scholarly journals Instrumental with and use: modality and implicature

2015 ◽  
pp. 532
Author(s):  
Lilia Rissman
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role

I present an analysis of the instrumental elements with and use, as in Betty cut the cake with a knife. A variety of evidence indicates that with and use do not make the same semantic contribution, casting doubt on the theory that these elements introduce the thematic role Instrument. For use, I adopt the analysis in Rissman (to appear): use expresses modal, goal-related content. For with, a modal reading may be implicated but is not entailed, explaining a variety of contrasts between with and use. The implications of this analysis for a theory of thematic roles is discussed.

THEMATIC ROLE ASSIGNMENT IN ENGLISH SENTENCES: A QUICK GLANCE AT AN INTERFACE BETWEEN SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eni Maharsi
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Role Assignment

This paper examines the role of elements of English sentences by employing the approach ofthematic role assignment. The emphasis is on how the positioning of words and phrases insyntactic structure helps determine the roles that the referents of NPs play in the situationdescribed by the sentences. The results reveal that the position of an NP’s determines itsthematic role and. There is a relevance between deep syntactic structure and the assignmentof thematic roles for every NP in the sentence.

scholarly journals Is children's acquisition of the passive a staged process? Evidence from six- and nine-year-olds' production of passives

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 991-1016 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATHERINE MESSENGER ◽  
HOLLY P. BRANIGAN ◽  
JANET F. McLEAN
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Strong Tendency ◽  
Syntactic Priming ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
Role Mapping ◽  
Transitive Actions

ABSTRACTWe report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children's acquisition of the passive is a staged process, with acquisition of constituent structure preceding acquisition of thematic role mappings. Six-year-olds and nine-year-olds described transitive actions after hearing active and passive prime descriptions involving the same or different thematic roles. Both groups showed a strong tendency to reuse in their own description the syntactic structure they had just heard, including well-formed passives after passive primes, irrespective of whether thematic roles were repeated between prime and target. However, following passive primes, six-year-olds but not nine-year-olds also produced reversed passives, with well-formed constituent structure but incorrect thematic role mappings. These results suggest that by six, children have mastered the constituent structure of the passive; however, they have not yet mastered the non-canonical thematic role mapping. By nine, children have mastered both the syntactic and thematic dimensions of this structure.

scholarly journals Implicit causality biases and thematic roles in American Sign Language

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Therese Frederiksen ◽  
Rachel I. Mayberry
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Psycholinguistic Research ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Implicit Causality

AbstractImplicit causality (IC) biases, the tendency of certain verbs to elicit re-mention of either the first-mentioned noun phrase (NP1) or the second-mentioned noun phrase (NP2) from the previous clause, are important in psycholinguistic research. Understanding IC verbs and the source of their biases in signed as well as spoken languages helps elucidate whether these phenomena are language general or specific to the spoken modality. As the first of its kind, this study investigates IC biases in American Sign Language (ASL) and provides IC bias norms for over 200 verbs, facilitating future psycholinguistic studies of ASL and comparisons of spoken versus signed languages. We investigated whether native ASL signers continued sentences with IC verbs (e.g., ASL equivalents of ‘Lisa annoys Maya because…’) by mentioning NP1 (i.e., Lisa) or NP2 (i.e., Maya). We found a tendency towards more NP2-biased verbs. Previous work has found that a verb’s thematic roles predict bias direction: stimulus-experiencer verbs (e.g., ‘annoy’), where the first argument is the stimulus (causing annoyance) and the second argument is the experiencer (experiencing annoyance), elicit more NP1 continuations. Verbs with experiencer-stimulus thematic roles (e.g., ‘love’) elicit more NP2 continuations. We probed whether the trend towards more NP2-biased verbs was related to an existing claim that stimulus-experiencer verbs do not exist in sign languages. We found that stimulus-experiencer structure, while permitted, is infrequent, impacting the IC bias distribution in ASL. Nevertheless, thematic roles predict IC bias in ASL, suggesting that the thematic role-IC bias relationship is stable across languages as well as modalities.

Animacy and long distance binding in Norwegian

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helge Lødrup
Keyword(s):  
Binding Theory ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Binding Properties ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Local Binding

Norwegian allows binding into finite subordinate clauses when the subordinate subject is inanimate and has a thematic role that is low on the hierarchy of thematic roles (e.g.Hun trodde hun gjorde det som var best forseg selv‘she thought she did that which was best forrefl self’). This kind of long distance binding is productive, and generally acceptable, but it has never been mentioned in the literature. This article discusses its syntactic and semantic properties. It is shown that the reflexives in question are not necessarily logophoric, and that they prefer a distributive interpretation. The general binding properties of inanimate subjects are discussed, and it is proposed that binding theory must have the option to disregard them. Binding across inanimate subjects can then be treated as local binding.

scholarly journals HIERARQUIA TEMÁTICA: UMA PROPOSTA PARA O PB

2004 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Márcia Cançado
Keyword(s):  
Current Literature ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Complex Predicate ◽  
Syntactic Position ◽  
In Memoriam ◽  
Per Se ◽  
And Control ◽  
Semantic Properties

Primeiramente, eu dedico este artigo à memória do Prof. Carlos Franchi. Apresento, aqui, uma proposta alternativa para o Princípio da Hierarquia Temática. A proposta é diferente de outras no sentido que, para construir o Princípio da Hierarquia, uso somente quatro propriedades semânticas – desencadeador, afetado, estado e controle – e suas combinações. Além disso, o princípio não é construído por papéis temáticos como o usual na literatura corrente. Diferentemente de outras propostas, a localização de um argumento em uma posição sintática específica deve-se à propriedade que compõe o papel temático (e não o próprio papel temático). Papel temático aqui, é definido como uma relação estabelecida entre um predicador simples ou complexo e seus argumentos. Abstract First of all, I dedicate this paper to Prof. Carlos Franchi (in memoriam). It presents an approach for the Thematic Hierarchy Principle applied to BP. The approach is different from others in the sense that, to construct the Thematic Hierarchy Principle, I deal only with four semantic properties – trigger, affected, state, and control – and their combinations. Besides, the principle is not constructed by thematic roles as is usual in the current literature. Differing from other proposals, the localization of an argument in a specific syntactic position is due to the property that composes the thematic role (and not to the thematic role per se). Thematic roles here are defined as a set of entailments (the semantic properties) derived from the relation established between a single or complex predicate and its arguments.

