scholarly journals СЪСТОЯНИЕТО КАТО ПРИЧИНА: КОНСТРУКЦИИТЕ С КАКЪВТО И КАКТО С ПРИЧИННО ЗНАЧЕНИЕ / STATE AS A CAUSE: CAUSAL CONSTRUCTIONS WITH КАКЪВТО AND КАКТО

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (03) ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
ELENA IVANOVA
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Static Feature ◽  
Semantic Differentiation

Apart from their main function, the Bulgarian constructions with какъвто and както can express causal relations between the situations described in the main clause and the subordinate clause. The paper shows that in the causal use of both constructions the subordinate clause expresses a static feature, serving as a justification of the situation presented in the main clause. In addition, there is a semantic differentiation between the two models: какъвто normally expresses a usual (permanent) feature, while както denotes mostly a temporary (episodic) feature. Observations on the means used by Russian translators to convey this kind of causal meaning are also put forward. Keywords: state, causal relations, relative clauses, manner clauses, Bulgarian, Russian

Subordinate and interrogative clause negation in Iquito

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Negative Particle ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Peruvian Amazonia

Abstract This paper describes a specific non-standard negation strategy in Iquito, a moribund Zaparoan language spoken in northern Peruvian Amazonia. This strategy is used in finite subordinate clauses (namely adverbial dependent clauses and relative clauses), as well as information questions, and it utilizes two negative markers: a negative particle which is also found in standard negation, and a verbal affix which does not function as a negator in any other context. Using existing typological characterizations of subordinate clause negation, we see that Iquito exhibits the following attested traits: it uses the standard negator in a different position, it also utilizes a distinct negator, and it employs more negators in the subordinate clause than in the main clause. But unlike the languages presented in the literature, Iquito utilizes these parameters simultaneously. Additionally, the position of the standard negator changes within the subordinate clause, depending on the reality status of the clause. Using Iquito as a case study, I propose a set of parameters for comparing subordinate clause and interrogative negation strategies to standard negation strategies, which include the type of negator used, its position, the overall number of negators, the potential for interaction with other grammatical categories, such as reality status, and the resulting word order of the clause. This set of parameters expands the initial typological characterizations of subordinate clause negation strategies.

Sur la nature et la structure des consécutives intégrées

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-175
Author(s):  
Christian Molinier
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Distributional Analysis ◽  
Causal Principle ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The One

This paper offers an analysis of the French integrated consecutive (result) construction, starting out from the correlative system observed in the ancient Indo-European languages, in particular the one which J. Haudry terms « dyptique inverse ». It is shown that the morpheme que, a relative marker, has a content that is identifiable on the basis of the main clause (as in the case of canonical relative clauses) but which functions as a causal principle in relation to the subordinate clause. At the same time, it is also shown that sentences containing consecutive subordinate clauses involve two distinct structures superimposed one on the other: one of these is defined in terms of the hierarchical constituents of distributional analysis, and the other in terms of two independent clauses. The latter structure makes it possible to account for certain ambiguities that may be found in their interpretation. In that respect as well, consecutive clauses are similar to canonical relatives.

scholarly journals Reanalysis processes in non-native sentence comprehension

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Hiroki Fujita ◽  
Ian Cunnings
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Memory Trace ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Subordinate Clause

Abstract We report two offline and two eye-movement experiments examining non-native (L2) sentence processing during and after reanalysis of temporarily ambiguous sentences like “While Mary dressed the baby laughed happily”. Such sentences cause reanalysis at the main clause verb (“laughed”), as the temporarily ambiguous noun phrase (“the baby”) may initially be misanalysed as the direct object of the subordinate clause verb (“dressed”). The offline experiments revealed that L2ers have difficulty reanalysing temporarily ambiguous sentences with a greater persistence of the initially assigned misinterpretation than native (L1) speakers. In the eye-movement experiments, we found that L2ers complete reanalysis similarly to L1ers but fail to fully erase the memory trace of the initially assigned interpretation. Our results suggested that the source of L2 reanalysis difficulty is a failure to erase the initially assigned misinterpretation from memory rather than a failure to conduct syntactic reanalysis.

