THE ONTOLOGICAL FEATURES OF VERB PHRASES IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’S VISIONS OF MARS

Verb Phrase (VP) is one of the most important types of phrase for its function. It provides information about the subject of the sentence. Verb Phrase itself has more than one type. It also has ontological aspect, an aspect by which a certain situation is represented. This aspect is made up by features. This study aims at finding out and analyzing the types of VP and their ontological features in National Geographic’s Visions of Mars. By analyzing and understanding the types of VP and their ontological features, readers understand the discourse more. They gain more perspective syntactically. This study employs syntactic approach and is qualitative in nature. The results yield three different types of VP, i.e. action, process, and state where action VP places the highest position. There are four ontological features found in Visions of Mars, i.e. dynamic, agentive, non-evolving, and evolving. The findings imply how Visions of Mars is structured. The deeds are mostly conducted or done by an agent and show prompt situations.

Struktur Frasa Verbal Bahasa Melayu Riau Dialek Kampar: Teori X-Bar

There have been several research studies that discussed verb phrases. But only some researchers analyse the X-bar theory concerning regional languages in Riau. The author attempts to demonstrate the structure of verb phrase in the Malay dialect of Kampar by using the X-bar theory.This study aims to find and analyse the rules structuring verb phrases contained in the Malay dialect of Kampar. This research was conducted through a field observation by using the descriptive method. According to the findings of the study, it is found that the principles for creating verb phrase structures in Kampar dialect were. 1) FV ---> V+N, ŋikIʸ umpʷIɁ ‘(me)motong rumput’/ Cut the grass; 2) FV ---> V+Spes, bagoɣaɁ lo ‘memasak’/ cook; 3) FV ---> Spes+V, ola makan ‘sudah makan’/ have got the food; 4) FV ---> NEG+V+Spes, ndaɁ dataŋ do ‘tidak datang’/ did not come; 5) FV ---> V+V, paʸ makan ‘pergi makan’/ get to eat; 6) FV ---> Adj+V, paya ŋasʷoňo ‘susah mengasuhnya/menjaganya’/ its hard to take care of; and 7) FV ---> V, motoŋ ‘menoreh/menyadap karet’/ tap the rubber. Key words: Riau Malay, Kampar Dialect, Verb Phrase Structure, X-Bar Theory

Reason fundamentalism and what is wrong with it

Is there a fundamental feature of normativity, to which other features can be reduced? One defensible view is ‘reason fundamentalism’: that the fundamental feature is the relation that holds between a person and F-ing when the person has reason to F. (‘F’ stands for any verb phrase, such as ‘run for the bus’ or ‘hope for relief’ or ‘believe Kampala is in Ghana’.) Another defensible view is ‘ought fundamentalism’: that the fundamental feature is the relation that holds between a person and F-ing when the person ought to F. The popular view that the fundamental feature of normativity is the property of being a reason is not defensible, since that property can be reduced to either of the two relations I have just described. I argue that ought fundamentalism is more credible that reason fundamentalism because it is more faithful to our ordinary normative concepts.

ИНОВАЦИОННИ ПРОЦЕСИ В СЪВРЕМЕННАТА ГРАМАТИКА НА АНГЛИЙСКИЯ ЕЗИК (С ОГЛЕД НА ТЕХНИТЕ ВЪЗМОЖНИ ПАРАЛЕЛИ В БЪЛГАРСКИЯ ЕЗИК) / PROCESSES OF INNOVATION IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH GRAMMAR (IN VIEW OF THEIR POSSIBLE PARALLELS IN BULGARIAN)

The paper explores some processes of innovation in present-day English grammar in view of the typological features, the historical development and the present status of English as the language of global communication. Some innovations can be observed within the noun phrase and the verb phrase that have to do mostly with changes in the properties of nouns and verbs in relation to particular grammatical categories. The ana-lysis also focuses on a particular structural pattern of the English noun phrase consisting of a sequence of nouns joined without the use of prepositions. Within a longer time span, a number of innovations can be noticed that are related to the process of grammaticalization. Special emphasis is placed on the tendency towards implicitness and compression of the linguistic expression, which is typical of present-day English. The study also discusses innovations associated with the current status of English as a global language that have to do mostly with the expanded application of grammatical rules and the minimization of exceptions. The most general conclusion of the study highlights the continuous tendency towards the simplification of English grammar in the context of the historical development of the language as well as its present state. Keywords: language typology, innovations in language, present-day English gram-mar, noun phrase, verb phrase, grammaticalization, Global English, English-Bulgarian parallels

