Sentence-initial Position Research Articles

A completive adverbial as a subordinator sequencing two (sub)events: TSIT-E in Taiwanese Southern Min

As a completive adverbial meaning ‘in a short time’, the Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM) ts̍ıt ‘one’ plus the verbal classifier ē sequence can be used in a preverbal but post-subject position to encode clausal dependency. This usage of ts̍ıt-ē is often translated as ‘immediately after’ or ‘as soon as’. While Adverbial ts̍ıt-ē(-á) (ts̍ıt-ē + the delimitative suffix -á) and tsin kín ‘very quickly’ in the sentence-initial position of an independent sentence establish backward linking with the preceding sentence, the subordinator ts̍ıt-ē regulates forward linking of two successive (sub)events. As a completive adverbial, the subordinator ts̍ıt-ē is subject to the telicity requirement, and it also encodes a speaker’s subjective evaluation that marks (un)expectedness. The low attachment of the subordinator ts̍ıt-ē in the subordinate clause accounts for the asymmetries observed in the three environments for how the telicity requirement is satisfied (e.g., whether completion or inchoativity has to be overtly marked): (a) an independent sentence with completive ts̍ıt-ē(-á), (b) a SUB ts̍ıt-ē clause, and (c) the main clause following a SUB ts̍ıt-ē clause. Finally, the fact that a SUB ts̍ıt-ē clause can only precede the main clause, and must be lower than a reason clause calls for further investigation.

Waning and waxing

Abstract This paper provides a preliminary description of the comparative construction in Tujia1 (northern dialect; NT), an endangered ergative Tibeto-Burman (TB) language spoken in China, in the context of the typologically diverse ways in which comparative meaning is expressed. In mono-clauses in NT, comparative marking depends on the position of the standard (i.e., that which is compared to). The standard may be marked with an ablative marker, or a topic marker if it appears in sentence-initial position due to left dislocation; otherwise, the comparandum (i.e., that which is to be compared) is assigned an ergative marker. Ergative on the comparandum and ablative on the standard can both occur but this is not obligatory. We propose that the ablative is the primary comparative marker in NT. However, this construction is subject to variation: the ablative marker is being replaced by a topic marker on the standard or by an ergative marker on the comparandum. We analyze this as change in progress (partly as a result of language contact); specifically, we propose that an ergative marker on the comparandum is starting to function as a focus marker, and in which the comparative meaning is derived from reanalysis. On the other hand, the comparative meaning in constructions where the standard is marked with a topic marker is proposed to result from the functional extension of the topic structure to comparative constructions. Both ergative marking on the comparandum and topic marking on the standard are typologically rare. Thus, the analysis of comparison marking in Tujia contributes to the typological understanding of comparative constructions in general.

Modal raising and focus marking in Chinese

This paper presents several new empirical observations regarding some interpretive effects and structural restrictions of modals that occur in sentence-initial positions in Chinese. It provides a new analysis of sentence-initial modal sentences in terms of the overt head-movement of a modal to the sentence periphery to value strong focus features and to focus-mark either the proposition or the subject of a sentence. This new proposal helps explain the markedness exhibited by such sentences, correctly predicts the structural and semantic restrictions of modal sentences, and directly explains the scopal interactions observed between modals and various types of focus constructions. It also shows that changes in word order in Chinese are not ascribable simply to an optional or free derivation in syntax but are related to an understudied mechanism in that language, i.e. T-to-C movement, and that the roles of information structure are represented as formal features in syntax. The results shed new light on how Chinese – though profoundly different from Germanic and Romance languages typologically – exemplifies a similarly fine structure in the sentence-internal domain, parallel associations of scope-bearing units with sentences’ left peripheries, and a neat interaction of syntax with discourse configurations.

Attitude markers in L2 learners' academic writing : a case study of master's theses by Czech students compared to L1 students' writings

Writer-reader interaction is considered a crucial component of a well-written academic text, largely achieved through the use of metadiscourse resources. This paper investigates the frequency and range of 'attitude markers', i.e. one of the five sub-categories of interactional metadiscourse resources (Hyland and Tse 2004) in two learner corpora composed of Czech (L2) and native speaker (L1) university students' academic texts. The survey has shown that research-oriented attitude markers are preferred over topic-oriented ones in both corpora, with the former being used mainly to evaluate the writer's own research and its findings. Attitudinal adjectives were identified as the most frequent and most varied category in both corpora, followed by attitudinal nouns, adverbs, and verbs in their respective order. The results also indicate some interesting differences, for example, that Czech students, unlike L1 students, tend to overuse attitudinal adverbs in the sentence initial position. By highlighting the similarities and differences in the use of attitude markers in L2 and L1 student writing, the study may be of value to both students and their tutors and help to raise students' awareness of the dialogic and interactional character of academic texts.

