scholarly journals Seminumerals, determiners and nouns in English

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takafumi Maekawa
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Countable Noun

A singular countable noun in English normally requires a determiner and they should agree in number. However, there is a type of noun phrase, such as those thousand teachers, which does not conform to this generalisation. As a subtype of singular countable noun, thousand requires a determiner, but the determiner has number agreement with the head noun teachers. The standard HPSG treatment, in which the determiner requirement and the determiner-noun agreement are both represented in the SPR specifications of the head noun, cannot capture this special agreement pattern. Our analysis, in which the determiner requirement and the determiner-noun agreement are dissociated from each other, can provide a straightforward account of the data.

The relative verb forms of Cuwabo (Bantu P34) as contextually oriented participles

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-491
Author(s):  
Rozenn Guérois ◽  
Denis Creissels
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
North Western

AbstractCuwabo (Bantu P34, Mozambique) illustrates a relativization strategy, also attested in some North-Western and Central Bantu languages, whose most salient characteristics are that: (a) the initial agreement slot of the verb form does not express agreement with the subject (as in independent clauses), but agreement with the head noun; (b) the initial agreement slot of the verb form does not express agreement in person and number-gender (or class), but only in number-gender; (c) when a noun phrase other than the subject is relativized, the noun phrase encoded as the subject in the corresponding independent clause occurs in post-verbal position and does not control any agreement mechanism. In this article, we show that, in spite of the similarity between the relative verb forms of Cuwabo and the corresponding independent verb forms, and the impossibility of isolating a morphological element analyzable as a participial formative, the relative verb forms of Cuwabo are participles, with the following two particularities: they exhibit full contextual orientation, and they assign a specific grammatical role to the initial subject, whose encoding in relative clauses coincides neither with that of subjects of independent verb forms, nor with that of adnominal possessors.

Morphological Deficits of Children With SLI

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1249-1257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mabel L. Rice ◽  
Janna B. Oetting
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Number Marking ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Morphological Productivity ◽  
Group A ◽  
Missing Feature

Three accounts of the grammatical deficits of children with specific language impairment (SLI), that is, Missing Feature, Surface Account, and Missing Agreement, were evaluated by examining children with SLI and language-matched non-SLI children’s acquisition of number marking and number agreement. The data consisted of spontaneous language transcripts from 108 preschool children. Number marking was evaluated using five indices of plural development: percent of use in obligatory contexts, lexical productivity, selectivity, contrastivity, and morphological productivity. Two levels of number agreement were examined: the traditional agreement between the verb and its subject, and a new measure of agreement within the noun phrase. The results indicated that children with SLI control number marking, counter to the predictions of the Missing Feature hypothesis and the Surface Account. On the other hand, as predicted, number agreement across clausal boundaries was more difficult for the children with SLI as compared to the children in the control group. A close analysis of number marking within the noun phrase revealed two distinctive contexts, determiner + noun versus quantifier + noun. Children with SLI had more difficulty with the latter than the former, whereas the two contexts were not differentiated for the control children. Syntactic and semantic explanations are discussed as interpretive options.

scholarly journals Agreement Attraction in Turkish: The Case of Genitive Attractor

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Utku Turk ◽  
Pavel Logacev
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Feature Matching ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Attraction Effects ◽  
Potential Confound ◽  
Acceptability Judgment ◽  
Genitive Case

Previous studies have shown that speakers may find sentences violating subject-verb agreement grammatical when the sentence contains a feature-matching noun phrase. This so-called agreement attraction effect has also been found in genitive possessive structures such as 'the teacher's brother' in Turkish (Lago et al., 2019), which is in contrast with its absence in similar constructions in English (Nicol et al., 2016). This discrepancy has been hypothesized to be a result of the association between genitive case marking and subjecthood in Turkish, but not in English. In the present research, we test an alternative explanation in which Turkish number agreement attraction effects are due to a potential confound in Lago et al.'s experiment, as a result of which subject head nouns were locally ambiguous between the possessive and the accusative case. We hypothesized that this ambiguity may have inhibited the availability of the head noun as an agreement controller as the accusative is a non-subject case in Turkish. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a speeded acceptability judgment experiment and our results suggest that case-ambiguity does not play a role in agreement attraction, and thus lends credibility to the claim that genitive noun phrases may function as attractors in Turkish due to the association between genitive case and subjecthood.

scholarly journals Gradience in subject–verb number agreement: Can bilinguals tune in?

