Slovak comparative correlatives

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-229
Author(s):  
Jakob Horsch
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Processing Efficiency ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Universal Applicability

Abstract Comparative Correlatives (CCs) are biclausal constructions (e.g. The harder you work, the more you earn) that have complex semantics and form. This is the first construction grammar-based corpus study to investigate Slovak CCs, based on a 500-token sample. I argue that intra-clausal word-order phenomena can be explained through processing efficiency, based on Hawkins’ principle of Early Immediate Constituents (2004), and I use covarying-collexeme analysis (Stefanowitsch & Gries 2005) to provide evidence for the existence of meso-constructions. The findings of this study contribute to construction grammar’s “aspirations toward universal applicability” (Fried 2017: 249), proving that the theory is also suitable for analysis of syntactic patterns in Slavic languages.

The network of reflexive dative constructions in South Slavic

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-83
Author(s):  
Liljana Mitkovska
Keyword(s):  
Complex Network ◽  
Wide Distribution ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
The South ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Lack Of Control ◽  
Inheritance Properties

Abstract This paper analyses a number of constructions with a reflexive marker on the verb and a dative argument, using the framework of Construction Grammar. In these constructions the predication is ascribed in various modes to the experiencer argument. We focus on these constructions in the South Slavic languages in which they have a wide distribution, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS). The following basic types are identified: Emotional processes and states, Accidental, Perception/Cognition and Stative Reflexive-Dative Construction (SRDC). The specific clusters of features in each one are due to the inheritance properties from a reflexive construction, indicating a valence reduction, in combination with the features of affectedness and lack of control, characteristic of a dative argument. This results in varied but multiply linked patterns that create a complex network of constructions. The study aims at defining the relations between these constructions and in particular at determining the place of SRDC in this network.

scholarly journals Word order in Latin locative constructions: a corpus study in Caesar’s De bello gallico

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Skopeteas
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Structural Domains ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
First Order ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

AbstractClassical Latin is a free word order language, i.e., the order of the constituents is determined by information structure rather than by syntactic rules. This article presents a corpus study on the word order of locative constructions and shows that the choice between a Theme-first and a Locative-first order is influenced by the discourse status of the referents. Furthermore, the corpus findings reveal a striking impact of the syntactic construction: complements of motion verbs do not have the same ordering preferences with complements of static verbs and adjuncts. This finding supports the view that the influence of discourse status on word order is indirect, i.e., it is mediated by information structural domains.

scholarly journals On the givenness of OV word order: a (re)examination of OV/VO variation in Old English

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
TARA STRUIK ◽  
ANS VAN KEMENADE
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Mixed Model ◽  
Linear Mixed Model ◽  
Multinomial Regression ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Given ◽  
New Hypothesis ◽  
Multinomial Regression Analysis

OV/VO variation in the history of English has been a long-debated issue. Where earlier approaches were concerned with the grammatical status of the variation (see van Kemenade 1987; Pintzuk 1999 and many others), the debate has shifted more recently to explaining the variation from a pragmatic perspective (see Bech 2001; Taylor & Pintzuk 2012a), focusing on the given-before-new hypothesis (Gundel 1988) and its consequences for OV/VO. While the work by Taylor & Pintzuk (2012a) focuses specifically on the newness of VO orders, the present study is particularly concerned with the givenness of OV word order. It is hypothesized that OV orders are the result of leftward movement from VO orders, triggered by givenness. A corpus study on a database of subclauses with two verbs and a direct object, collected from the YCOE (Taylor et al.2003) corpus, and subsequent multinomial regression analysis within a generalized linear mixed model shows that OV word order is reserved for given objects, while VO objects are much more mixed in terms of information structure. We argue that these results are more in line with an analysis which derives all occurring word orders from a VO base than an analysis which proposes the opposite.

