Information focus, syntactic weight and postverbal constituent order in Spanish

Steffen Heidinger

doi:10.7557/1.2.2.2742

Information focus, syntactic weight and postverbal constituent order in Spanish

Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics ◽

10.7557/1.2.2.2742 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 159 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Steffen Heidinger

Keyword(s):

Direct Object ◽

Final Position ◽

Order Information ◽

Font Size ◽

Similar Extent ◽

Two Factors ◽

Constituent Order ◽

Information Focus

In Spanish, postverbal constituents – such as direct object, locative adjunct or depicitive – can be ordered in different ways (e.g. Juan bailó desnudo en su casa vs. Juan bailó en su casa desnudo). The present paper examines two possible factors for postverbal constituent order: information focus and syntactic weight. Based on data from a perception experiment it will be shown that information focus and syntactic weight indeed influence in postverbal constituent order in Spanish: both the focalization of a constituent and the increase of the weight of a constituent increase the frequency with which the respective constituent takes up the sentence final position. As concerns the strength of the two factors, our results suggest that information focus and syntactic weight influence in postverbal constituent order to a similar extent. As concerns the syntatic position of narrow information focus in Spanish, our results show that the sentence final position is the preferred position for narrowly focused constituents, but such constituents are not limited to the sentence final position.

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Identifying Potentiality Online Sales In Malaysia: A Study On Customer Relationships Online Shopping

Journal of Applied Business Research (JABR) ◽

10.19030/jabr.v22i4.1420 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 22 (4) ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Ahasanul Haque ◽

Javad Sadeghzadeh ◽

Ali Khatibi

Keyword(s):

Significant Relationship ◽

Logistic Model ◽

Online Shopping ◽

Family Income ◽

Customer Relationships ◽

Font Size ◽

Online Behavior ◽

Online Sales ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Two Factors

Understanding of consumers buying pattern through internet and motivation of consumers to online shopping and what product has potential of online sales are critical questions. The purpose of this study was to identify the potential of online sales. The study started with verifying consumer online behavior and model of potential of online sales. The results showed only two factors, gender and family income was significant relationship with overall attitudes towards online shopping. In addition, results indicated that weekly internet use, having experience in e-shopping, and willingness to shopping online in the future have significant relationship with overall attitude towards online shopping. Moreover, results   proved that there is significant difference between human senses in online decision-making process and it is explored to customers who experienced shopping a product or they were satisfied previously, which have stronger confidence to do online shopping. The estimation of Logistic model shows that potential of online sales is affected significantly by consumer overall attitudes towards online shopping, product type, familiarity and confidence.

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Do grammatical relations reflect information status? Reassessing Preferred Argument Structure theory against discourse data from Tondano

Linguistic Typology ◽

10.1515/lingty-2017-0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Timothy C. Brickell ◽

Stefan Schnell

Keyword(s):

Information Flow ◽

Argument Structure ◽

Noun Phrases ◽

Structure Theory ◽

Final Position ◽

Austronesian Language ◽

Grammatical Relations ◽

Information Status ◽

Constituent Order ◽

Corpus Data

AbstractWe test Preferred Argument Structure theory against corpus data from Tondano, an Austronesian language with symmetrical voice. Investigating the use of full noun phrases in individual argument positions, we find no significant clustering of both S and P as opposed to A, hence no discourse ergativity. Moreover, neither pivotal nor non-pivotal grammatical relations appear to specialise in the accommodation of full noun phrases. Thus, grammatical relations do not serve as architecture for regulating information flow in discourse. Only constituent order reflects information flow, so that full noun phrases tend to occur in clause-final position. More generally, correlations of humanness and topicality predict most straightforwardly attested patterns of argument realisation.

