scholarly journals Heterosemy of case markers and clause-linkers in Andaandi (Nile Nubian)

2016 ◽  
pp. 162-188
Author(s):  
Angelika Jakobi ◽  
. El-Guzuuli
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Functional Change ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Complement Clauses ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Case Markers

Case markers are usually associated with nouns or noun phrases but, as shown in Aikhenvald’s (2008) cross-linguistic study on “versatile cases”, case markers are also used as clause-linkers in a wide range of genetically diverse languages. However, African languages are not found in Aikhenvald’s sample. Our paper shows that in some subgroups of Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic case markers are, in fact, attested on subordinate clauses. Focusing on Andaandi, a Nubian language classified as a member of the Eastern Sudanic subgroup of Nilo-Saharan, we first present an outline of the system of grammatical relations and an overview over the use of core and peripheral case markers on noun phrases. This overview serves as a background for our study of case markers. While the Accusative case marker is employed as subordinator of object complement clauses, various peripheral case markers are used as subordinators of adverbial clauses. The different morphosyntactic contexts in which the case markers occur, i.e. on noun phrases and on verbs of subordinate clauses, determine their functional change and heterosemy.

scholarly journals COMPLEX SENTENCES IN TEXTS OF INFORMED CONSENT FOR DENTAL TREATMENT: STRUCTURAL, SEMANTIC, COMMUNICATIVE AND DISCOURSIVE ASPECTS

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-147
Author(s):  
Victoria Kostenko ◽  
Olena Bieliaieva ◽  
Iryna Solohor
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Medical Information ◽  
Dental Treatment ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Communicative Strategy ◽  
Patient’S Perception

This article presents investigation of the structural and semantic characteristics of complex sentences and their contribution to implementing communicative strategies in the texts of informed consent for dental treatment. Informed consent is a bilateral document that provides a sufficient amount of specific information about the character of dental intervention, records the communication between doctor and patient in order to enable patients to make voluntary decisions concerning the exposure to potentially dangerous procedures. Complex sentences have been found out as one of the most common types of sentences in the texts studied. Although there is a wide range of complex sentences of different formal and semantic-syntactic types in the informed consent, some types are more prevalent than others. The two most common types of subordinate clauses have been identified: noun clauses as a direct object and adverbial clauses of condition. Complex sentences with objective clauses often contain cognitive or volitional verbs in the independent clause and are characterized by semantic and structural incompleteness, while the subordinate clause is a semantic center, which reveals, explains or complements the scope of the main clause. This type of complex sentences serves as one of the means to implement the communicative tactics guiding and controlling the patient’s perception of medical information. Conditional sentences specifying the circumstances and in particular those demonstrating the cause-effect relationship in the form of implicitation reasoning formulae are applied to implement the information communicative strategy. The considerable number of explanatory constructions (concretization, description, addition, clarification) serves to facilitate clearer understanding of the special information, thus implementing the information communicative strategy. The complex sentences are to increase the density of information and to focus on the addressee’s attention to the most relevant segments of the sentence and text. The predominance of complex sentences demonstrates the interaction of two tendencies: to compress the ramified logical relationship between phenomena, processes, situations within a sentence on the one hand, and to provide additional and sometimes redundant information in order to reduce the chance that a message will be misinterpreted, on the other hand. These tendencies incorporated on the syntax level by complex sentences are important preconditions for effective communication in giving / obtaining voluntary informed consent for dental treatment.

Avar

2021 ◽  
pp. 241-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Forker
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Clear Tendency ◽  
The Core ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Analytic Core ◽  
Gender Divisions ◽  
The Rich

This chapter provides a grammatical sketch of Avar, the largest indigenous language of Dagestan. Avar has five vowels and more than 40 consonants, among which there are a number of voiced, voiceless, ejective (glottalized), and tense (strong) obstruents. The language is agglutinative with some elements of fusion and strongly suffixing. Nouns are divided into three genders, and three inflectional classes, which largely correlate with the gender divisions. The core cases are absolutive, ergative, dative and genitive; furthermore, there are twenty spatial cases. Avar has gender and number agreement expressed by prefixes, suffixes, and occasionally infixes. Agreement targets are mainly verbs, adjectives, and certain pronouns. While agreement and case marking follow ergative alignment, no ergative patterns are found outside the realm of morphology. The rich inventory of verb forms consists of four synthetic and six analytic core tenses used in finite clauses. The non-finite verb forms include infinitive, masdar, and a wide range of participles and converbs. Noun phrases and subordinate clauses are head-final. In main clauses there is a clear tendency for A-P-V order, but other orders are also attested.

