scholarly journals The information structure of subject extraposition in Early New High German

Author(s):  
Caitlin Light

This paper investigates the information-structural characteristics of extraposed subjects in Early New High German (ENHG). Based on new quantitative data from a parsed corpus of ENHG, I will argue that unlike objects, subjects in ENHG have two motivations for extraposing. First, subjects may extrapose in order to receive narrow focus, which is the pattern Bies (1996) has shown for object extraposition in ENHG. Secondly, however, subjects may extrapose in order to receive a default sentence accent, which is most visible in the case of presentational constructions. This motivation does not affect objects, which may achieve the same prosodic goal without having to extrapose. The study has two major consequences: (1) subject extraposition in ENHG demonstrates that there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between syntactic structure and information structural effect (cf. Féry 2007); and (2) the overall phenomenon of DP extraposition in ENHG fits into a broader set of crosslinguistic focus phenomena which demonstrate a subject-object asymmetry (cf. Hartmann and Zimmermann 2007, Skopeteas and Fanselow 2010), raising important questions about the relationship between argument structure and information structural notions.

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-19
Author(s):  
Jacinta Bwana ◽  
Jerry Agalo ◽  
Millicent Otieno

This paper presents an assessment of the relationship between communication messages and tourism promotion. Homabay county located in Kenya's western tourists circuit is rich in tourists' attractions, but continue to receive very little tourists as a result of limited publicity. Promotion of tourism is necessary to enable the sector generate revenue to the county and improve the livelihood of the people around the area. The objective of the study was therefore to assess existing communication messages for promotion of tourism in Homabay county. In Kenya many tourists continue to ock certain destinations that have been frequently visited over the years, such as the Coastal and Nairobi Circuits. The study therefore sought to nd out if the missing link in tourism promotion in Homabay county was communication messages. The study was guided by Media framing theory. The approach used was mixed and data was collected using questionnaires that were issued to tourists, interviews with Homabay county government ofcials and with employees of Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS). Custodians of the selected tourists' sites were also interviewed. Homabay county integrated development plan was also analyzed. A sample of 93 tourists took part, the entire population of the remaining categories of the respondents was used in the study, totaling to 100 participants. Qualitative data was analysed thematically using manual open coding and NVivo 11 software while quantitative data was analysed statistically using SPSS 23.0. The study established that the promotional messages contained cultural and historical information while highlighting the uniqueness of the sites. Framing of messages for tourism promotion in a persuasive and convincing manner evokes in the actual or potential tourists the desire to visit a tourist's destination.


2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-811 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNA L. THEAKSTON ◽  
ELENA V. M. LIEVEN ◽  
JULIAN M. PINE ◽  
CAROLINE F. ROWLAND

This study investigated different accounts of early argument structure acquisition and verb paradigm building through the detailed examination of the acquisition of the verb Go. Data from 11 children followed longitudinally between the ages of 2;0 and 3;0 were examined. Children's uses of the different forms of Go were compared with respect to syntactic structure and the semantics encoded. The data are compatible with the suggestion that the children were not operating with a single verb representation that differentiated between different forms of Go but rather that their knowledge of the relationship between the different forms of Go varied depending on the structure produced and the meaning encoded. However, a good predictor of the children's use of different forms of Go in particular structures and to express particular meanings was the frequency of use of those structures and meanings with particular forms of Go in the input. The implications of these findings for theories of syntactic category formation and abstract rule-based descriptions of grammar are discussed.


