DOCSLIB.ORG

Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 Vol. 19:4 April 2019 India’s Higher Education Authority UGC Approved List of Journals Serial Number 49042 ==================================================================== Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan Amrita University, Coimbatore [email protected] Dr. N. Gejeswari Assistant Professor Bharathidasan University, Trichi [email protected] ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 19:4 April 2019 Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan and Dr. N. Gejeswari Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation 1 PREFACE This research material entitled “Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation” is lying in my lap since 2008. I was planning to edit and publish it in book form after my retirement. But after my retirement I have taken up some academic responsibility in Amrita University, Coimbatore. So, I could not find time to fulfil my intention. Now Prof. M.S.Thirumalai lends me a helping hand to publish it in book format in his esteemed e-journal Language in India. He and his journal encourage me to pursue my research activities with a promise of making them public. I am greatly indebted to him. In linguistics, word order typology is the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages employ different orders. Correlations between word orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The word order encompasses the constituent order of a clause, namely the relative order of subject, object, and verb, the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase and the order of adverbials. Some languages use relatively fixed word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey grammatical information. Other languages—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexible word order, which can be used to encode pragmatic information, such as topicalisation or focus. However, even languages with flexible word order have a preferred or basic word order, with other word orders considered "marked". Word order plays an important role in translation. For example, English word order and Tamil word order are different, and word order often needs to be changed in translation. Word order refers to the order in which components of a sentence are arranged. Machine translation talks about transfer grammar to map source language into target language. Many times, when we try to translate English sentence into Tamil we feel that the translation has to be started from the right and move to left. This is because the most of the times syntactic configuration of a unit or sentence in English is the reverse of syntactic configuration of a unit or sentence in Tamil. The present research work is not a complete one. Word order typology has to be studied extensively and come out with rules to map one type of word ordered language into another type word ordered language. The transfer grammar rules need to be evolved for human as well as machine translation. My interest in manual translation and machine translation motivated me to take up this research work. The topic is of great importance and the need of the day. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 19:4 April 2019 Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan and Dr. N. Gejeswari Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation 2 ABBREVIATIONS Accusative acc\ Acc. Adjective Adj\ ADJ Adjectival Phrase Adj P Adverb Adv\ ADV Adverbial Phrase Adv P. Auxiliary AUX Be verb BV Complement COMP Compound verb CV Dative Dat\ DAT Determiner Det\ DET Demonstrative Dem\ DEM Dictionary of English DEWA Word Analysis Direct object DO Finite F\N Genitive gen\GEN Indirect Object IO Intransitive verb Vi\ VI Lexical functional Grammar LFG Locative loc\ LOC Negative Neg\ NEG Noun N Noun phrase NP Number Num\ NUM ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 19:4 April 2019 Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan and Dr. N. Gejeswari Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation 3 Object O Ordinal Ord Perfect perf Phrase structure Grammar PSG Pre-determiner Pre-Det Preposition, post position P Prepositional\ Post positional Phrase PP Person Number-Gender PNG Progressive Prog\ PROG Pronoun PN Plural PLU Quantifier Quan\Q Relative Participle RP Sentence S Singular sing\ SING Structural and lexical transfer SALT Subject (specified in the content itself) S Tense T Tree Adjoining Grammar TAG Verb V Verb phrase VP ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 19:4 April 2019 Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan and Dr. N. Gejeswari Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation 4 TRANSLITERATION Roman Tamil a அ aa ஆ i இ ii ஈ u உ uu ஊ e எ ee ஏ ai ஐ o ஒ oo ஓ au ஒள k க் ng ங் c ச் nj ஞ் T ட் N ண் t த் nd ந் ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 19:4 April 2019 Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan and Dr. N. Gejeswari Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation 5 p ப் m ம் y ய் r 쏍 l ல் v வ் zh ழ் L ள் R ற் n ந் ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 19:4 April 2019 Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan and Dr. N. Gejeswari Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation 6 CONTENTS Sr. no. Titles Page no. 1. CHAPTER 1: Introduction 14-17 1.1. Earlier and related works 15 1. 