Dissociating syntax from morphology in a divergent L2 end-state grammar

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Lardiere
Keyword(s):  
Target Language ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Syntactic Feature ◽  
The Status ◽  
Agreement Morphology ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Verb Raising ◽  
State Grammar

This article addresses current proposals in the literature suggesting that thematic verb-raising is optional in the grammars of L2 acquirers, due either to failure to acquire verbal agreement morphology or to an impairment of the mechanism relating the ‘richness’ of morphological agreement paradigms to syntactic feature strength. I examine naturalistic longitudinal production data from Patty, a native Chinese speaker whose L2 English grammar has ‘fossilized’ with regard to verbal agreement morphology. The data show that, despite the omission of regular agreement suffixation in about 96% of obligatory contexts, thematic verbs are never raised in Patty's English,thus showing no optionality of raising.The results indicate that even in cases where regular verbal morphology is neveracquired,it is still possible for the learner to determine feature strength and the status of verb-raising in the target language.

scholarly journals Working memory as a factor mediating explicit and implicit knowledge of English grammar

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Mirosław Pawlak ◽  
Adriana Biedroń
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Explicit And Implicit Knowledge ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This paper reports the findings of a study that investigated the relationship between phonological short-term memory (PSTM), working memory capacity (WMC), and the level of mastery of L2 grammar. Grammatical mastery was operationalized as the ability to produce and comprehend English passive voice with reference to explicit and implicit (or highly automatized) knowledge. Correlational analysis showed that PSTM was related to implicit productive knowledge while WMC was linked to explicit productive knowledge. However, regression analysis showed that those relationships were weak and mediated by overall mastery of target language grammar, operationalized as final grades in a grammar course.

scholarly journals Semantic Categories and Gender Assignment in Contact Spanish: Type of Code-Switching and its Relevance to Linguistic Outcomes

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Osmer Balam
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Semantic Domains

The present study examines two aspects of determiner phrases (dps) that have been previously investigated in Spanish/English code-switching; namely, the openness of semantic domains to non-native nouns and gender assignment in monolingual versus code-switched speech. The quantitative analysis of naturalistic, oral production data from 62 native speakers of Northern Belizean Spanish revealed both similarities and notable differences vis-à-vis previous findings for varieties of Spanish/English code-switching in theu.s. Hispanophone context. Semantic domains that favoured non-native nouns in Spanish/Englishdps included academia, technology, work/money-related terms, abstract concepts, linguistics/language terms and everyday items. In relation to gender assignation, assignment patterns in monolingualdps were canonical whereas an overwhelming preference for the masculine default gender was attested in mixeddps. Biological gender was not found to be deterministic in switcheddps. The analysis highlights the important role that type of code-switching has on contact outcomes in bi/multilingual communities, as speech patterns are reflective of the status and resourcefulness that code-switching is afforded at a societal and idiolectal level.

The status of but in documentaries and their Romanian subtitles

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 133-152
Author(s):  
Mihaela MLADENOVICI (IONESCU)
Keyword(s):  
Target Language ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
Theoretical Support ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Status ◽  
Discourse Connectives ◽  
Core Meaning

