scholarly journals Reactivation of unaccusative and unergative verbs in Mandarin

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-252
Author(s):  
Yowyu Lin

Abstract Intransitives can be classified into two subclasses: unaccusative verbs and unergative verbs. According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis, the difference between unaccusatives and unergatives lies in where the single argument is generated in the underlying syntactic structure. Subjects of unaccusative verbs are base-generated in the object position and moved to the subject positions. Subjects of unergative verbs, however, are external and thus are not resulted from arguments moving from the object position. If the Unaccusative Hypothesis is correct, a trace is left at the original place for unaccusative verbs when movement occurs but no trace for unergative verbs. Friedmann et al. (2008) used the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm to examine the Unaccusative Hypothesis but their results could only lend limited support for the Unaccusative Hypothesis. Since the argument of Mandarin unaccusative verbs can occur preverbally and postverbally, it offers us a balanced testing ground to re-examine reactivation during sentence comprehension. Results of the current study lend support for the Unaccusative Hypothesis. When the argument occurred preverbally, a V-shaped line was observed. An inverted V-shaped line was observed when the argument occurred postverbally. For unergative verbs, the line showed a decay of reactivation.

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (68) ◽  
pp. 306-313
Author(s):  
Adriana Marques de Oliveira ◽  
Giseli Donadon Germano ◽  
Simone Aparecida Capellini

Abstract: This study aims to compare the performance of male and female dyslexic students in tests of reading words and pseudowords, and comprehension of sentences and texts. The participants were forty-eight students with dyslexia, attending 3rd grade to 5th grade of elementary school (age range 8 to 12 years old), from public and private schools, divided into: GI - 14 girls and GII - 34 boys. The researchers applied tests of Reading process assessment: reading of words, reading of pseudowords, comprehension of sentences, and comprehension of texts. The results showed evidence of difference by sex in reading of low frequency words and sentence comprehension. It was concluded that the discussion on the difference between dyslexic students by sex could be relevant in the educational context, as among the five variables, two provided information for promoting further discussion on the subject, highlighting the importance of further studies.


1996 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 201-215
Author(s):  
Boping Yuan

It has been proposed that intransitive verbs can be divided into two subgroups, unaccusative verbs, such as break and arrive, and unergative verbs, such as laugh and swim. The former type has an internal argument, but no external one, whereas the latter type has an external argument but no internal one. Unaccusative verbs are verbs of change of state or location, while unergative verbs are a set of agentive monadic verbs including verbs of manner of motion. In English, the internal argument of the unaccusative verb has to move to subject position to be Case-marked. In Chinese, however, the internal argument can remain in object position and get inherent partitive Case as long as it is an indefinite NP. External arguments of unergative verbs in both English and Chinese are in preverbal position whether they are definite or indefinite. The study reported in this paper was aimed at finding out whether the lexical-semantic distinction between the unaccusative verb and the unergative verb could be properly represented in English-speaking learners' L2 syntax of Chinese and whether the learner would only allow the single argument of the unaccusative verb but disallow that of the unergative verb to be in object position. The results indicate that the unaccusative/unergative distinction is acquired very late by English-speaking learners, and that the acquisition does not proceed in a linear fashion.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Paolo Lorusso

Italian is a pro drop language, since it allows subject drop and subject inversion. The pro-drop parameter is fixed early on (Orfitelli,2008), but both grammatical and informational factors might regulate the distribution of overt clausal subjects. On the grammatical side, the verb class influences the distribution of overt subjects: overt subjects in Italian are more likely to be found with unaccusative verbs (Lorusso, Caprin & Guasti 2005). On the informational side, 1st and 2nd person pronouns are more likely to e dropped than 3rd person NPs because the latter are more informative (Serratrice, 2005): 1st and 2nd ab ne recovered by the discourse, while 3rd persons are totally event anchored and have to be identified referentially within the linguistic stimuli. The parametric differences encoded in the lexical items, for example the unaccusative vs unergative distinction for verbs or the person ‘informative’ morphology, influence the subject drop in Italian: we propose a Lexical Parametrization account (Manzini & Wexler 1987) for subject drop in Italian, since the characteristic of lexical items influence the likelihood of appearance of an overt syntactic structure. Furthermore the distribution of indefinite postverbal subjects found just with unaccusatives in early stages of acquisition of Italian (Lorusso, 2014) confirms that the lexical characteristics of both the subject NPs and the verbs (in a subset relation with other NPs and verbs respectively) determine the parametric overt variation across the different stage of the acquisition of Italian, as Lexical Parametrization predicts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Noorlela Binti Noordin ◽  
Abdul Razaq Ahmad ◽  
Anuar Ahmad

