Subject Verb Research Articles

ВСИЧКО Е НАРЕД С ГЛАГОЛА (ИНОВАЦИОННИТЕ ПРОЦЕСИ ТРАНЗИТИВАЦИЯ И ДЕРЕФЛЕКТИВАЦИЯ С ЦЕЛ ПРИПИСВАНЕ НА КАУЗАТИВНОСТ) / EVERYTHING IS FINE WITH THE VERB (INNOVATION PROCESSES OF TRANSITIVIZATION AND DEREFLEXIVIZATION AS A MEANS OF ATTRIBUTING CAUSATIVITY)

The paper presents a summary of the observations on the tranisitivization and dereflexivization of Bulgarian verbs as a means of attributing causativity. The majority of the newly formed verbs that we analyze are causative while others may, under certain conditions and in particular sentences, exemplify the causative rule. The lability of morphological identification regarding the transitivity – intransitivity distinction is the reason to examine the excerpted verbs as being either A- or Р-labile. The following tendency can be observed: P-lability has to do with causativity, while A-labile verbs are not-causative. In such cases the subject does not undergo changes neither in their intransitive nor in their transitive use. With P-labile verbs, the subject of the intransitive verb becomes the object of the transitive verb. There are some ambiva-lent verbs, such as minavam (pass), premina (pass over), svetna (light up), spomagam (facilitate), stigna (reach), treniram (train). Although the second group contains 40 causatives and the third group has 3 verbs, the lability procedure is not applicable because of the difference between the reflexive with the se- (се) marker and the transitive verb, i.e. the mismatch in form also means non-lability. The examples in the third group can also be viewed as the absolute use of the transitive verb meaning. The changes in the verbs indicate a change in the way contemporary Bulgarians think – the causative verbs serve as an expression of an active position, while the interplay between transitive and intransitive and/or reflexive and non-reflexive verbs has mostly pragmatic purposes, such as achieving a certain communicative effect, attractiveness, informality. Keywords: labile verbs, A-lability, P-lability, the lexico-grammatical category of transitivity ‒ intransitivity, causativity, Bulgarian language

Gradience in subject–verb number agreement: Can bilinguals tune in?

AbstractThis study investigates native German speakers’ and bilingual Turkish/German speakers’ sensitivity to constraints on verbal agreement with pseudo-partitive subjects such as eine Packung Tabletten (“a pack of pills”). Although number agreement with the first noun phrase (headed by a container noun) is considered to be the norm, agreement with the second (containee) noun phrase is also possible. We combined scalar acceptability ratings with a stochastic constraint-based grammatical framework to model the relative strength of the constraints that determine speakers’ agreement preferences and subsequently tested whether these models could correctly predict speakers’ verb choices in a production task. For both participant groups, number match between the container noun phrase and the verb was the strongest determinant of both acceptability and production choices. The relative ranking of the constraints that we identified was the same for both groups, and the lack of age-of-acquisition effects suggests that constraints on variable subject–verb agreement, and their relative strength, are acquirable by both early and later learners of German. Group differences were seen in the absolute constraint weightings, however, with the bilinguals’ agreement preferences being more strongly influenced by number match with the containee phrase, indicating a comparatively greater reliance on surface-level cues to agreement (such as noun proximity) among the bilingual group.

The Effect of English Language Proficiency Level on Undergraduate Libyan Students’ Use of Subject Verb Agreement

This study aims to examine the proficiency level of Libyan EFL (English as a Foreign Language) undergraduate students in terms of the types of subject-verb agreement errors they commit. It also attempts to identify, analyze and categorize the frequency errors related to subject-verb agreement into three categories. These errors are statically analyzed and classified into: subject-verb agreement (SVA) errors with third person singular subjects (TPSS), with third person plural subjects (TPPS), with compound subjects (CS). The participants of this study were 40 intermediate and advanced students whose major is English at the Faculty of Arts in Misurata University, Libya. They were chosen based on their level of English language proficiency during the current study. The data of this study were collected through a written test consisting of six short passages. The results showed that the percentage of errors made by both groups was below 30% which refers to non-significant differences among the two groups with respect to the SVA errors made by them. Consequently, it can be concluded that language proficiency has little effect on the participants' use of the SVA rule. It was also found that subject-verb agreement errors with (TPPS) were the least frequent, and the most common errors committed were (CS) and (TPSS). This study is important for EFL teachers to be aware of the subject verb agreement errors that their target learners commonly produce. The implications for SLA research and classroom teaching practice are given for foreign language teachers and researchers.

