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The relationship between linguistic structure and the structure of social interaction has become the focus of a growing body of research (Duranti and Ochs 1979; Fox 1987; Ford 1993; Ono and Thompson to appear; Ochs, Schegloff, and Thompson in press, to name a few).l This research has been facilitated by the careful work of conversation analysts in defining the sorts of actions accomplished in human interaction and the recurrent shapes which those actions take (for reviews see Levinson 1983; Heritage 1984; Schiffrin 1988; recent collections include Atkinson and Heritage 1984; Button and Ixe 1987; Pomerantz 1993). The present study is a contribution to that research pro$am. We consider grammar in interaction from a cross-linguistic perspective, comparing the use of causal connectors in the management of disagreement in two languages which are distinct in their basic sentence structure: English, with SVO word order and Japanese, with SOV. Given the fundamental nature of many of the findings coming out of conversation analysis (CA), it is difficult to imagine a community of interactants that would not need to accomplish similar conversational tasks. Thus, it is likely that every linguistic ommunity has a set of regular practices for achieving turn-transfer (Sacks et al. 1974), for indicating attention and readiness for continuation (Schegloff 1982), for initiating and completing repair (Schegloff et al 7977; Fox, Hayashi and Jasperson 1993), and for agreeing or disagreeing (Pomerantz 1984a; Levinson 1983: 332-339; Sacks 1987). What is not yet understood is to what degree there exist similar strategies for performing these functions in different languages. Are there universal needs and constraints which, by force of the work to be done in interaction, have comparable realizations in any linguistic community regardless of typological and cultural differences? CA, of the ethnomethodological variety, has been criticized as too heavily English-based, and therefore, too closely tied to culture-specific interactional patterns to be a valid source for cross-linguistic and crclss-cultural generalizations (Gumperz

SOV languages are said to have less rigid word order than SVO languages because they allow scrambling. This study attempts to demonstrate that the 'freedom' of SOV languages is also expre ...

This paper shows that some Japanese non-fiction writers are using various structural characteristics of spoken discourse in their writing. Their written discourse includes non-canonical word order and long sentences that are produced by combining a series of clauses. Their sentences may lack case or topic marking particles, but they may contain clause-final particles. Their discourse looks like it may have gone through a dynamic, on-going formation process because it includes reformulation and changes in the structure in midstream. It is proposed that writers who adopt such an approach are deliberately blurring the boundary between speech and writing for multiple reasons. They may be exhibiting their creativity and innovation as well as their anti-establishment ideology. Vernacular style writing may also be an attempt to engage, involve, and connect with their readers. Further, they may be reflecting as well as expressing contemporary society in which orality is viewed favorably and as a result, writing in general has become increasingly more casual than before. The phenomenon discussed in this paper may be viewed as a reflection of erosions and shifting of traditional genres.

It is controversial whether a classifier (C) or measure word (M) in Chinese forms a constituent first with Num (numeral) or N in a [Num C/M N] phrase. This paper reviews evidence for the [Num C/M] constituency from modern Chinese and then provides evidence from historical and typological perspectives. Under the [Num C/M] constituency, not only the C/M word orders attested in Chinese history, but also all those attested elsewhere, can be straightforwardly accounted for by the head parameter, while such simplicity is unattainable under the [C/M N] constituency. In addition, fresh evidence is obtained from the internal word order within a complex numeral; e.g. san-shi ‘30’ is base-final, with n (3) and base (10) entering into a multiplicative function, 3×10. The same multiplicative function exists between Num and C/M, e.g. san-duo hua ‘3 C flower’ = 3×1 flower, and san-da hua ‘3 dozen flower’ = 3×12 flower. C/M and bases are thus unified as multiplicands, an insight further supported by the consistent correlation between the base-final order and the C/M-final order throughout the history of Chinese. A closer examination of the 103 classifier languages in Greenberg (1990[1978]) further reveals that, among the 52 languages whose numeral systems and C/M word orders can be obtained, the synchronization between the numeral base and C/M is nearly universal. The base-C/M unification as multiplicands and base-C/M synchronization in word order strongly suggest that Num and C/M form a single constituent.

抽象 本文檢視漢語母語者、西班牙語母語者漢語初級及中高級學習者在理解具有不同生命性對比的名詞組之下的漢語主動賓句以及主題句時所採用的模式。結果發現在主動賓句方面，三組均將第一個名詞組當成施事、第二個名詞組當成受事（即 NVN 捷思法），而名詞生命性的對比影響不大。至於主題句的理解，漢語母語人士及中高級的學習者隨機猜測其中一個名詞組作為施事，而初級的學習者則多運用 NVN 捷思法處理之。這三組漢語使用者的理解模式，符應了語法優先假說：運用語法結構進行語句理解，雖然名詞組生命性的對比影響了主題句的理解，但其影響力未大過語法結構。

