Position Of Clause Research Articles

Agrammatic sentence production: Is verb second impaired in Dutch?

This study investigates effects of verb movement in nine Dutch-speaking agrammatic aphasics. According to linguistic theory, in verb second languages such as Dutch and German, the verb remains in its clause-final base position in embedded clauses, whereas it moves to second position in main clauses. In recent linguistic accounts of agrammatic sentence production, it has been suggested that the production of sentences with moved verbs is relatively difficult. However, we argue that evidence provided by previous studies on this matter is inconclusive. An experiment is reported in which the production of both types of clauses is compared. No evidence is found that sentences with moved verbs are relatively difficult to produce. In fact, there was a tendency for the base order sentences to be harder. Implications of these findings for theories of normal and agrammatic sentence production are discussed.

Information structuring in Akan question-word fronting and focus constructions

Wh-question fronting and focus constructions in Akan have three structural characteristics in common: constituent fronting, introduction of a clitic morpheme after the fronted constituent, and pronoun resumption in a canonical clause position. In comparing these constructions to each other and to related canonical constructions, one is confronted with the question whether the same discourse-contextual information is consistently expressed in both constructions. Using the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar, we show that both whquestion fronting and focus constructions share representations in the constituent and functional structure. Considering the individual discourse-contextual information expressed in wh-question fronting and focus constructions, as compared to the discourse-contextual information expressed in the respective in situ and canonical clause counterparts, however, we show that a variance is drawn between them in the information structure. In a further constraint-based analysis, Optimality-Theoretic LFG is used to clarify the proposals made.

The Position of satellites in Latin word order

SummaryThis paper investigates in which positions satellites can occur in the Latin clause. The theory of Functional Grammar (FG) assumes that four types of satellites are to be distinguished and that these types differ, amongst other things, in their formal behavior. In the following, predictions about the position of satellites in the clause will be checked with regard to a corpus of letters by Cicero (Ad Atticum, book I-II). The relative position of satellites, arguments and the verb will be examined with particular interest in the position of satellite clauses. It will be shown that predicate satellite clauses prefer to be placed ad the end of the sentence, while illocutionaiy and prepositional satellite clauses tend to occur at the beginning of the sentence. The type of predication satellites should be split into two groups: purpose, consequence and causative clauses predominantly occur after and temporal, conditional and concessive clauses before the main verb. These observations are discussed in view of some general principles of Functional Grammar.

EMBEDDED V-TO-C IN CHILD GRAMMAR: THE ACQUISITION OF VERB PLACEMENT IN SWISS GERMAN. Manuela Schönenberger. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. Pp. xx + 410. $150.00 cloth.

This book examines the acquisition of verb placement in Swiss German. In Swiss German, as in the case of German and other verb-second languages, the finite verb occurs in the second position (i.e., C position) in matrix clauses but in the final position in embedded clauses, although verb movement in certain embedded contexts such as complements of bridge verbs and indirect questions is optionally permitted. The child Swiss-German data, collected by the author, come primarily from two children—Moira (age: 3;10–6;01) and Eliza (age: 3;10—6;01)—who were acquiring the Lucerne variant of Swiss German. A positive aspect of this research is that it is based on a vast amount of spontaneous production data gathered longitudinally as well as on elicited data. These data are supplemented by data elicited experimentally from Moira's peers in her kindergarten class in Lucerne. A significant finding of Schönenberger's research is that children acquiring the Lucernese variant of Swiss German make a high number of verb placement errors in embedded clauses, in striking contrast to what has been observed in the case of children acquiring German. Specifically, the two children in Schönenberger's study move the finite verb in any type of embedded clause even when there is an overt complementizer present in these clauses. Although the embedded clauses produced by the Lucernese children do not match those in the adult grammar, Schönenberger argues convincingly that their underlying grammar is only minimally different from that of the adult grammar.

On good algorithms for determining unsatisfiability of propositional formulas

This paper is concerned with an algorithm that provides short certificates of unsatisfiability with high probability when an input I is a random instance of 3-SAT. Rather than build a refutation DAG, the algorithm finds bounds on n I (true) , the number of variables that must be set to true, and n I (false) , the number that must be set to false, if all clauses of I are to be satisfied. If the sum n I (true)+n I (false) is greater than the number of variables in I then I must be unsatisfiable. Bounds on n I (true) and n I (false) may be found by throwing out all clauses except those having only negative or only positive literals and finding n I +(true) for the remaining positive clause set I + and n I − (false) for the remaining negative clause set I − . These questions can alternatively be stated as 3-hitting set problems on I + and I − separately. It is shown that a good enough approximation algorithm for 3-hitting set can determine useful bounds on n I (true) and n I (false) (high probability of success for large enough constant ratio of clauses to variables). Although a good enough algorithm seems evasive, one that comes fairly close is proposed and analyzed.

