scholarly journals The origins of the Romance analytic passive: Evidence from word order

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieven Danckaert
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Strong Preference ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Phonological Process ◽  
Present Tense

This chapter argues that despite formal resemblances, Latin perfect tense BE-periphrases of the type amatus sum ‘I was loved’ are not the historical source of Romance present tense passives like Italian sono amato and French je suis aimé (both meaning ‘I am (being) loved’). Evidence comes from the observation that Late Latin has a very strong preference for the head-final order ‘past participle–BE’, which goes against the otherwise general tendency for the language to move towards a strictly head-initial TP. As an alternative, I propose that amatus sum perfects disappeared from the language, and that the analytic present tense passives are new formations. The Late Latin preference for head-final BE-periphrases is explained in terms of phonological weakening of the auxiliary. I conclude by comparing this phonological process to the oft-discussed grammaticalization of HAVE (habeo) as a marker of futurity.

The development of BE-periphrases

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieven Danckaert
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Contrast Structures ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Diachronic Development

The sixth and final chapter of this book deals with word order in Latin BE-periphrases. It is first shown that the unexpected Late Latin preference for the head-final order ‘past participle–esse’ is not observed in every single environment, but only in the case of so-called ‘E-periphrases’, which display a mismatch between the tense of the BE-auxiliary in isolation and the tense of the entire periphrastic expression. In contrast, structures which lack this tense mismatch (‘F-periphrases’) can be shown to behave very differently. Next, the diachronic development of these two types of BE-periphrases is discussed, and it is suggested that in the light of the Late Latin corpus data, some received wisdom about the origins of the Romance present tense passive needs to be reconsidered. Finally, a prosodic account is proposed of the unexpected word order behaviour of Late Latin E-periphrases.

Specific Language Impairment in Swedish

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 848-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Hansson ◽  
Ulrika Nettelbladt ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Appropriate Use ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Several competing proposals have been offered to explain the grammatical difficulties experienced by children with specific language impairment (SLI). In this study, the grammatical abilities of Swedish-speaking children with SLI were examined for the purpose of evaluating these proposals and offering new findings that might be used in the development of alternative accounts. A group of preschoolers with SLI showed lower percentages of use of present tense copula forms and regular past tense inflections than normally developing peers matched for age and younger normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). Word order errors, too, were more frequent in the speech of the children with SLI. However, these children performed as well as MLU-matched children in the use of present tense inflections and irregular past forms. In addition, the majority of their sentences containing word order errors showed appropriate use of verb morphology. None of the competing accounts of SLI could accommodate all of the findings. In particular, these accounts—or new alternatives —must develop provisions to explain both the earlier acquisition of present tense inflections than past tense inflections and word order errors that seem unrelated to verb morphology.

Denominal verb formationin English and Modern Greek

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Nikos Koutsoukos
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Strong Preference ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Boundary Permeability ◽  
Category Assignment

Abstract Cross-linguistically, there are different patterns for denominal verb formation and languages show preferences for certain patterns (cf. McIntyre, 2015). In this paper, I focus on denominal verb formation in English and Modern Greek. The analyzed data come from the TenTen corpora (Sketch Engine, Kilgariff et al., 2014). The first aim is to quantify the use of the patterns of denominal verb formations in both languages. The results of the analysis corroborate the findings of previous analyses, such as the strong preference for conversion for denominal verb formation in English and for suffixation in Modern Greek. However, the present paper aims to go a step further. The second aim is to discuss why English and Modern Greek show these preferences. I propose that the preferences can be explained if we correlate the parameters of inflectional marking, word order/configurationality, system of lexical category assignment and boundary permeability.

scholarly journals THE PROSODY OF IMPERATIVE SENTENCES IN EVENKI AND OROCHON: PITCH

2019 ◽  
pp. 100-114
Author(s):  
Olga N. Morozova ◽  
◽  
Svetlana V. Androsova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Similar Frequency ◽  
Challenging Issue ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
Pitch Pattern ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Pitch Movement

Imperative sentences in Evenki and Orochon are undoubtedly a challenging issue of their grammar and phonetics. The aspects, on which researchers' opinions diverge, include grammar tense, neutral and inverted word order and prosodic arrangement of the sentences. It is the only type of sentences with the verb in sentences-initial position. Among 14 imperative verb forms (they change in 2 tenses with varying names, 3 persons and 2 numbers; some of them have inclusive and exclusive forms), 2nd-person forms in the Present Tense are characterized by the highest frequency of occurrence. This paper reports the results of an acoustic study of pitch movement in Evenki and Orochon imperative sentences depending on the number of words, syllables and the word order. The following results were obtained. In the Evenki material, two- and three-word syntagmas were characterized mostly by rise-fall pitch pattern while one-word syntagmas could have both rise-fall and fall patterns. Four-syllable-one word syntagmas' pattern was pitch declination while two- and three-syllable-one-word syntagmas could have both rise-fall and declination patterns with similar frequency of occurrence...

