Chapter 7. Vietnamese expletive between grammatical subject and subjectivity marker

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Subject

scholarly journals Modal verbs of strong obligation in Scottish Standard English

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
OLE SCHÜTZLER ◽  
JENNY HERZKY
Keyword(s):  
General Pattern ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Multinomial Regression ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
Mixed Effect ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
Multinomial Regression Model ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Mode Of Production

This article investigates differences between Scottish Standard English (SSE) and Southern British Standard English (SBSE) in the semantic domain of strong obligation. Focusing on the modal verbs must, have to, need to and (have) got to, we use new corpus material from nineteen written and spoken genres in the Scottish component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-SCO) and corresponding texts from ICE-GB. Data are analysed using a mixed-effect multinomial regression model to predict the choice of verb. Language-internal factors include mode of production (written/spoken), grammatical subject (first/second/third person) and source of obligation (objective/subjective). Our results show that, as previous research suggests, SSE is much more likely to employ need to for the expression of strong obligation, and less likely to employ must and (have) got to. This general pattern remains essentially unaffected by language-internal factors. To account for our findings, we draw on the sociologically motivated process of democratisation and the language-internal process of grammaticalisation.

Definiteness and Voice in the Interpretation of Active and Passive Sentences

1975 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Hupet ◽  
Brigitte Le Bouedec
Keyword(s):  
General Rule ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
The Voice

In Experiment I, subjects were given active and passive sentences where the definiteness of nominals is varied and about which uncertainty was expressed, e.g. “I thought that the policeman had been injured by a gangster, but I was mistaken, in fact.”. Their task was to decide what was the target of the mistake by completing freely the sentence in such a way that the account would be corrected. When the nominals are differentially determined (a-the, the-a), the pattern of responses indicates that, for both active and passive, subjects were more likely to conclude that it was the non-definitely marked nominal that had been involved in the mistake rather than the definitely marked one. When both nominals are similarly determined (a-a, the-the), subjects were more likely to indicate the event itself as having been involved in the mistake. This supports the hypothesis that subjects are able to utilize definiteness to determine the relation between presupposed and assertional information. In Experiment II, subjects were given paired active and passive sentences with differentially determined nominals and were required to choose between the two syntactic forms of each pair the one they would prefer to use. The pattern of responses clearly shows that subjects were more likely to choose the voice allowing the hypothesized preferential order “Definitely marked grammatical subject-non-definitely marked grammatical object”. Passive transformational rule is thus interpreted as a particular case of a more general rule specifying the ways in which what is made known (comment) is nested on to what is already assumed to be the case (topic).

scholarly journals Experiencer as quasi-agent: «from meaning to the linguistic form»

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 112-136
Author(s):  
М.А. Fomina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Functional Approach ◽  
Conceptual Category ◽  
Linguistic Representation ◽  
Linguistic Form ◽  
Grammatical Subject

The paper focuses on the category of semantic subject within the framework of a functional approach to linguistics. The variety of roles subject may have in a sentence accounts for the radially structured category of subject. With the agent subject being the center of the category, other members – Possessor, Experiencer, Neutral, etc. – appear to be scattered within the syntactical category of subject being more central or peripheral. The paper deals with the Experiencer subject. The author stresses the key role of a well-elaborated metalanguage in linguistic analysis and assumes that a thorough analysis of the relevant conceptual category, its structure and content, should precede the stage of developing a metalanguage. The paper 1) differentiates between similar though not interchangeable notions such as semantic subject, grammatical subject, and the bearer of predicative feature, 2) features the peripheral status of the Experiencer within the category of semantic subject, 3) reveals the means of its linguistic representation, 4) makes a structural and semantic analysis of the models with the Experiencer.

Commentary

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Enmarch
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
A Chain

The use of editorial marks in the transliteration and translation of The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All broadly follows Paul Maas (1958 [1927]), and in part the Leiden papyrological conventions. In the transliteration, words that belong together in a prosodic colon as defined by Gerhard Fecht are connected with hyphens. Specifically, the stative generally does not form a separate colon except when there is a chain of statives, or when the grammatical subject itself consists of several cola, or when the stative forms an adjunct clause. In ambiguous cases, where two prosodic analyses are possible, the alternative is given where it significantly alters the interpretation of the strophe. The transliteration ignores unetymological features of Ramessid orthography. The theme of insubordination and unruliness among subordinate workers recurs in the poem. This chapter also analyses the poem's strophes, audience, structure and laments.

