Subject-verb-object Research Articles

Passive Construction in Basketo

This paper deals with the passive construction in Basketo, a North Omotic language predominantly spoken in Basketo Special Woreda in Southern Nation Nationalities and Peoples Regional State, Ethiopia. The passive suffix - int- is also morphologically involved in reciprocal, reflexive, and spontaneous constructions. So, it can be regarded as a valency-reducing suffix having a de-transitivizing effect on the transitive. From the viewpoint of information structure, the passive construction is a strategy foregrounding the patient while backgrounding the agent. For this effect, OSV word order is used because the initial noun phrase of a sentence becomes a topic. On the other hand, in the interpretation of sentences with trivalent verbs, the noun phrase immediately preceding the verb is taken as focus. If this noun phrase is marked by instrumental (comitative) case -bara, the morpheme -int- of derived, verb stems must be interpreted as reciprocal, if accusative case (object), then passive. The passive form is also used in resultative constructions of telic verbs, i.e. those referring to a state that has happened as the result of a previous event. The object of the previous event is promoted to nominative, and the verbal noun of the derived verb stem with-int- is followed by the present auxiliary verb woɗe ‘exist’. Finally, the impersonal passive expresses a state of habitual or generic activity.

Electrophysiological evidence for a subject-first strategy in visually situated auditory sentence processing in Korean

This study investigated a subject-first strategy in prediction mechanism in visually situated sentence processing in Korean, using event-related potentials (ERPs). According to the subject-first strategy, parsers tend to generate sentences conforming to canonical sentence word order (i.e., SOV in Korean), subject-first sentence, mapping conceptually more prominent referent such as agent of the event on the subject position of the sentence. Therefore, in the predictive mechanism of language comprehension, the subject is pre-activated and anticipated for the first NP of the sentence at the initial phase of bottom-up language processing. This study tested this subject-first strategy in Korean by examining brain responses to object-initial sentences (OV) compared with subject-initial sentences (SV) under the context of clear thematic role relations set by a visual image. The results of an ERP experiment with 30 native Korean speakers identified neural effects for object-initial sentences compared with subject-initial sentences at the NP and Verb, reflecting a conflict between the pre-activated representation in the parser's mind and the encountered bottom-up input. An N400 effect was elicited at the NP, as early as at the noun, not at the following object case marker. Late frontal positivity (LFP) was also found in the sentence-final verb, proving the processing difficulty of non-canonical object-initial sentences compared with canonical subject-initial sentences. These results indicate that Korean native speakers build linguistic representation conforming to a canonical sentence in SOV language in the predictive mechanism supporting subject-first strategy but revise the predicted event structure rapidly upon newly encountering input.

A Typological Approach to Word Order and Information Processing: English as a SVO Language

The main purpose of this study is to examine a relation between word order and language processing and identify language-specific features that affect the degree of accessibility to information structure in a SVO word order. The findings from this study reveal that subject-prominent mechanisms in English, such as clefting structures, dummy subjects, existential sentences, non-agentive subjects, raising constructions, and passive voices, are well motivated for the purpose of maximizing language-use efficiency. In addition, passive constructions and non-agentive subjects are strategically exploited for the purpose of promoting high accessibility to a rigid SVO sequence and improving textual coherence. Furthermore, the tendency towards short–long ordering in SVO languages like English is predominant, and thus the language-specific maxims, such as ‘end-focus’, ‘end-weight’, and ‘dependency length minimization’, are well observed in the use of left-branching and right-branching modifiers in English for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of information processing. Finally, this study suggests that the language-specific structures, patterns, devices, or principles that are available in SVO word order seem to be optimized for facilitating information processing.

Maritime Students Meeting the Maritime Industry English Standards: An Analysis of Types of Sentences

A sentence is the highest unit of grammar. Thus, constructing error-free sentences in writing is one of the biggest challenges encounted by most non-native speakers, and even university students are not an exception to this reality. This study aims at investigating various types of sentences produced by tertiary-level maritime students in a Sri Lankan university. The study was based on a narrative writing activity in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) module. The students were provided forty-five minutes to produce the piece of writing as an in-class activity on a topic relevant to their field visit to a port. This is a descriptive study based on the analysis of a small corpus of essays written by twenty maritime students, and a structural analysis of sentences was employed to examine the students’ writing. Different kinds of sentences and sentence errors were identified, and they were classified accordingly. The findings of the study revealed that the students favoured simple sentences over other sentence types. Approximately two-thirds of the sentences produced belonged to the simple sentence category. The compound-complex form was found to be the least utilized sentence type among the target group. The analysis of sentences was based on the elements of the clause structure explained in Quirk et al. (1985) and Oshima and Hough (2006). Interestingly, it was observed that there was no single common clause structural pattern used by the participants. Instead, they used subject-verb-object (SVO), subject-verb-complement (SVC) and subject-verb-adverbial (SVA) types very often when writing. Similarly, fragments and run-on sentences were recorded high among maritime learners’ erroneous sentences in writing. The study findings have pedagogical implications for the teaching of English language grammar that subsumes essay writing in the EAP module. 

