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Nominal expressions in the Bantu languages have extraordinary typological characteristics. Their word order patterns are extremely diverse and some of the attested patterns are crosslinguistically very rare, or even unique. The same diversity can be found in the number of agreement marker paradigms. Equally remarkable are the prosodic idiosyncrasies found at the level of nominal expressions, especially the existence of prosodic boundaries associated with certain types of adnominal modifiers. Although logically unrelated, I argue that these typological characteristics can be accounted for by a single diachronic scenario here called the AMAR mechanism: a double tendency in the Bantu languages for the emergence of construals in which a nominalized modifier is in apposition to the phrase that contains its semantic head and for such appositional construals to be gradually reintegrated into a single nominal constituent. This paper aims to summarize some of the more remarkable typological characteristics of nominal expressions in the Bantu languages and to lay out the AMAR mechanism as a hypothetical diachronic explanation for many of them.

The present article is a systematic, large-scale corpus study of the varying position of the Old English adnominal genitive. Particular focus is put on intertextual variation and the potential influence of Latin, which is analysed alongside such intra-linguistic factors as syntactic weight and the animacy of the referent. The model of logistic regression adopted helps address a key issue in studies on genitive placement, namely, if and how multiple variables exert combined impact on the choice of the variant. The paper highlights the importance of a bottom-to-top approach in studies of older English syntax, as global tendencies turn out to be the corollary of significantly different contributions on the level of individual texts, whose translation status (original composition or translation) is also of importance to the variation studied.

Since the pioneering paper by Emenau (1956) there have been many attempts (cf. Masica 1976, 2001; Ebert 2001; among many others) to select areal features which are shared among languages spoken in South Asia. However, there has been little consent on the number of such features and the possible direction of their spread. In this paper we are focusing on two selected isoglosses, namely alignment and constituent order. Both of them have been used to define the Indo-Aryan linguistic area: alignment is one of the key elements to distinguish western from eastern Indo-Aryan (Peterson 2017) and word order is one of the innovations which differentiates some of the “Outer” languages from “Inner” Indo-Aryan languages (Zoller 2017: 15). This article focuses on two languages which are said to determine these isoglosses: Awadhi and Kashmiri. Our study of Awadhi shows that the isogloss delineating ergative or accusative case marking zones is situated in the area where the so-called Eastern Hindi dialects (among them Awadhi) are spoken. As we will demonstrate, this specific isogloss is substantially supported by diachronic evidence. The second language under consideration, namely Kashmiri, is an example of an “Outer” language with a quite stable V2 feature. Both Awadhi and Kashmiri are compared with Pahari, a language branch which functions as a link between the two of them. Our comparison of Kashmiri with certain Western Pahari Himachali languages shows that there is no clear borderline between two language groups supported by word order. We conclude from these case studies that the study of isoglosses is by definition a study of fluid boundaries, and qualitative, historical studies of one language can prove or disprove hypotheses based on synchronic similarities between languages.

This study explores continuous and discontinuous word order patterns of multi-word nominal expressions in flexible word order languages (traditionally referred to as “free word order” or “non-configurational” languages). Besides describing syntagmatic patterns, this paper seeks to identify any functional or other correlates that can be associated with different word orders. The languages under investigation are a number of Australian languages as well as Vedic Sanskrit, all of which have long been known for their syntagmatic flexibility. With respect to continuous order, evidence from several of these languages suggests that default ordering is primarily governed by functional templates. Deviations from default order, while maintaining continuity, can be attributed to different types of “focus” interpretations or heaviness effects. With respect to discontinuous order, I identify three sub-types. The most widespread one, “Left-Edge Discontinuity”, involves one element placed in or near utterance-initial position. It shows a clear, if not an absolute, correlation with different kinds of focus interpretations, similarly to deviations from the default order in continuity. The other two types of discontinuity are linked to the behaviour of specific function words. Besides teasing out cross-linguistic similarities, this paper also sheds light on language-specific characteristics that affect the forms and functions of complex (i.e. multi-word) nominal expressions in flexible word order languages, such as the nature of 2nd position (“Wackernagel”) elements.

Grammatical notions like that of ‘subject’ are widely used in second language teaching. However, while the grammatical subject is generally regarded as easily identifiable in the Indo-European languages of Europe, as e.g. English, French or Italian, and is a key element in determining word order, the application of this notion to Chinese has given rise to endless controversies. On the other hand, pragmatic-discourse considerations such as topichood, world knowledge, and context, and semantic notions such as agency, causation, and the roles of participants in the described event, appear to be more significant in Chinese as factors determining word order and interpretation of utterances. In this paper, we first provide an overview of the main differences concerning subjecthood, topichood and word order in English, Italian and Chinese, highlighting their impact on learner varieties of Chinese. We then summarise the state-of-the-art of research on subject and topic, with a focus on Chinese. Lastly, we discuss the implications of these theoretical issues for Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language teaching: to this end, we propose a critical overview of how the issue of topichood and subjecthood are treated in a sample of recent English-language, Italian-language and Chinese-language coursebooks and reference materials, and propose some recommendations for instructors.

