scholarly journals Plurality and distributivity in Yaeyaman wh-questions

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Michael Davis
Keyword(s):  
Critically Endangered ◽  
Distributive Reading ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject

In Yaeyaman, a critically endangered Japonic language of the Southern Ryukyus, there is a distinction made between singular and plural wh-questions, with plurality indicated by reduplication of the indeterminate (wh) pronoun. I argue that reduplication of the indeterminate is triggered by a morpheme RED that requires the presence of non-atoms in the set of Hamblin alternatives denoted by its sister. When attached directly to an indeterminate pronoun, RED requires the presence of non-atomic, plural entities. I then show that reduplicated indeterminate subjects can be interpreted distributively in pair-list answers, while reduplicated indeterminate objects cannot. After showing that the distributive reading of the subject indeterminate cannot be modeled straightforwardly using a distributivizing operator attached to the VP, I suggest that it reflects morphological agreement between the subject indeterminate and a clause-level RED morpheme, which requires the existence of plural answers in the set of alternative propositions denoted by the question. The semantics of clause-level RED requires a distinction between atomic and plural answers that parallels the distinction between atomic and plural entities. I also compare the Yaeyaman data with reduplication in Korean questions, showing that the semantics of RED differs between the two languages.  Keywords: plurality, distributivity, indeterminates, wh-questions, pair-list answers, redupli- cation, Ryukyuan, Yaeyaman, Korean

The development of subject–auxiliary inversion in English wh-questions: an alternative analysis

2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT D. VAN VALIN
Keyword(s):  
Initial Position ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Alternative Analysis ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject

Rowland & Pine (2000) present an analysis of the development of subject–auxiliary inversion in wh-questions in the speech of Adam from the Brown corpus. They show that there is an uninversion period in which the child fails to invert the subject and auxiliary in wh-questions, and they argue that this is a function of the frequency of wh-word+auxiliary collocations in the input: the more frequent a particular collocation is in the input, the more likely it is to be inverted in the child's speech. In this note an alternative analysis is proposed: the initial position of the tensed auxiliary signals interrogative illocutionary force, and the auxiliaries which are most reliably inverted are those that are overtly tensed morphologically. This analysis not only accounts for Rowland & Pine's data but also extends to inversion in yes–no questions. The analysis predicts three different patterns for the development of inversion in both types of questions, and it is shown that all three are attested.

scholarly journals The Derivation of Wh-Questions in Najrani Arabic

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Saud A. Mushait
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Phase Approach ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Edge Feature

The study explores the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic and attempts to answer the following questions: (i) Can wh-questions in Najrani Arabic be derived in VSO or SVO or both?, and (ii) How can Najrani Arabic wh-questions be accounted for within Chomsky’s (2001,2005, 2013,2015 ) Phase approach? The objective of the study is to present a unified analysis of the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic and show the interaction between Najrani Arabic data and Chomsky’s Phase framework. It has been shown that Najrani Arabic allows the derivation of wh-questions from the argument and non-argument positions in VSO word order. Given this, we assume that VSO is the unmarked order for the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic. In VSO, the subject DP does not raise to Spec-TP because the head T does not have the EPP feature: the latter attracts movement of the former. The verb raises to the head T of TP, while the subject DP remains in-situ in Spec-vP. Moreover, in Najrani Arabic intransitive structures, the phase vP does not have a specifier because it does not have an external thematic argument whereas in transitive constructions the vP has. Concerning case assignment, the phase vP merges with an abstract tense af (fix) on the head T, which agrees with and assigns invisible nominative case to the subject wh-word man ‘who’. We assume that the phase head C is the probe and has the Edge feature which attracts the raising of the subject wh-phrase to Spec-CP. Besides, we argue that the light transitive head v has an Edged feature which attracts the raising of the object wh-phrase aish ‘what’ to be the second (outer) specifier of vP. Being the phase head, the v probes for a local goal and finds the object wh-phrase aish; the v agrees with and assigns accusative case to the object wh-phrase aish. As the TP merges with a null interrogative head C, the phase head C has an Edge feature that attracts the raising of the object wh-word aish to Spec-CP for feature valuation. Following this, the null copies of the moved entities left after movement receive a null spellout in the phonological level and, hence, cannot be accessed for any further operation.