This cross-linguistic study focuses on ways in which conversationalists speak beyond a point of possible turn completion in conversation, specifically on turn extensions which are grammatically dependent, backward-looking and extend the prior action. It argues that further distinctions can be made in terms of whether the extension is prosodically integrated with the prior unit, its host, (Non-add-on) or not, and in terms of whether it repairs some part of the host (Replacement) or not. Added-on, non-repairing extensions are further distinguished in terms of whether they are grammatically fitted to the end of the host (Glue-ons) or not (Insertables). A preliminary survey of TCU continuation in English, German and Japanese conversation reveals a number of significant differences with respect to frequency and range of extension type. English is at one extreme in preferring Glue-ons over Non-Add-ons and Insertables, whereas Japanese is at the other extreme in preferring Non-add-ons and Insertables over Glue-ons. German occupies an intermediary position but is on the whole more like Japanese. The preference for Glue-ons vs. Insertables appears to reflect a language's tendency towards syntactic left- vs. right headedness. In conclusion the study argues for a classification of 'increment' types which goes beyond the English-based Glue-on, attributes a central role to prosodic delivery and adopts a usage-based understanding of word order. Keywords: Increment; Turn-constructional unit (TCU); Post-possible completion; Free constituent; Transition relevance place (TRP); Same-turn self-repair; Right dislocation; German sentence brace; Japanese predicate finality; Zero anaphora; Syntactic headedness.

Sin1 先 as a function word in contemporary Cantonese encodes a number of grammatical and pragmatic meanings. As its most prominent feature in syntax, it predominantly occurs in the postverbal position while indicating the meaning of ‘first’. This paper explores the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ in Cantonese. We first examine the word order typology on the element for ‘first’ in the languages and dialects of southern coastal China. In this linguistic area, the postverbal elements for ‘first’ in Chinese dialects are contact-induced by Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien languages; whereas sin1 先 ‘first’ in the mainstream Cantonese shows a stronger tendency to be placed in the postverbal position than its counterparts in other Chinese dialects. We then discuss the word order and semantic changes of sin1 先 from 1820s to 1960s based on Cantonese historical materials. Besides the pressure of language contact, the formation of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ has been further triggered by the semantic motivation to formally differentiate the ‘precedent-subsequent’ polysemy within sin1 先 itself. In short, the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ in Cantonese has been a two-stage process, dually driven by external and internal causes, respectively.

Corresponding to the Ba construction (S Ba-OVC) in Mandarin, Cantonese prefers a strong SVCO word order, and the Shaoxing dialect adopts an SOVC variation. This paper makes a detailed cross-linguistic study on the structure and semantic interpretations of disposal NPs and highlights the role of the disposal NPs in the formation of disposal construction in the above three dialects. It suggests that the word order variations in disposal constructions among the Mandarin, Cantonese, and Shaoxing dialects result from the different options being adopted to make the object NPs conform to the so called definiteness constraint of a disposal NP, namely, definite, specific, or generic.

Recent research has pointed out that certain grammaticalization phenomena originate in substandard varieties and/or colloquial speech styles. However, the potential of insights to be gained from relating grammaticalization and sociolinguistics still remains largely unexplored. The present paper is an attempt at such an approach, discussing grammaticalization processes in contemporary German youth language (Jugendsprache). On a word formation level, the paper deals with nominal and verbal formatives, denominal conversions, and the use of verb stems as lexical morphemes. Syntactic phenomena include the development of the non-inflected negative null and a new intensifier word order pattern. After highlighting the relevant grammaticalization mechanisms for each of these patterns, the paper discusses the relation between slang creation and grammaticalization, emphasizing the role of expressivity as a discourse-pragmatic motivation for linguistic innovations. Finally, the paper draws attention to connections between youth specific language varieties and language change, and tries to account for the fact that some grammaticalization processes in substandard varieties never reach their potential end point.

This squib documents exceptions to the main strategy of expressing sentential negation in Russian Sign Language (RSL). The postverbal sentential negation particle in RSL inverts the basic SVO order characteristic of the language turning it into SOV (Pasalskaya 2018a). We show that this reversal requirement under negation is not absolute and does not apply to prosodically heavy object NPs. The resulting picture accords well with the view of RSL word order laid out by Kimmelman (2012) and supports a model of grammar where syntactic computation has access to phonological information (Kremers 2014; Bruening 2019).

This paper discusses possible attrition of verb second (V2) word order in Norwegian heritage language by investigating a corpus of spontaneous speech produced by 50 2nd–4th generation heritage speakers in North America. The study confirms previous findings that V2 word order is generally stable in heritage situations, but nevertheless finds approximately 10% V2 violations. The cases of non-V2 word order are argued to be due to lack of activation of the heritage language grammar, making it vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence from the speakers’ dominant language. This crosslinguistic influence does not simply replace V2 by non-V2, but is argued to operate more indirectly, affecting (a) the distribution of contexts for V2 word order, and (b) introducing two new distinctions into the heritage language, one (indirectly) based on a similar distinction in the dominant language (a difference between adverbs and negation with respect to verb movement), the other based on frequency of initial elements triggering V2 in non-subject-initial declaratives. Together, these findings also indicate that crosslinguistic influence affects different contexts of V2 differently, providing support for analyses that treat V2 word order as the result of many smaller rules.

