Cross-Linguistic Trade-Offs and Causal Relationships Between Cues to Grammatical Subject and Object, and the Problem of Efficiency-Related Explanations

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648200 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Natalia Levshina

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Language Evolution ◽

Linguistic Variables ◽

Case Marking ◽

Grammatical Subject ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Subject And Object ◽

Linguistic Behavior ◽

Grammatical Roles

Cross-linguistic studies focus on inverse correlations (trade-offs) between linguistic variables that reflect different cues to linguistic meanings. For example, if a language has no case marking, it is likely to rely on word order as a cue for identification of grammatical roles. Such inverse correlations are interpreted as manifestations of language users’ tendency to use language efficiently. The present study argues that this interpretation is problematic. Linguistic variables, such as the presence of case, or flexibility of word order, are aggregate properties, which do not represent the use of linguistic cues in context directly. Still, such variables can be useful for circumscribing the potential role of communicative efficiency in language evolution, if we move from cross-linguistic trade-offs to multivariate causal networks. This idea is illustrated by a case study of linguistic variables related to four types of Subject and Object cues: case marking, rigid word order of Subject and Object, tight semantics and verb-medial order. The variables are obtained from online language corpora in thirty languages, annotated with the Universal Dependencies. The causal model suggests that the relationships between the variables can be explained predominantly by sociolinguistic factors, leaving little space for a potential impact of efficient linguistic behavior.

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

Languages ◽

10.3390/languages6010042 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 42 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

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.

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The role of case marking and word order in cross-linguistic structural priming in late L2 acquisition

10.31234/osf.io/rkh3m ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Merel Muylle ◽

Bernolet Sarah ◽

Robert Hartsuiker

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Language Variation ◽

Structural Priming ◽

Artificial Language ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Learning Paradigm ◽

Natural Languages ◽

Case Marking

Several studies found cross-linguistic structural priming with various language combinations. Here, we investigated the role of two important domains of language variation: case marking and word order. We varied these features in an artificial language (AL) learning paradigm, using three different AL versions in a between-subjects design. Priming was assessed between Dutch (no case marking, SVO word order) and a) a baseline version with SVO word order, b) a case marking version, and c) a version with SOV word order. Similar within- language and cross-linguistic priming was found in all versions for transitive sentences, indicating that cross-linguistic structural priming was not hindered. In contrast, for ditransitive sentences we found similar within-language priming for all versions, but no cross-linguistic priming. The finding that cross-linguistic priming is possible between languages that vary in morphological marking or word order, is compatible with studies showing cross-linguistic priming between natural languages that differ on these dimensions.

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The utilization of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cues in the assignment of subject role in Arabic

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s014271640001081x ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 299-317 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Hassan A. Taman

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Gender Agreement ◽

Cue Validity ◽

Case Marking ◽

Processing Strategies ◽

Highly Correlated ◽

Subject Role ◽

Similar Processing

AbstractThe role of four cues in the assignment of actor role in Arabic was studied. These cues included animacy, case marking, gender agreement, and word order. The cues were set-in-a competing/converging fashion following the framework of the Competition Model of Bates and MacWhinney (1981, 1982, 1987). Fifty-four sentences representing all possible permutations of the cues were presented to 100 native speakers of Arabic, who were asked to identify the actor in each sentence. Subjects relied mainly on gender agreement and case marking in the assignment of the actor role. The results suggested that cue validity is very highly correlated with cue strength. It was also found that cues do not exhibit an additive nature, and that cross-linguistic formal similarities do not warrant similar processing strategies. Order of nouns tended to represent a “latent strategy” to be utilized only when other relevant cues were not available.

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On the interplay of object animacy and verb type during sentence comprehension in German: ERP evidence from the processing of transitive dative and accusative constructions

Linguistics ◽

10.1515/ling-2017-0031 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 55 (6) ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Anna Czypionka ◽

Katharina Spalek ◽

Isabell Wartenburger ◽

Manfred Krifka

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Sentence Comprehension ◽

Object Processing ◽

Case Marking ◽

Grammatical Subject ◽

Order Case ◽

Accusative Constructions

AbstractComprehension of transitive sentences relies on different kinds of information, like word order, case marking, and animacy contrasts between arguments. When no formal cues like case marking or number congruency are available, a contrast in animacy helps the parser to decide which argument is the grammatical subject and which the object. Processing costs are enhanced when neither formal cues nor animacy contrasts are available in a transitive sentence. We present an ERP study on the comprehension of grammatical transitive German sentences, manipulating animacy contrasts between subjects and objects as well as the verbal case marking pattern. Our study shows strong object animacy effects even in the absence of violations, and in addition suggests that this effect of object animacy is modulated by the verbal case marking pattern.

