Word order in Croatian Sign Language

2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 169-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Milković ◽  
Sandra Bradarić-Jončić ◽  
Ronnie B. Wilbur
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
New Information ◽  
Information Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Head Positions

This paper focuses on the basic word order of Croatian Sign Language (HZJ) and factors that permit alternative word orders to occur in sentences and in context. Although they are unrelated languages, the basic word order in HZJ is the same as in spoken Croatian: SVO. One of the factors allowing alternative word orders in context is information status (old or new), which influences constituent placement, as in other languages. HZJ has a tendency to omit old, previously mentioned information, usually the Subject, and the part that is expressed is the new information (Rheme). When old information is expressed, it appears at the beginning of the sentence, preceding the Rheme. Like other languages, HZJ word order can be influenced by the nature of the arguments (Subject, Object) as well as the type of Verb. Sentences with ‘reversible’ arguments (i.e. both are animate and could be agents) tend to use the basic word order, whereas those with nonreversible arguments allow more variable word order. Basic word order also occurs more often with plain verbs (those that do not agree with their arguments). Agreeing and spatial verbs use other word orders in addition to SVO, including the tendency to position Verbs at the end of sentences. Investigation on the interaction of word order and the grammatical usage of facial expressions and head positions (nonmanual marking) indicates that nonmanual markings have pragmatic roles, and could have syntactic functions which await further research.

scholarly journals BASIC WORD ORDER IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE: A HYBRID EXTENDED PROJECTION PRINCIPLE (EPP) | A ORDEM BÁSICA DE PALAVRAS NO PORTUGUÊS BRASILEIRO: UM PRINCÍPIO DA PROJEÇÃO ESTENDIDO (EPP) HÍBRIDO

2017 ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Michelle Sheehan
Keyword(s):  
Hybrid Model ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Small Clause ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
Explanatory Account ◽  
Extended Projection ◽  
The Subject

<p>This paper proposes a novel analysis of word order in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), based on a hybrid model of EPP satisfaction. It is proposed that the subject requirement or EPP is a [uD] feature on T which can be satisfied either by DP movement or by movement of an inflected verb bearing a [D] feature in BP. This, it is claimed, offers an explanatory account of basic word order patterns in BP.  External argument DPs, merged above V, are closer to T than V, meaning that they must raise to satisfy the EPP, predicting SV(O) order with transitive and unergative predicates, including transitive psych-predicates. Internal arguments are merged below V, however, and so with unaccusatives, it is movement of the verb bearing a [uD] feature which satisfies the EPP, giving rise to VS order. With copular verbs which take small clause complements, a similar affect holds, as the copular verb can satisfy the EPP. Verb movement can also satisfy the EPP in impersonal contexts, hence the fact that BP lacks overt expletives.</p><p>Resumo: Este artigo propõe uma nova análise da ordem de palavras no Português Brasileiro (PB), baseada num modelo hibrido de satisfação do Princípio da Projeção Extendido (PPE). Propõe-se que o requisito de sujeito ou PPE é um rasgo [uD] no núcleo T, que se pode satisfazer ou por alçamento de um DP ou por movimento de um verbo flexionado com um traço [D] no PB. Esta abordagem oferece uma análise explanatória da ordem básica das palavras no PB. Os argumentos externos (dos verbos transitivos e inergativos) que originam acima do verbo, são mais perto de T, assim que devem mover para satisfazer o PPE, o que prediz corretamente a ordem SV(O) com estes verbos (incluso os predicados psicológicos transitivos).  Os argumentos internos originam abaixo do verbo, assim que com os verbos inacusativos, e o verbo com um traco [D] que deve satisfazer o PPE, ocasionando a ordem VS. Com os verbos copulares com clausulas pequenas como complemento, observamos algo parecido porque a verbo copulativo também pode satisfazer o PPE. O alçamento do verbo também pode satisfazer o PPE em contextos impessoais, por isso a falta de expletivos no PB. </p><p> </p>

Information status and word order in Croatian Sign Language

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 1007-1017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Milković ◽  
Sandra Bradarić‐Jončić ◽  
Ronnie B. Wilbur
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Status

scholarly journals Discourse functions at the periphery: noncanonical word order in English

2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty J. Birner
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
New Information ◽  
Information Status ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
The Status ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Discourse Functions