scholarly journals Case Markers in Mongolian: A Means for Encoding Null Constituents in Noun Phrase and Relative Clause

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Tseden Otgonsuren
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Early Observation ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Syntactic Function ◽  
Case Markers

This paper focuses on the capacity of the case markers in the Mongolian language, as a relative element, to generate any finite noun phrase or relative clause based on their syntactic function or relationship. In Mongolian, there are two different approaches to generate noun phrases: parataxis and hypotaxis. According to my early observation, if the noun phrase generated through the parataxis, is the complement of the postpositional phrase, the head word of the relevant noun phrase can be truncated. In other words, since this head noun is governed by case marker in its null form to generate the postpositional phrase, the head noun can be encoded.  The second approach generates two different types of noun phrases in their structures: free structured and non-free structured noun phrases. Of them, the free structured noun phrase allows any syntactic transformations in their internal structure based on the senses of the case markers which denote a relation. That is to say, the null constituents in this type of noun phrases can be encoded to generate an extended alternative of the noun phrase and a relative clause.    

scholarly journals Greek meets Turkish at the western edge of Asia: Case markers and complementizers under language contact

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Metin Bağrıaçık ◽  
Ash Göksel ◽  
Angela Ralli
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Standard Variety ◽  
Western Turkey ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Clausal Complementation ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Case Markers

We investigate case and clausal complementation systems in Cunda Turkish spoken in Western Turkey by refugees relocated from Crete (Greece) in and after 1923. Unlike Standard Turkish, Cunda Turkish exhibits unpredictable dative–locative and dative–accusative shifts. We claim these shifts are due to interference of the heritage language, Cretan Greek. Cunda Turkish subordination patterns also differ from those of the standard variety. Contrary to the case in Standard Turkish, nominalizing suffixes are employed only when selecting (matrix) predicates are non-factive veridical ones. Non-veridical predicates, on the other hand, select subordinate clauses that are in optative mood, a preexisting Turkish pattern which has nevertheless been reinforced by Cretan Greek impact. Finally, clauses that are complements to factive predicates are indicative clauses headed by an optional complementizer, a pattern which is extended to these clauses from factive adverbial clauses.

THE STUDY OF COMPLEMENTARY COMPLEXES IN MODERN GRAMMAR SCHOOLS

2019 ◽  
pp. 75-86
Author(s):  
O. Tuhai
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Status ◽  
Clausal Complementation ◽  
Communicative Approach ◽  
Clausal Complements ◽  
Form Feature

The article focuses on the basic theoretical approaches to the analysis of complementary complexes in modern grammar paradigms. The phenomenon of clausal complementation has been presented. Subordinate sentences are characterized as object clausal complements with the status of a core internal argument of the main predicate. Grammatical configuration and functioning of finite/infinitive complementary sentences in English have been revealed. Grammatical status of clauses under the study is postulated as object predication or the internal verbal complement in the function of an object. Grammatical indicators of finite sentences are analyzed considering specific that/wh- markers of complementation, semantics of matrix verbs as well as temporal tense-form feature in a verbal phrase. Grammatical configuration of infinitive sentences is denoted by to-/wh-markers and noun phrases in a certain case. Identifying criteria of verbal clausal complements have been distinguished. Morphology of the predicate, internal/external syntax of a complementary construction are grounded as leading features of their definition. Typology of verbal complementation in terms of transitivity, complement attachment to the perculia part of speech, functional communicative approach has been reviewed. General monotransitive, complex-transitive and ditransitive complementation has been outlined. When being attached to a particular language constituent a clause is determined as nominal, adjective or verbal complement. Due to communicative peculiarity finite subordinate clauses are positioned as content declarative, interrogative and exclamative.

