scholarly journals Re-examining the relationship between the subject agreement morpheme and (in)definiteness in Northern Sotho

Literator ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mampaka L. Mojapelo
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
Northern Sotho ◽  
Class 1 ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Agreement

The grammatical position of the subject noun phrase in Northern Sotho is to the left of the predicate. The subject agreement morpheme is a compulsory link between the subject noun phrase and the predicate. Scholars have examined the role of this morpheme from various perspectives. It is also extensively documented that the morpheme has dual functions. Its primary function is to mark agreement between the subject and the predicate. Its secondary function is pronominal, whereby it is co-referenced to some antecedent. This article reexamined the primary role of the subject agreement morpheme in Northern Sotho in relation to the interpretation of a subject noun phrase as definite or indefinite. This was accomplished by (1) revisiting existing works that are directly or indirectly linked to (in)definiteness and subject agreement, (2) analysing texts that may facilitate discussion on the issue, and (3) relating the findings from previous works to current analyses. The first hypothesis in this article was that when some class 9 subject noun phrases, denoting persons, agree with the verb stem by a class 1 agreement morpheme, the noun phrases are interpreted as definite. The second hypothesis was that although the subject position is considered predominantly topical and definite it may not categorically exclude indefinite noun phrases. Therefore some indefinite noun phrases may also agree with predicates by means of this morpheme.

scholarly journals Possessive and transitive in Eskimo

1970 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Mey
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Surface Structures ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Indirect Confirmation ◽  
Relative Case ◽  
Grammatical Tradition ◽  
Natural Way

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to give an account of some hitherto unexplained phenomena connected with the use of the Eskimo ‘relative case’. A deep structure is proposed that not only will account for the occurrence of certain surface morphemes, but also, and in a natural way, for the semantic affinities that exist between certain types of noun phrases and the transitive sentence in Eskimo. In particular, it is shown that in phrases of the type ‘the man's house’, there exists evidence for considering ‘man’ as the subject noun phrase, ‘house’ as the object noun phrase of some deep structure. The transformational machinery involved in deriving the correct surface structures is shown in some detail. A discussion of older terminology in Eskimo grammatical tradition provides additional, indirect confirmation of the naturalness of the proposed explanation.

Discontinuous noun phrases in existential sentences in English and German

1977 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. W. Kirkwood
Keyword(s):  
Surface Structure ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Prepositional Phrase ◽  
Existential Sentences ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
The Subject

In Kirkwood (1970) I noted that in the passivization of a sentence such as: (i) They issued a report on recent developments. i.e. (2) A report was issued on recent developments. a prepositional phrase on recent developments, which appears in some way to be attached to the subject noun phrase a report, may be detached from it in surface structure and placed after the verb. A similar phenomenon was observed in equivalent German sentences. Compare:

Descriptions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Neale
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Singular Term ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theory Of Descriptions

‘Definite descriptions’ are noun phrases of the form ‘the’ + noun complex (for example, ‘the finest Greek poet’, ‘the cube of five’) or of the form possessive + noun complex (for example, ‘Sparta’s defeat of Athens’). As Russell realized, it is important to philosophy to be clear about the semantics of such expressions. In the sentence ‘Aeschylus fought at Marathon’, the function of the subject, ‘Aeschylus’, is to refer to something; it is a referential noun phrase (or ‘singular term’). By contrast, in the sentence ‘Every Athenian remembers Marathon’, the subject noun phrase, ‘every Athenian’, is not referential but quantificational. Definite descriptions appear at first sight to be referential. Frege treated them referentially, but Russell held that they should be treated quantificationally in accordance with his theory of descriptions, and argued that certain philosophical puzzles were thereby solved.

The interaction of notional number and morphophonology in subject–verb agreement: A role for working memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 890-900
Author(s):  
Heidi Lorimor ◽  
Carrie N Jackson ◽  
Janet G van Hell
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact

Research shows that cross-linguistically, subject–verb agreement with complex noun phrases (e.g., The label on the bottles) is influenced by notional number and the presence of homophony in case, gender, or number morphology. Less well-understood is whether notional number and morphophonology interact during speech production, and whether the relative impact of these two factors is influenced by working memory capacity. Using an auditory sentence completion task, we investigated the impact of notional number and morphophonology on agreement with complex subject noun phrases in Dutch. Results revealed main effects of notional number and morphophonology. Critically, there was also an interaction between morphophonology and notional number because participants showed greater notional effects when the determiners were homophonous and morphophonologically ambiguous. Furthermore, participants with higher working memory scores made fewer agreement errors when the subject noun phrase contained homophonous determiners, and this effect was greater when the subject noun phrase was notionally singular. These findings support the hypothesis that cue-based retrieval plays a role in agreement production, and suggests that the ability to correctly assign subject–verb agreement—especially in the presence of homophonous determiners—is modulated by working memory capacity.

