Verbal Constituents Research Articles

Глагольно-именные сочетания с семантикой зрительного восприятия: синхронно-диахронический аспект

The article deals with the issue of perception representation potential by Russian verbs. The study is focused on stylistically marked verb-and-nominal phrases with the meaning of visual perception (vperit' glaza / vzgljad / vzor; lupit' glaza; pjalit' glaza; taraschit' glaza). The analysis was based on various materials from lexicographic sources that reflect the state of the Russian language in various periods of its evaluation and the data from the National Russian Language Corpus on functioning of verb-and-nominal phrases. The complex approach made it possible to identify collocation potential of the language units under analysis in modern Russian language and to define limitations on their usage in fiction and media styles. Semantic changes in the meaning of verbal constituents define patterns aimed at constructing semantics of perception in a pair with the nouns of perception that represent intense visual ability to perceive. It is concluded that semantic changes are based on correlation between the process of visual perception and another process that is not directly associated with the instance of perceiving, but may be apprehended with the sight conceptualization (during movement in space or physical impact at an object). The results might become the basis for further studies in the field of sensory linguistics.

CONTEMPORARY GERMAN VACANCY ADVERTISEMENTS AS A POLYCODE TEXT

The article considers the peculiarities of the modern German vacancy advertisement in the context of opposition of monocode and polycode texts. The author pays special attention to the fact of belonging of such texts to two semiotic systems (the German and the English language) that may be viewed as the basic verbal constituents of the vacancy advertisement joined in a whole by the common objective typical of this type of texts. The author analyzes English inclusions in German vacancy advertisement texts that reflect ethnical specific information referring to English picture of the world. The article points out the issue of correlation between English and German language pictures of the world remains debatable The results of the analysis allows to make the conclusion that the increasing number of such vacancy advertisements is an evidence of significant changes characteristic of all levels of communicative practice.

Structural priming in the production of Turkish possessive noun phrases and noun clauses

We provide an overview of a structural priming study in Turkish and an analysis of the data using logit mixed-effects modeling. As Turkish is an agglutinative language, it constitutes a unique testing ground for the universal and language-specific aspects of structural priming and linguistic representations. Using the idiosyncratic properties of Turkish, this study demonstrates priming effects in written production of Turkish by adult native speakers. The structures of interest are possessive noun phrases (nominal structure) (e.g. Ali[Ayse-nin ses-in]-i duydu: Ali [Ayse-GEN voice-3SG.POSS]-ACC heard “Ali heard [Ayse’s voice]”) and noun clauses (verbal structure) which are embedded complementizer phrases with a genitive subject and a nominalized verbal predicate (e.g. Ali[Ayse-nin git-tig-in]-i duydu: Ali [Ayse-GEN leave-VN-3SG.POSS]-ACC heard “Ali heard [that Ayse was leaving/(had) left]”. Certain verbs such as duy- (“to hear”) allow both such nominal and verbal structures as their direct object. The two structures have the same GEN-POSS morphology, but different inner constituents. Participants completed sentence target fragments (which are equally likely to be completed with either type under normal circumstances) with more nominal structures after nominal primes and with more verbal structures after verbal primes, which indicates a significant priming effect. Structural priming accesses the inner nominal vs. verbal constituents of these structures and is sensitive to the distinction between phrases and clauses. Despite their identical external morphological template, the two structures are represented distinctly and not as a single, general GEN-POSS form in Turkish native speakers’ minds.

Prosodic asymmetries in nominal vs. verbal phrases in Bantu

Investigations into phonological differences between nouns and verbs focus almost exclusively on the lexical (word) level, showing that underlying contrasts are more numerous and stable (“faithful”) on nouns (Smith 1998, 1999). This raises the question of whether these (or other) alleged differences in word level phonology generalize to the nominal vs. verbal phrase. The Bantu family provides an ideal testing ground for such an investigation. Based on Bantu, I show that nouns are more likely to undergo modification at the phrase level than verbs, thereby obeying less “faithfulness” to the input than verbs. Nominal phrases also show more distinct outputs and complex idiosyncracies than their verbal counterparts. After establishing that there are distinct asymmetric properties in the phrasal phonology of nominal vs. verbal constituents in Bantu, I raise the question of what causes these asymmetries and whether they are general or pertain only to Bantu and other African languages.

Playful female skinscapes: body narrations of multilingual tattoos

ABSTRACTUsing oral narratives of tattoos and their bodily emplacement, the paper explores the performance of creativity, language and multilingualism, identity and gender among female students at three universities in South Africa. We draw on notions of skinscapes, the material culture of multilingualism and multimodality to illustrate, analyse and discuss the creativity and imagination of the design features of the assembled semiotic material that inspire the content and representations of the tattoo. We highlight the inspirations and explorative imaginations of the tattooed and/or the tattoo artists that enable their creations to be visually materialised and for new meanings to be constructed on the skin. We argue that multilingualism and identities should not just be seen in the inscribed languages on tattoos but in the totality of the material and verbal constituents that includes the languages spoken, heard and referred to in the context in which the artefact is reproduced and consumed. We conclude by emphasising the significance of looking at tattoos as material culture of multilingualism/multiculturalism deployed as a creative practice in meaning making. Skinscapes thus becomes a way of expanding sites within semiotic landscape research to include the human body.

