Prepositional Object Construction Research Articles

When the independence of syntactic representation meets the sentence processing of Mandarin: Evidence from syntactic priming.

There is no consensus on whether syntactic representation is independent of semantic representation in Mandarin. In four experiments, we adopted the syntactic priming paradigm to investigate the independence of syntactic representation in Mandarin. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the priming effects of double object construction (DO) and prepositional object construction (PO) with the ditransitive verb being repeated across the prime and target. Experiment 1 showed two-way priming effects of DO and PO. Experiment 2 showed that the syntactic priming effects persisted regardless of whether the semantic features (animacy of the Theme) matched across the prime and target or not. Furthermore, such effects persisted in Experiments 3 and 4 where the ditransitive verb across the prime and target was not repeated. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that syntactic/semantic independence is universal and favoured over the traditional Chinese grammar account, which claims that the syntactic representation of Mandarin is not independent of the semantic representation.

Constructional variation with two near-synonymous verbs: the case of schicken and senden in present-day German

This article reports on the results of a corpus-based study of alternating ditransitive argument structures comprising an agent-like, a theme-like and a recipient-like argument in combination with the ditransitive verbs schicken and senden in present-day German. The alternation concerns the Indirect Object Construction with the addressee (i.e. the recipient-like argument) expressed in the dative case (IOC) and the Prepositional Object Construction with the addressee either introduced by the preposition an (+ accusative) or zu (+ dative) (POC). The quantitative analysis (logistic regression and Conditional Inference Tree) is based on N = 2689 naturally occurring sentences drawn from the Deutsches Referenzkorpus (IDS Mannheim). The article first presents a probabilistic account of the data that aims to predict the interplay of a wide array of morphosyntactic, semantic, pragmatic and processing factors. The problem with an exclusively semantic explanation of the alternation is that both IOC and POC can express the same senses. However, there are tendencies that relate IOC in particular to pronominal and individual addressees, whereas POC correlates more strongly with collective, dual reference and object addressees as well as passive voice. The article then proposes a typologically-informed account of the data that combines a constructional analysis with valency theory and a layered approach to the meanings of both the schematic argument structure construction and the verbs schicken and senden. The account corroborates the narrow definition of a construction as an encoded form-meaning pairing that allows for formal and pragmatic variation of the recipient-like argument. Accordingly, IOC and POC are not considered constructions in their own right but variants of a semantically underdetermined construction with an underspecified goal argument in present-day German.

‘Give it him and then I’ll give you money for it’. The dative alternation in Contemporary British English

‘Dative alternation’ refers to a linguistic phenomenon related to ditransitive verbs, that is, verbs which take a subject and two objects referring to a theme and a recipient. In English, the phenomenon offers the possibility of alternation between a prepositional object construction (PREP), where the recipient is encoded as a prepositional phrase (give it to him), a double object construction (DOC), where the recipient precedes the theme (give him it) and an alternative double object construction (altDOC), where the theme takes precedence over the recipient (give it him), the latter constrained to dialectal usage. Even though this alternation has been extensively addressed in the literature, few studies have considered language-external factors in determining the choice of encoding. This paper analyses the distribution of ditransitive forms in competition in contemporary British English from a twofold perspective, shedding some light on the distribution of these variants across time, along with the study of PREP, DOC and altDOC in relation to their sociolinguistic dimension. The corpus used as source of evidence is the British National Corpus, a 100-million-word collection of both written and spoken language from a wide range of sources.

How broad are thematic roles? Evidence from structural priming

Verbs that are similar in meaning tend to occur in the same syntactic structures. For example, give and hand, which denote transfer of possession, both appear in the prepositional-object construction: “The child gave/handed the ball to the dog.” We can call the child a “giver” in one case and a “hander” in the other, or we can refer to her more generally as the agent, or doer of the action. Similarly, the dog can be called the recipient, and the ball, the theme. These generalized notions of agent, recipient, and theme are known as thematic roles. An important theoretical question for linguists and psycholinguists is what the set of thematic roles is. Are there a small number of very broad roles, perhaps with each one mapping onto a single canonical syntactic position? Or are there many distinct roles, several mapping to the same syntactic position but conveying subtly different meanings? We investigate this question across eleven structural priming experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk (total N = 2914), asking whether speakers treat the thematic roles recipient and destination (i.e., location or spatial goal) as interchangeable, suggesting the broad role of goal, or distinct, suggesting two separate roles. To do so, we look for priming between dative sentences (e.g., “The man gave the ball to the dog”), which have a recipient role (dog), and locative sentences (e.g., “The man loaded hay onto the wagon”), which instead have a destination role (wagon). Our pattern of findings confirms that thematic role mappings can be primed independent of syntactic structure, lexical content, and animacy. However, we find that this priming does not extend from destinations to recipients (or vice versa), providing evidence that these two roles are distinct.

