A Morphological Comparative Study Between Albanian and English Language
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Does English Have a Genitive Case? [email protected]
2. Amy Rose Deal – University of Massachusetts, Amherst Does English have a genitive case? [email protected] In written English, possessive pronouns appear without ’s in the same environments where non-pronominal DPs require ’s. (1) a. your/*you’s/*your’s book b. Moore’s/*Moore book What explains this complementarity? Various analyses suggest themselves. A. Possessive pronouns are contractions of a pronoun and ’s. (Hudson 2003: 603) B. Possessive pronouns are inflected genitives (Huddleston and Pullum 2002); a morphological deletion rule removes clitic ’s after a genitive pronoun. Analysis A consists of a single rule of a familiar type: Morphological Merger (Halle and Marantz 1993), familiar from forms like wanna and won’t. (His and its contract especially nicely.) No special lexical/vocabulary items need be postulated. Analysis B, on the other hand, requires a set of vocabulary items to spell out genitive case, as well as a rule to delete the ’s clitic following such forms, assuming ’s is a DP-level head distinct from the inflecting noun. These two accounts make divergent predictions for dialects with complex pronominals such as you all or you guys (and us/them all, depending on the speaker). Since Merger operates under adjacency, Analysis A predicts that intervention by all or guys should bleed the formation of your: only you all’s and you guys’ are predicted. There do seem to be dialects with this property, as witnessed by the American Heritage Dictionary (4th edition, entry for you-all). Call these English 1. Here, we may claim that pronouns inflect for only two cases, and Merger operations account for the rest. -
This Chapter Provides a Historical Framework For
Chapter One Introductions 1.0 Background: This chapter provides a historical framework for the study specifically it will provide description of the context of the study and gives short account of history of English language in Sudan. It is also provide a description of the study problem and formulates the question and hypotheses of the study. The significance of the study was shown. The scope and limitation of the study. Finally, the study unfolds the methodology to be adopted for conducting the empirical part of study. 1.1 Context of the Study problem: During the British colonial period of Sudan (1898- 1956). English language was the official language of the state. It was the medium of instruction in the educational institution during that period. It is worth mentioning that most of teachers at that time were native speakers of English and that allowed a wide exposure of English language for Sudanese students. Late after Sudan gained its independence in 1956 Arabic language began gradually to replace English as medium of instruction. Consequently, English language comes to be taught as a foreign language. 1 The current status of this language in the context of Sudan shows that it is declining and losing its significance in the education environment in this country because the purposes of learning this language have been changed. Upon considering its characteristics, English is a language which is rich in what are calls phrasal verbs are the most frequently used types of figurative language in discourse. For Sudanese secondary schools students these guises of language (i.e. phrasal verbs) are difficult to deal with because they are not relevant of the culture of the target language. -
Possessive Constructions in Modern Low Saxon
POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN MODERN LOW SAXON a thesis submitted to the department of linguistics of stanford university in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts Jan Strunk June 2004 °c Copyright by Jan Strunk 2004 All Rights Reserved ii I certify that I have read this thesis and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Joan Bresnan (Principal Adviser) I certify that I have read this thesis and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Tom Wasow I certify that I have read this thesis and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Dan Jurafsky iii iv Abstract This thesis is a study of nominal possessive constructions in modern Low Saxon, a West Germanic language which is closely related to Dutch, Frisian, and German. After identifying the possessive constructions in current use in modern Low Saxon, I give a formal syntactic analysis of the four most common possessive constructions within the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar in the ¯rst part of this thesis. The four constructions that I will analyze in detail include a pronominal possessive construction with a possessive pronoun used as a determiner of the head noun, another prenominal construction that resembles the English s-possessive, a linker construction in which a possessive pronoun occurs as a possessive marker in between a prenominal possessor phrase and the head noun, and a postnominal construction that involves the preposition van/von/vun and is largely parallel to the English of -possessive. -