2. Importance of the present work 16 2. CHAPTER 2: Word Order Typology and Language Universals 18-44 2.0 Introduction 18 2.1. Word order parameters 19 2.2. Correlation among word order parameters 22 2.2.1. Greenberg’s correlation 23 2.2.2. Generalizations of Greenberg’s results 24 2.3. The value of word order typology 27 2.4. Deeper explanations for word order universals 28 2.5. Methodological problem 35 2.5.1. Subject 35 2.5.2. Object 37 2.5.3. Indirect object 37 2.5.4. Variant word orders 38 2.6. Factors determining word order 39 2.6.1. The basic principles 39 2.6.2. Topicalization hierarchies 42 2.6.3. Position of clitic pronouns 43 2.7. Summary 44 3. CHAPTER 3: Characteristics of English as SVO Language 45-79 3.0. Introduction 45 ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 19:4 April 2019 Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan and Dr. N. Gejeswari Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation 7 3.1. The structure of simple clauses 45 3.2. Nominal phrases 48 3.3. Verbal phrases 51 3.3.1. Expressions for modality 55 3.3.2. Expressions for aspect and tense 57 3.4. Sentence adverbials 60 3.5. Compound and complex sentences 60 3.6. Marking 64 3.7. Grammatical processes 64 3.7.1. Pronominalization 65 3.7.2. Anaphora 67 3.7.3. Passivization 68 3.7.4. Foregrounding: Topicalization 71 3.7.5. Clefting 72 3.8. Morphological characteristics 73 3.8.1 Inflection 74 3.8.2. Derivation 76 3.8.3. Morphophonemic process 76 3.9. Phonological characteristics 77 3.9.1. Syllabification 77 3.9.2. Suprasegmentals 78 3.9.3. Segmentals 78 3.10. Summary 79 4. CHAPTER 4: Characteristics of Tamil as SOV Language 80-113 4.0. Introduction 80 ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 19:4 April 2019 Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan and Dr. N. Gejeswari Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation 8 4.1. Structure of simple clauses 80 4.1.1. Basic word order 80 4.1.2. Word order in colloquial speech 81 4.1.3. Simple sentence type 83 4.1.3.1. Verbs 83 4.1.3.2. Adjectives 83 4.1.3.3. Copulas 84 4.1.4. Agreement 85 4.1.5. Subjectless sentence 85 4.1.6. Adpositions 86 4.1.7. Comparison of inequality 88 4.2. Nominal phrases 88 4.2.1. Relative clauses 89 4.2.2. Genitives 90 4.2.3. Numerals and quantifiers 91 4.3. Verbal phrases 93 4.3.1. Declarative, interrogative and negative 93 4.3.2. Reciprocal 96 4.3.3. Reflexive 96 4.3.4. Compound verbs, adjectives, and nominal-adjectives 97 4.3.5. Modality, aspect and tense 98 4.3.6. Compound verbals representing the speaker’s attitude 100 4.3.7. Passive and causative 100 4.3.8. Order of verbal elements 101 4.4. Adverbs 102 ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 19:4 April 2019 Prof. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan and Dr. N. Gejeswari Word Order Typology and Its Implication in Translation 9 4.4.1. Types of adverbs 102 4.4.2. Sentential adverbs 193 4.4.3. Some characteristics of adverbs 104 4.5. Compound and complex sentences 104 4.5.1. Coordination and subordination 104 4.5.2. Indirect statements and questions 106 4.6. Grammatical process 107 4.6.1. Pronouns and deletion of noun phrases 107 4.6.2. Deletion of verbs 109 4.6.3. Scrambling 110 4.6.4. Foregrounding 110 4.6.5. Clefting 111 4.7. Summary 112 5 CHAPTER 5: Relative Clause in English and Tamil 114-138 5.0. Introduction 114 5.1. Universal typology 117 5.1.1. Syntactic properties 118 5.1.2 Semantic characterization 119 5.1.3. Syntactic universals 121 5.1.4. Postnominal relative clauses 122 5.1.4.1. Correlation with word order type 122 5.1.4.2. Internal RC structure in SVO 123 5.1.4.3. Initial relative particles 124 5.1.4.4.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Processing Facilitation Strategies in OV and VO Languages: a Corpus Study
