The role of Function Words to build syntactic knowledge in French-speaking children

The question of how children learn Function Words (FWs) is still a matter of debate among child language researchers. Are early multiword utterances based on lexically specific patterns or rather abstract grammatical relations? In this corpus study, we analyzed FWs having a highly predictable distribution in relation to Mean Length Utterance (MLU) an index of syntactic complexity in a large naturalistic sample of 315 monolingual French children aged 2 to 4 year-old. The data was annotated with a Part Of Speech Tagger (POS-T), belonging to computational tools from CHILDES. While eighteen FWs strongly correlated with MLU expressed either in word or in morpheme, stepwise regression analyses showed that subject pronouns predicted MLU. Factor analysis yielded a bifactor hierarchical model: The first factor loaded sixteen FWs among which eight had a strong developmental weight (third person singular verbs, subject pronouns, articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, modals, demonstrative pronouns and plural markers), whereas the second factor loaded complex FWs (possessive verbs and object pronouns). These findings challenge the lexicalist account and support the view that children learn grammatical forms as a complex system based on early instead of late structure building. Children may acquire FWs as combining words and build syntactic knowledge as a complex abstract system which is not innate but learned from multiple word input sentences context. Notably, FWs were found to predict syntactic development and sentence complexity. These results open up new perspectives for clinical assessment and intervention.

DEICTIC PRONOUNS IN THE KHAKASS LANGUAGE

В настоящей статье представлены результаты исследования дейктических (указательных) местоимений в хакасском языке. Дейктические местоимения, как и другие указательные слова, выступают в качестве слов, служащих для определения степени удаленности объекта относительно позиции говорящего лица («дейктического центра»). В каждом языке своя (двучленная, трехчленная и более) система определения степени удаленности предмета относительно дейктического центра. В хакасском языке степень удаленности предметов относительно говорящего лица определяется через трехчленную систему: проксимальную («ближе к говорящему лицу»), медиальную («чуть дальше от говорящего лица») и экстремальную («далеко от говорящего лица»). Кроме того, дейктические местоимения служат для развития темпорального значения. В предложении дейктическим местоимениям отводится роль определения и обстоятельства времени. This article presents the results of a study of deictic (demonstrative) pronouns in the Khakass language. Deictic pronouns, like other demonstrative words, act as words that serve to determine the degree of remoteness of the object relative to the position of the speaker ("deictic center"). Each language has its own (binomial, three-term, and more) system for determining the degree of remoteness of the subject relative to the deictic center. In the Khakass language, the degree of remoteness of objects relative to the speaking person is determined through a three-term system: proximal ("closer to the speaking person"), medial ("slightly further from the speaking person") and extreme ("far from the speaking person"). In addition, deictic pronouns serve to develop a temporal meaning. In the sentence, the deictic pronouns are assigned the role of the definition and the circumstance of time.

Event and Entity Coreference Across Five Languages: Effects of Context and Referring Expression

Current work on coreference focuses primarily on entities, often leaving unanalysed the use of anaphors to corefer with antecedents such as events and textual segments. Moreover, the anaphoric forms that speakers use for entity and non-entity coreference are not mutually exclusive. This ambiguity has been the subject of recent work in English, with evidence of a split between comprehenders' preferential interpretation of personal versus demonstrative pronouns. In addition, comprehenders are shown to be sensitive to antecedent complexity and aspectual status, two verb-driven cues that signal how an event is being portrayed. Here we extend this work via a comparison across five languages (English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish). With a story-continuation experiment, we test how different referring expressions corefer with entity and event antecedents and whether verbal features such as argument structure and aspect influence this choice. Our results show widely consistent, not categorical biases across languages: entity coreference is favoured for personal pronouns and event coreference for demonstratives. Antecedent complexity increases the rate at which anaphors are taken to corefer with an event antecedent, but portraying an event as completed does not reach statistical significance (though showing quite uniform patterns). Lastly, we report a comparison of the same referring expressions to refer to entity and event antecedents in a trilingual parallel corpus annotated with coreference.Together, the results provide a first crosslingual picture of coreference preferences beyond the restricted entity-only patterns targeted by most existing work on coreference. The five languages are all shown to allow gradable use of pronouns for entity and event coreference, with biases that align with existing generalizations about the link between prominence and the use of reduced referring expressions. The studies also show the feasibility of manipulating targeted verb-driven cues across multiple languages to support crosslingual comparisons.

