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English Dative Alternation and Evidence for a Thematic Strategy in Adult SLA
UCLA Issues in Applied Linguistics Title English Dative Alternation and Evidence for a Thematic Strategy in Adult SLA Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/64d102q5 Journal Issues in Applied Linguistics, 5(1) ISSN 1050-4273 Author Davies, William D Publication Date 1994-06-30 DOI 10.5070/L451005171 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California English Dative Alternation and Evidence for a Thematic Strategy in Adult SLA William D. Davies University of Iowa INTRODUCTION A body of recent work in second language acquisition is concerned with applying constructs from Chomsky's conception of Universal Grammar in both constructing an overall theory of SLA and explaining various phenomena in L2 learners (e.g., Flynn, 1984, 1987; Hilles, 1986; Phinney, 1987; White, 1985a, 1985b; papers in Flynn and O'Neil, 1988). A key linguistic construct that has received relatively little attention in SLA research is thematic roles—notions such as AGENT, THEME, GOAL, LOCATION, SOURCE, and others that are believed to contribute to semantic encoding and decoding. Although thematic roles (alternatively, thematic relations, semantic roles, case roles, 9-roles) have long been part of modem linguistic theory (cf. Gruber, 1965; Fillmore, 1968; Jackendoff, 1972), they have enjoyed increased popularity in the recent linguistic literature owing in part to their central role in Chomsky's (1981) government and binding (GB) theory, as embodied in the G-Criterion.^ Various formulations of the 9-Criterion have been proposed, but the simple formulation in (1) will suffice here. (1) e-Criterion (Chomsky 1981, p. 36): Each argument bears one and only one H-role, and each H-role is assigned to one and only one argument. -
PUMICE: a Multi-Modal Agent That Learns Concepts and Conditionals
PUMICE: A Multi-Modal Agent that Learns Concepts and Conditionals from Natural Language and Demonstrations Toby Jia-Jun Li1, Marissa Radensky2, Justin Jia1, Kirielle Singarajah1, Tom M. Mitchell1, Brad A. Myers1 1Carnegie Mellon University, 2Amherst College {tobyli, tom.mitchell, bam}@cs.cmu.edu, {justinj1, ksingara}@andrew.cmu.edu, [email protected] Figure 1. Example structure of how PUMICE learns the concepts and procedures in the command “If it’s hot, order a cup of Iced Cappuccino.” The numbers indicate the order of utterances. The screenshot on the right shows the conversational interface of PUMICE. In this interactive parsing process, the agent learns how to query the current temperature, how to order any kind of drink from Starbucks, and the generalized concept of “hot” as “a temperature (of something) is greater than another temperature”. ABSTRACT CCS Concepts Natural language programming is a promising approach to •Human-centered computing ! Natural language inter enable end users to instruct new tasks for intelligent agents. faces; However, our formative study found that end users would of ten use unclear, ambiguous or vague concepts when naturally Author Keywords instructing tasks in natural language, especially when spec Programming by Demonstration; Natural Language Pro ifying conditionals. Existing systems have limited support gramming; End User Development; Multi-modal Interaction. for letting the user teach agents new concepts or explaining unclear concepts. In this paper, we describe a new multi- INTRODUCTION modal domain-independent approach that combines natural The goal of end user development (EUD) is to empower language programming and programming-by-demonstration users with little or no programming expertise to program [43]. -
Answering Particles: Findings and Perspectives
ANSWERING PARTICLES: FINDINGS AND PERSPECTIVES Emilio Servidio ([email protected]) 1. ANSWERING SYSTEMS 1.1. Historical introduction It is not uncommon for descriptive or prescriptive grammars to observe that a given language follows certain regularities when answering a polar question. Linguistics, on the other hand, has seldom paid much attention to the topic until recent years. The forerunner, in this respect, is Pope (1973), who sketched a typology of polar answering systems that followed in the steps of recent typological efforts on related topics (Ultan 1969, Moravcsik 1971 on polar questions). In the last decade, on the other hand, contributions have appeared from two different strands of theoretical research, namely, the syntactic approach to ellipsis as deletion (Kramer & Rawlins 2010; Holmberg 2013, 2016) and the study of conversation dynamics (Farkas & Bruce 2010; Krifka 2013, 2015; Roelofsen & Farkas 2015). This contribution aims at offering a critical overview of the state of the art on the topic1. In the remainder of this section, a typological sketch of answering systems will be drawn, before moving on to the extant analyses in section 2. In section 3, recent experimental work will be discussed. Section 4 summarizes and concludes. 1.2. Basic typology This survey will mainly deal with polar answers, defined as responding moves that address and fully satisfy the discourse requirements of a polar question. A different but closely related topic is the one of replies, i.e., moves that respond to a statement. Together, these moves go under the name of responses2. One first piece of terminology is the distinction between short and long responses. -