2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Löwenadler

Issues concerning the nature of so-called ‘filler-gap’ constructions and the constraints on their acceptability in different languages have for a long time been at the center of the linguistic debate. In more recent years, claims have often been made that many or all constraints on such constructions can be explained in terms of processing restrictions, properties of information structure, or limits to attention. However, in the present paper I will argue that at least some of these constraints cannot be explained by such factors. Instead, I will claim that speakers’ judgements of acceptability could be negatively affected if the syntactic structure of a productively formed instance of a schematic construction is not sufficiently similar to the prototypical entrenched structure of the same construction. Importantly, this might happen whether the relevant form is a phonological pattern, or a pattern of schematic syntactic categories. I will show how the proposed principles have the potential to explain a number of well-known constraints which have generally not been regarded as related. More specifically, I will show how the principles can account for some striking similarities between filler-gap constraints in English and Swedish, as well as some unexpected differences. I will also argue that the filler-gap constraint referred to as the complementizer-gap effect can be explained by the same principles that are involved in phenomena such as restrictions on wanna-contraction in English and adjective defectiveness in Swedish. The analysis will be based on the constructional approaches of Croft (2001) and Verhagen (2009), and some crucial issues will concern the relationship between syntactic and phonological structure in a construction, and the notions of non-iconic constituency and gradient syntactic attachment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Noorlela Binti Noordin ◽  
Abdul Razaq Ahmad ◽  
Anuar Ahmad

This study was aimed to evaluate the Malay proficiency among students in Form Two especially non-Malay students and its relationship to academic achievement History. To achieve the purpose of the study there are two objectives, the first is to look at the difference between mean of Malay Language test influences min of academic achievement of History subject among non-Malay students in Form Two and the second is the relationship between the level of Malay proficiency and their academic achievement for History. This study used quantitative methods, which involved 100 people of Form Two non-Malay students in one of the schools in Klang, Selangor. This study used quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and statistical inference with IBM SPSS Statistics v22 software. This study found that there was a relationship between the proficiency of Malay language among non-Malay students with achievements in the subject of History. The implications of this study are discussed in this article.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (5) ◽  
pp. 1800-1833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Drake ◽  
Amy Auletto ◽  
Joshua M. Cowen

In July 2011, the State of Michigan adopted a broad set of teacher labor market reforms, including a high-stakes evaluation system designed in part to remove low-performing teachers. We examine the characteristics of teachers rated as “minimally effective” and “ineffective,” as well as their schools, and the relationship between low effectiveness ratings and later employment outcomes. Results suggest teachers of color across traditional and charter schools are more likely to receive low effectiveness ratings than their within-school peers. These low rating risks are higher for teachers of color working in comparatively White-faculty contexts. Male and novice teachers are also rated low more frequently, and important differences appear to exist in the usage of low ratings by traditional public and charter schools.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 1421-1454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Kalandadze ◽  
Valentina Bambini ◽  
Kari-Anne B. Næss

AbstractIndividuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience difficulty in comprehending metaphors compared to individuals with typical development (TD). However, there is a large variation in the results across studies, possibly related to the properties of the metaphor tasks. This preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis (a) explored the properties of the metaphor tasks used in ASD research, and (b) investigated the group difference between individuals with ASD and TD on metaphor comprehension, as well as the relationship between the task properties and any between-study variation. A systematic search was undertaken in seven relevant databases. Fourteen studies fulfilled our predetermined inclusion criteria. Across tasks, we detected four types of response format and a great variety of metaphors in terms of familiarity, syntactic structure, and linguistic context. Individuals with TD outperformed individuals with ASD on metaphor comprehension (Hedges’ g = −0.63). Verbal explanation response format was utilized in the study showing the largest effect size in the group comparison. However, due to the sparse experimental manipulations, the role of task properties could not be established. Future studies should consider and report task properties to determine their role in metaphor comprehension, and to inform experimental paradigms as well as educational assessment.


