scholarly journals Priming as a Diagnostic of Grammatical Constructions: Second-Person Singular in Chilean Spanish

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Matthew Callaghan ◽  
Catherine E. Travis
Keyword(s):  
Priming Effect ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Weak Association ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Status ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Chilean Spanish ◽  
Measure Of Association

Structural priming has been described as a measure of association between constructions. Here, we apply priming as a diagnostic to assess the status of the Chilean second-person singular (2sg) voseo, which exists in variation with the more standard tuteo. Despite being the majority variant in informal interactions, Chileans are reported to have little metalinguistic awareness of voseo and they avoid the vos pronoun, in some cases using the tú pronoun with voseo verb forms, leading to proposals that tuteo and voseo are conflated into a single mixed form. The patterning for priming, however, indicates otherwise. Analyses of some 2000 2sg familiar tokens from a corpus of conversational Chilean Spanish reveal that a previous tuteo or voseo favors the repetition of that same form, indicating that speakers do treat these forms as distinct. We also observe that invariable forms with historically tuteo morphology are associated with neither voseo nor tuteo, while the invariable voseo discourse marker cachái ‘you know’ retains a weak association with voseo. Furthermore, while tuteo is favored with a tú subject pronoun, this effect does not override the priming effect, evidence that, even with a tú pronoun, voseo and tuteo are distinct constructions in speakers’ representations.

scholarly journals Verbs of Command and the Status of Their Embedded Complements in Chinese

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-145
Author(s):  
Chak-Lam Colum Yip
Keyword(s):  
Blocking Effect ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Partial Control ◽  
Object Control ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
The Status ◽  
Complement Clauses ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Subject Pronoun

AbstractThis paper argues against Yue’s (1999) view that complements to verbs of commands (jiao ‘to ask/to tell,’ qing ‘to request,’ quan ‘to persuade,’ etc.) are embedded imperatives with a covert [+second person] subject pronoun. Evidence against the embedded imperative analysis include the presence of partial control, the absence of blocking effect in long-distance binding, the incompatibility between these complement clauses and the polite imperative marker qing, and the fact that Yue’s proposed covert [+second person] pronoun cannot be made overt. Since verbs of commands participate in object control, the present proposal agrees with Zhu’s (1982) treatment of verbs of command as pivotal verbs. Finally, complement clauses of verbs of command are not embedded imperatives as bie can also appear with third person subjects, which shows that the negator does not mark imperative but irrealis and deontic modality. Hence, its presence in complements of verbs of command does not lead to an embedded imperative analysis.

The role of constituent order and level of embedding in cross-linguistic structural priming

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
GUNNAR JACOB ◽  
KALLIOPI KATSIKA ◽  
NEILOUFAR FAMILY ◽  
SHANLEY E. M. ALLEN
Keyword(s):  
Priming Effect ◽  
Target Sentence ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Tree Representation ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Hierarchical Tree ◽  
Constituent Order

In two cross-linguistic priming experiments with native German speakers of L2 English, we investigated the role of constituent order and level of embedding in cross-linguistic structural priming. In both experiments, significant priming effects emerged only if prime and target were similar with regard to constituent order and also situated on the same level of embedding. We discuss our results on the basis of two current theoretical accounts of cross-linguistic priming, and conclude that neither an account based on combinatorial nodes nor an account assuming that constituent order is directly responsible for the priming effect can fully explain our data pattern. We suggest an account that explains cross-linguistic priming through a hierarchical tree representation. This representation is computed during processing of the prime, and can influence the formulation of a target sentence only when the structural features specified in it are grammatically correct in the target sentence.

scholarly journals Los clíticos de segunda persona de plural en las lenguas romances de la Península Ibérica

2018 ◽  
Vol 134 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-85
Author(s):  
Víctor Lara Bermejo
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
Península Ibérica

AbstractThe Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula possess a second person plural subject pronoun that induces verb and pronoun agreement in 2pl. While standard Catalan chooses us/vos as unstressed pronouns, Portuguese selects vos and Spanish, os. Nevertheless, the data taken from linguistic atlases of the 20th century point out the great quantity of 2pl allomorphs in unstressed pronouns: tos, sos, sus, los and se. In this article, I aim to account for the linguistic geography of 2pl allomorphs and their possible linguistic factors.

scholarly journals Passives and impersonals

2003 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES P. BLEVINS
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Strong Tendency ◽  
Human Agent ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Status ◽  
Direct Objects

This paper argues that the term ‘passive’ has been systematically misapplied to a class of impersonal constructions that suppress the realization of a syntactic subject. The reclassification of these constructions highlights a typological contrast between two types of verbal diathesis and clarifies the status of putative ‘passives of unaccusatives’ and ‘transitive passives’ in Balto-Finnic and Balto-Slavic. Impersonal verb forms differ from passives in two key respects: they are insensitive to the argument structure of a verb and can be formed from unergatives or unaccusatives, and they may retain direct objects. As with other subjectless forms of personal verbs, there is a strong tendency to interpret the suppressed subject of an impersonal as an indefinite human agent. Hence impersonalization is often felicitous only for verbs that select human subjects.