Word-order asymmetry between source language and target language has been recognized as a major obstacle in interpreting. Regarding whether the original word order is changed in target production, two strategies for asymmetrical structures are identified: chunking and reordering. This study primarily examined the cognitive mechanism involved in applying these two strategies during English to Chinese sight translation. The cognitive load associated with chunking and reordering was measured by eye movement and the resulting data were analysed. A group of interpreting trainees sight-translated asymmetrical sentences in two contexts: sentence and text. Their eye-movement measures, including total dwell time, fixation count and rereading rate, were recorded. The results demonstrate that chunking was the primary strategy used to render word-order asymmetry in both task conditions. A greater cognitive load was found in the reordered sentences. More contextual information did not contribute to an execution of the strategies that required less effort. This research is one of the first attempts to explore the cognitive process associated with interpreting strategies for word-order asymmetry. It provides a new perspective with which to deepen our understanding of the cognitive mechanism underlying the use of a strategy.

This article investigates word order changes in negated periphrastic constructions in the history of Basque. A number of linguistic variables are argued to correlate with these changes: the negative particle ez is increasingly focalized in main clauses, the innovative pattern negative particle – auxiliary verb – main verb allows for more syntactic flexibility than the conservative one, and the word order changes do not progress at equal rates in all clause subtypes. Genre issues are also considered, including the hypothesis that the loss of the conservative order main verb – negative particle – auxiliary verb of main clauses occurs first in texts close to oral language. Moreover, it is argued that eastern dialects are more innovative than western dialects and that efforts towards standardization of the language have slowed down this case of word order change.

This paper explores the impact of word order asymmetry between source language and target language on cognitive load during Chinese–English sight translation. Twenty-five MA students of translation from a Hong Kong university were asked to sight translate sentences with different degrees of between-language structural asymmetry from Chinese into English, in both single-sentence and discourse context conditions. Their eye movements were recorded to examine cognitive load during sight translation. The results show: (1) There was a significant effect of word order asymmetry on overall cognitive load as indicated by the considerably longer dwell times and more frequent fixations for the asymmetric sentences, but it was only during the later-processing stage that structural asymmetry exerted a strong influence on local processing in terms of first fixation duration and regression path duration; (2) the role of context in offsetting the asymmetry effect was very limited; and (3) although reordering may place a greater burden on working memory, most participants preferred reordering over segmentation to cope with the asymmetric structures. The empirical data point to the need to consider word order asymmetry as a variable in theoretical accounts of the interpreting process, especially for interpreting between languages that are structurally very different.

In many languages, conjunctive adjuncts (e.g. however, therefore) are syntactically mobile. Several corpus-based contrastive studies have shown that languages differ in the positions that they tend to prefer for conjunctive adjuncts. However, the studies available have formulated general cross-linguistic differences in placement for languages as wholes, without considering the possibility that such contrasts may be influenced by register. The objective of this paper is to investigate and compare the placement patterns of English and French conjunctive adjuncts of contrast in two written registers (viz. editorials and research articles) in order to measure the impact of register variation on the differences between these two languages. The results suggest that, although register variation plays a significant role on placement within each language system, language is a better predictor of placement than register, since cross-linguistic differences in placement between English and French are stable across communicative situations. In a second stage, the results obtained in the comparable corpus study are complemented with the analysis of translation data, with a view to assessing the translators’ degree of awareness of the inherent word order preferences of the target language. The study is grounded in the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics and relies on the notions of Theme and Rheme to describe conjunctive adjunct placement.

The present study explores the viewpointing function of word order inversion and associated stylistic strategies across languages, comparing English-Chinese multiple parallel texts as illustration. In particular, I investigate whether the cognitive strategy of inverting the word order to create a subjective construal is similar in both languages, to what extent, and if the languages differ, what systematic contingency plans there are. To answer the question, I examined selected excerpts with inversion written in English and their multiple translations in Mandarin Chinese, to see how the subjective construals in the English originals are rendered. I find that in addition to inversion, the English samples exhibit a zoom-in effect through use of punctuation, the participial clause, and an ad hoc schema of [some] – [X] with the middle three instantiations sharing an identical phonological schema. The identical phonological schema and the shared narrative viewpoint makes the three instantiations iconic. In comparison, the Chinese renditions employ the presentative construction and a focus particle to approximate the character-based viewpoint, but the zoom-in effect is not present in any of the Chinese versions. Another important difference is the generally longer iconic part in the Chinese versions, due to the productivity of four-character templates at the phonological pole in Mandarin Chinese.

Greenberg (1990a: 292) suggests that classifiers (clf) and numeral bases tend to harmonize in word order, i.e. a numeral (Num) with a base-final [n base] order appears in a clf-final [Num clf] order, e.g. in Mandarin Chinese, san1-bai3 (three hundred) ‘300’ and san1 zhi1 gou3 (three clf animal dog) ‘three dogs’, and a base-initial [base n] Num appears in a clf-initial [clf Num] order, e.g. in Kilivila (Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic), akatu-tolu (hundred three) ‘300’ and na-tolu yena (clf animal-three fish) ‘three fish’. In non-classifier languages, base and noun (N) tend to harmonize in word order. We propose that harmonization between clf and N should also obtain. A detailed statistical analysis of a geographically and phylogenetically weighted set of 400 languages shows that the harmonization of word order between numeral bases, classifiers, and nouns is statistically highly significant, as only 8.25% (33/400) of the languages display violations, which are mostly located at the meeting points between head-final and head-initial languages, indicating that language contact is the main factor in the violations to the probabilistic universals.

