Finiteness marking in Russian-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment

Much crosslinguistic acquisition research explores finiteness marking in typical development and Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Research into Russian, however, has focused on typical acquisition, not SLI. This article presents a first attempt to investigate finiteness marking in monolingual Russian-speaking children with SLI. We test two competing hypotheses: the Extended Optional Infinitive (EOI) hypothesis and the morphological richness account. The former predicts a large proportion of non-finite forms in the speech of children with SLI crosslinguistically. Due to the rich morphological verbal system of Russian, the latter hypothesis predicts that finiteness marking in Russian SLI will be relatively unimpeded, except for ‘near-miss’ errors. To test these predictions, we analyzed picture-story narrative samples collected from 67 monolingual Russian-acquiring children aged 4;1 to 4;11. All samples are part of the BiSLI corpus created by Tribushinina and colleagues and publicly available through the CHILDES project. We found that, similar to both aged-matched typically developing (TD) controls (N = 24) and younger TD children (N = 23), children with SLI (N = 20) are essentially adultlike in terms of finiteness marking of verbal forms in the matrix clause. The handful of errors observed in the SLI sample involved substitutions in only one inflectional category. These findings provide support for the morphological richness hypothesis over the EOI model of Russian SLI.

Tone alternation in Dàgáárè verbs: Perfectives and Imperfectives

While previous studies on Dàgáárè tone have looked at the nouns, this paper particularly examines tone in verbs, perfective vs imperfective forms. The verbal system has different patterns based on the form of the verb. There are three tone classes for Dàgáárè verbs and for each of the classes, the surface tone pattern it exhibits in the perfective is systematically different from the tone patterns in the imperfective. For the perfectives we have L, H and HL while the imperfectives have LH, HL and H!H, at least in the dialect under study. I treat tone as a combination of the features [±upper] and [±raised] which are connected to what is described as a Tone node (T-node). These Tone nodes in turn connect to the syllable. Under this system, I assume L is represented with the features [-upper] and [-raised] and H with the features [+upper] [+raised]. Underlying tonal melodies of the root morphemes are identical to the surface tones of the perfective forms whether these contain an overt suffix or not. For the imperfectives, the suffix comes with an unspecified underlying T-node. The grammar then chooses the features [±upper] and [±raised] to insert under the already existing T-node.

Dance as a means of assimilating socio-cultural experience

The purpose of the article is to identify the essence of dance as a means of assimilating the sociocultural experience of the individual. The methodology of the research is based on interdisciplinary and systematicity characterizing the culturological knowledge. The scientific novelty of the results obtained is to formulate the problem of dance in the cultural dimension and in finding out the essence of dance as a means of assimilating socio-cultural experience due to the socio-cultural orientation laid down, which contribute to the full comprehension of the world of culture. Conclusions. Correlation with the eternal foundations of the world and with the most modern innovations makes dance a kind of model of cultural processes. Being a non-verbal system, the language of art performs an indirect function, however, dance - non-national, universal in its linguistic characteristics - does not need translation and therefore is capable of performing a unifying function. The educational and therapeutic possibilities of dance are important in the process of including the individual in the system of social relations; dance is an effective means of overcoming human disunity, acting as a standard of deep orientation towards the surrounding people, and develops the harmony of social understanding deeply rooted in a person.

ПРОБЛЕМИ ПРИ ГРАМАТИЧЕСКАТА АДАПТАЦИЯ НА НОВИ ЗАЕМКИ ОТ АНГЛИЙСКИ ЕЗИК / PROBLEMS OF THE MORPHOSYNTACTIC ADAPTATION OF RECENT ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN BULGARIAN

This paper examines the morphosyntactic adaptation of recent English loanwords to the grammatical system of Bulgarian. It builds on the conclusions in Hristov (2015) and outlines the latest trends in the accommodation of some problematic Anglicisms. Special attention is paid to the gender and number adaptation of nouns, the (in)declinability of adjectives, as well as the adoption of new verbs. The results demonstrate that the accommodation strategies discussed in the specialist literature are for the most part followed consistently although there are some exceptions too. In spite of the sizable number of imported adjectives which receive Slavonic derivational suffixes, a large number of newly borrowed adjectives remain indeclinable; there is also evidence for the blurring of the boundaries between adjective and noun modifiers – an expected new development in the ever growing tendency for foreign adjectives to remain uninflected in Bulgarian. The few borrowed verbs likewise take derivational suffixes and are thus successfully incorporated into the Bulgarian verbal system. At the same time, there are some surprising findings which suggest that processes rather untypical of Bulgarian might be underway. Nouns exclusively denoting females can be assigned a formal masculine gender, even without belonging to the so-called dual gender of epicene nouns – a highly unusual phenomenon. The material also turns up zero plural inflections, as well as plurals with English -s. The analysis highlights the competition between Bulgari-an and foreign forms and structures, as well as the question whether those innovations have the potential to become more established in Bulgarian grammar. Keywords: Anglicisms/English loanwords, morphosyntactic adaptation, nouns, adjectives, verbs, Bulgarian language

