scholarly journals Romance and Croatian in Contact: Non-Clitic Auxiliaries in Istro-Romanian

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Adina Dragomirescu ◽  
Alexandru Nicolae

This paper focuses on Istro-Romanian and argues that the TAM auxiliaries of this variety are not morphophonological clitics. This analysis is supported by the existence of several empirical phenomena (auxiliary-licensed VP-ellipsis, scrambling, and interpolation), some not found in modern Romance, others very rare in modern Romance. This property of Istro-Romanian auxiliary verbs accounts, in conjunction with other features of this variety (e.g., the availability of C-oriented and I-oriented pronominal clitics), for the massive variation in the word order of pronominal clitics, auxiliaries, and the lexical verb found in the Istro-Romanian sentential core. An endangered Romance variety spoken in Istria and in the diaspora, historically related to (Daco-)Romanian, Istro-Romanian has been in contact with Croatian since the settlement of Istro-Romanians in the Istrian peninsula. As some of the Istro-Romanian features and phenomena are found both in Croatian and in old Romanian, it appears that contact with Croatian acts as a catalyst of structural convergence engendering the retention of an archaic property of Istro-Romanian auxiliaries: a lower position on the grammaticalization cline, closer to the full word status of their etyma.

Author(s):  
Dong-woo Park

It has been analyzed that the word order of English comparative inversion is analogous to that of other subject-auxiliary inversions in that only a finite auxiliary verb can be followed by the subject. However, English comparative inversion should be distinguished from other inversions because the subject can be located between a cluster of auxiliary verbs and the non-auxiliary verb phrase in English comparative inversion. Existing analyses on subject-auxiliary inversion cannot account for this special kind of inversion. This paper proposes a new phrase type for English comparative inversion within the construction-based HPSG. In addition, I suggest that constraints on properties of lexemes participating in the new phrase type are governed by the construction-based approach, while the word order of English comparative inversion is determined by rules that the word order domain approach adopts. Also, it will be shown that these proposals can capture the word order of nor-inversion, as-inversion, and so-inversion as well as that of comparative inversion.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie McShane ◽  
Petr Babkin

Verb phrase (VP) ellipsis is the omission of a verb phrase whose meaning can be reconstructed from the linguistic or real-world context. It is licensed in English by auxiliary verbs, often modal auxiliaries: She can go to Hawaii but he can’t [e]. This paper describes a system called ViPER (VP Ellipsis Resolver) that detects and resolves VP ellipsis, relying on linguistic principles such as syntactic parallelism, modality correlations, and the delineation of core vs. peripheral sentence constituents. The key insight guiding the work is that not all cases of ellipsis are equally difficult: some can be detected and resolved with high confidence even before we are able to build systems with human-level semantic and pragmatic understanding of text.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1078-1085
Author(s):  
R. R. Ganieva

The research features syntactic structure in the twentieth century "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger and the twenty first century "Fates and Furies" by L. Groff. The research objective was to study the nature of syntactic relations expressed by word order in speech of narrators and characters. The paper outlines the rules of word order in the English sentence and reviews related studies in the field of syntax. The author analyzed the syntactic structure of sentences in the speech of narrators and characters in the two novels. The analysis was based on the descriptive method and techniques of observation, interpretation, comparison, and generalization. There were numerous examples of omission of auxiliary verbs in interrogative sentences in characters' speech, as well as interrogative sentences with affirmative structure. In "The Catcher in the Rye", affirmative sentences obecame interrogative with the help of interjections eh and ah. Both novels contained sentences where adverbial modifiers, objects, or attributes preceded the main parts – in the narrators' speech. A lot of one-member and contextually incomplete sentences were used to describe events and personages in both novels. In "The Catcher in the Rye", the narrator's speech revealed few cases of violations of word order rules, mostly in sentences with direct word order. The characters' speech appeared to contain much more cases of word order violations, since the novel features colloquial speech of twentieth century American teenagers. The speech of adult personages was characterized by correct word order. In "Fates and Furies", the narrator's speech demonstrated a significant number of elliptical sentences where auxiliary verb to be was omitted in simple verbal predicate with the verb in Present Continuous, as well as in compound nominal predicate and in passive voice. A comparative study of syntactic structure contributed to a deeper understanding of the nature of syntactic relations reflected by word order in the English sentence, grammatical structure of the English language, and popular types of sentences. In addition, the study showed the way native speakers express their ideas and thoughts by linguistic means and violate linguistic norms. The results can be used in various grammar courses and compiling textbooks.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-628
Author(s):  
Myung-Kwan Park ◽  
최선주
Keyword(s):  

