Gender assignment strategies and L1 effects in the elicited production of mixed Spanish-Basque DPs

This paper investigates the strategies involved in gender assignment in Spanish-Basque mixed Determiner Phrases (DPs) with a gendered Spanish determiner (el M /la F) and a Basque ungendered noun. Previous studies on Spanish-Basque mixed DPs have revealed conflicting results regarding the determining factor affecting gender assignment, namely, phonological ending vs. analogical gender. We designed a forced-switch elicitation task in order to elicit mixed DPs with a Spanish determiner and a Basque noun (controlled for both phonological vs. analogical cues). Thirty highly proficient Spanish-Basque bilinguals with different profiles and socio­linguistic backgrounds participated in the study. Three cues were significant in the selection of the Spanish M/F determiner: the analogical gender and two phonological cues, the word ending and the root ending of the Basque noun. Further statistical analyses revealed participants’ L1 as a strong factor in the variability attested: bilinguals with Spanish as (one of) their L1(s) rely predominantly on the analogical criterion, whereas speakers with only Basque as L1 follow mainly the phonological criterion. Overall, this study provides an explanation for the previous conflicting results and highlights the fact that bilinguals may use different strategies depending on their bilingual profile and the morpho-phonological properties of the languages in contact.

Involuntary Syntactic Error of Interlingual Word Order When English Rigid Word Order Momentarily Deforms Arabic Clauses

This paper intends to explore the potential momentary influence of English rigid word order on the placement of Arabic preverbal subjects. The idea is that English as a Subject-Verb-Object language has one subject position; thus, it poses no the distribution of determiner phrases in this position. By contrast, Standard Arabic (henceforth, Arabic) uses two different word orders (Subject-Verb/Verb-Subject-(Object), SVO/VSO). As a result, indefinite determiner phrases are not freely distributed in the subject position; that is, they can appear in the postverbal subject position -VSO but not in the preverbal subject position -SVO. Because the two languages use different syntactic word orders and different subject positions, two experimental tasks (an Arabic guided writing task and an English-to-Arabic translation written task) were administered to find out whether the English word order momentarily causes Arabic learners of English to violate their language subject distributions. Analysis of the performance of Arabic native participants in the two tasks revealed two important outcomes: a) when participants were asked to reorder scrambled words into full clauses, they significantly preferred VSO order; in contrast, b) when participants were asked to translate full English clauses into Arabic, they strikingly preferred SVO order violating syntactic parametric (distributional) restrictions on the placement of indefinite determiner phrases. In other words, they used indefinite determiner phrases in the preverbal subject position. Based on the results, the study argues that the improper use of indefinite determiner phrases in the preverbal subject position is not due to the implicit knowledge of Arabic grammar; it is due to the momentary influence of English syntactic word order involuntarily exerted by participants.

The Nominal Domain in Languages of the Caucasus

This chapter aims to address how Caucasian languages behave in terms of the dichotomy between noun phrases (NPs) and determiner phrases (DPs), dichotomy as specifically discussed in Bošković (2005, 2008, 2012). It uses comparative data from three Caucasian languages, namely, Laz, Abkhaz, and Kabardian. These three languages are chosen because typologically they make use of different strategies to express (in)definiteness. Abkhaz has definite and indefinite articles, while Pazar Laz is a language without articles. Kabardian, which also lacks articles, expresses definiteness and specificity through case morphology. Using Bošković’s own criteria, we show that, we shown that the NP/DP split is not enough to handle the differences among these languages. We propose that a new typology, one that allows for NP- and DP-languages as well as Kase Phrase (KP-) and null-DP-, languages is required to capture the properties of Abkhaz, Pazar Laz, and Kabardian. The chapter then discusses the implications of this new typology for the internal structures of the nominals in these three languages with a focus on what other functional projections are available and how they are ordered in the nominal domains.

