La relation entre accord et concordance dans deux dialectes des Grisons

This article deals with the agreement system of two dialects spoken in southern Switzerland. In both, FPL agreement is marked by the suffix -n, which is a reflex of the 6th person verbal ending. In Bregagliotto, the more conservative dialect of the two, -n occurs in the second position of FPL NPS (FPL and FSG NPs are otherwise identical). In Mesolcinese, -n occurs on all inflected elements that agree with a feminine plural controller (including finite verbs), except definite articles and subject clitics.

Phonological derivation from proximal to distal demonstratives in Chinese

Every language has at least two demonstratives or deictic terms, a proximal one and a distal one, and some languages in addition have a medial (or some other additional) demonstrative. Demonstratives exhibit a variety of grammatical and pragmatic functions, and they also serve as major sources for the development of various important grammatical devices, such as copulas, relativizers, definite articles, and complementizers. However, lexical sources for demonstratives remain largely unknown, as do the mechanisms leading to their emergence. Based on a database of more than 1000 subdialects of Chinese, this article demonstrates that the distal demonstratives in these subdialects are phonologically derived from their corresponding proximal demonstratives, which were themselves grammaticalized from classifiers in Late Medieval Chinese. This finding identifies a new type of mechanism leading to the emergence of grammatical items: within a pair of two closely related grammatical elements, the basic and unmarked member originates from a lexical source, and gives rise to the other member through certain phonological principles. The domain of demonstratives thus illustrates how processes of grammaticalization and phonological derivation can interact giving rise to the emergence of new grammatical forms.

On the Acquisition of French (Null) Subjects and (In)Definiteness: Simultaneous and Early Sequential bi-, tri- and Multilinguals

The French non-null-subject parameter is set very early, irrespective of the number of languages acquired. By contrast, the acquisition of (in)definiteness marking takes place at age 11;0. For early parametrized grammatical phenomena, Tsimpli (Tsimpli, Ianthi Maria. 2014. Early, late or very late? Timing acquisition and bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 4(3). 283–313.) argues that age of onset (AoO) matters. For late acquired phenomena, language experience is crucial. We recruited 23 simultaneous and 34 early sequential L2 (eL2) learners of French (mean age 4;6). Using an elicitation task, we examined the production of French subjects and (in)definite articles. All children behaved similarly with respect to the (early) setting of the null-subject parameter. In contrast, (in)definite marking was sensitive to number of languages and age; AoO or input effects did not affect the results. Simultaneous multilinguals diverge from eL2 children, showing subject spell-out preferences, interpreted in terms of acquisition phases. We will discuss this result against a model of language acquisition in which the child proceeds in acquisition stages.

On the Acquisition of French (Null) Subjects and (In)Definiteness: Simultaneous and Early Sequential bi-, tri- and Multilinguals

The French non-null-subject parameter is set very early, irrespective of the number of languages acquired. By contrast, the acquisition of (in)definiteness marking takes place at age 11;0. For early parametrized grammatical phenomena, Tsimpli (Tsimpli, Ianthi Maria. 2014. Early, late or very late? Timing acquisition and bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 4(3). 283–313.) argues that age of onset (AoO) matters. For late acquired phenomena, language experience is crucial. We recruited 23 simultaneous and 34 early sequential L2 (eL2) learners of French (mean age 4;6). Using an elicitation task, we examined the production of French subjects and (in)definite articles. All children behaved similarly with respect to the (early) setting of the null-subject parameter. In contrast, (in)definite marking was sensitive to number of languages and age; AoO or input effects did not affect the results. Simultaneous multilinguals diverge from eL2 children, showing subject spell-out preferences, interpreted in terms of acquisition phases. We will discuss this result against a model of language acquisition in which the child proceeds in acquisition stages.