Preverbal syntactic complexity leads to local coherence effects

ABSTRACT The effective use of preverbal linguistic cues to make successful clause-final verbal prediction as well as robust maintenance of such predictions has been argued to be a cross-linguistic generalisation for SOV languages such as German and Japanese. In this paper, we show that native speakers of Hindi (an SOV language) falter in forming a clause-final structure in the presence of a centre-embedded relative clause with a non-canonical word order. In particular, the fallibility of the parser is illustrated by the formation of a grammatically illicit locally coherent parse during online processing. Such a parse should not be formed if the grammatically licit matrix clause final structure was being successfully formed. The formation of a locally coherent parse is further illustrated by probing various syntactic dependencies via targeted questions. We show that the parser's susceptibility to form such structures is not driven by top-down processing, rather the effect can only be explained through a bottom-up parsing approach. Further, our investigation suggests that while plausibility is essential, presence of overt agreement features might not be necessary for forming a locally coherent parse in Hindi. These results go against top-down proposals to local coherence such as lossy surprisal and are consistent with the good-enough processing model to comprehension while only partially supporting the SOPARSE account. The work highlights how top-down processing and bottom-up information interact during sentence comprehension in SOV languages – prediction suffers with increased complexity of the preverbal linguistic environment.

Preserving Linguistic Diversity: Strategies for Language Preservation and Cultural Heritage Safeguarding

The Batak linguistic group in North Sumatra, Indonesia, encompasses a diverse array of languages, each representing a unique cultural identity. This research embarks on an in-depth comparative analysis of these languages to unveil their linguistic relationships and explore their cultural significance within their respective communities. The research employs a multi-faceted approach, involving data collection from native speakers, fieldwork in community settings, and collaboration with language experts. Linguistic data, including phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic features, are meticulously analyzed. Comparative methods are applied to elucidate linguistic bonds and distinctive nuances within these languages. Our analysis confirms the presence of strong linguistic bonds among the Mandailing Batak, Toba Batak, and Karo languages. Shared phonological features, agglutinative morphology, SVO word order, and culturally significant lexicons underscore their common Batak heritage. The existence of tonal patterns and tonal variations enriches the linguistic landscape. Simultaneously, distinctive linguistic nuances in each language highlight their unique identities and cultural significance. This research emphasizes the significance of preserving linguistic diversity and cultural heritage within the Batak communities. The findings provide valuable insights into the preservation of cultural practices, historical knowledge, and ancestral narratives. It serves as a call to action for the continued preservation and revitalization of these languages, recognizing their profound connections to culture and identity.

Processing Gapped and Gapless Relative Clauses in Mandarin: Evidence from Event–Related Brain Potentials

This paper reports an event–related potential (ERP) study examining the processing of “gapless” relative clauses (RCs), normal (“gapped”) RCs, attributive clauses, Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) forms and the morphological markers de and le in Mandarin Chinese. The objectives were to (1) determine whether a processing cost signature can be identified for gap–filler processing by comparing gapped RCs with SVO forms; and (2) determine whether processing gapless RCs is more similar to processing gapped RCs that they resemble on surface or attributive clauses that they resemble structurally by comparing gapped RCs, gapless RCs, and attributive clauses. ERP data was collected from 27 native speakers as they read 160 sentences containing gapped, gapless, attributive, and SVO sentences, which differed only in the second word of the string (e.g., 教授设计的/烧菜的/助手的/设计了/那个广告… The professor designed Ø/cooked food/assistant’s/designed that advertisement…). Results indicate that (1) the head noun evoked larger N400 and P600 components and the determiner elicited a larger sustained anterior negativity for the gapped RCs than for the SVO forms, and (2) the word immediately following the head noun evoked a larger P600 and the determiner elicited a larger sustained anterior negativity for both gapped and gapless RCs than for attributive clauses. These results indicate that (1) gap–filler integration in Mandarin is both semantic (hence the N400) and syntactic (hence the P600) in nature, and (2) gapless RCs are neurophysiologically processed more like gapped RCs than attributive clauses. The ERP signatures to verb+le, verb+de, verbs with verb–object (VO)+de morphological structure, and noun+de revealed that the processing costs for VO verbs and noun modifications were higher than for simple verbs, and the morphological markers de and le induced similar processing costs, even though de triggered the positing of a syntactic gap whereas le did not.

