Postverbal Subjects Research Articles

Subject licensing in non-verbal clauses in Arabic

Abstract This paper investigates the licensing of subjects in Standard Arabic participial clauses. Unlike verbal clauses, whose subject may appear post-verbally, the subject of participial clauses must precede the participle, having properties of topics of verbal clauses. I claim that this is because the canonical subject position, [Spec, vP], is not available for subjects of participles, due to lack of Nom Case. It is shown that neither tense nor a copula is sufficient to license structural Nom Case on a subject in [Spec, vP]. I conclude that the licensing of Nom Case on post-verbal subjects is dependent on V-to-T raising; that is, Nom Case is licensed by the T-V complex. The present account has implications for the nature of pre-verbal subjects in Arabic as well as for the categorial status of copular elements like kāna.

Word order and closest-conjunct agreement in the Greek Septuagint: On the position of a biblical translation in the diachrony of a syntactic correlation

AbstractClauses can show closest-conjunct agreement, where the verb agrees only with one conjunct of a conjoined subject, and not with the full conjoined subject. The aim of this study is to examine the properties of word order and closest-conjunct agreement in the Greek Septuagint to distinguish which of them are due to the native syntax of Koiné Greek, possibly influenced by contact with Hebrew, and which of them are the result of a biblical translation effect. Both VSO and closest-conjunct agreement in the case of postverbal subjects have been considered characteristics of Biblical Hebrew. VSO becomes a neutral word order for Koiné Greek, and Koiné Greek exhibits examples of closest-conjunct agreement as well. The present study shows that VSO is the neutral word order for various types of texts of Koiné Greek (biblical and non-biblical, translations and non-translations) and that closest-conjunct agreement is also present with similar characteristics in pre-Koiné Greek. All relevant characteristics reflect a type of a syntactic change in Greek related to the properties of the T domain, and evidenced not only in translations or Biblical Greek. However, the frequencies of word orders are indeed affected by the source language, and indirect translation effects are evident in the Greek Septuagint.

Comment Reduced Parenthetical Clauses and the syntax-discourse interface

Reduced parenthetical clauses (RPCs) in European Portuguese have not been studied until recently. Focusing on comment RPCs, a preliminary classification of the most common verbal predicates in this context is set up for this language, and their pragmatic values established. The distribution of comment RPCs, especially their floating status and the blocking of c-command from the host sentences, indicates that they are syntactically related to their hosts by a paratactic link, as parenthetical modifiers. As for the internal structure of the comment clause, island effects reveal that, in European Portuguese, the argument gap of the verb results from movement of a null category to an A-bar position of the parenthetical clause. Also, adverb placement shows that the verb and the subject occupy high discursive projections in the left periphery of the RPC, suggesting that the post-verbal subject is focalized in specifier of FocP. The contrasts between comment RPCs with null and overt subjects shows that in European Portuguese the mitigative pragmatic value of the RPC is not exclusively drawn from the epistemic, evidential or evaluative predicates, but also relies on the post verbal use of the subject.

Focus constructions, verb types and the SV/VS order in Italian: An acquisitional study from a syntax–prosody perspective

This paper investigates the realization of subjects in Broad and Narrow Focus constructions, from both an acquisitional and a theoretical perspective. Specifically, NF structures include Information (IF) and Corrective (CF) subjects and the study concerns Italian children (4–9 y.o.). Data are collected through an original experiment, based on spontaneous answers to (recorded) questions associated to scene settings. It is shown that the SV strategy is the most frequently used, independent of either Focus or verb type (considering transitive, unaccusative and unergartive verbs). Importantly, however, prosodic analysis shows that the SV order is systematically associated to distinct contours according to Focus types. As for the VS order, it appears as a late acquisition (around 7 y.o.) for both NF and BF constructions and is always associated with a downgrading contour. In a cartographic approach, these results lead to the conclusion that focus-related discourse and p-features are merged in dedicated projections and trigger movement to be valued and interpreted at Spell-Out. Consequently, p-features are uninterpretable at PF in the VS order. Finally, since the realization of postverbal subjects is part of the Null Subject Parameter, VS late emergence supports the hypothesis that the discourse-related competences connected with its acquisition are managed after 7 y.o.