Applied Objects and the Syntax–Semantics Interface

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
KYLE JERRO
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Morphological Properties ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Functional Head ◽  
Syntactic Position ◽  
Symmetry Properties

This paper investigates the syntax–semantics interface within the domain of the realization of applied objects in Bantu languages, and I argue that the syntactic structure and semantic contribution of a given argument-licensing functional head (here, the applicative) do not covary. Specifically, I show that in principle, both high and low applicatives can (and should) be available with any type of applicative and not tied to a specific semantics (such as transfer of possession) or thematic role, as proposed in earlier work. Furthermore, I reject the centrality of thematic roles as a component of grammar that determines the grammatical function of applied objects, and I propose instead a typology of Bantu applied objects based on their semantic and morphological properties. This approach makes several predictions about applied objects: (i) syntactic and semantic diagnostics for high and low applicatives need not pattern together, (ii) syntactic asymmetry (such as c-command) can arise for applied objects which pattern symmetrically with other diagnostics (such as passivization), and (iii) the type of an applied object does not universally capture symmetry properties cross-linguistically. The view put forward in this paper provides a framework that can better capture this type of variation with object symmetry in Bantu languages as well as language-internal facts about applied objects; more generally, this paper sheds light on the nature of the syntax–semantic interface by showing that the meaning of a functional head is not necessarily determined by its syntactic position.

Case Marking and French Psych-Verbs

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Herschensohn
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Verb Classes ◽  
Syntactic Position ◽  
Psych Verbs ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Syntactic Behavior

This article confirms that two classes of psych-verbs in French, amuser-type ("accusative") and manquer-type ("unaccusative"), involve movement into the subject position. However, the two classes are distinguished by their ability to assign accusative Case: the former assign accusative Case and thereby mimic the syntactic behavior of transitive verbs; the latter assign only partitive Case, thus precluding accusative clitics, passive and WH extraction. The existence of different syntactic configurations of thematic roles with different psych-verb classes indicates a lack of direct correlation between syntactic position and thematic role.

scholarly journals On the Impact of Case and Prosody on Thematic Role Disambiguation: An Eye-Tracking Study on Hungarian

2020 ◽  
pp. 002383092097470
Author(s):  
Gábor Müller ◽  
Emese Bodnár ◽  
Stavros Skopeteas ◽  
Julia Marina Kröger
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
High Reliability ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Role Assignment ◽  
Eye Fixations ◽  
Crucial Difference ◽  
The Impact

Thematic-role assignment is influenced by several classes of cues during sentence comprehension, ranging from morphological exponents of syntactic relation such as case and agreement to probabilistic cues such as prosody. The effect of these cues cross-linguistically varies, presumably reflecting their language-specific robustness in signaling thematic roles. However, language-specific frequencies are not mapped onto the cue strength in a one-to-one fashion. The present article reports two eye-tracking studies on Hungarian examining the interaction of case and prosody during the processing of case-unambiguous (Experiment 1) and case-ambiguous (Experiment 2) clauses. Eye fixations reveal that case is a strong cue for thematic role assignment, but stress only enhances the effect of case in case-unambiguous clauses. This result differs from findings reported for Italian and German in which case initial stress reduces the expectation for subject-first clauses. Furthermore, the sentence comprehension facts are not explained by corpus frequencies in Hungarian. After considering an array of hypotheses about the roots of cross-linguistic variation, we conclude that the crucial difference lies in the high reliability/availability of case cues in Hungarian in contrast to the further languages examined within this experimental paradigm.

scholarly journals Representasi Argumen Gerak Ruang Bahasa Melayu Berdasarkan Teori Struktur Konseptual

Jurnal Bahasa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-381
Author(s):  
Nurul Jamilah Rosly ◽  
◽  
Maslida Yusof ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
Spatial Motion ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Structure Representation ◽  
Basic Formula ◽  
Lexical Items

Motion is understood as a change from one location to another. Therefore, this study focuses on spatial motion consisting of directional, extensional, state and causative motion. This study utilizes data from the Pangkalan Data Korpus Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka database in Malaysia for its study samples. The analysis employs Jackendoff ’s (1997 & 2011) Theory of Conceptual Structure for its framework. The mapping of these arguments comprises three main stages, namely mapping to conceptual structure representation, mapping to conceptual tree diagrams and mapping to thematic roles. The results show that spatial motion is present in the [Event] and [States] functions that carry the basic formula [[[MOTION [x [Event] [Object] [Path] [Place]]]. The findings show that the lexical items balik, berlari, tinggal, terletak, berada, bunuh, paksa, benar and tolong have their own representation of arguments involving constituents such as [Event], [States], [Object] [Path] [Place] [Event] REASON], [NO Causative], [TRUE Causative] and [HELP Causative]. For the mapping stage in the thematic role, the item involved is the role of Actor, Theme, Goal, Source, Agent and Beneficiary (-). Accordingly, this study shows an adequate systematic representation of the conceptual structure, particularly in the spatial motion domain in the Malay language.

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