Rules and construction effects in learning the argument structure of verbs

Theorists of language acquisition have long debated the means by which children learn the argument structure of verbs (e.g. Bowerman, 1974, 1990; Pinker, 1984, 1989; Tomasello, 1992). Central to this controversy has been the possible role of verb semantics, especially in learning which verbs undergo dative-shift alternation in languages like English. The learning problem is somewhat simplified in Bantu double object constructions, where all applicative verbs show the same order of postverbal objects. However, Bantu languages differ as to what that order is, some placing the benefactive argument first, and others placing the animate argument first. Learning the language-specific word-order restrictions on Bantu double object applicative constructions is therefore more akin to setting a parameter (cf. Hyams, 1986). This study examined 100 three- to eight-year-old children's knowledge of word order restrictions in Sesotho double object applicatives. Performance on forced choice elicited production tasks found that four-year-olds showed evidence of rule learning, although eight-year-olds had not yet attained adult levels of performance. Further investigation found lexical construction effects for three-year-olds. These findings suggest that learning the argument structure of verbs, even when lexical semantics is not involved, may be more sensitive to lexical construction effects than previously thought.

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Niuean

10.1093/oso/9780198793557.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Diane Massam

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Argument Structure ◽

Word Formation ◽

Left Periphery ◽

Sentence Structure ◽

Noun Incorporation ◽

The Pacific ◽

Theta Role ◽

Predicate Argument Structure

This book presents a detailed descriptive and theoretical examination of predicate-argument structure in Niuean, a Polynesian language within the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family, spoken mainly on the Pacific island of Niue and in New Zealand. Niuean has VSO word order and an ergative case-marking system, both of which raise questions for a subject-predicate view of sentence structure. Working within a broadly Minimalist framework, this volume develops an analysis in which syntactic arguments are not merged locally to their thematic sources, but instead are merged high, above an inverted extended predicate which serves syntactically as the Niuean verb, later undergoing movement into the left periphery of the clause. The thematically lowest argument merges as an absolutive inner subject, with higher arguments merging as applicatives. The proposal relates Niuean word order and ergativity to its isolating morphology, by equating the absence of inflection with the absence of IP in Niuean, which impacts many aspects of its grammar. As well as developing a novel analysis of clause and argument structure, word order, ergative case, and theta role assignment, the volume argues for an expanded understanding of subjecthood. Throughout the volume, many other topics are also treated, such as noun incorporation, word formation, the parallel internal structure of predicates and arguments, null arguments, displacement typology, the role of determiners, and the structure of the left periphery.

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Indirect objects in Siswati

Studies in African Linguistics ◽

10.32473/sal.v18i3.107470 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 309-326

Author(s):

Videa P. De Guzman

Keyword(s):

Object Relations ◽

Word Order ◽

Direct Object ◽

Double Object ◽

Bantu Languages ◽

Indirect Object ◽

Object Properties ◽

Relational Grammar ◽

Ditransitive Constructions

Contrary to the view that in Bantu languages the two unmarked nominals following the verb in ditransitive constructions need not be distinguished because both possess the same object properties, this paper shows the necessity of making a distinction between the direct object and the indirect object relations. Evidence comes from SiSwati, the language of Swaziland, and the analysis of the data is cast in the Relational Grammar framework. The arguments presented refer to word order, object concord (or pronominal copy) and the interaction between object concord and some syntactic phenomena such as passivization, topicalization, relativization, and clefting. By distinguishing the direct object from the indirect object in Siswati, the grammar is able to provide a more natural account for a number of related double object constructions.

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Roles of verb and construction cues

Review of Cognitive Linguistics ◽

10.1075/rcl.00087.shi ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 332-362

Author(s):

Gyu-Ho Shin ◽

Hyunwoo Kim

Keyword(s):

Argument Structure ◽

Sentence Comprehension ◽

Semantic Information ◽

Sorting Task ◽

Lexical Semantic ◽

Verb Semantics ◽

Sentence Meaning ◽

English Speaking ◽

Constructionist Approach

Abstract This study investigates how speakers of English and Korean, two typologically distinct languages, derive information from a verb and a construction to achieve sentence comprehension. In a sentence-sorting task, we manipulated verb semantics (real versus nonce) in each language. The results showed that participants from both languages were less inclined to sort sentences by a verb cue when the lexical-semantic information about a verb was obscured (i.e., nonce verb). In addition, the Korean-speaking participants were less likely affected by the verb semantics conditions than the English-speaking participants. These findings suggest the role of an argument structure construction in sentence comprehension as a co-contributor of sentence meaning, supporting the constructionist approach. The findings also imply language-specific mechanisms of sentence comprehension, contingent upon the varied impact of a verb on sentence meaning in English and Korean.

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SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF THETA ROLES OF VERBS IN THE MAH MERI LANGUAGE

English Review Journal of English Education ◽

10.25134/erjee.v5i1.394 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 49

Author(s):

Maisarah Maisarah ◽

Kais Amir Kadhim ◽

Zahid Ali Veesar

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Argument Structure ◽

Semantic Analysis ◽

The Other ◽

Endangered Languages ◽

Verb Phrase ◽

Other Hand ◽

Thematic Relations ◽

Theta Role

The Mah Meri language, one of the severely endangered languages of Malaysia, is facing the threat of extinction. In order to save valuable information of this language, this paper focuses on one of its aspects, the Theta Roles in relation to the verbs. Using Radford’s (1997 & 2009) theory of Theta Roles, this study analyzes and explores the verb phrase of Mah Meri. The main objective of this study is to establish the Theta Roles in relation to verbs in the Mah Meri language. In order to fully understand the verb structures, the morphological entities of affixes such as prefixes and suffixes are studied. Moreover, the word order of the sentential constructions are also analyzed according to active and passive forms. These are done in tandem with analyzing the pronouns in relation to the placement of verbs in a Mah Meri sentential construction. It is found that Theta Roles are present in the data except for the Theta Role Recipient. However, this is not due to the lack of the Theta Role of Recipient in the Mah Meri language; rather it is due to the limitation of the scope in this study as data is analyzed based on the interviews only. On the other hand, the Theta Role of Agent is clearly evident in the Mah Meri language.Keywords: Mah Meri Language, Argument Structure, Theta Roles, Thematic Relations