The systems of demonstrative pronouns and derivative adverbs in the Dargin languages

This article is examines the demonstrative pronouns and derivative adverbs in a number of the Dargin languages and dialects. The Dargin languages have a rich deictic system that helps the native speakers to navigate in the severe conditions of mountain terrain, and found its reflection in pronouns and spatial adverbs. Recent changes observed in the traditional way of life of highlanders, along with the migration processes, lead to extinction of this layer of lexicon. The problem of early documentation and research of locative adverbs retains its relevance. The goal of this article lies in comparative analysis of the systems of demonstrative pronouns and spatial adverbs in different Dargin idioms. For achieving the set goal, the article employs descriptive methods and methods of field linguistics. This article is first to conduct the comparative analysis of locative adverbial form, which defines its scientific novelty. As a result, description is given to the deictic systems of pronouns and adverbs in the Akushin, Urakhin, Kajtak, Sanzhin and Itsari idioms. It is established that most Dargin idioms feature two forms of demonstrative pronouns, which differ depending on the visibility or vastness of the object. Various affixes allow forming spatial adverbs that can function in one of the local cases – lative, directive, essive, or elative. The obtained results can be valuable in preparing comparative-historical grammar of the Dargin languages.

Principles of the Translation of “The Tale of the Merchant”

The article is devoted to some principles of the translation of “The Tale of the Merchant” at the end of the 17th century, which realization is introduced on the functioning of pronouns. Adaptive and descriptive translation are widely spread in the text. Both techniques realize 1) in the observance of the book register, which supposes realization of the ternary opposition of demonstrative pronouns “sej / toj / onyj” and 2) in replacement of number category of personal pronouns in the direct speech. The article also consider features of the functioning of pronouns and pronoun constructions, in particular, with the enclitics “že” and the principles of introducing new characters into the narrative.

Deiktiskās, prospektīvās un retrospektīvās frāzes zinātnes valodā

The article focuses on the dimensions of space and time in the Latvian language of science. The space dimension is expressed by the deictic constructions of place (demonstrative pronouns and adverbs), and the time dimension is expressed by prospective and retrospective constructions (adverbs and adjectives). The research material consists of the texts of scientific articles included in the project “The Latvian Language of Science in the Intralingual Aspect”. The aim of the present study is to explore research articles written in Latvian and to single out the most frequently used wording expressing the mentioned dimensions. In the present research, content analysis has been carried out to establish the knowledge gap present in the given field. It was found out that very few publications so far exist pertaining to space and time deixis in the Latvian language. The respective wording in the research material has been singled out with the help of AntConc; therefore, the present study is a study in Latvian Linguistics, with the elements of Corpus Linguistics. The content analysis and the study revealed that the deictic space and prospective and retrospective time constructions are present throughout the articles written in the Latvian language of science, i.e. in the introductory parts, in the main bodies, and the conclusions of the mentioned texts and serve the function of creating the joint psychological space of the author and the audience. They facilitate the process of communication between the author and the reader of the given texts.

ACTUAL PARTICLES OF THE KARATIN LANGUAGE INDICATING THE DISTANCE OF THE OBJECT

The article examines the deictic particles of the Karatin language, indicating the localization of the object relative to the speaker away from it horizontally and vertically. There is an increase in deictic semantics in the joint use of particles and the corresponding demonstrative pronouns or pronominal adverbs.

On the Contrastive Analysis of a Television Text Type

Analysis of media-linguistic aspects by linguists is of great importance because the latest linguistic trends can be understood on the basis of this material. Based on the contrastive studies of the text type weather report on German and Georgian television, the following similarities and differences were highlighted: many media-linguistic aspects (sentence types, common verbs, mood, technical and local expressions, visual effects, etc.) look similar. With regard to the types of sentences, the following tendency has emerged: parataxes are the most common occurrence in TV weather reports. In second place are hypotaxes, followed by simple sentences and ellipses. German moderators tend mainly to use the oral style. This is shown by reductions, colloquial and regional expressions, breaking a sentence frame, demonstrative pronouns and modal particles. In addition, that could also indicate that they are less focused on the teleprompter. The weather report of the Georgian morning TV program "Guten Morgen, Georgia" (Rustavi 2) is broadcast live at various locations. Before the current temperature of the day is presented, the weather moderator chats casually with the studio moderators and their guests. The weather report is contextualized in this way. The weather report is almost always done with an introductory sentence. The weather data is read out by the moderator or by the respective guests. German moderators present both current temperatures and the weather forecast for the next few days. Regarding speaking speed, it can be emphasized that German moderators speak almost twice as fast as Georgian moderators. Both German and Georgian moderators are always in a good mood. The dress style of the morning presenters, in contrast to evening presenters, is mostly unofficial in both the German and Georgian weather reports. It must also be mentioned here that it is very important to deal with various types of text in both school and university foreign language lessons. Since listening to a weather report is a realistic everyday act, this type of text must find a worthy entry into foreign language lessons. It is advantageous to combine visual and linguistic aspects, because in this way both visual and hearing comprehension are trained.

