Preverbal Position Research Articles

The Syntax and Pragmatics of Language Contact: a case study of Andean Spanish

In this paper, I report the results of tests that I designed to show how Andean Spanish(AS) word order is affected by language contact with Quechua. In AS the object appears in preverbal position more frequently than in Standard Spanish(SS). The main syntactic properties of focus-fronting in SS are weak-crossover and long-distance movement. I constructed tests to check for these syntactic properties and the pragmatics of focus in AS and Quechua. The results show that AS and SS are syntactically identical, but that there is pragmatic transfer from Quechua into AS. The study has implications for language contact and syntax.

Cliticization and Old Chinese word order

This paper addresses the controversial question of whether Old Chinese was an OV or VO language. Evidence frequently cited for the OV analysis is the fact that objects sometimes surface in preverbal position. In this paper, I argue that basic word order in Old Chinese was uniformly VO. Preverbal objects achieved their position via movement. This is unsurprising, given that preverbal objects were typically wh-words and pronominal clitics. The primary evidence for the movement analysis, however, comes from the demonstration that it accounts for constraints on pronoun positioning which would be mysterious on a base-generation approach.

Object Preposing in Classical and Pre-Medieval Chinese

In this paper, one of the three instances of object preposing in Classical Chinese, the structure [NP1 NP2 shi / zhi V], is discussed in detail. According to their distributional differences, two structures—A [NP1 NP2 shi V] and B [NP1 NP2 zhi V]—are distinguished, and it is shown that both constructions, although sometimes identical in the surface structure, are subject to different syntactic and semantic constraints. This analysis challenges the hypothesis proposed by Peyraube (Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientales 26(1):3–20, 1997) that structure A [NP1 NP2 shi V] was gradually replaced by structure B [NP1 NP2 zhi V] during the Warring States period. In accordance with the syntactic constraints, different analyses are proposed for structures A and B in the course of the paper. Structure A, [NPS NPO shi V], is analyzed as a copula construction, a focalization (cleft) construction with the object not in preverbal position but to the right of the copula. Structure B, which is more heterogeneous than structure A, will be subdivided into different structures, only two of which will be retained as cases of a focalized and preposed object. The analysis reveals that object preposing in Classical Chinese is evidently a case of marked word order and cannot be assumed to be a vestige of an earlier SOV word order in Chinese.

Magari

Abstract We propose a constructionist approach to the polyfunctionality of the Italian focus particle magari (roughly corresponding to ‘maybe’, but also ‘I wish’). The sheer syntactic versatility of this word leads us to detect its formal regularities at the level of discourse configurations. This level of analysis, identified within the French linguistic tradition, is defined by the maintenance of a predicate-argument-adjunct structure in discourse. The salient feature of discourse configurations is their shape, which can be described by referring to a number of topological patterns: lists of elements in the same syntactic position, repetition of syntactic structures, shifting of elements from a post-verbal to a pre-verbal position and so on. These topological patterns are meaningful to an extent and they are eligible to be regarded as constructions. Magari is shown to be regularly associated with a general topological pattern, namely a list of items that occupy the same syntactic position as the item focused by magari. Each semantic function of magari correlates with one particular kind of list. These associations of a form (the different types of lists) and a meaning (the functions of magari) are shown to be related to one another by means of inheritance links.

Focus in Georgian and the expression of contrast

This paper examines the impact of contrastive focus in Georgian syntax. In a semi-naturalistic production study, we elicited spontaneous answers to questions which have shown that contexts involving contrastive focus induce placement of the focused constituent at the immediately preverbal position more frequently than other contexts. Based on this observation we investigate the properties of Georgian grammar which may account for the different impact of contrastive vs. non-contrastive contexts on word order. We first examine the involved syntactic structures and present evidence that preverbal focus is a result of movement to the specifier position of a functional projection whose head attracts the finite verb. We then address the question whether there is evidence for an association between contrast and movement to this position and we provide evidence that the correlation between context and order in the behavioral data does not result from a biunique form–function association of the kind ‘contrast ↔ movement to the specifier position’, but from an asymmetry at a discourse level such that contexts involving contrast induce answers in which focused constituents occupy the stressed position in the clause more often than contexts that do not.

