Some notes on central causal clauses in Venetian

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-572
Author(s):  
Nicholas Catasso

Abstract The goal of this paper is to provide novel evidence in favor of an integration of Haegeman’s (2002) taxonomy of adverbial clause subordination by discussing some data from C-introduced causal constructs in Venetian, the Italo-Romance dialect spoken in the city of Venice. Haegeman’s model is based on a two-class categorization of adverbial structures into central clauses, in which matrix-clause phenomena (such as the licensing of some sentence-initial or sentence-final discourse particle-like items, XP-fronting) are excluded, and peripheral clauses, in which these phenomena are licit. The external-syntactic distinction predicted by this model, namely a semantic differentiation resulting from TP/VP-adjunction for central vs. CP-adjunction for peripheral adverbial clauses, has severe consequences for the internal syntax of the a/m constructions, the most striking being the absence of the upper projections of the Split CP of central constructs. The data presented in this paper, however, suggest that (at least) in Venetian, (some) main-clause phenomena may also be licensed in central adverbial clauses under specific circumstances. Additionally, it will be shown that the conclusions drawn from the observation of the Venetian data match the behavior of the same constructions in Standard Italian, as well as in other languages, under the very same conditions.

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-149
Author(s):  
Brahim Adam

This paper studies the negation construction in musgum language.We collect the musgum data on negation from native users and analyse them in terms of Kayne’s (1994) antisymmetry and Rizzi’s (1997) split CP approaches. We identify the free negation element (á:à) and several negation markers (kài, kirkài, kài tiŋ and kirkài tiŋ) that close independent and complex clauses. In complex structures with completive and relative clauses, the main clause cannot contain a negation marker. In complex structure with adverbial clause, negation marker can be present in main and adverbial clauses. We discover that Negation Phrase is the highest projection, higher than Force Phrase, rejecting the split‐CP projections order of Rizzi (1997). When the negation head is generated, Inflexion Phrase is subject to heavy pied‐piping. It occupies the specifier of Negation Phrase.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Stefan Th. Gries ◽  
Stefanie Wulff

ABSTRACT This study examines the variable positioning of a finite adverbial subordinate clause and its main clause with the subordinate clause either preceding or following the main clause in native versus nonnative English. Specifically, we contrast causal, concessive, conditional, and temporal adverbial clauses produced by German and Chinese learners of English with those produced by native speakers. We examined 2,362 attestations from the Chinese and German subsections of the International Corpus of Learner English (Granger, Dagneaux, Meunier, & Paquot, 2009) and from the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (Granger, 1998). All instances were annotated for the ordering, the subordinate clause type, the lengths of the main and subordinate clauses, the first language of the speakers, the conjunction used, and the file it originated from (as a proxy for the speaker producing the sentence so as to be able to study individual and lexical variation). The results of a two-step regression modeling protocol suggest that learners behave most nativelike with causal clauses and struggle most with conditional and concessive clauses; in addition, learners make more non-nativelike choices when the main and subordinate clause are of about equal length.


Author(s):  
Karolin Obert

Abstract References to landscape and places are central in traditional narratives by speakers of Dâw (Naduhup, Brazilian Amazon). This emphasis on spatial reference is primarily established through locative adverbial clauses that are often repeated throughout the discourse. Their function is to relate an event to a place, establish reference to locative information mentioned earlier in discourse, and provide cohesion when pre-posed to the main clause. In this syntactic position, they act as bridges connecting sentences and paragraphs by referring to antecedent context. Locative adverbial clauses in clause-initial position are interesting in Dâw because they can occur as exact replicas of a locative adverbial clause that was postposed to the main clause of the antecedent sentence. This strategy has been described in the literature as tail-head linkage. Its central function is to maintain coherence among participants and events along subsequent sentences in discourse and to ensure that the interlocutor is able to track the numerous locations mentioned in the narrative. This paper explores the functional and formal properties of tail-head linkage by focusing on locative adverbial clauses in Dâw, and contributes to the understanding of how processes of subordination can be responsible for tracking spatial information in the discourse of Dâw speakers.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Erika Jasionytė-Mikučionienė

The aim of the paper is to investigate adverbial clauses of time, cause, condition and concession in spontaneous private communication. The study explores semantic relations between the main and subordinate clauses, grammatical features and predominant conjunctions.The data for the research was collected from the morphologically annotated Corpus of Spoken Lithuanian, namely, its sub-corpus of spontaneous private speech which is used at home, at friends’ place, or which is produced by close friends.The analysis of spontaneous private communication shows that the finite adverbial clauses of time, cause, condition and concession are related to a set of conjunctions, but other indicators such as the use of verbal categories (especially tense, aspect and mood), contextual lexical markers as well as pragmatic inference also help to determine the semantic relationship between the main and the subordinate clause.In a spoken language, temporal clauses are usually combined with the conjunctions kai, kaip ‘when’, kol ‘while’, less frequently – with kada ‘when’; causal clauses are combined with the conjunction nes ‘because; since’, less frequently – with kad and kadangi ‘because’; conditional clauses are typically combined with the conjunction jeigu ‘if’, less frequently – with jei ‘if’, concessive clauses – with the conjunction nors ‘though’. The conjunctions kai ‘when’, kol ‘while’, kadangi ‘because’, jeigu and jei ‘if’ correlate with the particle tai that is very frequent in a spoken language, while the conjunction nors ‘though’ – with the contrastive conjunction bet ‘but’.In the natural language flow, the structure of adverbial sentences is modified: other sentential and discourse units can intervene between the main and the subordinate clauses, and the adverbial conjunction moves from the initial to the medial position.Traditional Lithuanian grammars emphasise that the position of adverbial clauses is undefined: they can appear before or after the main clause. However, the analysis of spontaneous speech shows that the position of a subordinate clause is influenced by the semantic relationship between the clauses. If a subordinate clause refers to a previous action or event, then it dominates in a preposition. Besides, the position of an adverbial clause is also influenced by correlative conjunctions: the main clause with the correlative particle tai dominates in the postposition.The research also revealed that Lithuanian adverbial clauses could function at the discourse level: in dialogues, the structure of a complex sentence is broken down and subordinate adverbial clauses can acquire additional – discourse – functions. Adverbial conjunctions, in their turn, can indicate relations with a previous discourse. 


