 dependency resolutions.

Processing pro-drop features in heritage Turkish.

Previous studies have reported that null subject is not completely lost in heritage speakers, but there is an increase in the production and acceptance of overt subjects. Turkish is a pro-drop language and as a typical feature of pro-drop languages, it requires obligatory verb agreement marking for sentences with null subjects. However, Turkish subject-verb agreement marking is an example of optional agreement in which the 3rd person plural subject has optionality and can be used with singular verb forms under certain conditions. The current study investigates the reading times (RTs) of plural-marked and unmarked verbs in sentences with overt and null subjects during real time sentence processing in comparison to non-heritage speakers of Turkish via a self-paced reading experiment. Significant differences were observed between the heritage and non-heritage speakers of Turkish indicating both quantitative and qualitative real-time processing differences between the two groups. These differences suggest that Turkish heritage speakers need more time to integrate the information in real time processing.

What May Statistics Tell Us About Null Subjects in Russian?

The article highlights the linguistic phenomenon of abandoning the expletively presented syntactic subject (the Null Subject Phenomenon) in different languages and focuses on its exemplification by the Russian language. It is shown that despite the existing number of studies on this issue, there is lack of precisely formulated criteria that determine the choice of linguistic means to represent a syntactic subject in the languages, which allow both options (partial null subject languages). Based on the discussion of literature on the topic and on the statistical analysis of 16,718 sentence samples from the spoken language, print journalism, and fiction subcorpora of the Russian National Corpus, the article argues that the choice between null and overt subjects in Russian sentences depends on factors such as tense, person, and style, but that this dependency is rather weak, owing to the fact that the Russian language system is now in the process of change. Null-subjectness is not an exclusive syntactic parameter and should be studied along with other aspects like semantics and pragmatics. The statistical data from this study support previously discussed diachronic and acquisition data, and confirm that languages do not nicely distribute themselves into distinct groups, but inhabit a constantly changing continuum.

The verb-initial independent declarative clauses on which the most complete witnesses to the Old English Bede disagree

ABSTRACT The article examines the verb-initial independent declarative clauses with overt subjects (V1) in the Old English Bede on which the most complete witnesses disagree. It identifies the syntactic and textual environments in which the V1 clauses are altered or omitted and the types of changes they undergo. The article demonstrates that the majority of the alterations and omissions are recorded in the later manuscripts B and Ca. Most of them reflect the change to the V2 and V3 word order and the rise of the þa VS clauses in the V1 textual environments (e.g. reported discourse). Besides these widely attested developments in syntax and textual organisation, the corpus also exhibits the alterations that can be attributed to the individual scribes who modify or omit the V1 clauses to align the Old English translation with the Latin, eliminate asyndetic parataxis, homogenise the style, and streamline the narrative. The variants and scribal interventions uncovered by the present inquiry not only help form a more complete picture of the transmission and uses of the manuscripts of the Old English Bede but also contribute to the diachronic and synchronic study of the Old English language and style.

On the Syntax of the Russian Control Verbs Pomoč ' 'Help' and Pomešat' 'Hinder'

Abstract: This paper examines sentences with the verbs pomoč' 'help' and pomešat' 'hinder' in Russian and demonstrates that, although they are usually listed among object control predicates, these verbs appear in a wide range of constructions that cannot be accounted for by a straightforward control analysis. To explain the distribution of pomoč' and pomešat' , I argue that they are, in essence, ditransitive, similarly to 'give' or 'send': they require a Goal (a person or a situation that will be helped/hindered) and a Theme headed by a silent noun HETP/HINDRANCE. A dative DP, either [+sentient] or eventive, a subjunctive čtoby -clause, or a non-finite clause with an overt subject, when present, should be analyzed as a Goal. A controlled infinitival clause is merged as a modifier within the Theme NP. The approach is extended to control collocations such as 'give a chance'. It further offers an opportunity to develop a uniform structural representation for various verbs of object control that will reduce the differences between them to particular properties of the Theme.

Interpretive asymmetries between null and overt PRO in complement and adjunct infinitives in (Colombian) Spanish

Cross-linguistically, control complement clauses have been reported to allow overt pronominal subjects displaying the diagnostic properties of obligatory control (‘Overt PRO’; see Livitz (2011) and reference therein). Building on Gómez (2017), we extend the empirical range of the overt PRO phenomena to para finality adjunct clauses in (Colombian) Spanish. We show that the controlled subject of para-infinitives ―be it null PRO or overt PRO― has the same distribution and interpretive properties as that of complement infinitives. We bring to light unexpected asymmetries in the interpretive properties of overt vs. null PROs which we dub the Overt vs. covert PRO paradox: while they both only allow a bound variable reading under ellipsis, overt PRO, unlike null PRO, also allows a coreferential reading under association-with-focus. Here again, the data are identical in complement vs. adjunct control. We account for this paradox by putting forth the Anaphor Generalizations, which state that (i) both overt and null anaphors must be syntactically bound, and (ii) while null anaphors must be semantically bound, overt anaphors can but need not be semantically bound. We further show how the Anaphor Generalizations can be extended to account for similar patterns of interpretation reported for English and French reflexives.

The Acquisition of Verbs by Amharic Speaking Children

The study describes the acquisition of verb by typically developing Amharic-speaking children. It recruitedcross-sectional research design to gather the speeches’ data from thirty-two children using picture description, spontaneous elicitation, and story-tellingtasks. Thedata were audio- recorded, transcribed using IPA, and analyzed. The result showed that most ofAmharic speakingchildren’s verbs appeared as single utterances. Verbs such as progressive, pastand imperfective were predominantly frequent in such a way; especially past and imperfective verbs appeared potentially meaningful simple sentence without overt subject and object.Similarly, auxiliary verbs, as a linking or helping verb, they had a consistent occurrence and most of the childrensimple SOVsentences were guided by auxiliaries. Moreover, the perfective, imperatives, and gerund verbs had a significant representation. However, passives were the least and they were not even detected in some children’s speeches. The result alsoconfirmed, that progressive, past and auxiliary verbs had a leading place followed by imperfective. Children also varied in their choice of verbs while describing things, expressing ideas, and narrating events. Some children used a certain verbs monotonously but others weremore selective andstraightforward to the point. In this regard, olderage (4;5and 5;0years) girls had better performance. The distribution of verbs, in type and frequency also portrayed that how some verbs more salient than others. In sum, the progressive and past verbs were likely acquired earlier than others. However, verbs like passives seemingly need time. This implies that the order of verb acquisition differs cross linguistically due to the nature of derivational and inflectional morphology that children are able to acquire first.

Diary null subjects in L2 English: A study on grammatical acceptability

The current paper investigates the grammatical acceptability of null subjects in the diary register of L2 English by intermediate and advanced students, L1 speakers of Romanian. Overall results indicate performance that does not surpass chance level, and therefore, a strong conservative preference for overtly realized subjects in diary contexts. However, individual analysis has identified a small group of L2 learners who consistenly scored well above chance in the four experimental conditions (overt subject, null subject in root clause, null subject in embedded clause and null subject in yes-no questions). I discuss several factors that relate to the difficulty L2 learners have with accepting on-target null subjects in the diary register. Quite likely, they never had enough exposure to the relevant input. L2 acquisition slows down when multiple grammars (core and non-core) are identified. Also, subject omission is optional, so the study tested a preference, not a mandatory phenomenon.