Transatlantic Variation in English Adverb Placement
Language Variation and Change, 25 (2013), 179–200. © Cambridge University Press, 2013 0954-3945/13 $16.00 doi:10.1017/S0954394513000082 Transatlantic variation in English adverb placement C ATHLEEN W ATERS University of Toronto ABSTRACT This study examines the placement of an adverb with respect to a modal or perfect auxiliary in English (e.g., It might potentially escape / It potentially might escape). The data are drawn from two large, socially stratified corpora of vernacular English (Toronto, Canada, and York, England) and thus allow a cross-dialect perspective on linguistic and social correlates. Using quantitative sociolinguistic methods, I demonstrate similarity in the varieties, with the postauxiliary position generally strongly favored. Of particular importance is the structure of the auxiliary phrase; when a modal is followed by the perfect auxiliary (e.g., It might have escaped), the rates of preauxiliary adverb placement are considerably higher. As the variation is chiefly correlated with linguistic, rather than social factors, I apply recent proposals from Generative syntax to further understand the grammar of the phenomenon. However, the evidence suggests that the variability seen here is a result of postsyntactic, rather than syntactic, processes. Quantitative sociolinguistic study of adverbs has been limited, and much of the comparative work that has been undertaken on English has focused solely on morphological variation of the suffix -ly (Aijmer, 2009; Algeo, 2006; Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Opdahl, 2000). This work addresses the lacuna by examining a facet of adverb placement in two varieties of English using data from large, socially stratified corpora of vernacular English (described herein). -
Compound Word Formation.Pdf
Snyder, William (in press) Compound word formation. In Jeffrey Lidz, William Snyder, and Joseph Pater (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Linguistics . Oxford: Oxford University Press. CHAPTER 6 Compound Word Formation William Snyder Languages differ in the mechanisms they provide for combining existing words into new, “compound” words. This chapter will focus on two major types of compound: synthetic -ER compounds, like English dishwasher (for either a human or a machine that washes dishes), where “-ER” stands for the crosslinguistic counterparts to agentive and instrumental -er in English; and endocentric bare-stem compounds, like English flower book , which could refer to a book about flowers, a book used to store pressed flowers, or many other types of book, as long there is a salient connection to flowers. With both types of compounding we find systematic cross- linguistic variation, and a literature that addresses some of the resulting questions for child language acquisition. In addition to these two varieties of compounding, a few others will be mentioned that look like promising areas for coordinated research on cross-linguistic variation and language acquisition. 6.1 Compounding—A Selective Review 6.1.1 Terminology The first step will be defining some key terms. An unfortunate aspect of the linguistic literature on morphology is a remarkable lack of consistency in what the “basic” terms are taken to mean. Strictly speaking one should begin with the very term “word,” but as Spencer (1991: 453) puts it, “One of the key unresolved questions in morphology is, ‘What is a word?’.” Setting this grander question to one side, a word will be called a “compound” if it is composed of two or more other words, and has approximately the same privileges of occurrence within a sentence as do other word-level members of its syntactic category (N, V, A, or P). -
On the Relation Between Grammatical Number and Cardinal Numbers in Development
MINI REVIEW ARTICLE published: 09 October 2014 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01132 On the relation between grammatical number and cardinal numbers in development Barbara W. Sarnecka * Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA Edited by: This mini-review focuses on the question of how the grammatical number system of Ann Dowker, University of a child’s language may help the child learn the meanings of cardinal number words Oxford, UK (e.g., “one” and “two”). Evidence from young children learning English, Russian, Reviewed by: Emily Mather, University of Hull, UK Japanese, Mandarin, Slovenian, or Saudi Arabic suggests that trajectories of number-word Ruth Ford, Anglia Ruskin learning differ for children learning different languages. Children learning English, University, UK which distinguishes between singular and plural, seem to learn the meaning of the *Correspondence: cardinal number “one” earlier than children learning Japanese or Mandarin, which Barbara W. Sarnecka, Department have very little singular/plural marking. Similarly, children whose languages have a of Cognitive Sciences, University of California at Irvine, 3151 Social singular/dual/plural system (Slovenian and Saudi Arabic) learn the meaning of “two” earlier Sciences Plaza A, Irvine, CA than English-speaking children. This relation between grammatical and cardinal number 92697-5100, USA may shed light on how humans acquire cardinal-number concepts. There is an ongoing e-mail: [email protected] debate about whether mental symbols for small cardinalities (concepts for “oneness,” “twoness,” etc.) are innate or learned. Although an effect of grammatical number on number-word learning does not rule out nativist accounts, it seems more consistent with constructivist accounts, which portray the number-learning process as one that requires significant conceptual change. -