The Impact of Grammar on the Construal of Discourse Alternatives in German and English

This paper investigates additive links to discourse alternatives in picture comparison dialogues produced by adult native speakers of English and German. Additive relations are established across turns when participants are confirming the presence of matching objects on both pictures (A: “I have X”. B: “I also have X”). Speakers thereby describe their own picture and construe the interlocutor (or rather: the interlocutor’s picture) as a discourse alternative. Whereas the vast majority of the confirming descriptions in German contain an additive particle (auch), less than half of the corresponding confirmations in the English data do (“also”, “too”, etc.). Numbers differ even more drastically in polarity questions (“Do you (also) have X?”) that are equally typical for the dialogue task. Such frequency differences are at odds with recent accounts treating additive particles as being quasi obligatory when their presupposition is satisfied. An in-depth contrastive analysis of lexical, syntactic and information structural properties reveals that the default mapping of information units on syntactic functions (subject) in conjunction with the SVO word order of English leads to a structure in which subject, initial (topic) position and the particle’s associated constituent coincide. This would make the relation to its discourse alternative more prominent than warranted by the dialogue task and speakers of English leave this relation unmarked or resort to alternative constructions instead. The V2 syntax of German, on the other hand, allows for a dissociation of discourse topic and associated constituent. It allows the speaker to topicalize reference to the matching object, to highlight the confirmation of its presence on the speaker’s picture, and to relate the changing information to its discourse alternative in a non-contrastive way.

The processing of the ambiguous object pronoun in German monolingual and highly proficient L2 speakers with L1 Georgian

Aims and objectives: The current study examines the role of grammatical and positional parallelism on ambiguous German pronoun resolution in monolingual speakers and highly proficient L2 speakers with L1 Georgian. In particular, the study asks whether an object pronoun ihn in a sentence initial position could refer to the non-subject antecedent in a preceding subject–verb–object sentence. Furthermore, it investigates whether L1 and L2 speakers show similar preferences when resolving ambiguous object pronouns. Methodology: Two visual world eye-tracking and two offline experiments were conducted with L1 and L2 speakers of German. During the eye-tracking session, the task was simply to look and listen, while in the offline test, participants were required to decide on the assumed referent of the ambiguous pronoun. Data and analysis: Linear-mixed effect models were applied to the eye-movement data. Two-sample t tests were used in the analysis of the offline data. Findings and conclusions: Eye-movement results revealed a bias toward the subject antecedent in L1 speakers, while the L2 speakers showed a non-subject preference when resolving the referent of the object pronoun. The offline experiments supported the eye-tracking findings of both groups, particularly as regards the role of grammatical parallelism in the resolution of ambiguous pronouns by the L2 speakers. These findings are interpreted in the context of language-specific processing strategies in anaphora resolution. It appears that L1 and L2 speakers may be using different information-structural cues to resolve ambiguous pronouns. Concretely, a less strongly internalized knowledge of the target language or the influence of the first language may produce alternative processing mechanisms in L2 speakers. Originality: This study fills the research gap on ambiguous object pronoun resolution of L1 and L2 speakers of German. Implications: The findings of this study add additional information to the growing body of research into pronoun resolution. It focuses on the resolution of the German object pronoun within an information-structural framework of language processing in L1 and L2.

L’uso delle costruzioni marcate nel teacher talk dell’insegnante di italiano L2 del Belgio francofono

The use of marked structures in the teacher talk of the Italian as L2 teacher in Francophone Belgium
 The aim of this article is to present and discuss the first results of a research study on the teacher talk (TT) for Italian as foreign language (IL2) teachers in Belgium. In particular, data from the pilot corpus of the study, conducted in the French-speaking area of the country, are analysed. The TT is examined from a morphosyntactic point of view, in order to track the presence or absence of some spoken features typical of neo-standard Italian: the marked constructions, i.e. structures that present modifications of the canonical order of the subject-verb-object (SVO) elements, to respond to pragmatic communication goals. TT features could be an indicator of the structure and specificity of the teachers' spoken Italian, and at the same time provide information on their linguistic and cultural identity. IL2 teachers in Francophone Belgium are in fact mostly of Italian origin. This suggests that their TT is probably influenced by their socio-biographic profile as well as their linguistic repertoire.

