scholarly journals Passives and impersonals

2003 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES P. BLEVINS
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Strong Tendency ◽  
Human Agent ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Status ◽  
Direct Objects

This paper argues that the term ‘passive’ has been systematically misapplied to a class of impersonal constructions that suppress the realization of a syntactic subject. The reclassification of these constructions highlights a typological contrast between two types of verbal diathesis and clarifies the status of putative ‘passives of unaccusatives’ and ‘transitive passives’ in Balto-Finnic and Balto-Slavic. Impersonal verb forms differ from passives in two key respects: they are insensitive to the argument structure of a verb and can be formed from unergatives or unaccusatives, and they may retain direct objects. As with other subjectless forms of personal verbs, there is a strong tendency to interpret the suppressed subject of an impersonal as an indefinite human agent. Hence impersonalization is often felicitous only for verbs that select human subjects.

Medical and Biological Analysis

2013 ◽  
pp. 605-633
Author(s):  
Eugene N. Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Signal Processing ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Disease Process ◽  
Noise Removal ◽  
Clinical Applications ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Processing Methods ◽  
Biological Analysis ◽  
The Status ◽  
Signal Processing Methods

Medical and biological analysis refers to the engineering methods of signal processing as applied to measurements from human subjects, with the purpose of defining the differences between normal and pathological signals, in order to detect the presence of a disease process or detect changes in the status of a patient associated with treatment. As such, the focus of this chapter is on the identification of the sources of biomedical signals and their classification. This is followed by a historical background with emphasis on clinical applications and early quantitative and engineering approaches. Subsequently, the chapter presents classical engineering methods addressing signals in one dimension, focusing on traditional signal processing methods. It then describes some contemporary engineering approaches to medical and biological analysis, and concludes by addressing filters and noise removal and signal compensation.

L-syntax and phono-symbolism: on the status of ideophones in complex predicates

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludovico Franco
Keyword(s):  
Complex Predicates ◽  
Light Verb ◽  
Verbal Predicate ◽  
The Status ◽  
Adjacent Position ◽  
Bare Nouns ◽  
Direct Objects

AbstractIn this article, the author demonstrates that verbal compound constructions involving an ideophone and a light verb represent a widespread syntactic device in the world's languages. The author provides evidence that phono-symbolic morphemes cannot be treated as ‘bare’ direct objects in such constructions. Ideophones appearing in the light verb-adjacent position form a semantic unit with the verbal predicate, despite the fact that in some languages they can be syntacticized as (bare) nouns and appear in argumental position. Specifically, ideophones in complex predicates are part of the verbal domain with which they ‘blend’ (yielding a single predicate) through the mechanism of conflation, along the lines of Hale and Keyser (1993, 2002), and building on Ramchand (2008).

scholarly journals Argument Structure of the Verb in Albanian Linguistic

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Pranvera Osmani
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Semantic Roles ◽  
Generative Linguistics ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Common Opinion ◽  
Argumentative Structure ◽  
The Way

In this paper we attempt to address the argumentative structure of the verb in Albanian language. It is an almost common opinion that in the syntactic studies of Albanian language the way how they deal with phenomena, conceptions, ideas are logical. The verb forms the nucleus (core) of the sentence. It assigns to other components of the syntagm the semantic roles they will carry and their structure. In generative linguistics the necessary ingredients are called arguments, while the non-essentials are called adjuncts. As a corpus we will have the treatment of various authors on this issue, the most representative of Albanian language grammar. Different views of Albanian scholars are presented in this issue in the Albanian syntax.

scholarly journals Time and the event: The semantics of Russian prefixes

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.72 ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Ramchand
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Event Structure ◽  
Temporal Domain ◽  
Structure Level ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Basic Distinction ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One ◽  
Structure Domain

In this paper, I draw on data from prefixation in Russian to argue for a basic distinction between event structure and temporal struc- ture. I present a linguistic semantics of verb and argument structure interpretation on the one hand, and a formal semantic implementa- tion of 'telicity' on the other, which makes sense of the generalisations apparently common to both domains. I will claim that the temporal domain embeds the event structure domain, and that the latter con- strains the former. At the same time, the different formal primitives that operate at the levels proposed form the basis for a principled linguistic distinction between the two tiers of composition: the event structure level encodes subevental relations and predicational rela- tions within those subevents; the temporal structure level introduces a t variable explicitly and relates it to the structure built up by the event level. Whether the event structure is homogenous or not will have an impact on whether the temporal variable chosen will be 'def- inite' or 'indefinite.' This latter claim then forms the basis for a new conception of the difference between perfective and imperfective verb forms in Russian.

scholarly journals The la-form: Russian verbs in Nanai speech

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Oskolskaya ◽  
Natasha Stoynova
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Derivational Suffix