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INTERACTIONS BETWEEN VERB MOVEMENT AND AGREEMENT IN KARITIANA (TUPI STOCK)

Revista Letras ◽

10.5380/rel.v60i0.2876 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 60 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Luciana R. Storto

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Final Position ◽

Verb Second ◽

Verb Movement ◽

Transitive Verb ◽

Present Evidence ◽

Constituent Order ◽

Embedded Clauses ◽

Agreement Morphology

Este artigo tem como objetivo mostrar que o Karitiana, uma língua da família Arikém, tronco Tupi, falada em Rondônia, Brasil, é uma língua V-2, que apresenta movimento obrigatório do verbo para a posição de complementizador (C) nas sentenças matrizes. O verbo transitivo, invariavelmente, ocorre em primeira ou segunda posição em relação a seus argumentos nas sentenças principais, quando aparece, obrigatoriamente, marcado por tempo e concordância. Já nas sentenças subordinadas, o verbo aparece nú na última posição. Apresentamos evidências de movimento verbal ao discutirmos a ordem dos constituintes, a posição dos núcleos funcionais nas sentenças, e as possibilidades de adjunção adverbial na língua. Abstract This paper aims to show that Karitiana, a language of the Arikém family, Tupi stock, spoken in Rondônia, Brazil, is a verb-second language, which presents obligatory movement of the verb to complementizer position (C) in root clauses. The transitive verb, invariably, occurs in first or second position with respect to its arguments in matrix clauses, when it is marked by tense and agreement morphology. In embedded clauses, the verb is bare and occurs in final position. We present evidence of verb movement through a discussion of constituent order, the position of functional heads in the sentence, and adverb adjunction possibilities.

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Verb Phrase in Tamil

Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities ◽

10.34293/sijash.v7i4.1921 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

pp. 76-79

Author(s):

C Kuppusamy

Keyword(s):

Direct Object ◽

Final Position ◽

Verb Phrase ◽

Indirect Object ◽

Syntactic Property ◽

Verb Forms ◽

The Subject ◽

Finite Verb

The verb phrase is built up of a verb, which is the head of the construction. Verb occurs as predicate in the rightmost position of a clause. As a predicate it selects arguments (Ex. Subject, Direct object, Indirect object and Locative NPs) and assigns case to its arguments and adverbial adjuncts. Another syntactic property of verbs in Tamil is that they can govern subordinate verb forms. Verb occurring as finite verbs in clause final position can be complemented by non-finite verbs proceeding them. The latter with respect to the interpretation of tense or subject governs these non-finite forms, being subordinate to the finite verb form. If we follow the traditional idea of having a VP node for Tamil, then all the elements, except the subject NP, will have to be grouped under VP.

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Zu satzfinaler Subjektposition, Unakkusativität und C-Domäne im Jiddischen

Linguistik Online ◽

10.13092/lo.80.3566 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 80 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Pawel Mecner

Keyword(s):

Direct Object ◽

Final Position ◽

Thematic Role ◽

Daily Newspaper ◽

Case Assignment ◽

Isaac Bashevis Singer ◽

Internal Focus ◽

Feature Checking ◽

Focus Projection

The article examines structures of Yiddish clauses in which the kernel verb contains only one NP. The thematic role of an accessible NP is patient/theme, whereas the agent-NP remains vacant. It is assumed that a direct object of the type “X efent Y” (‘X opens Y’) and an accessible NP of the type “exists Y” appear in Yiddish in the clause-final position as a focalized subject. The study combines minimalist investigations and the cartographic approach, especially with regard to CP and IP/TP structures proposed in Rizzi (1997, 2004) and Belletti (1999) among others, and adopts the concept of functional topic/focus projections in the syntax of Yiddish. Investigations reveal possibilities of case assignment and feature checking in lower projection areas as well as the correlation between the topic projection of the C-domain and the clause-internal focus projection. A mechanism is assumed to combine precisely clause-final focalized subjects, unaccusatives and the C-domain including the following alternatives: (i) unmarked adverbials (PPs), (ii) expletive es and (iii) verb fronting. The analyzed structures have been observed in texts of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1931), Isaac Leib Peretz, (ed. 1920) and Fishl Bimko (1921) as well as in Yiddish daily newspaper Forverts.