Clause Order and Information Structure in Cheke Holo

Cheke Holo (Northwest Solomonic, Solomon Islands) displays considerable clause order variation, with SVO, OVS, VSO, and VOS all attested. In addition, arguments are frequently not overtly expressed, while some arguments may be marked with the preposed particle si . This paper investigates these issues in terms of information structure by examining each in its discourse context. It concludes that the pragmatically neutral order in Cheke Holo is VSO; that a single preverbal topic position exists, accounting for SVO and OVS; and that focused arguments are located in clause-final position, accounting for VOS. It finds that continued topics are always expressed by topic-drop (that is, elision), and that preverbal position is reserved for contrastive topics and switch topics, although in certain specific contexts, switch topics may instead be dropped. The paper concludes that preposed si is confined to main clauses and is a focus marker for arguments and adjuncts in clause-final position, but that another particle si , with a variant sini , occurs following, not preceding, a sentence-initial focused constituent that can range in size from an argument to an entire clause. On the basis of the analysis presented, Cheke Holo demonstrates that focused arguments need not be new information, as often assumed, but merely need to be unpredictable in the discourse context, allowing for discourse-given or context-given arguments in contrastive focus.

Idiom syntax: Idiosyncratic or principled?

An influential theory posits that the syntactic properties of idioms are idiosyncratic and encoded in the mental lexicon in “superlemmas”. It follows that experience with an idiom is necessary in order to judge the acceptability of syntactic operations on that idiom. To test these claims, Experiment 1 explored the acceptability of sentences containing familiar or invented idioms in four syntactic constructions. Unlike non-native speakers, who were better with familiar than invented idioms, Italian speakers performed equally well with the two types of expressions. In Experiment 2, native speakers, unlike non-native speakers, performed equally well in judging the acceptability of idiomatic sentences, regardless of whether these were familiar or unfamiliar to them. Experiment 3 indicated that acceptability of idiom syntactic variations is not fixed; rather it increases in pragmatically appropriate contexts. Experiment 4 showed that a general rule of Italian – bare nouns cannot occur in a preverbal position – applies systematically to idioms with such nouns, blocking their use in the passive form. The results, which failed to support the superlemma hypothesis, are interpreted in light of a new hypothesis, according to which the syntax of idioms is not idiosyncratic; rather it is governed by the same syntactic and pragmatic principles that apply to literal language.

Two kinds of subjectpro

Abstract. This paper discusses evidence that reinforces previous proposals (Barbosa 1995, 2000, Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998, Pollock 1997, Kato 1999) that there is no EPP feature driven subject movement to pre-verbal position in the Romance consistent Null Subject Languages (NSL). The paper argues that this property distinguishes European Portuguese (EP), a consistent NSL, not only from the non-NSLs (French or English) but also from a closely related partial pro-drop language such as Brazilian Portuguese (BP). In line with a long tradition of research on the topic, the absence of EPP feature driven XP movement to Spec-TP is attributed to properties of “rich” agreement morphology. The paper develops an analysis of this phenomenon within the Agree based framework of Chomsky (2000, 2001, 2005) as modified in Pesetsky & Torrego (2004a, b). In the analysis proposed here, pro is a minimally specified nominal whose unvalued φ-features are valued in the course of the derivation. Another consequence of this paper concerns partial pro-drop. The analysis of pro proposed here for the consistent NSLs doesn’t apply to the null subject in BP. In fact, our conclusion that subjects raise in BP may be seen as indirect confirmation of Holmberg’s findings regarding null subjects in Finnish where there is clear evidence for raising. Consequently, the null subject found in the consistent NSLs is of a different kind from that found in partial pro-drop languages, such as BP or Finnish.

Focus structure and Q-word questions in Hittite

The relationship between question words (Q-words) and focus is far more complex than generally assumed, in FDG or elsewhere. Q-words are not always contrastive, the focus of a Q-word clause can have more elements than the Q-word in its scope, and Q-word clauses may contain another, separate focus besides the Q-word. This becomes apparent when studying languages in which the Q-word seems to be freely distributed across the clause. A clear example is Hittite, an extinct Indo-European SO V language in which the placement of Q-words is not restricted to the preverbal focus position expected for SOV languages. In this article I will show that Hittite uses multiple strategies for the placement of Q-words, depending on the degree of counterexpectancy of the Q-word question. This motivation for the placement of the (always focused) Q-constituent is shared with the placement of focus constituents in Hittite declaratives. We should thus abandon the notion of a special question focus type, and describe the focus structure at the interpersonal level in FDG irrespective of the type of illocutionary act. As a corollary, the existential presupposition of a Q-word question, often taken to be its only pragmatic presupposition, is detached from its focus structure. In this article the existential presupposition is considered an inherent property of the Q-word, not of the question. Another consequence is that an FG-type focus typology as already established for declaratives can be set up for Q-word questions as well.