LEARNERS’ ERRORS IN WRITING THE RECOUNT TEXT

The objective of this research was to identify and to analyze what are kinds of grammatical errors made by the eighth-grade learners when they wrote the recount text. The design of this research was descriptive research design. The population of this research was the 8C learners of SMP Negeri 8 Bogor and the number of the sample was 31 learners. The researcher used three methods for getting the data; they were data from documentation, data from questionnaire, and data from the interview. The result of this research indicated that the 8C learners of SMP Negeri 8 Bogor had poor ability in writing the recount text. The highest percentage errors were made in the simple past tense by 83.8%, the second one was using in subject-verb agreement by 67.7%, the third one was preposition by 32.2%, and the last errors was pronoun 16.1%. Furthermore, based on the result of the questionnaire, most of the learners responded that they felt difficult in constructing grammatical sentences especially in the use past tense and it was appropriate with the result of the learners’ work and the answer of the interview. In the current research, errors in past tense was more dominant than errors in subject verb agreement, errors in preposition, and errors in pronoun.

Converging Evidence of Underlying Competence: Comprehension and Production in the Acquisition of Spanish Subject-Verb Agreement.

A surprising comprehension-production asymmetry in subject-verb (SV) agreement acquisition has been suggested in the literature, and recent research indicates that task-specific as well as language-specific features may contribute to this apparent asymmetry across languages. The present study investigates when during development children acquiring Mexican Spanish gain competence with 3rd-person SV agreement, testing production as well as comprehension in the same children aged between 3;6 and 5;7 years, and whether comprehension of SV agreement is modulated by the sentential position of the verb (i.e., medial vs. final position). Accuracy and sensitivity analyses show that comprehension performance correlates with SV agreement production abilities, and that comprehension of singular and plural third-person forms is not influenced by the sentential position of the agreement morpheme. Issues of the appropriate outcome measure and the role of structural familiarity in the development of abstract representations are discussed.

Correlation of grammatical and semantic parameters in portuguese change-of-state verbs

Verbs denoting change of state are a semantic-syntactic universal as they share common patterns in languages of different types. One of such patterns is their ability to take part in causative-inchoative alternation when one and the same situation codified by certain language units can be seen both from the viewpoint of the actor vs recipient (transitive model) and from the viewpoint of the recipient only, provided that the recipient is the only agent in the verb’s structure (inchoative model), unlike in passive constructions. In causative-inchoative alternation situations these verbs choose one of the three alternation types: a) suppletive (matar – morrer), b) anticausative, when the inchoative meaning is codified morphologically with the help of the pronominal particle se (espantar – espantar-se) and c) labile, when the inchoative meaning is optionally marked by se without any change in grammaticality or semantics. The present paper argues that the choice of pronominal or non-pronominal form of the verb in the inchoative meaning with an inanimate subject (A janela (se) quebrou) depends on the parameter of animate / inanimate subject in the corresponding transitive construction and, to a certain extent, on the graduality inherent to the verb’s semantics (the acceptability of quantification). It is also shown that Brasilian Portuguese reveals the tendency to realize the labile type of alternation when the subject of the inchoative verb is inanimate; in Old Portuguese, on the contrary, the anticausative type (marked by se) was more frequent.

KESALAHAN GRAMATIKA BAHASA INGGRIS DALAM MENULIS TEKS DESKRIPTIF OLEH MAHASISWA FARMASI SEMESTER DUA UNIVERSITAS SARI MUTIARA INDONESIA

This research title is Grammatical Errors in Writing Descriptive Text by Second Semester of Pharmacy Students of Sari Mutiara Indonesia University. This Research was conducted to find out the kinds of grammatical errors in writing descriptive text by second semester of Parmacy students of Sari Mutiara Indonesia University and to find out the dominant error. This research was conducted through descriptive qualitative by documentary research. This research was conducted to the pharmacy students of Sari Mutiara Indonesia University through survey and documentary research. This research found that errors in producing verb group (130), subject verb agreement (57), preposition (19), articles (13), plural (11), pronoun (27), conjunction (8). It was concluded that the dominant error was in producing verb group.

