Syntactic freezing has mainly been approached from a structural point of view, recently though, more cognitive approaches in terms of processing costs have been proposed. One such processing account is the additive account. According to this approach, the freezing effect is best explained as an additive effect of two syntactic processes coming together, rather than being a phenomenon on its own. Another processing account argues that the freezing effect is the result of a prosodic garden path according to which extraction can only take place from a prosodically focused constituent. The current study provides empirical evidence for a less discussed factor contributing to the freezing effect, namely a pragmatic one. The pragmatic account requires frozen sentences to have contextually given referents. If no such referent is present, the sentence becomes less acceptable. The need for such a referent comes from the non- default word order associated with frozen sentences, which often highlights/focuses a certain constituent. Several experiments were run to test the pragmatic account. Based on the results it was concluded that pragmatic factors play a significant role in explaining the apparent freezing effects. Other factors however, seem to contribute to this effect as well since this effect cannot be fully explained in terms of pragmatic factors solely.
{"title":"Frozen by context: Pragmatic factors of syntactic freezing","authors":"Gouming Martens","doi":"10.16995/glossa.5870","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5870","url":null,"abstract":"Syntactic freezing has mainly been approached from a structural point of view, recently though, more cognitive approaches in terms of processing costs have been proposed. One such processing account is the additive account. According to this approach, the freezing effect is best explained as an additive effect of two syntactic processes coming together, rather than being a phenomenon on its own. Another processing account argues that the freezing effect is the result of a prosodic garden path according to which extraction can only take place from a prosodically focused constituent. The current study provides empirical evidence for a less discussed factor contributing to the freezing effect, namely a pragmatic one. The pragmatic account requires frozen sentences to have contextually given referents. If no such referent is present, the sentence becomes less acceptable. The need for such a referent comes from the non- default word order associated with frozen sentences, which often highlights/focuses a certain constituent. Several experiments were run to test the pragmatic account. Based on the results it was concluded that pragmatic factors play a significant role in explaining the apparent freezing effects. Other factors however, seem to contribute to this effect as well since this effect cannot be fully explained in terms of pragmatic factors solely.","PeriodicalId":46319,"journal":{"name":"Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81388272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Previous studies have shown that English speakers use a range of factors including locality, information structure, and semantic parallelism to interpret clausal ellipsis structures. Yet, the relative importance of each factor is currently underexplored. As cues to information structure and semantic parallelism are often implicit in English, we turned to Persian which marks information structure overtly via word order scrambling and uses the -rā morpheme to indicate definiteness/specificity on direct objects. To determine what strategies Persian speakers use to disambiguate clausal ellipsis, we conducted a naturalness rating study and sentence completion task on polarity stripping structures. Our results show that information structure and parallelism strongly influence correlate resolution in both tasks, but that a weaker preference for a local correlate emerges in scrambling in the sentence completion task. As these results diverge from those obtained in English studies, we speculate that the morphosyntactic properties of Persian constrain the strategies the processer uses in selecting a contrastive correlate and resolving ambiguity in stripping ellipsis.
{"title":"Resolving ambiguous polarity stripping ellipsis structures in Persian","authors":"Vahideh Rasekhi, Jesse A. Harris","doi":"10.16995/glossa.5881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5881","url":null,"abstract":"Previous studies have shown that English speakers use a range of factors including locality, information structure, and semantic parallelism to interpret clausal ellipsis structures. Yet, the relative importance of each factor is currently underexplored. As cues to information structure and semantic parallelism are often implicit in English, we turned to Persian which marks information structure overtly via word order scrambling and uses the -rā morpheme to indicate definiteness/specificity on direct objects. To determine what strategies Persian speakers use to disambiguate clausal ellipsis, we conducted a naturalness rating study and sentence completion task on polarity stripping structures. Our results show that information structure and parallelism strongly influence correlate resolution in both tasks, but that a weaker preference for a local correlate emerges in scrambling in the sentence completion task. As these results diverge from those obtained in English studies, we speculate that the morphosyntactic properties of Persian constrain the strategies the processer uses in selecting a contrastive correlate and resolving ambiguity in stripping ellipsis.","PeriodicalId":46319,"journal":{"name":"Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75804945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The status of Old Icelandic with respect to (argument) configurationality was subject to debate in the early 1990s (e.g. Faarlund 1990; Rögnvaldsson 1995) and remains unresolved. Since this work, further research on a wide range of languages has enhanced our understanding of configurationality, in particular within Lexical Functional Grammar (e.g. Austin & Bresnan 1996; Nordlinger 1998) and syntactically annotated Old Icelandic data are now available (Wallenberg et al. 2011). It is thus fitting to revisit the matter. In this paper, I show that allowing for argument configurationality as a gradient property, and also taking into account discourse configurationality (Kiss 1995) as a further gradient property, can neatly account for word order patterns in this early stage of Icelandic. Specifically, I show that corpus data supports part of the original claim in Faarlund (1990), that Old Icelandic lacks a VP-constituent, thus being somewhat less argument-configurational than the modern language. Furthermore, the observed word order patterns indicate a designated topic position in the postfinite domain, thus reflecting some degree of discourse configurationality at this early stage of the language.