Syntactic-Words.Pdf
Yearbook ofmorphology 3 (1990),201-216 Syntactic words and n*"1orphological words, simple and composite Arnold M. Zwicky 1. SYNTAGMATIC UNITS AND PARADIGMATIC UNITS What is the relationship between the simple or elementary objects of grammar, word- like things, and its composite or complex objects, phrase-like things? I focus here on a small piece of this gargantuan topic, having to do specifically with the elementary objects of morphosyntax, rather than with the grammar as a whole: ‘syntactic words’, the syntagmatic units I will call Ws; and ‘morphological words’, the paradigmatic units I will call moremes. The distinction at issue is a familiar one - it is made clearly, though not with this terminology, in careful discussions of the notion of word, such as those in Lyons (1968: sec. 5.4) and Matthews (1974) - but for some reason generative grammarians have for the most part failed to take the distinction seriously, preferring instead to use references to ‘X°’ units as if the small objects of syntax and the large objects of morphology have the same status, in fact, as if they coincided with one another. But they are objects ofquite different character - the fonner are expression tokens, the latter are expression types -and the question of whether they are in some sense coincident with one another is an empirical question, to be decided by considering a wide range of problematic data, not via a terminological or notational stipulation. Indeed, familiar data suggest quite strongly that coincidence is merely the default relationship between -
Department of English and American Studies Possessive Pronouns in English and Czech Works of Fiction, Their Use with Parts of Hu
Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Kristýna Onderková Possessive Pronouns in English and Czech Works of Fiction, Their Use with Parts of Human Body and Translation Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek 2009 0 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………… 1 I would like to express thanks to my supervisor, Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek, for his valuable advice. 2 Table of Contents 1 Introduction.................................................................................................................... 5 2 Theory.............................................................................................................................. 7 2.1 English possessive pronouns.......................................................................... 7 2.1.1 Grammatical properties................................................................... 7 2.1.2 Use...................................................................................................... 8 2.2 Czech possessive pronouns............................................................................. 9 2.2.1 Grammatical properties................................................................... 10 2.2.2 Use...................................................................................................... 11 2.3 Translating possessive pronouns................................................................... -
Number Systems in Grammar Position Paper
1 Language and Culture Research Centre: 2018 Workshop Number systems in grammar - position paper Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald I Introduction I 2 The meanings of nominal number 2 3 Special number distinctions in personal pronouns 8 4 Number on verbs 9 5 The realisation of number 12 5.1 The forms 12 5.2 The loci: where number is shown 12 5.3 Optional and obligatory number marking 14 5.4 The limits of number 15 5.4.1 Number and the meanings of nouns 15 5.4.2 'Minor' numbers 16 5.4.3 The limits of number: nouns with defective number values 16 6 Number and noun categorisation 17 7 Markedness 18 8 Split, or mixed, number systems 19 9 Number and social deixis 19 10 Expressing number through other means 20 11 Number systems in language history 20 12 Summary 21 Further readings 22 Abbreviations 23 References 23 1 Introduction Every language has some means of distinguishing reference to one individual from reference to more than one. Number reference can be coded through lexical modifiers (including quantifiers of various sorts or number words etc.), or through a grammatical system. Number is a referential property of an argument of the predicate. A grammatical system of number can be shown either • Overtly, on a noun, a pronoun, a verb, etc., directly referring to how many people or things are involved; or • Covertly, through agreement or other means. Number may be marked: • within an NP • on the head of an NP • by agreement process on a modifier (adjective, article, demonstrative, etc.) • through agreement on verbs, or special suppletive or semi-suppletive verb forms which may code the number of one or more verbal arguments, or additional marker on the verb. -
The Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics of Adverbs in Cantonese
THE MORPHOLOGY, SYNTAX, AND SEMANTICS OF ADVERBS IN CANTONESE WONG LA1 YIN ZER M. PHIL. THESIS THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG 2002 Abstract of thesis entitled The Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics of Adverbs in Cantonese submitted by Wong Lai Yin for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in September 2002 This thesis reports on a study of adverbs in Cantonese as it is spoken in contemporary Hong Kong. Previous studies of Cantonese adverbs have put particular emphasis on the grammatical meanings of a few individual adverbs, for instance, the adverb % sin] (Cheng, 1990; Cai, 1995; Luke 2002; among others). The general properties of the adverb class as a whole have received relatively scant attention. In this study, the characteristics of Cantonese adverbs, and especially the morphologically, semantically and syntactically relevant aspects of these adverbs are investigated in greater depth. The search for general patterns has been given priority above the description of the peculiarities of each individual adverb. Linguists have generally agreed that an adverb can serve as an adverbial in a sentence (see, for example, Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973). Zhu Dexi (1982), in particular, provides the most insightful criterion in distinguishing adverb f?om other word classes. He proposes that an adverb can and can only function as adverbial, and never hnction as any other sentence constituent like subject and predicate. In the present study, only those words that can function only as adverbials according to Zhu's analysis are identified as adverbs. Particular attention is given to distinguishing adverbs from adjectives, time words (nouns) and conjunctions, which are commonly used as adverbials as well. -
Compositionality in English Deverbal Compounds
Chapter 3 Compositionality in English deverbal compounds: The role of the head Gianina Iordăchioaia University of Stuttgart Lonneke van der Plas University of Malta Glorianna Jagfeld Lancaster University This paper is concerned with the compositionality of deverbal compounds such as budget assessment in English. We present an interdisciplinary study on how the morphosyntactic properties of the deverbal noun head (e.g., assessment) can pre- dict the interpretation of the compound, as mediated by the syntactic-semantic relationship between the non-head (e.g., budget) and the head. We start with Grim- shaw’s (1990) observation that deverbal nouns are ambiguous between composi- tionally interpreted argument structure nominals, which inherit verbal structure and realize arguments (e.g., the assessment of the budget by the government), and more lexicalized result nominals, which preserve no verbal properties or arguments (e.g., The assessment is on the table.). Our hypothesis is that deverbal compounds with argument structure nominal heads are fully compositional and, in our system, more easily predictable than those headed by result nominals, since their composi- tional make-up triggers an (unambiguous) object interpretation of the non-heads. Linguistic evidence gathered from corpora and human annotations, and evaluated with machine learning techniques supports this hypothesis. At the same time, it raises interesting discussion points on how different properties of the head con- tribute to the interpretation of the deverbal compound. Gianina Iordăchioaia, Lonneke van der Plas & Glorianna Jagfeld. 2020. Compositionality in English deverbal compounds: The role of the head. In Sabine Schulte im Walde & Eva Smolka (eds.), The role of constituents in multiword expressions: An interdisciplinary, cross-lingual perspec- tive, 61–106. -
Plurality Cues and Non-Agreement in English Existentials
San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Spring 2013 Plurality Cues and Non-Agreement in English Existentials Robin Melnick San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Melnick, Robin, "Plurality Cues and Non-Agreement in English Existentials" (2013). Master's Theses. 4292. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.fftf-c5k5 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/4292 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PLURALITY CUES AND NON-AGREEMENT IN ENGLISH EXISTENTIALS A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Linguistics and Language Development San José State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Robin Melnick May 2013 © 2013 Robin Melnick ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled PLURALITY CUES AND NON-AGREEMENT IN ENGLISH EXISTENTIALS by Robin Melnick APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY May 2013 Dr. Soteria Svorou Department of Linguistics and Language Development Dr. Stefan Frazier Department of Linguistics and Language Development Dr. Kevin Moore Department of Linguistics and Language Development ABSTRACT PLURALITY