scholarly journals Mood Alternations in Old High German Subordinate Clauses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Coniglio ◽  
Roland Hinterhölzl ◽  
Svetlana Petrova
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Different Types

In this paper, Old High German mood alternations in the different types of subordinate clauses (complement, adverbial and relative clauses) are discussed. The use of the subjunctive in subordinate clauses is notoriously more frequent than in Modern German and has not yet been thoroughly investigated. Based on a comprehensive corpus study, the paper will show that the licensing conditions for the subjunctive in Old High German are determined by notions such as veridicality and – in relative contexts – specificity. These conditions are thus similar (but not always identical) to those observed for Modern Greek and Romance languages. Furthermore, a syntactic analysis is provided in order to account for the licensing of the subjunctive in each type of subordinate clause.

scholarly journals Pro-drop in interrogatives and declaratives.

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (7) ◽  
pp. 95-140
Author(s):  
Federica Cognola ◽  
George Walkden
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
The Asymmetry

While there has been a substantial body of research on the asymmetry between main and subordinate clauses in terms of the licensing of pro-drop, potential differences between types of unembedded clause have received much less attention – despite the fact that competing theories of pro-drop make strong, clear predictions about the distribution of null subjects across clause types, especially with regard to interrogatives. This paper presents the first in-depth comparative study of pro-drop in both declaratives and interrogatives in two asymmetric pro-drop languages: Old High German and Old Italian. Based on a parallel corpus study using two translations of Tatian’s Diatessaron, we show that there is a clear difference in distribution between interrogatives and declaratives: null subjects are more frequent in declarative clauses than in interrogatives, and these also differ in terms of the persons in which pro-drop is licensed. Our results speak against the V-in-C licensing theory of asymmetric pro-drop of Benincà (1984) and Adams (1987), and in favour of an account based on an Agree relation with left-peripheral operators in the sense of Frascarelli (2007, 2018).

Subordinate clauses

2019 ◽  
pp. 237-288
Author(s):  
Jan Terje Faarlund
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Infinitival Clauses ◽  
Finite Verb ◽  
Nominal Clauses

In subordinate clauses, the C position is occupied by a complementizer word, which may be null. The finite verb stays in V. SpecCP is either empty or occupied by a wh-word, or by some other element indicating its semantic function. Nominal clauses are finite or non-finite. Finite nominal clauses are declarative or interrogative. Declarative nominal clauses may under specific circumstances have main clause word order (‘embedded V2’). Infinitival clauses are marked by an infinitive marker, which is either in C (Swedish), or immediately above V (Danish). Norwegian has both options. Relative clauses comprise several different types; clauses with a relativized nominal argument are mostly introduced by a complementizer; adverbial relative clauses relativize a locative or temporal phrase, with or without a complementizer; comparative clauses relativize a degree or identity. Under hard-to-define circumstances depending on language and region, subordinate clauses allow extraction of phrases up into the matrix clause.

Subordinate and interrogative clause negation in Iquito

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Negative Particle ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Peruvian Amazonia

Abstract This paper describes a specific non-standard negation strategy in Iquito, a moribund Zaparoan language spoken in northern Peruvian Amazonia. This strategy is used in finite subordinate clauses (namely adverbial dependent clauses and relative clauses), as well as information questions, and it utilizes two negative markers: a negative particle which is also found in standard negation, and a verbal affix which does not function as a negator in any other context. Using existing typological characterizations of subordinate clause negation, we see that Iquito exhibits the following attested traits: it uses the standard negator in a different position, it also utilizes a distinct negator, and it employs more negators in the subordinate clause than in the main clause. But unlike the languages presented in the literature, Iquito utilizes these parameters simultaneously. Additionally, the position of the standard negator changes within the subordinate clause, depending on the reality status of the clause. Using Iquito as a case study, I propose a set of parameters for comparing subordinate clause and interrogative negation strategies to standard negation strategies, which include the type of negator used, its position, the overall number of negators, the potential for interaction with other grammatical categories, such as reality status, and the resulting word order of the clause. This set of parameters expands the initial typological characterizations of subordinate clause negation strategies.

