Syntactic Realization Research Articles

The syntactic metaphor of subordination: A typological study

This study explores the syntactic and semantic realization of subordinate clauses in a synchronic sample of 34 languages. It tests the hypothesis that subordination will favor nominalized predicates, and that temporally subordinate clauses will systematically show spatial associations. I argue that nominalization and locative marking interact as syntactic and semantic vehicles for the structural metaphor, EVENT is OBJECT, elaborated by another structural metaphor, TIME is SPACE. This analysis synthesizes insights from the literature in functional syntax and cognitive linguistics.

Classifications of children's speech acts: a consumer's guide

Abstract This paper enumerates eight problems of design and application which must be addressed by any proposed analysis of children's language production into speech acts. These problems fall into two main classes. ‘Problems of definition’ include defining the unit of analysis and its domain in speech data, and defining and relating one to another the taxonomy's levels of abstraction in a motivated fashion. ‘Problems of application’ include vagueness of textual realization of illocutionary force, canonical syntactic realization of illocutionaryacts, sequentially- and simultaneously-multiple illocutionary forces, conversational implicature, illocutionary forces constructed in dialogue, and discontinuous illocutionary acts. Each problem is explicated and exemplified by production data from Subjects taking part in a naturalistic longitudinal study of illocutionary act development. Published proposals for the analysis of children's speech acts are critically reviewed with respect to the adequacy of their treatment of each problem in turn. Finally, it is proposed that clinical or research ‘consumers’ who require speech-act analytic tools for use with samples of child language should assess the appropriateness of such taxonomies by means of their relative success in addressing the range of conceptual and design problems enumerated here.

Foreword

In this paper, we will try to shed new light on the ‘Ezafe’ construction in Kurdish.1 Drawing on historical facts and tracing the Ezafe back to its origins on the one hand, and the unified relation of adjectives and possessors to the head nouns, namely modification, on the other hand, we will argue for the existence of the predicate phrase which Ezafe realizes its head above the NP. The occurrence of the Ezafe will be attributed to the presence of such a functional head which serves to turn a property expression, assigned to the modifier constituent XP, into a propositional function which in turn needs to be saturated by an argument, that is the head noun. Extending the syntactic realization of predication from clausal domain to nominal domain is part of a broader project, which aims at further assimilation of the structure of DPs to clauses.

Classifications of children's speech acts: a consumer's guide

Abstract This paper enumerates eight problems of design and application which must be addressed by any proposed analysis of children's language production into speech acts. These problems fall into two main classes. ‘Problems of definition’ include defining the unit of analysis and its domain in speech data, and defining and relating one to another the taxonomy's levels of abstraction in a motivated fashion. ‘Problems of application’ include vagueness of textual realization of illocutionary force, canonical syntactic realization of illocutionaryacts, sequentially- and simultaneously-multiple illocutionary forces, conversational implicature, illocutionary forces constructed in dialogue, and discontinuous illocutionary acts. Each problem is explicated and exemplified by production data from Subjects taking part in a naturalistic longitudinal study of illocutionary act development. Published proposals for the analysis of children's speech acts are critically reviewed with respect to the adequacy of their treatment of each problem in turn. Finally, it is proposed that clinical or research ‘consumers’ who require speech-act analytic tools for use with samples of child language should assess the appropriateness of such taxonomies by means of their relative success in addressing the range of conceptual and design problems enumerated here.