Circumpositions in Afrikaans present several puzzles: (i) they always encode spatial paths, but spatial paths can also be encoded by prepositional phrases; (ii) they can be doubling or non-doubling, and (iii) they exhibit disharmonic word order of the kind that appears to violate the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC). In this paper, I argue that circumpositions offer support for the existence of a directional head [dir] in the fine structure of the Afrikaans verbal domain, and that this head is lexicalised by adpositional material in circumpositional expressions. I show that Afrikaans grammar distinguishes Route-paths from Goal-/Source-paths, and argue that whereas [dir] selects a [pathP] in the structure underlying Goal-/Source-paths (circumpositional expressions), Route-paths (prepositional expressions) are ‘bare’ [pathP] structures. I argue that since circumpositions identify structural components in different Spellout Domains, double-insertion of adposition-like material is required to exhaustively lexicalise the structure, and the disharmonic word order is understood as a direct consequence of the fact that [dir] is located in Afrikaans’ head-final verbal, which addresses the concern arising around FOFC. Finally, given that the adpositions in circumpositional expressions are shown to occupy structural positions that are distinct from that of de-adpositional V-particles, the paper also addresses the structural relation between circumpositions and particle verbs in which adposition-like material lexicalises a resultative [res] node in the verbal domain.

It has been claimed that Ngkolmpu (Yam, Papuan) displays discontinuous noun phrases (Donohue 2011). However, careful textual analysis of a corpus of naturalistic language reveals that, in practice, this is highly restricted. The data shows two relatively rare constructions which give rise to limited discontinuous structures. The first is an afterthought construction involving a full co-referential nominal constituent adjacent to the clause. This co-referential constituent is both syntactically and phonetically distinct from the main utterance. The other involves a topic marking demonstrative encliticised to verbs at the right edge of the clause interacting with general information-structural conditions on word order. This is the only true discontinuity found in the corpus and is restricted to demonstratives only. This paper clarifies a claim in the literature about the empirical facts of a specific language, Ngkolmpu, and adds a nuanced discussion of nominal discontinuity in a language of New Guinea.

Cross-linguistically, there are different patterns for denominal verb formation and languages show preferences for certain patterns (cf. McIntyre, 2015). In this paper, I focus on denominal verb formation in English and Modern Greek. The analyzed data come from the TenTen corpora (Sketch Engine, Kilgariff et al., 2014). The first aim is to quantify the use of the patterns of denominal verb formations in both languages. The results of the analysis corroborate the findings of previous analyses, such as the strong preference for conversion for denominal verb formation in English and for suffixation in Modern Greek. However, the present paper aims to go a step further. The second aim is to discuss why English and Modern Greek show these preferences. I propose that the preferences can be explained if we correlate the parameters of inflectional marking, word order/configurationality, system of lexical category assignment and boundary permeability.

When acquiring Spanish object pronouns (OP), English-speaking second language (L2) learners must learn the variety of forms available, word order, and case distinctions. The acquisition of case distinctions in particular is an aspect that has not been thoroughly investigated. Zyzik (2006) showed, through production tasks, that English-speaking L2 Spanish learners overgeneralize the dative form to accusative contexts when the referent is animate. This study investigates how L2 learners use animacy (human, animal, and inanimate object) instead of case marking as cues to interpret and produce L2 Spanish object pronouns. Data from an interpretation task and a fill-in-the-blank production task were collected from 121 intermediate to advanced levels of Spanish learners. Results from linear mixed effects models reveal that learners show effects of the influence of animacy on object pronoun distinction in comprehension as well as production. A key new finding is that learners use the dative form with human referents, reserving accusative forms for animals and inanimate referents. These results provide evidence that animacy cues strongly influence L2 Spanish learners in the formation of their OP paradigm, especially at lower-proficiency levels. As proficiency increases, L2 learners begin to rely on case cues to distinguish Spanish OPs.

This study examines the different learning outcomes of two computer-based cognitive tutors using two approaches to instructing German declension: an additive, bottom-up approach, which focuses on a stepwise introduction of each case, and a concept-based, top-down approach, which focuses on developing students’ conceptual understanding of the functions related to each case form and the case marking system as a whole. The results indicate that both groups learned, but what and how they learned differed depending on the method of instruction. The additive group showed general gains in production and a slight increase in their ability to correctly interpret object-first sentences. The concept-based group showed larger gains, but in fewer areas. Specifically, the production of adjective endings increased, although there were no differences in determiner production or accuracy. The concept-based group also had a larger gain in their ability to interpret non-SVO word order sentences. This study shows how concept-based approaches to grammar can outperform additive ones, and that the development of these concepts can prepare students for future learning.

