DOCSLIB.ORG

GRS LX 700 Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory Parameters

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
GRS LX 700 Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory Parameters GRS LX 700 Parameters Language Acquisition and • Languages differ in the settings of parameters (as Linguistic Theory well as in the pronunciations of the words, etc.). • To learn a second language is to learn the parameter settings for that language. • Where do you keep the parameters from the Week 10. second, third, etc. language? You don’t have a Parameters, transfer, and functional single parameter set two different ways, do you? categories in L2A • “Parameter resetting” doesn’t mean monkeying with your L1 parameter settings, it means setting your L2 parameter to its appropriate setting. Four views on the role of L1 Some parameters that have been parameters looked at in L2A • UG is still around to constrain L2/IL, parameter • Pro drop (null subject) parameter (whether empty settings of L1 are adopted at first, then parameters subjects are allowed; Spanish yes, English no) are reset to match L2. • Head parameter (where the head is in X-bar • UG does not constrain L2/IL but L1 does, L2 can structure with respect to its complement; Japanese adopt properties of L1 but can’t reset the head-final, English head-initial) parameters (except perhaps in the face of brutally • ECP/that-trace effect (*Who did you say that t left? direct evidence, e.g., headedness). English: yes, Dutch: no). • IL cannot be described in terms of parameter • Subjacency/bounding nodes (English: DP and IP, settings—it is not UG-constrained. Italian/French: DP and CP). • UG works the same in L1A and L2A. L1 shouldn’t have any effect. Null subject parameter Null subject parameter • The best parameters are those which have several • Spanish (+NS) L1 learning English (–NS) different effects. There are a number of things – An error constituting transfer of +NS would be omitting which seem to “cluster” with the availability of a subject in an English sentence, which requires a null subjects (providing clues as to what the actual subject. parameter is). • English (–NS) L1 learning Spanish (+NS) – null subjects are allowed – What would count as an error constituting transfer of – no pleonastic (dummy) pronouns (it’s raining) +NS? Trickier—have to look for context where Spanish would definitely drop the subject, and see if English – rich verbal agreement speakers incorrectly retain the subject. Even then, does – verb can precede subject in declaratives (came John) that mean the Spanish learner doesn’t have the – Embedded subject can be questioned with overt that parameter down, or just hasn’t worked out the pragmatics of where a subject should be dropped? Null subject parameter Null subject parameter White (1985), gramm. judg. task • Percent correct at • White (1985) identifying – 32 Spanish (+NS) Sentence type Spanish French ungrammatical (U) as – 2 Italian (+NS) Subjectless U 61 89 ungrammatical and grammatical (G) as – 37 French (–NS) Subjectful G 90 97 grammatical. – learning English (–NS) • Spanish is +NS, • Testing not only for null subjects but also for VS U 91 96 French is –NS, properties that “cluster” with null subjects (all of SV G 81 85 English –NS which—then—are different between Spanish and • Probable English, but the same between French and that-trace U 23 35 methodological English). problems with VS, other mmts G 79 79 SV, and that-trace sentences. Null subject parameter Null subject parameter White (1985), question formation • So, these +NS Spanish speakers accepted Spanish (+NS) that- other subjectless English sentences around 40% of the correct trace errs learning English (–NS) time (vs. 10% for French speakers), they produced Spanish (n=22) 17 71 12 were more that-trace errors 70% of the time (vs. 40% for likely to make French speakers). French (n=30) 20 42 38 that-trace errors. • There is some effect at least of the ±NS setting of the L1. • Is it transfer of the parameter value? Well, if so, Elizabeth believes that her sister will be late. Who does Elizabeth believe (*that) t will be late? there should be “clustering”—is there? Null subject parameter Null subject parameter Phinney (1987) Phinney (1987) • English->Spanish and Spanish->English ESL1 ESL2 SSL1 SSL2 • Perhaps questionable methodology (written, referential 13 6 83 65 exam in one case, class composition pleonastic 56 76 100 100 assignment in the