Cyclic Selection: Auxiliaries Are Merged, Not Inserted

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Asia Pietraszko
Keyword(s):  
Head Movement ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Functional Head ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Auxiliary Verb ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Syntactic Derivation

Abstract Traditional approaches to verbal periphrasis (compound tenses) treat auxiliary verbs as lexical items that enter syntactic derivation like any other lexical item, i.e. via Selection/Merge. An alternative view that has received much attention in recent years is that auxiliary verbs are not base-generated but rather inserted in a previously built structure (i.a. Bach 1967; Embick 2000; Arregi 2000; Cowper 2010; Bjorkman 2011; Arregi and Klecha 2015). Arguments for the insertion approach to auxiliaries include their last-resort distribution and the fact that, in many languages, auxiliaries are not systematically associated with a given inflectional category (the "overflow" distribution discussed in Bjorkman 2011). In this paper, I argue against the insertion approach. First, I demonstrate that the overflow pattern and last-resort distribution follow from Cyclic Selection (Pietraszko 2017)—a Merge-counterpart of Cyclic Agree (Béjar and Rezac 2009). And second, I show that the insertion approach makes wrong predictions about compound tenses in Swahili, a language with overflow periphrasis. Under the approach advocated here, an auxiliary verb is a verbal head externally merged as a specifier of a functional head, such as T. It then undergoes m-merger with that head, instantiating an external-merge version of Matushansky’s (2006) conception of head movement.

scholarly journals Ka a Temporal Prefix in Mardini Arabic Derived from the Verb Kana (To Be)

Hawliyat ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 9-15
Author(s):  
George Grigore
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Language ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Southern Turkey ◽  
Normal Sentence ◽  
Arabic Dialects ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Auxiliary Verb ◽  
Take All

Grammaticalization is usually thought of as that subset of linguistic changes through which a lexical item in certain uses becomes a grammatical item, or through which a grammatical item becomes more grammatical (Hopper- Traugott, 2). This paper is an attempt to present this phenomenon, showing the results of our investigation on the development of the temporal marker in Mardini Arabic (spoken in Mardin province situated in Southern Turkey) from lexical items (kan-to be) into grammatical prefix (ka). This prefix is attached to the extratem- poral forms of the verb (imperfective and perfective). The verb kana (to be) existent both in standard Arabic and in all the Arabic dialects, has syntactically the role of a temporal marker that changes the tem- poral situation of a normal sentence (without kana). When the verb kana modi- fies a verbal sentence, both kana and the verb that follows it, independently take all the marks of conjugation (aspect, mood, person, gender and number). Hence, we realize that kana is not an auxiliary verb and the Arabic language does not have compound tense forms.

scholarly journals Inclusion, Contrast and Polysemy in Dictionaries: The Relationship between Theory, Language Use and Lexicographic Practice

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-340
Author(s):  
Anu Koskela
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
National Corpus

This paper explores the lexicographic representation of a type of polysemy that arises when the meaning of one lexical item can either include or contrast with the meaning of another, as in the case of dog/bitch, shoe/boot, finger/thumb and animal/bird. A survey of how such pairs are represented in monolingual English dictionaries showed that dictionaries mostly represent as explicitly polysemous those lexical items whose broader and narrower readings are more distinctive and clearly separable in definitional terms. They commonly only represented the broader readings for terms that are in fact frequently used in the narrower reading, as shown by data from the British National Corpus.  

scholarly journals The Meanings of Modal Auxiliary Verbs in the Movie "The Perks of being a Wallflower"

Lexicon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Herlina Endah Atmaja
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
Auxiliary Verb

This research attempts to investigate the meanings of modal auxiliary verbs in the movie The Perks of being a Wallflower. In particular, it aims to identify and classify the modal auxiliary verbs according to their meanings. The data used in this research were dialogues containing modal auxiliary verbs. The modal auxiliary verbs are analyzed semantically and pragmatically. Based on the data analysis, 171 modal auxiliary verbs were found in the movie. The most commonly used modal auxiliary verb in the movie is the modal auxiliary will (28.7%), followed by can (24.0%), would (21.6%), could (14.0%), should (7.0%), might (2.9%), and must (1.8%). From the 171 modal auxiliary verbs, 43 (25.1%) are used to express epistemic meanings, 23 (13.4%) are used to express deontic meanings, and 105 (61.3%) are used to express dynamic meanings. It was found in this research that the modal auxiliary verbs are most frequently used to express dynamic meanings.