2019 ◽  
pp. 227-239
Author(s):  
Mariola Wierzbicka

The paper discusses ways of expressing the temporal relations of partial simultaneity in adverbial clauses in the German language. Although the relations can be expressed by participle phrases, noun phrases, prepositional phrases and infinitive phrases, the adverbial clause is the most frequent means of expressing the relations. The temporal adverbial clause has an almost unlimited range of applications, which stretches from vaguely hinted relation to absolute necessity, and from general statements and clarifications to definite emotionally motivated utterances. Wherever there is an obvious connection between facts, events, actions, relations as well as personal will and feeling, it can be expressed by means of a temporal structure. The subject of the paper is the influence of conjunctions während, als, wenn, seit(dem) and solange on the time arrangement of situations introduced into the time clause and the main clause with regard to morphological, syntactic and semantic elements and dependence on the relation of the correspondence between events in the time clause and events in the main clause in German.


Author(s):  
Łukasz Jędrzejowski

In this article, I examine the synchrony and diachrony of adverbial exceptive clauses in Polish headed by the complex complementizer 'chyba że' (unless). Synchronically, I argue that 'chyba-że'-clauses are syntactically nonintegrated adverbial clauses and that they cannot be analyzed as negated conditionals, although both clause types can give rise to an exceptive interpretation. Diachronically, I provide an analysis according to which 'chyba że' (unless) is treated as a complex C-head that is due to head adjunction of the discourse particle 'chyba' (presumably) and of the declarative complementizer 'że' (that). Essentially, there are three main factors that paved the way for the development of the exceptive complementizer in Polish: i) syntactic adjacency of the discourse particle 'chyba' (presumably) and of the declarative complementizer 'że' (that) establishing a subordination relation between the matrix clause and the embedded clause, ii) movement of the conditional clitic 'by' from MoodP to the CP domain, and iii) accommodation of negation of focus alternatives. As it will turn out, this process was completed in Middle Polish (1543-1765).


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Melani Rahmi Siagian ◽  
Mulyadi Mulyadi

An adverbial clause is a subordinate clause that serves to provide information on the main clause. The presence of an adverbial clause is not a must, but it can help create coherence in a discourse. This study aims to describe the markers of adverbial clauses in Angkola language. The method used is descriptive qualitative markers. Data collections are conducted by speaking, listening, and taking notes. The data in this study are adverbial clauses in Angkola language obtained from native Angkola speakers and also written sources obtained from Angkola language books. Data analysis was carried out by matching the data with the theory contained in the study, namely adverbial clause markers in Angkola language sentences. The results showed that there were five types of adverbial clauses in Angkola language, namely temporal clauses marked by the word dung 'after' and dompak 'when', conditional clauses marked by the word molo 'if', causal clauses (causal clause) which is marked by the word harana 'because', the purpose clause (purposal clause) which is marked by the word anso 'so that/so', and the concession clause (consessive clause) which is marked by the words bope 'although' and aha pe 'what ever'. The use of adverbial clauses can be found at the initial or final position in a sentence.


Diksi ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suhardi

This article reexamines Samsuri’s concept of a complement clause. Acomplement clause in an embedded transformed sentence functions to complement a nounphrase (as a subject or an object), a verb phrase, an adjective phrase, a numeral phrase, anda prepositional phrase (as a predicate in a matrix clause). The complement clauseembedded into a matrix clause complements a certain phrase in the matrix clause.Embedding a complement clause into a matrix clause uses certain embedding particles.The relational meaning of the complement clause and the main clause in an embeddedtransformed sentence can be identified on the basis of the syntactic meaning of theembedding operator employed. A complement clause as a combined clause complements acertain phrase in a main/matrix sentence, whereas an adverbial clause is the basic clausethat gives explanation to the main/matrix sentence.Keywords: complement clause, matrix cluse, combined clause, embedded transformation


2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Lahousse

In this paper it is argued that, contrary to what is often assumed, embedded adverbial clauses have an information structure articulation independent from that of the main clause. More particularly, it is shown that the specific way in which information structure is expressed in adverbial clauses depends on the possibility vs. impossibility of epistemic qualification in the adverbial clause. The claim is based on new empirical evidence concerning the distribution of a clearly information structure-driven syntactic configuration: verb-subject word order in French.


Probus ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J.-Marc Authier ◽  
Liliane Haegeman

AbstractThis paper investigates the restrictions on movement to the left periphery found in non-root environments such as French central adverbial clauses and argues that an analysis of main clause phenomena based on intervention/Relativized Minimality is to be preferred to one based on structural truncation. The empirical basis for this claim consists of an examination of some asymmetries between French infinitival TP ellipsis and infinitival TP Topicalization. Adopting Authie's (2011) approach to TP ellipsis whereby the to-be-elided TP undergoes fronting in the computational component but fails to be spelled out at PF, we argue that these asymmetries follow from the fact that in French, while a spelled out fronted TP is an intervener for


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