Unmarked Pattern Research Articles

Variation in negation in Seto

AbstractSeto is an exceptional language in the Uralic family due to its systematic use of postverbal negation, although preverbal and double negation marking are also used. Postverbal negation is still the most frequent and unmarked pattern occurring in about 74% of negative clauses in Seto. This paper analyzes variation between pre- and postverbal negation in East Seto (spoken in present-day Russia), based on data gathered during fieldwork trips in 2010–2013. By applying quantitative methods that are used in variationist studies (regression modelling, conditional inference trees, and random forests), we determine the variables affecting the choice between pre- and postverbal negation. Marked preverbal negation occurs more likely with first and third person, cognition verbs, and present tense, all of which are often used in fixed expressions likeI don’t know. We also found a strong structural persistence effect in the data and remarkable differences between individual speakers.

An Optimality Analysis of the Morphophonemic Development of Triconsonantal Verbs of Normal Jordanian Speaking Children

This study carries out an analysis using the framework of Optimality Theory to investigate the acquisition of the morphophonemics of JA triconsonantal verbs. The analyzed data consist of speech samples obtained from a picture/action naming task as well as spontaneous speech collection. The sample of the study consists of 64 normally developing children who are acquiring spoken Jordanian Arabic as their mother tongue. The participants whose ages range from 2;1 to 6 years are selected randomly from different preschools in two Jordanian cities. The major findings of the study suggest that children overcome the morphological complexity of Arabic verbs by applying a number of processes, including: cluster simplification, glottalization, and truncation. The OT analysis indicates that these processes are associated with highly-ranked markedness constraints and lower-ranked faithfulness constraints in child grammar. In addition, the root/affix asymmetry triggers unmarked patterns to emerge in the affix. Finally, the results display that children’s morphophonological abilities improve with age and that the majority of children’s morphophonological processes disappear at age six years.

A diachronic study of indirect object doubling in Argentinian Spanish

ABSTRACT This article investigates the textual motivation of clitic doubling in Spanish with a case study of indirect object doubling in 18th, 19th and 20th century Argentinian Spanish. It is generally assumed that doubling originated with preposed and stressed NPs, and increased in frequency till it was obligatory in those contexts. This development and the further spread of doubling have been ascribed mainly to topicality and high accessibility of the indirect object. However, in our data indirect objects may also be doubled when they are not highly accessible, for instance, when they are coded by an indefinite NP that introduces a new discourse referent. To gain a more comprehensive insight, we relate doubling to the interaction between the indirect and the direct object in terms of their accessibility marking. We observe that the gradual, ongoing spread of doubling to definite and indefinite indirect objects, which mark low accessibility, is strongest in contexts where the direct objects are marked for high accessibility, i.e., in contexts with the inverse distribution of the unmarked pattern, in which the indirect object has high and the direct object low accessibility marking. We interpret this surprising finding in terms of informational prominence and degrees of communicative dynamism.

Enclitic-induced stress shift in Catalan

In this paper we provide a novel and unified formal analysis of the stress microvariation found in verb–enclitic groupings in Barcelona Catalan, with stress stability, in Formentera Catalan, with stress shift to the penultimate and the last syllable of the whole sequence, and in Mallorca and Menorca Catalan, with stress shift to the last syllable. We argue that stress shift in Formentera Catalan conforms directly to the unmarked pattern of nominal stress in Catalan, that is, a right-aligned moraic trochee, with the constraintAll-Feet-Rightundominated, leading to final and penultimate stress. In Barcelona Catalan, the effects of this constraint are inhibited by an anti-alignment constraint prohibiting the right edge of a foot from coinciding with the right edge of a clitic. In Mallorca and Menorca Catalan, stress shift is also understood as a strategy to meet the unmarked nominal stress pattern of Catalan, although in these dialects the anti-alignment constraint is also undominated, leading to catalexis, in this case a melodically empty mora, and thus to final stress.

La relación entre foco y prosodia: análisis de la percepción de las prominencias acentuales en un corpus del español de Buenos Aires

Todas las lenguas presentan formas de marcar el foco para diferenciarlo de los patrones no-marcados. La prosodia constituye una herramienta esencial para la producción y percepción del foco oracional. El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar la identificación del foco y sus asociaciones con la percepción de la prominencia. Se realizó un experimento con 540 oraciones afirmativas e interrogativas, y con distintas variaciones focales (sujeto, predicado y foco neutro). Siete hablantes del español definieron el tipo de oración, identificaron el tipo de foco y marcaron el nivel de prominencia para cada una de las sílabas de la oración. Los resultados muestran que la totalidad de los hablantes definen de manera correcta el tipo de oración. Sin embargo, un alto porcentaje de evaluadores percibió con foco en el predicado a las oraciones emitidas con foco neutro. Además, se observó que las curvas de prominencia tonal no siempre correlacionaron con la producción de foco.

Laryngeal assimilation, markedness and typology

Current typologies of voice assimilation between obstruents include languages that exhibit either assimilation to voicelessness (a type of emergence of the unmarked effect) or onset-controlled patterns, where the value controlling the change is in the onset obstruent. In either case, this type of local assimilation is considered to result in (contextually) unmarked structures. This article presents data that highlights a previously unrecognised pattern: assimilation resulting in voicing (an ‘emergence of the marked’ effect). This pattern has implications for how markedness is expressed in grammar. It is argued here that voicing is a privative feature, and that faithfulness constraints regulating the feature [voice] yield a rich typology that includes emergence of both marked and unmarked patterns. In addition, this typology yields benefits that are lost if voicing is considered a binary feature. This is illustrated by extending the dynamics of this voicing typology to other laryngeal features, such as [spread glottis].