2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Fuss

This paper focuses on the origin of the V2 property in the history of Germanic. Considering data from Gothic and Old English (OE), it is suggested that the historical core of the V2 phenomenon reduces to V-to-C movement that is triggered in operator contexts. Therefore, the historical system shares basic properties with limited V2 in Modern English. It is shown that apparent deviations from this pattern that can be observed in Gothic can be attributed to the influence of Greek word order. Concerning the apparently more elaborate V2 properties of OE, it is claimed that a large part of them in fact do not involve a Spec-head relation, but rather result from linear adjacency between the clause-initial element and a finite verb located in T0. Special attention is paid to the placement of pronominal subjects in OE, which are claimed to occupy SpecTP. This contrasts with a lower position of full subjects due to the absence of an EPP in OE. Finally, the loss of superficial V2 orders in the Middle English period is attributed to the development of an EPP feature in T.


1991 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverly Wulfeck ◽  
Elizabeth Bates

We investigated the effect of morphosyntactic violation type on accuracy and processing time in Broca's aphasics engaged in an on-line error detection task. Five agrammatic Broca's aphasic subjects and 15 age-matched control subjects performed grammaticality judgments on auditorily presented grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. Both judgment accuracy and decision time were measured, so that the data revealed not only whether aphasics detected violations, but when they noticed them. The ungrammatical sentences were created by changing quantifiers and auxiliary verbs in one of two ways: substituting one quantifier or auxiliary for another to create agreement errors, or moving the quantifier or auxiliary “downstream” from its proper site to create word order errors. Also, the position of the violation in the sentence (early versus late) as well as the distance relationships among sentence elements involved in the violation (local versus global) were manipulated. Results suggest that aphasic subjects retain some sensitivity to grammaticality, knowledge that they are able to use “online.” Performance was also affected by type of violation. Aphasic subjects were less sensitive to agreement violations than they were to violations created by moving the same elements to an illegal position—and this tended to be reflected in decision times as well as accuracy. These results support two conclusions. First, although the performance of aphasic subjects was degraded relative to control subjects, the findings of overall grammaticality sensitivity and relatively rapid decision times suggest that the locus of grammatical impairment in these patients has more to do with the accessing of linguistic information than with loss of linguistic knowledge. Second, the difference between agreement and movement violations provides further evidence that morphological marking is relatively vulnerable in aphasia, compared with the principles that govern word and morpheme ordering.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Rankin

This study examines the interpretation of constituent wh-questions in L2 English by learners whose L1 is Austrian German. Austrian German and English share identical surface word order patterns for a range of question forms, but with distinct semantic interpretations. Non-target patterns of interpretation show that the learners ay high levels of proficiency continue to optionally parse English questions with the L1 syntax. The continued presence of thematic verb movement and head-final VP syntax in L1 German-L2 English interlanguage challenges previous findings that headedness is reset very early and that V2 is realised by auxiliary verbs. This is analysed as an instance of Variational Learning (Yang, 2002), whereby the L1 grammar is accessed to parse L2 input where possible. The L1 syntactic representation thus continues to be available at high proficiency levels to parse input strings that are linearly compatible, giving rise in the case of L1 German-L2 English to non-target parses and interpretation of wh-questions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
William O'Grady

AbstractI focus on two challenges that processing-based theories of language must confront: the need to explain why language has the particular properties that it does, and the need to explain why processing pressures are manifested in the particular way that they are. I discuss these matters with reference to two illustrative phenomena: proximity effects in word order and a constraint on contraction.


1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 600-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope B. Odom ◽  
Richard L. Blanton

Two groups each containing 24 deaf subjects were compared with 24 fifth graders and 24 twelfth graders with normal hearing on the learning of segments of written English. Eight subjects from each group learned phrasally defined segments such as “paid the tall lady,” eight more learned the same words in nonphrases having acceptable English word order such as “lady paid the tall,” and the remaining eight in each group learned the same words scrambled, “lady tall the paid.” The task consisted of 12 study-test trials. Analyses of the mean number of words recalled correctly and the probability of recalling the whole phrase correctly, given that one word of it was recalled, indicated that both ages of hearing subjects showed facilitation on the phrasally defined segments, interference on the scrambled segments. The deaf groups showed no differential recall as a function of phrasal structure. It was concluded that the deaf do not possess the same perceptual or memory processes with regard to English as do the hearing subjects.


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