Acquisition of cumulative conditioning effects on words: Spanish-speaking children’s [subject pronoun + verb] usage

Child language acquisition research has provided ample evidence of lexical frequency effects. This corpus-based analysis introduces a novel frequency measure shown to significantly constrain adult language variation, but heretofore unexplored in child language acquisition research. Among adults, frequent occurrence of a form in a particular discourse context that conditions usage accumulates in memory over time and shapes the lexical representation of that form. This study contributes to the body of research on frequency effects in child language acquisition by testing whether such cumulative conditioning effects are also found among children, and, if so, at what age such effects appear. Specifically, the study investigates the influence of a distributional frequency measure (each verb form’s likelihood of use in a switch vs same-reference discourse context) on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression ( N = 2227) in Spanish (e.g. yo voy ~ voy, both meaning ‘I go’) in the speech of 65 monolingual children in two age cohorts. Results reveal sensitivity to the contextual conditioning of discourse continuity (switch reference) among both the younger (6- and 7-year-olds) and older (8- and 9-year-olds) children in support of previous research. In addition, each verb’s likelihood of use in a switch-reference context significantly predicted the SPP use among the older children, but not the younger ones, suggesting that the cumulative effect of a probabilistic pattern takes time to emerge during childhood. The lexically specific accumulation in memory of contextual conditioning effects supports exemplar models of child language acquisition: each instance of use in discourse contributes to the lexical representation of that form and, over time, plays a role in the creation of morphosyntactic patterns during language development.

The syntax of peripheral adverbial clauses

This paper explores the relation between the interpretations of while in English and mentre in Italian introducing adverbial clauses. Central while/mentre clauses express a temporal/aspectual modification of the proposition in the host clause. Peripheral while/mentre clauses make accessible a proposition from the discourse context enhancing the relevance of the host proposition. In one approach, clauses introduced by adversative while/mentre are analyzed as ‘less integrated’ with the associated clause than those introduced by temporal while/mentre. In another approach, adverbial clauses introduced by adversative while/mentre are considered not syntactically integrated with the host clause. This paper re-examines the nature of the syntactic integration of the adverbial clauses with the host clause, revealing a parallelism between the adversative peripheral while/mentre clauses and speaker-related sentential adverbs, leading to the conclusion that the non-integration analysis is not appropriate for this type of peripheral clauses and that any analysis must be aligned with that of the relevant non-clausal adverbials, supporting Frey (2018, 2020a, b). We also argue that central adverbial clauses recycled as speech event modifiers must be considered non-integrated. Concretely, we propose that they are integrated in discourse, through a specialized layer FrameP (Haegeman & Greco 2018).

Pronoun production remains stable over the adult lifespan for contexts with topic continuity

A prevalent finding in the referential communication literature is that older adults produce more ambiguous pronouns than younger adults, likely because they have difficulty determining the prominence of referents. This finding has been widely understood to reflect a general age-related deficit in communication. However, all studies from this line of work have used materials involving topic shifts (i.e. when the to-be-named referent shifts from one character to another, which requires perspective-taking and can be cognitively costly). To determine the extent to which younger and older adults’ pronominal use diverges, we investigated whether other aspects of the discourse context influence age-related differences in referential choice, apart from topic shifts. Here we tested a large sample of adults (N=496, ages 18-82) using narrative elicitation tasks across four experiments and nine contexts of topic continuity (i.e. contexts in which the to-be-named referent remained the same). In Experiments 1 and 2, we varied the number of characters in the scene while keeping the sex/gender of the characters distinct and found that pronominal use did not differ by age for scenes with 1, 2, and 3 characters. In Experiments 3 and 4, we varied the number of characters, the sex/gender of those characters (such that they were the same or different), and the linguistic emphasis placed on the main character. Again, we found no age differences across all conditions. Taken together, our findings suggest that older adults’ difficulty with prominence estimates is not all- encompassing, but rather appears to be confined to contexts involving topic shifts.

Pelibatan Tuhan dalam Wacana Larangan Membuang Sampah: Antara Doa dan Sumpah Serapah

One of the main community problems related to rubbish is disposing of it carelessly. This fact then gave rise to various responses such as placing the no-littering signs conveyed through prayer and swearing. This paper aims to examine the discourse elements, the functions and strategies of speech acts, and the use of discourse context. By qualitatively classifying data obtained from several articles and pictures related to the issue, this paper found that in various no-littering-sign through prayers and/or swearing, the discourse was formed from the core elements of the prohibition and various supporting elements, namely more alert preparation, gounder, imposition, and identity. The speech act is in the form of a forbidden-directive speech act to others, but is conveyed through a request-directive speech act to God in order to get a more substantial perlocutionary effect. This is conveyed by explicit and implicit, direct and indirect strategies, literal and non-literal, and express and implied speech acts. The context used relates to life quality and condition. Thus, the emotive function of language is more dominantly used in this type of no-littering sign than the conative function which is generally found in directive speech acts. Salah satu masalah utama masyarakat terkait sampah adalah membuangnya secara sembarangan. Sebagai respons, kemudian muncullah berbagai reaksi seperti rambu larangan membuang sampah sembarangan yang disampaikan melalui doa dan sumpah serapah. Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji unsur-unsur wacana, fungsi dan strategi tindak tutur, serta pemanfaatan konteks wacana tersebut. Dengan mengklasifikasikan data secara kualitatif melalui beberapa artikel dan gambar yang terkait dengan masalah tersebut, tulisan ini menemukan bahwa dalam berbagai tanda larangan membuang sampah sembarangan melalui doa dan/atau umpatan, wacana terbentuk dari unsur inti larangan dan berbagai unsur pendukung. Tindak tutur tersebut berupa tindak tutur direktif terlarang kepada orang lain, tetapi disampaikan melalui tindak tutur direktif permintaan kepada Tuhan agar memperoleh efek perlokusi yang lebih substansial. Hal ini disampaikan melalui strategi eksplisit dan implisit, strategi langsung dan tidak langsung, literal dan non literal, serta tindak tutur tersurat dan tersirat. Konteks yang digunakan berkaitan dengan kualitas dan kondisi hidup, khususnya yang bersifat celaka dan penderitaan. Dengan demikian, fungsi emotif bahasa lebih dominan digunakan pada jenis tanda larangan membuang sampah sembarangan daripada fungsi konatif yang umumnya terdapat pada tindak tutur direktif.