Role of Inversion in Children's Question Development

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Klee
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Hearing Disorders ◽  
Question Types ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
Utterance Length ◽  
Auxiliary Verb ◽  
Question Development

Current developmental descriptions of children's Wh-question production are contradictory. One account posits a stage in which the auxiliary verb and subject noun phrase are uninverted, whereas another view offers no empirical support for such a stage. The purpose of the present investigation was to test these divergent developmental descriptions by analyzing children's spontaneously produced questions. Six children at each of three linguistic stages, defined by mean utterance length in morphemes and ranging from 2.50 to 3.99, were selected for study. The children were between 25 and 47 months of age and evidenced no speech, language, or hearing disorders. Although the results replicated the proposed semantic ordering of question types, a stage characterized by uninverted forms was not supported.

The semantic role of the wh-element and subject position in Spanish and Catalan

2010 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aria Adli
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Results ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Semantic Role ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThis work presents experimental results on the position of the subject in

A bidirectional study on the acquisition of plural noun phrase interpretation in English and Spanish

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
TANIA IONIN ◽  
SILVINA MONTRUL ◽  
MÓNICA CRIVOS
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
First Language ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Plural Noun ◽  
First Language Transfer ◽  
Bare Plurals

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates how learners interpret definite plural noun phrases (e.g., the tigers) and bare (article-less) plural noun phrases (e.g., tigers) in their second language. Whereas Spanish allows definite plurals to have both generic and specific readings, English requires definite plurals to have specific, nongeneric readings. Generic readings in English are expressed with bare plurals, which are ungrammatical in Spanish in preverbal subject position. Two studies were conducted in order to investigate the role of first language transfer in this domain in both English → Spanish and Spanish → English directions. Study 1 used a meaning-focused task to probe learners’ interpretation of definite plural nour phrases, whereas Study 2 used a form-focused task to examine learners’ judgments of the acceptability of definite and bare plurals in generic versus specific contexts. First language transfer was attested in both directions, at lower proficiency levels, whereas more targetlike performance was attested at higher proficiency levels. Furthermore, learners were found to be more successful in learning about the (un)grammaticality of bare plurals in the target language than in assigning the target interpretation to definite versus bare plurals. This finding is shown to be consistent with other studies’ findings of plural noun phrase interpretation in monolingual and bilingual children.

scholarly journals FUNGSI EKSTERNAL DAN KATEGORI FRASE NOMINA BAHASA MELAYU MANADO

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhode Margareth Dongalemba
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
External Function ◽  
The Subject

This research entitled “External Fuctions and Categories of Noun Phrase in Malay Manado Language”. The analysis of this research focuses on describes the external functions and categories of noun phrase structure in Malay Manado language. This research contributes to the development of linguistics in the field of Syntactic especially External Fuctions and Categories of Noun Phrase in Malay Manado Language.The methodology that used in this research is desciptive method. The data is taken from interview natives people by using some social media like WhatsApp, Facebook, instagram, and as well as interview by face-to-face. All the data is primary which is the data obtained comes from first hand or original sources.The collected data are identified and analyzed in term of how the external function and categories of noun phrase is performed in the language by using Aarts & Aarts’s theory (1982).The writer found 16 sentences data in Malay Manado language. The syntactic external function level is filled by subject, predicate, and adverb. The level of the external category, noun phrases attached to the subject function are 11 clauses, noun phrases that attach to the predicate function are 11 clauses, and noun phrases attached to the adverb are 4 clauses.Keyword : Syntactics, Function, Category, Malay Manado Language

scholarly journals Re-rigging Othering: Subversive Infantilisation in Contemporary Bosnian-Herzegovinian Prose

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 1259-1273
Author(s):  
Fedja Borčak
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Western Discourse ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

In this article I put forward the concept of subversive infantilisation to designate a phenomenon in contemporary Bosnian literature, which by using a certain kind of childish outlook on the world undermines paternalistic and balkanist Western discourse on Bosnia and Herzegovina. By analysing primarily the portrayal of the role of mass media in a few literary texts, principally books by Nenad Veličkovié and Miljenko Jergovié, I highlight the way in which these texts “re-rig” and by means of irony and exaggeration illuminate the problematic logic inherent in the subject position from which one represents the other. Textual characteristics of subversive infantilisation are contextualised further and seen as a discursive continuation of experiences of the 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Trois Constructions a Dependance Entre Sujet Et PP

1982 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjell-Åke Gunnarson
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
Main Verb ◽  
The Subject

Kjell-Åke Gunnarson: Three Constructions with a Dependency between Subject and PP. This study bears on relations between subject noun phrases and prepositional phrases found in various positions. The author discusses the action of a rule that extraposes noun complements of the subject head. Thus prepositional phrases are moved to positions that superficially appear as complement position. Complex conditions on the application of the rule lead to the distinction of three types of constructions that depend both on the main verb and on the content of the noun phrases.

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