Prepositional Phrases Research Articles

The genitive alternation in German

Abstract The genitive case in German is predominantly used to form noun modifiers (die Sehenswürdigkeiten [Hamburgs] ‘the sights of Hamburg’). Such genitive modifiers occur in a variety of different registers in German, and they have been claimed to be especially characteristic of non-proximal, written language. In many instances, they are interchangeable with diachronically younger prepositional phrases headed by von, with no noticeable impact on interpretation, thus giving rise to a genuine syntactic alternation phenomenon. There is an ongoing debate in the literature as to the distribution and function of these constructions. Based on corpus data from newspapers and internet discussion forums (approximately 15,000 noun phrases), we discuss semantic and syntactic conditions that limit the scope of this alternation. We then use a mixed-effects logistic regression model to examine a number of intra- and extralinguistic factors that bear on the choice of one construction over the other. We find that von-modifiers are used much less frequently than genitive modifiers overall, but there are grammatical niches in which they seem to thrive and, perhaps, even spread.

K-mean cluster analysis of the use of prepositional phrases for location, writing, reading, and understanding words presented in a three-dimensional, puzzled, and distorted form

The primary objective of this study is to examine the statistically homogeneous clustering in the hierarchical arrangement of the use of adverbial clauses for location, recognition, and comprehension of words presented in three-dimensional, rebus, and distorted forms. The study was conducted on a sample of 140 participants. The first subset of participants constituted the experimental group, consisting of 70 deaf students, while the second subset formed the control group, comprising 70 hearing students of the same chronological age. A battery of tests was utilized as a measurement instrument, including the “Test of Writing and Comprehending Adverbial Clauses for Location,” “Test of Reading, Writing, and Comprehending Words Presented in Three-Dimensional Form,” “Test of Reading, Writing, and Comprehending Words Presented in Rebus Form,” and “Test of Reading, Writing, and Comprehending Words Presented in Distorted Form.” In the descriptive analysis, frequencies of the total words achieved by both deaf and hearing participants were computed for the different types of measurement instruments employed. To identify the most robust homogeneity of participants concerning the applied variables, non-hierarchical and hierarchical Cluster Analyses were employed. The research results indicate a significant lag in the use of adverbial clauses for location, writing, reading, and understanding words presented in three-dimensional, rebus, and distorted forms among deaf children in comparison to their hearing peers. The Cluster Analysis revealed the most significant linkage between the variable “Number of used adverbial clauses for location” and the variable “Number of recognized words presented in three-dimensional form.” This link was clustered with the variable “Number of written words presented in rebus form” and the variable “Number of written words presented in three-dimensional form.” An analysis of variance for isolated clusters identified a statistically significant difference in the entire measurement space of adverbial clauses for location, three-dimensional, rebus, and distorted forms of words, with a level of statistical significance at p=0.00.

Noun phrase complexity in English integrated writing placement test responses

Research has shown that the use of noun phrases is a salient characteristic favored in academic writing (Biber et al., 2011; Biber & Gray, 2011; Parkinson & Musgrave, 2014). Although studies have examined the structure of noun phrases, further research is needed to deepen our understanding of noun phrase complexity in order to inform the instructional content of academic writing courses. In response to this need and the call for more empirical evidence for the developmental stages for complexity features proposed by Biber et al. (2011), this study aimed to investigate differences in the use of noun modifiers among second language learners of English at varying proficiency levels. A corpus consisting of 286 essays, written by international students in response to an English integrated writing placement test, was analyzed for grammatical structures of noun phrases. Results indicated that more proficient writers employed significantly more attributive adjectives, prepositional phrases, finite relative clauses with non-animate head nouns, and nonfinite relative clauses. These findings support previous research on the relationship between writing proficiency and the use of noun modifiers and provide implications for both academic writing instruction and the development of writing assessment criteria.

