STRUCTURAL DECOMPOSITION OF PASHTO PATH PS

Background and Purpose: Past studies categorized Pashto prepositions as pre-position, post-position and ambi-position on the basis of their syntactical position in a unit of grammar. This paper aims to analyze the Pashto path prepositions and to find out its syntactic differences from other major languages, particularly English. Methodology: A data corpus consisted of 245 clauses and sentences collected from Pashto grammar books was analysed using a nanosyntax approach, following Pantcheva and Svenonius’ decomposition of Path Ps and Place Ps where the terminal nodes of Pashto path Ps in the data were identified. Findings: The findings revealed that Pashto Path Ps exhibited Pantcheva’s eight functional semantic heads, but its complexity due to ambiposition and precedence of place Ps over path Ps in complex phrases required adjustments in Pantcheva and Svenonius’ syntactical models to harness the complex patterns of Pashto prepositional system. Moreover, the headedness of PPs in Pashto is flexible, as it can be both head initial and head final. Contributions: This paper not only contributes to the existing literature on Pashto Path Ps but also reflects that the existing syntactic models may further be enriched by their application to cross linguistic data. This paper suggests further studies into Pashto prepositions from other syntactic and semantic perspectives such as nanosyntax algebraic models and iconicity which will not only contribute to the understanding of Pashto grammar and syntax but also to learning Pashto as a second language and translating it. Keywords: Preposition, post position, ambiposition, Path Ps, Place Ps. Cite as: Sardaraz, K., & Kainat. (2022). Structural decomposition of Pashto path Ps. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 7(1), 168-195. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol7iss1pp168-195

Download Full-text

Positive evidence in second language acquisition: some long-term effects

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/026765839601200201 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 111-139 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Martha Trahey

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Long Term Results ◽

Long Term Effects ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Linguistic Data ◽

Adverb Placement ◽

One Year ◽

L1 Acquisition

It has been proposed (Krashen, 1981; 1982; 1985; Schwartz and Gubala- Ryzak, 1992; Schwartz, 1986; 1988; 1993) that L2 acquisition proceeds in essentially the same manner as L1 acquisition (the L1 = L2 position). That is, learners acquire underlying unconscious knowledge of a language (called lin guistic competence) simply by being exposed to the linguistic input (called primary linguistic data) in the environment. Instruction and error correction play no role in the development of competence in the L2. This article reports the long-term results of a study investigating the role of primary linguistic data in the acquisition of linguistic competence - in par ticular, the rules of adverb placement in English. This study examines the knowledge of adverb placement of 52 grade-6 francophone students (aver age age: 12 years, 2 months) learning English as a second language (ESL) in Québec schools. A year earlier, these subjects had been exposed over a two- week period to a flood of primary linguistic data on adverb placement in English. Immediately after the input flood, it was found that while the sub jects had learnt which adverb positions were grammatical in English, they still used positions which were ungrammatical in English but grammatical in the L1. The results of the follow-up test reported in this article reveal that one year after the input flood, the subjects' knowledge of adverb placement has not changed. They still use both the grammatical and the ungrammatical adverb positions, indicating that exposure to an abundance of primary lin guistic data on adverb placement did not lead to mastery of this structure. Possible explanations for these results and their implications for the L1 = L2 position are discussed.

Download Full-text

Is language interference (when it occurs) a graded or an all-or-none effect? Evidence from bilingual reported speech production

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728917000736 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 489-504 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

ANNA HATZIDAKI ◽

MIKEL SANTESTEBAN ◽

WOUTER DUYCK

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Speech Production ◽

Word Order ◽

The Other ◽

Reported Speech ◽

Cross Lingual ◽

Syntactic Differences ◽

Degree Of Similarity

Do cross-lingual interactions occur even with structures of different word order in different languages of bilinguals? Or could the latter provide immunity to interference of the contrasting characteristics of the other language? To answer this question, we examined the reported speech production (utterances reporting what just happened; e.g., Holly asked what Eric ate) of two groups of proficient, unbalanced bilinguals with varying similarity between their native (L1-Spanish/L1-Dutch) and second language (L2-English). The results showed that both groups of bilinguals produced word order errors when formulating indirect What-questions in L2, regardless of how similar the L1 was to the L2 in that respect. Our findings suggest that in the case of reported speech production in the examined bilingual groups, cross-linguistic syntactic differences by themselves suffice to induce language interference, and that the degree of similarity between the L1 and the L2 does not seem to modulate the magnitude of this effect.

Download Full-text

Language and woman's place

Language in Society ◽

10.1017/s0047404500000051 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 45-79 ◽

Cited By ~ 425

Author(s):

Robin Lakoff

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Personal Identity ◽

Real World ◽

Subject Matter ◽

Social Reform ◽

Social Roles ◽

Second Language Teaching ◽

Linguistic Data ◽

Women's Speech ◽

Expression Of Uncertainty

ABSTRACTOur use of language embodies attitudes as well as referential meanings. ‘Woman's language’ has as foundation the attitude that women are marginal to the serious concerns of life, which are pre-empted by men. The marginality and powerlessness of women is reflected in both the ways women are expected to speak, and the ways in which women are spoken of. In appropriate women's speech, strong expression of feeling is avoided, expression of uncertainty is favored, and means of expression in regard to subject-matter deemed ‘trivial’ to the ‘real’ world are elaborated. Speech about women implies an object, whose sexual nature requires euphemism, and whose social roles are derivative and dependent in relation to men. The personal identity of women thus is linguistically submerged; the language works against treatment of women, as serious persons with individual views.These aspects of English are explored with regard to lexicon (color terms, particles, evaluative adjectives), and syntax (tag-questions, and related aspects of intonation in answers to requests, and of requests and orders), as concerns speech by women. Speech about women is analyzed with regard to lady : woman, master : mistress, widow : widower, and Mr : Mrs., Miss, with notice of differential use of role terms not explicitly marked for sex (e.g. professional) as well.Some suggestions and conclusions are offered for those working in the women's liberation movement and other kinds of social reform; second language teaching; and theoretical linguistics. Relevant generalizations in linguistics require study of social mores as well as of purely linguistic data.