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Grammatical relations in Ikalanga

Studies in African Linguistics ◽

10.32473/sal.v35i2.107308 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 35 (2) ◽

pp. 189-208

Author(s):

Joyce T. Mathangwane ◽

E. Kweku Osam

Keyword(s):

Direct Object ◽

Double Object ◽

Bantu Languages ◽

Intermediate Language ◽

The Core ◽

Grammatical Relations ◽

Applicative Constructions ◽

The Impact ◽

Ditransitive Constructions

Although facts about grammatical relations in many Bantu languages have been established since the early 1970s, there are still languages in this family which have not benefited from such studies. One of these is Ikalanga, spoken in Botswana and Zimbabwe. This paper examines the core grammatical relations of Ikalanga, exploring its typological status in terms of double object constructions. In prototypical ditransitive constructions, the Recipient NP has all of the properties of Direct Object, whereas the Theme NP has only some of those features. The conclusion is that Ikalanga is an intermediate language if object symmetricity is scalar. However, it is shown that in marked applicative constructions where the Benefactive is non-human and the Theme is human, there is reason to argue for 'split direct-objecthood', reflecting the impact of animacy in the assignment of direct objecthood.

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The role of verb semantics in Hungarian verb-object order

Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America ◽

10.3765/plsa.v6i1.4941 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 54

Author(s):

Dorottya Demszky

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Information Structure ◽

Large Scale ◽

Lexical Semantics ◽

Grammatical Function ◽

Logical Function ◽

Semantic Class ◽

Verb Semantics ◽

Semantic Classes

Hungarian is often referred to as a discourse-configurational language, since the structural position of constituents is determined by their logical function (topic or comment) rather than their grammatical function (e.g., subject or object). We build on work by Komlósy (1989) and argue that in addition to discourse context, the lexical semantics of the verb also plays a significant role in determining Hungarian word order. In order to investigate the role of lexical semantics in determining Hungarian word order, we conduct a large-scale, data-driven analysis on the ordering of 380 transitive verbs and their objects, as observed in hundreds of thousands of examples extracted from the Hungarian Gigaword Corpus. We test the effect of lexical semantics on the ordering of verbs and their objects by grouping verbs into 11 semantic classes. In addition to the semantic class of the verb, we also include two control features related to information structure, object definiteness and object NP weight, chosen to allow a comparison of their effect size to that of verb semantics. Our results suggest that all three features have a significant effect on verb-object ordering in Hungarian and among these features, the semantic class of the verb has the largest effect. Specifically, we find that stative verbs, such as fed 'cover', jelent 'mean' and övez 'surround', tend to be OV-preferring (with the exception of psych verbs which are strongly VO-preferring) and non-stative verbs, such as bírál 'judge', csökkent 'reduce' and csókol 'kiss', verbs tend to be VO-preferring. These findings support our hypothesis that lexical semantic factors influence word order in Hungarian.

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Argument structure and the role of the body and space in Kenyan Sign Language

Sign Language & Linguistics ◽

10.1075/sll.00043.mor ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 23 (1-2) ◽

pp. 38-72

Author(s):

Hope E. Morgan

Keyword(s):

Sign Language ◽

Word Order ◽

Argument Structure ◽

The Body ◽

Sign Languages ◽

Verb Agreement

Abstract This paper investigates how systematically a young macro-community sign language, Kenyan Sign Language, uses two different means to communicate about events: (i) word order, and (ii) verb agreement using spatial co-reference. The study finds that KSL signers rely primarily on word order and using the body as a referent, rather than verb agreement, when representing transitive events. Yet, by looking separately at how KSL signers use the sub-components of verb agreement, a pattern emerges that indicates a possible path toward ‘canonical verb agreement’. These sub-components are evaluated using Meir’s stages/types of grammaticalization of verb agreement (Meir 2011, 2016), and compared with other young and emerging sign languages.

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L2 acquisition of Spanish dative clitics by English and Dutch learners

Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching ◽

10.14746/2017.7.3.8 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. 517-534 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

M. Ángeles Escobar-Álvarez

Keyword(s):

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Argument Structure ◽

First Language ◽

Target Language ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Double Object ◽

L1 Transfer ◽

Syntactic Structures ◽

New Findings

This article examines the second language acquisition (SLA) of Spanish dative clitics in clitic doubling (CLD) structures that are closely related to the double object construction (DOC) in English and Dutch. It also addresses the question of how adult English and Dutch speakers learning L2 Spanish in a formal setting develop knowledge and use of the animacy constraint in the target language, which is different from the first language (L1) counterparts. The role of transfer in acquiring new syntactic structures has been taken into account, where dative clitics appear and animate objects are marked by the dative preposition ‘to.’ New findings are obtained on CLD and the Spanish animacy constraint from a grammaticality judgement task (GJT), completed by English and Dutch learners at B1 and B2 CEFR levels. The difficulties learners experienced were not always due to negative L1 transfer, but also related to the complexity of the argument structure where the clitic is inserted. This has clear implications for the teaching of pronominal elements which are closely related to different syntactic configurations in Spanish.

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