Syntactic Change in Contact: Romance

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta D'Alessandro
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Selection Of

Language change as a result of language contact is studied in many different ways using a number of different methodologies. This article provides an overview of the main approaches to syntactic change in contact (CIC), focusing on the Romance language group. Romance languages are widely documented both synchronically and diachronically. They have been in extensive contact with other language families both in bilingual contexts and in creolization contexts. Furthermore, they present great microvariation. They are therefore ideal to tackle language change in contact. Given the breadth of studies targeting Romance languages in contact, only a selection of facts is considered here, namely pro-drop, differential object marking (DOM), and deixis. The article shows that microcontact, i.e., contact between minimally different grammars, is a necessary dimension to be considered within contact studies, as it provides insights that are often radically different from those provided by the observation of contact between maximally different languages. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Morpho-syntactic Variation in Romance v: A Micro-parametric Approach

Probus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-437
Author(s):  
Ángel J. Gallego
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Parametric Approach ◽  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
University Of Leiden ◽  
Parametric Variation ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Auxiliary Selection ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Syntactic Properties

AbstractThis paper discusses a series of morpho-syntactic properties of Romance languages that have the functional projection vP as its locus, showing a continuum that goes from strongly configurational Romance languages to partially configurational Romance languages. It is argued that v-related phenomena like Differential Object Marking (DOM), participial agreement, oblique clitics, auxiliary selection, and others align in a systematic way when it comes to inflectional properties that involve Case-agreement properties. In order to account for the facts, I argue for a micro-parametric approach whereby v can be associated with an additional projection subject to variation (cf. D’Alessandro, Merging Probes. A typology of person splits and person-driven differential object marking. Ms., University of Leiden, 2012; Microvariation and syntactic theory. What dialects tell us about language. Invited talk given at the workshop The Syntactic Variation of Catalan and Spanish Dialects, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, June 26–28, 2013; Ordóñez, Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan. In Sergio Baauw, Frank AC Drijkoningen & Manuela Pinto (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2005: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Utrecht, 8–10 December 2005, 259–280. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007). I label such projection “X,” arguing that its feature content and position varies across Romance. More generally, the present paper aims at contributing to our understanding of parametric variation of closely related languages by exploiting the intuition, embodied in the so-called Borer-Chomsky Conjecture, that linguistic variation resides in the functional inventory of the lexicon.

Protein Reconstitution Inside Giant Unilamellar Vesicles

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Litschel ◽  
Petra Schwille
Keyword(s):  
Optical Resolution ◽  
Microscopic Investigation ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Protein Encapsulation ◽  
Resolution Limit ◽  
Giant Unilamellar Vesicles ◽  
Unilamellar Vesicles ◽  
Encapsulation Methods ◽  
Selection Of

Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) have gained great popularity as mimicries for cellular membranes. As their sizes are comfortably above the optical resolution limit, and their lipid composition is easily controlled, they are ideal for quantitative light microscopic investigation of dynamic processes in and on membranes. However, reconstitution of functional proteins into the lumen or the GUV membrane itself has proven technically challenging. In recent years, a selection of techniques has been introduced that tremendously improve GUV-assay development and enable the precise investigation of protein–membrane interactions under well-controlled conditions. Moreover, due to these methodological advances, GUVs are considered important candidates as protocells in bottom-up synthetic biology. In this review, we discuss the state of the art of the most important vesicle production and protein encapsulation methods and highlight some key protein systems whose functional reconstitution has advanced the field. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Biophysics, Volume 50 is May 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Diachronic features of Romanian in a broader comparative setting

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-222
Author(s):  
Alexandru Nicolae
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diachronic Development

Chapter 6 highlights the novel theoretical and empirical facts brought about by the word order changes that occurring in the passage from old to modern Romanian, showing how the diachrony of Romanian may contribute to a better understanding of the history of the Romance languages and of the Balkan Sprachbund, as well as to syntactic theory and syntactic change in general. One important dimension of diachronic variation and change is the height of nouns and verbs along their extended projections (lower vs higher V- and N-movement). The two perspectives from which language contact proves relevant in the diachronic development of word order in Romanian, language contact by means of translation and areal language contact, are discussed. The chapter also addresses the issue of surface analogy vs deep structural properties; once again, Romanian emerges as a Romance language in a Balkan suit, as Romance deep structural properties are instantiated by means of Balkan word order patterns.

