Locative Inversion, PP Topicalization, and Weak Crossover in English

The literature on locative inversion in English currently disputes whether locative inversion differs from PP topicalization in permitting a quantifier in the fronted PP to bind a pronoun in the subject. In order to resolve this dispute, this paper runs two experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk, one an acceptability judgment task and the other a forced-choice task. Both find that PP topicalization does not differ from locative inversion: both permit variable binding. Locative inversion also does not differ from a minimally different sentence with the overt expletive there. These findings remove an argument against the null expletive analysis of English locative inversion, and they also show that weak crossover is not uniformly triggered by A-bar movement.

Speaker’s Involvement in Press Reportage: The Case of Nonlexicalised and Lexicalised Locative Inversion

This article offers a corpus-based analysis of locative inversion in journalistic writing. The study focuses on the analysis of the construction in press reportage dealing with cultural, sports, financial, political and spot news in Present-Day English. On the basis of data retrieved from six different corpora, it is argued that the distribution of locative inversion in these texts is related to the degree of the writer’s involvement in each text style. Results show that the more involved a text is, the more locative inversions may be expected. The study further demonstrates that the construction itself serves as a discourse marker through which the presence of the writer is encoded in these texts.

Locative inversion in Germanic and Romance

This chapter investigates locative inversion (LI) in Germanic and Romance, a subject inversion involving a preposed locative expression. LI appears in two primary types: overt LI and covert LI, where a locative reading obtains without a preposed locative. Covert LI occurs in null-subject languages, where a covert locative argument satisfies formal subject requirements. English LI is always overt, yet French only allows covert LI with verbs of appearance. Furthermore, Romance permits embedded and matrix LI, but English prohibits the former. This chapter proposes that cross-linguistic variation follows from varying conspiracies of syntactic and pragmatico-semantic factors. Firstly, verbs of appearance select a locative covert experiencer, which satisfies the French EPP. Secondly, multiple formal ingredients interact in different distributions to produce various instantiations of LI: an EPP in TP, and the ability of locatives to check: the EPP (Dutch), Subject of Predication (Italian), EPP and SoP (French), and EPP and Topichood (English).

Efeitos do ensino explícito da gramática no desenvolvimento de diferentes tipos de propriedades em L2

The present study investigates the effects of explicit grammar teaching on the acquisition of a core syntactic property (the ungrammaticality of free inversion) and a syntax-discourse property (the unacceptability of locative inversion with informationally heavy verbs) by advanced and upper intermediate Portuguese learners of English. The study followed a pre-test/post-test design. Its results reveal that, at an upper intermediate level, explicit teaching did not have any effects on learners’ performance, regardless of the type of property. At an advanced level, in contrast, the teaching intervention resulted in gains in all cases. However, these gains were only maintained beyond the immediate teaching period when the target property was strictly syntactic. These findings indicate that the effectiveness of instruction depends on the stage of development at which learners are and on the type of target property. The pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed in detail.

Structure of English Locative Inversion

A sentence structure involves the packaging of meaning. Words and their order decide the meaning of a sentence conveyed. This study discussed two points of problems. The first one is locative inversion structure in sentences taken from Corpus of Contemporary American English. The other problem is the constraints of locative inversion in the English grammar. The problems are discussed based on the theory of inversion by Hewings (2005). Method used to collect the data was documentation method. The analysis was conducted using descriptive qualitative method. The result of the analysis is shown using informal method. As results, this study shows that locative inversion structure is different from canonical structures. It has a distinct feature contrasting it with canonical structure. It also has several constraints regarding subject, predicate, and salient information affecting its formation.

Caused-Motion and Caused-Position

According to Goldberg (1995), placement verbs (such as put) are instantiated in the Caused-Motion Construction. Rohde (2001), however, argued that placement verbs in fact occur in a different construction, which she names the Caused-Position Construction, whose semantic value is not ‘cause to move’ but rather ‘cause to be positioned’. The present paper redefines and justifies the postulation of Caused-Position Construction. The Caused-Position Construction is compatible with not only placement verbs but also a variety of other verbs, such as verbs of creation (write or build) or certain stative verbs (want or need), many of which also occur in the Locative Inversion construction. Further, a similar distinction between Caused-Motion and Caused-Position can be attested in Mandarin as well, which suggests that the distinction between two patterns of spatial causation may not be idiosyncratically confined to the English language but motivated by the general patterns of human cognition.

Locative Inversion as an Alternation Phenomenon in Setswana: The Case of Lexical Functional Grammar Theory

The paper has examined locative inversion constructions in Setswana, showing that the pre-posed locative phrase in these constructions is not the subject as it is viewed by other linguists in the literature. It has been argued, in this paper, that locative phrase occurs in the sentence initial position to perform the topic function which sets the scene for the focused noun phrase that alternates with it (locative phrase). The analysis has been achieved through information structure approach, showing the locative phrase that occurs in sentence initial position is a discourse phenomenon showing given information, and that the focused post-verbal noun phrase is new information that is emphasised on. Also, an appeal is made to Lexical Functional Grammar Approach to explain different ways of representing syntactic structures such as constituent structure and the functional structure.

Syntax meets discourse: Locative and deictic (directional) inversion in English

This paper offers a formal analysis of three constructions in English: locative inversion, central deictic inversion and directional inversion. These constructions constitute thetic statements with a locative intentional base which sets a scene that (re)introduces an entity in the discourse; syntactically, they display a non-canonical word order and have a number of unusual grammatical properties which make them particularly interesting to show how syntax connects, and adapts, to discourse. I propose that they all obtain from a language particular mechanism which involves a functional category LocP that adjusts the computational requirement to have a preverbal subject to the intentional need to have the subject post-verbally. As for the differences among them, they are approached in terms of the features that head LocP and the lexical properties of the verbs that head each of the structures. Ultimately, the paper also serves to discuss the role of certain informational features (the so-called core intentional features) in the syntactic derivation.