scholarly journals The Position of the Subjectness of the Subject-less Conventional Infinitives

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Lemohang Tjabaka

The English conventional infinitive clauses have either overt or covert subjects. Previous analyses mainly used the PRO Theorem and Null-Case Approaches to show the distribution of the subjectness of the subject-less conventional infinitives. However, this paper investigated the position of the subjectness of the subject-less conventional infinitive clauses using the Minimalist Program’s Movement Theory of Control and the External Token Merge. In this qualitative paper, data was extracted from the previous English Ph.D. research studies conducted by English native and non-native speakers, and analysed using successive approximation analytic tools. The results demonstrate that the control and SSR-infinitives are generated in a similar fashion, which is why they share the type of subjectness.  The base-generated PRO, which is claimed to be the subjectness of the control infinitives, is further revealed that is derived from movement. Therefore, for uniformity purposes, the subjectness of the control and SSR-infinitives is found to be a trace-copy (t) or a lexical subject positioned at the [spec-IP], [spec-TP], and [spec-vP]. The analysis suggested connectivity between the structure of the subject-less conventional infinitive clause and the position of the subjectness of the subject-less conventional infinitives as the structure of the subject-less conventional infinitives informs the distribution.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2019 (1) ◽  
pp. 309-325
Author(s):  
Nadja Thoma

Zusammenfassung Im Kontext der zunehmenden Versicherheitlichung von Migration, deren Bedeutung auch für sprachliche Bildung im Kontext nationaler und globaler Sicherheitsagenden diskutiert wird, werden bestimmte Gruppen von Migrant*innen als Sicherheitsbedrohung konstruiert. Die Instrumentalisierung von Sprache für Identitätspolitik, die im Konzept von Sprache als ,Schlüssel zur Integration‘ besonders deutlich wird und unter Rückgriff auf Sprachideologien erklärt werden kann, bleibt nicht ohne Folgen für Angehörige minorisierter Gruppen. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, was ,innere Sicherheit‘ für Student*innen bedeutet, denen zugeschrieben wird, keine ,native speaker‘ zu sein. Den Bezugspunkt der ,inneren Sicherheit‘ bildet dabei nicht der Nationalstaat, sondern das Subjekt. Aus einer biographieanalytischen Perspektive wird rekonstruiert, mit welchen (Un-)Sicherheitsdimensionen die Subjekte an der Universität und in Hinblick auf ihre beruflichen Pläne konfrontiert sind, wie Sicherheit und Sprache biographisch eingebettet sind und welche Strategien und Wege die Student*innen (nicht) nutzen (können), um ihre Sicherheitsspielräume zu erweitern.Abstract: In light of the increasing securitization of migration, language education is discussed as part of national and global security agendas, and certain groups of migrants have been constructed as a security threat. The instrumentalization of language for identity politics is particularly evident in the concept of language as a ‘key to integration’ and can be explained with language ideologies. These ideologies are not without consequences for members of minoritized groups. The article at hand explores the meaning of ‘internal security’ for university students who are not considered ‘native speakers’. The reference point of ‘internal security’ is not the nation state, but the subject. From a biographical-analytical perspective, the article reconstructs dimensions of security and insecurity which the subjects confront at university with regard to their professional aims. It will explore how the connection between security and language is embedded in their biographies, as well as the strategies and pathways students can and cannot use to expand their security scope.


LETS ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Muh. Ikhlasul Amal ◽  
Syahdan ◽  
Risal Pandi ◽  
Halid M ◽  
Arialdi

The aim of the study was  to  analyze  and  describe  the  process of  improving students’ listening skill for eleventh grade students of MAN 1 Majene, West Sulawesi Province through  watching English movies. The subject of this research is XI Agama 2 Class that consisted of 16 students. The method used in this study is Classroom Action Research (CAR) which the writer works  collaboratively with the English teacher. The results in this study indicate that there  was  improvement of the students’ skill listening. Most of the students gradually gained good scores at the end of the cycle. The data were collected from a questionnaire, observation note of performance, pre-test and post-test. The study was conducted with cycle model through the steps of planning, conducting, observation, and reflection. The results of this study show a significant relationship between students' learning by English movie with delay subtitle related to their listening skills as shown in their improvement of post- test and positive responses of students than  E nglish movie  with not delay. The questionnaire shows that more than 75% students felt easy to understand listening materials from native speakers. Consequently, it was suggested that teaching learning process using English movie with English subtitle is recommended  into  learning  process  to  improve students' listening skills in English language classroom. In conclusion, watching English movie can improve students listening skill.


Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 27-38
Author(s):  
Oksana Evgen'evna Chernova ◽  
Aleksandra Anatol'evna Osipova ◽  
Dar'ya Sergeevna Buzhinskaya

Phraseological corpus of Russian language of the late XX – early XXI centuries has been enriched with multiple phraseological units. The subject of this research became neophraseologisms with “electronic” as the key component, actively used in modern publicistic discourse (electronic book, electronic textbook, electronic journal, electronic wallet, electronic library, and others). In Russia, the system of gradual fixation of emergence of new suprawords linguistic units did not form, thus composers of even the modern phraseological dictionaries include neologisms carefully, “sparsely”, often without due “linkage” to time and circumstances of their emergence, not fully answering the needs of a modern user. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that there is a need to conduct linguistic qualification and dictionary description of the Russian phraseological neologisms, emerged in the conditions of “digital pivot” of culture and formation of global communicative space. Abundance of supraword neologisms, which sensitively react to all changes in the life of society, is connected to a number of causes. On the one hand, on the background of geopolitical “redivisions” came drastic changes in the sociopolitical and socioeconomic life of the Russian native speakers. On the other hand, modern humanity is undergoing civilizational changes, caused by the “digital pivot” as coined by the renowned Polish phraseologist Wojciech Chlebda, driving formation of a global information network.


Author(s):  
Elena V. Kharchenko ◽  
◽  
Shu Man ◽  

The article describes aspects of perception and understanding of Russian ergonyms by native speakers of Russian and Chinese. The issue under study is of great relevance due to the increase in cross-cultural contacts, the tendency for the free travelling between the countries and the formation of a multicultural environment in cities. The modern metropolis is increasingly becoming a place of residence for representatives of different linguistic cultures, so we decided to check how successfully modern ergonyms perform their main function, i.e. help residents and guests of the city navigate in space. The aim of the study is to identify the universal and specific features in the perception and understanding of ergonyms by the representatives of different linguistic cultures. The study object is the perception and understanding of a proper name, with the subject being the strategies of ergonyms perception and understanding. The article describes a survey of Russian and Chinese students who were asked to determine the organization’s field of activity by its name. The experiment consisted of two stages: at the first stage, only a word was presented, while at the second one - the word and the photo of the sign. As a result, the main ways of identifying ergonyms were identified.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 293-296
Author(s):  
Kristine L. Florczak

Consideration of the impact of COVID-19 on conducting research studies is the subject of this column. First, it is argued that presence is critical to some qualitative methods and especially for those who use the Parse methods. Second, the use of e-mail, telephone, and videoconferencing is examined in terms of their advantages and disadvantages in relation to obtaining knowledge about a phenomenon of interest.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanako Mitsugi ◽  
Yasuhiro Shirai

AbstractUsing self-paced reading, this study investigated the role of head animacy in the processing of Japanese relative clauses (RCs). Second language (L2) learners whose first languages (L1) are English and Korean, and Japanese native speakers participated. The results showed that for native speakers, inanimate heads diminished the processing difficulty associated with object RCs. However, head animacy did not have an effect on L2 processing. The Korean group showed the subject-object asymmetry but no effect of head animacy. The English group did not demonstrate the effect of RC type or head animacy. The overall pattern of these results suggests that L2 learners of Japanese are not guided by syntactic and lexical-semantic information in the same way as Japanese native speakers. These findings are interpreted within the constraint-satisfaction models (MacDonald et al., 1994) and are further discussed in the light of the research concerning the transfer of L1 processing routines.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 619-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
SOL LAGO ◽  
CLAUDIA FELSER

