scholarly journals Noun Phrases as expressions of evidentiality: an analysis of four English abstract nouns and their Spanish equivalents

Kalbotyra ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 69 (69) ◽  
pp. 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Carretero
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
English Abstract ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Comparable Corpora ◽  
Abstract Nouns ◽  
Labelling Function ◽  
Shell Nouns

This paper presents an analysis of the expression of evidentiality with the English nouns evidence, indication, proof and sign and their Spanish equivalents evidencia, indicación, prueba and señal. The nouns are described as shell nouns having the properties of encapsulating, signalling and labelling. The delimitation of their evidential and non-evidential uses is determined by three factors: existence of a qualified proposition (Belief), non-occurrence within an irrealis context and constant value of the evidential qualification when the Belief refers to a plurality of events. The difficulties posed by the delimitation illustrate the problems involved in determining the scope of evidentiality when expressed by lexical devices belonging to the content of a proposition. A quantitative analysis was carried out on 400 occurrences of the nouns, extracted from two comparable corpora. The results reveal that all the nouns except two expressed evidentiality in most cases, that the linguistic context in which they appear shows great variation in terms of syntax and information structure, and that the labelling function is prominent. The results also uncover idiosyncratic evidential expressions with some of the nouns.

scholarly journals A multi-dimensional contrastive study of English abstracts by native and non-native writers

Corpora ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Cao ◽  
Richard Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
English Abstract ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Communicative Functions

This article takes the multi-dimensional (MD) analysis approach to explore the textual variations between native and non-native English abstracts on the basis of a balanced corpus containing English abstracts written by native English and native Chinese writers from twelve academic disciplines. A total of 47 out of 163 linguistic features are retained after factor analysis, which underlies a seven-dimension framework representing seven communicative functions. The results show that the two types of abstracts demonstrate significant differences in five out of the seven dimensions. To be more specific, native English writers display a more active involvement and commitment in presenting their ideas than Chinese writers. They also use intensifying devices more frequently. In contrast, Chinese writers show stronger preferences for conceptual elaboration, passives and abstract noun phrases no matter whether the two types of data are examined as a whole or whether variations across disciplines are taken into account. The results are discussed in relation to the possible reasons and suggestions for English abstract writing in China. Methodologically, this study innovatively expands on Biber's (1988) MD analytical framework by integrating colligation in addition to grammatical and semantic features.

scholarly journals Information Structure and Word Order Preference in Child and Adult Speech of Mandarin Chinese

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Jidong Chen ◽  
Bhuvana Narasimhan ◽  
Angel Chan ◽  
Wenchun Yang ◽  
Shu Yang
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Late Development ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Order Preference

The acquisition of appropriate linguistic markers of information structure (IS), e.g., word order and specific lexical and syntactic constructions, is a rather late development. This study revisits the debate on language-general preferred word order in IS and examines the use of language-specific means to encode IS in Mandarin Chinese. An elicited production study of conjunct noun phrases (NPs) of new and old referents was conducted with native Mandarin-speaking children (N = 24, mean age 4;6) and adults (N = 25, mean age 26). (The age of children is conventionally notated as years;months). The result shows that adults differ significantly from children in preferring the “old-before-new” word order. This corroborates prior findings in other languages (e.g., German, English, Arabic) that adults prefer a language-general “old-before-new” IS, whereas children disprefer or show no preference for that order. Despite different word order preferences, Mandarin-speaking children and adults resemble each other in the lexical and syntactic forms to encode old and new referents: bare NPs dominate the conjunct NPs, and indefinite classifier NPs are used for both the old and the new referents, but when only one classifier phrase is produced, it is predominantly used to refer to the new referents, which suggests children’s early sensitivity to language-specific syntactic devices to mark IS.