Syntactic representations encode grammatical functions: evidence from the priming of mapping between grammatical functions and thematic roles in Cantonese

ABSTRACT A structural priming study examined whether the mapping between grammatical functions (e.g. subject) and thematic roles (e.g. agent) persists across utterances. Specifically, we tested whether native Cantonese speakers are more likely to produce a standard subject–verb–object (SVO) active or a standard passive sentence after repeating an active sentence in object–subject–verb (OSV) order where the direct object (i.e. patient) is grammatically marked as a topic. Such Topic-OSV and standard active sentences share the same agent–subject and patient–direct object mapping, but they differ in all other important aspects including constituent structure, information structure, and linear thematic role order. In contrast, Topic-OSV and passive sentences only share information structure and thematic role order. The results demonstrated that Topic-OSV prime sentences primed SVO actives rather than passives, suggesting that grammatical function–thematic role mapping is a major source of structural priming. We thus argue that our sentence representations encode grammatical functions.

Middle Verbs and Their Acquisition

The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis of the L2 learners’ acquisition of middle constructions. One of the properties of middle constructions is that the subject of middle verbs must be a definite NP. Middle verbs can occur by revealing an intrinsic characteristic or property of the definite NP. In addition, middle verbs can only occur along with short adverbs such as well and easily. In this paper, we conduct a survey and evaluate the L2 learners’ responses to middle verbs. More specifically, we have examined how the L2 learners acquired the abstract constraint, the middle construction condition, the definite DP condition, and the adverb constraint. It is worth noting that 45% of the adult subjects acquired the definite condition, 32.5% of the L2 learners acquired the middle construction condition, 50% of the adult subjects acquired the abstract noun constraint, and 20% of the L2 learners acquired the adverb constraint. This in turn indicates that that the abstract noun constraint was first acquired by the adult subjects, followed by the definite DP condition, the middle construction condition, and the adverb constraint, in that order. With regard to middle verbs, it is significant to note that English are subject to the abstract noun constraint, the middle construction condition, the definite DP condition, and the adverb constraint, whereas Korean is not subject to the abstract noun constraint, the middle construction condition, and the definite DP condition. This in turn suggests that Korean is a superset language, compared to English. Thus, learning difficulty arises. Finally, this paper argues that unlike Chomsky’s UG hypothesis (Chomsky 1981, 1982, 2019a, 2019b), the L2 learners looked for similarities between L1 and L2 and thus relied on their L1.

The VOS Puzzle

The subject (S) in Spanish sentences may appear post–verbally and even sentence–finally following an object (O). Further, in post–verbal SO/OS pairs, the first element asymmetrically c–commands the second element. Previous analyses of the VOS phenomenon encounter difficulties in accounting for this asymmetric c–command relation and/or for Case and subject–verb agreement involving the VOS subject. We argue here that these Spanish SO/OS pairs operate in parallel to English double–objects (Larson 1988). Based on the work of Phillips (1997) and others, we propose a top–down approach to sentence derivation which resolves the problems with VOS sentences encountered by other analyses and which obviates the need for devices such as pro to account for ‘pro–drop’ sentences.

GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITTEN BY DIFFERENT GRADES OF SMP DHARMA PANCASILA MEDAN

GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXTWRITTEN BY DIFFERENT GRADES OF SMP DHARMAPANCASILA MEDAN*Grace Seprima Pakpahan**Prof. Dr. Berlin Sibarani, M.Pd** Safrida Lubis, S.Pd, M.HumABSTRACTThe study aims to analyze grammatical errors in descriptive text written bydifferent grades. This study was conducted by using descriptive qualitative design.The sources of this data are students in the eighth grade which consists of 21students and the ninth grade which consists of 20 at SMP Dharma PancasilaMedan. The data of the study were obtained from students’ descriptive text andinterview. The analysis found that the grammatical errors written by eighth gradeare subject verb agreement (46 cases), verb tense (7 cases), verb form (5 cases),singular/plural (2 cases), word form (11 cases) and sentence structure (26 cases),while the grammatical errors written by ninth grade are subject verb agreement(43 cases), verb tense (7 cases), verb form (4 cases), singular/plural (4 cases),word form (12 cases) and sentence structure (18 cases). From the analysis wasfound the factors underlying the grammatical error made by eighth grade areimperfect learning (4), overgeneralization (11) and influence of the nativelanguage (6), while the factors underlying the grammatical error made by ninthgrade are imperfect learning (8), overgeneralization (6) and influence of the nativelanguage (6).Key words : Grammatical errors, Descriptive text, Eighth and Ninth GradeStudents

Acceptability of Different Psychological Verbal Constructions by Heritage Spanish Speakers from California