This study was aimed to evaluate the Malay proficiency among students in Form Two especially non-Malay students and its relationship to academic achievement History. To achieve the purpose of the study there are two objectives, the first is to look at the difference between mean of Malay Language test influences min of academic achievement of History subject among non-Malay students in Form Two and the second is the relationship between the level of Malay proficiency and their academic achievement for History. This study used quantitative methods, which involved 100 people of Form Two non-Malay students in one of the schools in Klang, Selangor. This study used quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and statistical inference with IBM SPSS Statistics v22 software. This study found that there was a relationship between the proficiency of Malay language among non-Malay students with achievements in the subject of History. The implications of this study are discussed in this article.


2019 ◽  
pp. 74-98
Author(s):  
A.B. Lyubinin

Review of the monograph indicated in the subtitle V.T. Ryazanov. The reviewer is critical of the position of the author of the book, believing that it is possible and even necessary (to increase the effectiveness of General economic theory and bring it closer to practice) substantial (and not just formal-conventional) synthesis of the Marxist system of political economy with its non-Marxist systems. The article emphasizes the difference between the subject and the method of the classical, including Marxist, school of political economy with its characteristic objective perception of the subject from the neoclassical school with its reduction of objective reality to subjective assessments; this excludes their meaningful synthesis as part of a single «modern political economy». V.T. Ryazanov’s interpretation of commodity production in the economic system of «Capital» of K. Marx as a purely mental abstraction, in fact — a fiction, myth is also counter-argued. On the issue of identification of the discipline «national economy», the reviewer, unlike the author of the book, takes the position that it is a concrete economic science that does not have a political economic status.


Author(s):  
Lexi Eikelboom

This book argues that, as a pervasive dimension of human existence with theological implications, rhythm ought to be considered a category of theological significance. Philosophers and theologians have drawn on rhythm—patterned movements of repetition and variation—to describe reality, however, the ways in which rhythm is used and understood differ based on a variety of metaphysical commitments with varying theological implications. This book brings those implications into the open, using resources from phenomenology, prosody, and the social sciences to analyse and evaluate uses of rhythm in metaphysical and theological accounts of reality. The analysis relies on a distinction from prosody between a synchronic approach to rhythm—observing the whole at once and considering how various dimensions of a rhythm hold together harmoniously—and a diachronic approach—focusing on the ways in which time unfolds as the subject experiences it. The text engages with the twentieth-century Jesuit theologian Erich Przywara alongside thinkers as diverse as Augustine and the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and proposes an approach to rhythm that serves the concerns of theological conversation. It demonstrates the difference that including rhythm in theological conversation makes to how we think about questions such as “what is creation?” and “what is the nature of the God–creature relationship?” from the perspective of rhythm. As a theoretical category, capable of expressing metaphysical commitments, yet shaped by the cultural rhythms in which those expressing such commitments are embedded, rhythm is particularly significant for theology as a phenomenon through which culture and embodied experience influence doctrine.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182199892
Author(s):  
Chiara Valeria Marinelli ◽  
Marika Iaia ◽  
Cristina Burani ◽  
Paola Angelelli

The study examines statistical learning in the spelling of Italian children with dyslexia and typically developing readers by studying their sensitivity to probabilistic cues in phoneme-grapheme mappings. In the first experiment children spelled to dictation regular words and words with unpredictable spelling that contained either a high- or a low-frequency (i.e., typical or atypical) sound-spelling mappings. Children with dyslexia were found to rely on probabilistic cues in writing stimuli with unpredictable spelling to a greater extent than typically developing children. The difficulties of children with dyslexia on words with unpredictable spelling were limited to those containing atypical mappings. In the second experiment children spelled new stimuli, that is, pseudowords, containing phonological segments with unpredictable mappings. The interaction between lexical knowledge and reliance on probabilistic cues was examined through a lexical priming paradigm in which pseudowords were primed by words containing related typical or atypical sound-to-spelling mappings. In spelling pseudowords, children with dyslexia showed sensitivity to probabilistic cues in the phoneme-to-grapheme mapping but lexical priming effects were also found, although to a smaller extent than in typically developing readers. The results suggest that children with dyslexia have a limited orthographic lexicon but are able to extract regularities from the orthographic system and rely on probabilistic cues in spelling words and pseudowords.