Zusammenfassung In dem Beitrag wird die Verbstellungskompetenz von zwölf neu zugewanderten Grundschulkindern nach einem Jahr Kontakt zum Deutschen dokumentiert. Die Ergebnisse belegen zielsprachliche Kompetenz bei Hauptsätzen mit einfachem und komplexem Prädikat. Auch die Verbzweitstellung ist, anders als die Verbendstellung in Nebensätzen, für die meisten Kinder belegbar. Damit wird die Annahme implikativer Erwerbsabfolgen bestätigt, gleichzeitig relativieren die hier vorgestellten Daten frühere Befunde zur Erwerbsgeschwindigkeit.

This paper tackles the challenge of how to identify multi-word (or “complex”) nominal expressions in flexible word order languages including certain Australian languages and Vedic Sanskrit. In these languages, a weak or absent noun/adjective distinction in conjunction with flexible word order make it often hard to distinguish between complex nominal expressions, on the one hand, and cases where the nominals in question form independent expressions, on the other hand. Based on a discourse-based understanding of what it means to form a nominal expression, this paper surveys various cases where we arenotdealing with multi-word nominal expressions. This involves, in particular, periphery-related phenomena such as use of nominals as free topics or afterthoughts, as well as various kinds of predicative uses. In the absence of clear morpho-syntactic evidence, all kinds of linguistic evidence are relied upon, including, in particular, information structure and prosody, but also derivational morphology and lexical semantics. In this way, it becomes frequently possible to distinguish between what are and what aren’t complex nominal expressions in these languages.

This paper argues that the Polish noun-pronoun asymmetry in which the intensifier sam ‘self’ precedes nouns and follows pronominals is not a simple case of configuration in the DP, whereby pronouns, unlike nominals, target D0 for referential reasons (cf. Rutkowski 2002, 2012). Such viewpoints, in the case of Polish, are unfortunate because they appear to underlyingly work on and draw from the syntax of nominal projections characteristic of English or Italian i.e., languages with articles. We show that the asymmetry pertains to various semantic interpretations of sam, the different semantic specification of nominals and pronominals, and the flexible word order property. What we need, therefore, is a broader clausal perspective coupled with necessary remarks on the abovementioned issues. Thus, rather than employing the DP-hypothesis, we assume two cornerstone phenomena i.e. flexible word order and rich agreement to be crucial here as they facilitate syntactic options like focalisation or topicalisation which manifest discourse information and in which sam functions as a focus or topic particle (cf. Constantinou 2014). These contexts are held typical of the asymmetry, thereby making it an interplay between semantic properties of nominal/pronominal expressions and organisation of discourse information that syntax makes available.

Summary We move words and words move us. To describe and explain how and why this happens, the present article focuses on Prague traditions, both on the philosophical and linguistic elements. The semantic and syntactic approach is summarized, as developed by Anton Marty, belonging to the Brentano school, and by Vilém Mathesius, founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle, as well as by Jan Firbas, who developed the functional sentence perspective (FSP) into the theory of communicative dynamism (CD). The four Principles of FSP and the four factors of CD are highlighted, together with the related criticism that stems from a systematic work of corpus annotation, a true test procedure for any theory concerned with word order, the interplay between lexicon and morphology, rhythm, intonation and their effects on the addressee’s psychic and emotive processes and life.

In modern Danish, main clauses have the word order X > Verb > Adverb (i.e. V2) whereas subordinate clauses are generally characterized by the ”subordinate clause” word order Subject > Adverb > Verb. Spoken Danish has a high frequency of ”main clause” word order in subordinate clauses, however, and in the article we argue that this ”Main Clause Phenomena” (cf. Aelbrecht et al. 2012) functions as a foregrounding device, signaling that the more important information of the clause complex is to be found in the subordinate clause instead of in its matrix clause.A prediction from the foregrounding hypothesis is that a subordinate clause with Verb>Adverb word order will attract more attention than a clause with Adverb>Verb word order. To test this, we conducted an experiment under the text change paradigm. 59 students each read 24 constructions twice, each containing a subordinate clause with either Verb>Adverb or Adverb>Verb word order. Half of the subordinate clauses were governed by a semifactive predicate (open to both word orders) and the other half by a semantically secondary sentence (in itself strongly favoring Verb>Adverb word order). Attention to the subordinate clause was tested by measuring how disinclined the participants were to notice change of a word in the subordinate clause when re-reading it.Results showed significantly more attention to Verb>Adverb clauses than to Adverb>Verb clauses (though only under semifactive predicates), and more attention to subordinate clauses under semantically secondary than semifactive predicates. We consider this as strongly supporting the hypothesis that Verb>Adv word order functions as a foregrounding signal in subordinate clauses.

We investigate the order in which speakers produce the proper names of couples they know personally in English and Japanese, two languages with markedly different constituent word orders. Results demonstrate that speakers of both languages tend to produce the name of the person they feel closer to before the name of the other member of the couple (N = 180). In this way, speakers’ unique personal histories give rise to a remarkably systematic linguistic generalization in both English and Japanese. Insofar as closeness serves as an index ofcognitive accessibility, the current work demonstrates that systematicity emerges from a domain-general property of memory.