56. Pragmatic Failure and Referential Ambiguity When Attorneys Ask Child Witnesses “Do You Know/Remember” Questions
University of Southern California Law From the SelectedWorks of Thomas D. Lyon December 19, 2016 56. Pragmatic Failure and Referential Ambiguity when Attorneys Ask Child Witnesses “Do You Know/Remember” Questions. Angela D. Evans, Brock University Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Arizona State University Thomas D. Lyon Available at: https://works.bepress.com/thomaslyon/139/ Psychology, Public Policy, and Law © 2017 American Psychological Association 2017, Vol. 23, No. 2, 191–199 1076-8971/17/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/law0000116 Pragmatic Failure and Referential Ambiguity When Attorneys Ask Child Witnesses “Do You Know/Remember” Questions Angela D. Evans Stacia N. Stolzenberg Brock University Arizona State University, Tempe Thomas D. Lyon University of Southern California “Do you know” and “Do you remember” (DYK/R) questions explicitly ask whether one knows or remembers some information while implicitly asking for that information. This study examined how 4- to 9-year-old (N ϭ 104) children testifying in child sexual abuse cases responded to DYK/R wh- (who, what, where, why, how, and which) and yes/no questions. When asked DYK/R questions containing an implicit wh- question requesting information, children often provided unelaborated “yes” responses. Attorneys’ follow-up questions suggested that children usually misunderstood the pragmatics of the questions. When DYK/R questions contained an implicit yes/no question, unelaborated “yes” or “no” responses could be responding to the explicit or the implicit questions resulting in referentially ambig- uous responses. Children often provided referentially ambiguous responses and attorneys usually failed to disambiguate children’s answers. Although pragmatic failure following DYK/R wh- questions de- creased with age, the likelihood of referential ambiguity following DYK/R yes/no questions did not. -
Tutorial in Greek Syntax
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Hochschulschriftenserver - Universität Frankfurt am Main On the morphosyntax of (anti-)causative verbs Artemis Alexiadou1 Universität Stuttgart [email protected] 1. Setting the stage As is well known, in many languages change of state verbs participate in the so called (anti-) causative alternation; this is illustrated in (1) with an English example. Such verbs permit both transitive/causative and intransitive/anticausative construals: (1) a. John broke the window Causative b. The window broke Anticausative2 The paradigm in (1) has been the subject of much discussion in linguistic theory, as its existence raises a number of intriguing questions. In this paper, I address three of them. The first question is whether we are actually dealing with a causative formation or a detransitivization process. Both views have been proposed in the literature: proponents of the causative formation approach claim that the intransitive form is basic (e.g. Dowty 1979; Pesetsky 1995 and others), while proponents of the detransitivization process claim that it is the transitive that is basic, and intransitive one is derived (e.g. Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995, Chierchia 1989, Reinhart 2000 and others). Recently, a third proposal has been advanced, namely that the two alternates do not stand in a derivational relationship (Alexiadou & al. 2006, Doron 2003). The second question concerns the morphological form of the alternation, namely whether morphological marking plays a role in determining the directionality of the derivation. Derivational approaches typically assume an iconic reasoning; the derived form is expected to be morphologically marked. -
Tigre and the Case of Internal Reduplication*
San Diego Linguistic Papers 1 (2003) 109-128 TRIPLE TAKE: TIGRE AND THE CASE OF * INTERNAL REDUPLICATION Sharon Rose University of California, San Diego _______________________________________________________________________ Ethiopian Semitic languages all have some form of internal reduplication. The characteristics of Tigre reduplication are described here, and are shown to diverge from the other languages in two main respects: i) the meaning and ii) the ability to incur multiple reduplication of the reduplicative syllable. The formation of internal reduplication is accomplished via infixation plus addditional templatic shape requirements which override many properties of the regular verb stem. Further constraints on realization of the full reduplicative syllable outweigh restrictions on multiple repetition of consonants, particularly gutturals. _______________________________________________________________________ 1 Introduction Ethiopian Semitic languages have a form of internal reduplication, often termed the ‘frequentative’, which is formed by means of an infixed ‘reduplicative syllable’ consisting of reduplication of the penultimate root consonant and a vowel, usually [a]: ex. Tigrinya s«bab«r« ‘break in pieces’ corresponding to the verb s«b«r« ‘break’.1 Leslau (1939) describes the semantic value of the frequentative as reiterative, intensive, augmentative or attenuative, to which one could add distributive and diminutive. This paper focuses on several aspects of internal reduplication in Tigre, the northernmost Ethio-Semitic language. I present new data demonstrating that not only does Tigre allow internal reduplication with a wide variety of verbs, but it differs notably from other Ethiopian Semitic languages in two important respects: (1) a. the meaning of the internal reduplication is normally ‘diminutive’ or represents elapsed time between action; in the other languages it is usually intensive. -