On the position of subjects in Spanish periphrases: Subjecthood left and right

Chains of auxiliary verbs in Spanish allow for the reconceptualization of well-known grammatical problems under the light of understudied structures. In this paper we will deal with issues regarding the position of subjects in declarative and interrogative sentences featuring auxiliary chains. It will become immediately evident that the dichotomy between pre- and post-verbal subjects results inadequate to provide adequate characterisations for the Spanish cases, in contrast to the situation in English. This is so because post-verbal subjects may appear, a priori, to the right of each auxiliary in a chain. These new data, which have received little attention, constitute a challenge for standard hypotheses about the position of subjects in Spanish.

Postverbal subjects and agreement: specificational copular clauses in Faroese

In this paper we discuss a type of copular clause – specificational copular clauses – in which subject properties may be split between two nominative noun phrases. In particular, while the first noun phrase occupies the canonical preverbal subject position, in some languages the finite verb can agree with the postverbal nominative. Such agreement might be expected, on some theoretical assumptions, to show person restrictions. We discuss this phenomenon in two SVO Germanic languages – Icelandic and Faroese – and present new data from Faroese showing that the person effect here follows from the existence of distinct probes for Number and Person agreement.

The positive effect of explicit positive evidence

The study investigates questions central to the field of second language (L2) acquisition and instruction: Does the first language (L1) influence the L2 grammar? Can wrong patterns be restructured? Is Universal Grammar accessible during L2 acquisition? And can L2 acquisition, rather than learning (in Krashen’s sense), be triggered by explicit positive evidence (EPE), combining input flood with explicit emphasis upon target forms? Three properties associated with the Null Subject Parameter were inspected in two sixth-grade groups (L1-Hebrew, L2-English): thematic subject omission, expletive subject omission, and post-verbal subjects. During teaching, both groups were exposed to input flood of expletive subjects, but only in one group were expletives explicitly emphasized (EPE). A Hebrew-toEnglish translation-choice task tested the abovementioned properties pre-teaching, immediately post-teaching, and four months post-teaching. Shortly after teaching, the group which was explicitly taught improved significantly in rejecting ungrammatical null expletives and post-verbal subjects, but not null thematic subjects, thus indicating (partial) clustering. However, the improvement attained was not fully preserved four months later. The results show that shortterm exposure to EPE concerning a single property can apparently trigger change in another property, suggesting that learned knowledge can affect L2 competence, and that Universal Grammar plays a role in L2 acquisition.

The positive effect of explicit positive evidence

The study investigates questions central to the field of second language (L2) acquisition and instruction: Does the first language (L1) influence the L2 grammar? Can wrong patterns be restructured? Is Universal Grammar accessible during L2 acquisition? And can L2 acquisition, rather than learning (in Krashen’s sense), be triggered by explicit positive evidence (EPE), combining input flood with explicit emphasis upon target forms? Three properties associated with the Null Subject Parameter were inspected in two sixth-grade groups (L1-Hebrew, L2-English): thematic subject omission, expletive subject omission, and post-verbal subjects. During teaching, both groups were exposed to input flood of expletive subjects, but only in one group were expletives explicitly emphasized (EPE). A Hebrew-toEnglish translation-choice task tested the abovementioned properties pre-teaching, immediately post-teaching, and four months post-teaching. Shortly after teaching, the group which was explicitly taught improved significantly in rejecting ungrammatical null expletives and post-verbal subjects, but not null thematic subjects, thus indicating (partial) clustering. However, the improvement attained was not fully preserved four months later. The results show that shortterm exposure to EPE concerning a single property can apparently trigger change in another property, suggesting that learned knowledge can affect L2 competence, and that Universal Grammar plays a role in L2 acquisition.

French Postverbal Subjects: A Comparison of Monolingual, Bilingual, Trilingual, and Multilingual French