Some notes on the use of relatives in nineteenth-century scientific prose: a quantitative study

This paper deals with the use of relative clauses in nineteenth-century scientific writing. For this purpose, a 30,000-word corpus was compiled, gathering texts from the fields of mechanics and electricity. This input was automatically analysed using Wordsmith Tools, and thus accurate information about their frequency and concordances was drawn. Therefore, the present paper offers some statistical data about a) the occurrence of relativisers; b) their arrangement according to the syntactic function (e.g. the accessibility hierarchy); and c) the position of relative clauses with respect to the main clause (e.g. the principle of end-weight). Finally, these data were also compared with a twentieth-century scientific corpus so that their similarities and differences could be highlighted.

Read-Once Branching Programs, Rectangular Proofs of the Pigeonhole Principle and the Transversal Calculus

We investigate read-once branching programs for the following search problem: given a Boolean m × n matrix with m > n, find either an all-zero row, or two 1’s in some column. Our primary motivation is that this models regular resolution proofs of the pigeonhole principle $$PHP^{m}_{n}$$, and that for m > n2 no lower bounds are known for the length of such proofs. We prove exponential lower bounds (for arbitrarily large m!) if we further restrict this model by requiring the branching program either to finish one row of queries before asking queries about another row (the row model) or put the dual column restriction (the column model).Then we investigate a special class of resolution proofs for $$PHP^{m}_{n}$$ that operate with positive clauses of rectangular shape; we call this fragment the rectangular calculus. We show that all known upper bounds on the size of resolution proofs of $$PHP^{m}_{n}$$ actually give rise to proofs in this calculus and, inspired by this fact, also give a remarkably simple “rectangular” reformulation of the Haken–Buss–Turan lower bound for the case m ≪ n2. Finally we show that the rectangular calculus is equivalent to the column model on the one hand, and to transversal calculus on the other hand, where the latter is a natural proof system for estimating from below the transversal size of set families. In particular, our exponential lower bound for the column model translates both to the rectangular and transversal calculi.

Lexical, Morphological, and Syntactic Aspects of Verb Production in Agrammatic Aphasics

Agrammatic aphasics do not exhibit a normal pattern of verb production; their spontaneous speech is said to lack verbs, and the verbs that are produced lack inflection. The current article focuses on the lexical, morphological, and syntactic aspects of verbs in spontaneous speech of a group of Dutch agrammatic speakers. Dutch is a so-called verb-second language in which the finite verb in the matrix clause is in the second position and nonfinite verbs are in the final position. The analysis shows that agrammatic speakers are sensitive to this relation; they virtually never produce finite verbs in the final clause position or nonfinite verbs in the second position. Nevertheless, they produce significantly fewer finite clauses than do non-brain-damaged speakers. The diversity of the lexical verbs in spontaneous speech is also lower than in non-brain-damaged speakers, but this is due to less variation in the finite lexical verbs. Hence, it is suggested that the problems with verbs in Dutch agrammatic spontaneous speech are restricted to finite lexical verbs. In an experiment, it was evaluated whether these problems with finite lexical verbs are caused by a morphological deficit or a syntactic deficit. The data show that a syntactic deficit is more likely; Dutch agrammatic speakers produce finite verbs in the base-generated position (i.e., in the embedded clause) significantly better than finite verbs that have been moved to the second position (i.e., in the matrix clause). From these data, the authors conclude that in Dutch, a verb-second language, agrammatic aphasics demonstrate specific problems with moved finite verbs, although they are perfectly aware of the relation between verb position and verb finiteness. This syntactic problem affects not only the proportion of finite verbs but also the diversity of the verbs and, hence, communicative contents.