other, Spanish speakers had English in school—perhaps not entirely • Omission of pleonastic pronoun subjects. learned as an adult, English speakers only – can’t be omitted in English, must be omitted in Spanish. had exposure in college), but… • English->Spanish (SSL) always omitted pleonastic. • Spanish->English (ESL) sometimes omitted pleonastic. – Spanish: Carrying over [+NS] from L1. – English: Not carrying over [–NS] from L1. Null subject parameter Null subject parameter Phinney (1987) Phinney (1987) ESL1 ESL2 SSL1 SSL2 ESL1 ESL2 SSL1 SSL2 referential 13 6 83 65 referential 13 6 83 65 pleonastic 56 76 100 100 pleonastic 56 76 100 100 • Why would [+NS] be transferred and not [–NS]? • If [+NS] is the default, occurrence of over pleonastic • Perhaps there is a default (first setting) of the null subject pronouns could serve as evidence that the language is parameter: [+NS]. [–NS]; the non-default (marked) value can be learned. – Learners of a [–NS] language need to change that parameter. – Learners of a [+NS] language already have it right. • Arguments both for and against this exist… we can keep it in the back of our minds as a concept, though… Word order parameters Word order parameters • Japanese is head-final (SOVIC) • Quick mention of Flynn (1987) via White: –[CP [IP S [VP O V ] I ] C ] • Flynn (1987) was testing not the headedness parameter itself but things which are supposed to • English is head-initial (CSIVO) correlate with it. One such thing has to do with anaphora, and the order in which a pronoun and –[CP C [IP S I [VP V O ] ] its antecedent are preferably found. Further study showed this “correlated property” to be quite • This is a parameter by which languages unreliable, and should probably be considered to differ—but it should be pretty obvious to be its own parameter (at best). the L2 learner. Word order parameters Word order parameters (*UG) Clahsen and Muysken (1986) Clahsen & Muysken • Arguing for a non-UG-based view of L2A. That is, • C&M looked at naturalistic production data. that L1A of German and L2A of German are • They suggest that L2 learners extract the different. “canonical” order (SVO) and stick with that • (L1) kids get SOV order right away. (later learning to move non-finite verbs to • L2 learners coming from Romance use SVO order the end). (not just V2), but this isn’t even transfer, since L2 learners coming from Turkish also use SVO order • White: But how do they arrive at the (not SOV). canonical order? How can they tell that the • To the extent that people learn the SOV German Adv-V-S-O order is non-canonical? order, it’s due to (unnatural) rules transforming underlying SVO structures to the SOV forms. Word order parameters (*UG?) Vainikka & Young-Scholten Clahsen & Muysken • L2 learners do seem to have assumed SVO, producing • Vainikka & Young-Scholten explore the things like Adv-SVO, SV±FinO, … “canonical order”?? development of L2 phrase structure in some • Most languages are uniform with respect to detail—concentrating to some extent on the headedness—but German isn’t. CP is head initial, while VP headedness parameter. is head-final (IP could be either). • They are looking at naturalistic L2A (migrant workers in Germany with different L1 • German has mixed headedness (CSIOV) backgrounds, including Turkish [SOV], Korean –[ C [ S I [ O V ] ] CP IP VP [SOV], Spanish [SVO], and Italian [SVO]). • Learner of German could easily assume German is head- initial—that is, SVO. Vainikka & Young-Scholten Vainikka & Young-Scholten • V&YS propose that phrase structure is built • Vainikka (1993/4) argued for this in L1A of up from just a VP all the way up to a full English. In particular: clause. • Acquisition goes in (syntactically identifiable • Similar to Radford’s L1 proposal except stages). Those stages correspond to ever-greater that there is an order of acquisition even articulation of the tree. past the VP (i.e., IP before CP). Also – VP stage: no NOM subjects, no wh-questions. similar to Rizzi’s L1 “truncation” proposal. – IP stage: NOM subjects except in wh-questions. • V&YS propose that both L1A and L2A – CP stage: NOM subjects and wh-questions. involve this sort of “tree building.” Vainikka & Young-Scholten’s V&YS—headedness transfer primary claims about L2A • Cross-sectional: 6 Korean, 6 Spanish, 11 Turkish. • L2A takes place in stages, grammars which Longitudinal: 1 Spanish, 4 Italian. successively replace each other (perhaps • In the VP stage, speakers seem to produce after a