Syntactic and Phonological Influences on Children’s Articulation

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 841-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Panagos ◽  
Mary Ellen Quine ◽  
Richard J. Klich
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Declarative Sentence ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Phonological Structure ◽  
Phonological Deficits ◽  
Word Position ◽  
Structural Variables ◽  
Passive Sentence

The effects of syntactic and phonological structure on the consonant articulations of children with phonological deficits were investigated. Three structural variables were studied: syntactic structure (noun phrase, declarative sentence and passive sentence), word structure (monosyllable and disyllable) and word position (initial and final). Syntactic structure and word structure significantly affected the accuracy of articulation and the degree of word simplification. Structural complexity may contribute to overall hierarchial complexity, in turn causing children to simplify their speech.

Gender Agreement as a "Decreolizing" Feature of an Afro-Brazilian Dialect

1997 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan N. Baxter ◽  
Dante Lucchesi ◽  
Maximiliano Guimaraes
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Structural Variables ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
L1 Acquisition ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Afro Brazilian

This paper examines variation in the noun phrase gender agreement rule in the Afro-Brazilian Portuguese dialect of Helvétia. The analysis of the variation proceeds within a quantitative framework; it considers structural implications, in generative terms, and sociolinguistic aspects, yielding evidence relevant to the definition of the postcreole nature of the dialect. Structural parallels are found with Portuguese L1 acquisition and with varieties of creole Portuguese, and the relationship of the Helvétia dialect to more standard varieties of Brazilian Portuguese is clarified. An evaluation of structural variables reveals how the gender agreement rule is being incorporated into the grammar of the dialect at different rates along different structural paths and in different pragmatic functions, reflecting intricacies of the grammar associated with the noun. Finally, a scrutiny of the effect of extralinguistic variables on gender agreement clearly reveals the acquisitional nature of the variation.

Setting the Stage for Automatic Syntax Processing: The Mismatch Negativity as an Indicator of Syntactic Priming

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna S. Hasting ◽  
Sonja A. Kotz ◽  
Angela D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Early Event ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Word Category ◽  
Topographical Distribution ◽  
Auditory Change Detection ◽  
The Impact

The present study investigated the automaticity of morphosyntactic processes and processes of syntactic structure building using event-related brain potentials. Two experiments were conducted, which contrasted the impact of local subject-verb agreement violations (Experiment 1) and word category violations (Experiment 2) on the mismatch negativity, an early event-related brain potential component reflecting automatic auditory change detection. The two violation types were realized in two-word utterances comparable with regard to acoustic parameters and structural complexity. The grammaticality of the utterances modulated the mismatch negativity response in both experiments, suggesting that both types of syntactic violations were detected automatically within 200 msec after the violation point. However, the topographical distribution of the grammaticality effect varied as a function of violation type, which indicates that the brain mechanisms underlying the processing of subject-verb agreement and word category information may be functionally distinct even at this earliest stage of syntactic analysis. The findings are discussed against the background of studies investigating syntax processing beyond the level of two-word utterances.

scholarly journals Shared information structure: Evidence from cross-linguistic priming

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 568-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZUZANNA FLEISCHER ◽  
MARTIN J. PICKERING ◽  
JANET F. MCLEAN
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Shared Information ◽  
Passive Sentence ◽  
Share Information ◽  
Active Sentence

This study asked whether bilinguals construct a language-independent level of information structure for the sentences that they produce. It reports an experiment in which a Polish–English bilingual and a confederate of the experimenter took turns to describe pictures to each other and to find those pictures in an array. The confederate produced a Polish active, passive, or conjoined noun phrase, or an active sentence with object–verb–subject order (OVS sentence). The participant responded in English, and tended to produce a passive sentence more often after a passive or an OVS sentence than after a conjoined noun phrase or active sentence. Passives and OVS sentences are syntactically unrelated but share information structure, in that both assign emphasis to the patient. We therefore argued that bilinguals construct a language-independent level of information structure during speech.