Breton as a V2 language

Breton has VSO order in subordinate clauses and in some main clauses, but it does not normally allow a finite verb in initial position in main clauses, which instead show V2 order. We investigate Breton V2 structures and argue that they are problematic for transformational assumptions. We show that a more satisfactory account is possible within an extension of HPSG, which distinguishes between constituent structure and linear structure

Evaluation of Queries under Closed-World Assumption. Part II: The Hierarchical Case

This paper constitutes the second part of a paper published in the i>Journal of Automated Reasoning 18 (1997), 357–398. The minimal entailment vi>M i n has been characterized elsewhere by i>P vi>M i n p iff i>C n(i>P ∪{p}) ∩ i>G P o s ⊆ i>C n(i>P), where i>C n is the first-order consequence operation, i>P is a set of clauses (disjunctive logic program; in short: a program), p is a clause (a query), and i>G P o s is the set of positive (that is, bodiless) ground clauses. In this part, we address the problem of computational feasibility of certain iterative applications of criterion (1). In the first part of the paper we proposed a query evaluation algorithm that decided i>P vi>M i n p by what we called indefinite modeling. The query evaluation algorithm was capable of deciding the right-hand side of (1) without actually computing all ground positive consequences of i>P or i>P ∪{p}. The objective of the second part of the paper is to extend the proposed approach so that it properly captures phenomena associated with allowing negation in clauses" bodies, however, at a price of substantial complication (in particular, computing all ground positive consequences of i>P ∪{p} that are not consequences of i>P can no longer be avoided). For that purpose, we introduce the concepts of a layered program and its hierarchically minimal semantics, a special case of which covers stratified programs with semantics defined by second-order prioritized circumscription and, in the case of definite programs, perfect models. We characterize the hierarchically minimal entailment vi>H M i n in terms of iterative application of the right-hand side of criterion (1). Finally, we generalize the indefinite modeling and query evaluation algorithms presented in Part I over the layered programs, and indicate their computational advantages relative to other methods (e.g., those based on prefect model semantics). The presented approach does not require assigning different meanings to logically equivalent clauses, so it actually eliminates the need for program clauses with negation in their bodies.

Corpus analysis and pragmatics

Abstract Fail to belongs to a type of verbal structures which are in a syntactic construction with other verbs (e.g. fail to win) and which have meanings related to aspect or modality. In this paper we used the COBUILD corpus to analyse the discursive function of fail to and the meaning it adds to the verbal group where it occurs. The paper shows that with regard to function fail to is more similar to auxiliaries than to lexical verbs. Fail to is used in positive clauses to deny an expectation, which explains its association with non-durative aspect and with the modality meanings "non-achievement" and "unfulfilled obligation", and in rhetorical questions and negative clauses it is used to express the speaker's strong commitment to the certainty of a proposition.

A problem for expressivism

Language, Truth and Logic added expressivism to the inventory of substantive positions in meta-ethics, and the recent defences of versions of it by Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard have enhanced its status as a major position. 1 Ayer presented the doctrine as an improvement on subjectivism – that is, on the doctrine that ethical sentences serve to report attitudes of approval and disapproval – and it is widely supposed to be an internally coherent and interesting position. We argue, however, that there is a serious problem that expressivists, unlike subjectivists, have to face which has not been adequately addressed in the development of the doctrine. Expressivism is a bipartite theory. It holds, first, that ethical sentences lack truth conditions – they are not truth apt, truth assessable etc. – and do not serve to report anything that the speaker believes to be so. And it holds, second, that ethical sentences express certain distinctive pro and con attitudes, and express them without in any sense reporting them: without reporting them even in the broad sense in which ‘The present King of France is bald’ reports the existence of the King as well as his baldness. 2 The first clause is a negative, semantic claim; it denies that ethical sentences have truth conditions. The second is a positive claim: it informs us about the function – that of expressing attitudes – served by ethical sentences. The second, positive clause is supposed to underpin the first, semantic claim in the following sense. If ethical sentences reported the presence of

Evaluation of Queries under Closed-World Assumption

The minimal entailment vMin has been characterized elsewhere by P vMin} p iff Cn(P ∪ {p}) ∩ Pos ⊆ Cn(P) where Cn is the first-order consequence operation, P is a set of clauses (indefinite deductive data base; in short: a data base), p is a clause (a query), and Pos is the set of positive (that is, bodiless) ground clauses. In this paper, we address the problem of the computational feasibility of criterion (1). Our objective is to find a query evaluation algorithm that decides P vMin p by what we call indefinite modeling, without actually computing all ground positive consequences of P and P ∪ {p}. For this purpose, we introduce the concept of minimal indefinite Herbrand model MP of P, which is defined as the set of subsumption-minimal ground positive clauses provable from P. The algorithm first computes MP by finding the least fixed-point of an indefinite consequence operator μ TIP. Next, the algorithm verifies whether every ground positive clause derivable from MP ∪ {p} by one application of the parallel positive resolution rule (in short: the PPR rule) is subsumed by an element of MP. We prove that the PPR rule, which can derive only positive clauses, is positively complete, that is, every positive clause provable from a data base P is derivable from P by means of subsumption and finitely many applications of PPR. From this we conclude that the presented algorithm is partially correct and that it eventually halts if both P and MP are finite. Moreover, we indicate how the algorithm can be modified to handle data bases with infinite indefinite Herbrand models. This modification leads to a concept of universal model that allows for nonground clauses in its Herbrand base and appears to be a good candidate for representation of indefinite deductive data bases.