Alternating constructions with ditransitivegebenin present-day German

AbstractThis paper reports on a corpus-based investigation of the verbgebenin two alternating ditransitive constructions in present-day German with theRecipienteither coded in the dative case (the indirect object construction, abbreviated: IOC) or by means of the PPan+ accusative case (the prepositional object construction, POC). The study is based on a quantitative analysis ofN=1,301 sentences (712 IOC and 589 POC) drawn from theDeutsche Referenzkorpus(IDS, Mannheim) which were annotated for 20 factors. Using a logistic regression analysis, we found evidence for the effect of 10 predictors (bootstrapped C-index=95%). We discuss our results in comparison to corpus-based research of the English dative alternation and point to some notable differences between both languages. In German, POC appears to be strongly correlated with collectiverecipients, collectiveagents, passive voice, and concrete and propositional transfer senses of the main verbgeben. With regard to the semantics ofgeben, we argue that the quantitative findings are best accounted for on the basis of a general underspecified verb meaning ‘gebentransfer’ that does not yet differentiate between the three possible verb senses (concrete, abstract, and propositional).

Directionality and complexity of L1 transfer in L2 acquisition: Evidence from L2 Chinese discourse

Abstract First language (L1) transfer is a common phenomenon in second language (L2) acquisition. However, it will be argued in this article that although there are indeed pervasive influences of learners’ L1 in L2 acquisition, L1 transfer is not everywhere and it can be directional. We compare data from Chang’s (2001b. Discourse effects on the second language acquisition of English and Chinese dative structures. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i at Manoa PhD dissertation, 2004. Discourse effects on EFL learners’ production of dative constructions. Journal of Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences 33. 145–169.) studies of Chinese-speaking learners of English with data of our study of English-speaking learners of Chinese to examine whether their L2 English discourse and L2 Chinese discourse are equally influenced by their L1 discourse rules. We focus on learners’ answers to wh-questions with a double object construction or a prepositional object construction. The results demonstrate that L1 transfer takes place in Chinese-speaking learners’ L2 English discourse but not in English-speaking learners’ L2 Chinese discourse. This directionality of L1 transfer is accounted for on the basis of computational complexity of linguistic structures involved and on an economical consideration.

Give-Constructions in Heritage Ambon Malay in the Netherlands

The domains where languages show variable syntax are often vulnerable in language contact situations. This paper investigates one such domain in Ambon Malay: the variable encoding of give-events. We study give-expressions in the Ambon Malay variety spoken by heritage speakers in the Netherlands, and compare the responses of heritage speakers with those of homeland speakers in Ambon, Indonesia. We report that heritage Ambon Malay shows an innovative higher incidence of do constructions compared to the homeland variety, and a significant decrease in the frequency of ‘two predicate’ constructions. The change that heritage Ambon Malay is undergoing is thus not categorical, but rather involves a change in frequency of certain constructions. We argue that this ‘restructuring by changing frequency’ is due to a combination of factors: influence from Dutch, universal tendencies in language acquisition, and the language history of individual speakers. Apart from a quantitative difference, we also observe a qualitative difference between the give-constructions of heritage and homeland speakers of Ambon Malay: both groups use different prepositions in the prepositional object construction, a reflection of their different social histories.

On the inherent semantic meaning of double object Latinate verbs in English in modern and historical perspective *

Abstract This paper shows the realization of arguments of Latinate double object verbs and an analysis of their inherent semantic meaning in the Late Middle English and early Modern English periods, hence in the time-span when they were borrowed into English. The main aim of this paper is to show that although Latinate verbs occur in a construction with what seems to be an allative preposition, not all of them lexicalize movement in the inherent meanings. In contrast, some Latinate verbs lexicalize only a caused possession. What is more, this paper shows that the caused possession Latinate verbs select a different variant of prepositional object construction than the one selected by Latinate verbs lexicalizing movement.

