scholarly journals Non-canonical word order and temporal reference in Vietnamese

Linguistics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Thuan Tran
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Temporal Reference ◽  
Clausal Structure ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Past ◽  
Base Position ◽  
Temporal Interpretation ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Parameter Theory

Abstract The paper revisits Duffield’s (2007) (Duffield, Nigel. 2007. Aspects of Vietnamese clausal structure: Separating tense from assertion. Linguistics 45(4). 765–814) analysis of the correlation between the position of a ‘when’-phrase and the temporal reference of a bare sentence in Vietnamese. Bare sentences in Vietnamese, based on (Smith, Carlota S. & Mary S. Erbaugh. 2005. Temporal interpretation in Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics 43(4). 713–756), are argued to obtain their temporal interpretation from their aspectual composition, and the default temporal reference: bounded events are located in the past, unbounded events at present. It is shown that the correlation so observed in when-questions is superficial, and is tied to the syntax and semantics of temporal modification and the requirement that temporal adverbials denoting future time is base generated in sentence-initial position, and past time adverbials in sentence-final position. A ‘when’-phrase, being temporally underspecified, obtains its temporal value from its base position. However, the correlation between word order and temporal reference in argument wh-questions and declaratives is factual, depending on whether the predicate-argument configuration allows for a telic interpretation or not. To be specific, it is dependent on whether the application of Generic Modification (Snyder, William. 2012. Parameter theory and motion predicates. In Violeta Demonte & Louise McNally (eds.), Telicity, change, and state. Acrosscategorial view of event structure, 279–299. Oxford: Oxford University Press) or accomplishment composition is realized. Canonical declaratives, and argument wh-questions, with telicity inducing material, license GM or accomplishment composition, yielding bounded events, hence past; by contrast, their non-canonical counterparts block GM or accomplishment composition, giving rise to unbounded event descriptions, hence non-past.

The syntax of two types of sluicing in Tamil

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-82
Author(s):  
Tommi Leung
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Underlying Structure ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Regional Meeting ◽  
Morphological Distinction ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Normal Sentence ◽  
Oxford University Press

Abstract Recent analyses of sluicing focus on the underlying structure of the sluiced clause, i.e. sluicing as deriving from full-fledged wh-questions, or from reduced clefts (Ross 1969, Guess who? In Robert I. Binnick, Alice Davison, Georgia M. Green & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 252–286. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago; Merchant 2001, The syntax of silence. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press; Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van. 2010b. The syntax of ellipsis: Evidence from Dutch dialects. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press., inter alia). In this paper, we investigate two sluicing strategies in Spoken Tamil, namely case-marked (CM) and non-case-marked (NCM) sluicing. In addition to the morphological distinction with respect to the presence/absence of grammatical case on the wh-sluice, we argue that the two types of sluicing differ in the configuration of the underlying embedded CP. For CM sluicing, the sluiced clause is derived from a full-fledged interrogative CP at the underlying level, whereas the bare wh-sluice undergoes leftward wh-scrambling to the CP-initial position followed by TP-domain deletion at PF. While we contend that most A/A’-diagnostics are uninformative of the type of operation wh-scrambling in Tamil involves (contra Sarma 2003, Non-Canonical word order: Topic and focus in adult and child tamil. In Karimi Simin (eds.), Word order and scrambling, 238–272. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell), various properties of the CM wh-sluice (e.g. scope, negation, adverb placement, multiple sluicing) can still be described by postulating that the wh-sluice involves A’-scrambling. For the second type of sluicing (NCM sluicing), the sluiced clause involves a biclausal structure formed by a normal sentence and a null copular question. We claim that the NCM wh-sluice is derived from Spad (Sluicing Plus A Demonstrative), since the null copular question can be accompanied by a demonstrative, cf. English ‘John met someone, who is that?’ and Dutch spading (Van Craenenbroeck 2010b). Spad is not derived from a full-fledged interrogative CP, and therefore its wh-sluice does not involve any scrambling operation. The present analysis of Tamil sluicing refutes the claim that reduced clefts are one underlying sluicing source in Dravidian languages, and moreover invites an inquiry of whether Dravidian as a language family in the historical sense always receives a homogeneous analysis, given the immense parametric variation among branch languages. In the same vein, we contend that any claim about the ‘principles’ of Dravidian syntax must be supported by strong cross-linguistic evidence at the microscopic level.

The Asturian language and the evolution of Romance clausal structure

2019 ◽  
Vol 135 (3) ◽  
pp. 741-793
Author(s):  
Avelino Corral Esteban
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Evolutionary Development ◽  
Order Restriction ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
Clausal Structure ◽  
The Past ◽  
Order Pattern ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Abstract Over the past few years, the comprehensive study of syntactic variation across both the Germanic and the Romance branches of languages in relation to the unmarked word order pattern has meant a more in-depth knowledge of the nature of the verb-second phenomenon – an extremely intricate typological concept because of the complex factors that give rise to such a word order restriction. The aim of this paper is to investigate word order phenomena in the Asturian language (Romance, Western Iberian: Spain) from a comparative perspective1 by examining the word order patterns found in a number of documents written over the course of two centuries, with a view to determining what constitutes the unmarked word order and gaining a better understanding of its core syntax. Such a study has entailed collating research on the verb-first, verb-second and subject-verb-object orders. Finally, it aims to shed more light on the evolutionary development of the Romance languages.

