Syntactic Items Research Articles

On the Syntax of Existential Sentences in Standard Arabic

Existential sentences are noncanonical sentences that express the (non)existence of an entity. They have not received considerable attention in Standard Arabic (SA). This paper, thus, aims to propose a syntactic analysis of SA existential sentences. We first discuss the key grammatical properties of the four syntactic items, namely the copular verb, the expletive hunaaka, the pivot, and the coda phrase, that comprise the SA existential sentence. The expletive and the pivot are obligatory items in the structure, whereas the copular verb and the coda are optional. In our proposed analysis, we assume that the expletive is inserted in the Spec-TP to satisfy the EPP feature on T. We argue for the presence of a predicate phrase headed by Pred which hosts the pivot in its specifier and takes a null existential predicate as its complement. The fact that the expletive must precede the pivot and the locality requirement of the predication relation support locating the pivot in the Spec-PredP. We also assume that the coda is an adjunct, which is supported by its optionality and its inability to function as an NP. The conclusions reached may contribute to the ongoing discussion of existential constructions by presenting the perspective of SA.

An Analysis of the Problems in the Use of English Participles by Undergraduate Students at Hazara University Mansehra

The current study aimed at finding out the problems faced by undergraduate students in learning English present, past and perfect participles in Hazara University Mansehra. A descriptive survey design was used to collect data from a sample of hundred students through a non-randomly convenience sampling technique. For answering the questions and achieving objectives, the researchers used a proficiency test. The test comprised morphological and syntactic items about participles in the form of translation, voices and blanks. The collected data was analyzed statistically through SPSS 17.0 version. The analysis revealed that the problems mostly encountered in the English participle were in terms of morphological, functional and syntactical problems in the use of English participles learning particularly present, past and perfect participles. The higher percentage of errors suggests that students should be trained in the use and practice of English participles to learn their correct use.

Effects of Age-of-Acquisition on Proficiency in Polish Sign Language: Insights to the Critical Period Hypothesis.

This study focuses on the relationship between the age of acquisition of Polish Sign Language (PJM) by deaf individuals and their receptive language skills at the phonological, morphological and syntactic levels. Sixty Deaf signers of PJM were recruited into three equal groups (n = 20): (1) a group exposed to PJM from birth from their deaf parents; (2) a group of childhood learners of PJM, who reported learning PJM between 4 and 8 years; (3) a group of adolescent learners of PJM, who reported learning PJM between 9 and 13 years. The PJM Perception and Comprehension Test was used to assess three aspects of language processing: phonological, morphological and syntactic. Participants were asked to decide whether a series of signs and sentences were acceptable in PJM. Results show that the age of PJM acquisition has a significant impact on performance on this task. The earlier deaf people acquire PJM, the more likely they were to distinguish signs and sentences considered permissible and impermissible in PJM by native signers. Native signers had significantly greater accuracy on the phonological, morphological, and syntactic items than either the Childhood or the Adolescent signers. Further, the Childhood signers had significantly greater accuracy than the Adolescent signers on all three parts of the test. Comparing performance on specific structures targeted within each part of the test revealed that multi-channel signs and negative suffixes posed the greatest challenge for Adolescent signers relative to the Native signers. The above results provide evidence from a less-commonly studied signed language that the age of onset of first language acquisition affects ultimate outcomes in language acquisition across all levels of grammatical structure. In addition, this research corroborates prior studies demonstrating that the critical period is independent of language modality. Contrary to a common public health assumption that early exposure to language is less vital to signed than to spoken language development, the results of this study demonstrate that early exposure to a signed language promotes sensitivity to phonological, morphological and syntactic patterns in language.

Computability, Notation, and de re Knowledge of Numbers

Saul Kripke once noted that there is a tight connection between computation and de re knowledge of whatever the computation acts upon. For example, the Euclidean algorithm can produce knowledge of which number is the greatest common divisor of two numbers. Arguably, algorithms operate directly on syntactic items, such as strings, and on numbers and the like only via how the numbers are represented. So we broach matters of notation. The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between the notations acceptable for computation, the usual idealizations involved in theories of computability, flowing from Alan Turing’s monumental work, and de re propositional attitudes toward numbers and other mathematical objects.

