Syntactic Alternations Research Articles

Signal Smoothing and Syntactic Choices: A Critical Reflection on the UID Hypothesis.

The Smooth Signal Redundancy Hypothesis explains variations in syllable length as a means to more uniformly distribute information throughout the speech signal. The Uniform Information Density hypothesis seeks to generalize this to choices on all linguistic levels, particularly syntactic choices. While there is some evidence for the Uniform Information Density hypothesis, it faces several challenges, four of which are discussed in this paper. First, it is not clear what exactly counts as uniform. Second, there are syntactic alternations that occur systematically but that can cause notable fluctuations in the information signature. Third, there is an increasing body of negative results. Fourth, there is a lack of large-scale evidence. As to the fourth point, this paper provides a broader array of data-936 sentence pairs for nine syntactic constructions-and analyzes them in a test setup that treats the hypothesis as a classifier. For our data, the Uniform Information Density hypothesis showed little predictive capacity. We explore ways to reconcile our data with theory.

Syntactic alternatives and distractions: Title to a journal article

Syntactic alternatives and distractions: Title to a journal article

Rational Sentence Interpretation in Mandarin Chinese.

Previous work has shown that English native speakers interpret sentences as predicted by a noisy-channel model: They integrate both the real-world plausibility of the meaning-the prior-and the likelihood that the intended sentence may be corrupted into the perceived sentence. In this study, we test the noisy-channel model in Mandarin Chinese, a language taxonomically different from English. We present native Mandarin speakers sentences in a written modality (Experiment 1) and an auditory modality (Experiment 2) in three pairs of syntactic alternations. The critical materials are literally implausible but require differing numbers and types of edits in order to form more plausible sentences. Each sentence is followed by a comprehension question that allows us to infer whether the speakers interpreted the item literally, or made an inference toward a more likely meaning. Similar to previous research on related English constructions, Mandarin participants made the most inferences for implausible materials that could be inferred as plausible by deleting a single morpheme or inserting a single morpheme. Participants were less likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a preposition. And participants were least likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a main verb. Moreover, we found more inferences in written materials than spoken materials, possibly a result of a lack of word boundaries in written Chinese. Overall, the fact that the results were so similar to those found in related constructions in English suggests that the noisy-channel proposal is robust.

L’alternance entre le sujet nul et pronominal en roumain dans une perspective romane

This article focuses on the differences in the comprehension and the production of null and pronominal subjects in Romanian. It shows the importance of an empirical approach (experiments and corpus investigation) for the study of syntactic alternations, such us the null pronominal subject alternation in prodrop Romance languages, which cannot be described by the classical categorical syntactic constraints (cf. grammatical vs. agrammatical dychotomy), but rather by soft constraints, that reflect the preferences of the speakers for one structure or the other. This research allows us to observe (micro)variations within prodrop Romance languages. It also shows that an adequate analysis of such an alternation should be based on a multifactorial analysis, that takes into account factors from various linguistic levels (in particular syntax and discourse).

Challenges of FrameNet: The case of motion verbs in Persian

In this article, we intend to examine the transferability of parts of English FrameNet to other languages, specifi cally Persian. To accomplish this task, we consider the concept of motion due to its significance in cross-linguistic studies and its diff erent lexicalization patterns in typologically diverse languages. In this regard, we investigate the challenges that diff erent features of the Persian language and particularly the diff erence in the way of expressing motion events in this language make for the compatibility of English FrameNet with Persian FrameNet. Focusing on Persian motion verbs, we try to determine the extent to which it is possible to transfer diff erent components of English FrameNet — including semantic frames, coreness and peripherality status of frame elements, syntactic and semantic structures and frame-to-frame relations — to other languages. The results suggest that English FrameNet is prone to incompatibility due to the lack of systematicity in the specifi cation of frames and frame-to-frame relations. Moreover, diff erent polysemy patterns, the presence of the same word as diff erent lexical units, various syntactic alternations of lexical units, diff erent levels of importance of frame elements in lexicalization in various languages, the tendency of some languages like Persian to form compounds as well as the impact of culture make challenges for the transferability of English FrameNet to other languages.