The aim of this article is to describe the status of but functioning as a connector of contrast in documentaries and their subtitles, with English as the source language and Romanian as the target language. But is a complex word, serving as a connectivity evince, comprehension facilitator and argumentative indicator, acquiring therefore a host of roles, both within and beyond the sentence. As theoretical support, I will employ the idea put forward by Fraser (2009) that but conveys one core meaning, that of contrast and that pragmatically it has a wide range of interpretations which are to be inferred from the context, but I will also draw on the Relevance Theoretic approach to discourse connectives elaborated by Diane Blakemore (1987, 2002, 2004) who referred to these functional items as encoding procedures rather than concepts, their meaning being interpreted based on what they indicate, not on what they describe. As for its role in argumentation, but will be analysed within the pragma-dialectical framework. Using my own research, but also that carried out by Halliday and Hasan (1976), Quirk et al. (1985), Biber et al. (1999) and Fraser (1999, 2009), I have made a list of connectors of contrast and the conclusion I have reached so far is that there are roughly 66 such items in English. However, in documentaries, there is a tendency to use only a few of them, approximately 15 (but, yet, still, however, though, although, even though, despite, rather, in reality, better, while, whereas). But is at the top of the list, having by far the largest number of occurrences and therefore being of outmost importance in constructing the idea of contrast. However, there is a certain inconsistency with respect to the rendition but in Romanian. When it functions at the level of the sentence, it is very rarely omitted as it displays a strong syntactic dependence. Conversely, when it functions at the discourse level, its translation does not always have the same degree of salience, in certain cases the subtitler resorting to its omission as part of his/her strategy of text condensation. I will identify and analyse the types of situations in which but is omitted in Romanian and those in which it is not, focusing on its role according to the various patterns typical of documentaries that include this connector.

Agreement Paradigms across Moods and Tenses: The Case of Romanian Subjunctives and Imperatives

2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Mihaela Pirvulescu
Keyword(s):  
Distributed Morphology ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Close Resemblance ◽  
Syntactic Representation ◽  
Agreement Morphology ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Syntactic Status

AbstractThis article argues that the realization of agreement in subjunctive and imperative verbs is a consequence of the syntactic status of Tense in these two moods. Crucially, certain agreement paradigms across Romance languages show very a close resemblance: the subjunctive and imperative paradigms are identical, in most cases, to the indicative paradigms. Systematically, moods such as the subjunctive and the imperative do not show specific tense affixes or specific tense-induced allomorphy on their agreement affixes. The proposal is illustrated with Romanian verbal agreement, which is analyzed within the Distributed Morphology framework. The analysis shows that tense information is not used in subjunctive and imperative agreement morphology, unless it is exactly the same information as in another paradigm — the present indicative. It is proposed that at the syntactic level, Tense is unspecified in the subjunctive and absent in the imperative, and that the realization of agreement affixes is a consequence of this syntactic representation.

scholarly journals Linguistic Factors Influencing Speech Audiometric Assessment

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martine Coene ◽  
Stefanie Krijger ◽  
Matthias Meeuws ◽  
Geert De Ceulaer ◽  
Paul J. Govaerts
Keyword(s):  
Target Language ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Speech Stimuli ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
And Function ◽  
Verbal Repetition ◽  
Cognitive Cost

In speech audiometric testing, hearing performance is typically measured by calculating the number of correct repetitions of a speech stimulus. We investigate to what extent the repetition accuracy of Dutch speech stimuli presented against a background noise is influenced by nonauditory processes. We show that variation in verbal repetition accuracy is partially explained by morpholexical and syntactic features of the target language. Verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, and pronouns yield significantly lower correct repetitions than nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. The reduced repetition performance for verbs and function words is probably best explained by the similarities in the perceptual nature of verbal morphology and function words in Dutch. For sentences, an overall negative effect of syntactic complexity on speech repetition accuracy was found. The lowest number of correct repetitions was obtained with passive sentences, reflecting the cognitive cost of processing a noncanonical sentence structure. Taken together, these findings may have important implications for the audiological practice. In combination with hearing loss, linguistic complexity may increase the cognitive demands to process sentences in noise, leading to suboptimal functional hearing in day-to-day listening situations. Using test sentences with varying degrees of syntactic complexity may therefore provide useful information to measure functional hearing benefits.