On the Syntax of Existential Sentences in Najdi Arabic

The existential sentence is a noncanonical sentence type that is used crosslinguistically to assert the (non)existence of one or more entities. It consists of a set of syntactic items that includes an expletive, pivot, and coda. Two different syntactic analyses have been identified in the literature for the existential construction. The first type of analysis, the standard analysis, treats the existential sentence as a nonraising counterpart of copular sentences. In this analysis, both existential and copular sentences are derived from a single underlying structure, which takes the pivot as a subject and the coda as a predicate. The other type of analysis, the nonstandard analysis, treats the existential sentence differently from the copular sentence. In this analysis, the copular verb takes the pivot NP as its complement, and the coda is treated as an adjunct. The purpose of this paper is to examine the syntactic status of the three syntactic items, namely, the expletive fiih, the pivot NP, and the coda XP, in the existential construction in the dialect of Najdi Arabic (NA). Using the nonstandard analysis, I propose that the existential pronoun fiih is an NP merged in the Spec, vP, the pivot is an NP complement selected by a copular verb, and the coda is an adjunct that serves as either an internal or external modifier. This work about NA existentials may fruitfully contribute to the ongoing discussion on the syntax of existential constructions. Examining existential constructions in various unrelated languages may help obtain a better understanding of this interesting syntactic phenomenon, thereby enabling a more plausible analysis.

The Done‐State Derived Stative: A Case Study in Building Complex Eventualities in Syntax

AbstractA basic question for theories of the syntax–semantics interface is whether the relationship between the form and meaning of complex aspectual expressions is mediated by the pieces that make up hierarchical syntax or whether complex forms and their meanings can pair directly, in templatic or constructional representations, for example. This paper examines the string I’m done writing chapter 3 with this issue in mind. The (be) done V‐ing structure does not seem to have been analyzed before, and I refer to it as the done state. The done state expresses a complex stative eventuality. Notably, the transitive object of the done state can hold a target state, an unexpected interpretation given the ‐ing verb (contrast I’ve been writing chapter 3). Apparent form–meaning mismatches of this type are regularly taken as evidence for listed, constructional mappings. I show, however, that the done state has the syntactic pieces of a stative passive of a present participle, and I argue that the done state is a previously unnoticed type of derived stative. The analysis provides a compositional account of the structure’s semantics and morphology. I further argue that the syntactic items that make up the done state have the same properties that they have elsewhere in the grammar; there is no need to postulate new grammatical objects. The predictable properties of the done state find explanation in models in which complex eventualities are built up out of the minimal units that make up complex phrases.

Lexical and Syntactic Presupposition Triggers in Selected Online English and Kurdish Political News Texts: A comparative Study

This paper intends to analyze the presupposition triggers at both lexical and syntactic levels in selected online English and Kurdish political news texts. This is for the purpose of figuring out how texts in political news are achieving their political intentions via the use of presupposition triggers. Presupposition as a feature of language use is commonly exploited by language users. Expressions and constructions carrying presuppositions are called “presupposition triggers”. Its role in the news text is of specific importance in that writers of text tend to make use of this property so as to create either a favorable or unfavorable bias throughout the text this is to manipulate readers’ view. A descriptive analytic method has been used in this study. The data of this study is the political news texts in online English and Kurdish news channels, then 18 political news texts, which are released in the first half of the year 2020, have been selected randomly. Based on Levinson (1983), Yule (2010), and He’s (2003) classification of presupposition triggers the data have been analyzed and compared. The result of this study has shown that both English and Kurdish political news texts basically use both lexical and syntactic items of presupposition triggers. As for the lexical triggers, English political news texts constituted 530 times of occurring and Kurdish political news texts constituted 361 times. Regarding the syntactic level, the frequency of occurrence has been 185 times in the English news texts while it is 99 times in the Kurdish texts. All the syntactic items were more frequently used in the English texts except for the counter-factual conditionals which was the same as the Kurdish texts occurring 11 times. Adverbial clauses have recurred 23 times in the Kurdish texts and therefore ranking first among the other structural triggers. Finally, in the English texts, implicative verbs were noted only 1times while 11 occurrences were noted in the Kurdish texts.