Locality in the acquisition of object A’-dependencies: insights from French

Children’s difficulties with dependencies involving movement of an object to the left periphery of the clause (object relative clauses/RCs and wh-questions), have been explained in terms of intervention effects arising when the moved object and the intervening subject share a lexical N feature (Friedmann, Belletti & Rizzi 2009). Such an account raises various questions: (1) Do these effects hold in the absence of a lexical N feature when the object and the intervener share other relevant features? (2) Do phi-features with a semantic role modulate such effects? (3) Does the degree of feature overlap determine a gradience in performance? We addressed these in three sentence-picture matching studies with French-speaking children (4;8 to 6;3), by assessing comprehension of (1) subject and object RCs headed by the demonstrative pronouns celui/celle and matching or mismatching in number; (2) object RCs headed by a lexical N and matching or mismatching in animacy; (3) object who- and which-questions. Our results show that mismatches in number, not in animacy, enhance comprehension of object RCs, even in the absence of a lexical N feature, and confirm previous findings that object who-questions yield better comprehension than object which-questions. Comparing across studies, the following gradation emerges with respect to performance accuracy: disjunction > intersection > inclusion. The global interpretation of these findings is that fine-grained phi-features determining movement are both sufficient and necessary for locality, and the degree of overlap of these features can capture the pattern of performance observed in children, namely higher accuracy as featural differences increase.

Demonstratiivpronoomenid ja -adverbid määratlejatena. Miks me oleme siin ilmas, selles olukorras?

Kokkuvõte. Artiklis analüüsime eesti keele demonstratiivide referentsiaalseid omadusi sellistes konstruktsioonides, kus demonstratiivid kuuluvad definiitse määratlejana nimisõnafraasi koosseisu. Otsime vastust küsimusele, mille poolest erinevad demonstratiivadverb (nt siin, seal) ning demonstratiivpronoomen (see, too), kui need esinevad määratlejana koos kohakäändes nimisõnafraasiga (vrd siin koolis ja selles koolis). Oleme püstitanud hüpoteesi, et demonstratiivadverbid seostuvad ruumitähendust väljendavate substantiividega, demonstratiivpronoomenid esinevad aga nende substantiividega, mille referent on mitteruumiline. Uurimuse andmestik pärineb 2017. aasta eesti keele ühendkorpusest, kust oleme võtnud 100 lauset iga demonstratiivi kohta igas kohakäändes, seega kokku 2400 lauset. Materjali analüüsime kvantitatiivselt (tingimuslike otsustuspuude ja juhumetsadega) ning kvalitatiivselt. Uurimuse tulemused kinnitavad, et substantiivi semantilised omadused, täpsemalt substantiivi semantiline klass ning konkreetsus, on seotud määratleja valikuga. Kohatähenduses substantiividega esineb määratlejana sagedamini demonstratiivadverb, mittekoha tähenduses substantiivide määratlejana kasutatakse aga demonstratiivpronoomenit. Mittekohta tähistavate substantiivide korral mõjutab määratleja valikut omakorda sõna konkreetsus. Seega on võimalik demonstratiivseid määratlejaid eesti keeles kasutada referenti looval viisil. Abstract. Helen Hint, Piia Taremaa, Maria Reile, Renate Pajusalu: Demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative adverbs as determiners in Estonian: why are we in “here world” in “this situation”? We investigate the variation of definite determiner constructions in Estonian: noun phrases with a demonstrative pronoun (see ‘this’, too ‘that’) or demonstrative adverb (siin ‘here’, seal ‘there’) as a determiner are contrasted. The question is what differentiates the use of a demonstrative pronoun and a demonstrative adverb if used in a determiner position in an NP. The data from Estonian National Corpus 2017 were tagged for semantic class of a noun, noun concreteness, and verb type. We collected 100 clauses for each sub-construction (six spatial cases crossed with four determiner forms), 2400 clauses in total. For statistical analysis, we used conditional random forests and inference trees. We show that nouns expressing spatial meaning prefer demonstrative adverbs as determiners, while non-spatial nouns combine with demonstrative pronouns. Spatiality-wise polysemous nouns exhibit more varied preferences. Adverbial determiners are more probably used with concrete nouns, and abstract nouns co-occur with pronominals. Overall, the frequency of demonstrative adverbs as NP attributes confirms that demonstrative adverbs are productive determiners in Estonian.