scholarly journals Te puse la mano en el hombro ‘I put my hand on your shoulder’

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Grant Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Body Part ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Double Object ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Prepositional Object

The main goal of this paper is to provide a solution to a puzzle regarding a constraint on multiple external possession relations in Spanish prepositional double object verbs like poner ‘put.’ When both the direct object and prepositional object are body parts with different external possessors, the subject must be the possessor of the direct object body part and a dative clitic the possessor the prepositional object body part, not the other way around. Assuming that possessor movement to theta positions is what gives rise to external possession, I claim that the unacceptable interpretation is due to a locality violation that is incurred when an external possession relation is established between a subject and prepositional object body part that crosses over another external possession relation between a dative clitic and direct object body part.

Polysynthesis in Lakondê, a Northern Nambikwaran Language of Brazil

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Wetzels ◽  
Stella Telles
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Linguistic Family ◽  
The Subject

Lakondê, together with Mamaindê and Latundê, belongs to the Northern Nambikwara branch of the Nambikwara linguistic family spoken in Northwestern Brazil. The language is head-marking, predominantly suffixal, and of great derivational productivity. It has an elaborate system of nominal classifiers; it is incorporating, with nuclear arguments integrated in the morphology of the verb. Lakondê has two ways of incorporating nouns: one is prefixal when the incorporated morphemes represent body parts; the other is suffixal, involving nominal classifiers. When the incorporation occurs in dynamic verbs, the integrated classifier morphemes assume the role of direct object. The verbal template provides for more than thirty morpheme positions, which, from the point of view of their function, can be categorized as argumental, adverbial, evidential, and TAM. Flexional suffixes may function as nuclear arguments and dispense with the lexical realization of the subject and the object. With these characteristics Lakondê may be classified as a typical polysynthetic language.

Co-forming real space blends in tactile signed language dialogues

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Mesch ◽  
Eli Raanes ◽  
Lindsay Ferrara
Keyword(s):  
Body Part ◽  
Real Space ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
The Other ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Semiotic Perspective

AbstractThis article reports on a linguistic study examining the use of real space blending in the tactile signed languages of Norwegian and Swedish signers who are both deaf and blind. Tactile signed languages are typically produced by interactants in contact with each other’s hands while signing. Of particular interest to this study are utterances which not only consist of the signer producing signs with his or her own hands (or other body parts), but which also recruit the other interactant’s hands (or another body part). These utterances, although perhaps less frequent, are co-constructed, in a very real sense, and they illustrate meaning construction during emerging, embodied discourse. Here, we analyze several examples of these types of utterances from a cognitive linguistic and cognitive semiotic perspective to explore how interactants prompt meaning construction through touch and the involvement of each other’s bodies during a particular type of co-regulation.

scholarly journals Valency Theory

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dagobert Höllein
Keyword(s):  
Generative Grammar ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Prime Element ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Binary Division ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Stage Play

Valency theory is a grammatical theory which focuses on the verb or the predicate as its center. Modern valency theory was founded in 1959 by Lucien Tesnière and is based on the idea that verbs structure sentences by binding specific elements (complements, actants) as atoms do. Other, freely addable elements are not determined by the verb; these are called supplements, adjuncts, or circonstants. The basic items of valency theory are valency carriers, complements, and supplements. Take for example sentence (1), “He gives the book to Sandra in the library.” While the NPs He and the book and the PP to Sandra in sentence (1) are valency governed complements, the PP in the library is not governed. It is a supplement. Tesnière compares sentences to a stage play, with actors and requisites. The verb is considered the central valency carrier and the complements depend on the valency carrier. In contrast to other projective theories of grammar, such as generative grammar, the binary division of the sentence into subject and predicate is abolished: the prime element of a sentence is the verb, the subject is governed by the verb, and so are the other objects. In valency theory the number of complements that depend on the verb constitutes its valency. There are monovalent (run), bivalent (build), and trivalent verbs (give). The verb run requires a subject to form a minimal sentence and to communicate a scenario, build requires a subject and direct object for this purpose, give a subject, direct, and indirect object. But it is not necessary that every complement be realized. For instance, sentence (2): “He sold the car (to his neighbor)”. A trivalent verb like to sell can easily be realized with only two complements, as shown in example (2). Complements like the directive complement in (2) (called facultative complements) and supplements differ by the fact that complements are determined in their form (syntactic valency) and their meaning (semantic valency) by the valency carrier, while supplements such as temporal or local adjuncts are not. The ability of a valency carrier to determine formal aspects like case marking of its complement(s) is subsumed under syntactic valency and the ability to determine semantic aspects like its thematic role is called semantic valency/specificity. Acknowledgements: For discussion of the material in this article and notes, the author is grateful to Vilmos Ágel, Klaus Fischer, and the reviewers.

