scholarly journals Pro-drop in interrogatives and declaratives.

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (7) ◽  
pp. 95-140
Author(s):  
Federica Cognola ◽  
George Walkden
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
The Asymmetry

While there has been a substantial body of research on the asymmetry between main and subordinate clauses in terms of the licensing of pro-drop, potential differences between types of unembedded clause have received much less attention – despite the fact that competing theories of pro-drop make strong, clear predictions about the distribution of null subjects across clause types, especially with regard to interrogatives. This paper presents the first in-depth comparative study of pro-drop in both declaratives and interrogatives in two asymmetric pro-drop languages: Old High German and Old Italian. Based on a parallel corpus study using two translations of Tatian’s Diatessaron, we show that there is a clear difference in distribution between interrogatives and declaratives: null subjects are more frequent in declarative clauses than in interrogatives, and these also differ in terms of the persons in which pro-drop is licensed. Our results speak against the V-in-C licensing theory of asymmetric pro-drop of Benincà (1984) and Adams (1987), and in favour of an account based on an Agree relation with left-peripheral operators in the sense of Frascarelli (2007, 2018).

scholarly journals Mood Alternations in Old High German Subordinate Clauses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Coniglio ◽  
Roland Hinterhölzl ◽  
Svetlana Petrova
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Different Types

In this paper, Old High German mood alternations in the different types of subordinate clauses (complement, adverbial and relative clauses) are discussed. The use of the subjunctive in subordinate clauses is notoriously more frequent than in Modern German and has not yet been thoroughly investigated. Based on a comprehensive corpus study, the paper will show that the licensing conditions for the subjunctive in Old High German are determined by notions such as veridicality and – in relative contexts – specificity. These conditions are thus similar (but not always identical) to those observed for Modern Greek and Romance languages. Furthermore, a syntactic analysis is provided in order to account for the licensing of the subjunctive in each type of subordinate clause.

scholarly journals Object Clauses in Academic Discourse: Genre Preferences

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 278-286
Author(s):  
Tatiana Ivanovna Steksova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Semantic Type ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Genre Preferences ◽  
Article Abstract

The author of the article understands object clauses as a semantic type of sentences with a set of different ways of expressing semantics: polypredicative subordinate clauses, asyndetic clauses, monopredicative clauses, clauses with parenthesis. It is suggested that the set of constructions used in academic discourse depends on the genre of the academic text. The genres of article abstracts and thesis summaries as secondary texts (texts about texts) were chosen as a material for a comparative study. The author reveals the incomplete paradigm of object clauses in secondary academic texts. The analyzed language material allows us to state that the genre of the academic article abstract does not use the entire paradigm of the ways of expressing explanatory semantics, choosing only two models as the basic ones, with a higher frequency of the monopredicative model. In the genre of thesis summaries there is a lower frequency of monopredicative clauses with deliberative semantics and a higher frequency of polypredicative subordinate clauses containing hidden reflection of the author of the text. The analyzed material indicates that the hidden author’s reflection is more often manifested through the use of quasi-impersonal sentences. The author of the article believes that there is a tendency in the analyzed genres towards increasing impersonality, the elimination of the subjective author’s position, and the desire to objectify the presented information. The research has found out certain constructions which function actively in the genre of the academic article, but are not used in article abstracts and thesis summaries. It is noted that not all introducing predicates recorded in the academic literature function in the analyzed genres. This can be explained by the genre affiliation of the texts and their communicative task. The author determines a number of objectives of the further research.

Topic-drop versus pro-drop: null subjects and pronominal subjects in the Spanish L2 of Chinese, English, French, German and Japanese speakers

1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juana M. Liceras ◽  
Lourdes Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Null Subject Parameter ◽  
Early English

