Linguistic categories: auxiliaries and related puzzles. Vol. 1: Categories, xiv+294 pp. Vol. 2: The scope, order and distribution of English auxiliary verbs

Lingua ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Rigter
Author(s):  
Norma Schifano

Chapter 3 extends the investigation of verb placement to other Romance varieties, in order to expand the macro- and micro-typologies identified in Chapter 2. It starts with a description of the placement of the present indicative verb across a selection of varieties of French, Romanian, Spanish, Catalan, European Portuguese, and Brazilian Portuguese. Following the methodology of Chapter 2, the remainder of the discussion is devoted to the description of cases of microvariation attested across the varieties above, which emerge once a selection of structural and interpretative distinctions are considered, such as lexical and auxiliary verbs, ‘have’ and ‘be’ auxiliaries, finite and non-finite verbs (cf. participle and infinitive), as well as a selection of modally, temporally, and aspectually marked forms (e.g. subjunctive, conditional, past, future, imperfect).


Author(s):  
Norma Schifano

Chapter 2 investigates the differing patterns of verb placement attested across a selection of varieties of the Italian peninsula. After a description of the placement of the present indicative verb in the northern, central, and southern regional varieties of Italian, as well as in a selection of northern, central, upper southern, extreme southern, and Sardinian dialects, a macro-typology of verb placement in the Italian peninsula is drawn. The rest of the chapter is devoted to the description of the microvariation attested across the above varieties which emerges once different verb typologies are considered, such as lexical and auxiliary verbs, ‘have’ and ‘be’ auxiliaries, finite and non-finite verbs (cf. participle and infinitive), as well as a selection of modally, temporally, and aspectually marked forms (e.g. subjunctive, conditional, past, future, imperfect).


Author(s):  
Jonathan Rosa ◽  
Nelson Flores

This chapter presents a raciolinguistic perspective, which theorizes the historical and contemporary co-naturalization of language and race. Rather than taking for granted existing categories for parsing and classifying race and language, the chapter explores how and why these categories have been co-naturalized and imagines their denaturalization as part of a broader structural project of contesting white supremacy. The chapter explores five key components of a raciolinguistic perspective: (1) historical and contemporary colonial co-naturalizations of race and language; (2) perceptions of racial and linguistic difference; (3) regimentations of racial and linguistic categories; (4) racial and linguistic intersections and assemblages; and (5) contestation of racial and linguistic power formations. These foci reflect an investment in developing a careful theorization of various forms of racial and linguistic inequality, on the one hand, and a commitment to the imagination and creation of more just societies on the other.


Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Travis ◽  
Rena Torres Cacoullos

Are semantic classes of verbs genuine or do they merely mask idiosyncrasies of frequent verbs? Here, we examine the interplay between semantic classes and frequent verb-form combinations, providing new evidence from variation patterns in spontaneous speech that linguistic categories are centered on high frequency members to which other members are similar. We offer an account of the well-known favoring effect of cognition verbs on Spanish subject pronoun expression by considering the role of high-frequency verbs (e.g., creer ‘think’ and saber ‘know’) and particular expressions ((yo) creo ‘I think’, (yo) no sé ‘I don’t know’). Analysis of variation in nearly 3000 tokens of unexpressed and pronominal subjects in conversational data replicates well-established predictors, but highlights that the cognition verb effect is really one of 1sg cognition verbs. In addition, particular expressions stand out for their high frequency relative to their component parts (for (yo) creo, proportion of lexical type, and proportion of pronoun). Further analysis of 1sg verbs with frequent expressions as fixed effects reveals shared patterns with other cognition verbs, including an association with non-coreferential contexts. Thus, classes can be identified by variation constraints and contextual distributions that are shared among class members and are measurably different from those of the more general variable structure. Cognition verbs in variable Spanish subject expression form a class anchored in lexically particular constructions.


1990 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Rescorla ◽  
Ellen Schwartz

ABSTRACTThis article describes a follow-up of 25 boys diagnosed as having specific expressive language delay (SELD) in the 24- to 31-month age period. At the time of diagnosis, all subjects had Bayley MDI scores above 85, Reynell Receptive Language Age scores within 4 months of their chronological age, and Reynell Expressive Language Age scores at least 5 months below chronological age; most had vocabularies of fewer than 50 words and few if any word combinations. At follow-up, 16 boys were 3 years old, 7 were 3½, and 2 were 4 years of age. When seen for follow-up, half the 25 boys still had very poor expressive language. These boys were speaking at best in short, telegraphic sentences, and many had moderately severe articulation disorders with quite poor intelligibility. The 12 boys with better outcome had a range of language skills. All spoke in sentences to some extent, and each displayed some mastery of early morphemes (prepositions, plurals, articles, progressive tense, and possessives). However, few if any of the children spoke in completely fluent, syntactically complex, and morphologically correct language. Problems with copula and auxiliary verbs, with past tense inflections, and with pronouns seemed especially common. This research suggests that children with SELD at 24 to 30 months are at considerable risk for continuing language problems.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Blas Arroyo

AbstractBased on a corpus composed entirely of texts close to the pole of communicative immediacy, mainly private letters from the sixteenth, eighteenth and twentieth centuries (c. 1960), this paper analyses the results of a variationist study on the historical evolution undergone by the Spanish modal periphrases with three distinct auxiliary verbs (haber, tener, deber). Using the heuristic tools of the comparative method, the data show that variation has been constrained by a handful of common factor groups over almost five centuries. Nonetheless, with the odd exception, these factors have conditioned each verb in a different way. Moreover, the sense of this variation changes as time goes by, with especially relevant reorganisation in the first part of the twentieth century. Furthermore, there is a notable association between these constraints and the degree of markedness and the frequency of the conditioning contexts, giving support to a usage-based approach to language change in which cognitive processes such as entrenchment play a decisive role. These data also allow a particular profile to be traced for each modal verb in the history of Spanish, in which tener and haber finally undergo a complementary distribution, whereas deber follows a different pattern. After several centuries of stagnation, tener becomes the star in the deontic firmament of spontaneous communication, diffusing abruptly as a change from below in the twentieth century, and replacing haber, which had been the unmarked variant for centuries.


2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 1146-1157 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL SCHMERSE ◽  
ELENA LIEVEN ◽  
MICHAEL TOMASELLO

AbstractWe investigated whether children at the ages of two and three years understand that a speaker's use of the definite article specifies a referent that is in common ground between speaker and listener. An experimenter and a child engaged in joint actions in which the experimenter chose one of three similar objects of the same category to perform an action. In subsequent interactions children were asked to get ‘the X’ or ‘a X’. When children were instructed with the definite article they chose the shared object significantly more often than when they were instructed with the indefinite article in which case children's choice was at chance. The findings show that in their third year children use shared experiences to interpret the speaker's communicative intention underlying her referential choice. The results are discussed with respect to children's representation of linguistic categories and the role of joint action for establishing common ground.


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