Changes in task-extrinsic context do not affect the persistence of long-term cumulative structural priming

We present two experiments exploring the role of extrinsic memory factors (i.e., factors that are extrinsic to the primary task that is being performed) and intrinsic memory factors (i.e., factors that are intrinsic to the primary task being completed) in the persistence of cumulative structural priming effects. Participants completed a two-phase experiment, where the first phase established a bias toward producing either the double object or prepositional object construction, and the second phase assessed the effects of this bias. Extrinsic memory factors were manipulated by having participants complete the two phases of the study in the same or different locations (physical context change) or while watching the same or different videos (video context change). Participants completed the second phase of the study 10min after the first phase of the study in Experiment 1, and after a delay of 1week in Experiment 2. Results suggest that the observed structural priming effects were not affected by manipulations of extrinsic memory factors. These data suggest that explicit memory does not play a large role in the long-term persistence of cumulative structural priming effects.

Structural priming as implicit learning: cumulative priming effects and individual differences.

We explored the claim that structural priming is a case of implicit learning within the language production system. The experiment began with a baseline phase, in which we assessed participants' rates of production for double object and prepositional object constructions. Then participants were biased toward the production of either the double object or prepositional object construction. Finally, we again assessed participants' rates of production for the target constructions. Consistent with claims that structural priming is a case of implicit learning, we found that biasing participants toward the prepositional object construction produced stronger cumulative priming effects than did biasing participants toward the double object construction. We also found that individual differences in implicit learning were marginally correlated with overall rates of production for the double object construction. Participants who scored better on the learning task tended to produce fewer double object constructions.

I gave it him — on the motivation of the ‘alternative double object construction’ in varieties of British English

Three ditransitive constructions can be found in varieties of British English: (i) the ‘prepositional object construction’, where the recipient is encoded as a prepositional phrase (gave it to him); (ii) the ‘canonical double object construction’, where the recipient precedes the theme (gave him it); and (iii) the ‘alternative double object construction’, where the theme precedes the recipient (gave it him). The last of these constructions is typically found in (north)western varieties of British English when both objects are pronominal, and most of the relevant varieties have a ‘canonical’ ordering (REC > TH) when the theme is non-pronominal. Consequently, there seems to be an ‘inconsistency’ in the clause structure of the varieties in question. Using comparative and historical evidence, this article addresses the question of how this inconsistency can be explained. The ‘paradigmatic mismatch’ under discussion is shown to be a remnant of Old English clause structure which can also be observed in other verb second languages such as Modern German. It is argued to result from a tendency for both verb positions (finite/left and non-finite/right) to attract direct objects. This tendency is regarded as an effect of performance preferences in natural language discourse.

Is long-term structural priming affected by patterns of experience with individual verbs?

Several recent papers have reported long-term structural priming effects in experiments where previous patterns of experience with the double object and prepositional object constructions are shown to affect later patterns of language production for those constructions. The experiments reported in this paper address the extent to which these long-term priming effects are modulated by the participants’ patterns of experience with particular verbs within the double object and prepositional object constructions. The results of three experiments show that patterns of experience with particular verbs using the double object or prepositional object constructions do not have much effect on the shape of the long-term structural priming effects reported elsewhere in the literature. These findings lend support to the claim that structural priming is the result of adaptations to the language production system that occur on an abstract, structural level of representation that is separate from representations regarding the behavior of particular lexical items in particular constructions [e.g., Chang, F., Dell, G. S., & Bock, K. (2006). Becoming syntactic. Psychological Review, 113, 234–272].

Recent experience affects the strength of structural priming

In two experiments, we explore how recent experience with particular syntactic constructions affects the strength of the structural priming observed for those constructions. The results suggest that (1) the strength of structural priming observed for double object and prepositional object constructions is affected by the relative frequency with which each construction was produced earlier in the experiment, and (2) the effects of relative frequency are not modulated by the temporal placement of the tokens of each construction within the experiment.