The use of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in EFL Classrooms

Considering the value of literary texts as authentic language materials to provide real uses of lexical and syntactic items and interesting subjects for students to connect better with the language. In addition, taking in account the characteristic of light horror presented by Irving in the story proves adaptable for different levels and ages, we should use this factor to attract the student for the subjects of our planning. As the use of literature in language lessons stimulates mostly the use of three skills: reading, writing and speaking. This short article collects activities prepared to help EFL students to advance in these areas, and, by the addition of the video as a resource, which presents a context of leisure and entertainment, and could modify student’s posture and expectations in relation to its use (MORÁN, 1995).

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address in 2017

The current research work is a critical discourse analysis of Donald Trump's Inaugural Address (2017). The researcher has made use of Ruth Wodak’s Discourse Historical Model (2004) to study the inaugural address. Moreover, the current research work is qualitative in its approach and analysis, as it answers the research questions in accordance with Ruth Wodak’s Discourse Historical Model (2004). Furthermore, research design used in this research is both descriptive and explanatory; and, it also contains purposive sampling as a data collection method. Although much CDA research has been already carried out on Trump’s speeches, the current research studies Trump’s speech in the context of history and power using Ruth Wodak’s Discourse Historical Model (2004). The researcher has focused lexical and syntactic items in Trump’s speech. Besides, the researcher has found out that power relations, historical norms, ideological constraints, and American values have played a significant role in the discursive construction of Trump’s Inaugural address (2017). Finally, the current research convincingly achieves its objectives and answers its questions.

Shared Syntactic Representations in Balanced Bilinguals: Cross-linguistic Priming with and without Verb Overlap

ABSTRACTThis study investigated cross-linguistic priming in six-year-old, balanced Spanish-English bilinguals (n = 60). We examined bilinguals’ production of transitive forms in English (active, passive) after exposure to Spanish transitives (Study 1; M age = 6.2 years; SD = 0.3) and their production of transitive forms in Spanish (active, passive) after exposure to English transitives (Study 2; M age = 5.9 years; SD = 0.5). We varied whether the verb matched between the modeled prime sentences and target drawings that children described. Results revealed two-way, cross-linguistic structural priming effects, from Spanish to English as well as English to Spanish. Further, the results did not show evidence of a lexical boost in priming. These findings suggest that by school age, balanced bilingual children have generalized, shared syntactic representations and that language experience may influence the strength of the connections between these syntactic representations and lexical items.

Russian Constructions with Syntactic Reduplication of Colour Terms: A Corpus Study

Russian reduplicated constructions with colour terms have never previously been an object of a comprehensive corpus study. Nevertheless, they present considerable interest for a researcher because comparative ability of colour terms to be reduplicated reflects their semantic and pragmatic differences, whereas semantics and pragmatics of reduplication construction are revealed in the properties of colour terms that can fill its slots. Thus, the goal of the paper is to study semantic and pragmatic properties of Russian colour terms and Russian syntactic reduplication construction by analyzing their co-occurrence. We apply corpus methods to the data from the Russian National Corpus, RuTenTen Corpus on Sketch Engine and RuSkell corpus. We analyze absolute corpus frequencies and collocation patterns of Russian non-reduplicated colour terms, as well as their relative frequencies and collocation patterns in the construction of syntactic reduplication with a hyphen ( belyj-belyj ‘white-white, very white, spotlessly white’). Drawing on this data, we establish that absolute frequencies of non-reduplicated colour terms in Russian reflect both Anna Wierzbicka’s “universals of visual semantics”, as well as certain language and culture-specific tendencies, as evidenced by the prominence of goluboj ‘light blue’ and ryzhij ‘carroty-red’ in Russian. We also argue that the Russian reduplication construction with a hyphen ( belyj-belyj ‘white-white) is semantically and prosodically different from the construction of repetition with a comma ( belyj , belyj ‘white, white’). The former has the meaning of high degree, and thus attracts only gradable colour terms, such as belyj ‘white’, chernyj ‘black’, sinij ‘medium to dark blue’, and other basic colour terms. There are additional factors that influence colour term reduplication. Collocation patterns suggest that colour terms that co-occur with the names of culturally and cognitively salient objects, such as denotations of human appearance (face, hands, skin, eyes, hair) or landscape features (sea, sky, fire, grass) are more likely to be reduplicated. Moreover, aesthetic or emotional evaluation of such objects (‘blue-blue eyes’, ‘green-green grass’) is also a factor that is conducive to their occurrence in the construction of reduplication. Our findings establish the importance of corpus methods in the study of colour terms and reduplication, demonstrate that the use and interpretation of lexical and syntactic items hinges both on semantic and pragmatic factors, and add to the understanding of semantics and pragmatics of Russian colour terms and reduplication construction.