{"title":"Revisiting the configurationality issue in Old Icelandic","authors":"Hannah Booth","doi":"10.16995/glossa.5804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5804","url":null,"abstract":"The status of Old Icelandic with respect to (argument) configurationality was subject to debate in the early 1990s (e.g. Faarlund 1990; Rögnvaldsson 1995) and remains unresolved. Since this work, further research on a wide range of languages has enhanced our understanding of configurationality, in particular within Lexical Functional Grammar (e.g. Austin & Bresnan 1996; Nordlinger 1998) and syntactically annotated Old Icelandic data are now available (Wallenberg et al. 2011). It is thus fitting to revisit the matter. In this paper, I show that allowing for argument configurationality as a gradient property, and also taking into account discourse configurationality (Kiss 1995) as a further gradient property, can neatly account for word order patterns in this early stage of Icelandic. Specifically, I show that corpus data supports part of the original claim in Faarlund (1990), that Old Icelandic lacks a VP-constituent, thus being somewhat less argument-configurational than the modern language. Furthermore, the observed word order patterns indicate a designated topic position in the postfinite domain, thus reflecting some degree of discourse configurationality at this early stage of the language.","PeriodicalId":46319,"journal":{"name":"Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77545362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Based on experimental evidence, this paper shows that focus projection/percolation – the phenomenon by way of which prosodic prominence on a sub-constituent signals focus on the whole constituent – has a consistent prosodic realization in Georgian. The novelty of these findings lies in two properties of Georgian that have not been explored from the perspective of focus projection: it is a language with a dedicated focus position (linearly immediately preverbal) and one that does not rely on pitch accents in the expression of phrasal prosody (Skopeteas & Féry 2010; 2016). According to focus projection accounts (Selkirk 1984; Cinque 1993; Ladd 1996; Zubizarreta 1998, a. o.), utterances with narrow focus on the direct object are realized in the same way as broad focus utterances, since in all three cases prosodic prominence is realized on the direct object. In contrast, in utterances with narrow focus on the subject, the subject is the most prosodically prominent element, which means that the whole utterance has a different prosodic realization from that of broad focus contexts. This paper shows that the distribution of prosodic prominence in object- and subject-focus contexts in Georgian fits with this generalization. Specifically, the realization of utterances with narrowly focused objects does not differ from broad focus contexts in their F0 patterns and prominence of the stressed syllable, while narrowly focused subjects differ from subjects in broad focus utterances in both of these parameters.