A Phonetic Account of Spanish-English Bilinguals’ Divergence with Agreement

Does bilingual language influence in the domain of phonetics impact the morphosyntactic domain? Spanish gender is encoded by word-final, unstressed vowels (/a e o/), which may diphthongize in word-boundary vowel sequences. English neutralizes unstressed final vowels and separates across-word vocalic sequences. The realization of gender vowels as schwa, due to cross-linguistic influence, may remain undetected if not directly analyzed. To explore the potential over-reporting of gender accuracy, we conducted parallel phonetic and morphosyntactic analyses of read and semi-spontaneous speech produced by 11 Monolingual speakers and 13 Early and 13 Late Spanish-English bilinguals. F1 and F2 values were extracted at five points for all word-final unstressed vowels and vowel sequences. All determiner phrases (DPs) from narratives were coded for morphological and contextual parameters. Early bilinguals exhibited clear patterns of vowel centralization and higher rates of hiatuses than the other groups. However, the morphological analysis yielded very few errors. A follow-up integrated analysis revealed that /a and o/ were realized as centralized vowels, particularly with [+Animate] nouns. We propose that bilinguals’ schwa-like realizations can be over-interpreted as target Spanish vowels. Such variable vowel realization may be a factor in the vulnerability to attrition in gender marking in Spanish as a heritage language.

VN Phrasal Compounds in Cinyanja

This article aims at discussing verb-noun compounds with a locative prefix in the nominal part of the compounds in Cinyanja. The singular and plural forms of the compounds have been presented to show that the complex forms are nouns. With regard to the internal structure, the compounds show that they have a phrasal structure. Since verb-noun compounds in this study resemble the structure of synthetic compounds in English, the analysis of these words followed the syntactic approach. The results show that internally, the compounds with a locative have a verb phrase internal structure, and follow the verb-argument word order. In the syntactic context, it is shown that the compounds with the phrasal internal structure function as determiner phrases because they can appear in the subject and object positions in simple sentences and relative clauses. Further, the entire compound word can be modified by adjectives, and be coordinated with simple nouns, which suggests that the compounds with a locative are indeed determiner phrases. Finally, with the application of the lexical integrity hypothesis, the results reveal that the compounds with the locative in the nominal part are genuine compounds because they adhere to the lexical integrity principle.

Deriving Object Relatives in Kiswahili Determiner Phrases

Generally one finds there are shortages in the array of technical resources available to penetrate the morphology of Kiswahili and its similarities to, as well as its departures from, morphemic structures in other Bantu languages. The introduction of a new approach employed here is an attempt to contribute to correcting that deficit. Object relative Determiner Phrases (DPs) in Kiswahili are common noun phrases with the noun head called the object relative appearing in the initial position of the DP. The phrases also have relative words and clitics introducing relative clauses. In Kiswahili these phrases are formed via DP internal movements of the object noun to the highest position coupled with movements of the subject and verb complex. The suggestion here that the object relative moves to the highest position in DP configuration marks a significant departure from other studies. This analysis provides theoretical insights about how these constructions are mapped in the minds of Kiswahili speakers. Refinement of the morpho-syntactic display which is specific to Kiswahili is essential for helping learners of the language to master it correctly. Further research will reveal whether the analysis of the object relative adopted DP can be used to derive similar phrases in other Bantu languages, such as Sesotho, Chishona, Ikalanga, and ciNsenga.

The syntax of PP-adverbs within English determiner phrases

The current article explores the distribution of PP-adverbs, such as this month, this year etc., within English determiner phrases. Examples extracted from English newspapers show that PP-adverbs surprisingly separate head nouns from their PP-complements (i.e. of-phrases), e.g. the election this month of the first female president. At other times, PP-adverbs follow PP-complements, e.g. the election of the first female president this month. Assuming that these PP-adverbs have a null preposition (Larson 1985; McCawley 1988; Caponigro & Pearl 2008, 2009; Shun'ichiro 2013), I put forward three possible syntactic analyses to account for the examples above: (i) adjunction of both the PP-complement and the PP-adverb; (ii) leftward movement of the head noun or the noun phrase; and (iii) rightward movement of the PP-complement. Following Stowell (1981), Higginbotham (1983) and Anderson (1984), the adjunction proposal argues that both PP-adverbs and of-phrases are adjuncts, thus being freely ordered in the nominal hierarchy (Bresnan 1982; Svenonius 1994; Stroik & Putnam 2013). In contrast, the leftward movement analysis respects Kayne's (1994) Antisymmetric Theory of Linearization and argues that the of-phrase in the examples above is still a genuine complement, but the head noun, or sometimes the noun phrase, moves leftwards to a position higher than spec,FP where PP-adverbs are situated. As for the rightward movement account, it follows the leftward movement in treating the of-phrase as a complement but differs in that it extraposes the PP-complement outside PP-adverbs and right-adjoins it inside the DP. The article shows that the first two proposals are untenable, and sometimes cannot derive the wanted data. The third account is superior in that it accounts for the required data as well as other island-sensitive facts.