Tarifit Berber

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-330
Author(s):  
Abdelhak El Hankari
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Main Verb ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Embedded Clauses

This paper is concerned with the word order of Tarifit Berber. It is argued that this variety has now shifted from VSO to a topic-prominent system. The topic is realised by the subject when all arguments are lexical or by VP-Topicalisation (V + object clitic) when the object is a pronominal clitic. The syntax of wh-/operator and some embedded clauses, which typically require a Verb-first structure, is also investigated. A careful consideration of these clauses reveals that the surface position of the verb is the result of V-to-C movement, which is motivated by focus. Topic and focus are investigated within the current debate as to whether discourse features are syntactic or phonological. Several pieces of evidence are presented, which suggest that these features are likely to be phonological in Tarifit. The object clitic, which is specified for topic, cannot move alone to the initial position of the clause, presumably due to its prosodic deficiency. So, it must pied-pipe the verb with it yielding VP-Topicalisation. Similarly, focus in C can only be valued by an independent phonological item. If the complementiser does not meet this condition, the main verb must move to C, giving rise to a strict VS ordering.

Objects in the German prefield

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-39
Author(s):  
Markus Bader
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Demonstrative Pronoun ◽  
New Findings ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Speakers ◽  
Referential Form ◽  
Free Word

From the perspective of language production, this chapter discusses the question of whether to move the subject or the object to the clause-initial position in a German Verb Second clause. A review of experimental investigations of language production shows that speakers of German tend to order arguments in such a way that the most accessible argument comes first, with accessibility defined in terms like animacy (‘animate before inanimate’) and discourse status (e.g. ‘given before new’). Speakers of German thus obey the same ordering principles that have been found to be at work in English and other languages. Despite the relative free word order of German, speakers rarely produce sentences with object-before-subject word order in experimental investigations. Instead, they behave like speakers of English and mostly use passivization in order to bring the underlying object argument in front of the underlying subject argument when the object is more accessible than the subject. Corpus data, however, show that object-initial clauses are not so infrequent after all. The second part of the chapter, therefore, discusses new findings concerning the discourse conditions that favour the production of object-initial clauses. These findings indicate, among other things, that the clausal position of an object is affected not only by its referent’s discourse status but also by its referential form. Objects occur in clause-initial position most frequently when referring to a given referent in the form of a demonstrative pronoun or NP.

The position of object pronouns in the German middlefield

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 1059-1115
Author(s):  
Markus Bader
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Order Effects ◽  
Semantic Role ◽  
Language Resources ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Role Hierarchy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Object Pronouns

AbstractThis paper presents a corpus study of the position of object pronouns relative to a non-pronominal subject in embedded clauses of German. A total of 4322 embedded clauses from the deWaC corpus (Baroni, Marco, Silvia Bernardini, Adriano Ferraresi & Eros Zanchetta. 2009. The WaCky Wide Web: A collection of very large linguistically processed web-crawled corpora. Language Resources and Evaluation Journal 23(3). 209–226), a corpus of written German Internet texts, were analyzed. In 67.0% of all clauses, the object pronoun occurred in front of the subject. Several factors that have been proposed in the literature on word order alternations were found to govern the choice between subject–object and object–subject order in the corpus under investigation. The most important findings are: (i) The Extended Animacy Hierarchy and the Semantic Role Hierarchy independently contribute to the choice of word order. (ii) The Definiteness Hierarchy has a strong effect on the position of the object pronoun. (iii) Word order effects of constituent weight, measured as length in number of words, cannot be reduced to effects of grammatical factors, nor can effects of grammatical factors be reduced to effects of weight.

Relative inversion and non-verb-initial imperatives in Early Modern Swedish

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Magnusson Petzell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Additional Assumption ◽  
Structural Difference ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Syntactic Differences

This article deals with two syntactic differences between Present-Day Swedish (PDSw) and Early Modern Swedish (EMSw): first, only EMSw allows VS and XVS word order to occur in relative clauses; second, only EMSw permits non-verb-initial imperatives. One structural difference between the varieties is assumed to be a prerequisite for all these word order differences: the subject position was spec-TP in EMSw but is spec-FinP in PDSw. Only the lower position (spec-TP) is compatible with inversion (VS) and fronting of non-subjects (XVS) in relative clauses as well as with imperative clauses having elements other than the imperative verb in the initial position. To be able to account for the latter phenomenon, however, an additional assumption is needed: the imperative type-feature, [imp], always accompanies the verb in PDSw but is tied to an operator in EMSw. The first assumption about differing subject positions is independently motivated by findings already in the previous literature. The second assumption about the differing behaviour of [imp] in the two varieties is supported by the distribution of imperative verbs over a wider range of syntactic contexts in EMSw than in PDSw.

