Search

The artificial grammar learning paradigm is a classic method of investigating the influence of universal constraints on shaping learning biases on language acquisition. While this method has been used extensively by linguists to test theoretical claims in generative grammar, one of the most prevalent frameworks in language acquisition, several studies have questioned whether artificial grammar learning reflects language acquisition enough to allow us to use it to draw inferences about the validity of universal constraints, particularly those arising from phonetic naturalness. The current study tests whether artificial grammar learning shows the effect of one robust phonetic naturalness constraint: the restriction on nasal harmony patterns arising from the sonority hierarchy. Nasal harmony is of particular interest because it is one of the few types of harmony that occurs between consonants and vowels, which is an under-researched topic. The results, contrary to the skeptical concerns, showed that participants (n = 120) could learn an artificial grammar involving a natural pattern, but could not learn one corresponding to an arbitrary/phonetically unmotivated pattern in the same way or to the same degree. This study contributes epistemic support to the large body of work using artificial grammar experiments to test phonological operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this note is to offer a critical review of the contrastive analysis hypothesis within the field of second language acquisition. The notions of interlanguage, universal grammar and mental grammar are discussed. Transfer is redefined as the output of underlying rules in the grammar of a second language. Through Jackendoff’s notion of a mental grammar we reconcile the contribution of structural and generative grammar to the understanding of the phenomenon of transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a general summary of some of the current issues in the field of Generative Grammar, the study of the human Faculty of Language. We review some key ideas this approach to language has put forward and pursued, focusing on the basic properties of language and its interactions with other systems. We also point at some of the possibilities that a biological approach to language offers to build bridges between Linguistics and other scientific disciplines. Throughout the paper we take into consideration the advantages that incorporating some of these ideas would have in Secondary Education, -not only for the potentially intrinsic value of linguistic knowledge, but also for the impact of this approach on more general skills like observing, describing and comparing data, reasoning, providing arguments and counterarguments, formulating generalizations, analyzing, summarizing or inferring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that there is no narrow syntax, and that the language faculty merely consists of the semantic and phonological components, and linking between these and other systems. It follows as a logical consequence from the latest works of Chomsky (2007 et seq.) and Hauser et al. (2002) who argue that narrow syntax consists of as few features as possible, ideally only recursive embedding and mapping to the interfaces, and Nordström (2014) who shows that the language faculty cannot involve recursive embedding if one wants it to be able to handle discrete infinity, but must merely be a discrete combinatorial system. As such, it shares features with many other mental processes, such as tool making, and, this paper argues, should not be seen as a separate module. The discrete combinatorial processes, as argued here, take place in the semantic and phonological components, which are linked by an axonal pathway. The paper further shows that other potential features of narrow syntax, namely word order, agreement and case (Pinker and Jackendoff 2005; Chomsky 2000 et seq.) can also perfectly well be located within the semantic and phonological components, dispensing with so-called uninterpretable features and leading to the ultimate conclusion that there is no narrow syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underlying much of the research on intervention effects, in which a quantificational or focusing element preceding a wh-phrase leads to degradedness, is the assumption that these effects are universal, and should therefore follow from basic properties of the grammar. This paper shows that unlike any other language documented until now, Amharic does not generally exhibit intervention effects. It is nevertheless empirically possible and theoretically preferable to retain the idea that these effects are derivative, rather than to consider their presence vs. absence a parameterized feature. Accordingly, two existing approaches to intervention effects are assessed vis-à-vis their ability to account for the exceptionality of Amharic: a hierarchical analysis, following Beck (2006), and an information structural-prosodic analysis based on Tomioka (2007a,b), whereby the effect is read off the linear string. The latter is claimed to better explain the data and correlate with independent aspects of Amharic, thus providing a general argument in favor of nonstructural approaches to intervention effects. This analysis is also extended to alternative questions, in which an intervener preceding a disjunctive phrase removes the alternative question reading, allowing the sentence to be interpreted only as a yes/no question. In the process, many hitherto unknown properties of Amharic syntax, information structure, and prosody are brought to light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper seeks to emphasize the necessity of communicative strategies of translation in the case of three notions which belong to the Generative Grammar framework: strong features, Heavy Shift, „Tough‟ Movement. The study comprises a two-step approach of the issue: firstly, an explanation of the grammatical phenomena designated by these three notions; secondly, possible translation solutions for Romanian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the question of whether the verb is always situated towards the end of sentences in Afrikaans. An overview is given of the theoretical point of reference of both diachronic and sinchronic linguistics. The Classical Greek analysis of a sentence into subject and predicate, currently formalised in the Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) is used as point of departure. The discussion then continues with a focus on the role of the Object and/or remainder of the verb phrase (VP) in the predicate, which culminates in different combinatory sequences of SOV. The different perspectives of linguists who advocate the SVO and SOV orders in Afrikaans are explained. Furthermore, the influence of change in Germanic languages on the typology of Afrikaans is also taken into account. The position of the verb is discussed by looking at the role of auxiliaries in a sentence, at the role of prepositional phrases; at what takes place in independent clauses, subordinate clauses and in compound sentences. In conclusion, semantic and pragmatic aspects are taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental problem in spoken language is the duality between the continuous aspects of phonetic performance and the discrete aspects of phonological competence. We study 2 instances of this problem from the phenomenon of voicing neutralization and vowel harmony. In each case, we present a model where the experimentally observed continuous distinctions are linked to the discreteness of phonological form using the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how the parser employs thematic and contextual information in resolving temporary ambiguities during sentence processing. We report results from a sentence-completion task and from a self-paced reading experiment with native speakers of Greek examining two constructions under different referential context conditions: relative clauses (RCs) preceded by complex noun phrases with genitives, [NP1 +NP2Gen], and RCs preceded by complex noun phrases containing prepositional phrases, [NP1 + PP[P NP2]]. We found different attachment preferences for these two constructions, a high (NP1) preference for RCs with genitive antecedents and a low (NP2) preference for RCs with PP antecedents. Moreover, referential context information was found to modulate RC attachment differently in the two experimental tasks. We interpret these findings from the perspective of modular theories of sentence processing and argue that on-line ambiguity resolution relies primarily on grammatical and lexical-thematic information, and makes use of referential context information only as a secondary resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author presents his comments to critiques about the article "Grammar is grammar and usage is usage." Critiques recognizes that one possible objection to stochastic grammar is by mixing data from different individuals together in a large data set, evidence relevant to the investigation of the mental grammar of particular individuals is potentially obscured. But he then dismisses the importance of the objection. Critiques goes on to argue, that stochastic grammar is supported by the fact that phenomena that are categorial in some languages are simply a matter of statistical preference in others. So, the person of the subject argument cannot be lower than the person of a no subject argument. A consequence is that one never finds first or second person subjects of passives in that language where the agent is in the third person. In English, as it turns out, similar passives are possible, but very rare compared to passives with, say, third person subjects. As they note, a traditional generative model would ascribe the Lummi facts to competence and the English facts to performance. They see this as a lost generalization. In their view, only a model of grammar allowing stochastic constraints can unite the facts in the two languages, assigning them two different points along the same continuum with respect to relations involving grammatical person.