Interference in the production of Italian subject and object wh-questions

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARIA TERESA GUASTI ◽  
CHIARA BRANCHINI ◽  
FABRIZIO AROSIO
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Verb Phrase ◽  
Avoidance Strategies ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject

ABSTRACTWe investigate the production of subject and object who- and which-questions in the Italian of 4- to 5-year-olds and report a subject/object asymmetry observed in other studies. We argue that this asymmetry stems from interference of the object copy in the AGREE relation between AgrS and the subject in the Spec of the verb phrase. We show that different avoidance strategies are attempted by the child to get around this interference, all boiling down to a double checking of agreement: AGREE and Spec-Head. Then, we evaluate our approach from a cross-linguistic perspective and offer an account of the differences observed across early languages. Because our account seems to call both for a grammatical and a processing explanation, we end with a critical discussion of this dichotomy.

scholarly journals The Interaction of Input and UG in the Acquisition of Verb Movement in a Dialect of Norwegian

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.61 ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit R. Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Information Value ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Early Production ◽  
The Subject

In this paper it is argued that a principle of information structure provided by Universal Grammar (UG) may interact with input in the acquisition of word order. In a study which investigates three children from the age of approximately 1;9 to 3 acquiring a Northern dialect of Norwegian, it has previously been shown that word order patterns in certain types of wh-questions which are sensitive to subtle distinctions in the information value of the subject (given vs. new) are acquired extremely early (Westergaard 2003a). This paper presents a study of the same children’s topicalization constructions, and it is shown that, although these patterns of information structure do not appear in the input, the children nevertheless show traces of these patterns in the non-target forms that they occasionally produce. Thus, in their very early production of topicalization constructions the children seem to be guided by a word order principle based on information structure, which could be taken as support for this as a word order preferred by UG.

Functional Structure in Standard Arabic and How It Is Derived

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Kamel Jouini
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Structural Aspect ◽  
Functional Structure ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Functional Features ◽  
The Subject

The role played by the interpretability of features in the derivation and representation of sentences is a cornerstone of generative analyses of sentence structure. The most important structural aspect of such interpretability is the role played by the requirement that sentences have some representation of subjecthood in syntactic structure – namely, the EPP (Chomsky 1981) or the requirement that the subject of predication be somehow represented in the functional structure of the sentence. The emphasis on such a requirement in syntactic theory has brought forth a more basic characteristic of the derivation of sentences and their representation at the interface – namely, structural relations whereby elements in the grammar are interpreted have to be strictly local and are based on the licensing of functional features (mainly, categorial). The very Merge and movement processes involved in this feature licensing bring elements (probe and goal) closer to each other. The effect of this ‘Probe-Goal Union’ (Miyagawa 2010, p. 35) is that head-head and Spec-head agreement configurations become the basis of the derivation and representation of the functional structure of a language in terms of functional features for the expression of such discourse properties as topic-comment, interrogation, negation, the expression of focus and relativization. Topic-comment constructions, wh-questions, negative contrastive focus constructions, and relative clauses will form the testing ground for the working of such features in the derivation of functional structure of standard Arabic, in both SVO and VSO word orderings. 

The Subject Preference in the Processing of Locally Ambiguous WH-Questions in German

2000 ◽  
pp. 65-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Schlesewsky ◽  
Gisbert Fanselow ◽  
Reinhold Kliegl ◽  
Josef Krems
Keyword(s):  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject

The Prosody of Wh-exclamatives and Wh-questions in German: Speech Act Differences, Information Structure, and Sex of Speaker

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Repp
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Structural Effects ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Accent Structure

