scholarly journals Mind your weight: ‘Motionlessly’ sitting between the object and the verb in Japanese

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 463
Author(s):  
Hing-Yuet Fung
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
First Order ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Weight Effect ◽  
Distance Minimization ◽  
Manner Adverb

The object in Japanese is often displaced from its canonical position next to the sentence-final verb, due to motivations such as information structure or animacy. Such flexibility allows for an adverb to be placed between the object and the verb. In the literature, there are suggestions for an almost equal preference to place Japanese manner adverbs before or after the object, inferred from both online and offline results. We will present a corpus study with a representative Japanese manner adverb zitto ‘motionlessly’ to show that either order may be preferred in different accounts of word order variation, but none can satisfy both requirements of distance minimization and accessibility, which are manifested in competing directions in Japanese, a verb-final language. In both accounts, weight has immense effect and should not be neglected. By using two heuristic methods to measure the weight effect, we propose that this case study with an object and an adverb sheds new light on the explanatory power of the distance minimization account, in particular by the Mimimize Domains principle (Hawkins 1994), which operates at both levels of (1) the constituency construction of the full VP, which favors the object-first order, and (2) the Phrasal Combination Domain between the head of object and the verb, which favors the adverb-first order. It is also proposed to implement a complement-and-adjunct distinction in the MiD principle, as a step toward a more effective study method of weight effect which I shall call efficiency profiling.

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.

Barack Obama, being sharp

Gesture ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lempert
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Precision Grip ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Second Order ◽  
First Order ◽  
Political Oratory ◽  
The Way

Gesture in political oratory and debate is renowned for its nonreferential indexical functions, for the way it purportedly can indicate qualities of speaker and materialize acts of persuasion — functions famously addressed in Quintilian’s classic writings but understudied today. I revisit this problematic through a case study of precision-grip (especially thumb to tip of forefinger) in Barack Obama’s debate performances (2004–2008). Cospeech gesture can index valorized attributes of speaker — not directly but through orders of semiotic motivation. In terms of first-order indexicality, precision-grip highlights discourse in respect of information structure, indicating focus. In debate, precision grip has undergone a degree of conventionalization and has reemerged as a second-order pragmatic resource for performatively “making a ‘sharp’, effective point.” Repetitions and parallelisms of precision grip in debate can, in turn, exhibit speaker-attributes, such as being argumentatively ‘sharp’, and from there may even partake in candidate branding.

Topic, focus, and discourse structure

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dejan Matić
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Discourse Structure ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
One To One ◽  
Free Word ◽  
Free Variation

It is commonly assumed that word order in free word order languages is determined by a simple topic – focus dichotomy. Analysis of data from Ancient Greek, a language with an extreme word order flexibility, reveals that matters are more complex: the parameters of discourse structure and semantics interact with information packaging and are thus indirectly also responsible for word order variation. Furthermore, Ancient Greek displays a number of synonymous word order patterns, which points to the co-existence of pragmatic determinedness and free variation in this language. The strict one-to-one correspondence between word order and information structure, assumed for the languages labelled discourse configurational, thus turns out to be only one of the possible relationships between form and pragmatic content.

scholarly journals Sõnajärg, infostruktuur ja objekti kääne eesti keeles

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ogren
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Relevant Parameter ◽  
Order Information ◽  
Boundedness Criterion ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
The Relationship

