The acquisition of argument structures of intransitive and transitive verbs in Japanese: The role of parental input

The present study investigated the role of morphosyntactic information in the acquisition of transitive and intransitive verb argument structures (VAS) in the Japanese language, which allows massive omissions of arguments and case markers. In particular, we investigated how the ‘variation sets’ proposed by Küntay and Slobin work in Japanese. Longitudinal interaction data from three Japanese-speaking mother–child pairs were collected at five different times between the ages of 0;10 and 3;01. Children’s acquisition of VAS and mothers’ use of verbs were examined, including morphologically related verbs in a variety of sentence frames with null and overt arguments. The results indicate that all three mothers showed an increase in overt arguments in different syntactic roles as well as lexical given arguments around the time that children started uttering words. However, the use of a variety of sentence frames with null and overt arguments was not uniform among the mothers, and such individual differences were related to the acquisition of VAS among children. These findings support the role of ‘variation sets’ in the acquisition of VAS in Japanese and suggest that the availability of morphosyntactic information in the input helps children to reconstruct VAS.

Deverbal and deadjectival nominalization in Dan: Not as different as one might think. A reply to Baker & Gondo (2020)

The paper (Baker & Gondo 2020) studies several issues in Dan morphosyntax: the formal differences between verbs, nouns and adjectives; two types of possessive constructions (with alienable and inalienable head nouns) and their syntactic structures; the derivation of nouns from verbs and adjectives; low and high nominalization; and possessive constructions with deverbal and deadjectival nouns. As it turns out, Baker & Gondo’s analyses are incorrect in some major points: the key formal differences between verbs, adjectives and nouns have been left unnoticed due to disregard for Dan tonal morphology, and for the same reason, the tonal marking of the high nominalization has also been ignored. Baker & Gondo’s syntactic analysis of the possessive construction with alienable nouns as analogous to the Saxon genitive (king’s house) cannot be accepted; in fact, it can be compared with the genitive construction seen in English the house of the king. Possessive constructions with deverbal and deadjectival nouns are not as radically opposed as one may think after reading Baker & Gondo’s paper; in fact, a noun derived from an intransitive verb can sometimes appear as an alienable noun with respect to its theme, and, conversely, a deadjectival noun can appear as a relational noun with respect to the modified noun.

The passive of verbs constructed with prepositions (Das Passiv der mit Präpositionen konstruierten Verben )

Verbs in German and Arabic are of two types: active and passive. Passive voice is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. Out of grammatical perspective, each main verb has a form in the active and one in the passive known as a "genus verbi" (type of verb). In passive voice, both in German and in Arabic, the focus is on the action itself or on the result of the action; often the perpetrator is not mentioned. In German, to conjugate verbs in the passive voice, you must know the forms of werden (to become). German uses werden + the past participle and states it at the end of a sentence. In Arabic, the passive is formed by changing the vowels on the verb; the vowel series u-i-a occurs instead of the a-vowels. Transitive prepositional verbs originally are intransitive verb with a preposition added to the action of the sentence. In German, the prepositional group can be combined with the prepositions von or durch, while in Arabic, such a prepositional group occurs only in certain cases. In contrast to Arabic, the passive in German is impossible with reflexive verbs. In some cases, an impersonal passive in German corresponds with a personal passive in Arabic. The present paper discusses some of these verbs traced in a chart that shows the most important results when compared with their Arabic equivalents. In grammatischen Darstellung findet man für jedes Vollverb eine Form im Aktiv und eine im Passiv, es wird von „genus verbi“ (Art des Verbs) gesprochen. Im Passiv steht sowohl im Deutschen als auch im Arabischen das Geschehen selbst oder das Ergebnis der Handlung im Vordergrund; aus der Sicht der betroffenen Person oder Sache; oft wird der Täter nicht gennant. Im Deutschen wird die passivische Verbform mit dem Hilfsverb werden und dem Partizip II gebildet, während die Vokalreihe u-i-a anstelle der a- Vokale im Arabischen eintritt. Die im Aktiv mit Präpositionen verbundenen Verben bilden in beiden Sprachen ein unpersönliches Passiv. Im Deutschen kann die Präpositionalgruppe mit den Präpositionen von oder durch verbunden werden. Im Unterschied dazu tritt solche Präpositionalgruppe im Arabischen nur in bestimmten Fällen mit من قبل auf. Im Unterschied zum Arabischen ist das Passiv im Deutschen bei reflexiv Verben unmöglich. In einigen Fällen entspricht ein unpersönliches Passiv im Deutschen einem persönlichen Passiv im Arabischen.

Infidel or Paganus? The Polysemy of kafara in the Quran

This article explores the meaning of the root k-f-r in the Quran, questioning the practice of translating the noun kāfir as “infidel.” It argues for a distinction between the idiomatic phrasal verb kafara bi-, which does mean to reject or disbelieve, and the simple intransitive verb kafara and its deverbal nouns, which are used in the Quran in a large number of different ways. This polysemy is explored through contextual readings of Quran passages. It is argued that the noun kāfir, unlike the verb kafara, is used only with regard to adherents of traditional polytheism and is not deployed in an unmodified way with regard to Jews and Christians. The possible influence on the Arabic kafara of Greek and Latin conceptions is also broached.