基于实验证据，本文表明焦点投射/渗透(focus projection/percolation)在格鲁吉亚语中具有一致性的韵律实现。这些发现的新颖之处在于格鲁吉亚语的两个特性，这两个特性没有从焦点投射的角度进行探索:它是一种具有专门焦点位置的语言(线性直接言语前)，并且在表达短语韵律时不依赖音高重音(Skopeteas & fsamry 2010;2016)。根据焦点投射帐目(Selkirk 1984;五1993;Ladd 1996;Zubizarreta 1998, a. o.)，窄焦点直接宾语的话语与宽焦点话语的实现方式相同，因为在所有三种情况下，韵律突出都是在直接宾语上实现的。相比之下，在窄焦点语篇中，主词是韵律上最突出的元素，这意味着整个话语的韵律实现与宽焦点语篇不同。本文表明，格鲁吉亚语在客体和主体关注语境中的韵律突出分布符合这一概括。具体而言，窄聚焦对象的话语实现在F0模式和重音音节的突出程度上与宽聚焦上下文没有区别，而窄聚焦主体在这两个参数上与宽聚焦话语中的主体不同。
{"title":"The prosody of focus projection: word stress and F0 patterns in Georgian","authors":"Lena Borise","doi":"10.16995/glossa.5733","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5733","url":null,"abstract":"Based on experimental evidence, this paper shows that focus projection/percolation – the phenomenon by way of which prosodic prominence on a sub-constituent signals focus on the whole constituent – has a consistent prosodic realization in Georgian. The novelty of these findings lies in two properties of Georgian that have not been explored from the perspective of focus projection: it is a language with a dedicated focus position (linearly immediately preverbal) and one that does not rely on pitch accents in the expression of phrasal prosody (Skopeteas & Féry 2010; 2016). According to focus projection accounts (Selkirk 1984; Cinque 1993; Ladd 1996; Zubizarreta 1998, a. o.), utterances with narrow focus on the direct object are realized in the same way as broad focus utterances, since in all three cases prosodic prominence is realized on the direct object. In contrast, in utterances with narrow focus on the subject, the subject is the most prosodically prominent element, which means that the whole utterance has a different prosodic realization from that of broad focus contexts. This paper shows that the distribution of prosodic prominence in object- and subject-focus contexts in Georgian fits with this generalization. Specifically, the realization of utterances with narrowly focused objects does not differ from broad focus contexts in their F0 patterns and prominence of the stressed syllable, while narrowly focused subjects differ from subjects in broad focus utterances in both of these parameters.","PeriodicalId":46319,"journal":{"name":"Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84281101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines plural suppletion in the Barguzin dialect of Buryat (Mongolic, Russia), which occurs only in accusative and genitive noun phrases. The restricted distribution of this process, specifically its absence in oblique cases, is significant for recent research on the typology of suppletion and the feature structure of case. For much work in this vein, this plural suppletion would qualify as having an ‘ABA’ pattern, which is predicted to be unattested. I argue that the suppletive plural morpheme in question is a portmanteau whose morphological requirements cause it to conflict, for independent reasons, with the realization of oblique noun phrases. Consequently, I argue that its distribution does not falsify the theories that normally ban ABA patterns, but rather instantiates a principled exception to them which sharpens our understanding of them.
{"title":"Case-sensitive plural suppletion in Barguzin Buryat: On case containment, suppletion typology, and competition in morphology","authors":"Colin Davis, Colin Davis","doi":"10.16995/glossa.5885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5885","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines plural suppletion in the Barguzin dialect of Buryat (Mongolic, Russia), which occurs only in accusative and genitive noun phrases. The restricted distribution of this process, specifically its absence in oblique cases, is significant for recent research on the typology of suppletion and the feature structure of case. For much work in this vein, this plural suppletion would qualify as having an ‘ABA’ pattern, which is predicted to be unattested. I argue that the suppletive plural morpheme in question is a portmanteau whose morphological requirements cause it to conflict, for independent reasons, with the realization of oblique noun phrases. Consequently, I argue that its distribution does not falsify the theories that normally ban ABA patterns, but rather instantiates a principled exception to them which sharpens our understanding of them.","PeriodicalId":46319,"journal":{"name":"Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88435182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper proposes that subjunctive in the complement of belief sen- tences in Italian expresses a relation between the attitude holder’s beliefs and the common ground. In contrast to most other Romance languages, ‘believe’ commonly and prescriptively takes subjunctive in Italian, though indicative is found as well, and as has been observed in the literature, the choice of indicative or subjunctive has semantic effects. We show that the indicative with ‘believe’ is used when the belief statement describes the personal mental state of the holder of the attitude, an interpretation that follows from the traditional Hintikkean semantics. In contrast, we show that subjunctive with ‘believe’ is used to mark a relation between the content of belief and the discourse context. To analyze these facts, we propose that the modal quantification present in attitude reports comes not from the attitude verb, but instead from the embedded verbal mood. What differentiates Italian from related languages where ‘believe’ only takes indicative, is that Italian allows the subjunctive to access the com- mon ground as a modal base, utilizing the verb’s doxastic background as an ordering source. The fact that subjunctive relates the common ground to the subject’s beliefs explains the discourse oriented meaning of this combination. We extend our analysis to several other predicates that show mood variation in Italian.