Some Remarks on the Government-Binding Theory and Anaphors

1983 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milan Bilý
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
The Self ◽  
Binding Theory ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Binding

The Government-Binding theory cannot account for reflexives in Slavic languages. We may guess that the more a language differs from English with its quite rigid word-order, the worse are the predictions made by the theory.One cannot exclude Slavic reflexives as non-anaphors in a non-arbitrary way while keeping the spirit of Chomsky et al. The Slavic reflexives behave “as they ought to” in tensed clauses, too. An attempt to exclude them would also be another step on the self-destructive path that started by excluding the Japanese reflexives in order to cope with the facts clashing with the Government-Binding theory. Many interesting cases of English reflexives would also have to be ignored for the sake of the theory.

scholarly journals Aspetto verbale e referenza nominale

2016 ◽  
pp. 167-180
Author(s):  
Lucyna Gebert
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Verbal Aspect ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses ◽  
Nominal Arguments ◽  
Indefinite Pronouns

The paper attempts to examine the relation between the verbal aspect in the Slavic languages and the referential status of nominal arguments of the predicate. As is well known, Slavic languages (except Bulgarian and Macedonian) have not developed articles as a grammatical category. It is suggested that in addition to the well-known means of conveying referential information in these articleless languages – such as word order, use of demonstrative/indefinite pronouns, restrictive relative clauses, case alternations and prosody – the verbal aspect also should be taken into account.

scholarly journals English and Russian Genitive Alternations: A Study in Construction Typology

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-116
Author(s):  
Sergei Monakhov
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Structural Similarity ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Underlying Structure ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
Genitive Case

There is little doubt that one of the most important areas of future research within the framework of Construction Grammar will be the comparative study of constructions in different languages of the world. One significant gain that modern Construction Grammar can make thanks to the cross-linguistic perspective is finding a clue to some contradictory cases of construction alternation. The aim of the present paper is to communicate the results of a case study of two pairs of alternating constructions in English and Russian: s-genitive (SG) and of-genitive (OG) in English and noun + noun in genitive case (NNG) and relative adjective derived from noun + noun (ANG) in Russian. It is evident that the long years of elaborate scientific analysis have not yielded any universally accepted view on the problem of English genitive alternation. There are at least five different accounts of this problem: the hypotheses of the animacy hierarchy, given-new hierarchy, topic-focus hierarchy, end-weight principle, and two semantically distinct constructions. We hypothesised that in this case the comparison of the distribution of two English and two Russian genitives could be insightful. The analysis presupposed two consecutive steps. First, we established an inter-language comparability of two pairs of constructions in English and Russian. Second, we tested the similarity of intra-language distribution of each pair of constructions from the perspective of the animacy hierarchy. For these two purposes, two types of corpora were used: (1) a translation corpus consisting of original texts in one language and their translations into one or more languages; and (2) national corpora consisting of original texts in two respective languages. It was established that in both languages, the choice between members of an alternating pair is governed by the rules of animacy hierarchisation. Additionally, it was possible to disprove the idea that the animacy hierarchy is necessarily based on the linearisation hierarchy. Two Russian constructions are typologically aligned with their English counterparts, not on the grounds of the linear order of head and modifier but on the grounds of structural similarity. The English SG and Russian NNG construction are diametrically opposed in terms of word order. However, they reveal the same underlying structure of the inflectional genitive as contrasted with the analytical genitive of the Russian ANG and the English OG. These findings speak strongly in favour of the animacy hierarchy account of English genitive alternation.

scholarly journals Subject case alternation in negated existential, locative, and possessive clauses in Latvian

Kalbotyra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Andra Kalnača ◽  
Ilze Lokmane
Keyword(s):  
Full Article ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Semantic Type ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Adverbial Modifiers ◽  
Strict Rule ◽  
Negative Form

