SIMILATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN HITTITE «SONG OF ULLIKUMMI»

2020 ◽  
pp. 60-73
Author(s):  
Mariya Molina
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Contextual Analysis ◽  
Focus Position ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Standard Sequence ◽  
Standard Of Comparison ◽  
A Chain

The article is aimed at the analysis of similative constructions with the semantics «X like Y» in Hittite epos the «Song of Ullikummi». Contextual analysis allows the author to detect this type of collocations without any markers like asyndetic constructions (with juxtaposition, a chain of accusatives). The author of the article has studied the word order in these constructions. It has been shown that the similarity phrase regularly takes place in the immediate preverbal position after the object and the adverbial modifier of place in a linear structure. It is interesting to find contexts with a standard of comparison in the initial position of the clause, which points out to the upper (and marked) focus position. This type of placement mostly correlates with right dislocations, frequent in the Hittite poetic language. As for the linear word order, constructions with conjunction «like X», as a rule, appear as a sequence «a comparee – a standard of comparison – a marker of the standard». The rare sequences «a standard – a comparee – a marker» show markedness connected to the needs for information structure, which demands further research. In asyndetic constructions the standard sequence appears as «a comparee – a standard». In the paper it has been shown that similative constructions in the «Song of Ullikummi» actually lost the proper similarity semantics and serve as markers of certain qualities of poetic images.

scholarly journals How to start a V2 declarative clause: Transfer of syntax vs. information structure in L2 German

Nordlyd ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Bohnacker ◽  
Christina Rosén
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Control Data ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Discourse Pragmatics ◽  
Linguistic Means

This paper discusses V2 word order and information structure in Swedish, German and non-native German. Concentrating on the clause-initial position of V2 declaratives, the ‘prefield’, we investigate the extent of L1 transfer in a closely related L2. The prefield anchors the clause in discourse, and although almost any type of element can occur in this position, naturalistic text corpora of native Swedish and native German show distinct language-specific patterns. Certain types of elements are more common than others in clause-initial position, and their frequencies in Swedish differ substantially from German (subjects, fronted objects, certain adverbs). Nonnative cross-sectional production data from Swedish learners of German at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels are compared with native control data, matched for age and genre (Bohnacker 2005, 2006, Rosén 2006). The learners’ V2 syntax is largely targetlike, but their beginnings of sentences are unidiomatic. They have problems with the language-specific linguistic means that have an impact on information structure: They overapply the Swedish principle of “rheme later” in their L2 German, indicating L1 transfer at the interface of syntax and discourse pragmatics, especially for structures that are frequent in the L1 (subject-initial and expletive-initial clauses, and constructions with <em>så</em> (‘so’) and object <em>det</em> (‘it/that’)).

Polarity Questions with Fronted Foci in the Spanish of the Basque Country

2019 ◽  
pp. 159-180
Author(s):  
Aritz Irurtzun
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Basque Country ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Focus Position ◽  
Directive Speech Acts ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Directive Speech

In the Spanish variety spoken in the Basque Country, a set of directive speech acts is performed with absolute questions with an OV(S) word order such as Una sidra me pones? “will you serve me a cider?” This essay analyzes the structure, interpretation, and possible origin of these constructions, examining how their structure has a “split focus” whereby the left-dislocated element is really focal but rather than being “the focus” of the sentence it stands in a split-focus construction with the polarity of the absolute question (e.g., “[one cider]F -[polarity]F?”). A possible catalyst for the emergence of these structures is the language-contact situation in the Basque Country: Basque is an OV language with a dedicated focus position at the left periphery, and I suggest that transfer of the information structure strategies of Basque into Spanish may be a crucial factor for the emergence of this type of constructions.

An Information Structure scenario for V2 loss in Medieval French

Diachronica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Larrivée
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Gradual Loss ◽  
Order Change ◽  
Informational Cues ◽  
Word Order Change ◽  
Informational Value

Abstract This paper discusses word order change in Medieval French. Verb-second (V2) configurations are generally understood as having an initial XP and the verb in the left periphery. How has this configuration been lost in French? Under an Information Structure scenario, the XP is in initial position because of its characterized (discourse-old) informational value, which motivates the left-peripheral position of the verb. The decline of the characterized informational value of the XP thus accounts for the gradual loss of V2. The informational behaviour of XPs was examined in unambiguous V2 configurations with an overt post-verbal subject in Medieval French. This detailed quantitative study of a calibrated corpus shows that XPs with a characterized informational value were predominant with productive V2 configurations, that they gradually declined as productive V2 was lost, and that they increasingly failed to attract the verb to the left periphery. These observations can be accounted for if V2 in Medieval French was driven by informational values and if it disappeared along with the informational cues provided by the XPs.

scholarly journals The clause-initial position in L2 Swedish declaratives: Word order variation and discourse pragmatics

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Bohnacker
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
New Information ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Transfer Of Information

