15 setembre, 2019
Autors:
Eulàlia Bonet, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Laura J. Downing i Joan Mascaró
Títol:
(In)direct Reference in the Phonology-Syntax Interface under Phase Theory: A Response to "Modular PIC" (D'Alessandro and Scheer 2015)Editorial: Linguistic Inquiry, vol.50(4). MIT Press
Data de publicació: Tardor de 2019
ISBN13: E-ISSN: 1530-9150
Més informacióAlthough in many interface theories, the domains of phrasal phonological processes are defined in terms of prosodic constituents, D’Alessandro and Scheer (2015) argue that their proposed modification of phase theory, Modular PIC, renders prosodic constituents superfluous. Phrasal phonological domains can instead be defined directly in the syntax. In this response, we argue that Modular PIC does not provide a convincing new approach to the syntax-phonology interface, as it is both too powerful and too restrictive. We show that the analysis offered of raddoppiamento fonosintattico in Eastern Abruzzese does not justify the loss of restrictiveness Modular PIC brings to phase theory. We also show that Modular PIC is too restrictive to account for phenomena, from Bantu languages and others, that have received satisfactory analyses within interface theories that appeal to prosodic constituents. We conclude that Modular PIC does not successfully replace prosodic constituent approaches to the interface.
16 setembre, 2019
Autors:
Jingtao Zhu i Anna Gavarró
Títol:
Testing language acquisition models: null and overt topics in MandarinEditorial: Journal of Child Language, vol.46(4). Cambridge University Press
Data de publicació: Juliol 2019
Més informacióParameter setting is either precipitous (Gibson & Wexler, 1994) or it is gradual in response to input frequency (Yang, 2002, 2004). In this study, we compare these models against the empirical domain of subject and (direct) object drop in Mandarin. We conducted a corpus-based study of the speech of 47 Mandarin-speaking children aged 1;2–6;5, and their caregivers, from the CHILDES database. The results show that before age 1;8 all the children used null subjects and null objects in a target-like fashion, which reveals that the parameter that governs null topics is set from very early on, even if the presence of disambiguating evidence for [+Null Topic] patterns is low. Besides, children's ba constructions, which require an overt object, reliably included this object from the first occurrence although its frequency was scarce in the input. Our results indicate that the setting of certain parameters occurred early independently of the input.
8 juliol, 2019
Autors:
Wojciech Lewandowski & Şeyda Özçalışkan
Títol:
How language type influences patterns of motion expression in bilingual speakersEditorial: Second Language Research
Data de publicació: 7 d'octubre de 2019
Més informacióExpression of motion shows systematic inter-typological variability between language types, particularly with respect to manner and path components of motion: speakers of satellite-framed languages (S-language; e.g. German) frequently conflate manner and path into a single clause, while verb-framed language speakers (V-language; e.g. Spanish) typically express manner and path in separate clauses, a pattern that also becomes evident in bilinguals’ expression of motion events in each language type. However, less is known about intra-typological variability within each language type, particularly for the expression of motion events among bilingual speakers. In this study, we examine motion descriptions produced by two groups of bilinguals – with Polish as first language – learning a second language that belongs to the same (Polish–German) or a different language type (Polish–Spanish), in comparison to monolinguals in each language (German, Spanish, Polish). Our results, based on written descriptions of animated motion scenes, showed evidence for both inter-typological and intra-typological variation in the expression of motion, with greater attunement to first-language (L1) patterns in learning a language of the same type, and closer alignment to second-language (L2) patterns in learning a language that belongs to a different language type.
2 desembre, 2019
Autors:
Andreas Trotzke & Eva Wittenberg
Títol:
Long-standing issues in adjective order and corpus evidence for a multifactorial approachEditorial: Linguistics 57(2), 273-282
Data de publicació: 2 desembre 2019
Més informació
Text completIn this paper, we introduce the issue of adjective order and show that different approaches vary in their answers to the question of how fine-grained the semantic categories determining adjective order are. We report on a corpus study that we conducted and that illustrates that a clear answer to the question of what general factors exactly determine adjective order is elusive, given the multifactorial nature of the problem. We then present the individual contributions to this special issue, and how they attempt to add new observations from Germanic languages to the general issues revolving around the topic of adjective order.
17 desembre, 2019
Autors:
Anna Gavarró
Títol:
Child Relativised Minimality and Grammaticality JudgementEditorial: Frontiers in Psychology, section Language Sciences
Col·lecció: Frontiers in PsychologyData de publicació: 7 de febrer del 2020
Més informació
Grammaticality judgements are the fundamental experimental source of generative linguistic theory. They may be difficult to elicit, especially in some populations, but generally they inform us neatly about what the grammar licenses or, on the contrary, bans. On the other hand, acceptability is multifactorial and therefore, unlike grammaticality judgement, can be quantified. In this paper I consider a particular empirical domain, that of Relativized Minimality (RM) in acquisition, and its relation to the dichotomy between grammaticality and acceptability. Friedmann et al. (2009) argued that children hold a stricter version of RM than adults. In particular, children would require a disjoint feature specification, not just a distinct feature specification, between target and intervener. The literature shows asymmetries in comprehension of subject and object relative clauses in various languages which fulfill the predictions of child RM. Variation between adults and children might be expected not only in production and comprehension, but also in grammaticality judgement. If so, children would be predicted to reject object relatives as well as the classic RM violations. Alternatively, if child RM is a processing effect, the prediction is that children would be able to tease apart object relative clauses from RM violations under favorable processing conditions. The question I address is: do children assimilate RM violations and object relative clauses? Grammaticality judgement should provide an answer to this question. In this paper I present an experiment targeting grammaticality judgement for object relatives and RM violations and report preliminary results for a group of 6-year-old Catalan-speaking children showing that object relatives and RM violations are not judged in a parallel fashion, since RM violations are rejected more often than object relatives.
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