Monolingual French children have been observed to pass through a stage which is characterized by the production of target-deviant postverbal subjects of the following type (Jansen 2015, p. 272): est tombé Philippe ‘is fallen Philippe’ (Philippe, 2;2,10), écrit bien celui-là ‘writes well this one’ (Philippe, 2;2,2) (De Cat 2002; Déprez and Pierce 1993; Ferdinand 1993, 1996; Friedemann [1993] 1994; Labelle and Valois 1996; Pierce 1989). Interestingly, bilingual children who acquire French together with German produce postverbal subjects to an extremely low degree in mean length of utterance (MLU)-phases compared with monolingual children (Jansen 2015). Arguably, they skip the postverbal subject phase and are accelerated with respect to monolingual children. In our study, we tested whether multilingualism can speed up the acquisition process in French. A production test with 62 multilingual children (starting at 2;7 acquiring two, three, or four L1s) was administered in Spain and Germany to elicit finite verbs and DP (Determiner Phrase) subjects in French. The children’s proficiency in French was measured on the basis of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) (Dunn et al. 1993). In comparison with monolinguals studied in the literature, the bilingual children and the children who acquired more than two languages were accelerated with respect to the placement of subjects in the postverbal position. Although the multilingual children who ranked low in the PPVT exhibited all kinds of structures as responses to the test items that are characteristic of early French, such as null-subjects, root infinites and bare nouns, they did not use postverbal subjects. The absence of postverbal subjects was observed not only in children who acquired either German (or English) at the same time as French, as did the bilingual children in Jansen’s (2015) study, but also in children who acquired, in addition to French, a Romance language like Spanish, Catalan, or Italian, all null-subject languages which allow postverbal subjects in the adult language. Following (Biberauer and Richards 2006), the extended projection principle (EPP) feature of T (Tense) can be satisfied in different ways across languages: if a DP is necessary, which it is in adult French, it can be raised from Spec,vP (specifier of vP, of the small-verb Phrase) to Spec,TP (specifier of Tense Phrase) (in which case the finite verb surfaces in T). This is the default of EPP satisfaction in T. It is this option which is facilitated and boosts the acquisition of the preverbal subject position in early bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual French. The result that the children who acquired a null-subject language such as Spanish also enjoyed an advantage in French, adult Spanish being a language that allows for postverbal subjects, indicates that it is plausible that the default character of DP-raising for EPP satisfaction, instantiated in all languages involved, is the reason for its high relevance in the early French of bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual children. If our analysis of the multilingual data is plausible, monolingual French children exhibit more variation in satisfying the EPP-feature (in T) than children who acquire one or more other languages in addition to French, an observation which goes back to (Meisel 1989).

SUBJECT POSITION AND INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN L2 SPANISH

AbstractThis study investigates the acquisition of the constraints regulating subject position in the L2 Spanish spoken by English native speakers and provides a representational account following the premises of the Multiple Grammars (MG) model. The acceptability of preverbal and postverbal subjects is compared considering different discursive contexts (i.e., broad focus, Verbal Phase [VP] focus, and subject focus). Three groups (i.e., native speakers, intermediate learners, and advanced learners), with 28 subjects each, took part in the study. Findings show that advanced speakers behave in a more nativelike manner than intermediate learners. Learners, nonetheless, are not capable of blocking the acceptability of preverbal subjects in those contexts in which native speakers disfavor them and show high productivity levels of underspecified L2 rules that lead them to accept postverbal subjects in infelicitous contexts (e.g., VP focus). These results are consistent with MG, the representation model proposed by Amaral and Roeper (2014), because an acquisition path can be described using simple rules with lexical or pragmatic restrictions, which may be targetlike. Optionality can be explained considering that L1 and L2 rules coexist and are never deleted, simply assigned different productivity levels or blocked.

Word Order in Portuguese Gerund Clauses: comparing Old Portuguese and Dialectal Portuguese

Differently from the standard contemporary variety of European Portuguese, in which subject-verb inversion is considered categorical in gerund clauses, in Old Portuguese and Dialectal European Portuguese we can find both subject-verb and verb-subject orders in gerund clauses. These variable word orders challenge classical assumptions that correlate word order in gerund clauses with the null subject parameter. Therefore, other factors have to be taken into account. This work investigates the factors that condition subject-verb word order in gerund clauses of Old Portuguese and Dialectal European Portuguese. Corpus data show us that there is a difference in the frequency of subject-verb inversion in both varieties: verb-subject is the predominant word order in Old Portuguese, while subject-verb is the predominant word order in the dialects, regardless of the presence of inflected gerunds. In what concerns the conditioning factors that may trigger one order or the other, we considered the type of verb, the type of subject, and the presence of a connective. In the dialects, regardless of overt inflection, the most important factor for the post-verbal occurrence of the subject is the type of verb. In contrast, in Old Portuguese subject-verb inversion is the dominant pattern and post-verbal subjects can be found with all verb classes. We hypothesize that differences between the two varieties may correlate with the productivity of gerund clauses introduced by a connective, the specification of the C-domain and information-driven movement.