This study set out to investigate whether US Heritage Spanish features a more streamlined verbal paradigm in psych verb constructions compared to standard varieties of Spanish, where HS speakers find an invariable third-person singular form acceptable with both singular and plural grammatical subjects. In standard Spanish, the semantic subjects of psych verbs are typically pre-verbal experiencers cast as oblique arguments in inverse predicates such as in me encantan los buhos ‘I love owls’. The translation of this sentence shows that equivalent English predicates are typically direct constructions. The data were gathered using an acceptability judgement questionnaire that was distributed to participants that fit into one of three groups: early bilingual heritage speakers of Spanish from California, advanced Spanish as L2 speakers, and non-bilingual native speakers of Spanish who had learnt English as an L2 as adults. The Heritage Spanish speakers in this group often patterned differently from both other groups, who surprisingly patterned together. We argue that this is due to L2 speakers’ mode of acquisition (formal and subject to prescriptive grammar), in comparison with Heritage Spanish speakers’ naturalistic acquisition. Specifically, we find evidence for a streamlining of the Spanish verbal paradigm not immediately attributed to English interference, and that in psych verb constructions, Heritage Spanish speakers more readily accept a third-person singular invariable verbal form. This differentiation of the verbal paradigm from standard Spanish use should be considered a bona fide linguistic change, but not proof of either incomplete acquisition or language attrition. Since Heritage Spanish speakers are, after all, native speakers of Spanish, this study shows that Heritage Spanish should be considered and studied as any other dialect of Spanish, with its distinctive grammatical features, and subject to variability and change.

Correlative Coordination and Variable Subject–Verb Agreement in German

Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers’ agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the correlative conjunctions sowohl…als auch (‘both…and’), weder…noch (‘neither…nor’) or entweder…oder (‘either…or’). We examine to what extent conjunction type and a conjunct’s relative proximity to the verb affect the acceptability and processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed acceptability rating task, Experiment 2 a timed sentence completion task, and Experiment 3 was a self-paced reading task. Taken together, our results show that number agreement with correlative coordination in German is primarily determined by a default constraint triggering plural agreement, which interacts with linear order and semantic factors. Semantic differences between conjunctions only affected speakers’ agreement preferences in the absence of processing pressure but not their initial agreement computation. The combined results from our offline and online experimental measures of German speakers’ agreement preferences suggest that the constraints under investigation do not only differ in their relative weighting but also in their relative timing during agreement computation.

Grammar Competition and Word Order in a Northern Early Middle English Text

The Edinburgh Royal College of Physicians manuscript of Cursor Mundi and the Northern Homilies, a northern Middle English text from the early 14th century, contains unprecedentedly high frequencies of matrix verb-third and embedded verb-second word orders with subject–verb inversion. I give a theoretical account of these word orders in terms of a grammar, the ‘CM grammar’, which differs minimally in its formal description from regular verb-second grammars, but captures these unusual word orders through addition of a second preverbal A′-projection. Despite its flexibility, the CM grammar did not spread through the English-speaking population. I discuss the theoretical consequences of this failure to spread for models of grammar competition where fitness is tied to parsing success, and discuss prospects for refining such models.

Siladang Syntax: A Study of Grammar Typology

The analysis of basic clause structures shows that clauses in Bahasa Siladang consist of verbal and non-verbal predication. The non-verbal predicate can be filled by an adjective, noun, numeral or prepositional phrase. The analysis of the argument structure shows that the intransitive predicate requires one NP argument as the only argument functioning as the grammatical subject, which can be an agent or a patient. Meanwhile, the transitive verb predicate requires two or more arguments. The presence of these arguments in the predicate in transitive sentences is mandatory. The conclusion from the analysis of the grammatical behavior in syntactic construction is that SL is a language which has a grammatical alignment system which gives the same treatment to A and S, and a different treatment to P. It can be categorized as an accusative language, marking the direct object of transitive verbs, making them different from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs.
 Keywords: clause structure, argument structure, syntactic typology