Syntactic alternations and socio-stylistic constraints: the case of asyndetic complementation in the history of Spanish

AbstractThis paper analyses the alternation between complement clauses with and without complementizer (syndetic and asyndetic), in historical Spanish (15th–18th century). While previous studies have shown that this syntactic alternation was regulated by the degree of integration of the clauses, its stylistic distribution is understudied. In this paper we investigate whether the syndetic/asyndetic alternation is governed by socio-stylistic factors (discourse traditions, audience and speaker design). The analysis of the data from the corpus CODEA+2015, is carried out by using regression models. Our results indicate that the selection of asyndetic complements was predicted by the type of audience (reactive style-shift), employed especially when addressing superiors. Also, asyndetic complements were favored by the use of deferential request verbs such assuplicar(‘to beg’) that represents the petitioner as an inferior (proactive style-shift). Furthermore, the stylistic choice for an asyndetic complement was determined at the sentential level (“micro” discourse traditions), when the writer is also the performer of the speech-act. Thus, we show that in choosing alternative variants, writers are concerned with expressing grammatical meanings but also social identity. Additionally, the diachronic analysis indicates that while the proactive style-shift effect grows stronger over time, the relevance of the reactive style-shift declines, showing that socio-stylistic predictors, similarly to linguistic predictors, can be affected diachronic fluctuations. Our paper evinces the relevance of a multidimensional and diachronic approach to the study of syntactic variation, demonstrating how a monolithic view of the textual dimension can hide fine-grained socio-stylistic effects.

The Diachronic Shift of Japanese Transitive/Unaccusative Verb Pairs

This study explores how Japanese transitive/unaccusative verb pairs have transformed from being a substantive verb to the various forms they fulfil in Modern Japanese (i.e., an aspectual verb, a noun, an adjective, an adverb, a quantifier and a suffix) and how grammaticalisation and lexicalisation play an essential role during the processes. A working definition of ‘grammaticalisation’ and ‘lexicalisation’ that applies to Japanese is put forward, followed by a corpus-based investigation as well as a case study. The finding reveals that (a) the process by which a lexeme develops into a noun is a case of lexicalisation; the process by which a lexeme develops into an aspectual verb, an adverb, an adjective, a suffix or a quantifier is a case of grammaticalisation; (b) transitive verbs are more likely to convey aspect than unaccusatives are. The shift into a quantifier is limited to unaccusative verbs. Grammaticalisation (affixation) and lexicalisation in Japanese both require syntactic reduction and morphological alternation. The two differ in that lexicalisation does not require an alternation in writing, i.e., a lexicalised item can remain being written in Chinese characters (Note 1) whilst a grammaticalised item can only appear in kana script. Phonological alternation is obligatory in grammaticalisation but not required by lexicalisation. Lexicalisation appears to occur before grammaticalisation.

Infinitive-gerund alternations in Polish post-verbal complementation: a corpus-based study

The paper constitutes a contribution to semantically based research on the so called ‘syntactic alternations’, defined as “structurally and/or lexically different ways to say functionally very similar things” (Gries 2017: 8). More specifically, the study is concerned with Polish verbal predicates which accept both the gerundive and infinitival complement, with the difference between these two alternatives being a matter of construal or focus rather than any clear-cut semantic contrasts. Taking as its point of departure the cognitive linguistic thesis that a change in form always entails a change in meaning, the present paper seeks to determine the factors that significantly affect the choice of one or the other complement type in situations where both are fully acceptable. The study provides an in-depth, corpus-based analysis of three selected pairs of constructions, and offers a new theory (referred to as reduced-increased involvement theory) to explain the choices that Polish speakers make with respect to the two constructions in question.

Abstract structures and meaning in Japanese dative structural priming

AbstractSyntactic structures and meaning appear to independently contribute to structural priming within English structural alternations. Japanese uses scrambling of case-marked phrases to create syntactic alternations, and it is not clear how meaning impacts scrambling-based structural choices. To examine this issue, meaning overlap with dative targets was manipulated in two structural priming experiments. In Experiment 1, datives primed dative targets, but structurally similar primes with idiomatic meanings did not prime. In Experiment 2, transitive primes that differed from datives in thematic roles showed as much priming as dative primes. The transitive results demonstrate that scrambling-based alternations in Japanese can be primed from structures that differ in role meaning, but the lack of idiom priming means that these structures may be less independent of meaning than those in other languages.