The Effect of Recast vs. Clarification Request as Two Types of Corrective Feedback on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners' Structural Knowledge

The present study, considering Form-Focused Instruction as the theoretical framework f the study, is an attempt to study the benefits of two types of teacher feedback in structural knowledge. In the current study, in the two experimental groups, students were taught syntactic items. One of these classes was offered recast as the main feedback type. The other groups offered clarification request feedback. Later the outcome of these groups compared to one another and to the control group who did receive no feedback on their structural knowledge errors. The participants in this study included three groups of Intermediate level English language learners from intact classes of Marefat Language Institute. The selected students were sampled based on their scores on PET proficiency test. In the main study 90 students (30 students in clarification request group, 30 students in oral feedback group, and 30 students in the control group) were selected out of 120 students based on the homogeneity test. Students in the clarification request group and oral feedback group received the related treatment while students in the control group received regular planning. The result of statistical analysis (ANOVA) suggested that recast group and clarification request group outperformed the control group and the clarification group outperformed the recast group.

Grammaticalization and the rise of configurationality in Indo-Aryan by Uta Reinöhl

Reviewed by: Grammaticalization and the rise of configurationality in Indo-Aryan by Uta Reinöhl Geoffrey Haig Grammaticalization and the rise of configurationality in Indo-Aryan. By Uta Reinöhl. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 234. ISBN 9780198736660. $105 (Hb). Although relatively short, this book tackles central issues in historical syntax and grammaticalization theory, with implications far beyond the Indo-Aryan case study that forms the empirical core of the study. It can be read on two levels: on the one hand, as a historical micro-analysis of two postpositions and their source lexemes across three millennia of Indo-Aryan (I-A), and on the other, as a set of theoretical claims regarding the mechanisms by which the claimed ‘strong non-configurationality’ of Vedic ultimately spawned the ‘low-level configurationality’ of the modern I-A languages. Uta Reinöhl draws on a text corpus spanning several chronological stages of I-A: Vedic Sanskrit, early Middle I-A Old Awadhi, late Middle I-A Apabramsha, early New I-A Awadhi, and contemporary Hindi (9–17). The two postpositions have the forms mẽ ‘in’ and par ‘on’ in Hindi, but R refers to their various I-A cognates as madhye and upari respectively, a convention I also adopt in this review. The corpus includes a total of 1,060 tokens, 844 of madhye and 216 of upari, which are detailed in the Appendix. This review concentrates on the book’s broader implications for diachronic syntax, while an assessment of the philological details is referred to the specialists of historical I-A. The book’s main hypothesis is that phrasal structure co-evolves with the grammaticalization of lexical elements into purely functional items. The functional items here are the postpositions of contemporary I-A, which constitute a new form class that was entirely absent in ancient I-A. R proposes that with the emergence of postpositions, a previously unattested phrase type (the adpositional phrase) was introduced into I-A syntax, and this in turn contributed to the fixation of phrasal structure in NPs (or DPs). In this sense, then, the development of adpositional phrases spearheaded the development of phrasal structure in I-A. R’s proposals are profoundly influenced by Himmelmann’s (1997) thinking on grammaticalization: grammaticalization is not merely the evolution of individual lexical items down a cline of increasing grammaticalization, but it also creates novel constructional syntax. On this view, grammaticalization works in parallel, in that individual items shift in terms of, for example, obligatoriness or paradigmaticity, and at the same time syntactic structures specifically geared to these functional elements crystallize. In this sense, syntax is ‘emergent’. With regard to the grammaticalization of adpositions, R rejects the widespread view that the adpositions of I-A languages developed from the Indo-European ‘adverbial particles’. These particles constituted a set of syntactically very heterogeneous items in ancient Indo-European, regularly [End Page 484] cited as a main source of adpositions in contemporary Indo-European. According to R, I-A underwent a distinct development, setting it apart from ‘other Indo-European branches’ (87). In Ch. 4, the ‘traditional scenario’ (Section 4.1), widely assumed to hold for Indo-European, is outlined. On this view, the birth of adpositional phrases involved the grammaticalization of what R refers to as ‘symmetrical groups’, groups of nonhierarchically associated syntactic items that included the adverbial particles and case-marked nouns. Through frequent collocation, such groups apparently ultimately crystallized to grammatical phrases (87). In Ch. 4, R assembles three lines of evidence that militate against the ‘traditional scenario’ for I-A. First is the lack of evidence for an etymological connection between the adpositional particles and the later postpositions (the latter being of extremely varied provenience (83)). Second, in a meta-analysis of the corpus studies of Rigvedic syntax undertaken by Hettrich and associates (e.g. Hettrich et al. 2010), she shows that among the attested noun-plus-particle sequences, the ordering particle-noun is actually more frequent than the inverse order, a finding that runs counter to the expectations that the particles became postpositions. Finally, R refers to a distinct pattern of cliticization in I-A, which may have inhibited the reanalysis of the particles as...