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 1523-1551
Author(s):  
Anna Jessen ◽  
Lara Schwarz ◽  
Claudia Felser
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Bilingual Group ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Verb Number

AbstractThis study investigates native German speakers’ and bilingual Turkish/German speakers’ sensitivity to constraints on verbal agreement with pseudo-partitive subjects such as eine Packung Tabletten (“a pack of pills”). Although number agreement with the first noun phrase (headed by a container noun) is considered to be the norm, agreement with the second (containee) noun phrase is also possible. We combined scalar acceptability ratings with a stochastic constraint-based grammatical framework to model the relative strength of the constraints that determine speakers’ agreement preferences and subsequently tested whether these models could correctly predict speakers’ verb choices in a production task. For both participant groups, number match between the container noun phrase and the verb was the strongest determinant of both acceptability and production choices. The relative ranking of the constraints that we identified was the same for both groups, and the lack of age-of-acquisition effects suggests that constraints on variable subject–verb agreement, and their relative strength, are acquirable by both early and later learners of German. Group differences were seen in the absolute constraint weightings, however, with the bilinguals’ agreement preferences being more strongly influenced by number match with the containee phrase, indicating a comparatively greater reliance on surface-level cues to agreement (such as noun proximity) among the bilingual group.

Testing the effect of an arbitrary subject pronoun on relative clause comprehension: a study with Hebrew-speaking children

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 959-980 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yair HAENDLER ◽  
Flavia ADANI
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Specific Effect ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Identification Task ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Discourse Pragmatics

AbstractPrevious studies have found that Hebrew-speaking children accurately comprehend object relatives (OR) with an embedded non-referential arbitrary subject pronoun (ASP). The facilitation of ORs with embedded pronouns is expected both from a discourse-pragmatics perspective and within a syntax-based locality approach. However, the specific effect of ASP might also be driven by a mismatch in grammatical features between the head noun and the pronoun, or by its relatively undemanding referential properties. We tested these possibilities by comparing ORs whose embedded subject is either ASP, a referential pronoun, or a lexical noun phrase. In all conditions, grammatical features were controlled. In a referent-identification task, the matching features made ORs with embedded pronouns difficult for five-year-olds. Accuracy was particularly low when the embedded pronoun was referential. These results indicate that embedded pronouns do not facilitate ORs across the board, and that the referential properties of pronouns affect OR processing.

scholarly journals The two concurrent gender systems of Mba

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-325
Author(s):  
Ines Fiedler ◽  
Tom Güldemann ◽  
Benedikt Winkhart
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Semantic Agreement

Abstract This paper describes the gender system of the Ubangi language Mba, which can be characterized by the co-existence of two different classification systems. The ‘formal agreement’ system is tightly bound with the nominal deriflection system, while the ‘semantic agreement’ system, by contrast, emanates from a tripartite distinction in the language made between masculine humans, other animates, and inanimates. Whereas formal agreement is manifested on different elements that modify the head noun, the semantic agreement system operates in the pronominal domain, mostly outside the noun phrase.

scholarly journals Internally-Headed Relative Clauses in Hakha Chin

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefon M Flego
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Embedded Clause

Hakha Chin, an underdocumented Tibeto-Burman language, is reported to have internally-headed relative clauses (IHRCs), a typologically rare syntactic structure in which the head noun phrase surfaces within the relative clause itself. The current study provides new data and novel observations which bear on several outstanding questions about IHRCs in this language: 1) Relativization of locative and instrumental adjuncts in IHRCs is avoided. 2) Conflicting stem allomorph requirements of negation and relativization of non-subjects give rise to optionality in stem choice when the two are brought together in an IHRC. 3) To relativize an indirect object, an IHRC is either avoided altogether, or the noun phrase is fronted to the absolute left-most position in the embedded clause. 4) Relativization of NPs with a human referent in an IHRC exhibit relativizer gender agreement, which has not been previously reported for this clause type in Hakha Chin.

scholarly journals A Description of Dzә (Jenjo) Nouns and Noun Phrases, an Adamawa Language of Northeastern Nigeria

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 490-504
Author(s):  
Peace Benson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Important Data ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Descriptive Research ◽  
Reflexive Pronouns ◽  
Preliminary Study