It is generally accepted that the order of elements within the English noun phrase is relatively fixed, and that, in the prefield, determiners (primary and secondary) precede modifiers. This article is concerned with a group of noun phrases exhibiting non-canonical word order, namely those cases in which a modifier precedes a numeral, such as a fabulous two years, a staggering 30 singles, that short fourteen months, and the largest two markets. Using corpus data from the British National Corpus, it is shown that such noun phrases are far more heterogeneous (in terms of the kind of noun, the scope and type of the modifier, the form and number of the determiner, and subject-verb agreement) than assumed in previous studies. It is argued that the variation observed in the data can only be accounted for if different subtypes of such NPs are distinguished, each characterized by its own combination of functional and formal properties. Finally, it is demonstrated how Functional Discourse Grammar, with its function-to-form approach and its different levels and layers of representation, is particularly well-suited to capture the main features of the construction as a whole, as well as the more specific semantic and syntactic properties of each of the subtypes.

The paper focuses on analyzing the relationship among word order positions of pronominal enclitics in the history of Czech. Specifically, we look at the Wackernagel’s position and the contact position and we try to decide whether these two positions compete, as usually taken for granted, or whether there is a certain kind of cooperation between them. The results show that the positions do not compete, at least not in the majority of cases. We used a corpus-based on selected books of the first edition of the Old Czech Bible and Kralice Bible for the analysis.

A major issue in SLA research concerns the operationalization of syntactic complexity, in particular the need for fine-grained measures that go beyond the traditional focus on syntactic elaboration. Following recent findings that have demonstrated the potential of syntactic diversity for providing a more detailed picture of how complexity develops across languages and proficiency levels, the present study argues for the use of two types of non-canonical structures, passives and argument inversions, as indices of syntactic complexification in advanced L2 German writing. Based on 75 argumentative texts written by experienced L2 learners of German (B2 to C2 CEFR levels), we addressed the question to what extent learners’ use of non-canonical word order is a hallmark of advanced proficiency compared to measures of syntactic elaboration. The results revealed a considerable increase in the frequency of argument inversions from B2 to C1 and highlighted the interrelationship between diversity and elaboration in learner compositions.

This paper investigates marked and unmarked word order patterns in embedded clauses in Jordanian Arabic (JA), motivating a mono-clausal analysis of them. It shows that ‘topic’ in this Arabic dialect is not a unique category, nor susceptible to a single analysis, hence providing support for proposals that argue for topics typology. For instance, topics that express information that is newly introduced, newly changed or newly returned to, i.e. Aboutness Topic, are shown not to be licensed in JA embedded clauses. On the other hand, the study argues that topics that convey familiar information, i.e. Familiar Topic, are more constrained in embedded contexts than previously believed; they are not recursive. Such a state of affairs implies that there are no elements being assigned the same informational/communicative value in the left periphery of JA embedded clauses.

Summary Translators, linguists and translation researchers often have to deal with subtle and sometimes complex syntactical aspects involved in translation. Properly conveying the structure and rhythm of a sentence or text in another language is a difficult task that requires a good understanding of syntactical aspects of both the source and the target language. The morphology of Lithuanian verbs and nouns, and specially its system of declensions and cases, without any doubt facilitates a relatively flexible word order. Many linguists also agree that word order in the Spanish sentence is also freer than in French, English or other modern languages. It has often been said that Spanish has the most flexible word order of all Romance languages. However, Spanish word order is by no means as free as in Lithuanian. A comparative study of Lithuanian texts and their translation into Spanish allows a better understanding of the syntactical differences between both languages. This article examines a case of syntactical inversion in Lithuanian: the displacement of the direct object and its location at the beginning of the sentence, and the translation of such sentences into Spanish. In Spanish the direct object usually follows the verb, except in the cases when that function is carried out by pronouns. In order to displace a direct object to the beginning of the sentence, Spanish syntactical structures should be used. In this article two stylistically different Lithuanian texts will be compared with their Spanish translation so as to identify the linguistic means used in each case. A comparative analysis of different types of texts is useful to reveal the Spanish syntactical structures chosen by the translators as well as certain tendencies in each specific context.

Over the past few years, the comprehensive study of syntactic variation across both the Germanic and the Romance branches of languages in relation to the unmarked word order pattern has meant a more in-depth knowledge of the nature of the verb-second phenomenon – an extremely intricate typological concept because of the complex factors that give rise to such a word order restriction. The aim of this paper is to investigate word order phenomena in the Asturian language (Romance, Western Iberian: Spain) from a comparative perspective1 by examining the word order patterns found in a number of documents written over the course of two centuries, with a view to determining what constitutes the unmarked word order and gaining a better understanding of its core syntax. Such a study has entailed collating research on the verb-first, verb-second and subject-verb-object orders. Finally, it aims to shed more light on the evolutionary development of the Romance languages.