Conjunctive and disjunctive verb forms in Setswana

Setswana has a distinction between the so-called ‘short form’ and ‘long form’ of the Present Indicative (positive) which at first seems to be isolated in the system of this language. Its function has so far not been adequately identified. The aim of this paper is to show that: a) several other tenses of the Setswana verb have tonal variations carrying a distinction functionally identical to that between the short form and the long form of the Positive Present of the Indicative; and b) this distinction between what could conveniently be termed ‘disjunctive’ and ‘conjunctive’ verb forms, has a pragmatic function; the use of conjunctive forms implies that the verb is not in final clause position and that the noun phrase or the adverb which follows it provides some new information. Disjunctive forms have the opposite implication: if a disjunctive verb form is followed by a noun phrase or an adverb which seems to belong to the clause in which the verb in question fulfils the predicaste function, this element i...

Verb position in future clauses in Biblical Hebrew

ABSTRACTIn clauses with future meaning in Biblical Hebrew, a basically VSO language, there are consistent functional differences between clauses with verb-initial word order and clauses with non-verb-initial word order. Quantitative study shows that verb-initial clauses are associated with future events that come about through cooperation between (some combination of) the speaker, the listener, and God, whereas non-verb-initial clauses are associated with future events that are the result of unilateral action. This is related to the finding of Givón (1977) that, in clauses with past time reference in Biblical Hebrew, verb-initial order is associated with the unmarked function of temporal sequencing and continuity of the narrative, whereas non-verb-initial order is associated with a break in sequencing and discontinuity. If we take verb-initial order as generally associated with unmarked discourse functions, these data suggest that cooperation represents the unmarked expectation in dialogues about the future in the same way that sequencing represents the unmarked expectation in narratives about the past.

The Negation of the Non-Verbal Clause in Early Syriac

In early Syriac texts, the syntax of the negated non-verbal clause mirrors that of the positive non-verbal clause. Clauses that, in their positive form, are constructed with an enclitic personal pronoun, are negated by the composite particle la hwa, declined in accordance with the subject. On the other hand, clauses that do not employ an enclitic personal pronoun in their positive form are negated by the simple particle la. Later Syriac texts show a different syntax for clauses employing the composite la hwd. Therefore the syntax of the negated non-verbal clause may be used as a criterion for dating undated Syriac texts.

Icelandic case-marked PRO and the licensing of lexical arguments

On the basis of evidence from Icelandic I argue that PRO can be both governed and case-marked, but crucially not properly governed. Lexical arguments must be both case-marked and properly head governed, and proper head government is a strictly local relation whereas case-marking is not. As the subject position of PRO clauses is not properly head governed, it must not be lexicalized, irrespective of whether it is case-marked or not.

A fixpoint semantics for disjunctive logic programs

We present a fixpoint semantics for disjunctive logic programs. We extend the concept of the Herbrand base of a logic program to consist of all positive clauses that may be formed using the atoms in the Herbrand base. A monotonic closure operator is defined, operating on the lattice formed by the power set of the extended Herbrand base. The closure operator is shown to achieve a least fixpoint which captures the intended meaning of derivability of disjunctive programs. The equivalence of the fixpoint semantics with the minimal model semantics is also shown. We provide a characterization for Minker's generalized closed-world assumption using the fixpoint operator. We introduce the concept of support for negation and develop a proof procedure for handling negation based on this concept. We describe a proof procedure based on SLINF derivation, a modification of SLI derivation (LUST resolution). We show that the proof procedure reduces to SLDNF resolution when applied to Horn programs.