Distinguishing nouns and verbs

Many standard tests for identifying syntactic category, such as distribution and morphological potential, fail to distinguish between nouns and verbs in Tagalog. This state of affairs has led some scholars to propose that Tagalog does not treat verbs as a separate syntactic category from nouns. One such proposal by Kaufman (2009) further argues that adopting this so-called nominalist view of Tagalog allows us to straightforwardly understand a number of facts about the syntax of this language that have so far resisted consensus in analysis. This paper argues that the nominalist view cannot be maintained for Tagalog by showing differential behavior between nominal and verbal constituents in this language. It will furthermore be argued that the nominal behavior exhibited by verbal constituents can be attributed to a pervasive process of nominalization, broadly construed, neutralizing the aforementioned differential behavior. The result of this neutralization is reminiscent of phenomena found in other languages, and raises interesting questions regarding the range of nominalization processes observed cross-linguistically.

الانزياح التركيبي وجمالياته الشعرية عند أبي حمو موسى الزياني : مقاربة في أسلوبية التركيب الشعري

يركز هذا البحث على دراسة ظاهرة الانزياح الأسلوبي في التراكيب الشعرية عند أبي حمو موسى الزياني، من حيث أثره في التراكيب الاسمية والفعلية، وفي نسيج العمل الأدبي ككل، فعن طريق الانزياح تتحقق للنص أدبيته، وتأثيره في المتلقي. وفيه حاولنا استجلاء أشكال الانزياح، وجمالياته في ضوء المنهج الأسلوبي الحديث. وقد تنوع الانزياح فيها بين التقديم والتأخير، والحذف، وقد أد دورها في بيان المعاني وتوضيحها، وهذا ما يكشف عن تعدد تقنيات النظم وأساليبه الفنية، التي تفرد بها الشاعر أبو حمو موسى الزياني. The current research study revolves around pinpointing the stylistic deviations in the poems of Abu Hammou Moussa Azyiati in view of their impact both on the nominal and verbal constituents and on the literary work in its entity. The role of deviation is twofolds: it is fundamentally through deviation that the text’s literatures along with the impact thereof on the recipient are accomplished. And we try to dwelve into the different facets of deviation and its aesthetics drawing on the tenets of the modern trend of the stylistic approach. Deviation is multi faceted in fronting backing and deletion. Put together, these features have fulfilled their role in meaning clarity. This, by implication, reveals the multi-dimensional poetic techniques and aesthetic styles which impart uniqueness to Abu Hammou Moussa Aziyati’s poems.

Creolized Text as a form of Modern Educational Discourse

The article presented analyzes the educational discourse exemplified in massive open online courses (MOOCs) in order to find out the realization form and particularities of meanings translation in contemporary education. Considering the curriculum ideologies that determine priorities of teaching and learning activity, attitude to knowledge and values has also contributed to the goal of revealing the particularities of modern educational discourse. Special attention is paid to the learner-centered ideology and social reconstruction ideology. While analyzing the educational discourse, a new mode of meanings making in the process of learning is distinguished, that is educational media discourse represented through creolized text which contains several meaning-making modes at once. Interaction of visual and verbal parts of creolized text is described in the paper as “meanings arithmetic” since being the basis for the transmission of meanings different from those conveyed through non-verbal and verbal constituents when they are considered separately. The experimental part demonstrates that the creolized text has already entered the educational practice and is applied in open online tutorials.

El causativo misumalpa (miskitu, sumu)

Causative constructions in the Misumalpa family differ from more familiar constructions in that the causative head appears embedded under the verb corresponding to the effect of the causation. The causative verb carries a subject obviation morpheme, argued in this paper to be an indication of being structurally subordinated to a main clause. In addition, the non-causative verb shows overt agreement, a property typically restricted to main verbs. Despite these properties, several structural tests (binding, negation, tense interactions) show that causative constructions do not behave like other embedded clauses -in particular, like serial clauses-. It is argued in this paper that this apparent contradiction is due to the properties of functional morphology in headfinal languages and that the structural association of verbal constituents is different in causative and serial clauses. In particular, serial clauses are argued to be adjuncts of the main clause, while causative constructions are in complement positions and, probably, undergo (abstract) reanalysis with the main verb. Finally, the author argues that the causative interpretation (similar to the interpretation of more familiar causative constructions) is possible due to the fact that the position and the domain of the causative allow its subject to raise to a position higher than the non-causative, and that the VP is interpreted as the argument of the causative.