In a numeral classifier language, a sortal classifier (C) or a mensural classifier (M) is needed when a noun is quantified by a numeral (Num). Num and C/M are adjacent cross-linguistically, either in a [Num C/M] order or [C/M Num]. Likewise, in a complex numeral with a multiplicative composition, thebasemay follow the multiplier as in [n×base], e.g.,san-bai‘three hundred’ in Mandarin. However, the base may also precede the multiplier in some languages, thus [base×n]. Interestingly, base and C/M seem to harmonize in word order, i.e., [n×base] numerals appear with a [Num C/M] alignment, and [base×n] numerals, with [C/M Num]. This paper follows up on the explanation of the base-C/M harmonization based on the multiplicative theory of classifiers and verifies it empirically within six language groups in the world’s foremost hotbed of classifier languages: Sinitic, Miao-Yao, Austro-Asiatic, Tai-Kadai, Tibeto-Burman, and Indo-Aryan. Our survey further reveals two interesting facts: base-initial ([base×n]) and C/M-initial ([C/M Num]) orders exist only in Tibeto-Burman (TB) within our dataset. Moreover, the few scarce violations to the base-C/M harmonization are also all in TB and are mostly languages having maintained their original base-initial numerals but borrowed from their base-final and C/M-final neighbors. We thus offer an explanation based on Proto-TB’s base-initial numerals and language contact with neighboring base-final, C/M-final languages.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the variation in finite verb placement in Estonian, a verb-second language, by establishing two descriptive facts. First, it identifies a previously undescribed finite verb position in Estonian declarative main clauses, which will be referred to as ‘clause-medial’. The clause-medial position is located between clause-medial sentence adverbials on the one hand, and VP adverbials and the complements of the verb on the other hand. Secondly, the paper reports two empirical studies providing evidence in support of the hypothesis that the occurrence of a finite verb in the proposed clause-medial position, as opposed to its occurrence in the second position, correlates with its accentuation. While clause-medial verbs tend to bear a nuclear pitch accent, second-position verbs don’t. Finally, the paper briefly discusses some broader implications of the existence of the clause-medial finite verb position and of the interaction between verb placement and prosody.

This paper brings together typological and sociolinguistic approaches to language variation. Its main aim is to evaluate the relative effect of language internal and external factors on the number of cases in the world’s languages. I model word order as a language internal predictor; it is well-known that, for instance, languages with verb-final word order (that is, languages in which both nominal arguments precede the main lexical verb) tend to develop complex case systems more often than languages with SVO word order do. I model population size and the proportion of second language speakers in the speech community as sociolinguistic predictors; these factors have been suggested recently to influence the distribution of the number of cases in the world’s languages. Modelling the data with generalized linear mixed effects modelling suggests an interaction between the number of cases, word order, and the proportion of second language speakers on the one hand, and between the number of cases, word order, and population size, on the other. This kind of complex interactions have not been previously reported in typological research wherefore they call for more complex explanations than previously suggested for cross-linguistic variation.

We provide a usage-based approach to the construction [locative deictic + accusative clitic + intransitive verb] found in Galician/Galego. In this construction, the intransitive verb and the accusative clitic agree in person and number and, in the case of the clitic, also in gender with the referent of the clitic, as in, for example, aí a está (lit.: ‘there her is/there she is’)/aí as están (lit.: ‘there them are/there they are’). A corpus-based analysis of this construction shows that it presents skewed grammatical patterns in terms of frequency of occurrence. This grammatical skewing reveals that the construction emerges from an interactional usage pattern in which speakers shift from a displaced to an immediate mode of speaking to present a counter-expected situation. The construction is also exploited in narratives in order to create a quality of immediacy for displaced events. Our usage-based analysis also reveals a family of constructions — some more schematic, others more specific; some more entrenched, others more novel — that emerge from the repetition of local usage patterns through which speakers/narrators express immediacy and counter-expectation.

Grammaticalization is often considered to reflect frequent co-occurrence of certain elements in certain positions. This paper tests the frequency-based account of the grammaticalization of person agreement, comparing the grammaticalization of person agreement in Tabasaran, a Lezgic language, with the syntax of free pronouns in closely related Agul. Our assumption is that the situation in Agul, where person marking is not grammaticalized, approximately reflects a diachronic stage prior to the grammaticalization of person marking in closely related Tabasaran. We find little evidence in support of a frequency-based approach, at least when frequency is treated in terms of global frequencies. We do, however, identify a highly frequent verb that already in Agul appears to regularly associate with the pattern that has generalized to become person agreement in Tabasaran. We suggest specific information structural configurations associated with this verb, which have provided the impetus for the development. More generally, we show that while global measures of frequency may not yield the correct predictions, investigating the syntactic constructions associated with individual lexical items may be more revealing, and provide a more realistic model for reconstructing the paths of syntactic change involving the generalization of existing and quite local patterns.

A subject analysis of oblique subject-like arguments remains controversial even across modern languages where the available data are not finite: while such arguments are considered syntactic subjects in Icelandic, they have more often been analyzed as objects in Lithuanian, for example. This issue has been left relatively neglected for the ancient Indo-European languages outside of Sanskrit (Hock 1990), Gothic (Barðdal & Eythórsson 2012), and Ancient Greek (Danesi 2015). In this article, we address the status of oblique subject-like arguments in Old Irish, whose strict word-order enables us to compare the position (relative to the verb and other arguments) of nominative subject arguments of the canonical type to oblique subject-like arguments. We first establish a baseline for neutral word-order of nominative subjects and accusative objects and then compare their distribution to that of oblique subject-like arguments under two conditions: i) on a subject analysis and ii) on an object analysis. The word-order distribution differs significantly across the two contexts when the oblique arguments are analyzed as syntactic objects, but not when they are analyzed as syntactic subjects. These findings add to the growing evidence that oblique subject-like arguments should be analyzed as syntactic subjects, although their coding properties are non-canonical.