Лексико-конструкционный подход к синтаксической альтернации

Syntactic alternation cannot be treated as a lexical or as a constructional phenomenon (as is in lexical and constructional approaches, respectively). Realizing the significance of both factors, in the present paper I offer a lexical-constructional account of syntactic alternation which seems to prevail against previous ones by eliminating their shortcomings but exploiting their advantages. I demonstrate the explanatory power of my conception by thorough analysis of three Russian verb classes. They include the alternation of manner-of-motion and directional motion verbs as well as the locative alternation and instrument–subject alternation. The fundamental feature of my proposal is the underspecified character of lexical-semantic representations. Although underspecification may have several forms, the general idea consists in postulating optional components in lexical representations. It can be stated that verbs alternate syntactically if they own an underspecified but encyclopedically and pragmatically enriched representation, so being compatible with all meanings appearing in alternations. If a verb does not have a lexical-semantic representation that can result in different interpretations, it cannot participate in an alternation. Because of the possible lexical specification of either variant, an underspecified type of representation is inevitably required for alternating verbs. The lexical-constructional approach to syntactic alternation naturally extends to lexical pragmatics. This extension means that the hypotheses about the characteristics of word meaning representations can also be applied to cases where words reach their full meanings in corresponding contexts without the change of syntactic structure.

A corpus-driven description of when-adverbial in Nigerian and British Englishes

Abstract Syntactic alternation allows us to understand how structural variation, including crucial factors relevant to their meaning and interpretation, operates linguistic varieties. Empirical evidence from such syntactic alternation study can provide insights into how new varieties differ from the established ones. The present study aims at increasing contributions that show the nature of syntactic alternation from new Englishes such as Nigerian English, and how they differ from established varieties such as British English. Taking when adverbial construction in Nigerian English as a reference point (When Trump realised his reelection loss, he changed his political expectations versus Trump changed his political expectations when he realised his reelection loss), the study shows the extent to which previously tested factors influence the ordering of the construction and how they differ from findings reported in British English. Relying on corpus data, together with descriptive distributional analysis, the study shows that, unlike British English in which functional and cognitive factors strongly influence structural patterning, functional factors outweigh cognitive factors in Nigerian English.

СЪС ИЛИ БЕЗ ПРЕДЛОЗИ: КОЕ Е ВЯРНОТО / WITH OR WITHOUT PREPOSITIONS: WHICH IS TRUE

The article focuses on the competition between noun phrases in which the head noun is modified by either a relative adjective, noun qualitative modifier or a prepositional phrase. Several tests are proposed to distinguish between phrases with noun qualitative modifier and compounds consisting of two nouns. The type of the prepositions that occur in the prepositional phrases is characterised, and the conclusion is drown that the semantic dependency in the three competing structures is the same, although it is overtly expressed only through the prepositions. Keywords: noun qualitative modifier, syntactic alternations with prepositional phrases, identification of compounds, Bulgarian language

Ambiguity avoidance as a factor in the rise of the English dative alternation

AbstractThis paper discusses the role of cognitive factors in language change; specifically, it investigates the potential impact of argument ambiguity avoidance on the emergence of one of the most well-studied syntactic alternations in English, viz. the dative alternation (We gave them cakevsWe gave cake to them). Linking this development to other major changes in the history of English like the loss of case marking, I propose that morphological as well as semantic-pragmatic ambiguity between prototypical agents (subjects) and prototypical recipients (indirect objects) in ditransitive clauses plausibly gave a processing advantage to patterns with higher cue reliability such as prepositional marking, but also fixed clause-level (SVO) order. The main hypotheses are tested through a quantitative analysis of ditransitives in a corpus of Middle English, which (i) confirms that the spread of the PP-construction is impacted by argument ambiguity and (ii) demonstrates that this change reflects a complex restructuring of disambiguation strategies.