This paper develops a generative analysis for a particular language contact phenomenon familiar in the variationist and language contact literature, namely indirect transfer [F. Klein, A quantitative study of syntactic and pragmatic indications of change in the Spanish of bilinguals in the U.S, in: W. Labov (Ed.), Locating Language in Time and Space, Academic Press, New York, 1980, p. 69; R. Mougeon, E. Beniak, Linguistic Consequences of Language Contact and Restriction: The Case of French in Ontario, OUP, Oxford, 1991; C. Silva-Corvalán, Language Contact and Change: Spanish in Los Angeles, OUP, Oxford, 1994]. This language contact effect, which is preferential rather than categorical, is difficult to deal with in traditional generative approaches, and has received no attention in this literature. My analysis focuses on Klein's study of synthetic/analytic verb forms used for the expression of progressive aspect in Spanish, where contact with English causes a skewing in the distribution of use of analytic forms in a bilingual variety compared to a similar monolingual variety. The analysis is carried out in a stochastic OT [P. Boersma, B. Hayes, Empirical tests of the Gradual Learning Algorithm. Linguistic Inquiry 32 (1) (2001) 45–86] framework, where I show that the indirect transfer effects observed by Klein can be captured by way of different ranking of a small set of OT constraints on a linear ranking scale. In addition to providing a model for the indirect transfer effects in Klein's study, my analysis also makes a typological prediction regarding morphosyntactic expression and Imperfective and Progressive verb forms: no language can have a synthetic Progressive and an analytic Imperfective. This prediction is supported by the absence of any such distribution in the surveys of Bybee et al. [The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994] or Dahl [Tense and Aspect Systems, Blackwell, Oxford, 1985]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a number of problems associated with the widely accepted analysis of differential object marking (DOM) as reflecting the semantic markedness of highly individuated (definite and/or animate) direct objects. Firstly, such an account is in conflict with established notions of transitivity which take a typical object to be highly affected, since affectedness can be shown to correlate with a high degree of individuation. Secondly, the notion of markedness reversal, which is employed as a means of providing a unified account of differential marking of subjects and of objects (e.g. Aissen, 2000), cannot unproblematically be applied to the kinds of oppositions typically involved in DOM. Finally, the predictions made for subject marking only partly correspond to attested linguistic data. An alternative analysis is proposed which takes accusative case-marking to be a marker of a high degree of affectedness in objects. By exploiting the association between affectedness and a high degree of individuation (definiteness/animacy), such an analysis can account for the DOM data, while avoiding the difficulties inherent to the approach which takes individuated objects to be semantically marked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A theory of human syntactic processing must be both grammatically responsible and psychologically plausible. This article seeks to explore the structural relations in the grammar and the parser. In the first section of this article the author outlines his grammatical assumptions. Section two outlines the proposed parsing model. The empirical justification here, for the most part, is based on English data. In section three, the author turns to an examination of syntactic processing in Japanese. It is argued that a wide range of processing phenomena in Japanese can be accounted for without altering or parameterizing the parsing model. Sections four and five contrast the proposed parsing model with alternative approaches such as the characterization of automatic structural reanalysis and the underspecification theory.

This article provides information on the sentential nature of prenominal adjectives in German. It notes that generative grammar has made a considerable move from abstract structures towards more surface oriented ones. One major exception to this lies in the enrichment of surface structures with empty elements like NP-trace or PRO. As the goal of generative linguistics is to explain what the underlying mental representations of grammar look like, how languages can be acquired by children the way they are, this move can be justified if a) theory postulating empty elements for certain positions helps to keep a number of subtheories of grammar simpler and if b) postulating empty elements will not lead to a proliferation of stipulations concerning the nature of and rules governing these elements.

Focuses on the effect of question format at time of recall test. Formulation of grammatical rules for questions; Transformation component of the grammar; Basis for expecting a comparable effect for positive questions.

Copyright of Reading Research Quarterly is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)