This paper investigates the licensing condition of the [Num(eral)-Cl(assifier)-Mod(ifier)-de-N(oun)] / [Mod-de-Num-Cl‑N] variation in Mandarin Chinese. It is observed that this variation represents a complex interface phenomenon in the nominal domain, which is subject to the semantic condition concerning the i(ndividual)-level/​s(tage)-level nature of the modifier contained on the one hand, and the discourse-related condition concerning contrastive topic (ct) on the other. Based on this, at the syntax-semantics interface level, this paper proposes a division of the syntactic domain of adnominal modification to account for the discrepancy between i‑level and s‑level modifiers in terms of their capability in forming [Mod-de-Num-Cl‑N] in the neutral context. In the meanwhile, at the syntax-discourse interface level, in light of the interface-induced analysis pursued by Neeleman & Van de Koot (2008) and Horvath (2010), it is claimed that the word order of [Mod-de-Num-Cl‑N] could be adopted as a linguistic device to encode ct within the nominal domain in Mandarin Chinese, in which case the ordering of [Mod-de-Num-Cl‑N] is licensed for the purpose of establishing a transparent mapping between syntactic configuration and information structure.

This study investigates clause constructions in Auslan. It looks at the alignment of constituent semantic role with constituent position and order in clauses, changes in the morphology of signs according to position and/or role, and the interpretation of omitted arguments. The aim is to determine if there are grammatical relations in Auslan. The most frequent constituent order parallels English, thus Auslan might be said to also instantiate a basic SVO word order. However, every possible constituent order pattern is also attested without there being other coding and behavioural properties associated with grammatical relations that could explain this flexibility. I conclude that constituent order in Auslan is the result of the interaction of pragmatic and semantic factors, visual representation, and language contact with English, rather than autochthonous grammatical relations. Auslan grammar draws on both so-called gestural and so-called linguistic resources at the clause level, not just at the word (sign) level.

Pyu, an extinct Sino-Tibetan language once spoken in what is now Upper Burma, remains barely explored beyond the level of transliterating texts and the identification of individual words. Knowledge of Pyu grammar has advanced little over the past century. This article (1) presents a methodology for discovering the syntax of Pyu, (2) identifies five word classes and their combinatorial properties, (3) lists all known grammatical morphemes with notes on usage, (4) formulates rules of word order, and (5) demonstrates how all of the above can elucidate the meaning of a previously undeciphered Pyu inscription. Over 200 examples are provided.

Behaghel’s claim that verb finality in German dependent clauses (DCs) reflects Latin influence (1892, 1932) has been revived by Chirita (1997, 2003). According to Chirita, DC word order remains variable up to Early New High German, while in Latin, verb-finality is more frequent in DCs than main clauses (MCs); hence, she claims, German verb finality reflects Latin influence. This papers shows that the arguments for Latin influence are problematic and that the Modern German word order difference between MCs and DCs can be explained as the ultimate outcome of developments that started in early North and West Germanic. In the conclusion I briefly discuss similar developments in Western Romance and their implications for European contact linguistics.

Bantu languages employ a combination of simple and compound verb forms to encode tense-aspect-mood distinctions. Compound constructions typically involve an auxiliary form followed by an inflected main verb. However, the six East African Bantu languages under examination in this paper exhibit a word order in which the auxiliary appears after the verb. This order is typologically unusual for languages with SVO word order and comparatively unusual in the context of the Bantu languages. This paper presents a synchronic description of this word order and develops an account of its possible origins. It is proposed that the verb-auxiliary order originated from a verb-fronting construction which was used historically to convey predication focus. The account further corroborates the claim that the progressive aspect is an inherently focal category in Bantu and, from a wider perspective, shows the interplay between the encoding of information structure and tense-aspect information.

This paper reports on an experimental investigation of what second language (L2) learners and heritage speakers of Russian know about the relationship between word order and information structure in Russian. The participants completed a bimodal acceptability judgment task, rating the acceptability of SVO and OVS word orders in narrow-focus contexts, under neutral prosody. Heritage speakers behaved like the control group of baseline speakers, preferring SVO order in answer to object questions, and OVS order in answer to subject questions. In contrast, L2 learners preferred SVO order regardless of the context. While the heritage speaker group was more proficient than the L2 group, proficiency alone cannot account for differences in performance: specifically, with regard to acceptance of OVS order for subject narrow focus, heritage speakers improved with proficiency, but L2 learners did not. It is proposed that heritage speakers have an advantage in this domain due to early age of acquisition (cf.Montrul, 2008). This finding is consistent with prior literature on narrow focus with heritage speakers of other languages, and suggests that this phenomenon is not particularly vulnerable in heritage languages.

In Papiamento-Dutch bilingual speech, the nominal construction is a potential ‘conflict site’ if there is an adjective from one language and a noun from the other. Adjective position is pre-nominal in Dutch (cf. rode wijn ‘red wine’) but post-nominal in Papiamento (cf. biña kòrá ‘wine red’). We test predictions concerning the mechanisms underpinning word order in noun-adjective switches derived from three accounts: (i) the adjective determines word order (Cantone & MacSwan, 2009), (ii) the matrix language determines word order (Myers-Scotton, 1993, 2002), and (iii) either order is possible (Di Sciullo, 2014). An analysis of spontaneous Papiamento-Dutch code-switching production (Parafita Couto & Gullberg, 2017) could not distinguish between these predictions. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to measure online comprehension of code-switched utterances. We discuss how our results inform the three theoretical accounts and we relate them to syntactic coactivation and the production-comprehension link.