scholarly journals The Differential Object Marking of The Arborense Dialect of Sardinian in Language Contact Setting

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-56
Author(s):  
Daniela Boeddu
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Extensive Area ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Mandatory Use

This paper focuses on the Arborense Differential Object Marking (dom) system, which in line with the typical Sardinian dom system marks the object noun phrases characterized by a high degree of animacy and specificity with the preposition a. This is why the Sardinian dom is also called prepositional accusative. Authors dealing with other Sardinian dialects agree in identifying three domains of distribution of the phenomenon: with personal pronouns and personal names the use of the preposition is mandatory; with inanimate common nouns it is excluded; with common nouns referring animate beings, strong variability occurs. On the basis of an oral corpus of contemporary Arborense, it can be stated that the area of mandatory use of dom is restricted in this dialect and that the optionality area turns out to be more extensive than assumed in traditional descriptions of this Sardinian phenomenon. Since all the Arborense speakers of the oral corpus are bilingual (Sardinian-Italian), the data reflect the situation of dom in a contact setting scenario where Sardinian and both Standard and Regional Italian interact. According to Putzu (2005) and Blasco Ferrer and Ingrassia (2010), the extensive area of optionality for the use of the Sardinian dom should be the result of the influence of Standard Italian. However, two facts must be considered that make this idea questionable: first, in the language contact scenario of Modern Sardinian not only Standard Italian but also Regional Italian (with a widespread use of the dom) play a role; second, the synchronic variation observed in contemporary Arborense replicates the same variation which characterizes historical data from texts of the 12th–19th centuries.

Language Socialization at the Intersection of the Local and the Global: The Contested Trajectories of Input and Communicative Competence

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lourdes de León ◽  
Inmaculada M. García-Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Socialization ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Multifaceted Approach ◽  
Community Membership ◽  
Linear Evolution ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Grammatical Structures

This article provides a critical review of the theoretical underpinnings of two core concepts in language socialization research: input and communicative competence. We organize our discussion along two major lines of inquiry: ( a) the historical-local and ( b) the language contact–globalization bodies of work. The first part of the article contests the persistent view that input reduces to vocabulary and grammatical structures. To this end, it provides evidence for a more multifaceted approach to input that involves multiparty participant frameworks and multimodality in culturally diverse language socialization ecologies. In this vein, it problematizes language gap studies that are based on middle-class language acquisition models of mother–child dyadic verbal input. The second part of the article challenges monolingual, developmental, and speaker-based models of communicative competence that assume a linear evolution from lesser to greater communicative competence and from more peripheral to more central community membership. It also offers evidence for how communicative competence is socioculturally constructed and, sometimes, interactionally distributed. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals Topicality and differential object marking

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Iemmolo
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Comparative Data ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Left Dislocation ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
The Relationship

The present paper investigates the relationship between dislocation and differential object marking in some Romance languages. As in many languages that have a DOM system, it is usually also assumed that in Romance languages the phenomenon is regulated by the semantic features of the referents, such as animacy, definiteness, and specificity. In the languages under investigation, though, these features cannot explain the distribution and the emergence of DOM. After discussing the main theoretical approaches to the phenomenon, I will analyse DOM in four Romance languages. I will argue that DOM emerges in pragmatically and semantically marked contexts, namely with personal pronouns in dislocations. I will then show that in these languages the use of the DOM system is mainly motivated by the need to signal the markedness of these direct objects as a consequence of being used in (mainly left) dislocation as topics (cf. English “As for him, we didn’t see him”). Finally, the examination of comparative data from Persian and Amazonian languages lends further support to the advocated approach in terms of information structure

scholarly journals Differential object marking in Ibero-Romance languages: Explanatory models in domestic and Russian educational literature

Rhema ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
N. Pakhmutova
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Explanatory Model ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Didactic Literature ◽  
Educational Literature ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
Object Marking