Unclogging the Bottleneck: The role of case morphology in L2 acquisition at the syntax-discourse interface

ABSTRACT The Bottleneck Hypothesis argues that properties of inflectional morphology explain why second-language learners may face persistent difficulties in articulating meaning in target-language forms. In particular, the acquisition task proves even harder when first and second languages differ in the way they organize the mapping of functional features onto inflectional morphemes. Against this backdrop, the present study focuses on the interplay between case morphology and acquisition of syntax-discourse interface phenomena in the second language German of French native speakers. Whereas the Bottleneck Hypothesis predicts that discourse-driven syntactic alternations come for free when case morphology is in place, a concurrent prediction is made by the Interface Hypothesis, which suggests that the syntax-discourse interface is vulnerable per se, irrespective of L1-L2 differences at the interface between morphology and syntax. We tested 45 L2 learners in (i) a semicontrolled production task in context (element rearrangement task) targeting argument reordering (object fronting) as a function of the information status of discourse referents; (ii) a fill-in-the-blanks task involving the use of case endings; and (iii) a general proficiency test. Contra the Interface Hypothesis, results showed that argument reordering was affected by discourse properties of referents. Turning to the Bottleneck Hypothesis, learners’ command of case was identified as a reliable predictor of convergence in discourse-to-syntax mappings, which confirms the key role of inflectional morphology in the acquisition of other grammar areas, including interfaces between grammar and grammar-external domains such as discourse.

Corpus, experimental and modeling investigations of cross-linguistic differences in pronoun resolution preferences

We investigate the impact of syntactic alternatives on pronoun resolution in ambiguous constructions in English and French. Previous research detected language-specific preferences in pronoun resolution in utterances of the type “The postman met the streetsweeper before he went home”. These preferences have been attributed to the interaction of information structural and syntactic constraints inducing a subject bias on the one hand, and Gricean reasoning processes taking into account alternative syntactic constructions on the other hand. A corpus study of four English and French corpora shows that an alternative construction which takes a subject antecedent (“The postman met the streetsweeper before going home”) is much less frequent in spoken English than French. A Rational Speech Act (RSA) model with corpus frequencies integrated as language-specific costs on the use of each construction makes empirical predictions for pronoun resolution preferences in French and English for sentences with “avant”/“before” which have been tested before but also for sentences with “après”/“after” which have not been tested so far. New experimental data show a very good fit of the model predictions for pronoun resolution preferences in English as well as for the differences in antecedent choices between French and English. However, experimental data showing differences in antecedent choices between French sentences with “après” and “avant” deviate from model predictions, indicating that more factors need to be taken into account. The combination of Bayesian modeling, corpus analyses and experimental data shows that RSA models can make relevant and falsifiable predictions for cross-linguistic variation in processing.

Alternations emerge and disappear: the network of dispossession constructions in the history of English

AbstractThis paper focuses on two main issues regarding syntactic alternations and their development over time. On the one hand, it discusses the diachronic implications of alternations as involving multiple (rather than binary) choices. On the other hand, it shows that while studies are typically interested in the emergence of alternation relationships, there are also cases of diachronic loss of such. This is illustrated by zooming in on the history of a particular set of ditransitive verbs, viz. dispossession verbs such asstealorrob, and their connection to the well-known English dative alternation. Based on a quantitative analysis of different dispossession-constructions in corpora of Middle, Early Modern and Late Modern English, I demonstrate that the network of dispossession constructions has changed considerably over time — from a complex interaction between three overlapping patterns to a clear differentiation of two non-alternating constructions.

What’s in the Middle?

It has long been taken for granted in reference works, grammars and elementary introductions that Ancient Greek had three grammatical voices, active, passive and middle. Yet scholars have always had great difficulty in characterising the middle voice in a straightforward and convincing way, and language learners are often perplexed to find that most of the middles they find in texts fail to exemplify the function, usually involving some notion of self interest, that is typically ascribed to this voice. This article therefore re-examines the Ancient Greek middle, both through the lens of a general survey of “middle voice” functions across languages, and through the analysis of all the medio-passive verb forms attested in Book 1 of Plato’s Republic. 
 The principal observations are that Ancient Greek middles do not represent a regular pattern of usage either from a typological point of view or as employed specifically in Republic 1 (the database is in fact partly extended to other works). Accordingly, the main conclusion is that the Ancient Greek middle is not a grammatical voice sensu stricto, i.e. a regular syntactic alternation applying to all verbs with a given set of properties and expressed by a regular morphological form with a predictable semantic function. Rather, it appears to be a convenient collective name for a large set of “autonomous” verb forms that are either clearly deponent (i.e., have no active counterparts) or that have been lexicalised in a specialised meaning vis-à-vis their supposed active counterparts (i.e., are also deponents in practice, despite appearances). In all probability, therefore, medio-passive morphology, whatever it once represented in terms of function, was recharacterised prehistorically as “passive” morphology, leaving a residue of verbs exhibiting forms with non-passive functions. Presumably, these survived as “middles” only because they had no active counterparts or had been assigned innovative meanings that distinguished them from any formally related actives.

