To hón ich imma insistieat

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Flores ◽  
Esther Rinke ◽  
Claudia Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
German Language ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
General Stability ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Verb Placement ◽  
South Brazil

Abstract This paper investigates syntactic variation in Hunsrückisch German, spoken in a language enclave in South Brazil over eight generations. The aim is to analyse whether this heritage language maintains asymmetric verb placement, i.e. verb-second in main clauses and verb-final in subordinate clauses, a prominent syntactic feature of German varieties. The analysis is based on a sample of 5000 sentences, produced by participants belonging to two generations of Hunsrückisch speakers: 10 older speakers (age: 55–75), and 10 younger adults (age: 25–40). The results show a general stability of asymmetric verb placement in both speaker groups, as has also been observed for other German language islands. This stability is a consequence of the active use of this minority language, not only by the older, but also by the younger generation of speakers, who are dominant in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Variation to verb-second and verb-final order is conditioned by the same factors as in colloquial and dialectal German, and cannot be attributed to cross-linguistic influence from BP.

Similarities in the Syntactic Structure of the German and Croatian Language

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Manuela Svoboda
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
German Language ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Subordinate Clauses

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to analyse any potential similarities between the Croatian and German language and present them adopting a contrastive approach with the intent of simplifying the learning process in regards to the German syntactic structure for Croatian German as foreign language students. While consulting articles and books on the theories and methods of foreign language teaching, attention is usually drawn to differences between the mother tongue and the foreign language, especially concerning false friends etc. The same applies to textbooks, workbooks and how teachers behave in class. Thus, it is common practice to deal with the differences between the foreign language and the mother tongue but less with similarities. This is unfortunate considering that this would likely aid in acquiring certain grammatical and syntactic structures of the foreign language. In the author's opinion, similarities are as, if not more, important than differences. Therefore, in this article the existence of similarities between the Croatian and German language will be examined closer with a main focus on the segment of sentence types. Special attention is drawn to subordinate clauses as they play an important role when speaking and/or translating sentences from Croatian to German and vice versa. In order to present and further clarify this matter, subordinate clauses in both the German and Croatian language are defined, clarified and listed to gain an oversight and to present possible similarities between the two. In addition, the method to identify subordinate clauses in a sentence is explained as well as what they express, which conjunctions are being used for each type of subordinate clause in both languages and where the similarities and/or differences between the two languages lie.

Rethinking Verb Second and Nominative case assignment

2020 ◽  
pp. 575-593
Author(s):  
Ermenegildo Bidese ◽  
Andrea Padovan ◽  
Alessandra Tomaselli
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Spreading Model ◽  
Traditional Argument ◽  
Case Licensing ◽  
Finite Verb

Cimbrian is a German(ic) VO heritage language that does not display the linear V2 restriction: the DP subject can show up before the finite verb together with other constituents, while German-like verb-subject inversion only obtains with clitic pronouns. In recent literature on Cimbrian, pronominal subject inversion has been taken as a traditional argument in favour of mandatory V-to-C movement (assuming a split-C configuration). Building on this assumption, the syntax of the enclitic expletive subject, -da/-ta, (which shows up whenever the DP subject does not raise in the C-domain) makes the Cimbrian data particularly relevant, since it casts light on the correlation between V2 and Nominative case licensing. The stance in this chapter is that Nominative case in Cimbrian is assigned by C—as generally assumed for Germanic V2 languages—but in an idiosyncratic way: (i) it applies within the C domain, i.e. FinP; (ii) expletive -da/-ta absorbs Nominative case and acts as a defective goal with respect to the ‘low’ subject. On the basis of the feature-spreading model in Ouali (2008), the phasal head C in Cimbrian is taken to ‘KEEP’ its relevant ϕ‎- and T-features, to assign Nominative case in [Spec,FinP], and to triggering mandatory V-movement.

Object pronoun fronting and the nature of Verb Second in early English

2020 ◽  
pp. 396-425
Author(s):  
Eric Haeberli ◽  
Susan Pintzuk ◽  
Ann Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Placement ◽  
Early English

This chapter examines the nature of the V2 syntax of early English, with an empirical focus on Object Pronoun Fronting. It is claimed that early English, which exhibits both V2 and V3 orders, is similar to a true V2 language like German with respect to XP-fronting: both require one EPP-feature in the CP-domain; and if the presence of an EPP-feature is not motivated by an active interpretive feature, an EPP-feature is inserted and gives rise to Formal Movement (FM). What distinguishes early English from true V2 languages is that in the latter, there cannot be more than one EPP-feature, while in early English, there can be more than one. This difference in the number of EPP-features is related to a difference in verb placement within the CP-domain. Finally, some consequences of this analysis for the diachronic developments in the Middle English period are explored.

