scholarly journals Poly-predicative conditional constructions in Catalan (in comparaison with Spanish and French)

Author(s):  
T. V. Repnina

By poly-predicative conditional constructions we mean complex sentences that contain at least three simple sentences, each representing either a condition or a consequence. Poly-predicative sentences can in addition contain other simple sentences that represent neither condition, nor consequence. Poly-predicative constructions that, apart from one condition and one consequence, also include other simple sentences, are not classified here as poly-predicative conditional constructions. While poly-predicative constructions in general have already been in the focus of researches attention, this article seems to address them on Catalan material for the first time. The purpose of this article is an analysis of syntactic relations in poly-predicative conditional constructions. Its objectives include their comparison in Catalan, Spanish, and French, identification of the main types of these constructions, and an analysis of their characteristics. Since the use of tenses and moods in the constructions addressed coincides with that in prototypical bi-predicative conditional constructions, we do not examine it here. The methods, used in this study, included: sampling during corpus collection, classification, description, comparison, transformational analysis and synthesis. The study is based on Catalan texts and their translations into Spanish and French. The findings of the study include: 1) Poly-predicative conditional constructions with several condition and/or consequence clauses are possible. Condition and consequence clauses can occupy different positions in poly-predicative conditional constructions; 2) In contrast to Catalan and Spanish, French admits the replacement of the conditional conjunction si by que; 3) Prototypical conditional and poly-predicative constructions are invariably characterized by subordination relations, with coordination parataxis possible as well. In addition, more complex syntactic structures are possible like, e. g., parallel co-coordination; 4) A prototypical conditional construction being a complex sentence, this limits possible syntactic types of poly-predicative conditional constructions. They cannot be structured as a string of simple sentences connected by coordination or subordination. Consecutive subordination of three or more subordinate sentences is not characteristic of conditional constructions; 5) The study identified a similarity between poly-predicative conditional constructions in Catalan, Spanish, and French. The present research is a contribution into the syntax of Romance languages.

2020 ◽  
pp. 261-274
Author(s):  
T. I. Steksova ◽  

The paper reflects the author’s understanding of the explanatory structure as a semantic structure with a wide range of realizations: from complex sentences with an object clause, conjunctionless complex sentences, complicated sentences with introductory words, to simple sentences. The study considers a scientific text characterized by introducing other people’s information due to its polyphonic nature. The study objective was to identify the language reflection of the authors of the scientific text when choosing one of the possible syntactic constructions. A new direction, experimental analysis of the discourse, provides opportunities to language reflection study. Fifty-two graduate students of the Faculty of Philology took part in the experiment. Fifteen professors of various humanitarian specialties were the control group. The study analyzes the scientific text authors’ choice of the method of introducing other people’s information. The linguistic experiment results are those authors’ reflections about choosing one of the possible syntactic structures to deliver other people’s information. The students were found to prefer a direct speech structure (a conjunctionless complex sentence), with the teachers choosing the construction with indirect speech for “it may break the author’s text.” The following groups of reasons for choosing a design were identified: substantivecompositional, genre, and pragmatic. A conclusion is made that the authors of the scientific text do not fully use the wide possibilities for the language system to introduce explanatory semantics and often do it unconsciously. There is a tendency to “push” the authorization mode into auxiliary text, metatext.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 228-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aysegul Ozcan ◽  
Gulmira Kuruoglu ◽  
Koksal Alptekin ◽  
Sumru Ozsoy

Patients with schizophrenia often display unusual language impairments and these abnormalities in language are among the most extreme and obvious symptoms in Schizophrenia Disorder. In this context, this research attempts to analyze and compare the schizophrenic patients’ and control group’s speech  in terms of complex sentence structures. Fifty patients with schizophrenia diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria have been includedd in the study and compared to fifty healthy subjects matched for age, sex and education level with the patients.  The subjects’ speech  has been  evaluated in four stages.  These are narration, story picture sequencing, semi-structured speech and free speech. The data consists of 8-10 minute recorded interviews.  The recordings have been transcribed based on DuBois’ Discourse Transcription Symbols. The statistical  and linguistic analyses have shown significant differences between complex sentence types’ of patients with schizophrenia and healthy subjects’. The findings have demonstrated that due to the possible cognitive problems the speech produced by schizophrenia patients  is syntactically less complex than that of controls. Additionally, patients with schizophrenia use shorter and simple sentences instead of complex sentences compared to healthy subjects.Keywords: schizophrenia, sentence structure, complex sentence, language disorder, thought disorder.