Ela Longespee's Roll of Benefits: Piety and Reciprocity in the Thirteenth Century

Traditio ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 1-56
Author(s):  
Emilie Amt
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Archives

Ipsa autem, bonorum temporalium liberalissima ac spiritualium avida beneficiorum …— 1293 charter of Oxford University, describing Ela LongespeeIn 1293, the elderly and twice-widowed Ela Longespee, countess of Warwick, or someone acting on her behalf, gathered together eighteen charters that had been issued to her over the past dozen years and sent them to the bishop of Lincoln, to be confirmed and copied into a single roll. The original charters have long since vanished, but the enrolled copy survives in The National Archives at Kew. Its component documents, all of them detailed grants to Ela by religious institutions in the Oxford area, are highly unusual; even when compared to the few surviving parallels, they stand out for their specific content. The roll itself, comprising eighteen such documents in a private archive created for a thirteenth-century laywoman, is unique. And when it is examined along with other surviving evidence of Ela's religious activities, it provides us with an extraordinary perspective on the reciprocal nature of religious patronage at this time. What is especially unusual about Ela's case is that we know much more about what the religious promised to Ela than what she granted to them. Thus Ela Longespee's records tell us the side of the story that is seldom told when we look at records of religious patronage; they reveal the return that donors expected in the late thirteenth century, with increasing precision and urgency. Using a chronological framework, this essay will examine the surviving documents, tell the story of Ela's life, and explore the most interesting dimension of that story: her startlingly explicit reciprocal relationships with religious institutions.

Four decades of ELT development in Hong Kong: Impact of global theories on the changing curricula and textbooks

2019 ◽  
pp. 136216881986556
Author(s):  
Jim Yee Him Chan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Past ◽  
Framework Approach ◽  
Language Needs ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
Textbook Design

The past 40 years have witnessed significant developments in ELT research, reflecting the changes in learners’ language needs and the extensive development of various language learning/teaching methods in different times and places. The aim of this study is to provide a systematic and comprehensive account of changing ELT methods (oral-structural approach, communicative language teaching and task-based language teaching) in Hong Kong’s secondary education between 1975 and the present. By adopting Richards and Rodgers’s (2014) framework (approach, design and procedure), it examined how ELT theories have been transformed into local curricula (1975, 1983, 1999 and 2002/07) and commercial textbooks (Longman, Oxford University Press) via detailed content analysis. The findings suggest that research into ELT methods in Hong Kong over the past decades has generally directed the designs of the language curricula. Changes in the textbooks, however, have been relatively limited, although considerable attempts have been made to align textbook design with ELT trends. By considering various constraints in the theory-to-practice process, this study offers suggestions for future research and language teaching, particularly regarding the recent debate over the choice between the ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ versions of task-based language teaching in EFL contexts, and the post-methods perspective in language teaching.

The intonation of wh-questions in Franco-Ontarian

1973 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-101
Author(s):  
Renée Baligand ◽  
Eric James
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Canadian French ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Interrogative Sentence ◽  
Question Intonation

The melodic structure of an interrogative utterance frequently depends on the grammatical structure of the sentence in question. In addition to the enunciative sentence of the kind vous venez? which bears a particular acoustic mark of interrogation, a rise in fundamental frequency in sentence-final position, there exist also interrogative utterances signalled by inversion of word order and still others marked by lexical means, the WH-questions. It is the intonation of this latter type of sentence which we intend to examine in the Canadian-French spoken in Ontario.The intonation of interrogative sentences has for some years been the object of important research in different languages. Wells (1945) and Trager and Smith (1951) note in English an intonation curve at the following levels: 2 - 3 - 1 - without any tonal prominence on the interrogative word. Armstrong and Ward (1926), Jones (1932) and Faure (1948) also find that this type of interrogative sentence has a descending intonation. Fries (1964) finds no specific intonation pattern in a spontaneous corpus from which he studied yes-no questions. For German, Von Essen (1956) notes two intonation patterns: one rising (question intonation) and one falling (interrogative intonation).

scholarly journals On the Acquisition of Word Order in WH-Questions in theTromsø Dialect

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.48 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Richardsen Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
Wh Questions

This article reports on a study of three children acquiring a dialect of Norwegian which allows two different word orders in certain types of WH-questions, verb second (V2) and and verb third (V3). The latter is only allowed after monosyllabic WH-words, while the former, which is the result of verb movement, is the word order found in all other main clauses in the language. It is shown that both V2 and V3 are acquired extremely early by the children in the study (before the age of two), and that subtle distinctions between the two orders with respect to information structure are attested from the beginning. However, it is argued that V3 word order, which should be ìsimplerî than the V2 structure as it does not involve verb movement, is nevertheless acquired slightly later in its full syntactic form. This is taken as an indication that the V3 structure is syntactically more complex, and possibly also more marked.

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