Impersonal Passive "Se" in Spanish

1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Héctor Campos
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Transformational Grammar ◽  
Syntactic Properties

Within the last twenty years and in the framework of transformational grammar at least seven kinds of se have been proposed: spurious se, reflexive se, reciprocal se, pronominal se, impersonal se, passive se and se moyen. Each of these se's shows its own syntactic and semantic characteristics. In this article, in the framework of the Theory of Government and Binding, an eighth type of se, the impersonal passive se, is proposed. Similar to the passive se, it is passive in interpretation; however, unlike passive se, and similar to the impersonal se, it has an impersonal subject. The different syntactic properties this new se exhibits are shown to follow from the principles of universal grammar.

Second Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory in the 21st Century

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 248-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juana M. Liceras
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Science Field ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Syntactic Properties

Syntactic theory has played a role in second language acquisition (SLA) research since the early 1980s, when the principles and parameters model of generative grammar was implemented. However, it was the so-called functional parameterization hypothesis together with the debate on whether second language learners activated new features or switched their value that led to detailed and in-depth analyses of the syntactic properties of many different nonnative grammars. In the last 10 years, with the minimalist program as background, these analyses have diverted more and more from looking at those syntactic properties that argued for or against the various versions of the UG-access versus non-UG-access debate (UG for Universal Grammar) and have more recently delved into the status of nonnative grammars in the cognitive science field. Thus, using features (i.e., gender, case, verb, and determiner) as the basic units and paying special attention to the quality of input as well as to processing principles and constraints, nonnative grammars have been compared to the language contact paradigms that underlie subsequent bilingualism, child SLA, creole formation, and diachronic change. Taking Chomsky's I-language/E-language construct as the framework, this article provides a review of these recent developments in SLA research.

scholarly journals Transfer and Success in the Acquisition of Verbal Properties in French and English

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-119
Author(s):  
Ken Sheppard
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Group Learning ◽  
Exceptional Case ◽  
Control Structures ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
French And English ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Clausal Complements ◽  
Acceptability Judgments ◽  
And Control

AbstractThis study compares the acquisitional states of two groups of foreign language learners (a Francophone group learning English and an Anglophone group learning French) with a view to establishing the influence of Universal Grammar in the process. Specifically, the two groups (48 each) were asked to render acceptability judgments about 50 sentences in each language; the sentences exemplified syntactic properties [the permissability or impermissibility of fully tensed clausal complements, Exceptional Case Marking and Control structures (PRO)] associated with three verbs in the two languages (believe/croire,promise/promettreandwant/vouloir).

The Beauty of Deep Structure

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-64
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Technical Level ◽  
Educational Funding ◽  
Transformational Grammar ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Cognitive Revolution

This chapter charts the rise of Noam Chomsky’s Transformational-Generative Grammar, from its cornerstone role in the cognitive revolution up to its widely heralded realization in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. That realization featured the development of an evocative concept, Deep Structure, a brilliant nexus of meaning and structure that integrates seamlessly with Chomsky’s companion idea, Universal Grammar, the notion that all languages share a critical, genetically encoded core. At a technical level, Deep Structure concentrated meaning because of the Katz-Postal Principle, stipulating that transformations cannot change meaning. Transformations rearrange structure while keeping meaning stable. The appeal of Deep Structure and Universal Grammar helped Transformational Grammar propagate rapidly into language classrooms, literary studies, stylistics, and computer science, gave massive impetus to the emergence of psycholinguistics, attracted substantial military and educational funding, and featured prominently in Chomsky’s meteoric intellectual stardom.

Knowledge of English verb phrase ellipsis by speakers of Arabic and Chinese

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Verb Phrase Ellipsis ◽  
Persistent Problem ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Verb Phrase ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
English Verb

English verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) involves both syntactic and discourse information. The present study investigates knowledge of these properties by L1 speakers of Arabic and Mandarin Chinese. Three issues are addressed. Can the participants acquire syntactic properties of VPE that differ from their L1s and are under-determined by positive evidence? Can they acquire all of the syntactic properties of VPE that differ from their L1s? Can they successfully integrate their knowledge of the syntax of VPE with discourse information determining felicity? Results from a sentence completion judgement task are broadly consistent with the L2 participants having Universal Grammar (UG)-constrained grammars for VPE, and with their being able to successfully integrate syntactic representations with discourse information. A persistent problem with an uninterpretable feature is discussed, as are the implications of the findings for the claim that VPE involves gradient grammaticality.

