The Role of the Lexicon in the Syntax–Semantics Interface

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
Stephen Wechsler

Evidence from the study of verbal argument alternations suggests that the syntactic structure of an event-denoting clause often reflects the structure of the event it denotes, in the sense that parts of the clause refer to aspects of the event. The patterns of such mappings between clause structure and event structure tend to be crosslinguistically uniform. Proffered explanations for these phenomena fall into two distinct theoretical currents. Lexicalists explain these phenomena in terms of the inherent paradigmatic structure of the lexicon, which leads verbs with similar meanings to have similar valence structures. Constructionists see these phenomena as evidence that the syntax itself conveys meaning that composes with the meaning contributed by the verb. The roots of this theoretical split are traced to differing perspectives on polysemy, and a partial synthesis of the two perspectives is proposed.

Author(s):  
Eni Maharsi

This paper examines the role of elements of English sentences by employing the approach ofthematic role assignment. The emphasis is on how the positioning of words and phrases insyntactic structure helps determine the roles that the referents of NPs play in the situationdescribed by the sentences. The results reveal that the position of an NP’s determines itsthematic role and. There is a relevance between deep syntactic structure and the assignmentof thematic roles for every NP in the sentence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 1421-1454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Kalandadze ◽  
Valentina Bambini ◽  
Kari-Anne B. Næss

AbstractIndividuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience difficulty in comprehending metaphors compared to individuals with typical development (TD). However, there is a large variation in the results across studies, possibly related to the properties of the metaphor tasks. This preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis (a) explored the properties of the metaphor tasks used in ASD research, and (b) investigated the group difference between individuals with ASD and TD on metaphor comprehension, as well as the relationship between the task properties and any between-study variation. A systematic search was undertaken in seven relevant databases. Fourteen studies fulfilled our predetermined inclusion criteria. Across tasks, we detected four types of response format and a great variety of metaphors in terms of familiarity, syntactic structure, and linguistic context. Individuals with TD outperformed individuals with ASD on metaphor comprehension (Hedges’ g = −0.63). Verbal explanation response format was utilized in the study showing the largest effect size in the group comparison. However, due to the sparse experimental manipulations, the role of task properties could not be established. Future studies should consider and report task properties to determine their role in metaphor comprehension, and to inform experimental paradigms as well as educational assessment.


Author(s):  
Andriy Myachykov ◽  
Mikhail Pokhoday ◽  
Russell Tomlin

This chapter offers a review of experimental evidence about the role of the speaker’s attention in the choice of syntactic structure and the corresponding word order during sentence production. Here, we describe how the speaker’s syntactic choices reflect the regular mapping mechanism that reflects the features of the described event in the produced sentence. One of the most important event parameters that the speaker considers is the changing salience status of the event’s referents. This chapter summarizes current theoretical debate about the interplay between attention and sentence production mechanisms. Finally, it reviews the corresponding experimental evidence from languages with both restricted and flexible word orders.


Author(s):  
Tsymbalista L.R.

Валентність предиката має вирішальний вплив на структуру речення. Хоча активний і пасивний варіанти речення опису-ють одну й ту ж ситуацію, предикат проходить крізь трансформацію, яка тісно пов’язана з явищем валентності. У цій статті проаналізовано валентність предиката та її вплив на цю трансформацію у німецькій та українській мовах на прикладах із сучасної літератури.Мета. Метою статті є порівняння трансформації «актив – пасив» у німецькій та українській мовах та опис ролі валентності у цьому процесі.Методи. Для проведення дослідження було зібрано методом суцільної вибірки приклади пасивних конструкцій із сучас-них художніх текстів німецькою та українською мовами, які опісля було оброблено та проаналізовано з використанням типо-логічного, зіставного, описового методів, а також методу моделювання.Валентність предиката проявляється у його здатності формувати зв’язки з іншими елементами в реченні та дає змогу передбачити додаткові позиції у синтаксичній структурі речення, які можуть бути заповнені обов’язковими чи факультатив-ними компонентами. Для предиката властиві два типи валентності, які залежать від позиції поширювачів у реченні. Якщо лівобічну позицію переважно пов’язують із суб’єктом, то правобічна зазвичай стосується актантів з об’єктним, адресатним, локативним чи інструментальним значеннями.Результати. Зважаючи на те, що одна й та ж функція пасивних конструкцій у німецькій та українській мовах реалізується різними формами, валентні зміни у кожній з конструкцій мають свої особливості. Спільною рисою цих перетворень виступає зменшення облігаторних актантів на одну одиницю, яка може бути заповнена факультативно у разі комунікативної потреби у інформації про виконавця дії.Висновки. Можна зробити висновок, що валентність предиката є багатогранним феноменом, що підлягає впливу не лише формально-граматичних, а й семантико-синтаксичних чинників, а також мовленнєвої ситуації загалом. Відповідно, змін у валентності предикатів протягом трансформації з активу у пасив не можна уникнути. The valence of the predicate has a decisive effect on the structure of the sentence. Although the active and passive variant of the sentence describes the same situation, the predicate goes through a transformation that also has to do with valence. This article analyzes the valency of the predicate and its influence on such transformation in German and Ukrainian based on the examples from modern literature.Purpose. The purpose of the article is to compare the active-passive transformation in German and Ukrainian and to describe the role of valence in this process.Methods. For the research, we collected the examples of passive constructions from modern fiction in German and Ukrainian using the continuous sampling method, which were then processed and analyzed using typological, comparative, descriptive methods as well as the modelling method.The valence of the predicate verb shows in its ability to connect with other sentence elements and enables the prediction of the additional positions in the syntactic structure of the sentence, which can be supplemented by mandatory or optional components. The predicate is characterized by two types of valence, which depend on the position of the fillers in the sentence: the left-hand position is mainly connected the subject of the utterance, and the right-hand position has to do with actants which define object, addressee, location or have instrumental meaning.Results. Due to the fact that the same function of passive constructions in German and Ukrainian is realized in different forms, the valence changes in each of the constructions have their own features. A common feature of these transformations is the reduction of obligatory actants by one unit, which can be filled in optionally in case of communicative need for information about the performer of the action.Conclusions. We reach the conclusion that the valence of the predicate is a multilevel phenomenon that is influenced not only by formal grammatical but also by semantic and syntactic factors as well as the language situation in general. Accordingly, changes in the valence of predicates during the active-passive transformation are inevitable.