{"title":"Mood variation with belief predicates: Modal comparison in semantics and the common ground","authors":"A. Mari, P. Portner","doi":"10.16995/glossa.5726","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5726","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes that subjunctive in the complement of belief sen- tences in Italian expresses a relation between the attitude holder’s beliefs and the common ground. In contrast to most other Romance languages, ‘believe’ commonly and prescriptively takes subjunctive in Italian, though indicative is found as well, and as has been observed in the literature, the choice of indicative or subjunctive has semantic effects. We show that the indicative with ‘believe’ is used when the belief statement describes the personal mental state of the holder of the attitude, an interpretation that follows from the traditional Hintikkean semantics. In contrast, we show that subjunctive with ‘believe’ is used to mark a relation between the content of belief and the discourse context. To analyze these facts, we propose that the modal quantification present in attitude reports comes not from the attitude verb, but instead from the embedded verbal mood. What differentiates Italian from related languages where ‘believe’ only takes indicative, is that Italian allows the subjunctive to access the com- mon ground as a modal base, utilizing the verb’s doxastic background as an ordering source. The fact that subjunctive relates the common ground to the subject’s beliefs explains the discourse oriented meaning of this combination. We extend our analysis to several other predicates that show mood variation in Italian.","PeriodicalId":46319,"journal":{"name":"Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics","volume":"227 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80178505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates the change in differential object marking (DOM) currently exhibited in Modern Hebrew. To date, the consensus in the theoretical literature on Hebrew has been that the object marker 'et' is only licensed in the context of definite DPs. We observe, however, that in Modern Hebrew partitive indefinite DPs may also be preceded by 'et'. Here, we experimentally investigate this change in the distribution of 'et'. Using a judgment task, we asked 41 native Hebrew-speaking adults to rate sentences with 'et'-marked indefinite object DPs on a 5-point acceptability scale. Our results reveal that partitive items received a considerably high acceptance score, with an overall average of 3.6/5. In addition, we found a main effect for object-position and quantifier-type. In particular, acceptability of 'et'-marked partitives increased significantly for topicalized DPs and for DPs that contained proportional quantifiers (as opposed to cardinals). These data support the analysis of 'et' as a DOM marker. We propose that Modern Hebrew is currently undergoing a process of change, whereby the distribution of its object marker is shifting in the direction of the Turkish DOM pattern, along the Definiteness Scale proposed by Aissen (2003). Further, the Hebrew facts provide novel evidence for the relevance of this scale not only in a synchronic, but also in a diachronic investigation of DOM. Moreover, they point to a special status of partitivity among specific DPs, suggesting that it should be distinguished as a separate category on the Definiteness Scale.
{"title":"Differential object marking in Modern Hebrew: from definiteness to partitivity","authors":"Aviya Hacohen, O. Kagan, Dana Plaut","doi":"10.16995/glossa.5729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5729","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the change in differential object marking (DOM) currently exhibited in Modern Hebrew. To date, the consensus in the theoretical literature on Hebrew has been that the object marker 'et' is only licensed in the context of definite DPs. We observe, however, that in Modern Hebrew partitive indefinite DPs may also be preceded by 'et'. Here, we experimentally investigate this change in the distribution of 'et'. Using a judgment task, we asked 41 native Hebrew-speaking adults to rate sentences with 'et'-marked indefinite object DPs on a 5-point acceptability scale. \u0000Our results reveal that partitive items received a considerably high acceptance score, with an overall average of 3.6/5. In addition, we found a main effect for object-position and quantifier-type. In particular, acceptability of 'et'-marked partitives increased significantly for topicalized DPs and for DPs that contained proportional quantifiers (as opposed to cardinals). \u0000These data support the analysis of 'et' as a DOM marker. We propose that Modern Hebrew is currently undergoing a process of change, whereby the distribution of its object marker is shifting in the direction of the Turkish DOM pattern, along the Definiteness Scale proposed by Aissen (2003). Further, the Hebrew facts provide novel evidence for the relevance of this scale not only in a synchronic, but also in a diachronic investigation of DOM. Moreover, they point to a special status of partitivity among specific DPs, suggesting that it should be distinguished as a separate category on the Definiteness Scale.","PeriodicalId":46319,"journal":{"name":"Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79575860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Baule, a language of the Kwa family, has a rich set of quantifiers, which occur post-nominally within the DP. Moreover, Baule DPs can also combine more than one quantifier, and the order of occurrence of the quantifiers yields different interpretations of the quantified DPs. We focus on three quantifiers, ngba ‘all’, klwaa ‘every’ and jwe ‘some’. Given the distribution and the semantic contribution these quantifiers, we propose a structure of the Baule DP in which quantifiers merge as the head of different functional projections. We show that Baule DPs are strictly head-initial, and argue that the word orders observed within the DP is the result of systematic leftward movement of different portions of the nominal structure.