Objekti kääne eesti keeles oleneb eelkõige tegevuse ja objekti piiritle- (ma)tusest, kuid da-infinitiiviga konstruktsioonides leidub palju varieerumist objekti käändes, mida ei ole võimalik seletada piiritletuse mõiste abil. Suur osa sellest varieerumisest on seotud sõnajärjega: da-infinitiivile järgnev objekti on pigem totaalne, infinitiivile eelnev objekt on pigem partsiaalne. Artiklis vaadeldakse seoseid sõnajärje ja objekti käände vahel neljas sagedases da-infinitiiviga konstruktsioonis. Kuna eesti keele sõnajärg sõltub suuresti infostruktuurist, uuritakse, kas ja kuivõrd on sõnajärjega seotud varieerumine seletatav infostruktuuriliste parameetrite abil. Jõutakse järeldusele, et objekti käände varieerumist ei mõjuta mitte infostruktuur, vaid sõnajärg ise. Artikli lõpuosas arutletakse selle üle, miks võiks sõnajärg üldse mõjutada objekti käänet ning miks selle mõju piirdub infiniitsete konstruktsioonidega.Abstract. David Ogren: Word order, information structure and object case in Estonian. While object case in Estonian depends primarily on the boundedness of the action and the object nominal, numerous constructions with da-infinitive verb forms exhibit object case variation that cannot be explained by the boundedness criterion. A considerable amount of this variation is related to word order: VO word order in the da-infinitive phrase favors the use of the total object, OV word order favors the partial object. The article examines the relationship between word order and object case in four common da-infinitive constructions. As word order in Estonian is heavily dependent on information structure, the article also investigates whether the relationship between word order and object case can be explained by information-structural features, and finds that the relevant parameter is in fact not information structure, but rather word order itself. The article closes with a discussion of the possible explanations for the relationship between word order and object case and for why this relationship is found only in non-finite constructions.Keywords: object case, da-infinitive, information structure, word order, variation, analogy

scholarly journals On word order variation and informationstructure in peninsular spanish and italian ‘why’-interrogatives

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. e021025
Author(s):  
Svenja Schmid ◽  
Klaus Von Heusinger ◽  
Georg A. Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
High Preference ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
Peninsular Spanish ◽  
Structural Category ◽  
The Impact

In this paper, we investigate the effect of information structure on word order in Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives, and whether these two languages differ from each other. To this end, we conducted two empirical studies. In a parallel text corpus study, we compared the frequency of the word order patterns ‘why’SV and ‘why’VS, as well as the distribution of focal and non-focal subjects in the two languages. In order to get a deeper understanding of the impact of the information structural categories focus and givenness on word order in ‘why’-interrogatives, we conducted a forced-choice experiment. The results indicate that word order is affected by focus in Italian, while it is not determined by any information structural category in Peninsular Spanish. We show that Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives differ from each other in two ways. First, non-focal subjects occur preverbally in Italian, while they occupy the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish. Second, Italian reveals a lower level of optionality with respect to word order patterns. Even though we find a high preference for the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish, we argue that this limitation is related to a higher flexibility regarding word order in Peninsular Spanish than in Italian which does not allows for ‘why’VSO in contrast to Peninsular Spanish.

Syntactic and Prosodic Reflexes of Information Structure in Germanic

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisbert Fanselow
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Left Edge ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Finite Verb

This chapter deals with syntactic and prosodic reflexes of information structure in the Germanic languages. It begins with an overview of givenness and word order variation in the TP, along with aboutness topics and the prosodic prominence of topics and foci. It then considers the postulation of a focus head in Germanic and how contrast seems to intensify the acoustic properties of topics and foci. It shows how the left edge of verb second clauses acts as a slot for placing contrastive elements in all Germanic languages, but that the position is also filled on purely formal grounds. The article also describes the conditions of information structure that decide whether an XP can go to the position preceding the finite verb/auxiliary in the verb second (V2) constructions. Finally, it discusses two types of V2 constructions: unrestricted V2 constructions and pragmatically restricted V2 constructions.

De plaats van het voorzetselvoorwerp

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Hoeksema
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Regular Position ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This paper presents the results of a corpus study of Dutch complement PPs. On the basis of a collection of 3400 occurrences in negative sentences, the four major word order patterns (regular position, scrambling order, topicalization and extraposition) are studied, both in main and subordinate clauses, and linked to the properties of the prepositional phrases, in particular weight and definiteness. Greater weight corresponds to higher likelihood of extraposition, and definiteness to higher likelihood of scrambling and topicalization. This corresponds well with earlier studies of word order variation in Dutch, but had not been established for the class of complement PPs. Among definite phrases, PPs with so-called R-pronouns, such as hieraan ‘here-on’ and daarvan ‘thereof’ showed especially high preferences for topicalization and scrambling. Negative sentences were selected for this study to avoid cases where regular order and scrambling order could not be distinguished due to lack of adverbial elements in the middle field. The data set is temporally stratified. This made it possible to study changes over time, and the most robust finding was a continuous retreat of the scrambling order throughout the period 1700-2014.

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