[full article and abstract in English] The goal of this article is to analyse the alternation between the genitive and nominative cases in Latvian. As the alternation between genitive and nominative cases is possible in all clauses in which the verb būt ‘to be’ is used as an independent verb, this article examines existential, locative, and also possessive clauses, while also demonstrating that distinguishing these clause types is problematic for Latvian utilising the criteria given in the linguistic literature. Clauses containing the negative form of būt ‘to be’, i.e. nebūt, form the foundation of those selected for this study, as only in these sentences the genitive/nominative alternation can be seen for the subject in Latvian. There are only fragmentary descriptions of existential clauses as a unique semantic type, primarily in connection with the function of the verb būt ‘to be’ and the problems associated with distinguishing its independent and auxiliary meanings. Word order in existential, locative, and possessive clauses has, until now, been examined in connection with typical clause expanders – adverbial modifiers and the dative of possession as well as the information structure of the clause. At the same time, case choice for objects in negative existential clauses has traditionally been one of the most studied themes regarding language standardisation. In order to determine which factors affect the choice of either the genitive or nominative case, a corpus study was done analysing 979 examples: 882 with a genitive subject and 97 with a nominative subject. It was found that a connection exists between the definiteness of the subject, word order, and case choice; however, this manifests only as a tendency rather than as a strict rule.

scholarly journals Constructionist basis of composing and translating political speeches: A case study of President Trump’s inaugural address

2021 ◽  
Vol 105 ◽  
pp. 03006
Author(s):  
Nataliia Talavira
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Inaugural Address ◽  
American President ◽  
Political Speeches ◽  
Linguistic Material

Application of the principles and tenets of cognitive linguistics to translation studies rests on the assumption that both of them employ the same meaning process while working with a text. Procedures implemented to translate the inaugural address of American President Trump have been regarded from the point of view of Construction Grammar. The construction is viewed as the main translation unit representing source linguistic material below the level of the text. The paper singles out from the translation of President Trump’s inaugural address equivalent constructions with identical form and meaning and non-equivalent pairings indicating transformations of structure or semantics in the original constructions. Syntactical modifications include the change of word order, grammar tenses or omission of construction component, while lexical transformations result in generalization, carried out by words with more abstract meaning than those in the source construction; simplification, representing separate objects or features from the array of denoted in the source pairing; and specification accentuating and detailing particular entities.

scholarly journals Fake imperfective imperatives in Slavic

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Silje Susanne Alvestad
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Study ◽  
Slavic Languages

This paper is based on a comparative corpus study of aspect use in Slavic imperatives. Two important findings in this study are, first, that there is a cross-Slavic variation in aspect use, and second, that IPF is strikingly widespread. I argue that both findings are connected to the phenomenon of aspectual competition and the fact that the Slavic languages resolve cases of aspectual competition in different ways.

scholarly journals On word order variation and informationstructure in peninsular spanish and italian ‘why’-interrogatives

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. e021025
Author(s):  
Svenja Schmid ◽  
Klaus Von Heusinger ◽  
Georg A. Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
High Preference ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
Peninsular Spanish ◽  
Structural Category ◽  
The Impact

In this paper, we investigate the effect of information structure on word order in Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives, and whether these two languages differ from each other. To this end, we conducted two empirical studies. In a parallel text corpus study, we compared the frequency of the word order patterns ‘why’SV and ‘why’VS, as well as the distribution of focal and non-focal subjects in the two languages. In order to get a deeper understanding of the impact of the information structural categories focus and givenness on word order in ‘why’-interrogatives, we conducted a forced-choice experiment. The results indicate that word order is affected by focus in Italian, while it is not determined by any information structural category in Peninsular Spanish. We show that Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives differ from each other in two ways. First, non-focal subjects occur preverbally in Italian, while they occupy the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish. Second, Italian reveals a lower level of optionality with respect to word order patterns. Even though we find a high preference for the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish, we argue that this limitation is related to a higher flexibility regarding word order in Peninsular Spanish than in Italian which does not allows for ‘why’VSO in contrast to Peninsular Spanish.

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