Bradley, Francis Herbert (1846–1924)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Candlish
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Philosophy Of Logic ◽  
Ultimate Truth ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
The World ◽  
And Mathematics

Bradley was the most famous and philosophically the most influential of the British Idealists, who had a marked impact on British philosophy in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. They looked for inspiration less to their British predecessors than to Kant and Hegel, though Bradley owed as much to lesser German philosophers such as R.H. Lotze, J.F. Herbart and C. Sigwart. Bradley is most famous for his metaphysics. He argued that our ordinary conceptions of the world conceal contradictions. His radical alternative can be summarized as a combination of monism (that is, reality is one, there are no real separate things) and absolute idealism (that is, reality is idea, or consists of experience – but not the experience of any one individual, for this is forbidden by the monism). This metaphysics is said to have influenced the poetry of T.S. Eliot. But he also made notable contributions to philosophy of history, to ethics and to the philosophy of logic, especially of a critical kind. His critique of hedonism – the view that the goal of morality is the maximization of pleasure – is still one of the best available. Some of his views on logic, for instance, that the grammatical subject of a sentence may not be what the sentence is really about, became standard through their acceptance by Bertrand Russell, an acceptance which survived Russell’s repudiation of idealist logic and metaphysics around the turn of the century. Russell’s and G.E. Moore’s subsequent disparaging attacks on Bradley’s views signalled the return to dominance in England of pluralist (that is, non-monist) doctrines in the tradition of Hume and J.S. Mill, and, perhaps even more significantly, the replacement in philosophy of Bradley’s richly metaphorical literary style and of his confidence in the metaphysician’s right to adjudicate on the ultimate truth with something more like plain speaking and a renewed deference to science and mathematics. Bradley’s contemporary reputation was that of the greatest English philosopher of his generation. This status did not long survive his death, and the relative dearth of serious discussion of his work until more general interest revived in the 1970s has meant that the incidental textbook references to some of his most characteristic and significant views, for example, on relations and on truth, are often based on hostile and misleading caricatures.

Juvenal, 1. 155–7

1979 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-464
Author(s):  
John G. Griffith
Keyword(s):  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Recent Issue ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
Manuscript Tradition

It is gratifying to read, in a recent issue of this periodical, Mr. A. A. Barrett's informed exposition of the syntax of this passage, even though he balks at the need to extract a grammatical subject for the verb deducit in 157 from the relative pronoun qua in the previous line. However his persuasive presentation of what he relies on as evidence in support of his suggested interpretation from the mosaics from Zliten in Tripolitania, which portray scenes in an amphitheatre, may seduce the unwary into an over-ready acquiescence in his proposal to read raeda in 157 for taeda of the manuscript tradition. Juvenal's words were correctly understood by T. Maguire as long ago as 1881, and the solution was restated with clarity in a note by W. V. Clausen recently.

See / Witness and the ‘setting-subject construction’

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-301
Author(s):  
Christelle Lacassain-Lagoin
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Cognitive Schemas ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
Perception Verbs

Abstract Perception verbs prototypically occur with a grammatical subject NP referring to a person. However, see and witness also license an inanimate grammatical subject, more precisely a spatial or temporal setting, in a “setting-subject construction” (Langacker 1991, 2008). The present study addresses this kind of variation, and demonstrates how the two alternate constructions reveal shifts from an egocentric perspective to an anthropocentric perspective. It sets out to accomplish three main goals: first, to establish whether each construction aligns perfectly with one particular perspective; second, to identify the semantic and syntactic characteristics of setting-subject constructions and explain how an inanimate subject NP can be favored over a human subject NP; third, to determine what can motivate speakers’ choices between the two alternate constructions licensed by see and witness. To achieve this, a qualitative, corpus-based analysis is carried out, which helps to understand to what extent the grammatical coding embodies a specific way of viewing the scene. First, the cognitive theoretical concepts (e.g., the Extended Animacy Hierarchy (Croft, 2003), egocentric and canonical viewing arrangements, cognitive schemas and models) that are helpful for the proper characterization of the two structures are presented, as well as the methodology employed to collect data for the present study. I then focus on prototypical, human subject NP constructions which reveal either an egocentric or an anthropocentric point of view of the scene. Finally, setting-subject constructions are addressed: not only are the characteristics of such structures highlighted but also the parameters and factors that contribute to their occurrence are identified. The study shows that such constructions convey the conceptualizer’s assessment of a situation, as the viewing relationship is construed subjectively. A setting-subject construction thus reveals a perspective that indirectly turns out to be more anthropocentric than ‘setting-centric’, as the inanimate locative subject, ranking at the bottom of the Animacy hierarchy, winds up alluding to any possible human being, including the speaker, the addressee and the Other.

American myths of linguistic assimilation: A sociolinguistic rebuttal

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Daniel Erker ◽  
Ricardo Otheguy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
Domains Of Life ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Linguistic Behavior

Abstract This study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Spanish, such that US-born speakers demonstrate remarkable similarity to the immigrant generation in their usage of three variables: (i) subject pronoun presence vs. absence, (ii) grammatical subject position, and (iii) syllable-final /s/. The co-occurence of increased use of English, on one hand, and intergenerational structural continuity in variable linguistic behavior in Spanish, on the other, challenges two misconceptions about Spanish in the United States: that (a) Spanish-speaking immigrants and their US-born children are unwilling or unable to learn English, and (b) regular use of English entails attrition and/or failed acquisition of Spanish. Neither of these views finds empirical support in our data. (Spanish in the United States, comparative variationist linguistics, subject personal pronouns, grammatical subject position, syllable final /s/, bilingualism)

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