Now you hear it, now you don't: Vowel devoicing in Japanese infant-directed speech

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAUREL FAIS ◽  
SACHIYO KAJIKAWA ◽  
SHIGEAKI AMANO ◽  
JANET F. WERKER
Keyword(s):  
Native Language ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Mature Form ◽  
Adult Form ◽  
Structure Pattern ◽  
Phonological Structure ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Vowel Devoicing

ABSTRACTIn this work, we examine a context in which a conflict arises between two roles that infant-directed speech (IDS) plays: making language structure salient and modeling the adult form of a language. Vowel devoicing in fluent adult Japanese creates violations of the canonical Japanese consonant–vowel word structure pattern by systematically devoicing particular vowels, yielding surface consonant clusters. We measured vowel devoicing rates in a corpus of infant- and adult-directed Japanese speech, for both read and spontaneous speech, and found that the mothers in our study preserve the fluent adult form of the language and mask underlying phonological structure by devoicing vowels in infant-directed speech at virtually the same rates as those for adult-directed speech. The results highlight the complex interrelationships among the modifications to adult speech that comprise infant-directed speech, and that form the input from which infants begin to build the eventual mature form of their native language.

A contrastive analysis of (English) ‘there’ and (Spanish) hay existential sentences

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Javier Pérez-Guerra
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Existential Sentence ◽  
Specific Description ◽  
Existential Sentences ◽  
Existential Construction ◽  
Selection Of

This study is devoted to the grammatical, semantic and informative analysis of the so-called existential sentence (“There is a girl in the garden” in English, or Hay una niña en el jardín ‘There-is a girl in the garden’ in Spanish) in an attempt to establish a multi-linguistic prototype of the construction. To that end, data from several corpora of contemporary spoken English and Spanish are analysed in a number of ways, including the frequency of this construction in the two languages, the basic elements of its syntactic structure, and the semantic and informative constraints which operate in the existential/presentational construction. This study also deals with the degree of variation which these sentences exhibit and how this affects the selection of the marker of the construction (‘there’, hay), agreement between the marker or the verb and the postverbal noun phrase, the accommodation of additional constituents such as locative phrases or nominal postmodifiers and complements, the so-called indefiniteness restriction, and the compliance with general informative principles to which English and Spanish are claimed to be subject. A corpus-based contrastive methodology leads both to a prototypical and to a language-specific description of the existential construction in English and Spanish, in which the notion of grammatical, semantic and informative versatility plays a significant role.

Response Retrieval in Active and Passive Sentences

1970 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. L. Wilkes ◽  
R. A. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Structural Description ◽  
Passive Sentence

Retrieval latencies for active and passive sentence examples are compared. The argument is proposed that the sentences are searched by means of a strategy that permits direct entry into specific word groupings. Both syntactic structure and pausing behaviour are considered as indices of the groupings employed. It is concluded that neither descriptive source can on its own fully account for the obtained latency profiles, although the structural description derived from pause location provided a better prediction than constituent analysis. The implications of this conclusion are discussed.

scholarly journals Internally-Headed Relative Clauses in Hakha Chin

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefon M Flego
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Embedded Clause

Hakha Chin, an underdocumented Tibeto-Burman language, is reported to have internally-headed relative clauses (IHRCs), a typologically rare syntactic structure in which the head noun phrase surfaces within the relative clause itself. The current study provides new data and novel observations which bear on several outstanding questions about IHRCs in this language: 1) Relativization of locative and instrumental adjuncts in IHRCs is avoided. 2) Conflicting stem allomorph requirements of negation and relativization of non-subjects give rise to optionality in stem choice when the two are brought together in an IHRC. 3) To relativize an indirect object, an IHRC is either avoided altogether, or the noun phrase is fronted to the absolute left-most position in the embedded clause. 4) Relativization of NPs with a human referent in an IHRC exhibit relativizer gender agreement, which has not been previously reported for this clause type in Hakha Chin.