The Passive Construction in Chinese

Central to the passive construction in Chinese is the categorial status of the passive marker bei and the syntactic nature of passivization. In this respect, different analyses have been proposed in the literature. The passive marker bei is argued to be a preposition, a verb, or a passivization morpheme. Accordingly, some scholars propose analysis of Chinese bei-passives as non-canonical passives, which are different from the be-passive in English. By contrast, others argue differently and think English be-passivization in terms of unaccusativization also applies to Chinese bei-passives, and the only difference between Chinese and English is that the passivization domain for Chinese is the whole verb phrase while that for English is the verb only. In the article, we will review different proposals on the bei-passive in Chinese by examining their crucial arguments and identifying their potential problems.

Verb-second and the verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis debate

Verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis (VPE), when a verb is stranded outside of the VP-sized ellipsis site in which it originated, has been identified in a number of languages (Irish, McCloskey 1991; Hebrew, Doron 1991, Goldberg 2005; Greek, Merchant 2018; Uzbek, Gribanova 2019, i.a.), and has been invoked productively in analyses investigating the position to which verbs move and the timing of verb movement in the grammar. Recently, Landau (2018, 2019, to appear) proposes a phase-based negative licensing condition on head-stranding ellipsis that precludes verb-stranding VPE altogether. He claims that apparent verb-stranding VPE must be reanalyzed either as Argument Ellipsis (Oku 1998; Kim 1999; Takahashi 2008), or a clause-sized ellipsis that strands main verbs (Gribanova 2017). This article approaches this debate through an analysis of head movement and head-stranding ellipsis in the Indic verb-second (V2) language Kashmiri, arguing that Landau’s phase-based approach encounters empirical challenges in accounting for variation in the presentation of ellipsis in V2 languages and requires an unconventional approach to V2, at odds with recent accounts of Kashmiri V2 (Bhatt 1999; Munshi and Bhatt 2009; Manetta 2011) and mainstream views of V2 generally (e.g. Holmberg 1986; Travis 1991; Vikner 1995; Zwart 1997). While the present article argues in favor of the standard account of ellipsis (Merchant 2001, 2008), we affirm the important contribution of Landau’s work in identifying challenges facing any account of head-stranding ellipsis licensing. At issue is the larger question of whether and how verb-stranding ellipses can be used to better understand head movement.

Action-Depicting Gestures and Morphosyntax: The Function of Gesture-Speech Alignment in the Conversational Turn

The current study examines the role of action-depicting gestures in conversational turns by focusing on their semantic characteristics and temporal position in relation to their verbal affiliates (action verbs or more complex verb phrases). The data are video recordings of naturally occurring interactions in multilingual construction sites in Norway. The analysis distinguishes two modes of action depiction: generic depictions, which represent the action as a general type, and contextualized depictions, which in addition include deictic references to the spatio-material environment or iconic representations of the specific manner of action performance. These two modes typically occupy different positions in the turn. Generic depictions are mostly initiated before the verbalization of the action or are synchronized with it, while contextualized depictions mostly start simultaneously with the verbalization and extend beyond the verb phrase or the turn. The pre-positioned and synchronized generic gestures are shown to serve as a practice for facilitating recognition of the verbalized action and may be temporally manipulated in order to pre-empt understanding problems in the face of reduced common linguistic resources. The post-positioned contextualized depictions serve instead to add specifying information about aspects of the action referred to and thereby to complement or supplement the meaning of the verb phrase, securing understanding of action specifics. The study contributes to research on gesture-speech synchrony by demonstrating how variation in the alignment of action depiction and syntax is used to direct the recipient’s attention toward different interactional goals.

Evidence for generalized quantifier semantics in the interpretation of the English neuter singular pronoun

The English pronoun it can anaphorically take on the meaning of a salient generalized quantifier when it occurs in subject position followed by an elided Verb Phrase and (optionally) a VP-level operator. The extent to which theories of pronoun interpretation will have to be altered to take account of this finding will depend on whether the phenomenon is unique to English or part of a crosslinguistic pattern.