Thematic Relations

This study explores the processing of noun-prep-noun combinations in prepositional phrases in Brazilian Portuguese, focusing on the syntactic-semantic relationship marked by prepositions, implies the semantic sense in which the noun is being modified. We chose to contrast particularly two types of thematic relationships like 'made of' and 'made for’, categorized as: material and function (e.g. ‘toalha de crochê’, crocheted cloth vs. agulha de crochê, crochet needle). To do so, we conducted two psycholinguistic experiments: Experiment 1 consisted of a self-paced reading/picture matching task to investigate the impact of semantic relationship on processing time; and Experiment 2 employed a cloze task (e.g. ‘toalha de ______’) and Likert scale likelihood judgments to norm the stimuli and assess cognitive preferences for the types of relation explored (i.e., material or function). Our results revealed slower reading times for the function type relation, suggesting a higher processing demand, possibly due to covert semantic computations required for this relation. Cloze completions and likelihood ratings also indicated a cognitive preference for this type of relationship. We attribute these observed patterns to the robust syntactic-semantic relationship inherent to functional type relations, coupled with a broader range of potential response options. In contrast, material type relations demonstrated a higher level of convergence among participants for cloze responses, likely due to more restricted response options and, consequently, increased probability. Future EEG studies are proposed to identify specific moments in the cognitive processing of the constituents of these structures and assess possible anticipatory effects of prepositional phrase modifiers. These discoveries make a meaningful contribution to the broader literature on language processing, aligning with analogous patterns observed in different languages with a cognitive distinction between thematic relations and feature-based (i.e., telic and constitutive relations), such as in Wisniewsky & Love, 1998; Estes et al., 2003, 2011; Pustejovsky et al., 2016; Flick et al., 2021.

The Lexical and Syntactical Calque superaedificare in the Latin Tradition of the New Testament Epistles

Abstract The prefixed verb superaedificare, which is a calque of ἐποικοδοµέω, governs prepositional phrases and plain cases in the Latin New Testament Epistles. The Vulgate and Old Latin manuscripts feature constructions of superaedificare in agreement with the Greek source text. However, alternative translations are attested when the biblical text is cited by early Christian writers. In citations where the biblical passage is included in the author’s text, aedificare is frequently used instead of superaedificare. By contrast, when the biblical text is quoted for the first time and its source is acknowledged, superaedificare is employed and its construction matches that of the Greek text. These citation habits show that the construction of superaedificare is a syntactical calque of the Greek source text, which is attested when the citations are marked as such but is not used when the biblical text is embedded in the patristic text.

Satisfying the composite probe on the Topic head in Mandarin Chinese

AbstractThis paper investigates two puzzles concerning gapped topicalization in Chinese: (i) DPs are restricted from undergoing multiple gapped topicalization via Agree and movement, while prepositional phrases do not face this limitation; (ii) DP gapped topicalization, typically viewed as an instance of Ā‐movement, is able to feed anaphoric binding, a property conventionally associated with A‐movement. I propose that these two puzzles can be elucidated by adopting three hypotheses: (i) Van Urk's (2015) featural approach to A/Ā‐distinction, (ii) Coon & Bale's (2014) composite probing mechanism, and (iii) Deal's (2015, 2024) interaction/satisfaction model of Agree. I will also demonstrate how this proposal readily provides a systematically consistent derivational mechanism to generate successive‐cyclic topicalization in Chinese.

An Analysis of Structural Units and Modification of the Idiomatic Expressions on Speech Videos

This research analyzed idiomatic expressions in speech videos on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel. This study used descriptive linguistics to collect qualitative data and used analytical techniques. The data were taken from nine speech videos from TEDx Talks YouTube channel, after collected the idiomatic expressions, the data were categorized using two theories: Biber’s (1999) and Ernst’s (1981) theories. This study found 54 kinds of structural units of idiomatic expressions with the most dominant were prepositional phrase idioms with total 21 idioms, followed by selected verb + noun phrase idioms with total 14 idioms, next selected verb + prepositional phrase idioms with total 13 idioms, and lastly noun phrase idioms with total 6 idioms. This study also found 11 idiom modifications, and internal modifications were the most appeared with total 5 idioms, followed by external modifications with total 4 idioms, and lastly conjunction modification with total 2 idioms. The implications of this research can be used in teaching and learning for EFL/ESL.