Old Sardinian

2018 ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Sam Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Movement Characteristic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Embedded Clauses

This chapter presents a detailed study of the word order of Old Sardinian. The Sardinian data are of particular interest as the language has been claimed to have a form of verb-initial grammar in the small existing literature on the topic. Old Sardinian is shown to have the V-to-C movement characteristic of other Medieval Romance varieties but to lack obligatory fronting of a phrasal constituent, typical of V2 grammars. It is shown to have multiple subject positions, sensitive to the discourse status of the subject. Unusually within Romance, Old Sardinian is shown to have a VSO order in embedded clauses, with a strict adjacency between the embedded verb and the complementizer or relativizer. Overall, Old Sardinian is argued to have half of the V2 constraint, in that it has obligatory verb fronting into the left periphery, but no requirement for a phrasal constituent to also be merged.

scholarly journals Cleft as a Marker of a Thetic Sentence: Evidence from Irish and Russian

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 51-63
Author(s):  
Maria Shkapa ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Normal Position ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Sentence Construction ◽  
Pragmatic Function ◽  
Celtic Languages ◽  
Verbal Statement ◽  
The Subject

P. Mac Cana in his paper on Celtic word order notes that modern Celtic languages preserving VSO have a special construction where “the emphasis expressed by the abnormal word-order applies to the whole verbal statement and not merely, or especially, to the subject or object which takes the initial position” (Mac Cana 1973: 102). He gives examples from Welsh and Irish: ‘Faoi Dhia, goidé tháinig ort?’ ars an t-athair. by God what.it happened to.you said the father “In God's name, what happened to you?” asked the father. ‘Micheál Rua a bhuail mé,’ ars an mac. Micheál Rua rel hit me said the son “Micheál Rua gave me a beating,” said the son. In recent literature sentences of this kind acquired the name thetic. Thetic (Sentence Focus) construction is a “sentence construction formally marked as expressing a pragmatically structured proposition in which both the subject and the predicate are in focus; the focus domain is the sentence, minus any topical non-subject arguments” (Lambrecht 1997: 190). Cleft construction “designed” for focussing one XP of a clause is used in the sentence above to mark the whole clause as focussed. The effect is achieved by extracting the usual topic of a sentence – its subject – from its normal position and thus ascribing to it and to the whole clause a new pragmatic function. Such usage of cleft is by no means universal (e.g. it is not possible in English) but meets a parallel in Russian eto-cleft which has the same two meanings – focussing an XP and forming a thetic sentence. These two usages are generally regarded as two different constructions having different syntactic structures (see [Kimmelmann 2007] and literature cited there). However, existence of a typological parallel enables us to view it as a case of pragmatic homonymy.

scholarly journals ЗА ЕДНА ТЕНДЕНЦИЯ В СЛОВОРЕДА В ЧАСТНИТЕ ВЪПРОСИ В СЪВРЕМЕННИЯ БЪЛГАРСКИ ЕЗИК / ON A TENDENCY IN THE WORD ORDER OF CONTENT QUESTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY BULGARIAN

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (PR) ◽  
pp. 179-192
Author(s):  
IVAN DERZHANSKI
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Middle Position ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Main Verb ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Auxiliary Verb ◽  
Over Time