period of competition). sentences in which the headedness matches their • The stages correspond to the “height” of the L1 and not German. clausal structure. • L2 learners do transfer the structure of the L1 L1 head head-final VPs in L2 VP from their first language, but nothing Korean/Turkish final 98 else. Italian/Spanish (I) initial 19 Italian/Spanish (II) initial 64 V&YS—headedness transfer V&YS L2A—VP stage • VP-i: L1 value transferred for head-parameter, trees truncated at VP. stage L1 Aux Mod Default • VP-ii: L2 value adopted for head-parameter, trees still truncated at VP • At the VP stage, we VP Kor 1 1 68 NL VPs V-initial V-final find lack of VP Tur 0 1 75 Bongiovanni I 20 13 (65%) 7 – verb raising (INFL and/or CP) Salvatore I 44 35 (80%) 9 VP-i It 0 0 34 (65) – auxiliaries and Jose S 20 15 (75%) 5 modals (generated in VP-ii It 0 0 29 (63) Rosalinda S 24 24 (100%) 0 INFL) VP-i Sp 8 5 74 Antonio S 68 20 48 (71%) – an agreement paradigm (INFL) VP-ii Sp 1 1 57 Jose S 37 23 14 (38%) – complementizers (CP) All came from Rosalinda (Sp.); three Lina I 24 7 17 (71%) – wh-movement (CP) instances of wolle ‘want’ and five with is(t) Salvatore I 25 6 19 (76%) ‘is’—evidence seems to be that she doesn’t control IP yet.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Chapter 5 Variation in Romance Diego Pescarini and Michele Loporcaro
    Variation in Romance Diego Pescarini, Michele Loporcaro To cite this version: Diego Pescarini, Michele Loporcaro. Variation in Romance. Cambridge Handbook of Romance Lin- guistics, In press. hal-02420353 HAL Id: hal-02420353 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02420353 Submitted on 19 Dec 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Chapter 5 Variation in Romance Diego Pescarini and Michele Loporcaro 5.1 Introduction This chapter sets out to show how the study of linguistic variation across closely related languages can fuel research questions and provide a fertile testbed for linguistic theory. We will present two case studies in structural variation – subject clitics and (perfective) auxiliation – and show how a comparative view of these phenomena is best suited to providing a satisfactory account for them, and how such a comparative account bears on a number of theoretical issues ranging from (rather trivially) the modeling of variation to the definition of wordhood, the inventory of parts of speech, and the division of labour between syntax and morphology. 5.2 Systematic variation: the case of subject clitics French, northern Italian Dialects, Ladin, and Romansh are characterized by the presence, with variable degrees of obligatoriness, of clitic elements stemming from Latin nominative personal pronouns.
    [Show full text]
  • Eslema. Towards a Corpus for Asturian
    Eslema. Towards a Corpus for Asturian Xulio Viejoz, Roser Saur´ı∗, Angel´ Neiray zDepartamento de Filolog´ıa Espanola˜ yComputer Science Department Universidad de Oviedo fjviejo, [email protected] ∗Computer Science Department Brandeis University [email protected] Abstract We present Eslema, the first project devoted to building a corpus for Asturian, which is carried out at Oviedo University. Eslema receives minor funding from the Spanish government, which is fundamental for basic issues such as equipment acquisition. However, it is insufficient for hiring researchers for a reasonable period of time. The scarcity of funding prompted us to look for much needed resources in entities with no institutional relation to the project, such as publishing companies and radio stations. In addition, we have started collaborations with external research groups. We are for example initiating a project devoted to developing a wiki-based platform, to be used by the community of Asturian speakers, for loading and annotating texts in Eslema. That will benefit both our project, allowing to enlarge the corpus at a minimum cost, and the Asturian community, causing a stronger presence of Asturian in information technologies and, as a consequence, boosting the confidence of speakers in their language, which will hopefully contribute to slow down the serious process of substitution it is currently undergoing. 1. Introduction 1998. The most reliable estimates of the status and vitality We present Eslema, the first project devoted to building a of Asturian nowadays calculate the community of speak- corpus for Asturian, which is carried out by the Research ers corresponds to approximately a third of the population.
