scholarly journals Variation in adjunct islands: The case of Norwegian

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Ingrid Bondevik ◽  
Dave Kush ◽  
Terje Lohndal
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Syntactic Category ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Island Type ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

Finite adjunct clauses are often assumed to be among the strongest islands for filler–gap dependency creation cross-linguistically, but Kush, Lohndal & Sprouse (2019) found experimental evidence suggesting that finite conditional om-adjunct clauses are not islands for topicalization in Norwegian. To investigate the generality of these findings, we ran three acceptability judgment experiments testing topicalization out of three adjunct clause types: om ‘if’, når ‘when’ and fordi ‘because’ in Norwegian. Largely replicating Kush et al. (2019), we find evidence for the absence of strong island effects with topicalization from om-adjuncts in all three experiments. We find island effects for når- and fordi-adjuncts, but the size of the effects and the underlying judgment distributions that produce those effects differ greatly by island type. Our results suggest that the syntactic category ‘adjunct’ may not constitute a suitably fine-grained grouping to explain variation in island effects.

Experimental Evidence on Island Effects in Spanish Relative Clauses

Probus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Stigliano ◽  
Ming Xiang
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Judgment Study ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

Abstract Research on islands has been central to linguistic theory for more than 50 years. Its importance relies on the theoretical consequences islands posit for movement and long distance dependencies. In this paper we aim to explore the contrast between a variety of islands in Spanish relative clauses to reveal whether there is any gradience in the strength of the island effects. In order to tease apart fine-grained contrasts we run an acceptability judgment study based on the factorial definition of island, an experimental paradigm that aims to isolate the various factors that can affect the acceptability of a sentence involving island violations. Overall, we found that the five constructions tested (embedded wh-questions, whether-clauses, adjuncts, complex NPs and relative clauses) show island effects in Spanish and that there are limited differences in the size of these effects, which points to a more categorical view of islands.

Experimental Evidence on Island Effects in Spanish Relative Clauses

Probus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-296
Author(s):  
Laura Stigliano ◽  
Ming Xiang
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Judgment Study ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

Abstract Research on islands has been central to linguistic theory for more than 50 years. Its importance relies on the theoretical consequences islands posit for movement and long distance dependencies. In this paper we aim to explore the contrast between a variety of islands in Spanish relative clauses to reveal whether there is any gradience in the strength of the island effects. In order to tease apart fine-grained contrasts we run an acceptability judgment study based on the factorial definition of island, an experimental paradigm that aims to isolate the various factors that can affect the acceptability of a sentence involving island violations. Overall, we found that the five constructions tested (embedded wh-questions, whether-clauses, adjuncts, complex NPs and relative clauses) show island effects in Spanish and that there are limited differences in the size of these effects, which points to a more categorical view of islands.

The syntax of variable behavior verbs: Experimental evidence from the accusative–oblique alternations in Japanese

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-314
Author(s):  
SHIN FUKUDA
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Selectional Restrictions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Core Meaning ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

Japanese has two types of two-place motion verbs whose ‘objects’ can be marked as either accusative or oblique (accusative–oblique alternations). The accusative–goal verbs mark their objects with accusative case -o or the goal marker -ni, and the accusative–source verbs mark their objects with accusative -o or the source marker -kara. Previous studies describe systematic differences in the interpretation of the arguments of these verbs and the events they denote between the two structures. This study argues that these alternating verbs are variable behavior verbs that are linked to two distinct syntactic structures. The core evidence for this claim comes from the results of two acceptability judgment experiments with Japanese native speakers that examined: (i) selectional restrictions on the subjects of the alternating verbs and (ii) the ability of their subjects to license ‘floating’ numeral quantifiers. The results of the experiments demonstrate that the accusative–source verbs alternate between the transitive and unaccusative structures, whereas the accusative–goal verbs consistently behave like transitive verbs but assign two different structural cases to their objects. Thus, the study shows that there are multiple ways in which two-place motion verbs are mapped onto distinctive syntactic structures, whereby the core meaning of the verbs and their syntactic structures together determine their interpretation.

scholarly journals Rapid Access to Scalar Implicatures in Adjacency Pair Contexts: Experimental Evidence in Spanish

Languages ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Loredo ◽  
Juan E. Kamienkowski ◽  
Virginia Jaichenco
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Conversational Implicature ◽  
Scalar Implicatures ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Rapid Access ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

A conversational implicature arises when there is a gap between the syntactically and semantically encoded meaning of a sentence and the pragmatic meaning that is inferred in an actual communicative situation. Several experimental studies have approached the processing of implicatures and examined the extent to which the derivation of the pragmatic meaning is effortful, especially in the case of generalized implicatures, where the inferred meaning seems to be the most frequent one. In this study, we present two experiments that explore the processing of scalar implicatures with algunos ‘some’ in adjacency pair contexts through an acceptability judgment task and a self-paced reading task. Our results support the claim that the access to the meaning of some as only some is context sensitive. Moreover, they also indicate that adjacency pair structure contributes to making that meaning rapidly available.

Pore Water Expulsion during Freezing

1975 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward C McRoberts ◽  
Norbert R. Morgenstern
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Pore Water ◽  
Open System ◽  
Soil Type ◽  
Sandy Soils ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Freezing Front ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Excess Pore Pressures ◽  
Excess Pore

When a freezing front advances through a saturated soil water may either be expelled or attracted to the freezing front depending upon soil type, stress level, and rate of freezing. Experimental evidence is considered which shows that coarse-grained sandy soils expel water under most conditions while fine grained soils can be made to expel water only at higher overburden pressures. A solution for the excess pore pressures that can be generated due to impeded drainage by pore water expulsion in an open system is presented.