Da eine oder mehrere betroffen …

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-100
Author(s):  
Melitta Gillmann
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Formal Language ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Very High Frequency ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Very High

AbstractBased on a corpus study conducted using the GerManC corpus (1650–1800), the paper sketches the functional and sociosymbolic development of subordinate clause constructions introduced by the subjunctor da ‘since’ in different text genres. In the second half of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century, the da clauses were characterized by semantic vagueness: Besides temporal, spatial and causal relations, the subjunctor established conditional, concessive, and adversative links between clauses. The corpus study reveals that different genres are crucial to the readings of da clauses. Spatial and temporal usages, for example, occur more often in sermons than in other genres. The conditional reading, in contrast, strongly tends to occur in legal texts, where it displays very high frequency. This could be the reason why da clauses carry indexical meaning in contemporary German and are associated with formal language. Over the course of the 18th century, the causal usages increase in all genres. Surprisingly, these causal da clauses tend to be placed in front of the matrix clause despite the overall tendency of causal clauses to follow the matrix clause.

scholarly journals A taxonomy of antonymy in Arabic: Egyptian and Saudi proverbs in comparison

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 200-222
Author(s):  
Hamada Hassanein ◽  
Mohammad Mahzari
Keyword(s):  
Main Clause ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Discourse Functions ◽  
Syntactic Frames

Abstract This study has set out to identify, quantify, typify, and exemplify the discourse functions of canonical antonymy in Arabic paremiography by comparing two manually collected datasets from Egyptian and Saudi (Najdi) dialects. Building upon Jones’s (2002) most extensive and often-cited classification of the discourse functions of antonyms as they co-occur within syntactic frames in news discourse, the study has substantially revised this classification and developed a provisional and dynamic typology thereof. Two major textual functions are found to be quantitatively significant and qualitatively preponderant: ancillarity (wherein an A-pair of canonical antonyms project their antonymicity onto a more important B-pair) and coordination (wherein one antonym holds an inclusive or exhaustive relation to another antonym). Three new functions have been developed and added to the retrieved classification: subordination (wherein one antonym occurs in a subordinate clause while the other occurs in a main clause), case-marking (wherein two opposite cases are served by two antonyms), and replacement (wherein one antonym is substituted with another). Semicanonical and noncanonical guises of antonymy are left and recommended for future research.

Examining individual variation in learner production data: A few programmatic pointers for corpus-based analyses using the example of adverbial clause ordering

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Stefan Th. Gries ◽  
Stefanie Wulff
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Adverbial Clause ◽  
Temporal Adverbial

ABSTRACT This study examines the variable positioning of a finite adverbial subordinate clause and its main clause with the subordinate clause either preceding or following the main clause in native versus nonnative English. Specifically, we contrast causal, concessive, conditional, and temporal adverbial clauses produced by German and Chinese learners of English with those produced by native speakers. We examined 2,362 attestations from the Chinese and German subsections of the International Corpus of Learner English (Granger, Dagneaux, Meunier, & Paquot, 2009) and from the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (Granger, 1998). All instances were annotated for the ordering, the subordinate clause type, the lengths of the main and subordinate clauses, the first language of the speakers, the conjunction used, and the file it originated from (as a proxy for the speaker producing the sentence so as to be able to study individual and lexical variation). The results of a two-step regression modeling protocol suggest that learners behave most nativelike with causal clauses and struggle most with conditional and concessive clauses; in addition, learners make more non-nativelike choices when the main and subordinate clause are of about equal length.

scholarly journals On the correlative nature of Hungarian left-peripheral relatives

2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-313
Author(s):  
Anikó Lipták
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Distributional Properties ◽  
The Right

This paper takes a close look at the properties of Hungarian relative clauses that occur in the left periphery of the main clause, preceding a (pro)nominal associate. It will be shown that these left-peripheral relative clauses differ in many ways from relative clauses dislocated on the right periphery, as well as from relative clauses embedded under a (pro)nominal head. To capture the precise syntax of these left-peripheral clauses, these will be compared to ordinary left-dislocated items, with which they have some properties in common. Despite the surface similarities between the two, however, there are a few decisive aspects of behaviour, most notably, distributional properties and connectivity effects, which argue against taking left-peripheral relatives as cases of clausal left-dislocates in Hungarian. Instead, one is led to consider these as correlative clauses, on the basis of the properties they share with well-established correlatives in languages like Hindi.  