Infinitival relative clauses in spoken discourse

1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christer Geisler
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
British English ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
The Matrix

ABSTRACTThis article concerns infinitival relative clauses, such as Mary is the person to ask, and their distribution in spoken English. It analyzes the correlation between the function of the antecedent in the relative clause and the function of the whole postmodified NP (the relative complex) in the matrix clause. On the basis of a quantitative analysis of a corpus of spoken British English, I show that the grammatical function of the antecedent in the infinitival relative clause depends on the function of the antecedent in the matrix clause. I argue that the distribution of antecedent functions in the matrix clause can be explained in terms of thematic properties and information structure of the clauses in which the infinitival relatives occur. A key notion is that speakers center their discourse around information that they assume to be important for the communicative event.

scholarly journals The secret life of focus exponents, and what it tells us about fronted verbal projections

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kordula De Kuthy ◽  
W. Detmar Meurers
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Natural Explanation ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definiteness Effect ◽  
Focus Projection

The paper investigates a complex word order phenomenon in German and the interaction of syntax and information structure it exemplifies: the occurrence of subjects as part of a fronted non-finite constituent and particularly the so-called definiteness effect excluding (many) definite subjects from this position. We explore the connection between focus projection and the partial fronting cases and show that it is the subject of those verbs which allow their subject to be the focus exponent that can be included as part of a fronted verbal constituent. In combination with the observation by Webelhuth (1990) that fronted verbal constituents need to be focused, this provides a natural explanation of the definiteness effect in terms of the information structure requirements in these sentences. Interestingly, the generally ignored exceptions to the definiteness effect are predicted by our analysis; we show that they involve definite noun phrases which can bear focus, which allows them to be part of a fronted verbal constituent. Finally, building on the integrated grammatical architecture provided in De Kuthy (2002), we formulate an HPSG theory which captures the interaction of constraints from syntax, information structure and intonation.

Pragmatics and Information Structure

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Ward ◽  
Betty J. Birner ◽  
Elsi Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Informational Content ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Growing Body

Information structure deals with the question of how—and specifically, in what order—we choose to present the informational content of a proposition. In English and many other languages, this content is structured in such a way that given, or familiar, information precedes new, or unfamiliar, information. Because givenness and newness are largely matters of what has come previously in the discourse, information structuring is inextricably tied to matters of context—in particular, the prior linguistic context—and this is what makes information structure quintessentially pragmatic in nature. While it has long been recognized that various non-canonical word orders function to preserve a given-before-new ordering in an utterance, a great deal of research has focused on how to determine the specific categories of givenness and newness that matter for information structuring. A growing body of psycholinguistic work explores the role that these categories play in language comprehension.

scholarly journals Fachkommunikation, Popularisierung, Übersetzung: Empirische Vergleiche am Beispiel der Nominalphrase im Englischen und Deutschen

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Hansen-Schirra ◽  
Sandra Hansen ◽  
Sascha Wolfer ◽  
Lars Konieczny
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Structure Information ◽  
Comparable Corpora ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
The One ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Empirical Insight

This article examines the contrasts and commonalities between languages for specific purposes (LSP) and their popularizations on the one hand and the frequency patterns of LSP register features in English and German on the other. For this purpose corpora of expert-expert and expert-lay communication are annotated for part-of-speech and phrase structure information. On this basis, the frequencies of pre- and post-modifications in complex noun phrases are statistically investigated and compared for English and German. Moreover, using parallel and comparable corpora it is tested whether English-German translations obey the register norms of the target language or whether the LSP frequency patterns of the source language Ñshine throughì. The results provide an empirical insight into language contact phenomena involving specialized communication.

scholarly journals Compare noun phrases in Stieng language and Vietnamese

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. First
Author(s):  
Phan Thanh Tam
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Mass Nouns ◽  
Abstract Nouns ◽  
Closed Contact ◽  
Similarities And Differences

This article presents about structural features of the noun phrase in Stieng language in order to define the similarities and differences points between the noun phrase in Stieng language and noun phrase in Vietnamese. Noun phrase has a central component, previous sub-components, and the following sub-components. Also, it has played a role in creating a sentence. Base on situations in communication, the noun phrase may be previous vacant sub-components or following sub-components, but it can not be removed from the central component. The central component is mass nouns like as simple nouns, overall nouns, or abstract nouns. The previous sub-component includes quality words, numerals, or unit nouns. The following sub-component can be a noun, verb, pronoun, phrase, and followed by a demonstrative word. Stieng is a language of South Bahnaric subgroup, an Austroasiatic family, so there are many similarities with other languages such as Koho, Mnong, Ma, and Chrau. They belong to the Austroasiatic family, so they are closed contact with the Vietnamese.

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