Diagnosing Object Agreement vs. Clitic Doubling: An Inuit Case Study

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Michelle Yuan
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Comparative Data ◽  
Clitic Doubling ◽  
Agreement Morphology ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Object Agreement ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Morphological Diagnostics

Much recent literature has focused on whether the verbal agreement morphology cross-referencing objects is true φ-agreement or clitic doubling. I address this question on the basis of comparative data from related Inuit languages, Inuktitut and Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic), and argue that both possibilities are attested in Inuit. Evidence for this claim comes from diverging syntactic and semantic properties of the object DPs encoded by this cross-referencing morphology. I demonstrate that object DPs in Inuktitut display various properties mirroring the behavior of clitic-doubled objects crosslinguistically, while their counterparts in Kalaallisut display none of these properties, indicating genuine φ-agreement rather than clitic doubling. Crucially, this distinction cannot be detected morphologically, as the relevant cross-referencing morphemes are uniform across Inuit. Therefore, this article cautions against the reliability of canonical morphological diagnostics for (agreement) affixes vs. clitics.

scholarly journals REFUSAL STRATEGY PERFORMED BY INDONESIAN EFL LEARNER

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Nenden Sri Rahayu
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Interlanguage Pragmatics ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
The Status ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Similar Range

The research investigates the speech act recognition of refusing as made by Indonesian learners of English as a foreign language, native Indonesian, and native English. It involves three groups: 13 Indonesian EFL Learners (IELs), 13 Indonesian Native Speakers (INSs), and 13 American Native Speakers (NSs) of English. They were asked to respond to ten different situations, in which they carry out the speech act of refusal. Their strategies in refusing were compared one another in order to find out whether the refusal performed by Indonesian EFL Learner (IELs) correspond more closely with those of the Indonesian Native Speakers (INSs) or with speakers of the target language, the American Native Speakers (NSs). The data, collected from a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which was developed by Blum-Kulka, were analyzed and categorized based on Azis�s categories (2000). Results indicated that although a similar range of refusal strategies were available to the two language groups, cross-cultural variation still exists. The data involved some contextual variables, which include the status of interlocutors (higher, equal, or lower status) and eliciting acts, i.e., requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions.Keywords: Indonesian EFL Learners; interlanguage pragmatics; refusal strategy; speech�act.

scholarly journals Morphology and syntax in the Scandinavian vernaculars of Ovansiljan

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-231
Author(s):  
Piotr Garbacz
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Evidence ◽  
Parametric Approach ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
The One

Abstract The paper deals with the assumed correlation between morphological and syntactic phenomena, especially the one that has its roots in a parametric approach to syntax since (Chomsky 1981). Its main focus is on testing predictions presented in two works (Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998 and Holmberg 2010a). These papers connect verbal morphology with a clustering of syntactic phenomena in the Scandinavian languages and maintain that morphological evidence – in the form of ‘rich’ verbal agreement – signifies a positive setting of a parameter that in turn makes certain syntactic patterns possible. In the present paper it is shown how this relation works when tested on a group of Ovansiljan vernaculars (East Scandinavian non-standard varieties). Five of these vernaculars have retained verbal agreement in number and person, whereas two others have not. It turns out that the hypotheses encounter difficulties when faced with the Ovansiljan data.

scholarly journals The evolution of subject-verb agreement in Eastern Tukanoan

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thiago Costa Chacon ◽  
Lev Michael
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
The Family ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Subject Agreement ◽  
Agreement Morphology ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Diachronic Development

Abstract This article describes the evolution of past/perfective subject-verb agreement morphology in the Tukanoan family, reconstructing relevant aspects of Proto-Tukanoan verbal morphology and delineating the subsequent diachronic development of verbal subject agreement morphology in the Eastern branch of the family. We argue that suffixes that cumulatively expone past/perfective and person, number, and gender (png) subject agreement resulted from the fusion of post-verbal demonstratives/pronouns expressing png information with suffixes expressing past/perfective tam information. We propose that different png agreement categories developed at successive stages in the diversification of the family, with third person masculine singular subject agreement emerging before other png categories, followed by animate plural agreement, then finally by the development of third person feminine agreement. The result in Eastern Tukanoan was a cross-linguistically unusual agreement system that contrasts four agreement categories: (i) first and second person singular and third person inanimate (singular and plural); (ii) third person animate masculine singular; (iii) third person animate feminine singular; and (iv) third animate plural.

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