A study of the L2 acquisition of English reflexives

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Makiko Hirakawa
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Japanese Learners Of English ◽  
A Value ◽  
Subset Principle ◽  
Parameter Resetting ◽  
Japanese Learners ◽  
Two Parameters ◽  
Syntactic Properties

This paper reports on an experimental study which was conducted to examine how native speakers of Japanese acquire syntactic properties of English reflexive pronouns. In particular, the effects of two parameters of Universal Grammar, the Governing Category Parameter and the Proper Antecedent Parameter (Wexler and Manzini, 1987), were studied. The Governing Category Parameter has five values, of which Manzini and Wexler suggest that English represents the most unmarked value while Japanese and Korean represent the most marked one. In a learning situation where the L 1 is marked and the L2 is unmarked, we may ask whether learners observe the Subset Principle and successfully acquire the correct L2 value or whether they wrongly transfer their L1 value to the L2 grammar, or assume a value in between, as found by Finer and Broselow (1986). An experimental study was conducted to examine how Japanese learners of English set values of the above parameters. Results suggest that the L2 learners transferred their L1 parameter setting, leading to transfer errors; i.e., non-operation of the Subset Principle. However, I suggest that parameter resetting is possible, at least for some learners.

Generative Semantics 1: The Model

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-106
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Natural Extension ◽  
Homogeneous System ◽  
Transformational Grammar

This chapter follows the emergence of Generative Semantics from the Transformational Grammar developments codified in Noam Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. It was on George Lakoff’s mind from before Aspects but it only achieved the rhetorical, sociological, and theoretical conditions to thrive with that codification. Generative Semantics looked like a natural extension of Transformational Grammar, rooting itself in the semantic subsoil of Deep Structure and aligning closely with Universal Grammar. But that subsoil quickly proved to be less fertile than it had seemed, so Generative Semantics imported concepts from logic and philosophy of language; and Universal Grammar proved less substantial than it had seemed, so Generative Semantics solidified it with a Universal Base hypothesis. The resulting model was an extraordinarily elegant theory in which language passed through a homogeneous system of rules from thought and meaning to structure and expression, but it contained multiple seeds, both attitudinal and technical, of a challenge to Chomsky’s work.

The Interpretability Hypothesis: evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ianthi Maria Tsimpli ◽  
Maria Dimitrakopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Resumptive Pronouns ◽  
The Status ◽  
Syntactic Properties

The second language acquisition (SLA) literature reports numerous studies of proficient second language (L2) speakers who diverge significantly from native speakers despite the evidence offered by the L2 input. Recent SLA theories have attempted to account for native speaker/non-native speaker (NS/NNS) divergence by arguing for the dissociation between syntactic knowledge and morpho(pho)nology. In particular, Lardiere (1998), Prévost and White (2000), and Goad and White (2004) claim that highly proficient learners have knowledge of the abstract syntactic properties of the language but occasionally fail to associate them with the correct morphological or phonological forms. On the other hand, theories that support partial availability of Universal Grammar (UG) (Tsimpli and Roussou 1991; Hawkins and Chan, 1997) argue for a problem in the syntax: while UG principles and operations are available in SLA, the formal features of the target language that are not instantiated in the L1 or have a different setting, cause learnability problems. This article discusses acquisitional data in the light of the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Mastropavlou, 2007), which is a reformulation of the SLA theory suggested by Tsimpli and Roussou (1991) in minimalist terms. It is argued that a minimalist approach to SLA can be implemented to specify the status of the features that are least accessible to re-setting in the SLA process, given (1) constraints on their learnability and (2), their setting in the L1 grammar. The phenomenon discussed concerns the use of the resumptive strategy in wh- subject and object extraction by intermediate and advanced Greek learners of English. It is proposed that the acceptability rate of pronouns in the extraction site is conditioned by the Logical Form (LF) interpretability of the features involved in the derivation. Hence, the interpretable features of animacy and discourse-linking are hypothesized to be involved in the analysis of English pronouns by Greek L2 learners, while the first language (L1) specification of resumptive pronouns as clusters of uninterpretable Case and Agreement features resists resetting.