In a recent study of the clause-initial position in verb-second declaratives (the prefield), Bohnacker & Rosén (2008) found significant differences between native Swedish and German concerning the frequencies with which constituents occurred in the prefield, as well as qualitative differences concerning the mapping of information structure and linear word order: Swedish exhibited a stronger tendency than German to place new information, the so-called rheme, later in the clause. Swedish-speaking learners of German transferred these patterns from their L1 to German. Their sentences were syntactically well-formed but had Swedish-style prefield frequencies and a strong pattern of Rheme Later, which native Germans perceive as unidiomatic, as an acceptability judgment and a rewrite-L2texts task showed. The present study extends Bohnacker & Rosén's work in three ways. Learners of the reverse language combination (L1 German, L2 Swedish) are investigated to see whether similar phenomena also manifest themselves there. Secondly, written and oral data from highly advanced learners are examined to see whether the learners’ persistent problems can be overcome by extensive immersion (3, 6 and 9 years of L2 exposure). Thirdly, besides investigating theme–rheme (old vs. new information), some consideration is given to another information-structural level, background vs. focus. The learners are found to overuse the prefield at first, with non-Swedish, German-style frequency patterns (e.g. low proportions of clause-initial expletives and high proportions of clause-initial rhematic elements). This is interpreted as evidence for L1 transfer of information-structural or discourse-pragmatic preferences. After 6 and 9 years, a substantial increase in clause-initial expletive subjects, clefts and lightweight given elements is indicative of development towards the target. The findings are related to current generative theorizing on the syntax-pragmatics interface, where it is often maintained that the integration of multiple types of information is one of the hardest areas for L2 learners to master.

Pragmatics for Latin

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Devine ◽  
Laurence D. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Informational Content ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Association With Focus ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

Latin is often described as a free word order language, but in general each word order encodes a particular information structure: in that sense, each word order has a different meaning. This book provides a descriptive analysis of Latin information structure based on detailed philological evidence and elaborates a syntax-pragmatics interface that formalizes the informational content of the various different word orders. The book covers a wide ranges of issues including broad scope focus, narrow scope focus, double focus, topicalization, tails, focus alternates, association with focus, scrambling, informational structure inside the noun phrase and hyperbaton (discontinuous constituency). Using a slightly adjusted version of the structured meanings theory, the book shows how the pragmatic meanings matching the different word orders arise naturally and spontaneously out of the compositional process as an integral part of a single semantic derivation covering denotational and informational meaning at one and the same time.

Focus Attracts Attachment

2021 ◽  
pp. 002383092110333
Author(s):  
Katy Carlson ◽  
David Potter
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Focus Position ◽  
Auditory Comprehension ◽  
Perceptual Salience ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Sentence Interpretation ◽  
Pitch Accents

There is growing evidence that pitch accents as well as prosodic boundaries can affect syntactic attachment. But is this an effect of their perceptual salience (the Salience Hypothesis), or is it because accents mark the position of focus (the Focus Attraction Hypothesis)? A pair of auditory comprehension experiments shows that focus position, as indicated by preceding wh-questions instead of by pitch accents, affects attachment by drawing the ambiguous phrase to the focus. This supports the Focus Attraction Hypothesis (or a pragmatic version of salience) for both these results and previous results of accents on attachment. These experiments show that information structure, as indicated with prosody or other means, influences sentence interpretation, and suggests a view on which modifiers are drawn to the most important information in a sentence.

Bare nominals, information structure and word order

Lingua ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 120 (6) ◽  
pp. 1476-1501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murad Salem
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Bare Nominals

Word Order in Old and Middle English

Diachronica ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Extended Version ◽  
Major Parameter ◽  
Language Data ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mixed Systems

In the history of English one finds a mixture of V2 and non-V2 word order in declaratives for several hundred years, with frequencies suggesting a relatively gradual development in the direction of non-V2. Within an extended version of a cue-based approach to acquisition and change, this paper argues that there are many possible V2 grammars, differing from each other with respect to clause types, information structure, and the behavior of specific lexical elements. This variation may be formulated in terms of micro-cues. Child language data from present-day mixed systems show that such grammars are acquired early. The apparent optionality of V2 in the history of English may thus be considered to represent several different V2 grammars in succession, and it is not necessary to refer to competition between two major parameter settings. Diachronic language development can thus be argued to occur in small steps, reflecting the loss of micro-cues, and giving the impression that change is gradual.

scholarly journals Word order in Latin locative constructions: a corpus study in Caesar’s De bello gallico

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Skopeteas
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Structural Domains ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
First Order ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

AbstractClassical Latin is a free word order language, i.e., the order of the constituents is determined by information structure rather than by syntactic rules. This article presents a corpus study on the word order of locative constructions and shows that the choice between a Theme-first and a Locative-first order is influenced by the discourse status of the referents. Furthermore, the corpus findings reveal a striking impact of the syntactic construction: complements of motion verbs do not have the same ordering preferences with complements of static verbs and adjuncts. This finding supports the view that the influence of discourse status on word order is indirect, i.e., it is mediated by information structural domains.

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