Syntactic case and morphological case in the history of English (review)

146LANGUAGE, VOLUME 66, NUMBER 1 (1990) against the facts of Quechua. Even specialists in the Government-Binding approach will probably find some of the authors' allusions obscure. Finally, I found the book somewhat difficult to read. The overall structure of the argument is logical, but it can be hard to follow because of the amount of detail and because of the authors' frequent use of forward and backward references. The authors' language is abstract and vague in places—I am still not sure exactly what a 'Comp-like Case Position' is, for example. The book contains many charts, lists, tables, and diagrams; some are very helpful summaries , but others would be more useful with fuller explanation. There is also an index of names and a short subject index at the end. The book is rather sloppily printed: most of the mistakes are merely distracting (e.g., the first projection of N sometimes shows up as N' and sometimes as N'), but some interfere with comprehension (e.g., the branches of the trees do not always match up accurately with their terminals). In spite of the book's stylistic difficulties and the fact that the analysis it presents is not always completely satisfying (whose is?), the patient reader will be rewarded with a wealth of data, interesting descriptive generalizations, good examples of how to apply formal categories in an 'exotic language', and many suggestive theoretical ideas. REFERENCES Baker, Mark. 1985. Syntactic affixation and English gerunds. Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 4, ed. by J. Goldberg, S. MacKaye and M. Wescoat, 1-11. Stanford: Stanford Linguistics Association. Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Emonds, Joseph. 1988. The autonomy of the (syntactic) lexicon and syntax: Insertion conditions for derivational and inflectional morphemes. Seattle: University of Washington, ms. Marantz, Alec. 1979. Assessing the X' convention: Embedded sentences in English. Cambridge, MA: MIT, ms. Milsark, G. L. 1988. Singl-z'ng. Linguistic Inquiry 19.611-34. Reuland, Eric. 1983. Governing -ing. Linguistic Inquiry 14.101-36. Department of Linguistics[Received 9 August 1989.] McGiIl University 1001 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal PQ H3A 1G5 Canada Syntactic case and morphological case in the history of English. By Ans van Kemenade. Dordrecht: Foris, 1987. Pp. xi, 249. $23.90. Reviewed by Cynthia L. Allen, Australian National University This doctoral dissertation is an investigation, in a Government-Binding framework, into the workings of the abstract case-marking system in Old English (OE), and how changes in this abstract system in Middle English (ME) resulted in surface changes. The author argues that superficially unrelated facts, synchronic and diachronic, are in fact related when this abstract system is properly understood. REVIEWS147 Ch. 1 is a general introduction and review of the literature. In Ch. 2, Kemenade argues for an analysis of basic OE syntax similar to analyses which have been proposed in a GB framework for Dutch and German. Specifically, it is assumed that Old English had an underlying word order—SOV—which is obscured by the movement of the verb into second position in main clauses, and also by a fairly free process of extraposition in all clause types. The 'verbsecond ' phenomenon is explained in terms of lexicalization of infl. Infl must be lexicalized; in subordinate clauses this is accomplished by the use of a complementizer, and the verb remains in final position. But in main clauses, if infl is to be lexicalized, the verb must move into infl, which is in second position. However, K argues, it is not in S but in S'. Comp is not filled by a complementizer, but, in line with widely-accepted GB analyses of other Germanic languages, it is the position of topicalized items, including the subject in SVO sentences. This initial Topic position is not available in subordinate clauses, although K never explains this fact. In this chapter K presents an analysis in which both this topic position and infl are dominated by comp, but in Ch. 3 this structure is modified as follows (note: infl" = S'): (1)infl" COMPINFL ( = spec infl') infl Thus, comp is now solely occupied by a Topic position, and is the specifier of infl'. In Ch. 3 K considers...

Clauses and the semantic representation of words.

When a sentence with more than one clause is processed, words of the first clause become less available for recall or recognition once the clause boundary has been passed. One common interpretation of this observation is that the representation of a given word shifts from a predominantly surface form (e.g., phonological or lexical) to a semantic form, after the clause boundary. Two experiments that test that interpretation are reported. In the first experiment, two-clause spoken sentences were followed by spoken word or picture probes. Pictures were intended to provide a fast semantic match to probed words, but a slow surface match. Although response times exhibited a robust main effect of the clause position of the probe, no interaction with probe type was found. Similar results were obtained in a second experiment that compared pictures with written word probes. The faster response to picture than to word probes in the second experiment indicates that subjects did not covertly name the picture, but made a semantic match (as intended). These observations suggest the following reinterpretation of earlier sentence memory experiments: Words in the most recent clause of a sentence are more available than words in an earlier clause because their semantic representations are more active, not because their surface representations are more active.