Narrow presentational focus in Mexican Spanish: Experimental evidence

Probus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Hoot
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Mexican Spanish ◽  
Consensus View ◽  
Sentence Stress ◽  
Information Focus ◽  
Canonical Position ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

AbstractIt is most often claimed that in Spanish constituents in narrow presentational or information focus appear rightmost, where they also receive main sentence stress, while shifting the stress to the focus in its canonical position is infelicitous. Some, however, claim that Spanish in fact has recourse to both strategies for making the focus prominent, and some recent quantitative work has shown support for this alternative view. The present paper contributes to this debate by experimentally testing the realization of presentational focus in Mexican Spanish using an acceptability judgment task. The results of the experiment reveal that, for these speakers, focused constituents need not be rightmost and can in fact be stressed in non-final position, contra the consensus view. These findings expand the database on focus in Spanish and indicate that theories of the prosody/syntax interface may need to be revised, especially those theories that motivate discourse-related syntactic movement based on the requirements of the prosody.

Mylonitic Rocks and Flattened Garnets in the Southern Okanagam of British Columbia

1973 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
John V. Ross
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
High Strain Rate ◽  
Strain Rate ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
High Strain ◽  
Extensional Flow ◽  
Small Strain ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Deformational History ◽  
Geometric Relation

A zone of fine-grained laminated mylonitic rocks is described that is related to the formation of a tectonic slide produced during the refolding of an earlier fold. These mylonitic rocks are characterized by the presence of mesoscopic isoclinal folds whose axial surfaces are parallel with the overall orientation of the lamination and are genetically related to the early folds. Originally equidimensional garnets are tectonically flattened in the axial planes of these early folds as a result of the later folding and it is suggested that the mylonitic lamination is produced directly by flattening perpendicular to the lamination resulting in extensionsal flow parallel with the zone of mylonitic rocks.Thin sections of the laminated mylonitic rocks show the presence of strained augen and ribbon quartz separated by zones of small strain-free polygonal grains which have originated by syntectonic recrystallization. The two former structures have a geometric relation with the early isoclinal structures, whereas the polygonal grains are related to late orthorhombic mesoscopic folds found only within the mylonitic rocks. This latter fabric is interpreted as resulting from restricted extensional flow within the mylonitic zone. The geometry of the fabric is the same within and without the mylonitic zone, the only variation being the intense development of very small strain-free polygonal grains, which from experimental evidence require a high strain rate for their formation. Hence, these mylonitic rocks are interpreted as a zone of high strain rate produced by flattening perpendicular to their plane of flow but otherwise they have a deformational history similar to that of the enveloping rocks.

scholarly journals Long distance binding option for the Mandarin Chinese reflexive taziji

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuhang Xu ◽  
Jeffrey Runner
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Clausal Structure ◽  
Embedded Clause ◽  
Local Binding ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

Contradicting prevailing claims in the literature, we report experimental evidence showing that the Chinese reflexive taziji has both local and long-distance binding options. We per-formed a series of formal judgment experiments manipulating the gender feature of the potential antecedents such that they matched or mismatched the anaphor’s gender using a bi-clausal structure with an argument reflexive in the embedded clause (e.g., Name1-says-Name2-Verb-taziji). Participants were asked to choose the antecedent of the anaphor (antecedent choice task) and also to judge the acceptability of the sentence (acceptability judgment task). Results showed that the reflexive taziji had both long-distance and local binding options, although the local binding option was preferred. Also, the pattern was replicated for the original examples taken from a widely used Chinese syntax textbook (Huang et al. 2009), contra the judgments reported there. We discuss the implications of this study from both theoretical and methodological perspectives.

scholarly journals Polarity sensitivity of question embedding: experimental evidence

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thom Van Gessel ◽  
Alexandre Cremers ◽  
Floris Roelofsen
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Sensitivity ◽  
Universal Quantifiers ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

Attitude predicates can be classified by the kinds of complements they can embed: declaratives, interrogatives or both. However, several authors have claimed that predicates like be certain can only embed interrogatives in specific environments. According to Mayr, these are exactly the environments that license negative polarity items (NPIs). In his analysis, both NPIs and embedded interrogatives are licensed by the same semantic strengthening procedure. If this is right, one would expect a correlation between acceptability of be certain whether and NPIs. The analysis also predicts a contrast between antecedents vs. consequents of conditionals and restrictors vs. scopes of universal quantifiers. This paper tests these predictions experimentally through an acceptability judgment task. We find that judgments for be certain whether do not correlate with judgments on NPIs, which suggests that be certain whether and NPIs are in fact licensed by different mechanisms.

scholarly journals Morphosyntactic form of Korean fragments is relevant to their resolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Joanna Nykiel ◽  
Jong-Bok Kim ◽  
Rok Sim ◽  
Okgi Kim
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Syntactic Category ◽  
Linguistic Information ◽  
Retrieval Cues ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Structural Identity ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

We offer evidence for a structural identity constraint between a fragment and the structurally parallel position in the antecedent (which we term correspondent here). We ask if there is a preference for morphosyntactic match (generally in terms of syntactic category, but in terms of case marking in the Korean data discussed here) between a fragment and its correspondent. This question follows from the idea that in order to interpret fragments, the parser directly accesses content-addressable representations stored in memory, using as retrieval cues the linguistic information that fragments provide. We explore this preference using experimental data from Korean. In three acceptability judgment experiments, we demonstrate that (1) morphosyntactic match between fragments and correspondents is favored over mismatch, (2) the acceptability of mismatch is directional, favoring fragments that are morphosyntactically less complex than correspondents over the reverse, and (3) caseless fragments are degraded when paired with implicit correspondents compared to explicit ones.

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