Null referential subjects in the history of Swedish

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Håkansson
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Movement Strategies ◽  
Old Swedish ◽  
History Of ◽  
Striking Change ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Person Agreement

This article is concerned with null referential subjects in Old Swedish (ca. 1225–1526), and addresses the problem of why the scope for such subjects has been reduced during the history of Swedish. Within diachronic syntax it has been a common assumption that syntactic change is caused by changes in morphology. However, this study shows that deflexion only to a limited extent can explain the loss of null referential subjects in Old Swedish, since the most striking change in their use seems to take place during Early Old Swedish (ca. 1225–1375) before the loss of person agreement: whereas referential subjects could be omitted from verb-second main clauses and subordinate clauses in Early Old Swedish, in Late Old Swedish corresponding subjectless clauses are uncommon. Within the framework of generative grammar it is argued that this is an effect of changes in movement strategies to the subject position, [Spec, IP]: whereas movement to the subject position is syntactically determined in Modern Swedish, in Early Old Swedish the corresponding move is pragmatically determined. The study is based on a corpus of approximately 193,400 words, collected from 12 Old Swedish texts.

The persistence of verb second in negative utterances in Breton

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly J. Kennard
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Input Pattern ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Input Use ◽  
Medium Education ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Complex Verbs ◽  
Language Transmission

This article examines word order in negative clauses in Breton across two generations separated by a gap in language transmission. It might be expected that the V2 constraint in Breton matrix clauses would be subject to change in light of immense influence from French and this transmission gap. An examination of original fieldwork data indicates that there is little change between the older (65+) and younger (children/adults aged 20–30) speakers, but that there is variation among younger speakers currently in Breton-medium education. All speakers use the expected V2 in utterances with a pronominal subject. With lexical subjects, it seems that the key factor is the amount of Breton input children receive. Children in bilingual schooling with no additional Breton input use exclusively SVO order, whereas children in immersion schooling or with further Breton input pattern with older speakers and young adults using V2 with complex verbs, and both SVO and V2 with simple verbs. The implications of this for the continued maintenance of the V2 constraint in Breton are discussed, and the overriding factor is argued to be the continuation of Breton input as children grow older.

Crosslinguistic influence in early child bilingualism

2002 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 135-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natascha Müller
Keyword(s):  
Computational Complexity ◽  
Developmental Stage ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
German Child ◽  
Verb Placement ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence ◽  
Bilingual Individual ◽  
Finite Verb

Previous approaches to early bilingualism have argued either that children exposed to two languages from birth are not able to separate their two languages and experience massive cross-linguistic influence or that they do separate their languages from birth and lack crosslinguistic influence. The present paper assumes that both early language separation and crosslinguistic influence coexist in one bilingual individual during the same developmental stage for different grammatical phenomena. The goal of the present paper is to show that how crosslinguistic influence manifests itself depends on particular grammatical properties and is independent of language dominance. The direction of the influence is related to computational complexity (in the sense of Jakubowicz 2000). Data from a bilingual Italian/German child are discussed with respect to argument omissions, V2, and finite verb placement in subordinate clauses. For argument omissions, the Germanic language influences the Romance language and has a delaying effect. For V2 and finite verb placement in subordinate clauses, the Romance language has an accelerating effect on the Germanic language in the case of V2 and a delaying effect in the case of finite verb placement in subordinate clauses.

scholarly journals A Study of Syntactic Complexity in Language Production by Chinese-Speaking Older Adults

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Xinmiao Liu ◽  
Haiyan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
The Mean

<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: ??; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;" lang="EN-US"><em>The syntactic complexity of language production changes as a result of ageing. In this study, we made a comparison between Chinese-speaking older and younger adults in terms of the syntactic complexity in spoken language production. To assess the level of syntactic complexity of language production, we applied the traditional measures of syntactic complexity such as sentence length, verbal fluency and the distribution of subordinate clauses. Results indicated that older adults showed a decline in the mean number of clauses, the proportion of right-branching clauses and verbal fluency. These findings indicate that there was a decline in syntactic complexity in spoken language production among Chinese-speaking older adults.</em></span>

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document