scholarly journals The Leaf Fell (the Leaf): The Online Processing of Unaccusatives

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naama Friedmann ◽  
Gina Taranto ◽  
Lewis P. Shapiro ◽  
David Swinney

According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis, unaccusative subjects are base-generated in object position and move to subject position. We examined this hypothesis using the cross-modal lexical priming technique, which tests whether and when an antecedent is reactivated during the online processing of a sentence. We compared sentences containing unergative verbs with sentences containing unaccusatives, both alternating and nonalternating, and found that subjects of unaccusatives reactivate after the verb, while subjects of unergatives do not. Alternating unaccusatives showed a mixed pattern of reactivation. The research directly supports the Unaccusative Hypothesis.

Author(s):  
Christine Ravinski

AbstractNuu-chah-nulth possessor raising is semantically unrestricted and affects only subjects: subject agreement matches the person and number of the possessor (rather than the possessed subject), and the possessive-marking clitic attaches to the head of the clause (rather than to the possessum). Nuu-chah-nulth possessor raising is analyzed as a syntactic dependency between the possessive clitic in the main clause and the base-generated possessor position within DP. A Possessive Phrase can appear in either the DP or the clausal domain, and the possessive clitic may be generated in either position. When the possessive clitic is generated in the main clause, a possessor may raise out of subject position via feature-driven movement; the Minimal Link Condition prevents such movement from occurring out of object position.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 219-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Romain

Abstract This paper presents a method for quantitative and qualitative analyses of the causative alternation in English, where verbs may alternate between a transitive (causative) construction (Santa crinkled his eyes) and an intransitive (non-causative) construction (His eyes crinkled).1 The aim of this paper is to present a method designed to measure the alternation strength of causative verbs, i.e. the extent to which they alternate between the two constructions. One of the central elements this paper investigates is the Theme, i.e. the participant that is in subject position in the intransitive construction and object position in the transitive construction. A distinctive collostructional analysis (Gries and Stefanowitsch 2004) shows that certain verbs are significantly attracted to one of either two constructions while others are equivalently distributed in the two constructions. However, after careful analysis it appears that very few Themes actually overlap between the two constructions (Lemmens forthcoming) which indicates that each construction seems to be rather restrictive regarding which Themes they recruit. The low degree of alternation of the Themes leads us to ask ourselves the extent to which the alternation is part of a speaker’s knowledge of their language.


1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 556-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary D. Garrard

An Unusual Portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola has gained new prominence from its illustration in color in a recent publication. In her Women, Art, and Society (1990), Whitney Chadwick claims of the portrait in question, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola (fig. 1), that in presenting herself in the guise of a portrait being painted by her teacher, Anguissola produced “the first historical example of the woman artist consciously collapsing the subject-object position.” Chadwick's succinct observation opens up the possibility of understanding the painting in a new way, for she points to the peculiar conflation of subject and object that uniquely befell women artists in the Renaissance and complicates their art, especially their self-portraits. From this starting point, I will here explore the form of self-presentation offered by Anguissola in the Siena portrait and several other works in the context of what was a fundamental problem for the Renaissance female artist: the differentiation of herself as artist (the subject position) from her self as trope and theme for the male artist (the object position).


Author(s):  
Ana Clara Polakof

Even though the interpretation of Free Choice Items such as any has been on debate for more than 50 years (Vendler, 1974, Dayal, 1998, Horn, 2000, etc.), it is relatively more recent in Spanish (Menéndez-Benito, 2005, Giannakidou and Quer, 2013, among others). Some have analyzed it as a universal quantifier, neither taking its free choiceness into account nor contexts which seem to be problematic for the universal account (see, for instance, Etxepare and Uribe-Etxebarria, 2011). In this article, we defend that cualquier is a universal indeterminate pronoun which involves freedom of choice (as in the original proposal by Vendler, 1974). We will take into account data (taken from https://www.corpusdelespanol.org/web-dial) which has not been properly considered. We will analyze the interaction of negation and cualquier in Rioplantese Spanish in the subject position of negative generic statements, in the object position in negative episodic statements, and in a non argumental position. We will combine an alternative semantics approach to the analysis of the FCI cualquier, inspired in Menéndez-Benito (2010) and Aloni (2019), with a syntactic approach to negation inspired in Etxepare and Uribe-Etxebarria (2011).  


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 981
Author(s):  
Silvia Kim ◽  
Elsi Kaiser

We report an experiment that investigates how native and non-native Korean speakers’ interpretation of null pronouns in subject and object position is influenced by structural and discourse-level factors. We compare native Korean speakers to L2 Korean learners whose L1, Spanish, only has null pronouns in subject position. We find that native Korean speakers’ interpretation of subject and object null pronouns is guided by structural factors as well as discourse-level coherence relations, with subject nulls being more sensitive to coherence relations than object nulls. In contrast, our results suggest that L2 speakers’ interpretation of null pronouns in Korean is less influenced by coherence relations. Our results support claims that interface phenomena are challenging in L2 acquisition and provide new evidence that this occurs with null pronouns in L2 even when the L1 has null pronouns.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-285
Author(s):  
Eva Evianda ◽  
Ramli Ramli ◽  
Mohd Harun

This research aimed to describe women’s position in Prohaba Daily News texts based on Sara Mills and Theo van Leeuwen perspective of critical discourse analysis, especially the analysis of actor position, exclusion and inclusion. This is a descriptive qualitative research in which data were collected by documentation technique. The data were Prohaba Daily News texts during 2018. The data were analyzed using Sara Mills’ actor position analysis model and Theo van Leeuwen’s exclusion and inclusion analysis. Actor position analysis included subject position and object position. Exclusion analysis included the passivation, nominalization, and substitution of clauses. While the inclusion analysis included differentiation-indifferentiation, objectivity-abstraction, nomination-identification, nomination-categorization, determination-indetermination, assimilation-individualization, and association-disassociation. The results showed that Prohaba Daily News texts positioned female actors in subject and object position in their news texts. Women as non-marginalized subject found in three news texts. Women as non-marginalized objects found in two news texts. Women in the marginalized object position found in eight news texts. Marginalization was conducted by using exclusion and inclusion strategies. The exclusion strategy used includes the nomination and substitution of clauses. Inclusion strategies used were differentiation-indifferentiation, objectivity-abstraction, nomination-identification, nomination-categorization, and association-disassociation. In addition, the use of certain vocabularies can marginalize the position of women in the daily news text Prohaba.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Abolfazl MOSAFFA JAHROMI

It has generally been argued that Persian does not include dummy elements called expletives, in spite of the existence of the morpheme ǐn which shows the behavior of an expletive in specific constructions. The morpheme is not a part of the argument structure and has no meaning. In Persian, which is a pro-drop language, the morpheme ǐn as expletive is generated only in [SPEC CP] of an independent clause. This element may occur in a subject position, object position, or as an object of a preposition. In subject and object positions it is optional when S′ moves to the end of the sentence, or is adjoined to it, in other cases it is obligatory. As an object of a preposition it is always obligatory, no matter whether the structure is the result of a movement or not. The aim of this article is to provide evidence in favor of the existence of expletives, and their projection in Persian.


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