    [Show full text]
  • The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics
    CMYK PMS 175mm 44.2mm 175mm José Ignacio Hualde is Professor in Hualde, The Handbook of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Olarrea, and The Handbook of Hispanic Portuguese and in the Department of O’Rourke Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Linguistics Urbana-Champaign. His books include Basque Phonology (1991), Euskararen azentuerak Hispanic Edited by José Ignacio Hualde, Antxon Hispanic Linguistics Hispanic The Handbook of [the accentual systems of Basque] (1997), “The Handbook in its 40 well researched chapters presents a clear overview Olarrea and Erin O’Rourke and The Sounds of Spanish (2005). of different aspects of the Spanish language. As such it is destined to be an It is estimated that there are currently more important and indispensable reference resource which will be consulted for years Antxon Olarrea is Associate Professor in the Linguistics than 400 million Spanish speakers worldwide, to come.” with the United States being home to one of Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the Margarita Suñer, Cornell University the world’s largest native Spanish-speaking University of Arizona. He is author of Orígenes populations. Reflecting the increasing del lenguaje y selección natural (2005), “This handbook provides a comprehensive tour of the state-of-the art research importance of the Spanish language both coauthor of Introducción a la lingüística in all areas of Hispanic Linguistics. For students and scholars interested in the in the U.S. and abroad, The Handbook of hispánica (2001, 2nd ed. 2010), and coeditor Spanish language, it is a timely and invaluable reference book.” Hispanic Linguistics features a collection of Romance Linguistics (2009).
    [Show full text]
  • Francisco Gago-Jover
    FRANCISCO GAGO-JOVER PROFESSOR OF SPANISH 441 Stein Hall College of the Holy Cross Worcester, MA 01610 (508) 793-2507 [email protected] EDUCATION PhD (Hispano Romance Linguistics & Philology) University of Wisconsin-Madison 1990 - 1997 MA (Spanish) University of Wisconsin-Madison 1988 - 1990 Licenciado en Geografía e Historia Universidad de Valladolid 1980 - 1985 PUBLICATIONS A. BOOKS 2007: Diccionario militar de Raimundo Sanz. Edición y estudio. Zaragoza: Institución «Fernando el Católico». [co- edited with Fernando Tejedo-Herrero] 2002: Vocabulario militar castellano (siglos XIII-XV). Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada. 2002: Two Generations: A Tribute to Lloyd A. Kasten (1905-1999). Ed. Francisco Gago-Jover. New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. 1999: Arte de bien morir y Breve confesionario. Palma de Mallorca: José Olañeta / Universitat de les Illes Balears. B. DIGITAL PROJECTS Forthcoming: Gago Jover, Francisco and F. Javier Pueyo Mena. 2020. Old Spanish Textual Archive. Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. On line at http://www.oldspanishtextualarchive.org/osta/osta.php. 2018: “Colonial Texts”. Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts. Eds. Francisco Gago-Jover. Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. http://www.hispanicseminary.org/t&c/col/index.htm 2017: “Fuero General de Navarra Texts”. Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts. Eds. Francisco Gago-Jover. Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. http://www.hispanicseminary.org/t&c/fgn/index.htm 2017: “Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) Texts”. Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts. Eds. Francisco Gago-Jover. Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. http://www.hispanicseminary.org/t&c/laz/index.htm 2016: “Spanish Chronicle Texts”. Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts. Eds. Francisco Gago-Jover.