Speakers balance their use of cues to grammatical functions in informative discourse contexts

ABSTRACT Grammatical encoding has been suggested to be driven by communicative efficiency – a balance between production ease and communicative success. Evidence for this view comes from studies indicating that speakers balance their use of morphosyntactic cues to grammatical functions with respect to animacy. However, these studies have not taken cues in the discourse context into account. In a picture-description task, we investigate the influence of animacy on the morphosyntactic encoding of grammatical functions in Swedish transitive sentences. These sentences are produced in discourse contexts with additional information about grammatical functions. We find various morphosyntactic cues to grammatical functions (e.g. SVO word order and case marking) to more frequently be used when the object referent is animate. Speakers thus balance their use of cues to grammatical functions, even when the discourse context is informative about those functions. These findings provide direct evidence for the view that grammatical encoding is influenced by communicative efficiency.

Building a Knowledge Graph on Video Transcript Text Data

Youtube is a video platform which not only provides entertainment but also education in which knowledge can be dug based on video transcripts. The results of this knowledge can be formed as a knowledge graph to build a knowledge base that saves storage space. Moreover, it can be used for other purposes such as recommendation systems and search engines. Prosen built a knowledge graph using NLP to extract the text by identifying the subject-verb-object (SVO) and stored in the graph database. The construction of a knowledge graph on a Youtube video transcript was successfully carried out. However, there are still obstacles in the process of extracting text using NLP which is less optimal so it is possible that there is still a lot of knowledge that has failed to be obtained.

A corpus-based investigation on the distribution of pronominal objects in Russian

This study attempts to investigate the alternating word order VO and OV in Russian from a diachronic perspective. Literature has argued that Russian, the SVO language, has the pronoun object likely to move to the preverbal position, yielding the SOV order. By controlling some factors affecting occurrences of the VO-OV alternation, the current study examined the corpus data from the 19th and the 21st centuries of Russian. The diachronic corpus study has revealed that the VO alternant was comparable to the OV alternant during the 19th century but has become less frequent in the 21st century. This study suggests that the decrease of the VO alternant can be attributed to some historical changes in the language and the VO alternant as well as the OV alternant requires a structural account.

Slavic languages – “SVO” languages without SVO qualities?

AbstractSlavic languages are commonly classified as SVO languages, with an exceptional property, though, namely an atypically extensive variability of word order. A systematic comparison of Slavic languages with uncontroversial SVO languages reveals, however, that exceptional properties are the rule. Slavic languages are ‘exceptional’ in so many syntactic respects that SVO appears to be a typological misnomer. This fact invites a fresh look. Upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that these languages are not exceptional, but regular members of a different type. They are representative of a yet unrecognised type of clause structure organisation. The dichotomy of ‘head-final’ and ‘head-initial’ does not exhaustively cover the system space of the make-up of phrases. In addition, there arguably exists a third option (T3). This is the type of phrasal architecture in which the head of the verb phrase is directionally unconstrained. It may precede, as in VO, it may follow, as in OV, and it may be sandwiched by its arguments within the phrase. From this viewpoint, the Slavic languages cease to be exceptional. They are regular representatives of the latter type, and, crucially, their collateral syntactic properties predictably match the properties of this type.

One way in which Slavic languages really are SVO languages

One way in which Slavic languages really are SVO languages

Syntactic, Semantic and Discourse Effects on the Processing of Scrambled Japanese Sentences

In Japanese sentences, the default word order is ‘subject-object-verb’ (SOV). However, Japanese allows scrambling of noun phrases (NPs), for example ‘object-subject-verb’ (OSV) as opposed to the unscrambled default order. Two self-paced reading experiments in the moving window paradigm were conducted to test the effects of syntax, semantics and discourse in native Japanese and native English speakers’ processing of scrambled Japanese sentences. The first experiment examined how the syntactic factor (NP order) and semantic factor (NP animacy) affect processing of Japanese sentences. Results revealed that animacy difference between the subject-NP and object-NP contributes more to native English speakers’ processing than default SOV word order, whereas no such difference was found for native Japanese speakers. The second experiment examined the discourse effect in processing of scrambled OSV sentences. The experiment revealed that the processing of Japanese scrambled sentences is facilitated by the preceding context for both native Japanese and English speakers.