Definiteness and Determinacy
Linguistics and Philosophy manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Definiteness and Determinacy Elizabeth Coppock · David Beaver the date of receipt and acceptance should be inserted later Abstract This paper distinguishes between definiteness and determinacy. Defi- niteness is seen as a morphological category which, in English, marks a (weak) uniqueness presupposition, while determinacy consists in denoting an individual. Definite descriptions are argued to be fundamentally predicative, presupposing uniqueness but not existence, and to acquire existential import through general type-shifting operations that apply not only to definites, but also indefinites and possessives. Through these shifts, argumental definite descriptions may become either determinate (and thus denote an individual) or indeterminate (functioning as an existential quantifier). The latter option is observed in examples like `Anna didn't give the only invited talk at the conference', which, on its indeterminate reading, implies that there is nothing in the extension of `only invited talk at the conference'. The paper also offers a resolution of the issue of whether posses- sives are inherently indefinite or definite, suggesting that, like indefinites, they do not mark definiteness lexically, but like definites, they typically yield determinate readings due to a general preference for the shifting operation that produces them. Keywords definiteness · descriptions · possessives · predicates · type-shifting We thank Dag Haug, Reinhard Muskens, Luca Crniˇc,Cleo Condoravdi, Lucas -
Syntactic Aspects of Nominalization in Five Tibeto-Burman Languages of the Himalayan Area1
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area Volume 31.2 — October 2008 SYNTACTIC ASPECTS OF NOMINALIZATION IN FIVE TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGES OF THE HIMALAYAN AREA1 Carol Genetti University of California, Santa Barbara Research Centre for Linguistic Typology A.R. Coupe Ellen Bartee Kristine Hildebrandt You-Jing Lin La Trobe University SIL SIUE UC Santa Barbara The goal of this paper is to describe some of the syntactic structures that are created through nominalization processes in Himalayan Tibeto-Burman languages and the relationships between those structures. These include both structures involving the nominalization of clauses (e.g. complement clauses, relative clauses) and structures involving the nominalization of verbs and predicates (e.g. the derivation of nouns and adjectives). We will argue that, synchronically, clausal nominalization, structurally represented as [clause]NP, is the basic structure underlying many of the nominalizing constructions in these languages, even though individual constructions embed and alter this structure in interesting ways. In addition to clausal nominalization, we will illustrate the presence of derivational nominalization, represented as [V-NOM]N and [V-NOM]ADJ, although some nominal derivations target the predicate, not the verb root as their domain. We will also demonstrate that derivational nominalization can be seen as having developed from clausal nominalization, at least for some forms in some languages, and that the opposite direction of development, from derivational to clausal structures, is also attested. We will conclude with some syntactic observations pertinent to recent claims made on the historical relationship between nominalization and relativization, demonstrating that there are various ways that these structures can be related. -
Olga Tribulato Ancient Greek Verb-Initial Compounds
Olga Tribulato Ancient Greek Verb-Initial Compounds Olga Tribulato - 9783110415827 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/03/2016 10:10:53AM via De Gruyter / TCS Olga Tribulato - 9783110415827 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/03/2016 10:10:53AM via De Gruyter / TCS Olga Tribulato Ancient Greek Verb-Initial Compounds Their Diachronic Development Within the Greek Compound System Olga Tribulato - 9783110415827 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/03/2016 10:10:53AM via De Gruyter / TCS ISBN 978-3-11-041576-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-041582-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-041586-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Umschlagabbildung: Paul Klee: Einst dem Grau der Nacht enttaucht …, 1918, 17. Aquarell, Feder und Bleistit auf Papier auf Karton. 22,6 x 15,8 cm. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern. Typesetting: Dr. Rainer Ostermann, München Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Olga Tribulato - 9783110415827 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/03/2016 10:10:53AM via De Gruyter / TCS This book is for Arturo, who has waited so long. Olga Tribulato - 9783110415827 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/03/2016 10:10:53AM via De Gruyter / TCS Olga Tribulato - 9783110415827 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/03/2016 10:10:53AM via De Gruyter / TCS Preface and Acknowledgements Preface and Acknowledgements I have always been ὀψιανθής, a ‘late-bloomer’, and this book is a testament to it. -