Referential Choice in the Written Narratives of Indonesian Adults

This study aims to describe the referential choice of two protagonist animate characters in a silent six-minute film entitled The Pear Story (Chafe, 1980). A total of 80 undergraduate and graduate Indonesian students were asked to watch the film and then retell the story by writing a narrative about the film in Indonesian. Findings indicate that when the protagonist animate referents are mentioned for the first time, a classifier seorang ‘a person’ is always used before the NP. When they are reactivated, they are mostly expressed by zero, pronouns dia or ia ‘he’, clitic –nya ‘his’ or ‘him’, NPs with determiners ini ‘this’, itu ‘that’, tersebut ‘aforementioned’, tadi ‘mentioned before’, NPs with relative clauses and NPs with definite articles si or sang ‘the’ which are often used in fables or tales. This study also demonstrates that the choice of anaphoric expressions of the protagonists is determined by factors such as referential distance and referential interference. This study confirms other cross-linguistic studies about referential choice – that there is a correlation between salience and referring expressions in discourse. AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan penggunaan acuan untuk dua tokoh utama dalam film bisu berdurasi enam menit yang berjudul The Pear Story (Chafe, 1980). Sebanyak 80 mahasiswa Indonesia tingkat Strata 1 dan Pascasarjana di sebuah universitas swasta diminta untuk menonton film tersebut dan kemudian menuliskan narasi mengenai film itu dalam bahasa Indonesia. Data menunjukkan bahwa jika referen kedua tokoh utama tersebut disebutkan untuk pertama kalinya, bentuk leksikal seorang selalu muncul sebelum frasa nomina (FN). Jika referennya diaktifkan kembali, maka yang digunakan adalah zero, pronomina dia atau ia, klitik –nya, FN + ini/itu/tersebut/tadi, FN + klausa relatif, dan si/sang + FN. Penelitian ini juga menunjukkan bahwa pilihan bentuk anaforik untuk kedua tokoh utama itu ditentukan oleh faktor jarak antara referen dan anteseden dan juga oleh adanya interferensi referen. Hasil penelitian ini sejalan dengan penelitian lintas bahasa mengenai pilihan acuan, yaitu bahwa ada korelasi antara referen utama dan bentuk acuannya.

Reference to characters in narratives of Russian-Hebrew bilingual and Russian and Hebrew monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder and typical language development

This research analyzed adequacy of referential expressions in the narratives of bilingual and monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and typical language development (TLD), aiming to shed light on the relative contribution of morpho-syntactic, discourse-pragmatic, and semantic constraints. Narratives were collected from 51 children using a storytelling procedure ( MAIN – Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives). Participants were 18 bilingual Russian-Hebrew preschool children (8 with DLD), 17 monolingual Russian speakers (9 with DLD), and 16 monolingual Hebrew speakers (5 with DLD) aged 5;6–6;7. Referential expressions were coded for form (noun phrase [NP] or pronoun) and character function (Introduction or Maintenance). Analyses addressed the effects of proficiency group (TLD/DLD), language group (bilingual/monolingual), and language (Russian/Hebrew) on inadequate pronoun use and definiteness. Results demonstrated that children in all groups introduced characters using NPs. Children with DLD used more morpho-syntactically inadequate pronouns, such as incorrect gender, while both children with DLD and those with TLD used similar numbers of discourse-pragmatically inadequate pronouns. Bilinguals used more morpho-syntactically inadequate pronouns than monolinguals. In Hebrew, bilingual children with DLD omitted definite articles for character Maintenance more frequently than bilingual children with TLD and monolingual Hebrew-speaking children with DLD. Wrong gender assignment indicates that children with DLD have difficulties with morpho-syntactic constraints. Omission of definite articles for character Maintenance indicates a possibility of both morpho-syntactic and semantic difficulties that bilingual children with DLD acquiring Hebrew face. The results offer insight into the nature of the difficulty observed in bilingual children with DLD in using referential expressions.

Definite expression and degrees of definiteness

This chapter studies definite determiners formerly treated as semantic expletives and challenges the view that they can be uniformly treated as such. Assuming that definiteness consists of two features, uniqueness (iota) and familiarity (Fam), and depending on the features spelled out by the determiner, it proposes that definite articles can be fully specified for definiteness spelling out both features (full definiteness), partially specified, spelling out Fam (partial definiteness), or, in the case of true expletives, not specified at all (zero definiteness). Fully definite expressions cannot be modified by other definite nominals. In contrast, partially definite expressions form predicative FamPs, which can be modified by other definite nominals. Fam can also introduce proper names and generic kind-denoting nouns. Finally, true expletives appear even in non-definite contexts. An explanatory and descriptive account is offered that provides new insights on the properties of definiteness.

Information structure in language acquisition. Production and comprehension of (in)definite articles by German-speaking children

The present study investigates the production and comprehension of indefinite and definite articles as markers of givenness by typically-developing German-speaking children, from the perspective of information structure theory. The study involves 93 typically-developing children aged four to seven years old with normal language-skills and 20 adults. The results of a story-narration task and a truth-value judgment task reveal that children have more problems with new than with given referents in production as well as comprehension suggesting a “given better than new”-pattern. These findings are explained in the context of perspective-taking capacities and cue weighting theory.