    [Show full text]
  • Narrative Infinitives, Narrative Gerunds, and the Features of the C-T System
    J o u r n a l of H i s t o r i c a l S y n t a x Volume 3, Article 3: 1–36, 2019 NARRATIVE INFINITIVES, NARRATIVE GERUNDS, AND THE FEATURES OF THE C-T SYSTEM G a b r i e l a A l b o i u 1 York University V i r g i n i a H i l l 2 University of New Brunswick This paper discusses narrative infinitives (NIs) and narrative gerunds (NGs) in Romance by looking at Middle French (MF), Acadian French (AF) and Old Romanian (OR) data. The focus is on constructions where clauses with non-finite verb forms are coordinated with declaratives that contain indicative, hence finite, verbs. We show that NIs/NGs yield exclusively declarative (rather than interrogative) readings and argue that an Assert OP (Meinunger 2004) is mapped in Spec,CP/ForceP of these derivations thus recategorizing an otherwise non-finite derivation into a finite, realis clause. Conversely, we argue that root indicatives achieve the assertion reading in the absence of any clause typing operator. The paper identifies a series of shared properties in these derivations, as follows: (i) exclusive assertion semantics; (ii) projection to a phasal CP; (iii) verb movement outside of vP. By capitalizing on the two types of Agreement properties (i.e. j-features and d-features) and the 4-way language typology proposed by Miyagawa(2017), the paper discusses these core properties while also accounting for the empirical variation illustrated in the grammar of NIs/NGs in MF, AF, and OR (i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • A Comparative Perspective on the Evolution of Romance Clausal Structure
    A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON THE EVOLUTION OF ROMANCE CLAUSAL STRUCTURE Forthcoming in DIACHRONICA SAM WOLFE, ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The article presents a comparative analysis of the diachronic evolution of Romance clausal structure from Classical Latin through to the late medieval period, with particular reference to the Verb Second (V2) property). In the medieval period three distinct diachronic stages can be identified as regards V2: a C-VSO stage, attested in Old Sardinian, a 'relaxed' V2 stage across Early Medieval Romance and maintained into 13th and 14th century Occitan and Sicilian, and a 'strict' V2 stage attested in 13th and 14th century French, Spanish and Venetian. The C-VSO grammar found in Old Sardinian is a retention of the syntactic system attested in late Latin textual records, itself an innovation on an 'incipient V2' stage found in Classical Latin where V-to-C movement and XP- fronting receive a pragmatically or syntactically marked interpretation. 1. INTRODUCTION1 1.1. Background Despite a vast literature on the clausal structure of Latin (Pinkster 1990; Bauer 2009; Spevak 2010; Danckaert 2012; Ledgeway 2012) and the rich microvariation attested in the Modern Romance languages (Zanuttini 1997; Poletto 2000; Kayne 2000, 2005; Benincà & Poletto 2004; Belletti 2008; D’Alessandro, Ledgeway & Roberts 2010), the syntax of Medieval Romance remains under studied. Drawing on a new corpus of texts, the current article offers a comparative account of the key diachronic changes in clausal structure which take place within the medieval period and draws on the observed changes to shed new light on the passage from Latin to Medieval Romance, with a particular focus on the Verb Second (V2) property.
    [Show full text]
  • Studies in Historical Linguistics and Language Change Grammaticalization, Refunctionalization and Beyond
    Studies in Historical Linguistics and Language Change Grammaticalization, Refunctionalization and Beyond Edited by Dorien Nieuwenhuijsen and Mar Garachana Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Languages www.mdpi.com/journal/languages Studies in Historical Linguistics and Language Change Studies in Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Grammaticalization, Refunctionalization and Beyond Special Issue Editors Dorien Nieuwenhuijsen Mar Garachana MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editors Dorien Nieuwenhuijsen Mar Garachana Utrecht University Barcelona University The Netherlands Spain Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Languages (ISSN 2226-471X) from 2018 to 2019 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages/ special issues/Lingustics LanguageChange) For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03921-576-8 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03921-577-5 (PDF) Cover image courtesy of Bob de Jonge. c 2019 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editors ....................................
