Acquisition of attributive adjectives and noun adjuncts by L3 learners of French and German: further evidence for the typological primacy model (TPM)

This investigation explored the impact of prior acquired languages in the acquisition of third language (L3) at initial stages. The required data were gathered via two groups of L3 learners: 27 learners of L3 French and 26 learners of L3 German during a grammaticality judgement task (GJT) and an element rearrangement task (ERT) to test the placement of noun adjuncts and attributive adjectives. Both groups had acquired Persian as the first language and English as the second language. The participants were assigned to two L2 proficiency level groups (intermediate and advanced). The findings revealed that L3 German participants outperformed L3 French learners in the attributive adjective placement in both tasks as well as the noun adjunct in the GJT task. The L3 groups showed similar levels of performance in the ERT noun adjunct task. Additionally, the effect of L2 level of proficiency was not significant. The results also indicated that the typological similarity of L2 English to German rather than French rendered a facilitative effect on task performance in the L3 German group and a non-facilitative effect in the L3 French group. This study provides evidence for the Typological Primacy Model (TPM) of L3 acquisition suggesting that L3 learners are influenced by the typological similarities of the previous languages they have already acquired.

Register analysis of language use in the Jakarta Post’s football news

This research investigated the types of linguistic forms of English register and the meaning of register used in The Jakarta Post Football news. The linguistic forms that are investigated are specifically in content words and noun phrases. To obtain the data, documentation was used as the instrument. The data were analyzed using the model proposed by Elo and Kyangas (2007), it was found that there are two kinds of data in the form of content words, eight data of nouns, two verbs. In the form of the noun phrase, the researcher found two data in the category of attributive adjective and seven data of nouns in noun phrases. All of English registers found in The Jakarta Post’s football news have different meanings when compared with their conceptual meaning in the dictionary. The most dominant type of change in meaning is social meaning.

Adjectives as roots of nominal groups: the big mess construction in dependency grammar

The so-called ‘Big Mess Construction’ (BMC) frustrates standard assumptions about the structure of nominal groups. The normal position of an attributive adjective is after the determiner and before the noun, but in the BMC, the adjective precedes the determiner, e.g. that strange a sound, so big a scandal, too lame an excuse. Previous accounts of the BMC are couched in ‘Phrase Structure Grammar’ (PSG) and view the noun or the determiner (or the preposition of) as the root/head of the BMC phrase. In contrast, the current approach, which is couched in a ‘Dependency Grammar’ (DG) model, argues that the adjective is in fact the root/head of the phrase. A number of insights point to the adjective as the root/head, the most important of which is the optional appearance of the preposition of, e.g. that strange of a sound, so big of a scandal, too lame of an excuse.

Adjectives as roots of nominal groups: the big mess construction in dependency grammar

The so-called ‘Big Mess Construction’ (BMC) frustrates standard assumptions about the structure of nominal groups. The normal position of an attributive adjective is after the determiner and before the noun, but in the BMC, the adjective precedes the determiner, e.g. that strange a sound, so big a scandal, too lame an excuse. Previous accounts of the BMC are couched in ‘Phrase Structure Grammar’ (PSG) and view the noun or the determiner (or the preposition of) as the root/head of the BMC phrase. In contrast, the current approach, which is couched in a ‘Dependency Grammar’ (DG) model, argues that the adjective is in fact the root/head of the phrase. A number of insights point to the adjective as the root/head, the most important of which is the optional appearance of the preposition of, e.g. that strange of a sound, so big of a scandal, too lame of an excuse.

Formell og semantisk adjektivkongruens i norsk

This article provides an empirically based overview and discussion of types of adjectival agreement in attributive and predicative posisitions in Norwegian. In particular, we focus on two empirical facts that are quite striking: 1) With semantic agreement in predicative position, there are apparently no formal agreement features in the predication subject that trigger agreement on the predicative adjective; 2) Even though there is not alway formal agreement betwen the predication subject and a predicative adjective, there is always strict formal agreement between the head noun and an attributive adjective.