scholarly journals The use of attributive clauses in spoken Lithuanian

2016 ◽  
pp. 55-71
Author(s):  
Laura Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė ◽  
Ingrida Balčiūnienė
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Relative Pronouns ◽  
Attributive Adjectives

The syntactic features of spoken Lithuanian are still under-researched due to insufficient data bases, limited technologies, and research methodologies. During the last years, the "Corpus of Spoken Lithuanian" (developed at Vytautas Magnus University; 225,000 words; 80 hours of digitalized audio recordings) has been syntactically annotated, and this has enabled complex automatized syntactic analysis. In the present paper, one of the first such studies is presented and its results are discussed. The corpus linguistics methodology has been employed.The paper deals with the frequency and basic types of attributive clauses in spoken Lithuanian language. The results of the study have highlighted that attributive clauses tend to be more frequent (up to 15% of all subordinate clauses) in public speech, and they are significantly less frequent (up to 7% of all subordinate clauses) in private spontaneous speech.The position of a subordinate clause after the head noun is unmarked and the most frequent in public speech and spontaneous private speech. Consequently, 65% and 88% of all attributive adjectives followed the head noun in private spontaneous speech and in public speech. Since in Lithuanian the word order is not so strict, in private spontaneous speech constructions with a subordinate clause before the head noun are used.The analysis of subordinating conjunctions and relative pronouns has revealed that in public speech the link between a subordinate clause and an independent clause tends to be expressed by the relative pronoun "kuris", "kuri" (‘which’). Namely, in public speech, this pronoun is employed in 85% of all attributive clauses. The number of relative pronouns in private spoken speech reaches only 30%, whereas the subordinating conjunction "kur" (‘where’) has been used in the majority of attributive clauses (51%).The findings of the study reveal the main tendencies in the distribution and frequency of attributive clauses and suggest that the usage of attributive clauses depends, to a large extent, on the register of spoken language.

Sur la nature et la structure des consécutives intégrées

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-175
Author(s):  
Christian Molinier
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Distributional Analysis ◽  
Causal Principle ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The One

This paper offers an analysis of the French integrated consecutive (result) construction, starting out from the correlative system observed in the ancient Indo-European languages, in particular the one which J. Haudry terms « dyptique inverse ». It is shown that the morpheme que, a relative marker, has a content that is identifiable on the basis of the main clause (as in the case of canonical relative clauses) but which functions as a causal principle in relation to the subordinate clause. At the same time, it is also shown that sentences containing consecutive subordinate clauses involve two distinct structures superimposed one on the other: one of these is defined in terms of the hierarchical constituents of distributional analysis, and the other in terms of two independent clauses. The latter structure makes it possible to account for certain ambiguities that may be found in their interpretation. In that respect as well, consecutive clauses are similar to canonical relatives.

Similarities in the Syntactic Structure of the German and Croatian Language

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Manuela Svoboda
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
German Language ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Subordinate Clauses

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to analyse any potential similarities between the Croatian and German language and present them adopting a contrastive approach with the intent of simplifying the learning process in regards to the German syntactic structure for Croatian German as foreign language students. While consulting articles and books on the theories and methods of foreign language teaching, attention is usually drawn to differences between the mother tongue and the foreign language, especially concerning false friends etc. The same applies to textbooks, workbooks and how teachers behave in class. Thus, it is common practice to deal with the differences between the foreign language and the mother tongue but less with similarities. This is unfortunate considering that this would likely aid in acquiring certain grammatical and syntactic structures of the foreign language. In the author's opinion, similarities are as, if not more, important than differences. Therefore, in this article the existence of similarities between the Croatian and German language will be examined closer with a main focus on the segment of sentence types. Special attention is drawn to subordinate clauses as they play an important role when speaking and/or translating sentences from Croatian to German and vice versa. In order to present and further clarify this matter, subordinate clauses in both the German and Croatian language are defined, clarified and listed to gain an oversight and to present possible similarities between the two. In addition, the method to identify subordinate clauses in a sentence is explained as well as what they express, which conjunctions are being used for each type of subordinate clause in both languages and where the similarities and/or differences between the two languages lie.