This paper investigates a special sub-type of measurement construction in Mandarin Chinese, namely the [Num-measure word-de-N] construction where the N is an abstract dimension-denoting noun. Evidence is presented to show that the abstract-type [Num-measure word-de-N] should be fundamentally distinguished from the quantifying-/modifying-type [Num-measure word-de-N], in which the [Num-measure word] sequence serves to quantize/modify a semantically concrete, entity-denoting N. At the interpretive level, this paper claims that the abstracttype [Num-measure word-de-N] is semantically definite. At the syntactic level, a clausal analysis within the framework of the Predicate Inversion theory is pursued to account for the derivation of the abstract-type measurement construction. Last, it is proposed that the word order distinction between the Chinese abstracttype measurement construction, which is N-final, and its English counterpart, where the N linearly precedes [Num-measure word], can be explained in terms of a parametric variation with respect to the (non-)application of N-raising after Predicate Inversion.

The understanding of the functional range of numeral classifiers requires a combined effort from different theoretical approaches and the integration of findings from syntax, semantics and pragmatics. This article demonstrates how such an integrative perspective creates new insights into classifiers in Sinitic languages in the fields of counting and word order, the expression of definiteness and indefiniteness and the syntax of verbal classification.

This study offers an experimental perspective to investigate the word order and animacy effects of intransitives in Turkish, an agglutinative language with a canonical, flexible Subject-Object-Verb order. Four experiments were conducted to investigate a total of 528 Turkish speakers’ acceptability judgments using rating scales (Experiments 1 and 3; 7-point Likert scales) and forced choice tasks (Experiments 2 and 4; choosing one of two sentences) for various orders of linguistic forms in a simple intransitive sentence. Results from scalar acceptability judgments showed that there were significant main effects of order and subject, indicating that participants gave significantly higher ratings to SV sentences than VS sentences and that their ratings changed significantly according to the animacy of the subjects. Results from the forced choice tasks showed that participants preferred SV sentences to VS sentences. These findings suggest that Turkish speakers prefer SV order over VS order even though both are readily available.

The subjects of unaccusative verbs of change of location (e. g.,llegar, venir) may appear in pre-verbal and post-verbal position. However, most syntactic accounts of word order in Spanish suggest that VS is the canonical order for these verbs. This claim has been supported by some experimental data, but further insight on the mechanisms underlying this particular instance of variation can still be gained from its study from a variationist, corpus-based perspective. We investigate the SV-VS alternation in the spontaneous oral discourse of two populations, monolingual Spanish speakers from Mexico City and Spanish-English bilingual speakers from Southern Arizona. Multivariate analyses reveal that the informative load of the subject, the animacy of the subject, verbal tense and aspect, and the presence or absence of an initial modifier, in this order, condition word order selection. The results also show that bilingual speakers from Southern Arizona are less flexible than monolinguals speakers in assigning word order to unaccusative verbs of change of location when the subject does not introduce new information, favoring SV almost categorically. A possible cause for this dissimilar behavior is the influence of English, where unaccusative verbs tend to appear pre-verbally, on the Spanish of these bilinguals.

Comprehension of sentences in the non-canonical word order usually poses problems for preschoolers (e.g., Slobin, Dan I. and Thomas G. Bever. 1982. Children use canonical sentence schema: A crosslinguistic study of word order and inflections.Cognition12. 229–265). These problems may be modulated by information structure, such as the presence of an appropriate context licensing the non-canonical word order and the type of referring expression. We examined the impact of the given-new order, induced by a context sentence, and the type of referring expression realizing the given referent (NP vs. pronoun) on the comprehension of SVO and OVS sentences in monolingual Russian-speaking 4- to 5-year-olds and adults. Children and adults showed high comprehension accuracy for SVO and OVS sentences, with accuracy rates above 80 % for OVS sentences. Context and the type of referring expression had no effect. Compared to a similar experiment conducted in German, Russian-speaking children outperformed their German-speaking peers. This difference may result from the earlier acquisition of the case system and a stronger given-before-new preference in Russian compared to German. Our data suggest that as soon as children rely more on morphological information during processing and employ adult-like processing strategies, their offline comprehension performance depends less on contextual and information structure factors.

One of the distinctive features of the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is that it distinguishes various hierarchically organized layers of analysis, each of which is provided with a slot for modifiers relevant at the layer in question. Linear placement of these modifiers is determined by the layer to which they belong, with the ordering of elements taking place in a top-down, outward-inward manner. The model, in other words, makes predictions concerning the (relative) clausal position of different types of modifiers. In addition, the model places constraints on the occurrence of different types of modifiers in embedded environments (e.g. within the complement of certain types of verbs). Finally, the model places constraints on which modifiers can be expected to co-occur in coordinated constructions. The aim of the present paper is to test these predictions by examining the function, position and distribution of ten adverbs expressing various kinds of modality. Data from the British National Corpus (BYU-BNC) is used (i) to determine whether the predictions following from the overall organization of the FDG model are supported by empirical data; and (ii) to refine, where necessary, the classifications of modal adverbs proposed in the literature.