Download Full-text

Spanish Grammatical Gender Interference in Papiamentu

Languages ◽

10.3390/languages4040078 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 4 (4) ◽

pp. 78 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jorge R. Valdés Kroff ◽

Frederieke Rooijakkers ◽

M. Carmen Parafita Couto

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Grammatical Gender ◽

Forced Choice ◽

Gender Agreement ◽

Gender Assignment ◽

Heritage Speaker ◽

Syntactic Differences ◽

Gender Features

The aim of this study is to determine whether Spanish-like gender agreement causes interference in speakers of Papiamentu (a Western Romance-lexified creole language) who also speak Spanish. Papiamentu and Spanish are highly cognate languages in terms of their lexicons. However, Papiamentu lacks grammatical gender assignment and agreement, leading to cognate words with major morpho-syntactic differences. A total of 41 participants with different linguistic profiles (Papiamentu-dominant, Dutch-dominant, Spanish-dominant, and Spanish heritage speaker-Papiamentu bilinguals) listened to 82 Papiamentu sentences, of which 40 contained a Spanish-like gender-agreeing element on the Determiner, Adjective, or Determiner + Adjective and with half of the experimental items marked with overtly masculine (i.e., -o) or feminine (i.e., -a) gender morphology. Participants performed a forced-choice acceptability task and were asked to repeat each sentence. Results showed that Spanish-dominant speakers experienced the greatest interference of Spanish gender features in Papiamentu. This suggests that in cases where speakers must suppress gender in their second language (L2), this is not easy to do. This is especially the case in highly cognate languages that differ in whether they realize gender features.

Download Full-text

Missing inflection in second language French: accidental infinitives and other verbal deficits

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/026765830101700303 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 17 (3) ◽

pp. 273-305 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Julia Herschensohn

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Longitudinal Study ◽

Functional Category ◽

Functional Categories ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Structure Building ◽

The Third ◽

Syntactic Differences ◽

L1 Acquisition ◽

Theoretical Issues

This article re-examines the morphology/functional category debate in the light of empirical data drawn from the author’s longitudinal study of two intermediate learners of French as a second language (L2). It argues that inflectional deficits -which appear both as nonfinite verbs and as other morphological errors in the interlanguage data -support neither a codependence of syntax and morphology (Eubank, 1993/94) nor a gradual structure-building of L2 functional categories (Vainikka and Young-Scholten, 1998a, 1998b). The French data rather indicate that deficiencies in morphological mapping, not defective syntax (functional categories), are the cause of L2 failed inflection (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996; Lardière, 1998). The data also support the claim that L2 morpholexical characteristics - the most prone to cross-linguistic variation - are more difficult to master than syntactic differences (Herschensohn, 2000). The first section reviews the theoretical issues, discussing the morphology/functional category link in L1 and then in L2 acquisition. The second section presents relevant data on infinitival forms and other errors from the author’s study. The third section discusses the data, arguing that the infinitival forms of intermediate grammars are not ‘root infinitives’ such as those seen in early stages of L1 acquisition, but rather examples of defective inflection.

Download Full-text

Distinctiveness and Assimilation in Vowel Perception in a Second Language

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2019_jslhr-h-19-0074 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 62 (12) ◽

pp. 4534-4543

Author(s):

Wei Hu ◽

Sha Tao ◽

Mingshuang Li ◽

Chang Liu

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Native Language ◽

Vowel Identification ◽

Vowel Perception ◽

Perceptual Distance ◽

Vowel Space ◽

English Vowels ◽

Chinese Counterpart ◽

Vowel Categories

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate how the distinctive establishment of 2nd language (L2) vowel categories (e.g., how distinctively an L2 vowel is established from nearby L2 vowels and from the native language counterpart in the 1st formant [F1] × 2nd formant [F2] vowel space) affected L2 vowel perception. Method Identification of 12 natural English monophthongs, and categorization and rating of synthetic English vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ in the F1 × F2 space were measured for Chinese-native (CN) and English-native (EN) listeners. CN listeners were also examined with categorization and rating of Chinese vowels in the F1 × F2 space. Results As expected, EN listeners significantly outperformed CN listeners in English vowel identification. Whereas EN listeners showed distinctive establishment of 2 English vowels, CN listeners had multiple patterns of L2 vowel establishment: both, 1, or neither established. Moreover, CN listeners' English vowel perception was significantly related to the perceptual distance between the English vowel and its Chinese counterpart, and the perceptual distance between the adjacent English vowels. Conclusions L2 vowel perception relied on listeners' capacity to distinctively establish L2 vowel categories that were distant from the nearby L2 vowels.

Download Full-text