scholarly journals The Syntactic Roles of Touch in Shared Festivals in Kerala: Towards an Analysis of Ritual Categories

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophira Gamliel
Keyword(s):  
Deep Structure ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Structural Patterns ◽  
Ritual Communication ◽  
Linguistic Categories ◽  
Syntactic Properties

The following discussion of touch as a syntactic-semantic unit in ritual structures is based on an analogy of ritual and language postulating a 'deep structure' or a 'universal grammar' for rituals as presented by Frits Staal, Axel Michaels, and Naphtali Meshel. Following E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley in their cognitive approach to ritual competence and in identifying actions as building blocks in ritual structures, I propose an analysis of ritual events as a category with distinctive semantic and syntactic properties and within the framework of ritual communication and ritual competence. I extend Martina Wiltschko’s universal spine hypothesis for linguistic categories to the language-ritual analogy in the domains of semantics and syntax. The viability of this analytical framework is demonstrated by categorizing touching events in rituals in shared festivals in Kerala. I conclude the discussion by hypothesizing universal categories for ritual events and entities, and universal structural patterns partially analogous (perhaps even homologous) to categories and patterns used in Wiltschko’s universal spine hypothesis.

Sentence Repetition: A Clinical Marker for Developmental Language Disorder in Danish

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (12) ◽  
pp. 4450-4463
Author(s):  
Rikke Vang Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Likelihood Ratios ◽  
Clinical Marker ◽  
Sentence Repetition ◽  
Good Identification ◽  
Syntactic Properties

Purpose The aim of the study was to explore the potential of performance on a Danish sentence repetition (SR) task—including specific morphological and syntactic properties—to identify difficulties in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) relative to typically developing (TD) children. Furthermore, the potential of the task as a clinical marker for Danish DLD was explored. Method SR performance of children with DLD aged 5;10–14;1 (years;months; n = 27) and TD children aged 5;3–13;4 ( n = 87) was investigated. Results Compared to TD same-age peers, children with DLD were less likely to repeat the sentences accurately but more likely to make ungrammatical errors with respect to verb inflection and use of determiners and personal pronouns. Younger children with DLD also produced more word order errors that their TD peers. Furthermore, older children with DLD performed less accurately than younger TD peers, indicating that the SR task taps into morphosyntactic areas of particular difficulty for Danish children with DLD. The classification accuracy associated with SR performance showed high levels of sensitivity and specificity (> 90%) and likelihood ratios indicating good identification potential for clinical and future research purposes. Conclusion SR performance has a strong potential for identifying children with DLD, also in Danish, and with a carefully designed SR task, performance has potential for revealing morphosyntactic difficulties. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.10314437

A CASE STUDY OF NL INFLUENCE IN UNIS FKIP ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS' INTERLANGUAGE

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-54
Author(s):  
Irmala Sukendra ◽  
Agus Mulyana ◽  
Imam Sudarmaji
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Similar System ◽  
The One ◽  
L1 Acquisition

Regardless to the facts that English is being taught to Indonesian students starting from early age, many Indonesian thrive in learning English. They find it quite troublesome for some to acquire the language especially to the level of communicative competence. Although Krashen (1982:10) states that “language acquirers are not usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring language, but are only aware of the fact that they are using the language for communication”, second language acquisition has several obstacles for learners to face and yet the successfulness of mastering the language never surmounts to the one of the native speakers. Learners have never been able to acquire the language as any native speakers do. Mistakes are made and inter-language is unavoidable. McNeili in Ellis (1985, p. 44) mentions that “the mentalist views of L1 acquisition hypothesizes the process of acquisition consists of hypothesis-testing, by which means the grammar of the learner’s mother tongue is related to the principles of the ‘universal grammar’.” Thus this study intends to find out whether the students go through the phase of interlanguage in their attempt to acquire second language and whether their interlanguage forms similar system as postulated by linguists (Krashen).

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