The categorical perception of tactile distance: A difference in acuity at anatomical landmarks?

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Le Cornu Knight ◽  
Matthew Longo ◽  
Andrew J. Bremner
Keyword(s):  
Categorical Perception ◽  
Body Part ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Anatomical Landmarks ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Subjective Equality ◽  
Perceptual Distortions ◽  
Distance Judgments

Tactile distance judgments are prone to a number of physiological and perceptual distortions. One such distortion concerns tactile distances over the wrist being perceptually elongated relative to those within the hand or arm. This has been interpreted as a categorical segmentation effect: The wrist implicitly serves as a partition between two body part categories so that stimuli crossing the wrist appear further apart. The effect could alternatively be explained in terms of specialized acuity at anatomical landmarks (i.e., the wrist). To test these opposing explanations we presented participants with two tactile distances sequentially for comparison (one mediolaterally, across the arm, and the other proximodistally, along the arm). Points-of-Subjective-Equality (DV) were compared on the hand, wrist and arm, on dorsal and ventral surfaces between subjects. If the acuity account were true distances would be elongated in both axes at the wrist. If the categorical segmentation account were true there would be a selective perceived increase of the proximodistal distance at the wrist. A previously reported mediolateral bias was found on all body parts but, consistent with the categorical account, at the wrist the magnitude of the bias was either reduced (dorsally) or not found (ventrally) suggesting a selective proximodistal elongation. We found no evidence of increased acuity in the vicinity of the wrist in this task. Therefore we conclude that the segmentation of the body into discrete parts induces categorical perception of tactile distance.

Case Study in Training Generalized Instruction-Following Responses to Preposition-Noun Combinations in a Severely Retarded Young Adult

AAESPH Review ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 230-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis E. Mithaug
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Verbal Cues ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
Prepositional Object ◽  
Retarded Male

In this study a 16-year-old severely retarded male was trained to respond to instructional requests that included the prepositions “in,” “on,” and “beside.” The training consisted of presenting untrained nouns and prepositions in isolation to develop appropriate discriminations before combining them into multiple-word phrases. Once discrimination was established between four direct-object nouns, four prepositions, and four prepositional-object nouns, the subject was trained briefly to respond to two-word combinations that included a direct object and a prepositional object. Following this training, there were increases in the subject's correct responses to untrained two-word requests and to expanded, untrained phrases containing random combinations of four direct objects, four prepositions, and four prepositional objects. The accuracy of the instruction-following response was evaluated in a second experiment in which the experimenter altered the structure and delivery of the instructional request. When the experimenter added irrelevant cues to the three-word request, “put the ___ ___ the ___,” the subject's accuracy decreased; and when the experimenter paused between the third and fourth words, e.g., “put the ___ (pause) ___ the ___,” accuracy increased. These results indicated that generalization to new instructional forms may depend upon training in the appropriate responses to relevant and irrelevant verbal cues as well as to different styles of delivering the request.