Benefactive Verbs and Causative Verbs in Madurese: Morphosyntactic Analysis

This study is aimed to analyze a morphological process in the marker of benefactive verbs and causative verbs construction of Madurese Language. The theory used in this study was of generative morphology and syntax. The object of this study was Madurese Language. The data collected in Madurese Language was from the native speakers of Madurese. The result of this research was the formation rules of benefactive verbs and causative verbs of Madurese Language by using word and paradigm approach. The results show that there were three kinds of affixation to produce the benefactive verbs. Affixation in the marker of benefactive verb was shown by prefixes a-, ma-, and n-, and suffix –aghi. Affixation in the marker of causative verb was shown by prefixes ma-. Madurese also use intransitive verb and also adjective as the root to construct benefactive verb and causative verb. Keyword: Benefactive Verbs, Causative Verbs, Generative Morphology, Madurese

Zooming in on agentivity: Experimental studies of DO-clefts in German

Despite the importance of the agent role for language grammar and processing, its definition and features are still controversially discussed in the literature on semantic roles. Moreover, diagnostic tests to dissociate agentive from non-agentive roles are typically applied with qualitative introspection data. We investigated whether quantitative acceptability ratings obtained with a well-established agentivity test, the DO-cleft, provide evidence for the feature-based prototype account of (Dowty, David R. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selction. Language 67(3). 547–619) postulating that agentivity increases with the number of agentive features that a role subsumes. We used four different intransitive verb classes in German and collected acceptability judgements from non-expert native speakers of German. Our results show that sentence acceptability increases linearly with the number of agentive features and, hence, agentivity. Moreover, our findings confirm that sentience belongs to the group of proto-agent features. In summary, this suggests that a multidimensional account including a specific mechanism for role prototypicality (feature accumulation) successfully captures gradient acceptability clines. Quantitative acceptability estimates are a meaningful addition to linguistic theorizing.

Kata Kerja Transitif dan Intransitif dalam Bahasa Arab dan Bahasa Indonesia (Studi Linguistik Kontrastif)

This research aims to determine contrastive linguistic, transitive dan intransitive verb in arabic language and Indonesian language, and to determine similarities and differences between both of them. This research uses descriptive analytic method with contrastive linguistic approach. Subject of this research is contrastive linguistic contrastive theory and transitive and intransitive verb. Data collection technique is carried out through documentation studies, while the data analysis technique is done by selecting the data obtained, then collected for analysis and conclusions. The results of this research are the contrastive linguistic is method for analyzing language to find similarities and differences in order to find principles that can be applied practically. In Arabic and Indonesian language, transitive verb is verb that has objects and complement, while intransitive verb is verb that does not have objects and complement. The equation between the two is that both languages have one-object and two-object transitive verb, while the difference is that Indonesian has semitransitive sentence type but Arabic language does not have, Arabic language has three-object verb but Indonesian language does not have, Arabic language has different between transitive verb and preposition but Indonesian language does not have.

تجزيه ى روساختى جمله فارسى analyzethe Surface Structure of Persian Language

جمله در زبان فارسی اين همهءچيز كه در معنى ومفهوم مستقل مى باشد . جمله فارسى از اركان مى باشد. كه ساختمان جمله فارسى ازاين اركان مى باشد.که اركان جمله اين اجزاى جمله فارسى است همه اجزاى جمله در جاى هاى مختلف مى باشد. كه اقسام جمله فارسى سه اقسام است . اقسام جمله ازجهت معنى،ازجهت فعل،اقسام جمله ازجهت معنى مستقل است. روش تجزيه ی روساختى جمله فارسى يعني تجزيه ى اجزاى جمله فارسى به نمونه هاى مختلف ازحيث واژهاى جمله است . مى توان كَفت كه تجزيه جمله به دوجهت نهاد وكَزاره ياقيد وكَزاره ياجمله هاى مركب پايه است. Abstract The sentence is one building unit in a music that has a full meaning which in the end takes a long silence .The sentence bases made the sentences with intransitive verb ( non connection ) and the sentences are made with general verb (connection ) .The sentence parts :Verbal sentence –supportive sentence , sentence without a verb . The method of divide the sentence into these syntax units ( face division ) or (analysis and to each of the syntax units resulted from dividing the sentence to sections made to the end the characterizes the smaller syntax units ,the words .The method of analyze the surface structure of Persian language sentence is exchange method.

ANALISIS AHWAL MUTAʽALLIQĀT AL-FIʽLI PADA ALQURAN SURAH YASIN

Based on the observation and interviews with Arabic Language students, it was founded that one of their lack of knowledge is about the meanings of conditions for the words that related to the verb, even this term is odd to them. The importance of this research lies in the introduction of the condition meanings for the words that related to the verb in a sentence. This study aims to find out the meaning of condition meanings for the words that related to the verb in The Koran Surah Yasin. This search uses a descriptive method of the content analysis model The verses of the Surah Yasin are the main source or primary data in this study while additional or secondary data in this study are books and journals. The results found that there were 40 words with 4 types of condition meanings for the words that related to the verb with details of 14 words discarding the subject (11 known meanings and 3 unknown meanings), 13 words discarding object (4 words explain the vague, 5 words occupying position intransitive verb because there is no connection with established, 3 words guarding rhyme, and a word summarizing), 2 words prioritizing object (specializing and ruling out object), and 11 words prioritizing circumstance and jar majrur (6 words specializing, 4 words keeping rhyme, and a word occupies the denial position).

Ergativity Case-Marking in Batak Toba Language

Batak Toba Language (BTL) is an accusative, ergative and split-S language. It is called accusative because BTL has an active diathesis basic construction. In the BTL, the active diathesis clause is morphologically marked on the verb (head marking) by adding the prefix /ma-/, /maN-/ or zero prefix (occurred in some verbs that can stand without affixes). BTL is categorized ergative, firstly, because in the basic S argument from the intransitive verbs in BTL can be semantically gets the most influence from the verb, and it is also applied as O of intransitive verbs. Secondly, By using treatment parameters S equal to O and different from A in nominal construction. BTL is also categorized as split-S language because the behavior is that the agent-like argument of intransitive verb (Sa) in transitive verbs can be nominalized with /par-/ affixes, while the patient-like arguments of other intransitive patients cannot be nominalized with /par-/ affixes