Trajectories to third-language proficiency

Is there a single trajectory to third-language (L3) communicative proficiency in proficient, adult bilingual speakers? Parsimony favours such a possibility but in this theoretical paper we argue that multiple trajectories will be the norm. We focus on the processes of language control. These processes mediate the initial transfer of syntactic forms, entrain processes that change the language network and govern the selection of L3 syntactic structures and lexical items. Theoretical models of initial transfer differ in terms of their demands on top-down and bottom-up processes of language control. L3 learning, though, requires both types of process, yielding potential variability in the syntactic structures that populate the landscape of transfer. A language network can capture that landscape by tagging any existing structure (whether from the first language or from the second language) for use in the L3 by linking it to a L3 language node. Representational change incurs further processing costs because speakers must select L3 syntactic forms and lexical items in the face of competition. In line with earlier research, we propose that top-down control processes external to the language network help select outputs for speech production but these processes themselves must adapt to the demands of selecting amongst three rather than two languages. In a final section we review the nature of variability in language control processes and the processes they entrain. Such variability strongly predicts multiple trajectories to L3 proficiency. Exploring the nature of such variety, using converging methods in longitudinal designs, provides an opportunity for theoretical and practical advance.

Constructions, Word Grammar, and grammaticalization

Abstract In this paper, I explore the hypothesis that constructions — here understood primarily as the dependencies of Word Grammar — can undergo systematic change, sometimes partly due to the effects of the grammaticalization of a lexical item or class of lexical items. I argue that the development of will as a future tense marker in English involves the development of a new construction where two separate syntactic items are associated with a single event in the semantics. I also look at the loss of the impersonal construction in English, where it has been argued that the change is driven by an increase in the schematicity of the Transitive Construction, as well as having been argued that dative experiencers have been reclassified as subjects. I observe that it has also been noted that dative experiencers could function as subjects in earlier varieties of English, and suggest that this is an example of category strengthening.

Sinclair, pattern grammar and the question of hatred

The view of pattern grammar is that syntactic structures and lexical items are co-selected and that grammatical categories begin to align very closely with semantic distinctions. While this is certainly a valid position when analysing the phenomenon of collocation, it does not really solve the problem for open choice issues. Not all language use can be subsumed under the idiom principle. The noun hatred, for instance, can co-occur with any discourse object for which hatred can be expressed. It can also co-occur with other lexical items standing for various circumstantial aspects. The grammatical structure itself often does not tell us whether we find expressed the object of hatred or some circumstantial aspect, as these structures tend to have more than one reading. Lexicogrammar, or local grammar, is more than equating a syntactic structure with a semantic pattern. We have to be aware of the different functions or readings a given grammatical structure can have. The framework of valency/dependency grammar can help us to make the necessary distinctions.