ABSTRACTSecond language speakers often struggle to apply grammatical constraints such as subject–verb agreement. One hypothesis for this difficulty is that it results from problems suppressing syntactically unlicensed constituents in working memory. We investigated which properties of these constituents make them more likely to elicit errors: their grammatical distance to the subject head or their linear distance to the verb. We used double modifier constructions (e.g., the smell of the stables of the farmers), where the errors of native speakers are modulated by the linguistic relationships between the nouns in the subject phrase: second plural nouns, which are syntactically and semantically closer to the subject head, elicit more errors than third plural nouns, which are linearly closer to the verb (2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry). In order to dissociate between grammatical and linear distance, we compared embedded and coordinated modifiers, which were linearly identical but differed in grammatical distance. Using an attraction paradigm, we showed that German native speakers and proficient Russian speakers of German exhibited similar attraction rates and that their errors displayed a 2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry, which was more pronounced in embedded than in coordinated constructions. We suggest that both native and second language learners prioritize linguistic structure over linear distance in their agreement computations.


2004 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 25-54
Author(s):  
David J. Silva

Abstract. In an attempt to understand the variable nature of phonological phrasing in Korean, this study analyzes intuitional judgments of 53 native speakers of Korean who evaluated possible phonological phrasings of simple Subject-Object-Verb sentences: [S]-[OV], [SO]-[V], [SOV], and [S]-[O]-[V]. Analysis of the quantified rating data reveals a strong preference for a subject-predicate phrasing ([S]-[OV]) and a distinct dispreference for the phrasing in which the subject and object were grouped into a single phonological constituent ([SO]-[V]). These preferences are then analyzed in the context of a constraint-based theoretical framework; by extending the Optimality Theory (OT) notion of "ranking" to include not only constraints but also candidates, we corroborate the existence of preference patterns in native-speaker intuitions regarding the phrasing of [SOV]. These patterns are explained by referencing three putatively universal constraints that govern the phonological phrase formation: one that aligns phonological phrases with syntactic phrases, a second that requires phonological phrases to be binary branching, and a third that limits the weight of phonological phrases to five syllables. Although the quantitative data and the proposed OT account are not in complete agreement, the account put forward should encourage further research into a more comprehensive integration of variation studies and OT.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-18
Author(s):  
Natalia Kołaczek

Abstract Compounding seems to be the most productive word formation process in Swedish on the basis of “new words’ lists” (Swedish: nyordslistor) registered by the Language Council of Sweden (Svenska Språkrådet). The subject of the research was the productiveness of compounds and their comprehensibility for the native speakers. The material for the corpus analysis showing the productivity of compounds consisted of 353 compound words from the lists from years 2000 – 2012. With help of a survey where pupils from a secondary school in Tingsryd in Småland were asked to define 17 compounds from “new words’ list” 2008 a conclusion could be drawn that compound words are short-lived, ephemeral constructions. The analysis has shown the big pace of changes that the lexicon undergoes and the linguistic creativity of language users as well as their strong need to create new terms. The results can evoke questions about the effectiveness of communication in relation to the features of new words. The article is based on my unpublished master’s thesis.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly L. Geeslin ◽  
Aarnes Gudmestad

Research on variation demonstrates that analyses of frequency and predictors of use contribute to our understanding of languages. Investigations of subject expression in Spanish in particular have identified differences across person and number of the verb that suggest that linguists should focus their analyses exclusively on a single category of that variable (e.g., Torres-Cacoullos and Travis 2010). The current paper examines the subject-expression forms produced in first- and second-person contexts in separate analyses, exploring the degree to which patterns of use generalize across verbal person categories. Data from 32 sociolinguistic interviews with native and non-native speakers of Spanish in the same speech community were coded for independent linguistic variables, such as switch reference, perseveration, tense, mood and aspect of the verb form, verbal negation, presence of object pronouns, specificity and reference cohesiveness. Separate multivariate analyses for first- and second-person referents show subtle differences between NSs and NNSs.


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