    Open Journal of Modern Linguistics 2013. Vol.3, No.3, 252-258 Published Online September 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojml) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2013.33033 Processing Facilitation Strategies in OV and VO Languages: A Corpus Study Luis Pastor, Itziar Laka Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain Email: [email protected] Received June 25th, 2013; revised July 25th, 2013; accepted August 2nd, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Luis Pastor, Itziar Laka. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Com- mons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, pro- vided the original work is properly cited. The present corpus study aimed to examine whether Basque (OV) resorts more often than Spanish (VO) to certain grammatical operations, in order to minimize the number of arguments to be processed before the verb. Ueno & Polinsky (2009) argue that VO/OV languages use certain grammatical resources with different frequencies in order to facilitate real-time processing. They observe that both OV and VO lan- guages in their sample (Japanese, Turkish and Spanish) have a similar frequency of use of subject pro- drop; however, they find that OV languages (Japanese, Turkish) use more intransitive sentences than VO languages (English, Spanish), and conclude this is an OV-specific strategy to facilitate processing. We conducted a comparative corpus study of Spanish (VO) and Basque (OV). Results show (a) that the fre- quency of use of subject pro-drop is higher in Basque than in Spanish; and (b) Basque does not use more intransitive sentences than Spanish; both languages have a similar frequency of intransitive sentences.
    [Show full text]
  • Origins of Grammatical Forms and Evidence from Latin1
    Origins of Grammatical Forms and Evidence from Latin1 Brigitte L. M. Bauer The University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A. [email protected] Analyses of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages tend to focus on Germanic and Romance forms, for which we generally are able to identify the original autonomous composing elements. By contrast, in early Indo- European languages we find many inflected formations or other grammatical elements that are opaque. The question then is: are these forms opaque (1) because of the length of their existence; or (2) because the composing elements in origin were not autonomous lexical forms, but rather of a different type? We may never be able to fully answer that question. Yet comparison of phenomena of grammaticalization in different stages of Latin will help clarify certain aspects of it. This article compares manifestations of grammaticalization in the transition from Latin to Romance with earlier formation processes in Latin and Indo-European. I will submit that the instances of grammaticalization that we find in the later stages of Latin and that resulted in a number of new grammatical forms in Romance, reflect a major linguistic innovation. While the new grammatical forms are created out of lexical or mildly grammatical autonomous elements, earlier processes seem to primarily involve particles with a certain semantic value, and freezing. This fundamental difference explains why the attempts of early Indo-Europeanists such as Franz Bopp at tracing the lexical origins of Indo-European inflected forms were unsuccessful and strongly criticized by the Neo-Grammarians. 1. Introduction Over the last thirty or so years the study of grammaticalization has been one of the hotbeds of historical linguistics.
    [Show full text]
  • A Comparative Syntactic Review of Null-Subject Parameter in English and Ịzọn Languages
    Vol.7(8), pp. 79-85, September, 2016 DOI: 10.5897/JLC2016.0363 Article Number: BCF661160470 ISSN 2141-6540 Journal of Languages and Culture Copyright © 2016 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article http://www.academicjournals.org/JLC Full Length Research Paper A comparative syntactic review of null-subject parameter in English and Ịzọn languages Odingowei Kwokwo Macdonald Department of English and Literary Studies, Niger Delta University, Nigeria. Received 12 February, 2016; Accepted 6 June 2016 The theory of universal grammar relies predominantly on the biolinguistic concept of natural endowment and innate knowledge of the general principles of language. It postulates that all humans are naturally endowed with the general rules and configurations of language and to this extent, all natural languages have similar structural features. The theory of universal grammar as hypothesized by Chomsky and propagated by other linguists not only recognizes the universality of the general principles of language but also the existence of language-specific idiosyncratic features that constitute parametric variations among languages. These are the parameters of universal grammar. The most prominent parameters that create distinctions between languages are head directionality, pro-drop or null-subject and wh- parameters. This paper reviews the null-subject parameter in English and juxtaposes its occurrence or non-occurrence in the Ịzọn language. The aim of the paper is to characterize the parametric choices by English and Ịzọn languages in the derivation of grammatically convergent sentences with null-subject constituents. The study is competence-based and used data from tokens of sentences in conversation among competent native speakers of Ịzọn language.