scholarly journals The Functions of Danish Causal Conjunctions

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.14 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Therkelsen
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Distributional Properties

In the article I propose an analysis of the Danish causal conjunctions <em>fordi, siden</em> and <em>for</em> based on the framework of Danish Functional Grammar. As conjunctions they relate two clauses, and their semantics have in common that it indicates a causal relationship between the clauses. The causal conjunctions are different as far as their distribution is concerned; <em>siden</em> conjoins a subordinate clause and a main clause, <em>for</em> conjoins two main clauses, and <em>fordi</em> is able to do both. Methodologically I have based my analysis on these distributional properties comparing <em>siden</em> and <em>fordi</em> conjoining a subordinate and a main clause, and comparing <em>for</em> and <em>fordi</em> conjoining two main clauses, following the thesis that they would establish a causal relationship between different kinds of content. My main findings are that <em>fordi</em> establishes a causal relationship between the events referred to by the two clauses, and the whole utterance functions as a statement of this causal relationship. <em>Siden</em> presupposes such a general causal relationship between the two events and puts forward the causing event as a reason for assuming or wishing or ordering the caused event, <em>siden</em> thus establishes a causal relationship between an event and a speech act. <em>For</em> equally presupposes a general causal relationship between two events and it establishes a causal relationship between speech acts, and <em>fordi</em> conjoining two main clauses is able to do this too, but in this position it also maintains its event-relating ability, the interpretation depending on contextual factors.

Subordinate clauses

2019 ◽  
pp. 237-288
Author(s):  
Jan Terje Faarlund
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Infinitival Clauses ◽  
Finite Verb ◽  
Nominal Clauses

In subordinate clauses, the C position is occupied by a complementizer word, which may be null. The finite verb stays in V. SpecCP is either empty or occupied by a wh-word, or by some other element indicating its semantic function. Nominal clauses are finite or non-finite. Finite nominal clauses are declarative or interrogative. Declarative nominal clauses may under specific circumstances have main clause word order (‘embedded V2’). Infinitival clauses are marked by an infinitive marker, which is either in C (Swedish), or immediately above V (Danish). Norwegian has both options. Relative clauses comprise several different types; clauses with a relativized nominal argument are mostly introduced by a complementizer; adverbial relative clauses relativize a locative or temporal phrase, with or without a complementizer; comparative clauses relativize a degree or identity. Under hard-to-define circumstances depending on language and region, subordinate clauses allow extraction of phrases up into the matrix clause.

Foregrounding of subordinate clauses by word order: Psycholinguistic evidence of the function of V>Adv (V2) word order in Danish

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-273
Author(s):  
Marie Herget Christensen ◽  
Tanya Karoli Christensen ◽  
Torben Juel Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Clause Complex

AbstractIn modern Danish, main clauses have the word order X>Verb>Adverb (i. e., V2) whereas subordinate clauses are generally characterized by the “subordinate clause” word order Subject>Adverb>Verb. Spoken Danish has a high frequency of “main clause” word order in subordinate clauses, however, and in the article we argue that this “Main Clause Phenomena” (cf. Aelbrecht et  al. 2012) functions as a foregrounding device, signaling that the more important information of the clause complex is to be found in the subordinate clause instead of in its matrix clause.A prediction from the foregrounding hypothesis is that a subordinate clause with Verb>Adverb word order will attract more attention than a clause with Adverb>Verb word order. To test this, we conducted an experiment under the text change paradigm. 59 students each read 24 constructions twice, each containing a subordinate clause with either Verb>Adverb or Adverb>Verb word order. Half of the subordinate clauses were governed by a semifactive predicate (open to both word orders) and the other half by a semantically secondary sentence (in itself strongly favoring Verb>Adverb word order). Attention to the subordinate clause was tested by measuring how disinclined the participants were to notice change of a word in the subordinate clause when re-reading it.Results showed significantly more attention to Verb>Adverb clauses than to Adverb>Verb clauses (though only under semifactive predicates), and more attention to subordinate clauses under semantically secondary than semifactive predicates. We consider this as strongly supporting the hypothesis that Verb>Adv word order functions as a foregrounding signal in subordinate clauses.

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