We sought to describe the strategies used by 2L1 and L2 Basque-French bilingual children and monolingual Basque children to express subject-agent function in a free elicitation context in Basque. Based on a three-year longitudinal study, the analysis focused on transitive constructions requiring a subject-agent noun marked for ergative case. The results showed that the children mastered production of the ergative case marker at different ages, and used different psycholinguistic strategies to refer to the subject-agent. The majority of the bilingual children favoured topological strategy (i.e., marking of the subject-agent in the first position through subject-verb-object word order). However, the children with L1 Basque seemed to engage more in morphological strategy, through the use of the nominal ergative suffix. These data allowed us to discuss variations in the performance of bilingual children in light of the cue cost and cue validity concepts elaborated by the Competition Model applied to language production.

In every-day language use, two or more structurally unrelated constructions may occasionally give rise to strings that look very similar on the surface. As a result of this superficial resemblance, a subset of instances of one of these constructions may deviate in the probabilistic preference for either of several possible formal variants. This effect is called ‘constructional contamination’, and was introduced inPijpops & Van de Velde (2016). Constructional contamination bears testimony to the hypothesis that language users do not always execute a full parse of the utterances they interpret, but instead often rely on ‘shallow parsing’ and the storage of large, unanalyzed chunks of language in memory, as proposed inFerreira, Bailey, & Ferraro (2002),Ferreira & Patson (2007), andDąbrowska (2014).Pijpops & Van de Velde (2016)investigated a single case study in depth, namely the Dutch partitive genitive. This case study is reviewed, and three new case studies are added, namely the competition between long and bare infinitives, word order variation in verbal clusters, and preterite formation. We find evidence of constructional contamination in all case studies, albeit in varying degrees. This indicates that constructional contamination is not a particularity of the Dutch partitive genitive but appears to be more wide-spread, affecting both morphology and syntax. Furthermore, we distinguish between two forms of constructional contamination, viz. first degree and second degree contamination, with first degree contamination producing greater effects than second degree contamination.

Previous research on heritage speaker (HS) bilingualism suggests, not without controversy, that certain properties of HSs’ grammars, mainly discursive properties, can result in divergent grammatical outcomes in adulthood be it as a result of incomplete acquisition or attrition. This study contributes to this line of research by examining whether HSs’ word order configurations with Spanish double object constructions reflect compliance with the pragmatic (End-Focus Principle) and syntactic related factors (End-Weight Principle) that regulate word order in Spanish. To this end, two groups of HSs with different proficiency levels in Spanish as well as a bilingual and a monolingual control group, all of Mexican origin, completed an acceptability judgment task. HSs’ performance on this task shows that their knowledge of the discursive nuances associated with constituent order remains as robust as their knowledge of the syntactic factors associated with this phenomenon. Our findings therefore suggest that this linguistic domain may not be subject to so-called incomplete acquisition or L1 attrition.

An eye-tracking experiment using the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) shows that in on-line sentence processing in English the argument of an unaccusative verb reactivates late after verb offset. In contrast to previous studies, this VWP experiment establishes the exact time course of this effect, which matches the time course previously found for Dutch, despite differences in word order between the two languages. Furthermore, it uncovers an early reactivation of the argument of unergative verbs that has previously gone unnoticed. Such an effect has previously been observed for Dutch, but not for English. Moreover, the effect seems to occur earlier in English than in Dutch. We suggest that this difference may be due to the more rigid word order of English, which provides the parser with more informative cues.

This is the accepted manuscript version of a book chapter that is under copyright. For re-use of the material in any form the publisher should be contacted. Source at https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.59. This study investigates two word order phenomena in Norwegian heritage language spoken in the US, subject shift (SS) and object shift (OS). SS and OS occur in syntactic environments where (pronominal) subjects and objects may either precede or follow negation. This paper explores to what extent these two phenomena in Heritage Norwegian are affected by the factors frequency and structural similarity/difference. As subjects are frequently shifted, while objects are not, SS is expected to be robust and OS vulnerable. There is generally no structural overlap between English and Norwegian in these cases; thus, cross-linguistic similarity or difference should not play a role, except in one context: questions with auxiliaries or be, in which the two languages allow both orders (is he not/isn’t he ), but have opposite preferences. The results show that OS is somewhat vulnerable, but SS is also affected, in that both proficient and less proficient speakers seem to overuse the word order preferred in English. We thus speculate that all heritage speakers may be affected by cross-linguistic influence in situations with complete structural overlap.

Non-configurationality is a linguistic property associated with free word order, discontinuous constituents, including NPs, and null anaphora of referential arguments. Quantitative metrics, based both on local networks (syntactic trees and word order within sentences) and on global networks (incorporating the relations within a whole treebank into a shared graph), can reveal correlations among these features. Using treebanks we focus on diachronic varieties of Ancient Greek and Latin, in which non-configurationality tapered off over time, leading to the largely configurational nature of the Romance languages and of Modern Greek. A property of global networks (density of their spectra around zero eigenvalues) measuring the regularity in word order is shown to be strengthened from classical to late varieties. Discontinuous NPs are traced by counting the words creating non-projectivity in dependency trees: these drop dramatically in late varieties. Finally, developments in the use of null referential direct objects are gauged by assessing the percentage of third-person personal pronouns among verb objects. All three features turn out to change over time due to the decay of non-configurationality. Evaluation of the strength of their pairwise correlation shows that null direct objects and discontinuous NPs are deeply intertwined.

