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.

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 Discourse functions at the periphery: noncanonical word order in English

2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty J. Birner
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
New Information ◽  
Information Status ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
The Status ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Discourse Functions

Speakers have a wide range of noncanonical syntactic options that allow them to mark the information status of the various elements within a proposition. The correlation between a construction and constraints on information status, however, is not arbitrary; there are broad, consistent, and predictive generalizations that can be made about the information-packaging functions served by preposing, postposing, and argument-reversing constructions. Specifically, preposed constituents are constrained to represent discourse-old information, postposed constituents are constrained to represent information that is either discourse-new or hearer-new, and argument-reversing constructions require that the information represented by the preposed constituent be at least as familiar as that represented by the postposed constituent (Birner & Ward 1998). The status of inferable information (Clark 1977; Prince 1981), however, is problematic; a study of corpus data shows that such information can be preposed in an inversion or a preposing (hence must be discourse-old), yet can also be postposed in constructions requiring hearer-new information (hence must be hearer-new). This information status – discourse-old yet hearer-new – is assumed by Prince (1992) to be non-occurring on the grounds that what has been evoked in the discourse should be known to the hearer. I resolve this difficulty by arguing for a reinterpretation of the term 'discourse-old' as applying not only to information that has been explicitly evoked in the prior discourse, but rather to any information that provides a salient inferential link to the prior discourse. Extending Prince’s notion in this manner allows us to account for the distribution of noncanonically positioned peripheral constituents in a principled and unified way.  

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

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.

Distributions of case allomorphy by multilingual children

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmel O'Shannessy
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Linguistic Code ◽  
Case Morphology ◽  
Child Language Acquisition ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Different Sources ◽  
Mixed Code

When a new linguistic code emerges and stabilizes, what are the roles of children and adults in leading and consolidating the changes? This question lies at the intersection of child language acquisition and contact-induced language change. Adults and children have played different roles in the development of a new mixed code, Light Warlpiri, spoken in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia that arose from code-switching practices among bilinguals. Elements from typologically dissimilar languages are combined systematically in the new language, with verbal and nominal structures derived from different sources. Verbal morphology is from English/Kriol (which have fixed nominative-accusative word order patterns), with the addition of some innovations, probably brought in by speakers who were then children. Nominal case morphology is from Warlpiri (with ergative-absolutive case-marking, and flexible word order). But Light Warlpiri shows redistributions of case suffix allomorphy derived from Warlpiri. The paper shows the emerging case-marking patterns in Light Warlpiri, and tracks the roles played by children and adults in the changes.

The development of information interaction as a key element of state risk management and health protection

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-76
Author(s):  
S. Voronkova
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Information System ◽  
Information Interaction ◽  
New Information ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Working Age ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Working Age Population ◽  
Types Of Information

The article discusses ways to obtain information about risk factors and the health status of the population. The article describes a new information system «labor Medicine», which allows to organize the collection of a wide range of data for further analysis and application in the activities of various Executive authorities, public organizations, foundations, legal entities and citizens. It is proposed to improve this system by expanding the types of information collected, creating a passport for health promotion organizations, as well as integration with systems that are being implemented in the Russian Federation for managing the health of the working-age population in the context of state policy in the field of Informatization.

Processing subject focus across two Spanish varieties

Probus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-127
Author(s):  
Bradley Hoot ◽  
Tania Leal
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
New Information ◽  
Basic Facts

AbstractLinguists have keenly studied the realization of focus – the part of the sentence introducing new information – because it involves the interaction of different linguistic modules. Syntacticians have argued that Spanish uses word order for information-structural purposes, marking focused constituents via rightmost movement. However, recent studies have challenged this claim. To contribute sentence-processing evidence, we conducted a self-paced reading task and a judgment task with Mexican and Catalonian Spanish speakers. We found that movement to final position can signal focus in Spanish, in contrast to the aforementioned work. We contextualize our results within the literature, identifying three basic facts that theories of Spanish focus and theories of language processing should explain, and advance a fourth: that mismatches in information-structural expectations can induce processing delays. Finally, we propose that some differences in the existing experimental results may stem from methodological differences.

Case morphology and word order in second language Turkish: Evidence from Greek learners

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Despina Papadopoulou ◽  
Spyridoula Varlokosta ◽  
Vassilios Spyropoulos ◽  
Hasan Kaili ◽  
Sophia Prokou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Case Morphology ◽  
L2 Development ◽  
Order Constraints ◽  
On Line

The optional use of morphology attested in second language learners has been attributed either to a representational deficit or to a ‘surface’ problem with respect to the realization of inflectional affixes. In this article we contribute to this issue by providing empirical data from the early interlanguage of Greek learners of Turkish. Three experiments have been conducted, a cloze task, a sentence picture matching task and an on-line grammaticality judgement task, in order to investigate case morphology and its interaction with word order constraints. The findings of all three experiments point towards a variable use of case morphology, which is also observed in previous studies of Turkish as a second language (L2). Moreover, they show clearly that the learners face difficulties with non-canonical word orders as well as with the interaction of word order constraints and Case. On the other hand, the learners performed well on verbal inflections. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the developmental patterns in the early stages of L2 acquisition cannot be attributed to a global lack of functional categories but rather to more localized difficulties, which seem to be related to (a) whether the features in the L2 are grammaticalized in the first language and (b) the way these features are encoded in the morphosyntax of the first language. Moreover, we claim that processing factors and the specific properties of the morphological paradigms affect L2 development.

scholarly journals Honorifics: A sociocultural verb agreement cue in Japanese sentence processing

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
YUKI YOSHIMURA ◽  
BRIAN MACWHINNEY
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Role Assignment ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
New Type

ABSTRACTCase marking is the major cue to sentence interpretation in Japanese, whereas animacy and word order are much weaker. However, when subjects and their cases markers are omitted, Japanese honorific and humble verbs can provide information that compensates for the missing case role markers. This study examined the usage of honorific and humble verbs as cues to case role assignment by Japanese native speakers and second-language learners of Japanese. The results for native speakers replicated earlier findings regarding the predominant strength of case marking. However, when case marking was missing, native speakers relied more on honorific marking than word order. In these sentences, the processing that relied on the honorific cue was delayed by about 100 ms in comparison to processing that relied on the case-marking cue. Learners made extensive use of the honorific agreement cue, but their use of the cue was much less accurate than that of native speakers. In particular, they failed to systematically invoke the agreement cue when case marking was missing. Overall, the findings support the predictions of the model and extend its coverage to a new type of culturally determined cue.

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