2011 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
KYUMIN KIM

This paper provides a unified syntactic account of the distribution of Englishhavein causative constructions (e.g.John had Mary read a book) and experiencer constructions (e.g.John had the student walk out of his classroom). It is argued thathaveis realized in the context of anapplicative head(Appl) and an event-introducer v, regardless of the type of v.Haveis spelled out in the causative when Appl merges under vCAUSE, and in the experiencer construction when Appl merges under vBE. This proposal is extended tohavein possessive constructions (e.g.John has a hat/a brother):haveis realized in the context of vBEand Appl. The proposed account provides empirical evidence for expanding the distribution of Appl: (i) a causative can take ApplP as a complement, which was absent in Pylkkänen's (2008) typological classification, and (ii) Appl can merge above Voice, contrary to Pylkkänen's analysis in which Appl is argued to always merge below VoiceP, never above. Moreover, the proposed account supports the theoretical claim that argument structure is licensed by functional syntactic structure; in particular, it shows that the relevant functional heads are not aspectual heads, but Appl and v.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Cottiero ◽  
Katherine Kucharski ◽  
Evgenia Olimpieva ◽  
Robert W. Orttung

How effective is Russian state television in framing the conflict in Ukraine that began with the Euromaidan protests and what is its impact on Russian Internet users? We carried out a content analysis of Dmitrii Kiselev's “News of the Week” show, which allowed us to identify the two key frames he used to explain the conflict – World War II-era fascism and anti-Americanism. Since Kiselev often reduces these frames to buzzwords, we were able to track the impact of these words on Internet users by examining search query histories on Yandex and Google and by developing quantitative data to complement our qualitative analysis. Our findings show that much of what state media produces is not effective, but that the “fascist” and anti-American frames have had lasting impacts on Russian Internet users. We argue that it does not make sense to speak of competition between a “television party” and an “Internet party” in Russia since state television has a strong impact in setting the agenda for the Internet and society as a whole. Ultimately, the relationship between television and the Internet in Russia is a continual loop, with each affecting the other.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-150
Author(s):  
Hellen Kabasinguzi Wataba ◽  
Nafiu Lukman Abiodun

This study sought to establish the relationship between boards of governors' (BOGs) roles and management of government aided secondary schools in Kyenjojo District. The objectives were to establish the relationship between BOGs' planning role and management of government aided secondary schools, to establish the relationship between BOGs' supervisory role and management of government aided secondary schools, to establish the relationship between BOGs' control role and management of government aided secondary schools; and to determine the major predictor of management of government aided secondary schools out of the three aspects of BOGs' roles. A correlational research design was used. A total of 90 respondents drawn from 108 BOGs and nine head teachers were selected as sample for the study using stratified random sampling and census inquiry respectively. The instruments used were questionnaire and interview guide. Quantitative data was analysed using Pearson product-moment correlation and regression, while thematic analysis was used on qualitative data. The study found a statistically moderate positive and significant relationship between BOGs' planning role and management of government aided secondary schools (r=.626, p=.000); a statistically moderate positive and significant relationship between BOGs' supervisory role and management of government aided secondary schools(r=.591, p=.000); and a statistically weak positive and significant relationship between BOGs' control role and management of government aided secondary schools(r=.280, p=.015). All the three aspects of BOGs roles account for 38.4% of the influence on management of government aided secondary schools in Kyenjojo district (adjusted r2=0.384, p=.000). The researchers recommend that BOGs should be well trained in management of schools in order to be effective in their work. Head teachers should not be dictators but create a conducive climate for planning, supervision and control by the BOGs.


Author(s):  
Dorthe Brogaard Kristensen

This article presents the case of the shaman José Karipan, who is considered one of the most powerful and popular shamans in southern Chile. The article explores the success of his practice as a healer, by analyzing the relationship between healing, identity and the socio-economic and political context of Southern Chile. It is argued that shamanistic medical practice is so popular among patients in Southern Chile due to its sensitivity to their historical past and socio-political reality. The shaman’s practice and figure build upon symbols and aspects of his social environment; the shaman is Roman Catholic and claims to receive his healing power from the Virgin of Carmen, the national saint of Chile. Furthermore, he is publicly known for a conflict with the local taxation authorities, who accuse him of failing to claim tax for his income as a healer. These factors serve to challenge the logic of the Chilean state but also show how the shaman’s personal practices are embedded inside the logic of the state, and draw upon national symbols as a source of power.  


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