Why Does the Verb Fail to Be Xabar? A Relevance-Theoretic Analysis

Adopting a psycholinguistic model of analysis such as Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1986a[1995]), helps, we argue, account for traditional Arab grammarians' long-standing belief that the verb, as a lexical category, fails to be xabar (a rheme). Concisely, this paper aims to explore the 'linkage' between linguistic structure and pragmatic interpretation. The proposal adopted here is that, following Al-Jarrah (2009), actions, being less concrete than participants, tend to stand out less in the landscape; and thus, are less likely to create maximal relevance. In relevance-theoretic terms, verbal constituents create, we argue, less contextual effects for larger processing cognitive effort. Nominal constituents, on the other hand, are more likely to be relevant because they are, we believe, the discourse entities which are mainly the potential carriers of information. The present study advances the uniform assumption that the “rhematic status” of a constituent be it nominal, verbal, etc. is exclusively determined by its overall relevance to the context in which it occurs, i.e. the one causing substantial modification to the cognitive environment of the interlocutors in the discourse. In order to empirically support the validity of this claim, the information structuring of the opening of some Qur'anic chapters (Arabic: suras) is investigated. Whereas some chapters (e.g. 'al-muŧaffifeen, 'al-''la) follow the verbal pattern (V S), others (e.g.'altakweer, 'al-inshigaag, 'al-infiŧaar) follow the nominal pattern (NP VP). As for the mechanism, sooner disambiguation (topicalisation), defocalisation (lower pitch), and reference assignment (pronoun usage) all work in tandem in a text consisting of a set of assumptions of different degrees of manifestness to narrow down the assumption that is relevant most to both the speaker and the audience in the discourse, and ultimately enhance the local cohesion of the text. (Note 1)

The Establishment of Modern Chinese Grammar: The Formation of the Resultative Construction and its Effects (review)

Reviewed by: The establishment of Modern Chinese grammar: The formation of the resultative construction and its effects by Yuzhi Shi Lan Zhang The establishment of Modern Chinese grammar: The formation of the resultative construction and its effects. By Yuzhi Shi. (Studies in language comparison series 59.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002. Pp. 262. ISBN 1588112039. $108 (Hb). This book investigates how the resultative construction was formed in Chinese grammar and its effects on the lexicon, morphology, and syntax of Chinese. The resultative construction is a widely observed structure in Modern Chinese, which consists of a verb plus an adjective or an intransitive verb expressing the resulting state of the action. An issue central to the resultative construction is the determination of the structure from which it developed. This book identifies the separable resultative structure as its source, which had an object, adverbial, or a negative element between the verb (V) and the resultative (R). The intervening elements were often omitted, which created adjacency between V and R. Through reanalysis, the boundary between the two was lost and they fused together. The resultative construction was thus formed. The book also provides a chronology of the formation of the resultative structure based on vernacular texts of different times. The motivation for the V and R to be fused involves several factors, the most fundamental of which is disyllabification. The Chinese phonological system underwent a simplification throughout history, which motivated disyllabification to reduce resultant homophony and restore distinctive phonological representations. The V and R, which were often adjacent, became fused together like a disyllabic word. The more frequently a verb collocates with a particular resultative, the more likely they are to become fused into a single constituent. The necessary structural condition for the V and R to be fused is the loss of the connective er between two verbal constituents. One of the outcomes of this loss was the possibility for the V and R to be adjacent to each other, which was necessary in order for them to be fused. The book also discusses the semantic factors in the development of the resultative construction. Those that were fused together first were the ones that expressed a typical ‘action-result’ relation. The R that defines a telic state for V has a high degree of semantic relevance, and this semantic relevance also plays a critical role in the fusion of the two elements. The book then introduces the effect of the formation of the resultative structure on Chinese grammar, including the aspects of lexicon, morphology, and syntax. During the formation of the resultative structure, many VR phrases were lexicalized into verb compounds. Also, some resultatives further developed into verb suffixes or clitics, including the three major aspect markers in Chinese: perfective -le, durative -zhe, and experiential -guo. With the increase of VR structures, there arose a syntactic requirement for the predicate to be semantically bounded, and bare predicates became greatly limited in their distribution. In addition, through analogy, other linguistic forms expressing results of an action are like resultatives limited to postverbal position; and those expressing concomitant features occur in preverbal position. This distribution was established not long after the emergence of the resultative construction. The book also provides several case studies based on empirical data to support its theory. The frequency of the occurrence of the relevant structures during a certain time is also often provided. Lan Zhang University of South Carolina Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

Reaffirming the Predicator and verbal group in Systemic Grammar: A reply to Fawcett's “In place of Halliday's ‘verbal group’”

In early (Scale and Category) expositions of Systemic Grammar, the verbal group realised the Predicator. Halliday now appears to recognise the Finite as a separate element from the Predicator in clause structure, thereby having more than one clause element realised by different constituents of the same verbal group. Fawcett dispenses with the Predicator and the verbal group entirely and analyses the various verbal constituents as separate clause elements.In direct contrast to Fawcett's article “In place of Halliday's ‘verbal group’”, this paper argues in favour of retaining the Predicator and the verbal group, and of handling the finite element not as an element of clause structure but rather as a feature which is conflated with a constituent element of the verbal group.