Syntactic structure and the garden path

1987 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. M. Holmes ◽  
A. Kennedy ◽  
W. S. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Structural Reanalysis ◽  
Complement Clause

The experiment investigated locally ambiguous English sentences containing “complement” verbs such as believe, which can be followed either by a direct object or by a complement clause. These two sentence types were compared with unambiguous sentences in which the complement clause was introduced by the word that. Subjects processed numerous examples of these sentences in a word-by-word self-paced reading task. At the disambiguation point after the ambiguous noun phrase, longer reading times were obtained for reduced complement constructions compared with direct object sentences. Such an effect has been attributed to the operation of the parsing principle Minimal Attachment (Frazier and Rayner, 1982). This principle predicts that subjects assume falsely that the noun phrase after the complement verb in the reduced complement constructions is the direct object, resulting in the need for subsequent structural reanalysis. However, longer times in the disambiguating zone were also found for the unambiguous that complements. Thus, the complexity difference seems not to represent “garden-pathing” as a result of the operation of Minimal Attachment, but may instead reflect the extra complexity caused by having to handle two sets of clausal relations instead of just one.

scholarly journals Semantic relations underlie non-linear planning in complex noun phrases

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENS ROESER ◽  
Mark Torrance ◽  
Thom Baguley
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Production System ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Semantic Relations ◽  
Surface Form ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Non Linear

When producing a noun phrase whether or not pre-planning extends beyond theinitial noun varies with the phrase’s syntactic structure. However it is not clear on whatbasis – conceptual or syntactic – the production system determines that pre-planning isnecessary. In two experiments (Ns= 32, 64) participants produced noun phrases inresponse to picture arrays. Surface form was held constant but scope of the initialdeterminer was manipulated by varying the contrastive functions of the first and thesecond noun (e.g., The man with the painting [but not the girl with the painting] vs. Theman with the painting [but not the man with the ball]). Evidence from eye movement data revealed a stronger tendency for early planning in the extended-scope condition. This is evidence that pre-planning requirements of structurally complex noun phrase are determined prior to the processing of syntax and lexis.

scholarly journals THE PRINCIPLES OF PHONOLOGICAL WORD STRUCTURE COMPARISON OF RUSSIAN AND CHINESE LANGUAGES

2014 ◽  
pp. 215-223
Author(s):  
A. N. Aleksakhin
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Language ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Structure Comparison ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Phonological Structure ◽  
Zero Position ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Russian Language ◽  
Phonological System

The article is devoted to the phonological structure of words of Russian and Chinese languages. With phonological point of view the word as a Central significant unit of language is a sequence of consonants and vowel phonemes. A comparative study shows that the phonological structure of the Russian words prevail consonant phonemes and the phonological structure of the Chinese words prevail vowel phonemes. The phonological system of the Russian language is characterized by consonant dominant, and the phonological system of the Chinese language Mandarin is characterized by vocal dominant. In the vowel system of the Russian language there are six vowel phonemes, in the vowel system of the Chinese language Mandarin there are thirty-one vowel phonemes. The typical sound pattern of words of the Chinese language consists of vowel combinations. The strong (vowels differ in different effective modes of vocal cords) vowels are implemented in the even phonological position; the weak vowels are implemented in the left and right odd phonological positions of the syllabic matrix 0123. Consonant phonemes of the Chinese language are implemented only in the zero phonological position. The Sound variety of simple one-syllable words of the Chinese language is constructed by oppositions: twenty-five consonants in the zero position, thirty-one strong vowel phonemes in the even position, as well as three weak vowels in the left odd position and five weak vowels in the right odd position . The typical distribution of consonant and vowel phonemes is shown in the following examples of words: 0123 - guai «obedient», gudi «rotate», guài «strange». The opposition of weak vowels with a derivative phonological zero is also an effective method of making words: guai «obedient» - gai «must» - gua « blow» - ga «a dark corner». Both Russian and Chinese Synharmonia variety of sound words is supported by five derivative phonological zeros that are phonetically in Russian and Chinese are implemented by weak vowels. It is demonstrated for the first time that the Vowel harmony (Synharmonia) is a universal means for phonetic cel'nooformlennost' (phonetic unity) of words in Russian and Chinese languages.

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