Speakers have a wide range of noncanonical syntactic options that allow them to mark the information status of the various elements within a proposition. The correlation between a construction and constraints on information status, however, is not arbitrary; there are broad, consistent, and predictive generalizations that can be made about the information-packaging functions served by preposing, postposing, and argument-reversing constructions. Specifically, preposed constituents are constrained to represent discourse-old information, postposed constituents are constrained to represent information that is either discourse-new or hearer-new, and argument-reversing constructions require that the information represented by the preposed constituent be at least as familiar as that represented by the postposed constituent (Birner & Ward 1998). The status of inferable information (Clark 1977; Prince 1981), however, is problematic; a study of corpus data shows that such information can be preposed in an inversion or a preposing (hence must be discourse-old), yet can also be postposed in constructions requiring hearer-new information (hence must be hearer-new). This information status – discourse-old yet hearer-new – is assumed by Prince (1992) to be non-occurring on the grounds that what has been evoked in the discourse should be known to the hearer. I resolve this difficulty by arguing for a reinterpretation of the term 'discourse-old' as applying not only to information that has been explicitly evoked in the prior discourse, but rather to any information that provides a salient inferential link to the prior discourse. Extending Prince’s notion in this manner allows us to account for the distribution of noncanonically positioned peripheral constituents in a principled and unified way.  

scholarly journals Word order variation and ba sentences in Chinese

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 649-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng-hsi Liu
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
New Information ◽  
Information Status ◽  
Order Variation

Despite extensive research on ba sentences in Chinese, the issue of when ba sentences are used in discourse has received little attention. This study examines the word order variation involving ba sentences by comparing three word orders: the canonical postverbal form, the ba form, and the topicalized preposed form. I show that the choice of the ba form depends on multiple factors, including information status, weight and topicality. The ba form is more likely to be used under two conditions: (a) when the ba NP carries old information but is not highly topical, (b) when the ba NP carries new information and is heavy. Further, my findings raise doubts on the ba NP’s role as a topic in discourse.

scholarly journals ON THE WORD ORDER OF SIMPLE SENTENCES IN TELEUT

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Денис Михайлович Токмашев
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Simple Sentence ◽  
Linear Distribution ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Simple Sentences

Типология порядка слов относится к слабо разработанной области тюркского синтаксиса. Телеутский язык относится к SOV-языкам левого ветвления. Глагол-сказуемое располагается в конце простого предложения, содержащего одну пропозицию, с непосредственно примыкающим к нему прямым дополнением. Позиция косвенного дополнения и обстоятельства может варьировать в зависимости от коммуникативной перспективы (информационной структуры) предложения. В придаточных клаузах порядок слов стремится к порядку в главных. Функционально порядок слов отвечает за линейную дистрибуцию вершины-сказуемого и его зависимых. Базовый порядок слов регламентирует дистрибуцию аргументов глагола без учета позиции адъюнктов. Семантические роли аргументов не влияют на их синтаксические функции и их позицию в предложении. Изменение SOV-порядка слов в телеутском языке возможно при изменении его информационной структуры, например, рематизации субъекта и тематизации предиката. На современном этапе под влиянием русского языка отмечается прагматически не обусловленное построение предложения по модели SVO. Word order typology can be referred to as a poorly developed area of Turkic syntax. The Teleut language belongs to the SOV-type of the left-branching languages. The predicate verb is located at the end of a simple sentence containing one proposition, with a direct object directly adjacent to it. The position of the indirect object and the adverbial may vary depending on the communicative perspective (information structure) of the sentence. The word order in the subordinate clause tends to copy that in the main clause. Functionally, the word order is responsible for the linear distribution of the predicate head and its dependents. The basic word order defines the distribution of verb arguments regardless of the adjuncts’ position. The theta roles of the arguments do not affect their syntactic functions and their position within a sentence. A change in the SOV-word order in Teleut may be concurred by its information structure, for example, when the subject and the predicate become focal and topical parts of the sentence respectively. At the present stage, the influence of Russian bringing about the pragmatically unconditioned SVO-pattern model is noted.

scholarly journals The Problem of Word Order and Verbal Movement in Moroccan Arabic

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 34-54
Author(s):  
Inass Announi
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Moroccan Arabic ◽  
New Information ◽  
Cyclic Movement ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Feature Checking ◽  
Minimalist Framework

This paper attempts to investigate word order and verbal movement in Moroccan Arabic in the Minimalist framework. We observe that the unmarked word order in MA is SVO while the derived structure is VSO. SVO follows an English-like derivation where the subject moves from [Spec, vP] to [Spec, TP] whilst the verb moves from v to T. This paper raises the issue of the verbal movement when it comes to VSO order in languages that have VSO as the derived order and SVO as the underlying order. To derive VSO, we propose that the verb moves from T to Focus based on pragmatic reasons: verbs positioned in the left-periphery denote new information that is focused compared to SVO. We also test our new proposal against the marginal word orders OSV and OVS and propose that object topicalization is the result of the object moving to [Spec, TopicP] which dominates FocusP. Moreover, we go back to the issue of verbal movement and trace the verbal cyclic movement. We argue that the verb moves from V to v based on the position of the adverb. The verb further moves to T based on the quantifier evidence and feature checking: Focus and T form a complex and probe into v to check [TNS] and [V] features. Moreover, T-to-Focus occurs in wh-constructions except when /lli/ ‘that’ is present. In WH-VO (WH as a wh-subject), the verb stays in T while the wh-subject stays in [Spec, TP]. If /lli/ ‘that’ is present, then the wh-subject is forced to move further to [Spec, FocusP]. In WH-SV, the wh-elements move to [Spec, FocusP] while the subject moves to [Spec, TopicP] and the verb moves to Topic. In WH-VS, the wh-elements move to [Spec, FocusP] while the verb moves to Focus.