정보구조 관점에서 본 중국어 관계절 구조의 특징

The relative structure is the one in which the relative clause is backgrounded and the head noun is foregrounded to be promoted to the matrix sentence. Therefore, the relative structure in which the relative clause includes the subject - old information, and the head noun is relativised object - new information is the unmarked information structure of the Chinese sentence. On the other hand, the relative structure in which the relative clause includes the object - new information, and the head noun is relativised subject - old information is the marked information structure. This explains why the frequency of emergence of relative structures with relativised objects is much higher than that of relative structures with relativised subjects. The relative structure is rarely used as the subject of a transitive verb, and is mainly used as the object of a transitive verb or the subject of an intransitive verb. This can be explained in that the object of the transitive verb and the subject of the intransitive verb are generally new information, and the subject of the transitive verb is mainly old information. While old information is mainly expressed by pronouns, new information is introduced by lexical nouns, so the relative structure that adds lexical information about head nouns is suitable for delivering new information. Therefore, it appears mainly in locations that require new information, such as the object of a transitive verb or the subject of the intransitive verb, and is rarely used as the subject of the transitive verb.

Number Dissimilarity Effects in Object-Initial Sentence Comprehension by German-Speaking Children With Specific Language Impairment.

Purpose This study examines the contribution of number morphology to language comprehension abilities among children with specific language impairment (SLI) and age-matched controls. It addresses the question of whether number agreement facilitates the comprehension accuracy of object-initial declarative sentences. According to the predictions of the structural intervention account for German, number agreement should assist the correct interpretation of object-initial sentences. Method This study examines German-speaking children with SLI and a control group of age-matched typically developing children on their sentence comprehension skills for auditory presented subject-verb-object and object-verb-subject (OVS) sentences. The sentences were manipulated with respect to the number properties of the noun phrases (e.g., one plural and one singular, or both singular) and the number agreement of the verb. Results The group of children with SLI demonstrated poorer comprehension accuracy in comparison to controls. Comprehension difficulty was limited to OVS sentences among children with SLI. In addition, children with SLI comprehended OVS sentences in which number agreement (with plural subject and verb inflection) indicated the noncanonical word order more accurately than OVS sentences with two singular noun phrases and therein did not differ from controls. Conclusion The study suggests that number agreement helps alleviate the difficulty with OVS sentences and enhances comprehension accuracy, despite the finding that children with SLI exhibit lower comprehension accuracy and more heterogeneous interindividual differences, relative to controls. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13718029.

The role of discourse in long-distance dependency formation

ABSTRACT Sentences with filler-gap dependency are more difficult to process than those without, as reflected by event-related brain potentials (ERPs) such as sustained left anterior negativity (SLAN). The cognitive processes underlying SLAN may support associating a filler with a temporally distant gap in syntactic representation. Alternatively, processing filler-gap dependencies in the absence of a supportive context involves additional discourse processing. The present study conducted an ERP experiment that manipulated syntactic complexity (subject–object–verb [SOV] and object–subject–verb [OSV]) and discourse (the supportive and non-supportive context) in Japanese. The result showed a SLAN in OSV relative to SOV in the non-supportive but not the supportive context, which suggests that the difficulty involved in processing OSV in Japanese is largely due to a pragmatic factor. The present study contributes to a better understanding of how the language-processing system builds long-distance dependency by interacting with the memory system.

Supplemental Material for Maintenance Cost in the Processing of Subject–Verb Dependencies

Supplemental Material for Maintenance Cost in the Processing of Subject–Verb Dependencies

Expressive Verb Morphology Deficits in Arabic-Speaking Children With Developmental Language Disorder.

Purpose This study investigated the production of tense and subject-verb agreement in Palestinian Arabic-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) in comparison to their typically developing (TD) peers in terms of (a) performance accuracy and (b) error patterns. Method Participants were 14 children with DLD aged 4;0-7;10 and 32 TD children aged 3;0-8;0 matched on nonverbal abilities. Children were asked to complete a picture-based verb elicitation task. The task was designed to measure the production accuracy of tense and subject-verb agreement inflections in Arabic. Results The DLD group scored significantly lower than the TD group on the verb elicitation task. The DLD group was significantly less accurate than the TD group in marking tense, specifically present tense. They were also less accurate in marking agreement in general, with specific difficulty in using feminine verb forms. The DLD and TD groups differed in their tense error patterns, but not in agreement error patterns. Conclusions The acquisition of verb morphology in Palestinian Arabic-speaking children with DLD appears to be delayed and possibly different from their TD peers. The DLD group found the production of marked verb forms more challenging than less marked ones. These results are discussed in light of the structural characteristics of Arabic. Future studies would need to include larger sample sizes; investigate other aspects of verb morphology, including both production and comprehension; include other language domains; and consider longitudinal designs to provide more in-depth knowledge of Arabic language acquisition.