Topic and focus in Old French V1 and V2 structures

AbstractThe hypothesis that Old French was not a verb-second (V2) language, but rather a Topic-initial language, is evaluated in a corpus of verb initial (V1) and V2 matrix clauses extracted from a corpus of 12th- and 13th-century texts. It is shown that the initial constituent of V2 clauses is not always a Topic; it may be part of the informational Focus, or it could be an element that is neither Topic nor Focus. In addition, in V1 and V2 sentences with subject inversion, the postverbal subject may be an informational Topic, contrary to the hypothesis that subjects must move to the preverbal position to avoid being interpreted as part of the informational Focus. Therefore, from an Information-Structure point of view, Old French is similar to a standard V2 language like German. However, certain differences between 12th- and 13th-century texts could suggest that the use of the left periphery evolved during the period considered.

Lexical Parametrization and Early Subjects in L1 Italian

Italian is a pro drop language, since it allows subject drop and subject inversion. The pro-drop parameter is fixed early on (Orfitelli,2008), but both grammatical and informational factors might regulate the distribution of overt clausal subjects. On the grammatical side, the verb class influences the distribution of overt subjects: overt subjects in Italian are more likely to be found with unaccusative verbs (Lorusso, Caprin & Guasti 2005). On the informational side, 1st and 2nd person pronouns are more likely to e dropped than 3rd person NPs because the latter are more informative (Serratrice, 2005): 1st and 2nd ab ne recovered by the discourse, while 3rd persons are totally event anchored and have to be identified referentially within the linguistic stimuli. The parametric differences encoded in the lexical items, for example the unaccusative vs unergative distinction for verbs or the person ‘informative’ morphology, influence the subject drop in Italian: we propose a Lexical Parametrization account (Manzini & Wexler 1987) for subject drop in Italian, since the characteristic of lexical items influence the likelihood of appearance of an overt syntactic structure. Furthermore the distribution of indefinite postverbal subjects found just with unaccusatives in early stages of acquisition of Italian (Lorusso, 2014) confirms that the lexical characteristics of both the subject NPs and the verbs (in a subset relation with other NPs and verbs respectively) determine the parametric overt variation across the different stage of the acquisition of Italian, as Lexical Parametrization predicts.

Agreement Asymmetries and Word Order in Iraqi Arabic

Agreement asymmetries in the varieties of Arabic have been a topic of continuing attraction. One particularly interesting area where this agreement asymmetry occurs is the case of conjoined subjects. Here Iraqi Arabic, and reportedly other spoken Arabic dialects, differentiate between preverbal and post-verbal subjects. In VS orders the agreement is sometimes with the first conjunct DP while in SV order there is full agreement with the whole conjoined DP. A number of proposals have been suggested to offer a formal account for this asymmetry in Standard Arabic and modern spoken dialects. However, these formal accounts with their single mechanisms fail to deal with the evident variability in the agreement pattern that is exhibited in sentences with VS order. The paper attempts to account for this variability via the investigation of the performance-related processing factors lying behind it. To this effect, a sentence production experiment is conducted that manipulates subject-verb and subject-predicative adjective order. The informants view objects on a poster, name the objects and produce sentences of varying word order that contain two agreement targets. The difference in this order appears to produce a significant difference in the agreement pattern of the agreement target. Post-subject verbs exhibit agreement with the whole conjoined DP, and pre-subject verbs exhibit variability in their agreement pattern, while adjectives do not show this asymmetry since they always occur after the subject. This shows that linear order plays a substantial role in determining agreement in the resolution of the target number. .

On different types of postverbal subjects in Italian

On different types of postverbal subjects in Italian

Early null and overt subjects in the Spanish of simultaneous English-Spanish bilinguals and Crosslinguistic Influence

This study assesses the scope of the Crosslinguistic Influence (CLI) hypothesis’ predictions with regard to early bilingual acquisition. To this end, we analyze longitudinal corpus data from four bilinguals attesting the acquisition of subjecthood (null versus overt; preverbal versus postverbal) and the pragmatic adequacy of early null and overt subjects in a null-subject language (i.e., Spanish) in combination with a language differing in its pro-drop parameter setting (i.e., English). Our results indicate that CLI barely affects the development of subjects in the null-subject language at the initial stages, namely at the outset of null and overt subjects, and in turn support the Separate Development Hypothesis. Our bilingual cohort patterns with their Spanish-acquiring monolingual peer in that both groups display comparable proportions of null subjects as well as acquisitional trajectories of null and overt subjects at the early stages of acquisition. Much like monolinguals, bilinguals begin to produce preverbal and postverbal subjects concurrently. The bilingual children and the monolingual child of this study actually produce extremely high rates of pragmatically appropriate covert and overt subjects, which are for the most part target-like from the start, thus pointing to the absence of CLI effects. In light of monolingual and bilingual data, the paper also revisits the hotly debated issue of the ‘no overt subject’ stage of Grinstead (1998,et seq.), its existence in child Spanish being questionable.