THE CLAUSE-INITIAL POSITION IN L2 GERMAN DECLARATIVES : Transfer of Information Structure

This article investigates the information structure of verb-second (V2) declaratives in Swedish, German, and nonnative German. Even though almost any type of element can occur in the so-called prefield, the clause-initial preverbal position of V2 declaratives, we have found language-specific patterns in native-speaker corpora: The frequencies of prefield constituent types differ substantially between German and Swedish, and Swedish postpones new (rhematic) information and instead fills the prefield with given (thematic) elements and elements of no or low informational value (e.g., expletives) to a far greater extent than German. We compare Swedish learners of German to native controls matched for age and genre (Bohnacker, 2005, 2006; Rosén, 2006). These learners master the syntactic properties of V2 but start their sentences in nonnative ways. They overapply the Swedish principle of rheme later in their second language German, indicating first language (L1) transfer at the interface of syntax and information structure, especially for structures that are frequent in the L1.

Satisfying V2 in early Romance: Merge vs. Move

In early Romance the finite verb raises in root clauses to the vacant C position, a movement operation frequently accompanied in turn by fronting of a pragmatically salient constituent to a preverbal position within the C-domain. Although this structural characterization of early Romance V2 word order overwhelmingly accounts for the core cases, there remains a smaller number of contexts in which the V2 effect appears to be satisfied by other means. More specifically, in addition to the move option, we argue that the V2 constraint may be met in early Romance by the Merge option: in the former case this involves movement of the finite verb to the empty C head, whereas in the latter case the V2 requirement is met by mergingsì(<sic‘thus, so’) directly in C°. This analysis radically departs from traditional analyses of Romancesì, which characterize it either as a coordinating conjunction or, in recent generative analyses, as a pleonastic phrasal category associated with a specifier position within CP. Our proposed analysis makes some interesting and novel predictions both about the rather restricted distribution ofsìin Old Neapolitan, many aspects of which remain unexplained under the alternative accounts, and the C-related functional positions involved in medieval Romance V2.

On parts of speech in Chinese: gen

In preverbal position in Mandarin Chinese the morpheme gen sometimes presents strict distributional characteristics, sometimes not. In the first case, it can be either a preposition, equivalent to the comitative marker ‘with’ in English or a conjunction, equivalent to ‘and’. In the second case, it evidences a mixed distribution, partaking of both preposition and conjunctive features. In this paper, gen is treated as an underspecified marker whose values can be predicted from its syntactic behavior and from the types of predicates it is in construction with. It is shown that when it presents mixed distributional characteristics, gen can only be in construction with collective predicates. The semantic features associated with such predicates, which are [+/–eventive], are [+symmetry], hence [–distributivity].

The Brythonic Reconciliation

I argue that despite their traditional verb-first vs. verb second partition, Welsh and Breton both instantiate a ban on verb-first and I present an analysis of these two languages as fundamentally verb second. In this view, so-called verb first orders prototypically illustrated byWelsh result from inconspicuous strategies to fill in the preverbal position, whereas traditional verb second prototypically illustrated by Breton results from conspicuous strategies to fill in the preverbal position. I show that both conspicuous and inconspicuous verb second orders are present in bothWelsh and Breton. The difference in word order between Welsh and Breton is reduced to (i) a lexical parameter, that is availability of a free preverbal expletive particle inWelsh, and (ii) a syntactic parameter: Breton allows for the creation of expletives by short movement, a parameter shared with Icelandic and other languages instantiating stylistic fronting.