Mijloace de redare a filiației în spațiul romanic medieval. Polisemia prepoziției de

The preposition de ( lat. de) is being used in early medieval Latin documents in order to compile the complementary denomination, marking mainly the provenance of the denominate (for the first centuries of the documentary use, at least). De prepositional structures occur always after the personal name (i.e. first name) with the same functionality in the medieval documents from the whole Roman space. But the vernacular way of name composition, involving the use of the preposition de with the parentage meaning (inherited in the Western Romance languages, but not in the Eastern Romance ones) are also being registered in the Romance documents (from the XIIth century in the aragonese official documents, and from the XIVth century in the Occitan ones). These prepositional phrases always involve an anthroponym (as selected Noun Phrase), indicating thus the parentage relation, instead of the provenance indication, as seen before, in the official acts drafted in the chancellery Latin. When these two different ways of composition of the complementary denomination are being used in the official acts in the same historical stage, one can expect the complete elimination of the preposition: few members of the same occitan family bear the same name, but linked differently: Ramun de la Pena, Miquel de Pena, but Bernat Pena. On the other hand, Romanian inherited the preposition de but only with the provenance use (e.g. Stan de Câne, in which Câne is the name of the personal estate); for the parentage meaning, the Old Romanian specialized some genitival proclitic markers (al, lui), used mainly in the popular anthroponymy that one can encounter in the Latin Medieval documents: Ioan al popae; Dumitru al Myrkey, Zawa fychor allu Mayne.

Exploring the Grammatical Complexity of International Teaching Assistants: A Comparative Corpus Study

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to analyze the grammatical complexity features of international teaching assistants' (ITAs) mock‐teaching presentations and to compare the distributions of these features to those found in the Oral English Proficiency Test (a local ITA assessment), university classroom teaching, conversation, and academic writing. The data consisted of 186 prospective ITAs' mock‐teaching presentations collected from two ITA training courses at a large U.S. university: one higher‐level course and one lower‐level course. All presentations were transcribed, proofread, and built into a corpus consisting of 247,043 words. Based on the previous corpus studies, a total of 22 grammatical complexity features were selected for the analysis. Overall, the discourse of ITA mock‐teaching involved a substantial number of both the grammatical complexity features commonly found in spoken conversation (e.g., finite adverbial clauses and modals) and those commonly used in academic writing (e.g., noun premodifiers and prepositional phrases). The frequency distributions of the features differed in complex ways between ITA mock‐teaching and the other registers, as well as between the higher‐level and lower‐level ITAs. Pedagogical implications for ITA training and assessment, and future research directions are discussed at the end.

Seeing the Forest but Naming the Trees: An Object-Over-Place Bias in Learning Noun Labels.

Objects and places are foundational spatial domains represented in human symbolic expressions, like drawings, which show a prioritization of depicting small-scale object-shape information over the large-scale navigable place information in which objects are situated. Is there a similar object-over-place bias in language? Across six experiments, adults and 3- to 4-year-old children were asked either to extend a novel noun in a labeling phrase, to extend a novel noun in a prepositional phrase, or to simply match pictures. To dissociate specific object and place information from more general figure and ground information, participants either saw scenes with both place information (a room) and object information (a block in the room), or scenes with two kinds of object information that matched the figure-ground relations of the room and block by presenting an open container with a smaller block inside. While adults showed a specific object-over-place bias in both extending novel noun labels and matching, they did not show this bias in extending novel nouns following prepositions. Young children showed this bias in extending novel noun labels only. Spatial domains may thus confer specific and foundational biases for word learning that may change through development in a way that is similar to that of other word-learning biases about objects, like the shape bias. These results expand the symbolic scope of prior studies on object biases in drawing to object biases in language, and they expand the spatial domains of prior studies characterizing the language of objects and places.