Clitic metathesis in the Friulian dialect of Forni di Sotto

Probus ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Calabrese ◽  
Diego Pescarini
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Morphological Operations ◽  
Functional Head ◽  
Morphological Component ◽  
Object Clitics ◽  
Subject Clitics ◽  
Pf Interface ◽  
Syntactic Derivation

Abstract In this article we entertain the hypothesis that cliticization involves a rule of m-merge, which brackets a functional head with another constituent under linear adjacency to build a structure legible at the PF interface. We therefore argue for a division of labour between syntax and morphology in the spirit of Halle and Marantz (1993), although we depart from their model in rejecting a single post-syntactic Morphological Component, and instead assume that syntactic derivation and morphological operations such as m-merge are cyclically interleaved. In the first part of the article, we focus on the behaviour of clitics in contexts of V-to-C movement. As object clitics and negation are pied-piped by the verb to C, crossing the position of subject clitics, we argue that subject clitics are m-merged after V-to-C movement. The second part of the article deals with some puzzling permutations affecting the order of clitic elements. In particular, we focus on the Friulian dialect of Forni di Sotto (Manzini & Savoia 2005, 2009) to show that such permutations are due to morphological rules of fission and metathesis operating after m-merge. We therefore claim that the Forni pattern provides further evidence for syntactically void operations taking place at the Syntax/PF interface.

Lemmatization of compound tenses in English

1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 71-122
Author(s):  
Maurice Gross
Keyword(s):  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
Finite State ◽  
Compound Verbs ◽  
Auxiliary Verb

We generalize the process of lemmatization of verbs to their compound tenses. Usually, lemmatization is limited on verbs conjugated by means of suffixes; tense auxiliaries and modal verbs (e.g. I have left, I am leaving, I could leave) are ignored. We have constructed a set of 83 finite-state grammars which parse auxiliary verbs and thus recognizes the ‘head verb’, that is, the lemma. We generalize the notion of auxiliary verb to verbs with sentential complements which have transformed constructions (e.g. I want to go) that can be parsed in exactly the same way as tense auxiliaries or modal verbs. Ambiguities arise, in particular because adverbial inserts occur inside the compound verbs,. We show how local grammars describing nominal contexts can be used to reduce the degree of ambiguity.

The Playful Lexicon in the Romance Languages: Prosodic Templates, Onomatopoeia, Reduplication, Clipping, Blending

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pharies
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Item ◽  
Repeated Sequences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Social Convention ◽  
Separate Category ◽  
Semantic Effect ◽  
Full Form ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Lexical Items

A lexical item is described as “playful” or “ludic” when it shows evidence of manipulation of the relation that inheres between its form (signifier) and its meaning (signified). The playful lexicon of any given language, therefore, is the sum total of its lexical items that show signs of such manipulation. Linguists have long recognized that the only necessary link between a word’s form and its meaning is the arbitrary social convention that binds them. However, nothing prevents speakers from creating additional, unnecessary and therefore essentially “playful” links, associating forms with meanings in a symbolic, hence non-arbitrary way. This semantic effect is most evident in the case of onomatopoeia, through which the phonetic form of words that designate sounds is designed to be conventionally imitative of the sound. A second group of playful words combines repeated sequences of sounds with meanings that are themselves suggestive of repetition or related concepts such as collectivity, continuity, or actions in sequence, as well as repeated, back-and-forth, or uncontrolled movements, or even, more abstractly, intensity and hesitation. The playfulness of truncated forms such as clips and blends is based on a still more abstract connection between forms and meanings. In the case of clipping, the truncation of the full form of a word triggers a corresponding connotative truncation or diminution of the meaning, that is, a suggestion that the referent is small—either endearingly, humorously, or contemptuously so. In blending, truncation is often accompanied by overlapping, which symbolically highlights the interrelatedness or juxtaposition of the constituents’ individual meanings. Prosodic templates do not constitute a separate category per se; instead, they may play a part in the formation or alteration of words in any of the other categories discussed here.