    [Show full text]
  • Nonnative Acquisition of Verb Second: on the Empirical Underpinnings of Universal L2 Claims
    Nonnative acquisition of Verb Second: On the empirical underpinnings of universal L2 claims Ute Bohnacker Lund University Abstract Acquiring Germanic verb second is typically described as difficult for second-language learners. Even speakers of a V2-language (Swedish) learning another V2-language (German) are said not to transfer V2 but to start with a non-V2 grammar, following a universal developmental path of verb placement. The present study contests this claim, documenting early targetlike V2 production for 6 Swedish ab-initio (and 23 intermediate) learners of German, at a time when their interlanguage syntax elsewhere is nontargetlike (head-initial VPs). Learners whose only nonnative language is German never violate V2, indicating transfer of V2-L1 syntax. Informants with previous knowledge of English are less targetlike in their L3-German productions, indicating interference from non-V2 English. V2 per se is thus not universally difficult for nonnative learners. in press in: Marcel den Dikken & Christina Tortora, eds., 2005. The function of function words and functional categories. [Series: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today] Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins (pp. 41-77). Nonnative acquisition of Verb Second: On the empirical underpinnings of universal L2 claims Ute Bohnacker Lund University 1. Introduction This paper investigates the acquisition of verb placement, especially verb second (V2), by native Swedish adults and teenagers learning German. Several recent publications (e.g. Platzack 1996, 2001; Pienemann 1998; Pienemann & Håkansson 1999; Håkansson, Pienemann & Sayehli 2002) have claimed that learners, irrespective of their first language (L1), take the same developmental route in the acquisition of syntax of a foreign or second language (L2).
    [Show full text]
  • WORD ORDER and W O R D ORDER Chatjge
    Linguistics WORD ORDER AND WORD ORDER CHAtjGE The University of Texas Press Austin 1975 REVIEWED BY JAMES M. DUNN Princeton Unlversi ty This is a collection of twelve of the thirteen papers pre- sented at the Conference on Word Order and dord Order Change that was held at tne University of California, Santa Barbara, on January 26 - 27, 1974. The first eight deal with the diachk'onic aspect of word order, while the other four represent a synchronic treatment of the subject. In the preface the editor acknowledges the influence of Joseph Greenberg on these proceedings. Bis 1961 paper, Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements' , is seen as ' the starting point* for mos't of the papers in this volume. The papers in this collection appeal to a great diversity of interests r sign language, languages of the Niger-Congo group, Chinese, Indo-European, drift, discourse grammar, rnetatheory, the evaluation me-tric, and, of course, language typology. Obviously, their common purpose is to move toward a clearer ex- planation of the causal relationships between the surface con- stituents of a sentence both synch~onicdllyand diachronically. 54 But many of the papers actually share more than the commom denom- inator of interest in word order. At several points where other mutual interests overlap, the discussions assume the nature of a dialog (or, more often, a debate), and the reader finds transi- tion from paper to paper relatively smooth. I shall withhold further comment on the merits of this book as a whole until the conclusion of this review.
    [Show full text]
  • Sentence Structure: Subject – Verb – Object (SVO)
    Sentence structure: Subject – Verb – Object (SVO) Structuring sentences effectively is a key Verb feature of successful academic writing. If a supported sentence is easy to read, the meaning of your Object writing – the point you are trying to make or the cause of poor people. your argument – will be much clearer. In addition, structuring sentences properly will ‘Strongly’ is an adverb, qualifying the verb allow you to write more precisely. (‘supported’), while ‘in the nineteenth century’ is a prepositional phrase which is also Structuring sentences effectively will give functioning as an adverb. your writing greater clarity and precision. Here’s another example: Writing clearly and precisely is vital if you are to get the highest marks for your work. It has been argued that social media forms Academic work is in part assessed on its ability an essential element of an effective to communicate ideas, information and marketing campaign (Smith, 2018). interpretations in a lucid (i.e. clear) and mature (i.e. confident) way. Subject It In this guide, we are going to look at a basic Verb arrangement of words in a sentence: SVO. If has been argued you have this word order in mind when writing, it will help you to communicate your ideas The verb is followed by ‘that’. In sentences like more easily. What follows will therefore be this one, ‘that’ acts as a conjunction, particularly useful if you find academic writing introducing a subordinate clause (see our more challenging. You might find it useful to guide, ‘Sentences, clauses and phrases’). This use this guide with the related one on clause consists of everything that comes after ‘Sentences, clauses and phrases’.
