scholarly journals Do particle verbs share a representation with their root verbs? Evidence from structural priming

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuemei Chen ◽  
Robert Hartsuiker
Keyword(s):  
Structural Priming ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Particle Verbs ◽  
Particle Verb

Many languages have particle verbs like meegeven in Dutch, in which a particle (“mee”, with) sometimes appears independently from the root verb (“geven”, give). To investigate whether particle verbs and their root verbs share a lexical-syntactic (lemma) representation, we tested whether structural priming (the tendency for speakers to repeat sentence structure) is boosted by lexical overlap between prime and target verbs. Priming was larger with repetition of the identical verb than with root-only repetition and larger with particle-only repetition than without lexical repetition. These findings support a dual-lemma representation for particle verbs: one lemma represents the verb-particle combination (separately from the root), another lemma represents the particle (shared with other particle verbs). Finally, priming was larger from root to particle verb than between two different particle verbs with identical roots, suggesting that particle-verb lemmas are connected to their root-verb lemmas but not to each other.

English transitive particle verbs

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han Luo
Keyword(s):  
Causal Link ◽  
State Change ◽  
Final State ◽  
Particle Verbs ◽  
Motion Event ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Particle Verb ◽  
Change Event ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Idiomatic Meaning

Abstract Adopting the Cognitive Linguistic (CL) framework, this study focuses on the particle placement phenomenon of English transitive particle verbs and its relationship with idiomaticity. Construal is argued to play a key role in determining which order a transitive particle verb should take. When a caused motion event or state change event is construed sequentially, the discontinuous order is taken to emphasize the final resultant state of the object. When the holistic construal is taken to view the same situation, the continuous order is adopted to profile the object or the interaction between the subject and the object. The holistic construal requires two conditions. First, the particle has a dynamic sense. It can designate both the process and the endpoint of motion. Second, the final state denoted by the particle is directly caused by the action denoted by the verb. In contrast, the sequential construal is allowed as long as a causal link can be established between the two participants under discussion or between the verb and the state change of one participant. In addition, the present study argues that the particle placement of idiomatic particle verbs depends on the processes in which the particle verb has developed its idiomaticity. If the idiomatic meaning develops from the inference associated with the sequential construal, the discontinuous order is preferred. On the other hand, if the idiomatic meaning is based on the holistic construal, the continuous order is then preferred. Moreover, item-by-item analyses of particle verbs that only allow one order listed in the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs provide corpus-based support to the CL view of the relationship between construal, particle placement, and idiomaticity proposed in this study.

Structural priming supports grammatical networks

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Network Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Dependency Structure ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Theory Of Language

AbstractAs Branigan & Pickering (B&P) argue, structural priming has important implications for the theory of language structure, but these implications go beyond those suggested. Priming implies a network structure, so the grammar must be a network and so must sentence structure. Instead of phrase structure, the most promising model for syntactic structure is enriched dependency structure, as in Word Grammar.

Motivations for particle verb word order in Middle and Early Modern English

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARION ELENBAAS
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
The Other ◽  
Particle Verbs ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The One ◽  
Particle Verb

This article examines possible motivations for the choice of particle verb word order in Middle English (1100–1500) and Early Modern English (1500–1700). The word order alternation of Present-Day English particle verbs, which presents language users with a choice between verb–object–particle and verb–particle–object order, first emerged in Early Middle English (twelfth century). For Present-Day English, several studies (e.g. Gries 1999, 2003; Dehé 2002) have shown that the choice is influenced by a number of linguistic factors, such as the heaviness of the object (morphosyntactic factor) and the givenness of the object (discourse factor). This article reveals the influence of a number of morphosyntactic factors and also shows that the choice is increasingly influenced by the givenness of the object. The differences between Present-Day English on the one hand and Middle and Early Modern English on the other hand are discussed in the light of syntactic changes going on in these periods. It is argued that the developments in particle verb syntax are characterised by an increasing division of labour between the two word orders, which may also explain why both orders survive into Present-Day English.

