scholarly journals Object position and Heavy NP Shift in Old Saxon and beyond

Author(s):  
George Walkden
Keyword(s):  
Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 745-766
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Stark ◽  
Paul Widmer

AbstractWe discuss a potential case of borrowing in this paper: Breton a- ‘of’, ‘from’ marking of (internal) verbal arguments, unique in Insular Celtic languages, and reminiscent of Gallo-Romance de/du- (and en-) arguments. Looking at potential Gallo-Romance parallels of three Middle Breton constructions analyzed in some detail (a with indefinite mass nominals in direct object position, a-marking of internal arguments under the scope of negation, a [allomorphs an(ez)-/ahan-] with personal pronouns for internal arguments, subjects (mainly of predicative constructions) and as expletive subjects of existential constructions), we demonstrate that even if there are some semantic parallels and one strong structural overlap (a and de under the scope of negation), the amount of divergences in morphology, syntax and semantics and the only partially fitting relative chronology of the different constructions do not allow to conclude with certainty that language-contact is an explanation of the Breton facts, which might have come into being also because of internal change (bound to restructuring of the pronominal system in Breton). More research is necessary to complete our knowledge of a-marking in Middle Breton and Modern Breton varieties and on the precise history of French en, in order to decide for one or the other explanation.


PMLA ◽  
1897 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick H. Wilkens

The Old Saxon (or Old High German) Hildebrandslied occupies a unique position among the remains of Germanic antiquity. It is the only specimen of the ancient German national epic preserved in the O.H.G. or the O.S. language. Interesting as this noble poem is, when considered by itself, it gains still more in interest when viewed as an older type of the epic poetry developed into perfection, at a later period, in works like the Nibelungenlied. Its orthography and dialect also offer most interesting problems. These considerations will explain why a renewed detailed examination of the manuscript, orthography, and dialect of the poem were deemed justifiable.


Author(s):  
Sara Morgado ◽  
Paula Luegi ◽  
Maria Lobo

We report two experiments, a self-paced reading task and an off-line questionnaire, that tested if the overt subject pronoun in European Portuguese was sensitive to the animacy (animate vs. inanimate) of the antecedent in object position. We found higher reading times when the overt pronoun was forced to retrieve an inanimate antecedent compared to retrieving an animate one (Experiment 1) and less object choices with inanimate antecedents (compared to animate ones). Our findings show that several factors are taken into account during the resolution of pronominal forms, including animacy features, favouring thus a multifactorial approach to pronoun retrieval (Kaiser & Trueswell, 2008). We propose that there is a hierarchy that considers both syntactic and semantic information in pronoun resolution and that within the syntactic information the prominence of entities varies according to their animacy features. Our results are neither explained by processing theories that only consider syntactic factors (Carminati, 2005), nor by theoretical accounts that associate strong pronouns with animacy features (Cardinaletti & Starke, 1999).


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