    [Show full text]
  • Spanish Sibilants
    The Development of Spanish Sibilants 1. Old Spanish Old Spanish was based on the dialect of Vulgar Latin spoken in the plains north of Burgos. This was one of the areas not under Islamic rule during the Middle Ages. This northern Castilian dialect was considered rather provincial and non-prestigious during Roman times, where the prestige urban dialects were centered around Sevilla (in Andalucia). However, since most of Spain fell under Islamic rule, the Andalucian Romance language co-existed with Arabic, where it was known as Mozarabe (and was written with an Arabic orthography). The history of Spanish is closely connected with the spread of Castilian Spanish south during the reconquest; during that period speakers of Arabic and Mozarabe adopted Castilian, but with certain modifications. One area where Andalucian Spanish and Castilian differ is in the reflexes of the Old Spanish sibilant system. During the Old Spanish period (13th-15th century) Castilian had six sibilant phonemes: (1) phoneme orthography examples dentals voiceless /ts/ > /s/ c, ç decir /detsir/ > /desir/ ‘descend’ (affricates caça /katsa/ > /kasa/ ‘hunt’ > fricatives) voiced /dz/ > /z/ z dezir /dedzir/ > /dezir/ ‘say’ pozo /podzo/ > /pozo/ ‘well’ apico-alveolars voiceless /S/ ss passo /paSo/ ‘step’ (fricatives) espesso /eZpeSo/ ‘thick’ voiced /Z/ s casa /kaZa/ ‘house’ espeso /eZpeZo/ ‘spent’ palato-alveolars voiceless /š/ x dixo /dišo/ ‘s/he said’ (fricatives) caxa /kaša/ ‘box’ voiced /ž/ j, g fijo /fižo/ ‘son’ mugier /mužyer/ ‘woman’ The dentals probably began as affricates (/ts/ and /dz/) and were weakened to corresponding fricatives (/s/ and /z/). It is unclear exactly when this happened, but it is often assumed that this change was complete by the end of the Middle Ages.
    [Show full text]
  • Spanish Velar-Insertion and Analogy
    Spanish Velar-insertion and Analogy: A Usage-based Diachronic Analysis DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Steven Richard Fondow, B.A, M.A Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese The Ohio State University 2010 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Dieter Wanner, Advisor Dr. Brian Joseph Dr. Terrell Morgan Dr. Wayne Redenbarger Copyright by Steven Richard Fondow 2010 Abstract The theory of Analogical and Exemplar Modeling (AEM) suggests renewed discussion of the formalization of analogy and its possible incorporation in linguistic theory. AEM is a usage-based model founded upon Exemplar Modeling (Bybee 2007, Pierrehumbert 2001) that utilizes several principles of the Analogical Modeling of Language (Skousen 1992, 1995, 2002, Wanner 2005, 2006a), including the ‘homogeneous supracontext’ of the Analogical Model (AM), frequency effects and ‘random-selection’, while also highlighting the speaker’s central and ‘immanent’ role in language (Wanner 2006a, 2006b). Within AEM, analogy is considered a cognitive means of organizing linguistic information. The relationship between input and stored exemplars is established according to potentially any and all salient similarities, linguistic or otherwise. At the same time, this conceptualization of analogy may result in language change as a result of such similarities or variables, as they may be used in the formation of an AM for the input. Crucially, the inflectional paradigm is argued to be a possible variable since it is a higher-order unit of linguistic structure within AEM. This investigation analyzes the analogical process of Spanish velar-insertion according to AEM.