Nanai speakers who are fluent both in Nanai and Russian use verb forms with a Russian root and the suffix -la (called further “la-forms”) in their speech. The status of -la is under question: on the one hand, it resembles the Russian past tense form (-l), on the other hand, it can be interpreted as the Nanai derivational suffix -la/-lə, which is used in Standard Nanai for the verbalization of nouns. We argue that in modern Nanai this case turns out to be a complicated one, and that la-forms are maintained due to their links with both of these sources.

scholarly journals German participle II constructions as adjuncts

2000 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 309-321
Author(s):  
Ilse Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Syntactic Position ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Propositional Operator ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Interpretative Flexibility

The present investigation is concerned with German participles II (past participles) as lexical heads of adjuncts. Within a minimalist framework of sound-meaning correlation, the analysis presupposes a lexicalist conception of morphology and the differentiation of Semantic Form and Conceptual Structure. It is argued that participles II have the same argument structure as the underlying verbs and can undergo passivization, perfectivization and conversion to adjectives. As for the potential of participles to function as modifiers, it is shown that attributive and adverbial participle constructions involve further operations of conversion. Participle constructions are considered as reduced sentences. They do not have a syntactic position for the subject, for an operator (comparable to the relative pronoun in relative clauses) or for an adverbial relator (as in adverbial clauses). The pertinent components are present only in the semantic structure. Two templates serve the composition of modifiers - including participle constructions - with the modificandum. It is necessary to differentiate between modification which unifies two predicates relating to participants or to situations and frame setting modification where the modifier is given the status of a propositional operator. The proposed analysis shows that the high degree of semantic underspecification and interpretative flexibility of German participle II constructions resides in the indeterminacy of participles II with respect to voice and perfect, in the absence of certain constituents in the syntactic structure and in the presence of corresponding parameters in the Semantic Form of the participle phrases.  

scholarly journals Natural selection at the RASGEF1C (GGC) repeat in human and divergent genotypes in late-onset neurocognitive disorder

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. Jafarian ◽  
S. Khamse ◽  
H. Afshar ◽  
H.R. Khorram Khorshid ◽  
A. Delbari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Late Onset ◽  
Core Promoter ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Primate Species ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Specific Gene ◽  
Repeat Allele ◽  
The Status ◽  
Significant Divergence

AbstractExpression dysregulation of the neuron-specific gene, RASGEF1C (RasGEF Domain Family Member 1C), occurs in late-onset neurocognitive disorders (NCDs), such as Alzheimer’s disease. This gene contains a (GGC)13, spanning its core promoter and 5′ untranslated region (RASGEF1C-201 ENST00000361132.9). Here we sequenced the (GGC)-repeat in a sample of human subjects (N = 269), consisting of late-onset NCDs (N = 115) and controls (N = 154). We also studied the status of this STR across various primate and non-primate species based on Ensembl 103. The 6-repeat allele was the predominant allele in the controls (frequency = 0.85) and NCD patients (frequency = 0.78). The NCD genotype compartment consisted of an excess of genotypes that lacked the 6-repeat (divergent genotypes) (Mid-P exact = 0.004). A number of those genotypes were not detected in the control group (Mid-P exact = 0.007). The RASGEF1C (GGC)-repeat expanded beyond 2-repeats specifically in primates, and was at maximum length in human. We conclude that there is natural selection for the 6-repeat allele of the RASGEF1C (GGC)-repeat in human, and significant divergence from that allele in late-onset NCDs. STR alleles that are predominantly abundant and genotypes that deviate from those alleles are underappreciated features, which may have deep evolutionary and pathological consequences.

The Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
The Third ◽  
Geographical Regions ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The World ◽  
Linguistic Analyses ◽  
Definition Of

This handbook offers an extensive cross-linguistic and cross-theoretical survey of polysynthetic languages, in which single multi-morpheme verb forms can express what would be whole sentences in English. These languages and the problems they raise for linguistic analyses have long featured prominently in language descriptions, and yet the essence of polysynthesis remains under discussion, right down to whether it delineates a distinct, coherent type, rather than an assortment of frequently co-occurring traits. Chapters in the first part of the handbook relate polysynthesis to other issues central to linguistics, such as complexity, the definition of the word, the nature of the lexicon, idiomaticity, and to typological features such as argument structure and head marking. Part II contains areal studies of those geographical regions of the world where polysynthesis is particularly common, such as the Arctic and Sub-Arctic and northern Australia. The third part examines diachronic topics such as language contact and language obsolence, while Part IV looks at acquisition issues in different polysynthetic languages. Finally, Part V contains detailed grammatical descriptions of over twenty languages which have been characterized as polysynthetic, with special attention given to the presence or absence of potentially criterial features.

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