    [Show full text]
  • Automatic Evaluation of Syntactic Learners in Typologically-Different
    Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Cognitive Systems Research 9 (2008) 198–213 www.elsevier.com/locate/cogsys Automatic evaluation of syntactic learners in typologically-different languages Action editor: Gregg Oden Franklin Chang a,*, Elena Lieven b, Michael Tomasello b a Cognitive Language Information Processing Open Laboratory, NTT Communication Sciences Laboratories, NTT Corp., 2-4 Hikari-dai, Seika-cho, Souraku-gun, 6190237 Kyoto, Japan b Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Received 7 June 2007; received in revised form 12 September 2007; accepted 6 October 2007 Available online 1 November 2007 Abstract Human syntax acquisition involves a system that can learn constraints on possible word sequences in typologically-different human languages. Evaluation of computational syntax acquisition systems typically involves theory-specific or language-specific assumptions that make it difficult to compare results in multiple languages. To address this problem, a bag-of-words incremental generation (BIG) task with an automatic sentence prediction accuracy (SPA) evaluation measure was developed. The BIG–SPA task was used to test several learners that incorporated n-gram statistics which are commonly found in statistical approaches to syntax acquisition. In addition, a novel Adjacency–Prominence learner, that was based on psycholinguistic work in sentence production and syntax acqui- sition, was also tested and it was found that this learner yielded the best results in this task on these languages. In general, the BIG–SPA task is argued to be a useful platform for comparing explicit theories of syntax acquisition in multiple languages. Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
    [Show full text]
  • Information to Users
    INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct prim, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. University Microfilms International A Bell & Howeil Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor Ml 48106-1346 USA 313 761-4700 800 521-0600 Order Number 0105209 Topics on a categorlal theory of Chinese syntax Sheu, Ying-yu, Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • ٧٠٩ Morphological Typology
    جامعة واسط العـــــــــــــــدد السابع والثﻻثون مجلــــــــة كليــــــــة التربيــــــة الجزء اﻷول / تشرين الثاني / 2019 Morphological Typology: A Comparative Study of Some Selected Languages Bushra Farhood Khudheyier AlA'amiri Prof. Dr. Abdulkareem Fadhil Jameel, Ph.D. Department of English, College of Education/ Ibn Rushud for Humanities Baghdad University, Baghdad, Iraq Abstract Morphology is a main part of English linguistics which deals with forms of words. Morphological typology organizes languages on the basis of these word forms. This organization of languages depends on structural features to mould morphological, patterns, typologising languages, assigning them to analytic, or synthetic types on the base of words segmentability and invariance, or measuring the number of morphemes per word. Morphological typology studies the universals in languages, the differences and similarities between languages in the structural patterns found in different languages, which occur within a restricted range. This paper aims at distinguishing the various types of several universal languages and comparing them with English. The comparison of languages are set according to the number of morphemes, the degree of being analytic ,or synthetic languages by given examples of each type. Accordingly, it is hypothesed that languages are either to be analytic, or synthetic according to the syntactic and morphological form of morphemes and their meaning relation. The analytical procedures consist of expressing the morphological types with some selected examples, then making the comparison between each type and English. The conclusions reached at to the point of the existence of similarity between these morphological types . English is Analytic , but it has some synythetic aspects, so it validated the first hypothesis and not entirely refuted the second one.