    [Show full text]
  • Word Order and Information Structure in Old Spanish. Catalan Journal Of
    CatJL 10, 2011 159-184 Word order and information structure in Old Spanish* Ioanna Sitaridou University of Cambridge. Queens’ College [email protected] Received: February 9 2011 Accepted: March 31 2011 Abstract In this article it is claimed that in Old Spanish the discourse-sensitive field is exclusively the preverbal one. Focusing on object preposing, it is shown that the object can: (i) either be linked to a topic reading (England 1980, 1983; Danford 2002); or (ii) an information focus reading (cf. Cruschina and Sitaridou 2011) –the latter only available as the rightmost element in Modern Spanish (cf. Zubizarreta 1998, inter alios); or (iii) a contrastive focus reading; or (iv) verum focus reading (cf. Leonetti & Escandell-Vidal 2009). Given all these different discourse readings which are linearized as verb second syntax, the testing hypothesis is that the verb second orders are an epiphenomenon of the organisation of information structure (cf. Wanner 1989; Bossong 2003; Sitaridou 2006, 2011 pace Fontana 1993; Cho 1997; Danford 2002; Fernández Ordóñez 2009; Molina 2010) rather than structural as in the Germanic languages. Keywords: Old Spanish; Topicalisation; Focus Fronting; OV; V2. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 4. Diachronic implications for 2. Word order in Old Spanish information structure packaging in Spanish 3. The encapsulation of information structure in Old Spanish 5. Conclusion Primary Text Sources References * I am very grateful to Miriam Bouzouita for discussing the data in such an enlightening way, as well as the Editors of this special issue for comments on an earlier draft of the paper. I would also like to thank Miguel Calderón Campos and María Teresa García Godoy for their help with the translation of some of the examples.
    [Show full text]
  • Portugal: Europe’S Mistaken Identity
    UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM Graduate School for Humanities MA Programme in General Linguistics Portugal: Europe’s Mistaken Identity Chris Deacon Student Number: 11104015 [email protected] Supervisors: Paul Boersma Silke Hamann Amsterdam 2016 1 Portugal: Europe’s Mistaken Identity by Chris Deacon 1. Introduction ​ There seems to be a general consensus amongst those not well versed in Portuguese that it is a bit of an anomaly as a Romance language as it is perceptually not a Romance language at all. It is in fact perceived by many as “Eastern European”. This is quite an assertion to make, especially with no well known academic sources to back it up. The following paper sets out to not only empirically validate this claim, but also investigate the reasons why. Through the use of an online questionnaire, this hypothesis will be examined together with three subsidiary hypotheses : Main Hypothesis: Portuguese is perceived as Eastern European ​ Hypothesis One: Portuguese is perceived as Eastern European due to it being a ​ stress-timed language. Hypothesis Two: Portuguese is perceived as Eastern European due to its high proportion of ​ sibilants. Hypothesis Three: Portuguese is perceived as Eastern European due to its nasal vowels. ​ 2. What is an “Eastern European” language? ​ Before the investigation can begin, it is necessary to define “Eastern Europe”. Eastern Europe is traditionally thought to contain the following countries: Russia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, as well as, arguably, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. What these countries all share in common is being on the east side of the “Iron Curtain”.
    [Show full text]
  • The Status of Judeo-Spanish in a Diachronic and Synchronic Perspective Includes Six Translated Romances Plus Sample Texts of Biblical Literature and Modern Press
    The status of Judeo-Spanish in a diachronic and synchronic perspective Includes six translated Romances plus sample texts of biblical literature and modern press Lester Fernandez Vicet Master thesis in Semitic Linguistics with Hebrew (60 credits) Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages University of Oslo May 2016 Abstract. The speech of the Sephardic Jews have been defined as both language and dialect, depending always on the standpoint of the analyzer, but is it a language on its own right or is it “just a dialect”? What is, then, the difference between both concepts? In the case Judeo-Spanish could be considered a language, what are the criteria taken into account in the classification? In an attempt to answer these questions I will provide facts on the origin of both terms, their modern and politicized use as well as on the historical vicissitudes of Judeo-Spanish and its speakers. Their literature, both laic and religious, is covered with an emphasis on the most researched and relevant genres, namely: the biblical Sephardic translations, the Romancero and the modern press of the 19th Century. A descriptive presentation of Judeo-Spanish main grammatical features precedes the last chapter, where both the diagnosis of Judeo-Spanish in the 20th Century, and its prognosis for the 21st, are given with the aim of determine its present state. Acknowledgements The conception and execution of the present work would have been impossible without the help and support of the persons that were, directly or indirectly, involved in the process. I want to express my gratitude, firstly, to my mentor Lutz E.
    [Show full text]