scholarly journals Expletives in Modern Persian

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Abolfazl MOSAFFA JAHROMI
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Subject And Object

It has generally been argued that Persian does not include dummy elements called expletives, in spite of the existence of the morpheme ǐn which shows the behavior of an expletive in specific constructions. The morpheme is not a part of the argument structure and has no meaning. In Persian, which is a pro-drop language, the morpheme ǐn as expletive is generated only in [SPEC CP] of an independent clause. This element may occur in a subject position, object position, or as an object of a preposition. In subject and object positions it is optional when S′ moves to the end of the sentence, or is adjoined to it, in other cases it is obligatory. As an object of a preposition it is always obligatory, no matter whether the structure is the result of a movement or not. The aim of this article is to provide evidence in favor of the existence of expletives, and their projection in Persian.

Here's Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist*

1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 556-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary D. Garrard
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Sofonisba Anguissola ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Art And Society

An Unusual Portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola has gained new prominence from its illustration in color in a recent publication. In her Women, Art, and Society (1990), Whitney Chadwick claims of the portrait in question, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola (fig. 1), that in presenting herself in the guise of a portrait being painted by her teacher, Anguissola produced “the first historical example of the woman artist consciously collapsing the subject-object position.” Chadwick's succinct observation opens up the possibility of understanding the painting in a new way, for she points to the peculiar conflation of subject and object that uniquely befell women artists in the Renaissance and complicates their art, especially their self-portraits. From this starting point, I will here explore the form of self-presentation offered by Anguissola in the Siena portrait and several other works in the context of what was a fundamental problem for the Renaissance female artist: the differentiation of herself as artist (the subject position) from her self as trope and theme for the male artist (the object position).

scholarly journals Interpretation of Korean Null Pronouns in subject and object position: Comparing native and non-native speakers

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 981
Author(s):  
Silvia Kim ◽  
Elsi Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Null Pronouns ◽  
Coherence Relations ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Korean Speakers ◽  
Native Korean Speakers

We report an experiment that investigates how native and non-native Korean speakers’ interpretation of null pronouns in subject and object position is influenced by structural and discourse-level factors. We compare native Korean speakers to L2 Korean learners whose L1, Spanish, only has null pronouns in subject position. We find that native Korean speakers’ interpretation of subject and object null pronouns is guided by structural factors as well as discourse-level coherence relations, with subject nulls being more sensitive to coherence relations than object nulls. In contrast, our results suggest that L2 speakers’ interpretation of null pronouns in Korean is less influenced by coherence relations. Our results support claims that interface phenomena are challenging in L2 acquisition and provide new evidence that this occurs with null pronouns in L2 even when the L1 has null pronouns.

scholarly journals Critical discourse analysis on women’s position in prohaba daily news texts

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-285
Author(s):  
Eva Evianda ◽  
Ramli Ramli ◽  
Mohd Harun
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Position Analysis ◽  
Subject And Object

This research aimed to describe women’s position in Prohaba Daily News texts based on Sara Mills and Theo van Leeuwen perspective of critical discourse analysis, especially the analysis of actor position, exclusion and inclusion. This is a descriptive qualitative research in which data were collected by documentation technique. The data were Prohaba Daily News texts during 2018. The data were analyzed using Sara Mills’ actor position analysis model and Theo van Leeuwen’s exclusion and inclusion analysis. Actor position analysis included subject position and object position. Exclusion analysis included the passivation, nominalization, and substitution of clauses. While the inclusion analysis included differentiation-indifferentiation, objectivity-abstraction, nomination-identification, nomination-categorization, determination-indetermination, assimilation-individualization, and association-disassociation. The results showed that Prohaba Daily News texts positioned female actors in subject and object position in their news texts. Women as non-marginalized subject found in three news texts. Women as non-marginalized objects found in two news texts. Women in the marginalized object position found in eight news texts. Marginalization was conducted by using exclusion and inclusion strategies. The exclusion strategy used includes the nomination and substitution of clauses. Inclusion strategies used were differentiation-indifferentiation, objectivity-abstraction, nomination-identification, nomination-categorization, and association-disassociation. In addition, the use of certain vocabularies can marginalize the position of women in the daily news text Prohaba.