Differential object marking (DOM) is a common feature of many languages, including Standard Turkish and Urum, a Turkish variety spoken by ethnic Greeks in Georgia. This article investigates the interaction between case marking and word order in both varieties of Turkish. While Standard Turkish shows a strong dependence of the case marking possibilities from word order, i.e. bare objects may only appear in immediately preverbal position of a clause, the analysis reveals that bare objects in Urum may occur in any position of a clause. This provides evidence that the verb in Urum can freely move within the VP.

Using data from the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS), the order of the oblique phrase with respect to the verb in a sentence is shown to be a good predictor of the order of the relative clause with respect to its head noun in a relative construction. It is a significantly better predictor of relative construction order than the more traditional indicator, the relative order of the verb and the direct object in a sentence. The difference between these two predictors is demonstrated quantitatively, and then discussed in the context of theories of syntactic head-position harmony.

We test Preferred Argument Structure theory against corpus data from Tondano, an Austronesian language with symmetrical voice. Investigating the use of full noun phrases in individual argument positions, we find no significant clustering of both S and P as opposed to A, hence no discourse ergativity. Moreover, neither pivotal nor non-pivotal grammatical relations appear to specialise in the accommodation of full noun phrases. Thus, grammatical relations do not serve as architecture for regulating information flow in discourse. Only constituent order reflects information flow, so that full noun phrases tend to occur in clause-final position. More generally, correlations of humanness and topicality predict most straightforwardly attested patterns of argument realisation.

The word order typology of numerals (Num), classifier or measure word (C/M), and noun (N) put forth by Greenberg (1990 [1972], Numerical classifiers and substantival number: Problems in the genesis of a linguistic type. In Keith Denning & Suzanne Kemmer (eds.)

Expressions like English ago have been claimed to be among the most likely candidates for postposition crosslinguistically, and the reason for this has been conjectured to be diachronic. A few previous contributions notwithstanding, however, we still lack a typologically wider-ranging account of such temporal adpositions and adverbials and of how they develop. These are the main goals of the present article. Relying on a sample of 100 languages, it has been found that: (i) the structure instantiated in English by ago is far from universal and is geographically unevenly distributed; (ii) these expressions are indeed predominantly postposed, which does not hold for their mirror images for the future; and (iii) evidence from etymology, patterns of polysemy, and documented semantic extensions suggests that this asymmetry is the result of past and future markers having different diachronic sources.

Dative shift is a two-fold process that affects both the morphological coding and the order of T and R arguments of a three-participant construction, as in the teacher gave a book to the student vs. the teacher gave the student a book. Across languages, dative shift tends to express similar functions including differences in animacy, definiteness, semantic role of arguments, affectedness of recipient and permanence of transfer. This is understandable, since dative shift increases the formal transitivity of the affected clauses, and all the expressed functions are somehow related to transitivity. The goal of this paper is to study whether, and to what extent, mere changes in word order suffice to express the functions of dative shift. The examined language is Finnish, which suits very well for this purpose due to its relatively free word order and inherently different coding of Theme and Recipient. It can be hypothesized that mere word order changes readily express features related to definiteness and animacy, while they are less capable of expressing features such as affectedness of the recipient.

Language is a very dynamic entity, so language change is inevitable, especially in contact settings. Most contact studies are based on recordings of spontaneous speech. Useful as this has been, such data cannot tell us everything: for one thing, they do not tell us much about the degree to which the attested changes are entrenched in bilinguals' linguistic competence, and whether the changes are manifested mostly in bilingual speech, i.e. when the speakers are codeswitching at the same time. This paper aims to look for converging evidence, a fairly recent notion (Schönefeld, 2011:1), by employing two experimental techniques to explore a single issue: Dutch influence on the word order of immigrant Turkish in the Netherlands. More specifically, the focus is on the position of the matrix verb in complex clauses. Dutch and Turkish differ in their word orders, specifically in the position of the verb. Although Turkish can be claimed to have a relatively free word order, it is canonically verb-final. Dutch, on the other hand, is a verb-medial language, at least in main clauses. This study discusses findings as to whether immigrant Turkish verb positioning differs from TR-Turkish practice, and whether the differences are more pronounced when speakers are in a bilingual mode. It studies data from three groups of participants; 1) Bilinguals in bilingual mode, 2) Bilinguals in monolingual mode and 3) Monolinguals. One method employs elicited ‘production’ data reflecting bilingual ‘performance’ and the other one ‘judgments’ reflecting ‘comprehension’ or ‘linguistic knowledge’ (i.e. converging evidence). Unconventionalities, changes in preferences and frequency differences in these data are interpreted subtypes of a contact-induced change in this paper. Interestingly, the data from the two different sources did not converge completely: for the structures caught up in change, the ‘judgment’ data showed full acceptability of both the changed and the non/changed structures, while the ‘production’ data showed a clear preference for the former. The paper finally focuses on the question what kind of change mechanism may be responsible for the changes. The findings point to restructuring (Heine & Kuteva), which overlaps with Johanson's frequential copying and Matras' ‘other outcomes of pivot matching’. In conclusion, the results show that word order in Dutch Turkish is changing.