2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 149-175
Author(s):  
Ayumi Matsuo

This paper reports results from a series of experiments that investigated whether semantic and/or syntactic complexity influences young Dutch children’s production of past tense forms. The constructions used in the three experiments were (i) simple sentences (the Simple Sentence Experiment), (ii) complex sentences with CP complements (the Complement Clause Experiment) and (iii) complex sentences with relative clauses (the Relative Clause Experiment). The stimuli involved both atelic and telic predicates. The goal of this paper is to address the following questions. Q1. Does semantic complexity regarding temporal anchoring influence the types of errors that children make in the experiments? For example, do children make certain types of errors when a past tense has to be anchored to the Utterance Time (UT), as compared to when it has to be anchored to the matrix topic time (TT)? Q2. Do different syntactic positions influence children’s performance on past-tense production? Do children perform better in the Simple Sentence Experiment compared to complex sentences involving two finite clauses (the Complement Clause Experiment and the Relative Clause Experiment)? In complex sentence trials, do children perform differently when the CPs are complements vs. when the CPs are adjunct clauses? (Lebeaux 1990, 2000) Q3. Do Dutch children make more errors with certain types of predicate (such as atelic predicates)? Alternatively, do children produce a certain type of error with a certain type of predicates (such as producing a perfect aspect with punctual predicates)? Bronckart and Sinclair (1973), for example, found that until the age of 6, French children showed a tendency to use passé composé with perfective events and simple present with imperfective events; we will investigate whether or not the equivalent of this is observed in Dutch.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-490
Author(s):  
Claudia Radünzel

Summary The present article deals with Easy-to-read Russian. It focuses on the level of syntax which is mainly characterized by the avoidance of complex sentence structures. The necessity to write sentences that are as short and simple as possible is intuitively comprehensible, but often difficult to implement in practice since Easy-to-read texts also have to express causal, final or many other relations. Suggestions for avoiding complex syntactic structures in Russian are submitted and put up for discussion by consulting results and important proposals of studies about German “Leichte Sprache”. This includes both clause constructions and complex sentences with their individual subgroups as well as asyndetic compound sentences. On the whole, the study is intended to make a linguistically substantiated contribution to the development of Easy-to-read Russian, for which there are only initial approaches available today.


2019 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 00081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Nikolenko ◽  
Olga Zakharchu ◽  
Larisa Babakova ◽  
Boris Morenko

What makes this study topical: the urgency of the problem under consideration is due to the existing need for structural and semantic analysis of complex sentences (CS) with homogeneously collateral subordination of clauses, in different functional styles of speech and language. Our study is directed towards revealing the ability of syntaxemes with homogeneously collateral subordination to render hidden meanings of the author‘s ‘I’ and to thereby affect the reader/hearer. The cornerstone research method in this study is direct observation of language phenomena with generous borrowings from transformational analysis; it allows us to assert that the multi-component sentences under scrutiny here possess powerful expressive potential and can better than any other render additional information, thereby giving a strongly suggestive focus to an utterance or statement. In this paper, for the first time in the history of linguistics, we reveal how CS with homogeneously collateral subordination of sub clauses work in all functional styles. We also define cognitive boundaries within which takes place the choice between such multi-component structures in the process of language activity, with concern for how the ‘I’ of the author affects the addressee.


2020 ◽  
pp. 210-214
Author(s):  
Sarina Rakhimova

The article highlights the problem of compound sentences in the Turkic languages. Within the framework of this study, the problem of predicativity in complex sentences and the relationship of theoretical linguistics to predicative constructions used instead of a sentence member are investigated. A complex sentence, like a simple sentence, is pronounced with a single intonation, expressing a complete idea. Complex sentences describe more complex phenomena of the world around us than in simple sentences, and therefore these constructions appear as a later, higher expression of human speech. In primitive human speech, to express his feelings or other information, a person mainly used simple sentences. Later, as the connection between events became clearer, their expression in speech became more complex. Although simple sentences as components of a complex sentence, while maintaining intonation, are predicative parts of a certain syntactic construction.