Predicting Perceptually Weak and Strong Unmarked Patterns: A Message-based Approach

Perceptual factors have been drawn on to provide insight into sound patterns and commonly serve as a diagnostic for markedness. However, a puzzling situation hasemerged: patterns associated with strong perceptual distinctiveness and those with weak distinctiveness are both described as unmarked. We propose that insight into the unmarked nature of these patterns can be gained when we take seriously the view of language as a system of information transmission. In particular, we suggest thatperceptually weak and strong unmarked patterns are those that effectively balance two competing properties of effective communication: (a) the contribution of the phonological unit in context to accurate message transmission, and (b) the resource cost of the phonological unit.

Address strategies in a British academic setting

The English system of address constitutes an exception among the European languages, in that it does not have a grammatical distinction between a formal pronoun of address and an informal one. Rather, English speakers exploit lexical strategies (i.e. nominal vocatives). This study aims to shed light on the address strategies used by students and members of the teaching staff in academic interactions, with reference to the University of Reading (UK). Data from semi-structured interviews and video-recordings outline an unmarked pattern of asymmetry between the parties, in which students mainly employ formal vocatives towards lecturers (title+surname, honorifics), while lecturers frequently use first names and other informal expressions. Reciprocal informal vocatives, by contrast, emerges as a marked practice, which is resisted or delayed in time. This asymmetrical distribution of forms questions classical models and previous research on address and calls for the necessity of new components for the understanding of the phenomenon.

Saturation of parameter settings in Spanish stress

This paper advances a novel analysis of Spanish non-verb stress couched in the metrical model of Halle & Idsardi (1995), minimally augmented with an Edge Marking domain parameter. All relevant data are surveyed, and the patterns are classified on empirical grounds into unmarked, marked and supermarked. The unmarked pattern, assigned by default, has the stem-final syllable stressed, while the marked pattern involves a binary trochee, also on the right edge of the stem, and supermarked stress a non-final binary trochee or a word Edge Marking domain. All and only these patterns are generated, in both singulars and plurals, through permutations in the settings of three of the four Edge Marking components (domain included), checked by an avoidance constraint barring stress from the desinence. The ‘three-syllable window’ directly falls out from this machinery, both in the established Spanish vocabulary and in incoming borrowings, blind mimicry of the source form thus being obviated, indeed contradicted.

A gap filled: postpostinitial accent in Azkoitia Basque

The investigation of the accentual systems of the languages of the world within metrical phonology has revealed that the typology of accentual systems is severely constrained. Theoretical considerations also allow us to predict the existence of certain accentual systems and to point out typological gaps. In particular, accent on the third syllable in quantity-insensitive systems, the mirror image of antepenultimate accent, has been considered an unattested pattern (van der Hulst i.p.). In this paper, I demonstrate that postpostinitial accent is precisely the unmarked pattern in the Basque variety spoken in Azkoitia. This is important in that a predicted but previously unattested pattern is shown to occur in at least one language. It is further argued that the Azkoitia accentual system derives historically from a system with penultimate accentuation. In fact, in the Azkoitia system both edges are taken into account since regular postpostinitial accentuation is constrained by a nonfinality condition

A modular approach to the grammar of additive particles: the case of German Auch

In this paper we give a modular account of the grammar of additive particles. In doing this we take issue with the standard descriptions of focus particles, which are based on just one possible pattern: the particle preceding the main stressed constituent it relates to (its RC). Additive particles, however, occur in a second, equally unmarked pattern: the RC preceding the main stressed particle. Former accounts do not only miss this complementary distribution as to position and stress pattern relative to the RC, but, as we demonstrate in detail, they misrepresent the relation between syntax, semantics and focus structure of these (and similar) particles in general. Using German auch as our prime example, we argue in particular (i) that there is just one auch underlying the ± stressed variants, and that the complementary distribution cannot be explained by a movement analysis; (ii) that the set of alternatives the auch proposition p and some contextually given proposition q induced by auch belong to, is not supplied by the focus structure of p but by comparing p and q; (iii) that the syntactic scope of auch is crucial for its semantics in that the adding operation applies to the material it contains, no matter whether it is the RC or predicative material common to p, q; (iv) that the complementary distribution of ± stressed auch follows from the modular interaction of the syntax and semantics of auch with focus structure; (v) that auch gives rise to two utterance meanings, 'in addition/furthermore' and 'likewise', directly correlating with whether or not the scope of auch contains RC material. What we argue, in short, is that so-called 'focus particles' are in reality 'scope particles'

The definite article with proper names for referring to people in the Greek of Acts

A study examined the presence or absence of the article with proper names for people in the Bible's book of Acts, using four categories of description, including: (1) the unmarked patterns involving the first mention of a participant and furthe: references to the participant in the same incident; (2) the reintroduction of participants after an absence; (3) further references to a participant in the same incident that arP Inarttrous as contrasted with arthrous; and (4) the use of the artic-,e with names in reported speeches. It is proposed that, in different contexts, the four situations illustrate the principle that anarthrous references to particular, known participants either mark the participant as locally salient or highlight the speech that he or she utters. A list of twelve references is included. (MSE) *******************************************************0 y***********Ota * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * *********************************************************.************** PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORM ATION CENTER (ERIC) a IL DEPARTMENT OP EDUCATION Oltu Educetanal Rimearch and onprovemont EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER tERIC/ ielnis document ha bun twooduced es reCeeved from the persoe or omisnitabon oopireitincit O Minor cnantles nese bun made to ;twos, reproduction pow rty Pant t of view OT OptntOns stated tn tnudoco mem do mot nCItay nipprssant ,)ftroll OEM positron or pdticv TELE DEFINITE ARTICLE WITH PROPER NAMES FOR REFERRING TO PEOPLE IN THE GREER OF ACTS1 Stephen H. Levinsohn