Bracketing paradoxes: A dependency grammar analysis in terms of morph catenae

This manuscript examines various types of bracketing paradoxes: classical “personal noun” constructions, parasynthetic compounds, agentive deverbal nouns, compound denominal adjectives, plural nouns with lexicalized modifiers, multiple auxiliary constructions, and German particle verb constructions. We argue that given a dependency-based view of both sentence and word structure, these bracketing puzzles become non-paradoxical. The morph catena is taken to be the fundamental unit of morphosyntax. A morph catena is A MORPH OR A COMBINATION OF MORPHS THAT ARE CONTINUOUS WITH RESPECT TO DOMINANCE. This notion is derived from its syntactic equivalent, the catena, which is defined as a word or a combination of words that are continuous with respect to dominance. Given an understanding of morphosyntax that acknowledges morph catenae, bracketing paradoxes are resolved by the ability of morph catenae to reach across words to include parts of words.

Do particle verbs share a representation with their root verbs? Evidence from structural priming

Many languages have particle verbs like meegeven in Dutch, in which a particle (“mee”, with) sometimes appears independently from the root verb (“geven”, give). To investigate whether particle verbs and their root verbs share a lexical-syntactic (lemma) representation, we tested whether structural priming (the tendency for speakers to repeat sentence structure) is boosted by lexical overlap between prime and target verbs. Priming was larger with repetition of the identical verb than with root-only repetition and larger with particle-only repetition than without lexical repetition. These findings support a dual-lemma representation for particle verbs: one lemma represents the verb-particle combination (separately from the root), another lemma represents the particle (shared with other particle verbs). Finally, priming was larger from root to particle verb than between two different particle verbs with identical roots, suggesting that particle-verb lemmas are connected to their root-verb lemmas but not to each other.

Textual and pictorial representations in strategic thinking about linguistic meaning

The aim of this study was to investigate L2 speakers’ ability to think strategically about linguistic meaning by asking them to make sense of particle verb (PV) constructions, a particularly demanding aspect of the English language for L2 speakers. Our focus was on meaning construal strategies in textual and pictorial representations of 22 figurative PVs with the particle down. The participants were asked to express themselves verbally and visually, and we were interested in the nature of their answers as well as their relationship. More specifically, we wished to determine the salience of particular elements in the participants’ strategic meaning construal, the type of relationship between textual and pictorial representations and, finally, potential dominance of one mode over another, which was examined in terms of the well-established concepts of “relay” and “anchorage”. The results showed that participants generally related the meaning of the PV construction to its components in their textual answers, whereas in pictorial answers their main tendency was to attend to the figurative meaning of the PV. Furthermore, their textual and pictorial answers most frequently depended on each other, which allowed us to determine that the text-picture relationship was predominantly that of relay, i.e. that text was perceived as more significant in the text-picture relationship.

Particle-verb order in Old Hungarian and complex predicates

This chapter examines the distribution of verbal particles in Old Hungarian, and argues that despite the word order change from SOV to SVO in Hungarian, the particle-verb order did not change because the previous pre-verbal argument position was reanalysed as a pre-verbal predicative position where complex predicates are formed in overt syntax. Predicative constituents other than particles show significant word order variation in Old Hungarian, apparently due to optionality in predicate movement (while variation found with particle-verb orderings can be attributed to independent factors). It is proposed that after the basic word order was reanalysed as VO, internal arguments and secondary predicates could appear post-verbally and it was the still obligatory movement of particles that triggered the generalization of predicate movement, making all predicates pre-verbal in neutral sentences at later stages. This process involves a period of word order variation as predicate movement gradually generalizes to different types of predicates.

English transitive particle verbs

Adopting the Cognitive Linguistic (CL) framework, this study focuses on the particle placement phenomenon of English transitive particle verbs and its relationship with idiomaticity. Construal is argued to play a key role in determining which order a transitive particle verb should take. When a caused motion event or state change event is construed sequentially, the discontinuous order is taken to emphasize the final resultant state of the object. When the holistic construal is taken to view the same situation, the continuous order is adopted to profile the object or the interaction between the subject and the object. The holistic construal requires two conditions. First, the particle has a dynamic sense. It can designate both the process and the endpoint of motion. Second, the final state denoted by the particle is directly caused by the action denoted by the verb. In contrast, the sequential construal is allowed as long as a causal link can be established between the two participants under discussion or between the verb and the state change of one participant. In addition, the present study argues that the particle placement of idiomatic particle verbs depends on the processes in which the particle verb has developed its idiomaticity. If the idiomatic meaning develops from the inference associated with the sequential construal, the discontinuous order is preferred. On the other hand, if the idiomatic meaning is based on the holistic construal, the continuous order is then preferred. Moreover, item-by-item analyses of particle verbs that only allow one order listed in the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs provide corpus-based support to the CL view of the relationship between construal, particle placement, and idiomaticity proposed in this study.

Particle Verbs in the Surinamese Creoles

This paper shows that Dutch verb-particle constructions have been transferred into the Surinamese creole languages as a result of pervasive multilingualism and intensive contact. Particle-verb structures are, at most, marginal in the native grammar of Surinamese creoles. However, recent data show that verb-particle constructions of the Dutch sort are becoming productive and are used with some homogeneity in the creole language context.