The processing of case in near-native Spanish

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Jegerski
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Case Markers ◽  
Ditransitive Constructions

This article reports a study that sought to determine whether non-native sentence comprehension can show sensitivity to two different types of Spanish case marking. Sensitivity to case violations was generally more robust with indirect objects in ditransitive constructions than with differential object marking of animate direct objects, even among native speakers of Spanish, which probably reflects linguistic differences in the two types of case. In addition, the overall outcome of two experiments shows that second language (L2) processing can integrate case information, but that, unlike with native processing, attention to a case marker may depend on the presence of a preverbal clitic as an additional cue to the types of postverbal arguments that might occur in a stimulus. Specifically, L2 readers showed no sensitivity to differential object marking with a in the absence of clitics in the first experiment, with stimuli such as Verónica visita al/el presidente todos los meses ‘Veronica visits the[ACC/NOM]president every month’, but the L2 readers in the second experiment showed native-like sensitivity to the same marker when the object it marked was doubled by the clitic lo, as in Verónica lo visita al/el presidente todos los meses. With indirect objects, on the other hand, sensitivity to case markers was native-like in both experiments, although indirect objects were also always doubled by the preverbal clitic le. The apparent first language / second language contrast suggests differences in processing strategy, whereby non-native processing of morphosyntax may rely more on the predictability of forms than does native processing.

scholarly journals Typological Shift in Bilinguals’ L1: Word Order and Case Marking in Two Varieties of Child Quechua

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Kalt ◽  
Jonathan A. Geary
Keyword(s):  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
New Information ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Case Morphology ◽  
Grammatical Roles

We compare speech production and find morphosyntactic change among children and adolescents speaking two closely related varieties of Quechua in Cuzco, Peru, and Chuquisaca, Bolivia. Quechua languages traditionally employ Object-Verb (OV) word order in main clauses, but robust case marking permits other orders, especially to focalize new information through constituent fronting. In Chuquisaca, but not Cuzco, we find that schoolchildren often omit the accusative suffix -ta from direct objects while retaining a prosodic trace of -ta. In other varieties, loss of accusative marking is associated with a shift towards Verb-Object (VO) word order, as in Spanish. However, we find that Chuquisaqueños use more canonical OV and possessor-possessed order in declarative sentences than do Cuzqueños, who employ a wide range of word orders at the sentence level and deviate from the possessor-possessed norm for Quechua noun phrases. Our finding of more rigid word order in Chuquisaca highlights the complex factors contributing to typological shift in word order and morphology: Omission of case morphology places a greater burden on word order to identify grammatical roles. Further, we find that Chuquisaqueño schoolchildren alone have begun to use huk, “one,” to mark indefiniteness, perhaps to replace determiner-like functions ascribed to -ta and to obsolescent markers such as evidentials.

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.

Typological overview of Estonian syntax

2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mati Erelt
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Concise Overview ◽  
Verb Categories

AbstractThe paper presents a concise overview of the main syntactic features of Estonian. It deals with basic clause patterns, case marking of arguments, verbs and verb categories, non-verbal predication, word order, expression of speech acts and negation, noun phrases, p-phrases, subordinate clauses, and coordination.

scholarly journals The understanding of complex syntax in children with Down syndrome

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Frizelle ◽  
Paul A. Thompson ◽  
Mihaela Duta ◽  
Dorothy V. M. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
Down Syndrome ◽  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Complex Syntax ◽  
Complement Clauses ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Digit Recall

Background: Down syndrome (DS) is associated with poor language skills that seem disproportionate to general nonverbal ability, but the nature and causes of this deficit are unclear. We assessed how individuals with DS understand complex linguistic constructions, and considered how cognitive ability and memory and impact the ability of those with DS to process these sentence types. Methods: There were three groups participating in the study: children with DS (n = 33) and two control groups composed of children with cognitive impairment of unknown aetiology (CI) (n = 32) and children with typical development (n = 33). The three groups did not differ on raw scores on a test of non-verbal cognitive ability. Using a newly devised animation task, we examined how well individuals with DS (n = 33) could understand relative clauses, complement clauses and adverbial clauses compared to children with CI and typically developing controls. Participants also completed the Test for the Reception of Grammar-2, three measures of memory (forward and backward digit recall, visuo-spatial memory) and a hearing screen. Results: Results indicated that (1) with the exception of intransitive subject relative clauses, children with DS performed at floor on all other complex sentences, (2) they performed at a significantly lower level than both control groups, and (3) DS status accounted for a significant proportion of the variance over and above memory skills. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that children with DS have a disproportionate difficulty understanding complex sentences compared to two control groups matched on mental age. Furthermore, their understanding of syntax is not completely explained by poor cognitive or memory skills, rather it appears to be a specific deficit that may distinguish children with DS from other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document