This paper presents a treebank-based study of the effect the text form (prose vs. verse) has on the course of two grammatical changes in Medieval French: the loss of null subjects and the loss of OV word order. By means of statistical analysis, we demonstrate that naive estimates of the spread of overt subjects and VO orders give the impression that there is a significant difference between the rates of development in prose vs. verse. By contrast, estimates based on an abstract grammar competition model which distinguishes between grammar-ambiguous surface forms (overt personal subjects, null subjects in coordination contexts) and grammar-unambiguous surface forms (overt expletive subjects, null subjects in non-coordination contexts) show prose-verse parallelism, prose having an earlier change onset, in line with traditional intuitions. At a more general level, these results suggest that the product of the interaction of a particular grammar with universal pragmatic laws is constant, which can be observed if the factors responsible for variation in grammatical choices are controlled for.

The status of syntactic resultative constructions has been disputed in the American Sign Language (ASL) literature. These are single sentences such as “Mary hammered the metal flat,” where two predicates share the same object and an event (hammered) causes the affected object (the metal) to change state (flat) as a result. While not all languages permit such constructions, this study shows that (several) alternate multi-sentential analyses can be ruled out. WH-clefts are used to provide a test for independent clausal boundaries, providing additional support that American Sign Language (ASL) permits resultative constructions. We also observe possible word order variations and note common features of the result predicates in these constructions.

This paper aims to describe different patterns of syntactic extensions of turns-at-talk in mundane conversations in Czech. Within interactional linguistics, same-speaker continuations of possibly complete syntactic structures have been described for typologically diverse languages, but have not yet been investigated for Slavic languages. Based on previously established descriptions of various types of extensions (Vorreiter 2003; Couper-Kuhlen & Ono 2007), our initial description shall therefore contribute to the cross-linguistic exploration of this phenomenon. While all previously described forms for continuing a turn-constructional unit seem to exist in Czech, some grammatical features of this language (especially free word order and strong case morphology) may lead to problems in distinguishing specific types of syntactic extensions. Consequently, this type of language allows for critically evaluating the cross-linguistic validity of the different categories and underlines the necessity of analysing syntactic phenomena within their specific action contexts.

In this paper we argue that verb clusters in Dutch varieties are merged and linearized in fully ascending (1-2-3) or fully descending (3-2-1) orders. We argue that verb clusters that deviate from these orders involve non-verbal material: adjectival participles, or nominal infinitives. As a result, our approach does not involve any unmotivated movements that are specific for verb clusters.Support for our analysis comes from (i) the interpretation of verb clusters; (ii) the fact that order variation depends on the types of verbs involved, which can be explained by selectional requirements of the verbs; and (iii) the geographic co-occurrence patterns of various orders. First, the 1-3-2 and 3-1-2 orders are argued to be ascending orders with a non-verbal 3. Indeed these orders occur in grammars that have ascending, rather than descending, verb clusters. Secondly, the 1-3-2 order is argued to be an interrupted V1-V2 cluster with a non-verbal 3. Indeed, this order is most common in the region where non-verbal material can interrupt the verb cluster.Our analysis of word order variation in verb clusters in terms of principles of grammar is further supported by an experiment in which we asked a large number of speakers distributed over the Dutch language area to rank all logically possible orders, including orders that are not common in their own variety of Dutch. The results demonstrate that speakers apply their syntactic knowledge to rank verb cluster orders that they do not use themselves. We argue that this knowledge cannot be due to familiarity with the various orders.

Studies of unaccusativity and word order in Spanish have yielded conflicting results. This study further investigates unaccusativity by testing the ability of the ‘Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy’ (Sorace 2000) to account for word orders with intransitive predicates in Mexican Spanish. The results of an oral production task show significant word order differences between verb categories and locate an unergative/unaccusative cutoff point midway along the hierarchy, situating unaccusativity in Spanish as being similar to Italian but trending in the direction of Dutch or French. Other variables affecting the word order are identified and ranked, including subject heaviness, definiteness, and the location of adverbial phrases. Greater inter-speaker variation at the syntax-discourse interface when compared with the syntax-lexicon interface shows that the Interface Hypothesis has application to native speakers of Spanish. The results of this study are important for current research on unaccusativity and syntactic interfaces.

Several syntactic properties of verbal heads are accounted for through their semantic properties. Verbal features such as agentivity, volitionality, stativity etc. have been proven a useful tool for predicting several aspects of their syntactic behavior such as passivization, auxiliary selection etc. In the context of the empirical turn in current linguistics, the assumption of discrete features is questioned by studies based on corpora or speakers’ intuitions showing that the diagnostics of semantic features involve gradience. These findings are challenging for grammatical theory: are we justified to assume the existence of discrete verb classes or do the established properties indicate scalar dimensions of meaning? Based on two empirical studies – an acceptability study and a corpus study – the present article examines the role ofagentivityin distinguishing verb classes and in predicting the syntactic behavior of verbs in German. Acceptability data show that the diagnostics of agentivity involve gradience, which cannot be reduced to random sources of variation. However, a comparison of scalar vs. categorical models of agentivity based on these diagnostics reveals that the syntactic variation in word order found in written corpus data is best accounted for through a model that assumes a binary division into a ±agentive and a non-agentive verb class.