The word order in content questions in Bulgarian is largely determined by the information structure of the sentence, whereby the wh-word most commonly assumes the position immediately preceding the verb and the subject is located after the verb. In recent years the author believes to have observed a growth in the frequency of content questions in which the subject precedes the verb, as is usual in declarative sentences. If this is the case, it may be due to the waxing influence of English, where an auxiliary verb usually precedes the subject in content questions (inversion), but the main verb retains its place after the subject. A study was conducted on a provisional corpus of 138 thousand content questions beginning with an initial adverbial wh-word защо ‘why’, как ‘how’, кога ‘when’ (докога ‘until when’, откога ‘since when’) or къде ‘where’ (докъде ‘up to where’, закъде ‘due where’, накъде ‘whither’, откъде ‘whence’) extracted from original Bulgarian as well as translated texts, mostly fiction. The material shows a tangible correlation between the source language of the translated texts and the frequency of inversion in content questions: it is most common in translations from Romanian and much rarer in translations from Turkish, with the original Bulgarian texts occupying a middle position. In the translations from English, which prevail in the corpus in terms of number, the frequency of questions without inversion increases over time. This supports the hypothesis about the influence of English on Bulgarian with respect to the word order in content ques-tions. Keywords: Bulgarian, interrogative sentences, word order

scholarly journals VO-OV-variasjon i nordsamisk: Hva kan LIA Sápmi fortelle oss?

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-45
Author(s):  
Kristine Bentzen
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Object Shift ◽  
Frequent Word ◽  
Object Movement ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Main Verb

In this paper I investigate the alternation between VO and OV word order in spoken North Sami, based on data from LIA Sápmi – Sámegiela hállangiellakorpus. My results show that VO in general is the most frequent word order. However, I also find many instances of SAuxOV order in my material, particularly in sentences with periphrastic verb forms where the main verb is in the infinitive (that is, modal constructions) and where the object is a pronoun. In addition, I also find some cases where the object precedes both the auxiliary and the main verb, but crucially without being topicalized to clause-initial position. Based on the account of Norwegian Object Shift in Bentzen and Anderssen (2019), I suggest that OV word order in North Sami may be analyzed as IP-internal topicalization, where objects that are familiar in the context may move to a thematic position between VP and TP. This will account for the OV pattern with periphrastic tense forms. Furthermore, I suggest that there is an additional higher IP-internal topic position, and that object movement to this position is what results in OV with finite main verbs. This higher IP-internal topic position is also the position involved in patterns where the object precedes both the finite auxiliary and the main verb.

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.

scholarly journals A Typological Study of Lower Sorbian and Breton Word Order

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 175-202
Author(s):  
Till Vogt ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Specific Position ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Actual Word

In the case of Breton, lots of attempts were made to determine its historically grown word order. Proposals in this regard range from VSO (Timm) over V2 (Schafer) to SVO (Varin). This paper shows that traditional Breton has a preference for V2 positioning within a VSO-type framework. Lower Sorbian is a language with a rich morphology and consequently shows a relatively flexible word order. However, in unmarked declarative sentences it is normally the subject which occurs in sentence-initial position whereas the verb does not seem to prefer any specific position. Having determined the word order in the traditional varieties of Breton and Lower Sorbian, an outlook will be given on potential changes of their actual word order under language contact.

scholarly journals L’apposition en français et en slovène

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Adriana Mezeg
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Nominal Group ◽  
Initial Structure ◽  
Context Word ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Source Structure ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Newspaper Articles

This article first gives an overview of the different uses of French apposition and then focuses on nominal appositions, a kind of supplementive clause introduced by a nominal group (NG) without an article. Only translations of initial nominal appositions are examined, i.e. those which are placed at the beginning of the sentence and where the content of the initial structure is expressed by an apposition or NG as the subject. In this context, word order and the use of commas are discussed, which are often of importance for Slovenian language users. Based on the FraSloK corpus, the following conclusions can be drawn: (a) sentence-initial position is maintained much more often in novels than in newspaper articles; (b) the expression of the content of initial structures with an apposition and an NG, which functions as a subject, is fairly evenly represented in more than half of the cases from newspaper articles, while in novels the subject function is prominent; (c) apart from the change in sentence position, Slovenian apposition corresponds to the source structure, and when its content is expressed by an NG with subject function, there are changes at different levels compared to French; (d) the (non-)use of the comma cannot be satisfactorily justified on the basis of the present corpus, but the examples suggest that it is based on translators’ personal choices and also depends on the possibilities of expression in the target language. Suggestions have already been made to change the rules and usage examples, which are not tenable in our cases, and would require further consideration.

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