Da eine oder mehrere betroffen …

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-100
Author(s):  
Melitta Gillmann
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Formal Language ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Very High Frequency ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Very High

AbstractBased on a corpus study conducted using the GerManC corpus (1650–1800), the paper sketches the functional and sociosymbolic development of subordinate clause constructions introduced by the subjunctor da ‘since’ in different text genres. In the second half of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century, the da clauses were characterized by semantic vagueness: Besides temporal, spatial and causal relations, the subjunctor established conditional, concessive, and adversative links between clauses. The corpus study reveals that different genres are crucial to the readings of da clauses. Spatial and temporal usages, for example, occur more often in sermons than in other genres. The conditional reading, in contrast, strongly tends to occur in legal texts, where it displays very high frequency. This could be the reason why da clauses carry indexical meaning in contemporary German and are associated with formal language. Over the course of the 18th century, the causal usages increase in all genres. Surprisingly, these causal da clauses tend to be placed in front of the matrix clause despite the overall tendency of causal clauses to follow the matrix clause.

Examining individual variation in learner production data: A few programmatic pointers for corpus-based analyses using the example of adverbial clause ordering

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Stefan Th. Gries ◽  
Stefanie Wulff
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Adverbial Clause ◽  
Temporal Adverbial

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.

scholarly journals The concepts of «reality» and «statement» in the analysis of modal alternation in Spanish relative subordinate clauses

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (25) ◽  
pp. 129-134
Author(s):  
Alexandra I. Makarova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Subjunctive Mood ◽  
Subordinate Clauses

The article analyzes theoretical works that raise the problem of analyzing the use of the subjunctive mood in subordinate relatives in Spanish based on the concept of «reality». This topic is relevant and widely discussed among Spanish researchers. Earlier, the author has already attempted to study a different concept – the concept of «statement». This concept, based on the hidden semantics of the whole sentence, is applicable to the analysis of subordinate object sentences. The aim of the study is to determine the features of the subjunctive mood use in subordinate relative sentences in the Spanish language, based on the semantic features of the concepts of «statement» and «reality». This article attempts to implement the concept of «statement» in the analysis of subordinate relative clauses. The author concludes that this concept is not always applicable to the analysis of this type of subordinate clauses. However, we cannot completely exclude it from the analysis. The concept of «reality», which is in its own way a consequence of the concept of «statement», helps to explain the modal alternation in subordinate relative clauses. The subjunctive mood indicates the abstractness of the antecedent or the speaker's doubts about the existence of the antecedent in reality. The indicative mood, on the contrary, indicates the reality of the object or the speaker's belief in its existence. The materials of this study raise questions related to the application of concepts within other types of subordinate clauses and in other closely related languages (French).

scholarly journals Comparative and contrastive analysis of French conjunctive expressions «autant que», «d'autant que and d'autant plus que» and their Spanish equivalents

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (25) ◽  
pp. 119-128
Author(s):  
Anna V. Solntseva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Equivalence Condition ◽  
Additional Reason ◽  
Three Components

The article is an attempt of a semantic and syntactic analysis of French complex conjunctions autant que, d'autant que and d'autant plus que. The author undertakes to find out which means of conjunction can be regarded as their equivalents in Spanish. The research is based on the data provided by dictionaries and translations of French fiction and press into Spanish. The article defines the grammatical status and lexical meaning of the conjunctions autant que, d'autant que and d'autant plus que and their Spanish equivalents, analyzes the conditions of their functioning in speech, reveals common features and differences in the fields of syntagmatics and paradigmatics. The conjunction autant que can denote a variety of meanings and their shades: comparison, limitation, equivalence, condition, concession. In Spanish it corresponds to tanto como, como, cuanto, hasta donde, según lo que, en lo que, todo lo que and the combination a más po + infinitive, cuando, por mucho que. French verbless constructions containing autant que can be translated by Spanish constructions containing lo que, lo mismo que, el mismo + noun + que, al mismo tiempo. French conjunctions d'autant plus que and d'autant que correspond in Spanish to tanto más cuanto que, tanto más cuanto, tanto más que. These conjunctions serve to indicate additional motivation for the action described in the mainsentence. They introduce subordinate clauses expressing additional reason and operate within constructions consisting of three components: the motivated message, the main reason, and the additional reason.

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