Towards a typology of morphological case

Adposition phrases in morphologically impoverished languages have a function similar to nouns with morphological cases in morphologically rich languages, leading some researchers to argue that at least some cases belong to the category P. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether all cases can be analysed as Ps. The focus is on partitive case in Finnish. Whilst the ‘local’ cases in many languages appear to be strong candidates for analysis as members of the category P, it will be argued that partitive case (and genitive in languages where there is no distinct partitive) spells out a functional head between P and D, and that it properly belongs to the D-system (quantifiers or determiners), not the P-system. Thus morphological cases do not form a coherent category in syntax. Instead, morphological case paradigms relate to one of three different syntactic items: (i) uninterpretable features (structural cases), (ii) PP structures (cases expressing spatial or thematic relations), and (iii) determiner or quantifier projections (partitive, and partitive uses of genitive). Possible extensions of the analysis to other languages (German, Tongan and English) are explored.

Acquisition of Japanese as a Foreign Language Through a Baseball Video Game

Video games have become increasingly more popular and more technologically advanced. This one-month study used interview, observation, self-report, and reading and listening test data to demonstrate and investigate how one intermediate Japanese-as-a-foreign-language (JFL) student improved his listening comprehension and kanji character recognition by playing a Japanese baseball video game. It is suggested that language acquisition was facilitated by the subject being able to control the video game's repetitive, highly contextualized, and simultaneously presented aural and textual language. Limitations of the study and implications for the foreign language teacher are briefly discussed. Background Video games have grown increasingly more popular; hundreds of millions of video games are sold each year, and Phillips, Rolls, Rouse, and Griffiths (1995) studied 816 11- to 16-year olds and found that over 75% of them played video games, with many playing 30 minutes to an hour every day. Video games have also advanced technologically; modern sports games feature true- to-life graphics and celebrity play-by-play announcers that make them almost indistinguishable from the real games on Saturday afternoon television. Is it possible that video games may not only entertain, but also serve in the process of language acquisition? Although material authen- ticity has been found to be beneficial (Peacock, 1997; Thanajaro, 2000), and instrumental moti- vation can play a large role in language learning (Van Aacken, 1999), the fact that nearly all com- mercial video games are designed for native speakers (Japanese and American games are often translated for distribution in other countries) and are highly motivating does not mean that games will guarantee the acquisition of language. Additional support is needed before video games are used to enhance certain areas of formal language education for motivated individuals. First, because video games are quite repetitious (batting in a baseball game or navigating menus in a simulation game may be the game's most integral and enjoyable aspect), they may prolong time on task and allow for increased familiarity of unknown language in video games. Gass and Selinker (2001) advanced the idea that language learners are able to unravel new lan- guage based on its context, and because a video game player already understands the setting of repetitive language used in a game, he/she may be able to decode first semantic and then lexical and/or syntactic items (bootstrap), or vice versa, thereby building receptive comprehension skills that may later be transferred to more productive usage. Second, although the question of control is complex and largely unexplored (see Skehan, 1989, for a discussion of locus of control and its effects on individual motivation), a player's con- trol of a video game's language may facilitate acquisition. A player can affect the audio com-