Antisymmetry Kayne, Richard (1995)
CAS LX 523 Syntax II (1) A Spring 2001 March 13, 2001 qp Paul Hagstrom Week 7: Antisymmetry BE 33 Kayne, Richard (1995). The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. CDFG 1111 Koopman, Hilda (2000). The spec-head configuration. In Koopman, H., The syntax of cdef specifiers and heads. London: Routledge. (2) A node α ASYMMETRICALLY C-COMMANDS β if α c-commands β and β does not The basic proposals: c-command α. X-bar structures (universally) have a strict order: Spec-head-complement. There is no distinction between adjuncts and specifiers. • B asymmetrically c-commands F and G. There can be only one specifier. • E asymmetrically c-commands C and D. • No other non-terminal nodes asymmetrically c-command any others. But wait!—What about SOV languages? What about multiple adjunction? Answer: We’ve been analyzing these things wrong. (3) d(X) is the image of a non-terminal node X. Now, we have lots of work to do, because lots of previous analyses relied on d(X) is the set of terminal nodes dominated by node X. the availability of “head-final” structures, or multiple adjunction. • d(C) is {c}. Why make our lives so difficult? Wasn’t our old system good enough? • d(B) is {c, d}. Actually, no. • d(F) is {e}. A number of things had to be stipulated in X-bar theory (which we will review); • d(E) is {e, f}. they can all be made to follow from one general principle. • d(A) is {c, d, e, f}. The availability of a head-parameter actually fails to predict the kinds of languages that actually exist. -
Antisymmetry and the Lefthand in Morphology*
CatWPL 7 071-087 13/6/00 12:26 Página 71 CatWPL 7, 1999 71-87 Antisymmetry And The Lefthand In Morphology* Frank Drijkoningen Utrecht Institute of Linguistics-OTS. Department of Foreign Languages Kromme Nieuwegracht 29. 3512 HD Utrecht. The Netherlands [email protected] Received: December 13th 1998 Accepted: March 17th 1999 Abstract As Kayne (1994) has shown, the theory of antisymmetry of syntax also provides an explanation of a structural property of morphological complexes, the Righthand Head Rule. In this paper we show that an antisymmetry approach to the Righthand Head Rule eventually is to be preferred on empirical grounds, because it describes and explains the properties of a set of hitherto puzz- ling morphological processes —known as discontinuous affixation, circumfixation or parasyn- thesis. In considering these and a number of more standard morphological structures, we argue that one difference bearing on the proper balance between morphology and syntax should be re-ins- talled (re- with respect to Kayne), a difference between the antisymmetry of the syntax of mor- phology and the antisymmetry of the syntax of syntax proper. Key words: antisymmetry, Righthand Head Rule, circumfixation, parasynthesis, prefixation, category-changing prefixation, discontinuities in morphology. Resum. L’antisimetria i el costat esquerre en morfologia Com Kayne (1994) mostra, la teoria de l’antisimetria en la sintaxi també ens dóna una explicació d’una propietat estructural de complexos morfològics, la Regla del Nucli a la Dreta. En aquest article mostrem que un tractament antisimètric de la Regla del Nucli a la Dreta es prefereix even- tualment en dominis empírics, perquè descriu i explica les propietats d’una sèrie de processos fins ara morfològics —coneguts com afixació discontínua, circumfixació o parasíntesi. -
Toward a Definitive Grammar of Bengali - a Practical Study and Critique of Research on Selected Grammatical Structures
TOWARD A DEFINITIVE GRAMMAR OF BENGALI - A PRACTICAL STUDY AND CRITIQUE OF RESEARCH ON SELECTED GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURES HANNE-RUTH THOMPSON Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD SOUTH ASIA DEPARTMENT SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES LONDON O c t o b e r ZOO Laf ProQuest Number: 10672939 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10672939 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT This thesis is a contribution to a deeper understanding of selected Bengali grammatical structures as far as their syntactic and semantic properties are concerned. It questions traditional interpretations and takes a practical approach in the detailed investigation of actual language use. My methodology is based on the belief that clarity and inquisitiveness should take precedence over alliance to particular grammar theories and that there is still much to discover about the way the Bengali language works. Chapter 1 This chapter on non-finite verb forms discusses the occurrences and functions of Bengali non-finite verb forms and concentrates particularly on the overlap of infinitives and verbal nouns, the distinguishing features between infinitives and present participles, the semantic properties of verbal adjectives and the syntactic restrictions of perfective participles.