The Syntactic Distribution of Object Experiencer Psych Verbs in Heritage Spanish

This paper contributes to our understanding of the grammatical architecture of heritage languages and, specifically, the role of lexical semantics, by examining the syntactic distribution of Spanish psych verbs. Object experiencer psych verbs in Spanish fall into two classes: Class II (e.g., molestar “to bother”) and Class III (e.g., encantar “to love”). Class II verbs allow numerous syntactic alternations, while Class III verbs are more restricted syntactically. The asymmetry under investigation here is attributed to a lexical semantic featural difference—Class II verbs can be [±change of state], while Class III verbs are always [−change of state]. Two groups of HSs, (intermediate (n = 21) and advanced (n = 18)), and a group of Spanish dominant bilinguals (n = 19) completed two judgment tasks, a standard proficiency measure, a vocabulary task, and a biographical questionnaire. Results reveal that the responses of both HS groups are consistent with the Spanish dominant bilinguals in nearly all conditions, indicating that HSs are highly sensitive to this syntactic distribution. These results also highlight the importance of considering the results of individual verbs in studies that focus on lexical semantics, as they not only help us understand aggregate trends, but also reveal, in this case, that even in cases of deviant underlying semantic representations, licensing restrictions at the syntax-lexical semantic interface remain intact, suggesting that this is an area of resilience in the Heritage Spanish grammar.

Mixed evidence for crosslinguistic dependency length minimization

Abstract We investigate whether and to what extent the principle of Dependency Length Minimization (DLM) predicts crosslinguistic syntactic ordering preferences. More specifically, we ask: (i) is there a typological tendency for shorter constituents to appear closer to their syntactic heads in constructions with flexible constituent orderings? (ii) how does the extent of DLM in these constructions vary for languages with different structural characteristics? Our study uses prepositional and postpositional phrase (PP) typology as a testbed. Leveraging multilingual corpora for 34 languages, we focus on sentences with verb phrases that have exactly two PP dependents on the same side of the head verb, the ordering of which under certain conditions contains flexibility. Overall we show a pronounced preference for shorter PPs to be closer to the head verb, establishing the first large-scale quantitative evidence that DLM exists in crosslinguistic syntactic alternations. Furthermore, we present evidence that while the efficacy of DLM depends on the specific ordering structures of different language types, across languages there appears to be a much stronger preference for DLM when the two PPs appear postverbally, compared to no or a much weaker tendency for shorter dependencies when the two PPs occur preverbally. This contrast is the most visible in mixed-type languages with head-initial PPs that can appear both after or before the head verb. Within the limited number of rigid OV languages in our dataset, which have head-final PPs before the head verb, we observe no robust tendency for DLM, in contrast to the patterns in languages with head-initial PPs after the head verb. This contradicts previous findings of a longer-before-short preference in preverbal orders of head-final languages.

Notes on Coptic Possessive Predication

Summary The aim of this paper is to present a linguistically valid description of Coptic (or, more precisely, Sahidic) possessive predication construction, both from the diachronic and the synchronic points of view. The first section treats the complex possessive predication system in Demotic, largely based upon Quack 2020 with some additional observations. The second section discusses possible causes for the shift of the possessor-argument, introduced by the preposition mtw-, to the immediate proximity of the existential verboid wn-. Section 3 aims to explain the origin and the usage of the double suffix possessive pattern (ⲉⲧⲉⲟⲩⲛⲧⲁ-ⲓ-ϥ). Section 4 deals with argument marking in the Sahidic possessive predication, looking for the features that speak for or against the ‘have-drift’. Section 5 discusses the syntactic alternatives of the ⲟⲩⲛⲧⲁ-pattern. The final section attempts to find the semantic mechanisms behind the use of the adverb ⲙⲙⲁⲩ in the basic possessive predication pattern.