Does interlanguage grammar project intermediate categories? Evidence of partial representation from one‐substitution by Chinese learners of English

AbstractThis study investigates how prepositional phrases within English noun phrases (e.g., the student of physics from Italy) are represented and processed by advanced Chinese‐speaking learners of English (henceforth L2ers). Using grammaticality judgment tasks and self‐paced reading tasks, we aim to examine the offline performance and the real‐time processing of English NP‐internal PPs in relation to the head nouns. To this end, two groups of participants were instructed to provide judgments of testing materials and to respond on‐line to experimental stimuli containing the proform one. Results indicate that highly proficient L2ers processed English NP‐internal PPs utterly differently from English controls in that they demonstrated almost no sensitivity to the existence of PPs as complements following one, mostly without consciously distinguishing them from PP adjuncts. To account for L2ers’ response patterns, we propose a partial representation hypothesis (PRH), claiming that L2ers tend to disregard intermediate categories containing PP‐complements in English NPs, thus only partially representing syntactic constituents of the target language. As a structural explanation, PRH awaits further corroboration and/or falsification from more empirical studies.

문학작품을 토대로 한 부정어 동반 There 존재구문 연구 및 교육방안 제시

This study examines the primary function of the ‘There + be(with negatives) structure’ in English, asserting its role in emphasizing the non-existence of a noun in a sentence. Analysis of this structure alongside ‘be(with negatives)’ in literary works such as Black Beauty by Anna Swell, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and the Korean-English translated literature The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith, is conducted. A survey involving three English teachers from Korea and five English native speakers aimed to uncover disparities in perception of these sentence patterns. Findings indicate a minimal occurrence of ‘be(with negatives) sentences’ without ‘there,’ with the ‘be’ verb primarily complementing prepositional phrases rather than emphasizing the absence of a noun. The survey underscores the importance of negative words in determining the appropriate usage of existential sentences, suggesting their pivotal role in ensuring accuracy and contextual appropriateness. While supporting the initial hypothesis, further research with larger sample sizes and rigorous statistical analysis is deemed necessary for conclusive confirmation.

Types of zero complements in French and Spanish prepositional phrases

Types of zero complements in French and Spanish prepositional phrases

On the Alternation between Complex Prepositions and Adverbial Prepositions in Esperanto, such as en la mezo de vs. meze de / en la kadro de vs. kadre de

The grammar of Esperanto allows a derived adverbial to replace the initial element in any complex prepositional phrase, thus creating a range of equivalent structures such as en la mezo de / meze de ‘in the middle of’, en la kadro de / kadre de ‘in the framework of’ etc. This ‘adverbial alternation’ raises a number of questions. Are Adv Ps interchangeable with their Complex P counterparts? Do they occur with the same frequency? Does lexicalisation operate in the same way in Esperanto as it does in other languages? Here I examine a sample of alternating structures in a corpus of standard written Esperanto (Tekstaro >10 million tokens). While many pairs seem to be interchangeable, others appear to be developing contrastive use. The use of idioms and other marked units of phraseology is often seen as evidence that Esperanto has become an autonomous language. Here I point to evidence of less marked, more routine patterns of discourse which are unique to this speech community.

Secondary predication in Irish and the syntax-prosody interface

Cross-linguistically, secondary predicates may be distinguished from event-modifiers (e.g. adverbs or converbs) and individual-modifiers (e.g. attributive adjectives, participles, or prepositional phrases) via the presence or absence of prosodic processes and phonetic cues. This paper examines the prosodic behavior of secondary predicates in Modern Irish, which can form bare adjectival depictive and resultative secondary predicates. We show that Mod. Irish bare AP secondary predicates are distinguished from surface distributionally equivalent attributive modifiers through the morphophonological system of initial mutation and cues such as phrase-final lengthening and pauses. These facts support an analysis of secondary predicates as extraposition structures that project to a φ-max/ι-boundary, mapping to complex syntactico-semantic representations. Evidence from Italian consonant gemination (raddoppiamento sintattico) and Georgian boundary tones are likewise discussed under the proposed analysis.