Actionality across (sub)paradigms

This paper explores the verbal system of Tundra Nenets and offers a partition of the entire set of derivationally minimal verbs into actional classes, which include stative, process, inceptive-stative, ingressive-atelic, durative and punctual telic, durative and punctual ingressive, and bi-telic verbs. This classification is established in a bottom-up manner, starting from the lowest level of actional interpretations of individual subparadigms of a verb. As a result, 18 subparadigmatic classes are established. At the next stage, an actional characteristic is assigned to the entire paradigm and the 18 subparadigmatic classes are reduced to seven actional macroclasses. However, at the paradigmatic level, one discovers that for certain types of verbs actional information available paradigm-internally does not suffice. To recover the missing information, one needs to examine derivationally related lexical items that realize semantic configurations unavailable paradigm-internally. This paradigm-external perspective leads to the recognition of cross-paradigmatic actional characteristics assigned to groups of derivationally related verbs.

Verbalization/Insubordination: A Diachronic Syntactic Isogloss in Northeast Asia

The present paper discusses one of diachronic syntactic isoglosses in Northeast Asia. This study addresses in particular the process of renewal of finite verbal forms through non-finite forms, which is very prominent in different families in Northeast Asia (Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Japanese and Korean). It will be shown that the processes of verbalization (finitization of participles and nominalizations) is a general areal feature in Northeast Asia, but recognition of this diachronic isogloss has been partially hampered by differences in research traditions. Apart from similarities (finitization of participles/nominalizations, displacement and modalization of the erstwhile finite forms), the languages also show certain differences, in part reflecting structural differences of constructions subject to reanalysis. Following up on our earlier work, in this paper we will be more specific on how the developments in the Korean verbal system fit into this general pattern.

Typology and diachrony of converbs in Indo-Aryan

Non-finite forms constitute an important component of the verbal system of Indo-Aryan (IA) languages. On the one hand, some of them, such as e.g., converbs, have already received proper attention in historical linguistics and typological literature, with regard to Old Indo-Aryan (OIA), Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) and New Indo-Aryan (NIA) (cf. Tikkanen 1987; Peterson 1998; Subbarao 2012 among others). Other forms, such as participles, have usually been analysed in the wider context of reorganisation of a finite verbal system which led to alignment change (for recent discussion see Dahl and Stroński 2016). On the other hand, adverbial participles or infinitives have so far been under-studied (cf. Sigorski 2005), particularly within early NIA. This period in the history of IA languages witnessed several important morphosyntactic developments and still requires in-depth study, particularly due to the lack of well-edited corpora. The aim of the present paper is to partly fill this gap by highlighting major trends in the development of constructions based on various non-finite forms in early NIA. We focus on main argument marking in converbal chain constructions and its interplay with the animacy hierarchy. We demonstrate a relative stability of differential case marking (DCM), focusing mainly on conditions on differential subject marking (DSM) and differential object marking (DOM). In addition, we compare converbal chain constructions with participial absolute constructions (AC). Finally, in order to give a holistic view of converbal constructions, we verify the type of linking instantiated by them, focusing on three scopal parameters in converbal constructions (Tense, Illocutionary Force and Negation) and using the apparatus of Role and Reference Grammar and Multivariate Analysis.

Latvian verbs in -ēt: semantics vs. conjugation

The conjugation of secondary Latvian verbs is determined with high accuracy by their suffixes. However, verbs with the suffix -ē- are different: they are more or less equally divided between the traditional second and third conjugations. The article sets out to prove or disprove the hypothesis that the assignment of Latvian verbs with the suffix -ē- to a specific conjugation correlates with their semantics. For that purpose, 705 disyllabic verbs ending in -ēt were collected and marked by their origin, transitivity, and conjugation. Verbs that are not obvious borrowings were then divided into semantic classes. As a result of the semantic classification, the working hypothesis was confirmed: second conjugation verbs ending in -ēt predominantly denote agentive actions (creation, destruction, modification, etc.), whereas third conjugation verbs usually denote phenomena, processes, states, and sound production. The results suggest that the Latvian verbal system exhibits a close interrelation between semantics and morphology.

Egyptian Students Difficulties in Learning the Italian Verbal System

This essay aims to analyse errors made by Egyptian students in learning the Italian verbal system. We try to explain the most frequent errors highlighting the causes that generated them. This thesis is based on the analysis of compositions written by 60 Egyptian learners enrolled in the second year of the Italian degree course at the Faculty of Al Alsun. The analysis revealed that the verb is a part of the speech in which almost all students have made errors. The causes of the errors are numerous: the influence of the Arabic language; the difference between the structure of the tense in the Italian language and in the Arabic language and the intrinsic difficulties of the Italian language.