LA distribution et la signification de is, ille et ipse dans les Sermons de Saint CÉsaire d'arles Concordance et discordance avec la norme « classique »

Summary:Does the system of anaphorics and deictics already change in the first part of sixth century? In this study we have examined the uses of is, ille and ipse in a few of the Admonitiones of Caesarius Arelatensis. The data have been compared with these of Cicero's Pro Milone. Caesarius uses all the forms, but we note that ille is more frequent. This deictic is expanding to the detriment of is. Also it appears that the use as attributive adjective is much less frequent in Caesarius than in Cicero. What is the reason why the use of ille will develop in late common Latin? The meaning of this deictic is very extensive: it points out to a breaking, an innovation or an opposition. It's true when the speaker continues to say words he hopes he expresses something new. Furthermore the meaning of ille is not very far from ipse which means: “He /she /it and nobody /nothing else”.

Investigating the additive probability of repeated language production decisions

This paper introduces an experimental paradigm based on probabilistic evidence of the interaction between construction decisions in a parsed corpus. The approach is demonstrated using ICE-GB, a one million-word corpus of English. It finds an interaction between attributive adjective phrases in noun phrases with a noun head, such that the probability of adding adjective phrases falls successively. The same pattern is much weaker in adverbs preceding a verb phrase, implying this decline is not a universal phenomenon. Noun phrase postmodifying clauses exhibit a similar initial fall in the probability of successive clauses modifying the same NP head, and embedding clauses modifying new NP heads. Successive postmodification shows a secondary phenomenon of an increase in additive probability in longer sequences, apparently due to ‘templating’ effects. The author argues that these results can only be explained as cognitive and communicative natural phenomena acting on and within recursive grammar rules.

Lexicon geupdated: New German anglicisms in a social media corpus

The German verbal lexicon has been enriched by numerous English borrowings, particularly within the past 100 years, but while many verbal anglicisms are frequently used and sanctioned by language authorities, the status of new, non-standard, and rare verbal anglicisms in German has not been subject to extensive research attention. In this study, a new method is used to analyze non-standard German verbal anglicisms in a large and novel corpus compiled from the social media platform Twitter. After a review of previous work, the methods used to create a corpus of German-language tweets and to automatically extract new verbal anglicisms are described, and the semantics of some of their most frequent types are analyzed, including forms with separable and inseparable prefixes. Then, present and past participles are considered according to assimilation to standard German orthography, use as participle or attributive adjective, and stem vowel quality. In the final set of results, the focus is on the productivity of the verbalizing morpheme -ier-, a historically important element for the integration of foreign word material into German. The study demonstrates that non-standard verbal anglicisms are widely used, and that their morphological behavior is mediated by frequency effects as well as phonological, pragmatic, and semantic considerations.

’n Korpusondersoek na huidiglik

A corpus exploration of huidiglik. In tandem with Van Huyssteen (2018a), this article examines the current usage of the word huidiglik (‘currently’) (an alleged Anglicism), together with other associated words (e.g. its base, huidig ‘current’). Based on a comprehensive literature review, Van Huyssteen (2018a) concludes that apart from stylistic preferences, none of the linguistic arguments against huidiglik holds water. In this article, a corpus exploration of some of the issues pertaining to huidiglik is undertaken. Based on evidence from a large variety of corpora, we conclude that huidiglik has become well-established in Afrikaans over the past four decades, both in formal texts and informal chat language. Since it does not displace any of its often-prescribed synonyms (like tans, deesdae, or teenswoordig), it confirms that arguments for its status as an Anglicism is rather thin. Although the inflected form huidige is mostly used as prenominal adjective, its uninflected form is also used with noticeable frequency as adverb and predicative adjective. Huidiglik, however, is used almost exclusively as adverb, rarely as inflected attributive adjective, but never as predicative adjective. Lastly, it is shown that adverbialising ⋅lik occurs with high frequency in Afrikaans, but it is not very productive. In addition, it is illustrated that ⋅ig⋅lik is an entrenched suffix pairing.