The present work studies the grammatical properties of Spanish time constructions involving hacer ‘to make’ from an empirical, quantitative perspective with insights from both competence and language use. The results show a big difference between the properties of the so-called clausal and adverbial constructions, something unnoticed until now. Whereas hacer, in the former, has properties not significantly different from other verbs, in the latter, it shows a strong erosion of its verbal and clausal properties like TAM morphology, negation, time adjunction or word order freedom. This contradicts earlier contributions to the topic and argues against those formal proposals positing a synchronic derivational relation between the two constructions.

This paper presents an examination of syntactic constructions that are associated with the mirative interpretation of marking propositional content as being surprising or unexpected to the speaker. I report experimental evidence showing that certain options of marked word order in German are particularly suitable in mirative contexts. Cross-linguistic evidence offers good reasons to assume that mirative marking is also reflected in word order patterns. Having identified word order variation as one option to trigger mirative interpretations of utterances, I discuss the issue of distinguishing between information-structural and mirative effects of marked syntactic configurations.

For many of the sign languages studied to date, different types of agreement markers have been described which express agreement in transitive constructions involving non-inflecting (plain) verbs and sometimes even inflected agreement verbs. Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) belongs to the group of sign languages employing two different agreement markers (agrm-bc/agrm-mf), which will be described in this paper. In an online questionnaire, we focused on two questions: (i) whether both forms of agreement markers are rated as equally acceptable by Deaf ÖGS-signers and hearing native signers, and (ii) whether there is a preferred syntactic position (pre- vs. postverbal) for these markers. Data analysis confirmed that both agreement markers are accepted by ÖGS-signers and that both agreement markers are slightly preferred in preverbal position. Further, possible origins of both agreement markers are discussed.

‘Negative scope’ concerns what it is that is negated in an utterance with a negative morpheme. With English and Japanese conversational data, we show that for an English speaker, calculating negative scope requires that recipients incrementally keep track of all the material in the clause that follows the negative morpheme, which comes early in the clause. In contrast, the negative morpheme comes late in the clause in Japanese; thus it would seem that recipients need to hold in memory all the material in the clause preceding the negative until the negative morpheme is produced. Several features of Japanese grammar, however, suggest that this characterization is not accurate. We argue that prosody, grammar, cognition, processing, and fixedness all interact with the grammar of clause organization to afford quite different real-time processing strategies for calculating the assignment of negative scope in languages with different ‘word order’ norms.

This study investigates effects of selective vulnerability and dominant language transfer in heritage grammar. Mandarin Chinese has a shì…de cleft construction, which, despite its superficial similarities with the it-cleft in English, is subject to additional conditions. Four experimental tasks elicited eighteen adult heritage speakers’ implicit knowledge of the word order and the temporal, telicity and discourse conditions associated with the Chinese cleft. The heritage speakers demonstrated target-like representation of the conditions. Meanwhile, their sensitivity to the telicity and discourse conditions is weaker than that of native speakers in Beijing, suggesting selective vulnerability in the heritage grammar. By comparing the heritage speakers with adult second language learners of Chinese, we concluded that the vulnerability of the heritage grammar in the discourse domain did not result from cross-linguistic influence from English. In different types of Chinese-English bilinguals, the dominant language affects the weaker language in different ways.

Yami relative clauses (RCs) can either precede the head noun, for example,kanakan‘child,’ as inko ni-ma-cita o [ji yákneng] a kanakan‘I saw the child who cannot hold still’, functioning as restrictive RCs ([RC] + a + Head NP), or follow it as inko ni-ma-cita o kanakan a [ji yákneng]‘I saw that child, who cannot hold still’, functioning as nonrestrictive RCs for complementation strategy (Head NP + a + [RC]). The VARBRUL results demonstrate that head final RCs are predominant in Yami, and Yami speakers use them to connect the given referent with the previous discourse to convey given information. The study found that Subject head nouns outnumber other grammatical roles of head NPs, and that Subject head noun with Subject RC construction is produced more than any other RC constructions, which indicates that Yami RCs are used to modify the Subject for topic continuity.

Research has indicated that during sentence processing, French native speakers predominantly rely upon lexico-semantic cues (i.e., animacy) while native speakers of English rely upon syntactic cues (i.e., word order). The present study examined sentence production in L1 French/L2 English and L1 English/L2 French sequential bilinguals. Participants used animate and inanimate entities as sentence subjects while describing motion events represented by static pictures. To test a gradual change in animacy cue weighting in second-language sequential bilinguals with different proficiency levels were included. Sentence production of sequential bilinguals was compared against that of simultaneous bilinguals. The results indicated an overall preference for the use of animate subjects for both languages at all proficiency levels. The effect of animacy was stronger for English L2 than French L2 while it did not differ between languages in simultaneous bilinguals. Evidence for potential change in the animacy-cue weighting was only observed for English L2.