Aspects of the presence of the Aristotelian Logic in Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity:

In this article, we discuss a particular aspect of the presence of the Aristotelian Logic –mainly based on the treatise Topics– in the Christianity of the West as well as in the Christianity of the East, with Boethius and Manuel Holobolus as representatives. As a reference text, we have Boethius’ treatise De topicis differentiis, which was translated into Greek, with certain adaptations and individual comments, by Manuel Holobolus. We approach a concise passage from the Byzantine scholar’s translation, which refers to “middle places”, that is to say, to those which arise neither from the meaning of names per se nor from external factors alone, but from their encounter with each other under particular circumstances. We investigate how “middle places” are distinguished into three categories –a) by πτώσις (case), b) by συστοιχία (co-ordination), and c) by διαίρεσις (division)– and how arguments are structured on the basis of their use. They appear as modalities of nouns, mainly through adjectives and adverbs within prepositional phrases, which do not refer to semantic singulars but to a structure of various kinds of relations between situations and between persons, with evaluative schemes sometimes present. We pay particular attention to how an actual case highlights both morphological and semantic variations so that it is not just a grammatical scheme but also one of philosophical interest. We indicate how through the “middle places” formal Logic is brought into relevance with Ontology, or nominal reflections with pragmatological data, in the perspective of what can be called conceptual realism, which refers to how a meaning adapts to the external conditions it is asked to describe and is transformed accordingly. Finally, we conclude that through Boethius’ original text and Holobolus's translation, the Aristotelian formal Logic is utilized by the theological and philosophical atmosphere of Christianity, both in the West and in the East, even though there is a gap of about eight centuries between the two thinkers.

Graded complementarity in the resolution of pronouns and reflexives

This paper presents an experimental evaluation of how pronoun and reflexive resolution preferences in English vary across different syntactic environments. Five structures were tested: coarguments, picture noun phrases, prepositional phrases, coordination, and comparatives. Results show that reflexives display a general preference for structurally local antecedents, but the strength of the preference varies significantly by environment; pronouns display a similarly variable, but stronger preference for nonlocal antecedents. Our findings suggest that complementarity between pronouns and reflexives may be a gradient phenomenon, with the robust complementarity observed in coargument anaphora occupying the endpoint of a graded continuum.

Comparing reflexive and personal pronouns in Chinese locative prepositional phrases

In many languages, both reflexive and personal pronouns within locative prepositional phrases (LPPs) can be co-construed with a local subject, making LPPs an ideal testing ground for non-syntactic factors influencing pronoun use. Focusing on Chinese, we experimentally tested the extent to which acceptability of reflexives ziji and ta-ziji and personal pronoun ta depends on event type (motion/perception) and relation type (contact/non-contact). We find that effects follow the trend previously reported for English but affect different forms to different degrees. Along with advancing understanding of binding in LPPs, this work contributes to comparisons between ziji and ta-ziji and the typology of pronouns more broadly.

Locative Inversion in Old English Embedded Clauses

A grammatical construction resembling Present-Day English locative inversion has already been found in Old English, with a fronted prepositional phrase prompting V2 word order, both in main and subordinate clauses. It has been demonstrated that several discourse-related factors influence the positioning of objects, fronted locatives, finite verbs and subjects in subordinate clauses. One of the main aims of the present paper is to provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the locative inversion construction in Old English subordinate clauses. The Old English data for this study were obtained from the York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose, and they were analysed using Corpus Studio. The results were compared with those for main clauses, and discourse-related factors such as PP anaphoricity or subject type were analysed in order to find the motivation for the existence of this alternation of word orders. PP anaphoricity proved not to be a determining factor in triggering finite verb inversion, while other factors such as subject weight and subject type do seem to motivate finite verb inversion, thus yielding an embedded PP-V-S word order.

Grammaticalized uses of the postverbal locative prepositional phrase in Lianhua Gan

Grammaticalized uses of the postverbal locative prepositional phrase in Lianhua Gan