Gothic is the oldest attested Germanic language that possesses features similar to Proto-Germanic i.e., the parent language of all contemporary Germanic languages. The grammar of the Gothic language not only comprises distinctive features of native origin, but also contains peculiarities inherited from Proto-Germanic as well as traces of non-Germanic impacts. The peculiar nature of Gothic grammar reveals itself in Gothic syntax, and notably in the order of words. The article aims at defining word order patterns in The Gothic Gospel of Luke, Chapter 4 with special reference to word order in a phrase and sentence. Firstly, word order in Gothic phrases is considered, and the most recurrent word order patterns in noun and verb phrases found in Luke 4 are defined. Secondly, word order patterns and peculiar features of simple sentences and principal clauses are discussed. Finally, the article comments upon the choice of word order in those types of subordinate clauses that are represented in the chapter of Luke selected for the analysis as well as compares word order in principal and subordinate clauses. All comments on Gothic word order and syntactic features are provided with examples from Luke 4. The analysis of Gothic word order patterns is performed by fusing two research methods i.e., descriptive and analytic. Being the only attested East Germanic language, Gothic has a great linguistic value. Therefore, the study of Gothic word order and syntax is of great significance for the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic, for understanding word order patterns in other Germanic languages as well as for identifying common Germanic features. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.3.6

Native speakers of Spanish (children aged 6–7, 10–11 and adults) rated grammatical and ungrammatical ground- and figure-locative sentences with high frequency, low frequency and novel verbs (e. g.,Lisallenó/forró/nupóla caja con papel; *Lisallenó/forró/nupópapel en la caja, ‘Lisa filled/lined/nupped the box with paper’; ‘Lisa filled/lined/nupped paper into the box’) using a 5-point scale. Echoing the findings of a previous English study (a language with some important syntactic differences relevant to the locative), participants rated errors as least acceptable with high frequency verbs, more acceptable with low frequency verbs, and most acceptable with novel verbs, suggesting that learners retreat from error using statistically-based learning mechanisms regardless of the target language. In support of the semantic verb class hypothesis, adults showed evidence of using the meanings assigned to novel verbs to determine the locative constructions in which they can and cannot appear. However, unlike in the previous English study, the child groups did not. We conclude that the more flexible word order exhibited by Spanish, as compared to English, may make these types of regularities more difficult to discern.

Relative clauses (RCs), with their typological universality and structural complexity, have always been central to inquiries in generative linguistics and language acquisition. Although recent years witness a growing interest in psycholinguistic and acquisition research in Chinese RCs, few studies have attempted to make connections between psycholinguistic theories and Chinese as a second language learning and teaching. This paper tries to bridge the gap and uses an interdisciplinary approach to address the comparative difficulty of Chinese subject and object RCs in their interaction with demonstratives. Chinese L1 and L2 participants completed a written sentence completion task. More productions in a certain type of RC, when observed in both participant groups, were interpreted as evidence of structural preference, and differences between L1 and L2 patterns were analyzed as competence issues. It was found that both groups prefer subject RCs when the structure begins with a demonstrative, and this result corresponds to corpus studies of Chinese RCs as well as findings in previous acquisition research. At the same time, there was no asymmetry between the subject and object RCs produced when the demonstrative follows the RC. A multi-constraint model in which a “perspective” factor (MacWhinney 1977, 1982, MacWhinney and Pleh 1988) and a word order factor simultaneously contribute to production cost can explain the data. Meanwhile, L2 participants’ errors were often related to neglecting the obligatory gap within the RC. Pedagogical implications were put forward. 1 The experiment reported in this study was part of a bigger dissertation project referenced as Xu (2009). The original dissertation project was supported by the Language Learning Dissertation Grant in 2008, awarded by Language Learning, the journal, and the 2008 University of Arizona’s Social and Behavioral Science Research Institute Small Grant. Data from this particular experiment were recoded in 2012 with the help of a research assistant, enabling me to verify the reliability and statistical significance of the result. The interpretation of the results in this study is not entirely identical to Xu (2009), and this paper is intended for researchers as well as for CFL practitioners. I extend my gratitude to the students, the instructors, and the research program coordinator at the Defense Language Institute. I also thank Dr. Feng-hsi Liu, Dr. Heidi Harley, and Dr. Janet Nicol for their advice, Dr. Brian MacWhinney for communicating with me, and Ms. Jie Cui for her assistance in data coding. My appreciation also goes to two anonymous reviewers’ for their valuable suggestions. All errors remain mine. Brought to you by | University of Pittsburgh Authenticated | 132.174.255.116 Download Date | 4/25/14 8:14 AM

The aim of works described in this article is to elaborate and experimentally evaluate a consistent method of Language Model (LM) construction for the sake of Polish speech recognition. In the proposed method we tried to take into account the features and specific problems experienced in practical applications of speech recognition in the Polish language, reach inflection, a loose word order and the tendency for short word deletion. The LM is created in five stages. Each successive stage takes the model prepared at the previous stage and modifies or extends it so as to improve its properties. At the first stage, typical methods of LM smoothing are used to create the initial model. Four most frequently used methods of LM construction are here. At the second stage the model is extended in order to take into account words indirectly co-occurring in the corpus. At the next stage, LM modifications are aimed at reduction of short word deletion errors, which occur frequently in Polish speech recognition. The fourth stage extends the model by insertion of words that were not observed in the corpus. Finally the model is modified so as to assure highly accurate recognition of very important utterances. The performance of the methods applied is tested in four language domains.