The prosody of non-assertive speech acts other than questions is rather underexplored. Very little is known about the role of information structure in non-assertive speech acts in general. The present study presents two production experiments examining the prosody of string-identical verb-second (experiment 1) and verb-final (experiment 2) wh-exclamatives and wh-questions in German in relation to their status as different speech acts, in relation to their sensitivity to information structure, and in relation to speaker sex. The study shows that the two speech acts are differentiated by many prosodic means, both globally (duration, intonation contour) and locally (accent distribution in the clause-initial and clause-final regions; pitch, duration, intensity on various elements in the clause, especially the subject pronoun and the direct object, which are more prominent in exclamatives, and the verb-second auxiliary, which is more prominent in questions). Exclamatives overall show a very rigid prosodic contour; they typically are realized with an accent on the subject pronoun and on the object and end in a fall. Questions are much more flexible; they are realized as rises or falls, and show a more varied accent structure in the clause-initial and clause-final regions. Both speech acts show information-structural effects of givenness marking, but the effects in exclamatives are remarkably weak. It is proposed that the speech-act marking prosody overrides information-structural effects to some extent. Male and female speakers show differences in their preferred accent patterns for the two speech acts. Some acoustic differences are only reliable for female speakers.

scholarly journals The biogeography of introgression in the critically endangered African monkey Rungwecebus kipunji

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trina E. Roberts ◽  
Tim R. B. Davenport ◽  
Kyndall B. P. Hildebrandt ◽  
Trevor Jones ◽  
William T. Stanley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mitochondrial Dna ◽  
Mitochondrial Genome ◽  
Original Description ◽  
Critically Endangered ◽  
Sister Taxon ◽  
Mitochondrial Haplotype ◽  
Voucher Specimen ◽  
Separate Genus ◽  
The Subject

In the four years since its original description, the taxonomy of the kipunji ( Rungwecebus kipunji ), a geographically restricted and critically endangered African monkey, has been the subject of much debate, and recent research suggesting that the first voucher specimen of Rungwecebus has baboon mitochondrial DNA has intensified the controversy. We show that Rungwecebus from a second region of Tanzania has a distinct mitochondrial haplotype that is basal to a clade containing all Papio species and the original Rungwecebus voucher, supporting the placement of Rungwecebus as the sister taxon of Papio and its status as a separate genus. We suggest that the Rungwecebus population in the Southern Highlands has experienced geographically localized mitochondrial DNA introgression from Papio , while the Ndundulu population retains the true Rungwecebus mitochondrial genome.

scholarly journals Word order in wh-questions in a North Norwegian dialect: some evidence from an acquisition study

2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Richardsen Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
New Information ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject

While standard Norwegian is a V2 language, some Norwegian dialects exhibit V3 in certain types of wh-questions. In some previous work on the Tromsø dialect, V3 has been considered the ‘true’ dialect and speakers' acceptance of V2 simply a result of the influence from the standard language. Based on child and adult data from a study of the acquisition of word order in the Tromsø dialect, I will argue that both V2 and V3 orders are part of the dialect – used by adult speakers and acquired (more or less) simultaneously by children. It will further be argued that the choice between the two depends on the information structure of the sentence, more specifically, on the interpretation of the subject as given or new information.

scholarly journals What can wh-questions tell us about real-time language production: Evidence from English and Mandarin

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Monica Do ◽  
Elsi Kaiser ◽  
Pengchen Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Time Window ◽  
Initial Experiment ◽  
Role Assignment ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Information Focus

We present two visual-world eye-tracking experiments investigating how speakers begin structuring their messages for linguistic utterances, a process known as linguistic encoding. Specifically, we focus on when speakers first linearize the abstract elements of their messages (positional processing) and when they first assign a grammatical role to those elements (functional processing). Experiment 1 de-coupled the process of linearization from grammatical role assignment using English object wh-questions, where the subject is no longer sentence initial. Experiment 2 used Mandarin declaratives and questions, which have the same word order, to test the extent to which findings from Experiment 1 were linked to information focus associated with wh-questions. We find evidence of both grammatical role assignment and linearization emerging around 400-600 ms, but we do not find evidence of the +/- wh distinction influencing eye-movements during that same time window.

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