2019 ◽  
pp. 117-129
Author(s):  
Natalia Darchuk

The purpose of this study is to construct an automatic syntactic analysis (ASA) and, as a result, to compile a dictionary of models of multicomponent complex sentences for studying the fectures of the linear structure of Ukrainian text. The process includes two-stages: the first stage is an automatic syntactic analysis of the hierarchical type which results in building of a dependency tree (DT), in the second stage, the sentence structure information is automatically extracted from the obtained graph. ASA is a package of operations performed with a string of morphological information (the result of AMA work) representing the incoming text for determination of syntactic relations between text units. The outgoing text for the ACA is a string of information reduced after the AMA to wordforms. We have studied features of the linear structure of 2000 Ukrainian language sentences in journalistic genre (selection of 52000 words use). Based on the obtained results, we have constructed the real models of the syntactic structure of sentences, in which the relations between simple clauses were presented. All grammatical situations of the linear context were possible manifestations of models in the text. Based on that data, the algorithm for the automatic generation of a complex sentence model was created. These models are linear syntax grammar. All types of syntactic connection between the main and subordinate clauses are recorded algorithmically. Thus, it is possible to build the interpretations of the linear structure of the Ukrainian language sentence almost not using lexical-semantic information. The theoretical value of the paper is in extension of our knowledge about the structure of the syntactic level of the language and the variety of mechanisms functioning at that level. The applied value, is first of all, in creation of the dictionary of compatibility of compound (coordinated) and complex (subordinated) sentences, and in the possibility of constructing requests to the Ukrainian language Corpus in order to mine from the text definite models sentences, creating own dictionaries of authors and styles.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
Ni Luh Ketut Mas Indrawati

Words combine to form larger units; phrases, clauses, and sentences. The study of the structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences is referred to as syntax. Quirk, et, all (1985:47) distinguishes sentences into two types they are; simple sentences and multiple sentences which cover compound sentences and complex sentences. A simple sentence consists of one independent clause, a multiple clause contains more than one clauses, a compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses, while a complex sentence consists of insubordinate and subordinate clauses.Subordinate clause, in embedding the element of the insubordinate clause use either complementiser or relativiser. For example: (1) john said that he did not come to the party. That in (1) is considered to be complimentiser since it introduces the subordinate clause. (2) John met the teacher that teaches you English. That in (2) is classified as relativiser because it is used to introduce the modifying clause.This paper attempts to discuss complementiser and relativiser in the English subordinate clauses and describe the constituent structure in a tree diagram using the approach proposed by Kroeger (2005). The data were taken from a novel entitled Saved by The Bride by Fiona Lowe (2013).Keywords: complex sentences, subordinate clauses, complementiser or relativiser


Author(s):  
Muthia Damaiyanti ◽  
Edwar Kemal

Speaking is one of the activities conducted by human everyday. In speaking, the sentences can be simple sentences and even complex sentences. Sometimes, in speaking the words and phrases are used to fill a syntactic position without having a meaning or referent. It is called expletive. The research analyzes the form and function of expletive in utterances of kubang society. The data were collected through interviews and recording technique and the theory used from Azar and Manser. The data were presented in written form. The research shows that there are fiften expletive words used by Kubang society in conversation. Expletive often appears in adverb. Though, it is only a filler, expletive words are often used by Kubang society.


2010 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Frenck-Mestre ◽  
Nathalie Zardan ◽  
Annie Colas ◽  
Alain Ghio

Abstract Eye movements were examined to determine how readers with Down syndrome process sentences online. Participants were 9 individuals with Down syndrome ranging in reading level from Grades 1 to 3 and a reading-level-matched control group. For syntactically simple sentences, the pattern of reading times was similar for the two groups, with longer reading times found at sentence end. This “wrap-up” effect was also found in the first reading of more complex sentences for the control group, whereas it only emerged later for the readers with Down syndrome. Our results provide evidence that eye movements can be used to investigate reading in individuals with Down syndrome and underline the need for future studies.


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