Differential object marking / dom is the term for the phenomenon of distinguishing two classes of direct objects, one bearing a special marker, while the other lacking it. In modern linguistics, the marker licensing is partially or fully attributed to the features of a direct object: Animacy/Inanimacy and referential status. Russian didactic literature generally contains a reduced explanatory model of Spanish dom, based on the grammar of the Royal Spanish Academy. For Catalan, the explanatory model is complicated by the usus/norm split, the latter reducing the phenomenon’s scope. The paper focuses on the improvement of dom explanatory models for Spanish and Catalan.

scholarly journals Language-Specific Transitivities in Contact: The Case of Coptic

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Eitan Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
P Domain ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Object Indexing

This paper sketches the integration of Greek-origin loan verbs into the valency and transitivity patterns of Coptic (Afroasiatic, Egypt), arguing that transitivities are language-specific descriptive categories, and the comparison of donor-language transitivity with target-language transitivity reveals fine-grained degrees of loan-verb integration. Based on a comparison of Coptic Transitivity and Greek Transitivity, it is shown that Greek-origin loanwords are only partially integrated into the transitivity patterns of Coptic. Specifically, while Greek-origin loan verbs have the same coding properties as native verbs in terms of the A domain, i.e., Differential Subject Marking (dsm), they differ in important respects in terms of the P domain, i.e., Differential Object Marking (dom) and Differential Object Indexing (doi). A main result of this study is that language contact – specifically, massive lexical borrowing – can induce significant transitivity splits in a language’s lexicon and grammar. Furthermore, the findings of this study cast doubt on the usefulness of an overarching cross-linguistic category of transitivity.

When cultural maintenance means linguistic convergence: Pennsylvania German evidence for the Matrix Language Turnover hypothesis

1996 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet M. Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Pennsylvania German ◽  
Model Code ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
Weak Evidence ◽  
Verb Phrases ◽  
The Matrix

ABSTRACTResearch on languages in contact has shown evidence of structural convergence, as well as internally motivated language change; one language which has been frequently studied in this light is Pennsylvania German (PG). Myers-Scotton 1993 posits that convergence involves a change in the selection of the language which sets the morpho-syntactic frame involved in language production. This is called a turnover in the Matrix Language (ML). Data from PG collected in the 1940s, as compared with data collected in the late 1970s and 1980s, indicate that an ML turnover is underway in the sectarian communities; the language can be characterized as having a composite ML. The primary features of convergence in these data are English lexical-conceptual structures in the tense system, English morphological realization patterns in verb phrases, and the increased syntactization of word order in PG. There is only weak evidence for the introduction of English system morphemes at this stage. The loss of case-marking does not conform to English patterns; this indicates that much of the influence of language contact occurs at the lexical-conceptual level. (Pennsylvania German, convergence, Matrix Language Frame Model, code-switching, borrowing, language contact)

Clinical Staging for Youth Mental Disorders: Progress in Reforming Diagnosis and Clinical Care

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick D. McGorry ◽  
Cristina Mei
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Clinical Care ◽  
Clinical Staging ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Diagnostic Systems ◽  
Illness Progression ◽  
Selection Of

Current silo-based diagnostic systems for mental disorders lack utility and fail to fulfil a fundamental purpose of diagnosis: to guide treatment planning and predict outcomes. Diagnostic reform has gained momentum, and clinical staging has emerged as a promising framework to improve the precision of diagnosis, particularly in early illness stages, and fill current gaps in linking diagnosis to more personalized and effective intervention, prognosis, and neurobiological markers. Transdiagnostic clinical staging recognizes that the early development of mental ill-health is marked by substantial fluidity and that symptoms may, although not inevitably, evolve into more stable diagnosable syndromes. Staging facilitates the selection of interventions that are proportionate to the current need and risk of illness progression and provides an efficient framework to organize biomarker data and guide service delivery. Here, we provide an overview of transdiagnostic clinical staging and summarize key evidence supporting its ability to integrate biomarkers and guide mental health care. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Volume 3 is December 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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