UKRAINIAN EQUIVALENTS TO ENGLISH SENTENCES: WHAT THEY REVEAL ABOUT DATIVE EXPERIENCER AND EXPLETIVE CONSTRUCTION

This paper presents a comparative study of Ukrainian sentences with Dative experiencer and their English equivalents. While Ukrainian allows null-subject sentences, in English there is a structural subject it. Moreover, in Ukrainian, there are sentences with Dative experiencers in the sentence initial position. Interestingly, the same kind of predicates that licenses Dative experiencer construction in Ukrainian, licenses the it-extraposition in English. Thus, the objective of this research is to establish what predicates belong to this category and what there is in the structure of the predicate that allows or disallows the described kinds of construction. We suggest that the adjectival predicates that do not allow it (or Dative experiencer in Ukrainian) have CAUSE-head introducing a causing event in their structure which blocks it-insertion. Key words: Dative experiencer, expletive, CAUSE, it-extraposition, predicate, English, Ukrainian.

The Neo-Celtic Verbal Complex and Earlier Accentual Patterns

Celtic inherited from Indo-European a system in which the first word of the sentence was invariably accented and was often followed by an unaccented word. In the evolution towards Gaelic and Brythonic, it became most common for that first word to be either a verb or a preverb. The beginning of the sentence thus became even more clearly defined because, also as an inheritance from Indo-European, verbs and preverbs were unaccented in other positions. Between Proto-Indo-European and the earliest attested Gaelic and Brythonic, the accent moved. As a result, the phonetic effects of the earlier accent became morphophonemic: phonologically stronger forms of verbs and preverbs occur in sentence-initial position in Old Irish and early Brythonic. Information about the shape and function of the clause, formerly conveyed by the accent, came to be conveyed by these morphophonemic contrasts. If the inherited primary/secondary system marking tense still survived then, this new absolute/conjunct opposition clashed with it and displaced it.

Rhetorical Questions and Polarity Licensing: On Cantonese Modal Sai2

Abstract This paper investigates the deontic modal sai2 in Cantonese. I argue that sai2 is an NPI and a negative operator is induced at the sentence-initial position by the SFPs me1 or aa4 in rhetorical questions. In SAI sentence, sai2 must syntactically agree with the negative operator for licensing, and minimality and locality effects are found in such agreement. This study may provide evidence of a syntactic approach to NPI licensing and rhetorical questions.

A cartographic analysis of Shi and Lian…Dou in Mandarin Chinese

Shi and lian … dou/ye can both be used as focus constructions in Mandarin Chinese. The current paper aims to investigate the shi and lian … dou/ye constructions within the framework of Syntactic Cartography. The two constructions share very similar syntactic distributions; however, shi and lian are not in the same syntactic position, or more precisely, the former is located higher than the latter. The two constructions mark various foci, namely, adjunct focus, predicate focus, subject focus, and complement focus. In terms of the focus meaning, they express foci of different types, namely, shi introduces the exclusive focus and lian signals the inclusive focus, which is retained in their lexical meanings during the process of grammaticalization of the two words. Both shi and lian can occur at the sentence-initial position and the sentence-internal position. The current research agrees with the previous studies that the sentence-initial lian-XP serves as topics while the sentence-internal lian-XP functions as foci. This paper claims that the sentence-initial shi-phrase also expresses topics and further argues that the sentence-initial shi-phrase marks topic foci whereas the sentence-initial lian-phrase marks focus topics which both carry the [Topic] and [Focus] features but differ in the feature strength. It is concluded that shi can be analyzed on a par with lian in Mandarin Chinese.