“Como no me trago el humo...:” A Corpus-Based Approach to Aspectual Se

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Rivas
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Text Type ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Peninsular Spanish

AbstractIn Spanish, two-participant verbs of consumption (such as tragar ‘swallow’) may variably occur with the reflexive marker se. This paper provides a quantitative analysis of this variation in a corpus of spoken and written Peninsular Spanish in order to test the hypothesis that the construction with se correlates with High Transitivity (Hopper & Thompson 1980). We operationalize grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics that are associated with High Transitivity: definiteness and generalizability of the direct object, volitionality of the subject, polarity, tense and verb. Additionally, this study operationalizes person and text type in order to test the extent to which all of these characteristics correlate with the use of the reflexive clitic in Peninsular Spanish. The results show that the presence of se is primarily conditioned by the verb and that the other characteristics contribute to the use of the reflexive in varying degrees, depending on the verb.

Comparison of Nine Methods of Indicating the Direction to Objects: Data from Blind Adults

Perception ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyn Haber ◽  
Ralph Norman Haber ◽  
Suzanna Penningroth ◽  
Kevin Novak ◽  
Hilary Radgowski
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Body Part ◽  
The Body ◽  
Verbal Description ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Localization Accuracy ◽  
Object Locations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Diagnostic Measurement

Nine methods of indicating the direction to object locations were tested on twenty blind adult subjects. The task was to indicate the location of active auditory targets distributed in a semicircle with a 1.7 m radius around the subject. Target location, practice, and feedback were systematically varied for each method. The greatest accuracy and lowest variability were found for pointing methods that used body parts (directing the nose at the target, facing it with the chest, and pointing with the index finger) and extensions of body parts (pointing with a hand-held cane or with a short stick). Two less accurate methods involved rotating a dial. The least accurate methods involved drawing and a verbal description in terms of clockface labels. Method interacted significantly with target location, and with individual differences. In general, the body-part and extension method were affected less than other methods by target location and individual differences. The findings suggest that a pointing response that uses a body part or an extension of a body part is the best choice for experimental or diagnostic measurement of object location by blind subjects. Differences between the results of this study of blind subjects and auditory localization accuracy in sighted subjects are discussed, and the implications for spatial processing in the blind are considered.

scholarly journals The semantics of the aan-construction in 16th-century Dutch: A semasiological and onomasiological approach

Literator ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dario Rens
Keyword(s):  
Direct Object ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Double Object Construction ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Object Construction ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ditransitive Verbs

This article focuses on the semantics of the Dutch aan-construction [NP V NP aan NP], for example, Jan geeft een boek aan Piet (‘Jan gives a book to Piet’) in the 16th-century. In modern Dutch the aan-construction is used as an alternative to the Dutch double object construction, but previous research suggests that the use of ditransitive verbs in the Dutch aan-construction is only a 16th-century innovation – this alternation is called the ‘dative alternation’. However, it is not clear which ditransitive verbs initiated the dative alternation. Colleman (2010) believes that the first instances of the ditransitive use of the aan-construction are concrete physical movements of the direct object from the subject to the indirect object; however, he argues there is no quantitative proof to support those claims. In a self-compiled corpus of 16th-century Dutch, this article tries to find the evidence which is needed to underpin Colleman’s hypothesis by making use of the distinctive collexeme analysis and its diachronic variant. The results show that the first ditransitive instances of the aan-construction are indeed concrete uses, but that there is also an increase in the metaphorical use of the construction.

scholarly journals Forceful Contact in a Result Prominent Language

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald P Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
Body Part ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Complementary Distribution ◽  
Locative Alternation ◽  
Complementary Component ◽  
The Face ◽  
In Series ◽  
Main Verb