    [Show full text]
  • Morphosyntactic Development of Bangla-Speaking Preschool Children
    1 Morphosyntactic development of Bangla-speaking preschool children Morphosyntactic development of Bangla-speaking preschool children Asifa Sultana BRAC University, Bangladesh Stephanie Stokes and Thomas Klee The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Paul Fletcher University College Cork, Ireland Abstract This study examines the morphosyntactic development, specifically verb morphology, of typically-developing Bangla-speaking children between the ages of two and four. Three verb forms were studied: the Present Simple, the Present Progressive, and the Past Progressive. The study was motivated by the observations that reliable language-specific developmental information is not available in Bangla (which affects research in the areas of speech and language therapy and computational linguistics) and that properties of these verb forms render them suitable for exploring how language typology contributes to the learnability of verb morphology in emerging child language. Children’s performance on these forms was assessed through form-specific language elicitation tasks and spontaneous language samples. Three stages of development of verb morphology were identified by consideration of accuracy of production and error types. 2 Morphosyntactic development of Bangla-speaking preschool children Keywords Language acquisition, language typology, verb morphology, Bengali, Bangla Introduction Typological characteristics of languages have often been found to regulate the patterns of language development in children. Crosslinguistic investigations have revealed that, depending on the morphological character of the language investigated, young typically- developing (TD) children’s productions of verbal inflections is characterised by omission of obligatory tense markers on verbs, failure to mark agreement correctly on verbs, or substitution of incorrect verb forms for target verb forms (e.g. Leonard, Caselli, & Devescovi, 2002; Wexler, 1994).
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory
    An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory Hilda Koopman Dominique Sportiche Edward Stabler 1 Morphology: Starting with words 1 2 Syntactic analysis introduced 37 3 Clauses 87 4 Many other phrases: first glance 101 5 X-bar theory and a first glimpse of discontinuities 121 6 The model of syntax 141 7 Binding and the hierarchical nature of phrase structure 163 8 Apparent violations of Locality of Selection 187 9 Raising and Control 203 10 Summary and review 223 iii 1 Morphology: Starting with words Our informal characterization defined syntax as the set of rules or princi- ples that govern how words are put together to form phrases, well formed sequences of words. Almost all of the words in it have some common sense meaning independent of the study of language. We more or less understand what a rule or principle is. A rule or principle describes a regularity in what happens. (For example: “if the temperature drops suddenly, water vapor will condense”). This notion of rule that we will be interested in should be distinguished from the notion of a rule that is an instruction or a statement about what should happen, such as “If the light is green, do not cross the street.” As linguists, our primary interest is not in how anyone says you should talk. Rather, we are interested in how people really talk. In common usage, “word” refers to some kind of linguistic unit. We have a rough, common sense idea of what a word is, but it is surprisingly difficult to characterize this precisely.
    [Show full text]
  • A Semantic Study of the Preposition “På” in Norwegian
    Life of på A semantic study of the preposition “på” in Norwegian Vilde Reichelt MA thesis in Linguistics LING4190 Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies University of Oslo November 2018 II Life of på A semantic study of the preposition “på” in Norwegian III © Vilde Reichelt 2017/18 Life of på Vilde Reichelt http://www.duo.uio.no/ Print: Reprosentralen, University of Oslo IV Abstract In this thesis I examine the lexical semantics of the Norwegian word på (eng. on) using a written translation corpus from Norwegian to English. My empirical data was collected from the written corpus OMC and an excerpt of the novel Sophie’s World in The English- Norwegian Parallel Corpus. The analysis comprised of two substudies. To test for my hypotheses, I studied noun phrases of the type ‘fur of the rabbit’ in translation from Norwegian, and the Norwegian prepositions av ‘of’, i ‘in’ and til ‘to’ in relation to på and the English translation of constructions that originally have på ‘on’ in Norwegian. The other substudy consists of both particle verbs of the type ‘believe in’ and verbs with preposition phrases ‘was on her way’. I explored nominalization of verbs and whether it give rise to a requirement for på, and what patterns there are for the semantic selection of prepositional elements. Occasionally the lexeme på functions as a complement to the verb, making it more specific, or else it appears in particle verbs as a grammatical function. Focusing on translation data from both Norwegian and English, the thesis investigates the different combinations of på and of, and the interchangeability within the Norwegian prepositions.
    [Show full text]