The Origin of Front Vowel Nominal Prefixes in Berber

Almost all nouns in Berber are preceded by a prefix. The most commonly attested prefix system marks gender, number and ‘state’. There are two states, the annexed state or Etat d’Annexion (henceforth EA) which marks the post-verbal subject and post-preposition nouns, and the free state or Etat Libre (henceforth EL), which is used in all other contexts, and is the usual citation form.1 The example of the noun aɣyul ‘donkey’ in Kabyle Berber below illustrates the typical system found in Moroccan-Algerian Berber languages.2

Structural Case Assignment in Standard Arabic: A Feature-Based-Inheritance Perspective

The study seeks to explore structural (nominative and accusative) Case assignment in Standard Arabic (henceforth, SA). The objective is to offer a unified account of structural Case assignment in VSO structures, verbal copular sentences, and SVO structures introduced by the complementizer Ɂinna in SA. Following Chomsky’s (2005) minimalist analysis, I argue that TP and VP are not phases in SA; I assume that CP and vP are the only phases in SA clause structure. Furthermore, I assume that the head C of the CP phase is the source of all the features (edge feature and phi-features) on T in SA. The paper shows that Case is not assigned by T, but rather by the phase head C of CP which is responsible for Case assignment. It shows that Case and phi-features of the subject (the Goal) can be valued either under a long-distance Agree relation when the subject remains in situ in VSO structures or by raising the subject DP from [Spec-vP] to [Spec-TP] in SVO structures introduced by Ɂinna. Moreover, the accusative Case is assigned to the object under the Agree relation established between the phase head v and the object. Besides, I argue that there are two subjects in SVO structures introduced by Ɂinna: the external subject is the preverbal subject which follows Ɂinna and the internal subject which is a pro(nominal); in such structures I assume that C assigns two Cases; it assigns an external accusative Case to the preverbal NP and an internal nominative Case to the postverbal pro subject.

The Syntactic Cartography of the TP Layer in Minimalism

Recent analyses of word order in Standard Arabic and the regional varieties of Arabic have assumed that the postverbal subject in the VSO word order in these languages is actually in-situ in its base position in spec-vP (Fassi Fehri, 1993; Ouhalla, 1994; Shlonsky, 1997; Benmamoun, 2000 et al.). In this paper, I provide an alternative analysis in which the postverbal subject in the VSO word order is assumed to have vacated its base-position in spec-vP and moved to the left of the vP projection. I take this new position of the postverbal subject to be the specifier position of the functional head Subj that heads a projection between vP and TP (Kayne, 2000; Belletti, 2004; Ordonez, 2005). Arguments that support this assumption come from the comparison of Standard Arabic and Sana’ani Arabic, through examining the distribution of postverbal subjects with respect to quantifiers, adverbs, pronominal clitics and restructuring contexts. This paper introduces new evidence to the effect that a detailed cartography of the postverbal area in these languages can provide a relatively minimal account for parametric differences in postverbal subject position(s) in other related languages.

Processamento de sujeitos de orações com verbos inacusativos no português brasileiro

This is a study about the optionality observed in the placement of syntactic objects of unaccusative monoargumental verbs in Portuguese. These verbs allow for both pre-verbal or post-verbal subjects in this language. We sought to investigate the hypothesis that such grammatical optionality may diverge from what is observed in sentence processing, therefore creating a separation of the two grammatically possible constructions at the level of their inplementation as linguistic performance. Our investigation was based upon a psycholiguistic experiment for which we employed a type of task that allows for very precise localization of processing events leading to higher processing costs: the maze task. Our results provide evidence that post-verbal syntactic subjects in sentences with uaccusative verbs yield systematically less costly sentence processing for speakers of Brazilian Portuguese.