Semantics and syntax of mass and count nouns: Data from aphasia and dementia

Universita` di Milano-Bicocca, ItalyAvailable online 29 July 2004IntroductionMass nouns like milk or salt usually refer to substances, whereascount nouns like dish or chair denote objects (Quine, 1960). This se-mantic difference between mass and count nouns also has a syntacticcounterpart(seeGillon,1992):massnounsinthesingularformcanonlybe modifiedby quantifiers that do not enumerate (e.g., some milk, muchsalt), whereas count nouns can be used with quantifiers that enumerate(e.g.,eachdish,onechair).Inviewofthefactthatmassandcountnounscan be differentiated either syntactically or semantically, it is of partic-ular interest to investigate semantic and syntacticprocessing in patientswithlanguagedifficultiesbycontrastingmassandcountnouns.Todate,neuropsychological findings on this distinction are still scarce (Gross-man, Mickanin, Onishi, & Hughes, 1995; Semenza, Mondini, & Mari-nelli, 1997; Vigliocco, Vison, Martin, & Garrett, 1999).Two studies are reported here conducted with Italian-speakingpatients with language disorders performing both a syntactic and asemantic task involving mass and count nouns. Study 1 describes theperformance of an aphasic patient (GA) and results are discussed andcompared to those of the aphasic patient described by Semenza et al.(1997). Study 2 reports multiple single-case data from Alzheimer’sdisease (AD) patients to investigate their ability to process mass/countsemantics and mass/count syntax, compared to their general syntacticand semantic capacities. If the mass/count distinction reflects the or-ganization of the lexical-semantic system, a differential performance onthe mass/count semantic and syntactic distinctions will be found.Materials and procedureThe experimental stimuli included 12 mass and 12 count nouns inthe singular form, matched for number of syllables and familiarity.Two experimental tasks were carried out: a semantic judgment taskand a syntactic judgment task. In both tasks a pair of four-wordsentences was presented. In the semantic task, patients had to select thesentence with the appropriate predicative adjective (e.g., This mouse isplentiful*/This mouse is big; The snow is abundant/The snow is large*).In this task, the right choice signals the ability to distinguish the ‘no-tional’ difference between objects and substances (i.e., count and massnouns). In the syntactic task, patients had to judge the correctness ofthe quantifier used in the sentence (e.g., He caught much mouse*/Hecaught one mouse; It fell some snow/It fell one snow*). This task impliesa syntactic judgment, i.e., the matching of a noun with a quantifier thatdoes or does not enumerate. In both tasks, the 24 pairs of experimentalmass/count stimuli were randomized and intermixed with 64 pairs offiller sentencesfeaturing other types of semantic or syntactic violations.ResultsThe performance of 12 controls, matched for age and educationwith the patients, provided the normative data (i.e., cut-off values).Study 1The aphasic patient (GA) showed deficits exclusively in the syn-tactic task (Table 1A). More specifically, he showed difficulties withfiller items, but his performance on mass/count syntactic items wasflawless. Moreover, he also showed an impaired performance in thesyntactic tasks of an external linguistic battery (Miceli, Laudanna,Burani, & Capasso, 1994). These results suggest that despite markedsyntactic difficulties GA was able to use the syntactic rules that un-derlie mass/count nouns.Study 2Three AD patients were tested with a two-month follow-up (Table1B). In the first assessment, patient SL showed semantic difficultieswith fillers only, but in the second assessment her semantic deficit alsoinvolved mass nouns. Patient FR first showed a deficit in processingmass-noun and filler sentences both semantically and syntactically,while preserving correct judgment on sentences involving count nouns.Two months later, the disorder also involved count nouns. In the firstevaluation, patient CF showed a selective difficulty with mass nounsin the semantic task only. She maintained the same profile in thefollow-up.DiscussionThese data corroborate the hypothesis of the specificity of mass/count noun rules and allowed to compare semantic and syntacticprocessing in aphasia and during the evolution of dementia.Brain and Language 91 (2004) 138–139www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l

Varietal conditioning in Japanese/English code-switching

This paper demonstrates that the patterns of Japanese/English code-switching found in Canadian Niseis' (second generation Japanese) in-group speech are conditioned by the varieties of bilingual speech characterized in terms of base language. In the variety where Japanese is the base. English nouns are used (borrowing). In the variety where English is the base. Japanese phrases and sentences occur sporadically. In the variety where neither Japanese nor English predominates, switching of various syntactic items occurs (intrasentential code-switching). Thus, a common word order is not necessary for intrasentential code-switching to take place: borrowing is not the alternative to intrasentential code-switching when two languages with different word order are in contact as Poplack et al. (1989) and Sankoff et al. (1990) claim.