Author(s):  
Scott Jukes ◽  
Alistair Stewart ◽  
Marcus Morse

Abstract Situated within a series of river journeys, this inquiry considers the role of material landscape in shaping learning possibilities and explores practices of reading landscapes diffractively. We consider ways we might pay attention to the ever-changing flux of places while experimenting with posthuman pedagogical praxis. Methodologically, we embrace the post-qualitative provocation to do research differently by enacting a new empiricism that does not ground the inquiry in a paradigmatic structure. In doing so, we rethink conventional notions of method and data as we create a series of short videos from footage recorded during canoeing journeys with tertiary outdoor environmental education students. These videos, along with a student poem, form the empirical materials in this project. Video allows us to closely analyse more-than-human entanglements, contemplating the diverse ways we can participate with and read landscapes in these contexts. We aim to provoke diffractive thought and elicit affective dimensions of material encounters, rather than offer representational findings. This project intends to open possibilities for post-qualitative research, inspired by posthuman and new materialist orientations.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-74
Author(s):  
Alison Biggs ◽  
David Embick

An important ongoing discussion in theories of argument structure concerns the explanatory division of labor between thematic properties and event structure. In this context, the English get-passive provides an interesting test case. Much previous work has analyzed get-passives as differing thematically from be-passives. Yet many get-passive properties remain poorly understood. We present an analysis of the get-passive centered on the proposal that it contains additional event structure (realized as get) relative to its be counterpart. We employ by-adjuncts to identify the event structures in passive types, and demonstrate that the behavior of this and other diagnostics support the conclusion that get- and be-passives differ systematically in ways that accord with our analysis. Further discussion considers the prominent proposal from previous studies that get-passives differ thematically from be-passives in (sometimes) assigning an Agent role to their surface subjects. We show that there is no evidence for such an analysis. Instead, intuitions about the interpretation of the get-passive surface subject arise from how an event’s Responsible Party is identified: contrasts between get and be on this dimension are a consequence of event structural differences between the two. The overall result is a unified analysis of the get-passive, one that has implications for the role of event structure in understanding the syntax and interpretation of arguments.


2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 974-1010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly P. Branigan ◽  
Martin J. Pickering ◽  
Janet F. McLean ◽  
Andrew J. Stewart

Linguistics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-814
Author(s):  
Berit Gehrke ◽  
Louise McNally

AbstractThe syntactic literature on idioms contains some proposals that are surprising from a compositional perspective. For example, there are proposals that, in the case of verb-object idioms, the verb combines directly with the noun inside its DP complement, and the determiner is introduced higher up in the syntactic structure, or is late-adjoined. This seems to violate compositionality insofar as it is generally assumed that the semantic role of the determiner is to convert a noun to the appropriate semantic type to serve as the argument to the function denoted by the verb. In this paper, we establish a connection between this line of analysis and lines of work in semantics that have developed outside of the domain of idioms, particularly work on incorporation and work that combines formal and distributional semantic modelling. This semantic work separates the composition of descriptive content from that of discourse referent introducing material; our proposal shows that this separation offers a particularly promising way to handle the compositional difficulties posed by idioms, including certain patterns of variation in intervening determiners and modifiers.


Author(s):  
Bethany Lochbihler ◽  
Eric Mathieu

AbstractThis article discusses the morphological and syntactic structure of relative clauses in Ojibwe (Algonquian), in particular their status as wh-constructions. Relatives in this language are full clauses that bear special morphology, show evidence of A′-movement of a wh-operator, and consequently exhibit wh-agreement also found in interrogatives and certain types of focus constructions. Ojibwe shows the possibility of wh-agreement realized on T (in addition to C and v for other languages), as it appears on tense prefixes. We account for the realization of wh-agreement on T in Ojibwe via the mechanism of feature inheritance. We propose that while declarative matrix clauses are canonical in that C introduces φ-features in Ojibwe, the role of C in embedded or wh-contexts is to introduce δ-features (discourse features), such as [uwh], rather than φ-features. These δ-features can be introduced by C, but are transferred down to T where they spell out as wh-agreement.


1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 708-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Wingfield ◽  
J. Buttet ◽  
A. W. Sandoval

Comparative data are reported for the intelligibility of English and of French time-compressed speech when heard spoken either in normal intonation or in intonation patterns conflicting with underlying syntactic structure. Within an overall decrement in intelligibility with increasing compression, both French and English show similar superiority functions for sentences heard in normal intonation. Results suggest a role of prosodic features in perceptual processing of French comparable to that previously reported for English.


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