Recent developments within the so-called Principles and Parameters model of acquisition argue for a clear-cut separation of Universal Grammar (UG) principles from parametric options and locate all parameters within functional categories (Borer, 1984; Lebeaux, 1988; Chomsky, 1991). This has led Tsimpli and Roussou (1991) to propose that adult L2 (second language) learners have access to UG principles but do not reset the parameters of the L2, which amounts to saying that null subjects in the adult Spanish L2 may or may not have the same status as native Spanish null subjects, depending on the speakers’ L1 (first language) and the UG principles at stake. In the case of L1 acquisition, Rizzi (1994) and Hyams (1994) provide a competence account of null subjects in early child English which relate them to adult English Diary Drop and German-style topic-drop rather than to Spanish-style pro-drop. They specifically argue that these missing subjects are restricted to the first position of non- wh root clauses and that fixing the null subject parameter will consist of incorporating the ROOT=CP principle into this grammar. In this paper, we analyse the Spanish L2 oral spontaneous data produced by adult L1 speakers of pro-drop and topic-drop languages in an attempt to provide a competence account of null subjects in adult nonnative Spanish. Our data show that, unlike early English grammars, all the Spanish non-native grammars contain null subjects both in matrix and subordinate clauses, and that this is the case at the early and advanced stages. It also shows that many non-native pronominal subjects do not have the same value as native Spanish subjects and that subject pronouns are used for identification purposes. It is suggested that these data provide evidence for a model of L2 acquisition where adult non-native grammar construction resorts to a default licensing procedure which allows null pronouns provided they can be identified.

scholarly journals How do translators handle (near-) synonymous legal terms? A mixed-genre parallel corpus study into the variation of EU English-Polish competition law terminology

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
Łucja Biel ◽  
Dariusz Koźbiał
Keyword(s):  
Competition Law ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Mixed Genre

Terminological variation, i.e. synonymy at the term level, is regarded as a recurrent problem in EU law. Working with a parallel-comparable corpus of EU English-Polish legislation, soft law and judgments in the area of competition, this study explores how source-language synonymy is handled in translation across institutional genres. The findings show that synonyms may be reflected symmetrically or asymmetrically, with variation being eliminated, partly reduced, mirrored, or increased in translation. It is quite frequent for translators to introduce additional variation and cross-variation. This is affected by: genre, source and target asymmetries, complexity of a semantic field, low termness and microdiachronic shifts. The study confirms that synonymy is one of the causes of variation in translation and calls for more conceptual clarity at the drafting stage.

scholarly journals The Interpretation of Null Subjects in a Radical Pro-drop Language: Topic Chains and Discourse-semantic Requirements in Chinese

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-45
Author(s):  
Mara Frascarelli ◽  
Marco Casentini
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Online Experiment ◽  
Significant Preference ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Structural Differences ◽  
Null Subject Parameter ◽  
Adverbial Clauses

Abstract Based on original data collected through an online experiment, evidence is provided in this paper that the interpretation of null subjects in a radical pro-drop language like Chinese relies on the topic criterion proposed for consistent and partial pro-drop languages (Frascarelli 2007 and Frascarelli 2018), thereby supporting the theory that the null subject parameter implies an information-structural strategy for interpretation. Nevertheless, radical Chinese shows specificities that must be integrated in this theory for a comprehensive account. In particular, even though silent topic can start chains (consistent with the topic criterion), data show a significant preference for overt and local topics as antecedents. This locality requirement thus integrates phonological visibility in a general syntactic condition (minimal overt link condition), proposing an interesting parallel with the properties shown by partial pro-drop languages (Frascarelli and Jimenez-Fernandez in press). The present investigation also contributes to outline the structural differences existing between adverbial clauses in Chinese, supporting a distinction between central and peripheral adverbial clauses (Haegeman 2012). Specifically, while temporal and conditional clauses show the properties of nonrestrictive relative clauses, this is not the case for concessive clauses, which merged as subordinate clauses in either the C-domain or the high split-TP area. Differences between temporal and conditional clauses are attributed to the presence of an overt operator in the latter, and the pre-matrix position of adverbial clauses is explained in the light of their discourse role as frame-setters (Krifka 2007).

Referential null subjects in German

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Weiß ◽  
Anna Volodina
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Research Topic ◽  
Middle High German ◽  
Central Research ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Generative Syntax ◽  
Early New High German

Null subjects (NSs) have been a central research topic in generative syntax ever since the 1980s. This chapter considers the situation of German NSs both from a dialectological and from a diachronic perspective and attempts to reconstruct a direct line concerning the licensing conditions of pro-drop from Old High German (OHG) through Middle High German (MHG) and Early New High German (ENHG) to current dialects of New High German (NHG). Particularly, we will argue that German changed from a consistent, yet asymmetric pro-drop language to a partial, but symmetric one. In order to demonstrate that this development took place and the steps involved, we survey the existing empirical evidence and introduce new data.

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