Solving the bracketing paradox: an analysis of the morphology of German particle verbs

2003 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFAN MÜLLER
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Properties ◽  
Particle Verbs ◽  
Bracketing Paradoxes ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Particle Verb ◽  
Bracketing Paradox ◽  
Inflectional Affixes

Inflectional affixes are sensitive to morphological properties of the stems of the verbs they attach to. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the inflectional material is combined with both the verbal stem of simplex verbs and the verbal stem of particle verbs. It has been argued that this leads to a bracketing paradox in the case of particle verbs since the semantic contribution of the inflectional information scopes over the complete particle verb. I will discuss nominalizations and adjective derivation, which are also problematic because of various bracketing paradoxes. I will suggest a solution to these paradoxes that assumes that inflectional and derivational prefixes and suffixes always attach to a form of a stem that already contains the information about a possible particle, but without containing a phonological realization of the particle. As is motivated by syntactic properties of particle verbs, the particle is treated as a dependent of the verb. The particle is combined with its head after inflection and derivation. With such an approach no special mechanisms for the analysis of particle verbs are necessary.

scholarly journals What particle verbs have to do with grammatical aspect in early child English

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 119-131
Author(s):  
Liane Jeschull
Keyword(s):  
First Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Child ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Grammatical Aspect ◽  
Particle Verbs ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The One ◽  
Particle Verb

The current study investigates the relation between aspect and particle verbs in the acquisition of English. Its purpose is to determine whether children associate telicity, as argued in previous studies, or rather perfectivity, which entails completion of a telic situation, with their early particle verb use. The study analyzes naturalistic data of four monolingual children between 1;6 and 3;8 from CHILDES acquiring English as their first language. On the one hand, it finds that children use both –ed and irregular perfective morphology with simplex verbs before particle verbs. They further use imperfective before perfective morphology with particle verbs. These findings suggest that there is no correlation between telic particle verbs and perfective morphology, as would have been predicted on an account which claims that lexical aspect of predicates guides the acquisition of grammatical aspect (Olsen & Weinberg 1999). On the other hand, the study finds that the children’s particle verbs denote telic situations from early on, but not half of them were used to refer to situations that are also completed. This finding questions analyses which claim that, at an initial stage, children will only interpret predicates as telic if they refer to situations that are at the same time completed. Completion information is not necessary for children in order to use particle verbs correctly for telic situations, as would have been predicted on an extended account along the lines of Wagner (2001). As a conclusion, it is suggested that the divergent findings result from a difference in methodology. While restrictions of perfective and imperfective morphology to particular classes of lexical aspect pertain to the production of grammatical aspect morphology, perfective and imperfective viewpoints on situations pertain to the level of interpretation of telic and atelic situations.  

scholarly journals The role of explicit memory in syntactic persistence: Effects of lexical cueing and load on sentence memory and sentence production

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0240909
Author(s):  
Chi Zhang ◽  
Sarah Bernolet ◽  
Robert J. Hartsuiker
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Explicit Memory ◽  
Sentence Production ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Memory Mechanism ◽  
Mathematical Problems ◽  
Load Effects ◽  
Syntactic Persistence

Speakers’ memory of sentence structure can persist and modulate the syntactic choices of subsequent utterances (i.e., structural priming). Much research on structural priming posited a multifactorial account by which an implicit learning process and a process related to explicit memory jointly contribute to the priming effect. Here, we tested two predictions from that account: (1) that lexical repetition facilitates the retrieval of sentence structures from memory; (2) that priming is partly driven by a short-term explicit memory mechanism with limited resources. In two pairs of structural priming and sentence structure memory experiments, we examined the effects of structural priming and its modulation by lexical repetition as a function of cognitive load in native Dutch speakers. Cognitive load was manipulated by interspersing the prime and target trials with easy or difficult mathematical problems. Lexical repetition boosted both structural priming (Experiments 1a–2a) and memory for sentence structure (Experiments 1b–2b) and did so with a comparable magnitude. In Experiment 1, there were no load effects, but in Experiment 2, with a stronger manipulation of load, both the priming and memory effects were reduced with a larger cognitive load. The findings support an explicit memory mechanism in structural priming that is cue-dependent and attention-demanding, consistent with a multifactorial account of structural priming.

scholarly journals The Acquisition of Prefix and Particle Verbs in German: Evidence from CHILDES

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Evelyn Richter
Keyword(s):  
Particle Verbs ◽  
Morphological Composition ◽  
Syntactic Behavior ◽  
Particle Verb ◽  
Stress Patterns

German prefix and particle verbs differ in their morphological composition and morpho-syntactic behavior (see Zeller 2001). This project investigates errors children do (not) make in the acquisition of these verb types using semi-automatically extracted CHILDES data from one child (1.9 to 4.0). The results support our prediction that children distinguish prefix and particle verbs: Prefix verbs are not split. Perfective ge- is not inserted between prefix and root. ge- is not attached before the particle. Verb dropping only occurs with particle verbs. Contrasting stress patterns could be explored as the reason for the child’s ability to distinguish these verb types.

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