Coping with syntactic complexity in English–Chinese sight translation by translation and interpreting students.

This study approaches syntactic complexity from a relative point of view and examines how translation and interpreting students cope with relative clauses and passive constructions, two exemplifications of syntactic complexity in English–Chinese sight translation. A group of students (N = 23) took part in the study. The study consisted of three parts: an English reading span test, a sight translation task, and a baseline reading task. During the sight translation task, the participants sight translated English sentences with different degrees of structural asymmetry into Chinese in the single sentence context and the discourse context. During the baseline reading task, they silently read the English sentences and answered the comprehension questions. The participants' eye movements in the sight translation and baseline reading tasks were recorded as indicators of cognitive load. Three major findings were generated: (1) Syntactic complexity resulted in a significant increase in cognitive load during the sight translation task. The syntactic aspects of the target language were activated during the initial stage of comprehension, which favoured the parallel view of translation. (2) Although sight translation became more time efficient due to wider contexts, a larger amount of contextual information did not make word-based processing less effortful, as indicated by more fixations and the longer regression path duration in the discourse context. (3) No correlations were found between reading span and cognitive load in addressing syntactical complexity.

Mood variation with belief predicates: Modal comparison in semantics and the common ground

This paper proposes that subjunctive in the complement of belief sen- tences in Italian expresses a relation between the attitude holder’s beliefs and the common ground. In contrast to most other Romance languages, ‘believe’ commonly and prescriptively takes subjunctive in Italian, though indicative is found as well, and as has been observed in the literature, the choice of indicative or subjunctive has semantic effects. We show that the indicative with ‘believe’ is used when the belief statement describes the personal mental state of the holder of the attitude, an interpretation that follows from the traditional Hintikkean semantics. In contrast, we show that subjunctive with ‘believe’ is used to mark a relation between the content of belief and the discourse context. To analyze these facts, we propose that the modal quantification present in attitude reports comes not from the attitude verb, but instead from the embedded verbal mood. What differentiates Italian from related languages where ‘believe’ only takes indicative, is that Italian allows the subjunctive to access the com- mon ground as a modal base, utilizing the verb’s doxastic background as an ordering source. The fact that subjunctive relates the common ground to the subject’s beliefs explains the discourse oriented meaning of this combination. We extend our analysis to several other predicates that show mood variation in Italian.

Toward an accommodation account of deaccenting under nonidentity

Two competing models attempt to explain the deaccentuation of antecedent-nonidentical discourse-inferable material (e.g., Bach wrote many pieces for viola. He must have LOVED string instruments). One uses a single grammatical constraint to license deaccenting for identical and nonidentical material. The second licenses deaccenting grammatically only for identical constituents, whereas deaccented nonidentical material requires accommodation of an alternative antecedent. In three experiments, we tested listeners’ preferences for accentuation or deaccentuation on nonidentical inferable material in out-of-the-blue contexts, supportive discourse contexts, and in the presence of the presupposition trigger too. The results indicate that listeners by default prefer for inferable material to be accented, but that this preference can be mitigated or even reversed with the help of manipulations in the broader discourse context. By contrast, listeners reliably preferred for repeated material to be deaccented. We argue that these results are more compatible with the accommodation model of deaccenting licensing, which allows for differential licensing of deaccentuation on inferable versus repeated constituents and provides a principled account of the sensitivity of accentuation preferences on inferable material to broader contextual manipulations.

What factors determine object expression in Kîîtharaka

Across world languages, speakers are known to structure information in such a way that they accommodate the discourse context in which the utterances are made. In so doing they put into consideration the mental state of the hearer and also their own communication intentions (see Dooley 2020). This achieves effective communication. Such strategies in information structure are found in object expression. The data for this research was gathered from narratives collected through story telling sessions organized during the field study. Elicitation was also used to complement the data collected this way. The investigation was guided by the hypothesis that the accessibility hierarchy is the main discourse factor that determines the choice of object expression. The results are that the hypothesis holds true for most referring expression such as full lexical NP, demonstratives and their NP combinations (though with exceptions), object markers, NP + relative clause, and zero anaphora. This notwithstanding, there are substantial cases of deviations that lay ground for discovery of complementary factors like predicate type, use of direct speech and pragmatic emphasis. It can therefore be concluded that while accessibility is key, there are other complementary factors that come into play in determining the Kîîtharaka object expression paradigm.