In the present communications the effect of oxygen upon the fermentation of glucose and upon the growth of the bacteria, in so far as this affects fermentation, is considered. To this end the organisms have been grown both aerobically and anaerobically, and subsequently made to ferment glucose, both aerobically and anaerobically, with the object of comparing the products of decomposition in the two cases. There are clearly two problems : firstly, the effect of exposure to oxygen during growth upon the subsequent fermentation, whether aerobic or anaerobic, and, secondly, the effect of oxygen admitted during the fermentation. The first question relates to the part played by oxygen in the formation of enzymes, the second to the part played by oxygen in their action on carbohydrates. The first question is considered, though in but a preliminary way, in Section A, the second, more fully, in Section B. Section A. Object of the Experiments . Two results were aimed at in these experiments. Firstly, to compare the products of fermentation of glucose anaerobically, after anaerobic growth, with the products of fermentation anaerobically after previous growth aerobically. And, secondly, to obtain information as to the effect of introducing oxygen during the fermentation itself. This latter consideration, however, though brought to notice by these experiments, is considered only incidentally here because it forms the subject of Section B. In the present section we wish to direct attention particularly to those differences which exist between the fermentation after anaerobic and aerobic growth, not upon the effect of aeration during the fermentation. To point out the difference which previous growth aerobically or anaerobically has made, several analyses from previous experiments are included in Table IV side by side with the completely anaerobic experiments of Tables I, II, and III.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gualtiero Calboli

AbstractI started from the relative clause which occurs in Hittite, and in particular with the enclitic position of the relative pronoun. This is connected with the OV position and this position seems to have been prevailing in Hittite and PIE. The syntactic structure usually employed in Hittite between different clauses is the parataxis. Nevertheless, also the hypotaxis begins to be employed and the best occasion to use it was the diptych as suggested by Haudry, though he didn't consider the most natural and usual diptych: the law, where the crime and the sanction build a natural diptych already in old Hittite. Then I used Justus' and Boley's discussion on the structure of Hittite sentence and found a similarity with Latin, namely the use of an animate subject as central point of a sentence. With verbs of action in ancient languages the subject was normally an animate being, whereas also inanimate subject is employed in modern languages. This seems to be the major difference between ancient and modern structure of a sentence, or, better to say, in Hittite and PIE the subject was an animate being and this persisted a long time, and remained as a tendency in Latin, while in following languages and in classical grammar the subject became a simple nominal “entity” to be predicated and precised with verb and other linguistic instruments. A glance has been cast also to pronouns and particles (sometimes linked together) as instruments of linking nominal variants of coordinate or subordinate clauses and to the development of demonstrative/deictic pronouns. Also in ancient case theory a prevailing position was assured to the nominative case, the case of the subject.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (09) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Claudio Reyes Lozano

Los estudios críticos de género sustancialistas desconocen su posición teórico-política en el momento de explayar algunas de sus hipótesis fundamentales. El presente estudio intenta dar cuenta de las consecuencias éticas que asume llevar hasta el final algunas de estas posiciones teóricas. Advertimos así que obras fundamentales de estos estudios se apropian con claridad, y sin saberlo, de una lógica aristotélica para tratar la asunción material del cuerpo, el sujeto y el género ¿Qué encontramos específicamente en esta lógica? Esta última se caracteriza por tener su raíz en una ontología inamovible, en donde cualquier intento de desbaratar el “ser” tiene como respuesta inmediata la exclusión violenta de la diferencia: concretamente observamos esto, dialogando tanto con colegas como legos, en la “violencia académica” pero también en la “violencia cotidiana” ¿Cómo salir del cierre metafísico que ha mantenido durante décadas la violencia y exclusión de aquello que se generó en primera instancia, paradójicamente, como argumentación de tolerancia y emancipación? Pensamos que deconstruyendo el discurso de género aristotélico podremos vislumbrar nuevas hipótesis y posiciones ético-políticas que no recurran, para validarse, a la exclusión violenta de nuevos cuerpos-sujetos-géneros. Some critical gender studies do not know their theoretical and political position at the time to developing some of their basic assumptions. This study attempts to explain the ethical consequences that lead to the end some of these theoretical positions. We realize that fundamental works of these studies clearly appropriating, and without knowing it, an aristotelian logic to justify the assumption of material body, the subject and gender. What specifically found in this logic? It is characterized to found on an immovable ontology, where any attempt to disrupt the “being” has as an immediate violent response to exclude the difference: specifically we observe this, dialoguing with colleagues and laymen, in the “academic violence” but also “everyday violence”. How to get out of the metaphysical closure that maintained for decades the violence and exclusion of what is generated in the first place, paradoxically, as argument of tolerance and emancipation? We think deconstructing the aristotelian discourse of gender can warn new hypotheses and ethical positions that not based, to validate, on a violent exclusion of new bodies-subject-genres positions.


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