scholarly journals Word order in wh-questions in a North Norwegian dialect: some evidence from an acquisition study

2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Richardsen Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
New Information ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject

While standard Norwegian is a V2 language, some Norwegian dialects exhibit V3 in certain types of wh-questions. In some previous work on the Tromsø dialect, V3 has been considered the ‘true’ dialect and speakers' acceptance of V2 simply a result of the influence from the standard language. Based on child and adult data from a study of the acquisition of word order in the Tromsø dialect, I will argue that both V2 and V3 orders are part of the dialect – used by adult speakers and acquired (more or less) simultaneously by children. It will further be argued that the choice between the two depends on the information structure of the sentence, more specifically, on the interpretation of the subject as given or new information.

scholarly journals The acquisition of Irish: a study of word order development

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Hickey
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Verbal Nouns ◽  
Verbal Noun ◽  
New Information ◽  
Main Verb ◽  
The Subject

ABSTRACTThis study examines the development of word order patterns in Irish, a strict VSO language. It was found that the three children studied used subject-initial utterances considerably more frequently than adults in input, and that in both adult and child the elision of the verb ‘to be’ played a significant role. Another significant factor was found to be the different restrictions on main verbs and verbal nouns with regard to the subject: in neutral sentences the main verb always precedes the subject, while the verbal noun always follows it. The Bates & MacWhinney (1979). hypothesis that early verb initialization results from a tendency to place new information before given information was also investigated.

Can familiarity lessen the effect of locality? A case study of Mandarin Chinese subjects and the following adverbials

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunshan Xu ◽  
Haitao Liu
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Activation Level ◽  
New Information ◽  
Information Status ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Chinese Subjects

AbstractThis paper explores the relation between familiarity of Chinese subjects and the syntactic distance. We propose two hypotheses: (1) contextually given Mandarin Chinese subjects are more likely to be used with long intervening adverbials than contextually new subjects; and (2) subjects with higher word frequency are more likely to be followed by long adverbials than those with lower word frequency. The data from two Mandarin Chinese treebanks provide supportive evidence for the first hypothesis, but not the second. Cognitively, this is probably due to the possibility that contextual givenness, which reflects familiarity, may lessen the effect of locality by increasing the activation level (the accessibility) of the subject and rendering these subjects less susceptible to the memory decay caused by the adverbials intervening between them and the predicate verbs. Subjects are usually the starting point of a sentence, which has a default given–new information structure. Therefore, when organizing a sentence, we are dominantly concerned with the information status (contextual givenness) relative to previous context when choosing the subjects, which may partly accounts for the observed irrelevance between word frequency and the use of adverbials. A sentence is structured based on the information status of the subjects, not their word frequency.

scholarly journals Syntax and processing in Seediq: an event-related potential study

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masataka Yano ◽  
Keiyu Niikuni ◽  
Hajime Ono ◽  
Manami Sato ◽  
Apay Ai-yu Tang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Processing Load ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Austronesian Language ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Processing Difficulty

AbstractIn many languages with subject-before-object as a syntactically basic word order, transitive sentences in which the subject precedes the object have been reported to have a processing advantage over those in which the subject follows the object in sentence comprehension. Three sources can be considered to account for this advantage, namely, syntactic complexity (filler-gap dependency), conceptual accessibility (the order of thematic roles), and pragmatic requirement. To examine the effect of these factors on the processing of simple transitive sentences, the present study conducted two event-related potential experiments in Seediq, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan, by manipulating word orders (basic VOS vs. non-basic SVO), the order of thematic roles (actor vs. goal voice), and discourse factors (presence/absence of visual context). The results showed that, compared to VOS, SVO incurred a greater processing load (reflected by a P600) when there was no supportive context, irrespective of voice alternation; however, SVO did not incur a greater processing load when there was supportive context and the discourse requirement was satisfied. We interpreted these results as evidence that the processing difficulty of the non-basic word order in Seediq is associated with a discourse-level processing difficulty.

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