Pre-field phobia – About formal and meaning-related prohibitions on starting a German V2 clause

AbstractGerman is a V2 language, i.e., a declarative clause has the finite verb in the position immediately after the first constituent. Traditionally, this order is derived by raising the verb to C and putting a single constituent into the so-called pre-field. Arguably, there are three options to fill the first position: (i) topicalization (A’-movement), (ii) formal movement, which raises the highest constituent in the ongoing derivation (A-movement), or (iii) merging a constituent which is only legitimate there (base-generation). Theoretically, any major constituent can occupy the pre-field. However, it has been observed that certain expressions cannot appear there. In its narrower focus, the paper argues that there are more pre-field-phobic expressions than standardly assumed, and that these expressions, although at first glance heterogeneous, fall into two classes. One can be defined structurally and is considered in the second part of this paper; the other class can be captured in terms of meaning and comprises a specific type of expressive adverbial (discussed in the first and main part). The paper’s message in a broader sense is that syntax restricts the occurrence of expressive expressions. It is shown that the sentence-initial position in German does not allow material which is exclusively use-conditional in the sense of expressive meaning.

The processing of the ambiguous object pronoun in German monolingual and highly proficient L2 speakers with L1 Georgian

Aims and objectives: The current study examines the role of grammatical and positional parallelism on ambiguous German pronoun resolution in monolingual speakers and highly proficient L2 speakers with L1 Georgian. In particular, the study asks whether an object pronoun ihn in a sentence initial position could refer to the non-subject antecedent in a preceding subject–verb–object sentence. Furthermore, it investigates whether L1 and L2 speakers show similar preferences when resolving ambiguous object pronouns. Methodology: Two visual world eye-tracking and two offline experiments were conducted with L1 and L2 speakers of German. During the eye-tracking session, the task was simply to look and listen, while in the offline test, participants were required to decide on the assumed referent of the ambiguous pronoun. Data and analysis: Linear-mixed effect models were applied to the eye-movement data. Two-sample t tests were used in the analysis of the offline data. Findings and conclusions: Eye-movement results revealed a bias toward the subject antecedent in L1 speakers, while the L2 speakers showed a non-subject preference when resolving the referent of the object pronoun. The offline experiments supported the eye-tracking findings of both groups, particularly as regards the role of grammatical parallelism in the resolution of ambiguous pronouns by the L2 speakers. These findings are interpreted in the context of language-specific processing strategies in anaphora resolution. It appears that L1 and L2 speakers may be using different information-structural cues to resolve ambiguous pronouns. Concretely, a less strongly internalized knowledge of the target language or the influence of the first language may produce alternative processing mechanisms in L2 speakers. Originality: This study fills the research gap on ambiguous object pronoun resolution of L1 and L2 speakers of German. Implications: The findings of this study add additional information to the growing body of research into pronoun resolution. It focuses on the resolution of the German object pronoun within an information-structural framework of language processing in L1 and L2.

Topikaliserade rums- och tidsadverbial i fornsvenskt lagspråk – texttypiska och informationsstrukturella drag

Topicalization is a common means of bringing about syntactic variation in Old Swedish. In topicalization, a sentence element for which the usual place is in the middle or final field is instead placed in the initial field. In Early Old Swedish and up to the mid-15th century, adverbials were more common than subjects in sentence-initial position. This study analyzes factors connected to genre and information structure that contribute to topicalization of adverbials in Early Old Swedish legal language. These factors are analyzed in relation to the structure of the text.The data consist of the Uppland law (UL) and are restricted to topicalized spatial and temporal adverbs (n=77). Three research questions are posed: 1) what features connected to genre contribute to topicalization in UL; 2) what functions topicalized spatial and temporal adverbials serve in information structure; and 3) whether there is a relationship between genre features and information structure in Early Old Swedish legal language.Topicalized spatial and temporal adverbials are significantly more common in main clauses (n=57) than in subordinate clauses (n=20) in UL. Clauses with a topicalized spatial or temporal adverb usually belong to legal declarations; topicalization occurs in both first and second clauses. Two central genre-related motivations for topicalization are textual binding and framing, which means that spatial and temporal adverbs can be used to refer backward and forward in the text. Factors connected with genre also include emphasis and contrast, which in old laws is not just a stylistic technique, but has a further function in shaping the text. The information structure functions of the adverbs studied are background and rheme, with the background function being the most common. The function of theme does not occur in the data. The analysis shows clearly that the genre features are connected with the information structure functions; together they contribute to topicalization in Old Swedish legal language.