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Cross-linguistic influence in simultaneous Cantonese–English bilingual children's comprehension of relative clauses

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728914000649 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 438-452 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

EVAN KIDD ◽

ANGEL CHAN ◽

JOIE CHIU

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Relative Clauses ◽

Bilingual Children ◽

Thematic Roles ◽

Error Analyses ◽

English Bilingual ◽

Subject And Object

The current study investigated the role of cross-linguistic influence in Cantonese–English bilingual children's comprehension of subject- and object-extracted relative clauses (RCs). Twenty simultaneous Cantonese–English bilingual children (Mage= 8;11, SD = 2;6) and 20 vocabulary-matched Cantonese monolingual children (Mage= 6;4, SD = 1;3) completed a test of Cantonese RC comprehension. The bilingual children also completed a test of English RC comprehension. The results showed that, whereas the monolingual children were equally competent on subject and object RCs, the bilingual children performed significantly better on subject RCs. Error analyses suggested that the bilingual children were most often correctly assigning thematic roles in object RCs, but were incorrectly choosing the RC subject as the head referent. This pervasive error was interpreted to be due to the fact that both Cantonese and English have canonical SVO word order, which creates competition with structures that compete with an object RC analysis.

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The Role of Case Marking and Word Order in Cross‐Linguistic Structural Priming in Late L2 Acquisition

Language Learning ◽

10.1111/lang.12400 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 70 (S2) ◽

pp. 194-220 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Merel Muylle ◽

Sarah Bernolet ◽

Robert J. Hartsuiker

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Structural Priming ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Case Marking

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Constituent order in silent gesture reflects the perspective of the producer

Journal of Language Evolution ◽

10.1093/jole/lzaa010 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Fiona Kirton ◽

Simon Kirby ◽

Kenny Smith ◽

Jennifer Culbertson ◽

Marieke Schouwstra

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Language Evolution ◽

Human Cognition ◽

Central Theme ◽

Human Agent ◽

Constituent Order ◽

Speech Research ◽

The Relationship ◽

Computational Solution

Abstract Understanding the relationship between human cognition and linguistic structure is a central theme in language evolution research. Numerous studies have investigated this question using the silent gesture paradigm in which participants describe events using only gesture and no speech. Research using this paradigm has found that Agent–Patient–Action (APV) is the most commonly produced gesture order, regardless of the producer’s native language. However, studies have uncovered a range of factors that influence ordering preferences. One such factor is salience, which has been suggested as a key determiner of word order. Specifically, humans, who are typically agents, are more salient than inanimate objects, so tend to be mentioned first. In this study, we investigated the role of salience in more detail and asked whether manipulating the salience of a human agent would modulate the tendency to express humans before objects. We found, first, that APV was less common than expected based on previous literature. Secondly, salience influenced the relative ordering of the patient and action, but not the agent and patient. For events involving a non-salient agent, participants typically expressed the patient before the action and vice versa for salient agents. Thirdly, participants typically omitted non-salient agents from their descriptions. We present details of a novel computational solution that infers the orders participants would have produced had they expressed all three constituents on every trial. Our analysis showed that events involving salient agents tended to elicit AVP; those involving a non-salient agent were typically described with APV, modulated by a strong tendency to omit the agent. We argue that these findings provide evidence that the effect of salience is realized through its effect on the perspective from which a producer frames an event.

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OV–VO in English and the role of case marking in word order

English Language and Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s1360674305001541 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 63-82 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

THOMAS McFADDEN

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

The Other ◽

Morphological Property ◽

Case Marking ◽

Verb Raising ◽

Germanic Languages ◽

The Way

It is shown that the connection posited by Roberts (1997) between the loss of case marking and the shift from OV to VO in English is contradicted by the facts of English and the other Germanic languages. It is argued that this failure is not the result of an incorrect handling of the syntactic or morphological details, but of the way that the proposal straddles the syntax–morphology interface. Parallels are explored with research on verb raising and agreement, and it is proposed that, in order to be more than a descriptive generalization, the claim that some morphological property has a syntactic effect must be couched in terms that both the morphology and the syntax can refer to in a principled way.

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