La Présentation des Néologismes

Babel ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
María José Serrano Cabezas ◽  
Pablo Jesús Sanz Moreno
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Functional Value ◽  
Lexical Items

Although the presentation of neologisms is the last step to be taken in the translation of new lexical items in scientific and technical texts, it has a significance which should not be overlooked. In the same way as the neologism itself, typography (quotation marks, italics, etc.), explanatory notes and commentaries, can play an important role in giving account of the functional value of the new term in the micro-context in which it is inserted. The translator's function is to weigh up what he considers to be more important and what less important in each particular occurrence of a neologism in a text. Thus, if the neologism is bound to occupy a crucial role in its conceptual area that will affect any future research, it should be treated in a special way. It is clear that, in other cases, the functional value of the term can be perfectly rendered by means of a periphrasis. One way or another, the presence of a new lexical item in the source language should always be pointed out in a target text in which the value of a neologism has a direct influence on its translation and presentation. This article provides some general reflections from a terminological perspective, about the translation strategies to be considered for a variety of cases by means of a series of examples taken from scientific literature.

Inconsistency in Technical Terminology

Babel ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad A. Saraireh
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Item ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Stylistic Variation ◽  
Arabic Translation ◽  
Technical Translation ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Language Text

Standardization is one of the basic elements of technical translation for proper communication among the users of the target language text. Consistency in signifier-signified correspondence is vital to maintain proper tandardization. However, there are many instances (in translation) in which stylistic variation and inconsistency in using lexical items are confused. The problem arises and becomes serious when inconsistency is mistakenly considered as stylistic variation. Stylistic variation is a very well known literary device to avoid repetition in texts by employing synonyms. Inconsistency arises when a signifier which has been employed in the target language to signify a new borrowed concept is alternately used with any of its synonyms. The translator may create a kind of confusion when he uses a synonym to signify the same concept rather than the assigned lexical item. Therefore, the reader may not be able to follow the progress of the text assuming that there is a different meaning for each synonym. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the different types of this phenomenon in English-Arabic translation.

On Expletive Negation Some Remarks With Regard to Catalan

1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Teresa Espinal
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Item ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Especial Reference ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Comparative Structure ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Logical Specifications

The aim of this paper is to identify which syntactic structures allow the interpretation of meaningless or expletive negation and under what conditions formal negation appears in the syntax of natural languages, with especial reference to Central Catalan. I shall describe two syntactic environments: (a) the negation which occurs at the subordinate clause of a comparative structure of inequality, and (b) the negation which occurs at the subordinate clause in the subjunctive tense-mood of certain predicates. In both structures I shall assume that there is a lexical item at the main clause which subcategorizes, among other possible complements, for a que (than, that) clause. At D-structure there is, furthermore, a NegP which is the complement of this conjunction. At the level of LF no expletive is specified, because the logical specifications of the lexical items which subcategorize for these subordinate clauses absorb the value of the negative operator.

Modeling lexical borrowability

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roeland van Hout ◽  
Pieter Muysken
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
Lexical Items

ABSTRACTIn this article, we develop analytical techniques to determine borrowability – that is, the ease with which a lexical item or a category of lexical items can be borrowed. The analysis is based on two assumptions: (1) the distribution of items in both the host and donor language should be taken into account to explain why certain items are, and others are not, borrowed; (2) the borrowability of a lexical category may result from a set of (underlying) operative factors or constraints. Our analysis is applied to Spanish borrowings in Bolivian Quechua on the basis of a set of bilingual texts.

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