scholarly journals Russian constructions with numerals and quantifiers: Their non-standard use in the subject and object position

Rhema ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 70-89
Author(s):  
Alexander В. Letuchiy
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Object Behavior

In the article, I describe cases of special behavior of Russian phrases with quantifiers like neskol’ko ‘some’, mnogo ‘many, much’ and small numerals like dva ‘two’. I show that they can occur in the subject position in contexts that usually do not contain a canonical DP/NP subject (constructions with the verb xvatat’ ‘be enough’, negation contexts with the verb byt’ ‘be’ and its habitual / iterative correlate byvat’), and for neskol’ko-like quantifiers, the direct object position with intransi- tive predicates like na-...-sja circumfixed verbs is also available. The reason of non- canonical subject behavior is the possibility to be subjects without controlling plural verbal agreement, while the non-canonical direct object behavior is possible because neskol’ko-like quantifiers lack the category of case.

scholarly journals Syntax or nothing: Some theoretical and empirical remarks on implicit arguments

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andres Saab
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Satisfactory Solution ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Repair Strategy ◽  
Implicit Arguments ◽  
Syntactic Representation

<p>I show that core implicit subjects in Spanish (i.e., the ones that occur with analytical passives, impersonal <em>se</em>, and causatives) can be derived from a theory under which absence of <em>Merge</em> in external subject position is a possible syntactic output. Core implicit arguments then have no syntactic representation (<em>pace</em> Landau 2010). Absence of <em>Merge</em> can make to arise two different scenarios: (i) a conflict at the interfaces, which requires the implementation of some repair strategy, (ii) no conflict at the interfaces; i.e., a legitimate object at the interfaces. The first scenario is illustrated with reference to the so-called impersonal <em>se</em> in Spanish, and the second one with reference to analytical passives. The proposed system is able to capture a set of very intricate facts that does not have a satisfactory solution hitherto. Crucially, this particular view on implicit arguments, together with a purely syntactic theory of argument structure, derives the full distribution of impersonals and reflexives in <em>hacer</em> ‘to make’ causative contexts. Finally, it is shown that the arbitrary readings that the two scenarios above described display have a different source: whereas impersonal <em>se</em> requires (costly) default computation at the interface, arbitrary interpretations in analytical passives are calculated at the <em>v</em>P level.   </p>

Possessor Raising in Nuu-chah-nulth

2007 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 167-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Ravinski
Keyword(s):  
Main Clause ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Possessor Raising ◽  
Subject Agreement ◽  
Minimal Link Condition ◽  
Syntactic Dependency

AbstractNuu-chah-nulth possessor raising is semantically unrestricted and affects only subjects: subject agreement matches the person and number of the possessor (rather than the possessed subject), and the possessive-marking clitic attaches to the head of the clause (rather than to the possessum). Nuu-chah-nulth possessor raising is analyzed as a syntactic dependency between the possessive clitic in the main clause and the base-generated possessor position within DP. A Possessive Phrase can appear in either the DP or the clausal domain, and the possessive clitic may be generated in either position. When the possessive clitic is generated in the main clause, a possessor may raise out of subject position via feature-driven movement; the Minimal Link Condition prevents such movement from occurring out of object position.

scholarly journals The Impact of Transitional Movements and Non-Manual Markings on the Disambiguation of Locally Ambiguous Argument Structures in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS)

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 652-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Krebs ◽  
Ronnie B. Wilbur ◽  
Phillip M. Alday ◽  
Dietmar Roehm
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Hand Movement ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Time Points ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact

Previous studies of Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) word-order variations have demonstrated the human processing system’s tendency to interpret a sentence-initial (case-) ambiguous argument as the subject of the clause (“subject preference”). The electroencephalogram study motivating the current report revealed earlier reanalysis effects for object-subject compared to subject-object sentences, in particular, before the start of the movement of the agreement marking sign. The effects were bound to time points prior to when both arguments were referenced in space and/or the transitional hand movement prior to producing the disambiguating sign. Due to the temporal proximity of these time points, it was not clear which visual cues led to disambiguation; that is, whether non-manual markings (body/shoulder/head shift towards the subject position) or the transitional hand movement resolved ambiguity. The present gating study further supports that disambiguation in ÖGS is triggered by cues occurring before the movement of the disambiguating sign. Further, the present study also confirms the presence of the subject preference in ÖGS, showing again that signers and speakers draw on similar strategies during language processing independent of language modality. Although the ultimate role of the visual cues leading to disambiguation (i.e., non-manual markings and transitional movements) requires further investigation, the present study shows that they contribute crucial information about argument structure during online processing. This finding provides strong support for granting these cues some degree of linguistic status (at least in ÖGS).

Measuring the alternation strength of causative verbs

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 219-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Romain
Keyword(s):  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Causative Alternation ◽  
Low Degree ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Causative Construction ◽  
Qualitative Analyses ◽  
Causative Verbs

Abstract This paper presents a method for quantitative and qualitative analyses of the causative alternation in English, where verbs may alternate between a transitive (causative) construction (Santa crinkled his eyes) and an intransitive (non-causative) construction (His eyes crinkled).1 The aim of this paper is to present a method designed to measure the alternation strength of causative verbs, i.e. the extent to which they alternate between the two constructions. One of the central elements this paper investigates is the Theme, i.e. the participant that is in subject position in the intransitive construction and object position in the transitive construction. A distinctive collostructional analysis (Gries and Stefanowitsch 2004) shows that certain verbs are significantly attracted to one of either two constructions while others are equivalently distributed in the two constructions. However, after careful analysis it appears that very few Themes actually overlap between the two constructions (Lemmens forthcoming) which indicates that each construction seems to be rather restrictive regarding which Themes they recruit. The low degree of alternation of the Themes leads us to ask ourselves the extent to which the alternation is part of a speaker’s knowledge of their language.

scholarly journals Argument-Structure-Reducing Operations in Standard Arabic: An Exploratory Comparative Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. p1
Author(s):  
Abdellatif ED-DARRAJI
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Change Of State

This paper attempts to examine some argument-structure-reducing operations in Standard Arabic (SA for short). It is proposed here that some affixes (viz. prefixes and infixes) can decrease the argument structure (or valence) of the subclass of change-of-state (COS for short) verbs in the language under study. More specifically, these affixes function as unaccusativizers or decausativizers in that they can derive unaccusative COS verbs from causative COS verbs by suppressing the external argument of the latter verbs and syntactically promoting the direct object to subject position. Crucially, the ability of these affixes to affect the argument structure and the morphosyntactic realization of arguments is not limited to SA, but it has been attested in some other languages, such as Italian, Russian, Chichewa, Spanish, French, Eastern Armenian, West Greenlandic, and Tzutujil, among others.            

scholarly journals The negation of cualquier NP

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Ana Clara Polakof
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Universal Quantifier ◽  
Alternative Semantics ◽  
Freedom Of Choice ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Original Proposal ◽  
Syntactic Approach ◽  
The Subject

Even though the interpretation of Free Choice Items such as any has been on debate for more than 50 years (Vendler, 1974, Dayal, 1998, Horn, 2000, etc.), it is relatively more recent in Spanish (Menéndez-Benito, 2005, Giannakidou and Quer, 2013, among others). Some have analyzed it as a universal quantifier, neither taking its free choiceness into account nor contexts which seem to be problematic for the universal account (see, for instance, Etxepare and Uribe-Etxebarria, 2011). In this article, we defend that cualquier is a universal indeterminate pronoun which involves freedom of choice (as in the original proposal by Vendler, 1974). We will take into account data (taken from https://www.corpusdelespanol.org/web-dial) which has not been properly considered. We will analyze the interaction of negation and cualquier in Rioplantese Spanish in the subject position of negative generic statements, in the object position in negative episodic statements, and in a non argumental position. We will combine an alternative semantics approach to the analysis of the FCI cualquier, inspired in Menéndez-Benito (2010) and Aloni (2019), with a syntactic approach to negation inspired in Etxepare and Uribe-Etxebarria (2011).  

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