<p>Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) remind us that manner and result verbs often exhibit complementary distribution within a given language. They also note that when a main verb lexically specifies manner or result, the complementary component can be expressed outside the verb, in a satellite constituent of some sort. In Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010), manner/result complementarity constrains verb root lexicalization. Building on this, Erteschik-Shir and Rapoport (2010) examine English verbs of contact, e.g. <em>smear</em>, <em>splash</em>, whose complements specify a result relation between moveable object and stationary locatum. Classically, these verbs show a locative alternation with holistic ~ partitive interpretations (Levin 1993).</p><p>For this paper I examine forceful contact expressions in Emai (West Benue Congo, Edoid in Williamson and Blench 2000). Relatively strict SVO, Emai manifests little inflectional morphology and few prepositions. Its motion predications express manner and result as one verb in series with another (<em>la</em> ‘run’ and <em>shan</em> ‘move through’ for ‘run through’) or as verb plus postverbal particle (<em>si<span style="text-decoration: underline;">o</span>n</em> ‘thread’ and <em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">o</span></em> ‘onto’ for ‘thread onto’).</p><p>Lacking verbs in series or postverbal particles, forceful contact in Emai reflects simple and complex predications. Predicates like transitive <em>hian</em> ‘strike’ or <em>so</em> ‘collide, bang into’ take a subject expressing moveable object and a direct object conveying locatum (<em>òjè só ùdék<span style="text-decoration: underline;">è</span>n</em> [Oje collide wall] ‘Oje collided with / banged into the wall’).</p><p>Related complex predications explicitly code contact means. English near equivalents are ‘punch,’ ‘kick,’ ‘peck,’ ‘bite’ and ‘pinch.’ Corresponding Emai predications with <em>hian</em> or <em>so</em> require means of contact, expressed as a body-part noun (<em>èkpà</em> ‘fist,’ <em>ízà</em> ‘heel,’ <em>úkpà </em>‘beak,’ <em>àk<span style="text-decoration: underline;">ò</span>n</em> ‘tooth,’ <em>éhì<span style="text-decoration: underline;">é</span>n</em> ‘fingernail’) covertly linked to a subject referent, followed by a preposition marked locatum. With a nonhuman locatum, body-part means (serving as moveable object) occurs in direct object position and a place noun locatum appears as preposition <em>vbi</em> object (<em>òhí só ékpá vbì ìtébù</em> [Ohi collide fist LOC table] ‘Ohi’s fist collided with the table/ Ohi’s fist banged on the table’). With a human locatum, the means body-part nominal is retained but a distinct body-part noun occurs as <em>vbi</em> object and its external possessor immediately follows the verb and precedes the moveable object (<em>òhí só ójé ékpá vbì <span style="text-decoration: underline;">è</span>ò</em> [Ohi collide Oje fist LOC face] ‘Ohi’s fist collided with Oje’s face / Ohi punched Oje in the face’).  Human locatum predications also show an alternation lacking the <em>vbi</em> phrase (<em>òhí só ójé èkpà</em> [Ohi collide Oje fist] ‘Ohi’s fist collided with Oje / Ohi punched Oje’). There is however no simple transitive predication that combines as core arguments possessors, with or without their body parts (*<em>òhí só òjè</em> ‘Ohi punched Oje’), or subject possessor and locatum (*<em>òhí só ùdék<span style="text-decoration: underline;">è</span>n</em> ‘Ohi punched the door’). As a consequence, result is privileged in Emai expression of forceful contact, downgrading manner through use of nominal forms and their partitive relations. English, as manner prominent in this domain, reveals a contrary type, where manner is obligatorily verb expressed (<em>punch</em>) and result is optionally available via prepositional satellite (<em>on</em>). </p>

Ergativity and Transitivity

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Woolford
Keyword(s):  
Type A ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Nez Perce ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Object Shift ◽  
Shift Type ◽  
Ordinary Notion ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

Ergative case is said to mark transitive subjects, and it is widely assumed that this is true under the ordinary definition of transitive; however, Bittner and Hale (1996) propose that ergative languages fall into two types, neither of which is based on the ordinary notion of transitivity. In one, a direct object is not necessary for ergative case: any verb with an external argument counts as transitive, following Hale and Keyser 1993 (e.g., Warlpiri). In the other, a direct object is necessary, but not sufficient: the subject gets ergative case only if the object moves out of the VP (e.g., Inuit). This article argues that Niuean, Dyirbal, and Nez Perce are also of this object shift type. A search yielded no language where ergative case is clearly governed only by ordinary transitivity; languages that do fit the stereotype have only ergative agreement. A formal account of the correlation between object shift and ergative case is proposed, under which ergative case can be used as a ‘‘last resort,’’ as one of three ways to avoid the locality violation that object shift creates.

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