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How Franchisors Describe Their Ideal Entrepreneurial Franchisee

Journal of Applied Business Research (JABR) ◽

10.19030/jabr.v29i1.7559 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 97

Author(s):

Jacques Boulay ◽

Valentina Stan

Keyword(s):

Qualitative Research ◽

Strong Support ◽

Selection Strategy ◽

Font Size ◽

Second Stage ◽

Two Factors ◽

System Developer ◽

System Characteristics ◽

The Ideal

This article has two main objectives: first, to identify the various entrepreneurial profiles of the ideal franchisee, as perceived by franchisors, and second, to describe and compare each profile on the basis of system characteristics. Qualitative research of franchisors is coupled with analyses of data collected from 90 franchise systems. This procedure offers strong sequential evidence in that the results of the first method inform the second-stage sampling and instrumentation (Greene et al., 1989). The study reveals three main entrepreneurial profiles of prospective franchisees - system developer, in-store craftsperson, and opportunistic investor. It also establishes that the term of the franchise agreement and the level of system plurality are two factors on which entrepreneurial profiles differ. These results offer strong support for franchisors in their selection strategy of future franchise partners.

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Differential Object Marking in Spanish: state of the art

Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics ◽

10.7557/1.2.2.2603 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 1 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Antonio Fábregas

Keyword(s):

Current Literature ◽

State Of The Art ◽

The Other ◽

Direct Object ◽

Font Size ◽

Differential Object Marking ◽

Internal Properties ◽

Object Marking ◽

Syntactic Properties

This state of the art tries to cover as much as possible about the properties, conditions and analyses of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish. Starting with some considerations about the boundaries of the phenomenon, it considers its morphological, semantic and syntactic properties –with respect both to the internal properties of the direct object and to the wider context in which it appears–. It also reviews the other morphosyntactic phenomena that have been claimed to correlate with DOM, and finally goes through a number of analysis in different theoretical traditions to highlight the points of agreement and debate in the current literature.

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The prosodic properties of narrow information focus in Central Mexican Spanish: Pitch accents, de-emphasis and phrasing

Loquens ◽

10.3989/loquens.2020.069 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. e069

Author(s):

Érika Mendoza Vázquez ◽

Rodrigo Gutiérrez-Bravo ◽

Pedro Martín Butragueño

Keyword(s):

Pitch Accent ◽

Primary Factor ◽

Final Position ◽

Mexican Spanish ◽

Properties Of Information ◽

Information Focus ◽

Pitch Accents ◽

Flat Pattern

This paper investigates the different prosodic strategies used for the marking of information focus in Central Mexican Spanish. For this purpose, we carried out a study of the prosodic properties of information focus both in clause final position and in situ. Our results show important differences when compared to other varieties of Spanish. Specifically, we observe that the most frequent accent signaling information focus is a monotonal pitch accent (L* or !H*) and not L+H*. Furthermore, in many cases we observe that the pitch accent is not the only mechanism used to signal the focus: this is because we observe the presence of prosodic edges to the left of the focus, presumably functioning as an additional prosodic cue to identify it. Additionally, while we do not observe deaccenting of post-focal material, we do observe a sequence of non-rising forms (a flat pattern or “de-emphasis”) following the pitch accent that signals an in situ information focus forced by the test. With respect to phonological phrasing, our results confirm the analysis in Prieto (2006), where it is proposed that syntactic constituency is not the primary factor that regulates phrasing in Spanish.