Intersubjectivity, stance, and Korean general extenders

Studies examining general extenders such as and stuff (like that) have mostly concentrated on Indo-European languages. Turning to a typologically distinct language, this study investigates the Korean general extenders ko kulay ‘and stuff (like that)’ and ko ilay ‘and stuff (like this)’. The study analyzes the frequency and functions of these Korean expressions in natural and scripted conversation corpora, considering their role in stance-taking and drawing on the theoretical frameworks of grammaticalization and intersubjectification. General extenders typically come at the end of sentences. In Indo-European SVO languages, they usually consist of a connective, a noun, and a demonstrative. In Korean, an SOV language, the general extenders ko kulay/ilay consist of a connective (ko ‘and’) and a demonstrative predicate (kulay ‘do/be like that’; ilay ‘do/be like this’). They nonetheless share many functions with English and stuff (like that): marking invited solidarity, expressing intensity, hedging, and downgrading. In addition, ko kulay/ilay can denote repetition or the speaker's critical stance toward an addressee. Ko kulay/ilay have been described previously only as listing constructions indicating extrapolated additional members of an evoked category. By investigating these expressions in natural conversation, this study demonstrates that they perform diverse interactional-pragmatic functions in conversation.

Estimating Cue Strengths in Oral Production in a Japanese Learner Corpus

Word order, case marking, and animacy are cues used to convey and comprehend argument roles in transitive events. Japanese, however, is characterized by flexible word order, null arguments, and case-marker omission. This study analyzes corpus data of interviews between native Japanese speakers and L1-English and L1-Korean learners to examine these characteristics in both input to learners and learners' own production. The relative importance of the three cues is estimated based on their distributional properties using the competition model framework. The findings indicate that animacy was the strongest cue for the native speakers and, when at least one NP was elided, for the learners. However, when both subject and object were present, learners adhered to SOV word order. Case marking was reliable when present but was so frequently omitted that it was not a useful cue, contra previous reports. L1 and proficiency effects are also discussed.

Multiple Objects, Serial Verbs and the Question of Argument-Sharing

This paper explores syntactic operations that obtain in multiple object and serial verb constructions in Akoose, a Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. Focus is placed on the structure and types of multi-verb constructions (MVCs), the structure of (MVCs), as well as multiple object constructions (MOCs). The paper also examines argument-sharing in both (MVCs) and (MOCs). The analysis is done following insights from Chomsky (1981, 1995; Miyagawa, 2010). While (MOCs) display predicates with two structural patterns, namely [VP, [NP IO [NP DO]]] and [VP, [NP DO [NP IO]]], serial verb constructions (SVCs) constitute a maximum of three different VP structures, namely a) [V1 [XP [V2]], b) [XP [V1 [V2]], and c) [V1[V2 [XP [V3]]]. It is found that notwithstanding the normal SVO word order in the language, complex serial verbs impose an S-V1-V2-(V3)-O word order, which further derives S-V1-V2-O-V3 and S-V1-O-V2-V3 surface variants. The analysis further reveals that irrespective of the complex nature of structures examined and the various transformational operations they undergo, there is no argument sharing in MOCs and SVCs in Akoose.

NegP Located Above TP: Evidence from Standard Arabic (SA) and Saudi Northern Region Dialect of Arabic (SNRDA)

The paper examines the properties of sentential negation in Standard Arabic (henceforth SA) and Saudi Northern Region Dialect of Arabic (henceforth SNRDA), focusing on similarities and differences in use and distribution (Note 1). In this paper, I propose that that the sentential negation facts of standard and dialectal versions of Arabic receive a unified account despite their apparent differences. I provide some empirical and conceptual evidence of the workability for the Neg-Above-T analysis over the Neg-Below-T analysis. NegP cannot remain lower than TP in Standard Arabic as the language employs V-to-T raising to drive the VSO from SVO word order. NegP in SNRDA should be higher than TP as it precedes non-verbal predicates (nominals, adjectivals, prepositionals, and adverbials) and some TP/CP located elements (expletive/ (indefinite) pronominal subjects and the future tense expressing element raaħ, and adverbials hosting pronoun subject clitics like ʕumri/uh.