Word Order and Tense Choice in Standard Written French

1986 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dulcie M. Engel
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
The Past ◽  
Passe Compose

SUMMARY In modern French, the use of simple and composed tenses varies with respect to word order in two specific cases: firstly with subject inversion, and secondly with insertion of material between the auxiliary and the past participle. With the 'passé simple' (past historic) and the 'passé composé' (perfect), both of which can express past punctual actions, this difference in word order may influence tense choice. If a particular effect (contrast, emphasis...) is desired in the phrase, either the 'passé simple' or the 'passé composé' can be used to express the punctual past, the choice being dependent on their respective influence on word order. RESUME L'emploi des temps simples et des temps composés en français moderne diffère du point de vue de l'ordre de mots, en deux cas spécifiques: premièrement, avec l'inversion du sujet; et deuxièmement avec la possibilité de l'insertion de mots entre l'auxiliaire et le participe passé. Pour le passé simple et le passé composé, qui expriment tous les deux des actions passées et ponctuelles, cette différence d'ordre peut influencer le choix du temps: si l'on désire creer un effet particulier dans la phrase (contraste, emphase...), on pourrait employer soit le passé simple, soit le passé composé pour exprimer le passé ponctuel, selon leur influence sur l'ordre des mots.

scholarly journals Subject-verb word order in Spanish interrogatives

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther L. Brown ◽  
Javier Rivas
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Question Type ◽  
Strong Preference ◽  
Conversational Speech ◽  
Puerto Rican Spanish ◽  
Rule Analysis ◽  
Subject Expression

We conduct a quantitative analysis of conversational speech from native speakers of Puerto Rican Spanish to test whether optional non-inversion of subjects in wh-questions (¿qué tú piensas?) is indicative of a movement in Spanish from flexible to rigid word order (Morales 1989; Toribio 2000). We find high rates of subject expression (51%) and a strong preference for SV word order (47%) over VS (4%) in all sentence types, in line with assertions of fixed SVO word order. The usage-based examination of 882 wh-questions shows non-inversion occurs in 14% of the cases (25% of wh-questions containing an overt subject). Variable rule analysis reveals subject, verb and question type significantly constrain interrogative word order, but we find no evidence that word order is predicted by perseveration. SV word order is highest in rhetorical and quotative questions, revealing a pathway of change through which word order is becoming fixed in this variety.

scholarly journals Floating affixes in Polish

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berthold Crysmann
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
General Treatment ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
The Past ◽  
Considerable Debate ◽  
Inflectional Features

The morphosyntactic status of Polish past tense agreement markers has been a matter of considerable debate in recent years (Spencer 1991, Borsley & Rivero 1994, Borsley 1999, Bański 2000, Kupść 2000, Kupść & Tseng 2005). Past tense agreement is expressed by a set of bound forms that either attach to the past participle, or else float off to a host further to the left. Despite this relative freedom of attachment, it is often noted in the literature, e.g., Borsley 1999, Kupść & Tseng 2005, that the combination of verbal host and agreement marker forms a word-like unit. In this paper I will argue that these agreement markers are best analysed as affixes uniformly introduced on the verb whose inflectional features they realise. Building on the linearisation-based theory of morphology-syntax interaction proposed in Crysmann 2003, syntactic mobility of morphologically introduced material will be captured by mapping phonological contributions to multiple lexically introduced domain objects. It will be shown that this is sufficient to capture the relevant data, and connect the placement of floating affixes to the general treatment of Polish word order Kupść 2000.

On the history of the IPP construction in German

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes Jäger
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Cluster Formation ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Repair Strategy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Over Time

The chapter discusses the development and syntactic analysis of IPP (infinitivus pro participio), i.e. certain perfect tense constructions in which a verb embedding an infinitive appears in the form of an infinitive itself rather than in the expected form of a past participle. This effect is indicative of verb cluster formation and typically linked to a re-ordering of verbs at the right clausal periphery. It can be observed since the MHG period spreading to more verbs over time in accordance with the typological hierarchy of IPP verbs. IPP is argued to involve true infinitives from the beginning rather than originating in homophonous ge-less participles. Recent analyses of IPP as one repair strategy among others are supported by historical and dialectal data as several types of competing constructions are evidenced. These data further show that IPP is not inherently linked to the specific word order of verbs found in MSG.

Tense morphology in German agrammatism

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Marusch ◽  
Titus von der Malsburg ◽  
Roelien Bastiaanse ◽  
Frank Burchert
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Processing ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Group Of Seven ◽  
Mechanism Model ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Agrammatic Aphasia ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Irregular Verbs

This study investigates tense morphology in agrammatic aphasia and the predictions of two accounts on processing of regular and irregular verbs: the Dual Mechanism model, that is, for aphasic data, the Declarative/Procedural model, and the Single Mechanism approach. The production of regular, irregular and mixed verbs in the present, simple past and past participle (present perfect) was tested in German by means of a sentence completion task with a group of seven speakers with agrammatic aphasia. The results show a difference between regular verbs and irregular verbs. Mixed verbs were equally difficult as irregular verbs. A frequency effect was found for irregular verbs but not for regular and mixed verbs. A significant difference among the correctness scores for present tense and simple past forms was found. Simple past and past participle were significantly more difficult than present tense. Error types were characterized by pure infinitive responses and time reference errors. Neither of the above accounts is sufficient to explain these results. Correctness scores and error patterns for mixed verbs suggest that such minor lexical patterns can be useful in finding new evidence in the debate on morphological processing. The findings also highlight time reference as well as language specific characteristics need to be taken into consideration.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document