Dzə [jen] is an Adamawa language spoken in some parts of Taraba, Adamawa and Gombe states in Northeastern Nigeria. The study presented in the article syntactically describes nouns and noun phrases in Dzə. In an attempt to document Dzə and taking into consideration that Dzə is an under-investigated and under-documented language, the result will provide important data to typological research and to linguists working on Adamawa languages. The study adopts a descriptive research design in collecting, describing and analyzing the data. The data was obtained from fieldwork in December 2014, personal observations of daily conversations, introspection and the Dzə Bible. In the article, a brief overview of the phonology and tone of Dzə is provided. It also shows the different kinds of nouns, pronouns and noun phrases in Dzə; simple and complex noun phrases. The language is rich in pronouns, consisting of subject pronouns, object pronouns, reflexive pronouns, interrogative pronouns and possessive pronouns. As it is with most African languages, the elements that constitute a noun phrase occur after the head noun. These elements are articles, demonstratives, possessives, adjectives, numerals, quantifiers, genitive constructions (inalienable and alienable possessives) and relative clauses. This is a preliminary study of Dzə and it is open for further research and contributions.

Anaphor reconstruction in Japanese relative clauses

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunchuan Chen
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Binding Analysis ◽  
Truth Value

Abstract This study conducted two experiments to examine the derivation of the head noun phrase in Japanese relative clauses, with a focus on whether the anaphors jibun ‘self’ and jibun-jishin ‘self-self’ within the head noun phrase can be co-referential with the relative clause subject. It aims to settle a long-standing debate among the previous studies concerning the interpretation of the anaphors inside the head noun phrase: while several studies claimed that the co-reference between the anaphor jibun ‘self’ and the relative clause subject is prohibited, many other studies argued that such co-reference is possible. In addition, it has been claimed that while co-indexing the anaphor jibun with the relative clause subject might be marginally acceptable, it would become fully acceptable if we replace jibun with the morphologically complex anaphor jibun-jishin ‘self-self’, which implies that the morphological make-up of an anaphor may affect its ability to be co-indexed with the relative clause subject. The results of two carefully controlled truth value judgment experiments show that neither the simplex anaphor jibun nor the complex anaphor jibun-jishin within the head noun phrase of relative clauses can take the relative clause subject as its antecedent, which suggests that the head noun phrase does not reconstruct and therefore lends support to the pro-binding analysis of Japanese relative clauses. Moreover, the findings also suggest that the morphological make-up of an anaphor does not affect its ability to take the relative clause subject as its antecedent, despite the claim that it is more acceptable to co-index the complex anaphor jibun-jishin with the relative clause subject than the simplex anaphor jibun.

The syntax of PP-adverbs within English determiner phrases

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
MUTEB ALQARNI
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Movement Analysis ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Determiner Phrases ◽  
The Third ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Rightward Movement ◽  
Female President

The current article explores the distribution of PP-adverbs, such as this month, this year etc., within English determiner phrases. Examples extracted from English newspapers show that PP-adverbs surprisingly separate head nouns from their PP-complements (i.e. of-phrases), e.g. the election this month of the first female president. At other times, PP-adverbs follow PP-complements, e.g. the election of the first female president this month. Assuming that these PP-adverbs have a null preposition (Larson 1985; McCawley 1988; Caponigro & Pearl 2008, 2009; Shun'ichiro 2013), I put forward three possible syntactic analyses to account for the examples above: (i) adjunction of both the PP-complement and the PP-adverb; (ii) leftward movement of the head noun or the noun phrase; and (iii) rightward movement of the PP-complement. Following Stowell (1981), Higginbotham (1983) and Anderson (1984), the adjunction proposal argues that both PP-adverbs and of-phrases are adjuncts, thus being freely ordered in the nominal hierarchy (Bresnan 1982; Svenonius 1994; Stroik & Putnam 2013). In contrast, the leftward movement analysis respects Kayne's (1994) Antisymmetric Theory of Linearization and argues that the of-phrase in the examples above is still a genuine complement, but the head noun, or sometimes the noun phrase, moves leftwards to a position higher than spec,FP where PP-adverbs are situated. As for the rightward movement account, it follows the leftward movement in treating the of-phrase as a complement but differs in that it extraposes the PP-complement outside PP-adverbs and right-adjoins it inside the DP. The article shows that the first two proposals are untenable, and sometimes cannot derive the wanted data. The third account is superior in that it accounts for the required data as well as other island-sensitive facts.

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