Subject Raising in Chinese Modal Auxiliary Verb Constructions: A-movement or A′-movement?

Abstract Subject raising in Chinese modal auxiliary verb constructions can be either A-movement or A′-movement. Modal auxiliary verbs such as hui and yao can take a nonfinite TP complement which cannot value the abstract case of the embedded subject. Hence the embedded subject must get its case valued by the matrix T and is raised to the Spec-TP of the matrix clause. This kind of raising is A-movement and is obligatory. Modal auxiliary verbs such as keneng and yinggai take a finite CP complement that can be assigned tense value by the broader context. The embedded subject can get its case valued and stay in situ. It can also be raised to the sentence-initial position by topicalization. This kind of raising is A′-movement. The A-movement and A′-movement contrast accounts for the minimal link condition in object raising, weak and strong quantificational NPs, topic stacking, and resumptive pronouns in Chinese modal auxiliary verb constructions.

Children's syntactic parsing and sentence comprehension with a degraded auditory signal.

During sentence comprehension, young children anticipate syntactic structures using early-arriving words and have difficulties revising incorrect predictions using late-arriving words. However, nearly all work to date has focused on syntactic parsing in idealized speech environments, and little is known about how children's strategies for predicting and revising meanings are affected by signal degradation. This study compares comprehension of active and passive sentences in natural and vocoded speech. In a word-interpretation task, 5-year-olds inferred the meanings of novel words in sentences that (1) encouraged agent-first predictions (e.g., The blicket is eating the seal implies The blicket is the agent), (2) required revising predictions (e.g., The blicket is eaten by the seal implies The blicket is the theme), or (3) weakened predictions by placing familiar nouns in sentence-initial position (e.g., The seal is eating/eaten by the blicket). When novel words promoted agent-first predictions, children misinterpreted passives as actives, and errors increased with vocoded compared to natural speech. However, when familiar words were sentence-initial that weakened agent-first predictions, children accurately interpreted passives, with no signal-degradation effects. This demonstrates that signal quality interacts with interpretive processes during sentence comprehension, and the impacts of speech degradation are greatest when late-arriving information conflicts with predictions.

Specificity Effects and Object Movement In Turkish and Uyghur

This paper examines a typologically novel differential object marking pattern in Uyghur where marked objects loose their obligatory specific interpretation under fronting to sentence initial position. This pattern contrasts with the more typical differential object marking pattern found in, for example, Turkish where marked objects always have a specific interpretation regardless of surface position. The Uyghur data, I argue, suggest that specific interpretation of object DPs does not always correlate with structural height relative to the VP (Diesing 1992). Instead, I propose a new model where a specific interpretation of an object is forced if it passed through a particular position in the structure.

Discourse markers in the making

This study examines the discourse-pragmatic functions of the discourse marker (DM, hereafter) jijitsujoo ‘as a matter of practice, practically speaking’ in comparison with another DM jijitsu ‘in fact, the fact is’ in the history of Japanese. The gist of the survey results is that, while jijitsu serves to introduce telling evidence for the preceding statement, jijitsujoo reformulates the preceding statement with what the speaker regards to be relevant, while disregarding irrelevant information. In other words, jijitsujoo plays a more subjective role as a DM than jijitsu in that the former can provide the speaker’s own stance toward an immediate topic. These DM functions can be fully fulfilled in sentence-initial position, presumably because they are connective in essence.

Strange nominative case in topicalized object pronominal relative clauses

Abstract In an online production experiment, we investigated the effect of sentence position on the preference for either a nominative or object form of an object pronoun restricted by a relative clause in Dutch. Results show a significant preference for the nominative form of the restricted object pronoun in sentence-initial position as it was chosen in 95% of the cases. In the original object position this percentage is only 20%. The preference for a nominative pronominal object is considered a grammatical norm violation. We account for this in terms of a combination of two factors. First, the presence of the relative clause makes the object ‘long’. Second, the sentence-initial position is a syntactic position that is relatively far removed from the original object position. We argue that when a long object is topicalized, there are too many intervening elements between the pronoun and the verb of which it is the complement. If the distance between the pronominal object and the verb has become too long, the object case fades from the working memory. This then results in the appearance of nominative case as the default case for topicalized object pronominal relative clauses in Dutch.