School-Age Children’s Metalinguistic Awareness of Grammaticality in Verb Form

1990 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith C. Sutter ◽  
Cynthia J. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
School Age Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
School Age ◽  
Error Identification ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Grammatical Errors

This study investigated 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old children’s ability to monitor grammaticality in the past progressive, perfect progressive, and perfect verb forms. The children achieved a significantly higher rate of accurate judgments monitoring grammatical forms that ungrammatical forms. Age was a significant factor in error identification. Eight-year-olds were substantially better at identifying ungrammatical forms than were their younger schoolmates. Verb form, in conjunction with type of anomaly, significantly varied with respect to ease of identification. Errors of the auxiliary and suffix were easier for children to identify than an adverbial error which required a sentence analysis to determine the incompatibility. The context surrounding ungrammatical verb forms significantly affected monitoring ability. Anomalous forms in unrelated sentences were easier to identify as ungrammatical than anomalous forms in sentences taken from a story the children had just heard. It appears that school-age children prefer to maintain the semantic intent of the message rather than critically search for grammatical errors.

scholarly journals The la-form: Russian verbs in Nanai speech

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Oskolskaya ◽  
Natasha Stoynova
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Derivational Suffix

Nanai speakers who are fluent both in Nanai and Russian use verb forms with a Russian root and the suffix -la (called further “la-forms”) in their speech. The status of -la is under question: on the one hand, it resembles the Russian past tense form (-l), on the other hand, it can be interpreted as the Nanai derivational suffix -la/-lə, which is used in Standard Nanai for the verbalization of nouns. We argue that in modern Nanai this case turns out to be a complicated one, and that la-forms are maintained due to their links with both of these sources.

scholarly journals Nominal suffixes as markers of information structure in Basketo

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-120
Author(s):  
Hideyuki Inui
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Short Form ◽  
The Other ◽  
Information Function ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Pragmatic Information ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Pragmatic Function ◽  
Zero Anaphora ◽  
Subject Pronoun

This paper deals with the information function of two nominal suffixes, -i appearing in all nouns, and -n- in first- and second-person pronouns in Basketo, a North Omotic language predominantly spoken in the Basketo Special Woreda in Ethiopia. The suffix -i is often described as nominative. However, object nouns without definite marker can be marked by -i, and as a result -i can appear in both subject and object in the same sentence. We analyze morpheme -i as a marker of specificity. Suffix -n- distinguishes short and long forms of the first- and second-person subject pronoun. The short form is the same as the possessive. In general, the possessive does not bear any pragmatic information in discourse. Therefore, short pronouns also show no pragmatic function, but show what is subject or agent in a clause. On the other hand, long pronouns are morphologically and pragmatically marked. We analyze morpheme -n- as the foregrounded topic in discourse in contrast with zero anaphora.

Null subjects, expletives, and the status of Medieval French

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Frequent Occurrence ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Status ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Fundamental Insight ◽  
Modern Standard

In view of considerable differences from prototypical null-subject (NS) languages and recent proposals of different types of NS language, this chapter reconsiders the status of Medieval French, generally analysed as a NS language, regarding the NS parameter. It is essentially shown that Medieval French displays traits incompatible with an analysis as a consistent or partial NS language, particularly the existence of overt TP subject expletives, the highly frequent occurrence of overt referential subject pronouns in embedded clauses, and the consistent occurrence of an overt generic subject pronoun. From this and the fundamental insight that, in prototypical non-NS languages such as Modern Standard French, null subjects (NSs) are licit in a restricted number of contexts, the chapter concludes that Medieval French constitutes a non-NS language in which, as in the modern stage, NSs are principally possible in contexts of left-peripheral focalization.

Cross-Structural Priming

2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maaike Loncke ◽  
Sébastien M. J. Van Laere ◽  
Timothy Desmet
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Priming Effect ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Target Sentence ◽  
Prepositional Phrase ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Syntactic Structures

In this paper we show that attachment height (high vs. low attachment) of a modifier to a complex noun phrase (CNP; e.g., “the servant of the actress”), can be primed between dissimilar syntactic structures. In a sentence completion experiment, we found that the attachment height of a prepositional phrase (PP) in the prime sentence primed the attachment height of a relative clause (RC) in the target sentence. This cross-structural priming effect cannot be explained in terms of the priming of specific phrase-structure rules or even sequences of specific phrase-structure rules ( Scheepers, 2003 ), because the attachment of a PP to a CNP is generated by a different phrase-structure rule than the attachment of an RC. However, the present data suggest that the location at which the RC is attached to the CNP is mentally represented, independent of the specific phrase-structure rule that is attached, or by extension, that the abstract hierarchical configuration of the full CNP and the attached RC is represented ( Desmet & Declercq, 2006 ). This is the first demonstration of a cross-structural priming effect that cannot be captured by phrase-structure rules.

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