Ever since Goldin-Meadow, S., C. Mylander, W. C. So, and A. Özyürek. 2008. The natural order of events: How speakers of different languages represent events nonverbally. PNAS 105: 9163–9168. proposed that there is a preferred order in sequential non-verbal event representations (Actor > Patient > Act), apparently independent of the default word order in one’s native language, the topic has been the focus of much cognitive-semiotic research. After providing a partial review of the field, we describe an empirical study investigating the order of pictorial representations of motion events using a design that emphasized the linearity of the representations to a greater extent than Goldin-Meadow et al. (2008). Speakers of Swedish (default word order: Actor > Act > Patient, or SVO) and speakers of Kurdish (default word order: Actor > Patient > Act, or SOV) participated in the study. Unlike earlier studies, we found an effect of native language word order. The Swedish speakers preferred to place the Patient picture after the Act picture, especially after first describing the stimuli verbally. In contrast, the Kurdish speakers preferred Act after Patient both with and without verbalization. The results of the study suggest that any cognitive or communicative biases for particular constituent order in non-verbal representations are likely to be modulated by linguistic word order, at least in populations reliant on written language in their daily lives.

This article concerns a Czech language minority living in the south-western Romanian region of Banat. First an overview of the situation of Banatian Czech speakers is given, both from a historical and a contemporary perspective, followed by a sociolinguistically focused description of the linguistic conditions present in this language island. Next, the article examines seven syntactic and morphosyntactic structures found in Bígr Czech, namely three word order phenomena, use of the indefinite determiner, totality quantifiers and prepositional phenomena. Using the specialized corpora, BANAT for Banatian Czech (BC) and the ORAL corpus for Common Czech (CC), the BC and CC structures are compared to reveal that some of the investigated features previously assigned as characteristic for Bígr Czech are equally present in Common Czech spoken in the Czech Republic.

This article examines whether Australian languages generally lack clear noun phrase structures, as has sometimes been argued in the literature. We break up the notion of NP constituency into a set of concrete typological parameters, and analyse these across a sample of 100 languages, representing a significant portion of diversity on the Australian continent. We show that there is little evidence to support general ideas about the absence of NP structures, and we argue that it makes more sense to typologize languages on the basis of where and how they allow “classic” NP construal, and how this fits into the broader range of construals in the nominal domain.

In several languages, non-nominative experiencers tend to appear early on in utterances, which frequently triggers deviations from the preferred word order. These observations are based on linearization preferences, which in most cases involve gradient levels that cannot be determined precisely through singular intuitions. This article presents a crosslinguistic experimental study on languages with different word order properties (German, Greek, Hungarian, and Korean), offering precise estimates for the effects of experiencer objects on linearization. The findings reveal a strong effect of case in the sense that dative experiencers appear more frequently early in an utterance than accusative experiencers. Based on the specific properties of the investigated languages, we are revising previous hypotheses about the source of the dative/accusative asymmetry and conclude that the asymmetry relates to phrase-structural differences. Accusative experiencers are fronted more frequently than patients of canonical transitive verbs. We argue that this phenomenon relates to a preference for selecting experiencers as aboutness topics, which explains the fact that

This paper examines the design of verb phrases and noun phrases, focusing on the diachronic tendencies observed in the data in Middle English, Early Modern, and Late Modern English. The approach is corpus-based and the data, representing different periods and text types, is taken from the

The Interpretation of Chinese relative clauses has become of significant interest in sentence processing research, since some studies found that Chinese comprehension patterns violate the well-known universal subject relatives preference proposed by NAPH theory and proved by cross-linguistic studies. The current study uses the neuropsychological measure of ERP. It supports such a language-specific phenomenon, with the results showing that both subject-and object-modifying subject relatives eliciting larger ERP components than object relatives. The results suggest that object relatives are easier to process than subject relatives at both modifying positions, challenging the claim of universal subject preference for all languages. In addition, this study casts doubts on CWO and working memory-based DLT models despite results being compatible with them, and concludes that none of the current models are comprehensive enough to account for the data. Finally, this study offers a piece of evidence for the garden path effect caused by the surface NVN word order in the Chinese relative clause. All in all, this study adds to the evidence that processing preference is not universal. It contributes to a comprehensive model of how complex structures are processed.

This study examines whether the sentence structure of particular languages predisposes speakers to particular attentional patterns. We hypothesized that the holistic attentional bias of Japanese participants observed in a previous study (Masuda and Nisbett 2001), attributed in that paper to pan-Asian cultural factors, is better interpreted as a consequence of specific linguistic properties of Japanese: namely, sentence structure. In experiments involving Japanese, English and Chinese native speakers, it was found that Japanese participants reported more Ground information before mentioning Figure information, mentioned more background details overall, and remembered background elements in a subsequent recall task significantly more accurately than either English or Chinese participants. The “Asian response” was thus split, as predicted by the grammatical typology of Japanese and Chinese. Our results therefore support a linguistic interpretation of Japanese-English differences, and run counter to the previous explanation in terms of culture.