{"title":"On quantified DPs in Baule","authors":"Yan Konan, G. Puskás","doi":"10.16995/glossa.5707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5707","url":null,"abstract":"Baule, a language of the Kwa family, has a rich set of quantifiers, which occur post-nominally within the DP. Moreover, Baule DPs can also combine more than one quantifier, and the order of occurrence of the quantifiers yields different interpretations of the quantified DPs. We focus on three quantifiers, ngba ‘all’, klwaa ‘every’ and jwe ‘some’. Given the distribution and the semantic contribution these quantifiers, we propose a structure of the Baule DP in which quantifiers merge as the head of different functional projections. We show that Baule DPs are strictly head-initial, and argue that the word orders observed within the DP is the result of systematic leftward movement of different portions of the nominal structure.","PeriodicalId":46319,"journal":{"name":"Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85104219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates coordination in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). We offer an account for a typologically unusual coordination pattern found in this language. We show that the conjuncts of a coordinated structure in NGT may violate a constraint governing coordinated structures in spoken languages, which we refer to as the ‘Parallel Structure Constraint’. The violation consists in asymmetric fronting in the second conjunct of a coordinated structure. We argue that a violation of the Parallel Structure Constraint is acceptable in NGT in order to express a contrast across the conjuncts. Hence asymmetric reordering in the second conjunct is a strategy that allows signers to obtain the desired strength of marking when in situ marking is insufficient.
{"title":"Asymmetry and Contrast: Coordination in Sign Language of the Netherlands","authors":"Katharina Hartmann, R. Pfau, Iris Legeland","doi":"10.16995/glossa.5872","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5872","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates coordination in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). We offer an account for a typologically unusual coordination pattern found in this language. We show that the conjuncts of a coordinated structure in NGT may violate a constraint governing coordinated structures in spoken languages, which we refer to as the ‘Parallel Structure Constraint’. The violation consists in asymmetric fronting in the second conjunct of a coordinated structure. We argue that a violation of the Parallel Structure Constraint is acceptable in NGT in order to express a contrast across the conjuncts. Hence asymmetric reordering in the second conjunct is a strategy that allows signers to obtain the desired strength of marking when in situ marking is insufficient.","PeriodicalId":46319,"journal":{"name":"Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86558933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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.
儿童在依赖关系方面的困难涉及到一个物体移动到子句的左边缘(对象关系子句/ rc和wh-问句)，这已经被解释为当移动的物体和干预的主体共享一个词汇N特征时产生的干预效应(Friedmann, Belletti & Rizzi 2009)。这样的解释提出了各种问题:(1)当对象和干预者共享其他相关特征时，在没有词汇N特征的情况下，这些效应是否成立?(2)具有语义作用的phil -features是否调节了这种效应?(3)特征重叠的程度是否决定了性能的梯度?我们通过对法语儿童(4、8至6、3)的三个句子-图片匹配研究来解决这些问题，通过评估(1)以指示代词celui/cell为首的主语和宾语rc的理解以及数量的匹配或不匹配;(2)以词汇N开头的对象匹配和不匹配;(3)反对who- and - which疑问句。我们的研究结果表明，即使在没有词汇N特征的情况下，数量上的不匹配，而不是动画性上的不匹配，也能增强对对象rc的理解，并证实了之前的研究结果，即对象who问题比对象which问题更容易理解。比较各研究，在性能准确性方面出现以下等级:分离>交叉>包含。对这些发现的整体解释是，细粒度的phi特征决定了运动的局域性，这些特征的重叠程度可以捕捉到在儿童中观察到的表现模式，即随着特征差异的增加，准确性更高。
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