Metadiscourse and Counterargument Integration in Student Argumentative Papers

Incorporating counterarguments can be challenging for many student-writers, including those for whom English is a second or other language. In this study, we present findings that may lead to improvements in students’ understanding of the benefits of integrating counterarguments. In our study, expert readers were presented with excerpts of student academic writing in order to assess the degree to which counterarguments could be identified through student deployment of metadiscoursal features. The results suggest that student-writers deploy metadiscoursal features with insufficient frequency and consistency. The results further suggest that when metadiscoursal features are used in counterarguments, their deployment is largely restricted to the sentence-initial position. The study also considers the pedagogical and technological issues associated with the findings.

Doubling in Wolof-French Bilingual Speech

This paper presents an analysis of the phenomenon of doubling in the context of Wolof-French codeswitching where the French subordinating conjunction comme “as” and its Wolof counterpart ni, often appear in succession. More specifically, the paper analyses the different patterns underlying the structure of these two conjunctions in the mixed sentence. The first observation is that doubling occurs either in the sentence initial position or between the independent clause and subordinate one. This suggests that each double corresponds both languages’ word order in the sense that in both Wolof and French, subordinating conjunctions can occupy the initial and middle position of the sentence. The study also indicates that the Wolof conjunction ni always occurs at the beginning of the subordinate clause, otherwise, the sentence becomes ungrammatical. For this reason, we claim that the Wolof conjunction (and not the French one) combines the subordinate clause to the independent one. Also, this is why the French conjunction comme may be dropped from the mixed sentence while the omission of the Wolof ni makes it ungrammatical. Using the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model to explain the indispensability of the Wolof conjunction, it is shown that this subordinating conjunction is a bridge system morpheme. Like outsider system morphemes, earlies and bridges also come from Wolof, the matrix language in Wolof-French codeswitching.

Non-canonical word order and temporal reference in Vietnamese

Abstract The paper revisits Duffield’s (2007) (Duffield, Nigel. 2007. Aspects of Vietnamese clausal structure: Separating tense from assertion. Linguistics 45(4). 765–814) analysis of the correlation between the position of a ‘when’-phrase and the temporal reference of a bare sentence in Vietnamese. Bare sentences in Vietnamese, based on (Smith, Carlota S. & Mary S. Erbaugh. 2005. Temporal interpretation in Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics 43(4). 713–756), are argued to obtain their temporal interpretation from their aspectual composition, and the default temporal reference: bounded events are located in the past, unbounded events at present. It is shown that the correlation so observed in when-questions is superficial, and is tied to the syntax and semantics of temporal modification and the requirement that temporal adverbials denoting future time is base generated in sentence-initial position, and past time adverbials in sentence-final position. A ‘when’-phrase, being temporally underspecified, obtains its temporal value from its base position. However, the correlation between word order and temporal reference in argument wh-questions and declaratives is factual, depending on whether the predicate-argument configuration allows for a telic interpretation or not. To be specific, it is dependent on whether the application of Generic Modification (Snyder, William. 2012. Parameter theory and motion predicates. In Violeta Demonte & Louise McNally (eds.), Telicity, change, and state. Acrosscategorial view of event structure, 279–299. Oxford: Oxford University Press) or accomplishment composition is realized. Canonical declaratives, and argument wh-questions, with telicity inducing material, license GM or accomplishment composition, yielding bounded events, hence past; by contrast, their non-canonical counterparts block GM or accomplishment composition, giving rise to unbounded event descriptions, hence non-past.

Clause order and syntactic integration patterns in Dutch conditionals

AbstractConditional clauses in Dutch can occur in sentence-initial and sentence-final position. For sentence-initial conditionals, a number of syntactic integration patterns are available. This corpus study investigates to what extent clause order and syntactic integration are associated with text mode (spoken, written) and register (formal, informal). Sentence-initial position of the conditional clause is shown to be most frequent in both modes and registers, although sentence-final position is more frequent than one would expect based on the literature, especially in written texts. The distribution of syntactic integration patterns shows a clear difference between modes, as full integration of the conditional clause into the main clause is most frequent in written texts, whereas the use of the resumptive elementdan(‘then’) is most frequent in spoken texts.