À propos de X / à ce propos / à propos : évolution du XIVe au XIVe siècle

The aim of this paper is to give an account of the emergence and evolution of the French « topicalization marker » à propos de (‘about’), as well as two other phrases : à propos and à ce propos. This study is corpus-based and deals with texts in Middle and Pre-Classical French (14th to 16th centuries). As we try to refine the chronology of the evolution, we show that all three expressions have always displayed both postverbal and preverbal (even initial) positions. While the expressions in postverbal position have always functioned as complements, strongly linked to the verb, those in initial position go through an important change : from verbal complement to topicalization or enunciative markers. As we explain in our paper, this evolution roughly corresponds to the three-staged movement described by Traugott in the global framework of grammaticalization, namely from a more objective to a more subjective value, or in other words, from a propositional to an expressive function, through a textual one.

À propos de X / à ce propos / à propos : évolution du XIVe au XVIe siècle

The aim of this paper is to give an account of the emergence and evolution of the French « topicalization marker » à propos de (‘about’), as well as two other phrases : à propos and à ce propos. This study is corpus-based and deals with texts in Middle and Pre-Classical French (14th to 16th centuries). As we try to refine the chronology of the evolution, we show that all three expressions have always displayed both postverbal and preverbal (even initial) positions. While the expressions in postverbal position have always functioned as complements, strongly linked to the verb, those in initial position go through an important change : from verbal complement to topicalization or enunciative markers. As we explain in our paper, this evolution roughly corresponds to the three-staged movement described by Traugott in the global framework of grammaticalization, namely from a more objective to a more subjective value, or in other words, from a propositional to an expressive function, through a textual one.

Reinforcing negation: The case of Italian

We study the formal and pragmatic properties of the ˋreinforced negation construction' in Italian, which, unlike the regular negative sentence, contains both non and an n-word in preverbal position. On the one hand, this construction relies on a more general construction (positive or negative), which is pragmatically associated with reprise assertion, on the other hand, it uses non without the usual constraints attached to it. We propose that this unfaithful recycling is a pattern for creating a form dedicated to metalinguistic negation. Our analysis integrates both negative types of negative forms with their formal and pragmatic properties.

The Role of Animacy in Teiwa and Abui (Papuan)

n/a

Children's Interpretation of Ambiguous Focus in Sentences With "Only"

We report 3 studies investigating children's and adults' interpretation of ambiguous focus in sentences containing the focus-sensitive quantifier only. In each experiment, child and adult participants compared sentences with only in a preverbal position and counterpart sentences without only against a series of pictures depicting events that matched or mismatched with the sentence meaning. The sentences with only were ambiguous between an analysis with contrastive focus assigned to the verb phrase (VP) and one with contrastive focus assigned to the direct object. The results indicate that both children and adults interpreted sentences with only as excluding the possibility of events that formed a contrast with VP constituents. Children also appeared to interpret sentences without only as excluding the possibility of these events despite the absence of grammatical cues that might indicate contrastive focus. We consider these results in relation to a processing account of focus interpretation (Crain, Ni, and Conway (1994)).

Word order variation in spatial descriptions with adverbs

Previous research has shown that in a three-term spatial reasoning task, the second premise of a German premise pair is especially easy to comprehend if (1) the prepositional object rather than the grammatical subject denotes the given entity, and if (2) the term denoting the given entity precedes the term denoting the new entity. Accordingly, the second premise is easiest to comprehend with noncanonical word order--that is, with the prepositional object in preverbal position denoting the given entity (e.g., To the right of the given object is the new subject). This finding is explained in terms of contextual licensing of noncanonical word order. Here, we discuss and tested two alternative accounts of contextual licensing, given-new and partially ordered set relations (Poset). The given-new account claims that noncanonical word order is licensed by the term denoting the given entity preceding the term denoting the new entity. On the Poset account, noncanonical word order is licensed if the preverbal constituent introduces a new entity that stands in a transitive, irreflexive, and asymmetric relation to a given entity. Comprehension times for second premises with spatial adverbs in four different word orders support both accounts of contextual licensing; Poset licensing was stronger than given-new licensing.

A visual graphic tool to support the production of simple sentence structures in a student with learning disability

A tool was devised to improve spoken syntax through manipulation of graphic symbols. The participant, a French-speaking 11-year-old girl with general learning disability, learned to produce subject-verb-object (SVOn) sentences and transform them into a subject-object-verb (SOpV) structure in which the object becomes pronominal in a preverbal position. The production of personal pronouns in subject position was also targeted. Didactic methods were selected and administered for a total of 12 individual sessions. Pre-and post-measurements in an elicitation task (picture description) and language sample analysis showed significant improvement on target productions.