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"Infinity Goes up on Trial": Sanism, Pretextuality, and the Representation of Defendants with Mental Disabilities

QUT Law Review ◽

10.5204/qutlr.v16i3.689 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 106

Author(s):

Michael L Perlin

Keyword(s):

Criminal Justice ◽

Criminal Justice System ◽

Justice System ◽

Mental Disability ◽

Public Defender ◽

Mental Disabilities ◽

Font Size ◽

Maximum Security ◽

Us Supreme Court ◽

Two Factors

I begin by sharing a bit about my past. Before I became a professor, I spent 13 years as a lawyer representing persons with mental disabilities, including three years in which my focus was primarily on such individuals charged with crime. In this role, when I was Deputy Public Defender in Mercer County (Trenton) NJ, I represented several hundred individuals at the maximum security hospital for the criminally insane in New Jersey, both in individual cases, and in a class action that implemented the then-recent US Supreme Court case of Jackson v Indiana, that had declared unconstitutional state policy that allowed for the indefinite commitment of pre-trial detainees in maximum security forensic facilities if it were unlikely he would regain his capacity to stand trial in the ‘foreseeable future.’I continued to represent this population for a decade in my later positions as Director of the NJ Division of Mental Health Advocacy and Special Counsel to the NJ Public Advocate. Also, as a Public Defender, I represented at trial many defendants who were incompetent to stand trial, and others who, although competent, pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Finally, during the time that I directed the Federal Litigation Clinic at New York Law School, I filed a brief on behalf of appellant in Ake v Oklahoma, on the right of an indigent defendant to an independent psychiatrist to aid in the presentation of an insanity defence. I have appeared in courts at every level from police court to the US Supreme Court, in the latter ‘second-seating’ Strickland v Washington. I raise all this not to offer a short form of my biography, but to underscore that this article draws on my experiences of years in trial courts and appellate courts as well as from decades of teaching and of writing books and articles about the relationship between mental disability and the criminal trial process. And it was those experiences that have formed my opinions and my thoughts about how society’s views of mental disability have poisoned the criminal justice system, all leading directly to this paper, that will mostly be about what I call ‘sanism’ and what I call ‘pretextuality’. The paper will also consider how these factors drive the behaviour of judges, jurors, prosecutors, witnesses, and defence lawyers, whenever a person with a mental disability is charged with crime, and about a potential remedy that might help eradicate this poison.It is essential that lawyers representing criminal defendants with mental disabilities understand the meanings and contexts of sanism and pretextuality and to show how these two factors infect all aspects of the criminal process, and offer some thoughts as to how they may be remediated. I believe – and I have been doing this work for over 40 years – that an understanding of these two factors is absolutely essential to any understanding of how our criminal justice system works in the context of this population, and how it is essential that criminal defence lawyers be in the front lines of those seeking to eradicate the contamination of these poisons from our system. *Please note this is an invited paper - ie. not peer reviewed*

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Subject inversion in transitive sentences from Classical to Modern European Portuguese

10.1093/oso/9780198747307.003.0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Charlotte Galves ◽

Alba Gibrail

Keyword(s):

Word Order ◽

Information Structure ◽

Clause Structure ◽

Verb Second ◽

High Position ◽

European Portuguese ◽

Constituent Order ◽

Tycho Brahe ◽

Information Focus

This chapter focuses on Classical Portuguese and its change to Modern European Portuguese, bringing to the debate new data concerning transitive sentences. The data are drawn from the Tycho Brahe Parsed Corpus of Historical Portuguese (texts written by Portuguese authors born 1502–1836). It is argued that both constituent order syntax and the information structure functions of word order in transitive sentences (SVO, VSO, VOS) support the characterization of Classical Portuguese as a verb-second language: the verb occupies a high position in clause structure, which makes a high position for post-verbal subjects available as well. This explains why post-verbal subjects in Classical Portuguese are not obligatorily associated with an information focus interpretation, but very frequently receive a familiar topic interpretation. The empirical evidence discussed in this chapter supports the claim that there was a syntactic change from Classical to Modern European Portuguese, rather than a discursive reinterpretation of the same syntax.

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