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Much research has been conducted on whether and to what extent corpus-based materials support more effective EFL learning in comparison to traditional materials. Little is known, however, about the effectiveness of different types of homework materials on students’ grammatical performance. This classroom-based study addressed this gap by examining what effect two types of published materials—corpus-informed (CI) and non-corpus informed (NCI) grammar textbooks—have on the learning of one grammatical construction (post-predicate –ing and infinitive clauses controlled by verbs) in a group of 89 EFL learners in Colombia. The learners were randomly assigned to two treatments: CI and NCI material for homework. The results from pretest, post-test, and delayed test showed that both groups displayed significant gains in terms of their knowledge of the target construction. The effect was larger for the CI group than the NCI group, providing evidence for the potential advantage of CI material use for homework as a supplement for instruction. We suggest that CI textbooks be considered by teachers and learners who want to benefit from innovative commercial teaching materials (i.e., corpus-informed textbooks), especially in locations where innovative teaching practices (computer-based or data-driven learning) are restricted due to infrastructure limitations.

This work presents the first large-scale analysis of the typologically and dialectally unusual appearance of variable pronominal subjects in non-finite clauses. A comparative variationist analysis of 703 Spanish adverbial purpose clauses (both finite and non-finite) reveals that, despite a significant difference in rates of pronoun expression across clause types (subjunctive and infinitival), the linguistic factors constraining null vs. expressed pronominal subjects are nearly identical. This result suggests a similar function for subject pronouns that operates independently of clause types (finite/non-finite). The usage-based analysis allows us to identify the locus of emergence for the unusual morphosyntactic construction [para + ( subject ) + infinitive ] as appearing in a non-canonical discourse context. This construction may be evidence in favor of a hypothesized general pattern of SVO word order solidification in Caribbean Spanish.

In this paper I examine the syntax–semantics of the Romeyka infinitive, still to be found in an endangered Greek variety uninterruptedly spoken in the historical region of Pontus, Turkey. It is shown that the infinitive is found: (a) as a complement to negated past tense modals; (b) in before-clauses; (c) in counterfactuals. My proposal is that the Romeyka infinitive is licensed as a NPI. It is argued that antiveridicalidity (in the sense of Giannakidou, 1998 et seq.) licenses the infinitive and therefore explains the unavailability of the Romeyka infinitive in other nonveridical contexts such as: (i) questions, (ii) nonveridical conditionals, (iii) present and imperfect tense negated modals. The analysis set out here (i) proposes a new type of NPI, namely an infinitive; (ii) reinforces the disengagement between morphological negation and antiveridicality; (iii) highlights parallels with Romance polarity subjunctives, which, like the infinitive, also share a T-C dependency; the latter may have rendered the Romeyka infinitive diachronically more prone to developing a neg-dependency too (Sitaridou, 2014).

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the occurrence of nonfinite verbs in the spontaneous speech of monolingual Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) distinguishes them from typically-developing children of the same age and to consider the Interface Deficit account of SLI, in contrast to other prominent accounts of the tense deficit, in light of current literature. To demonstrate that tense, a discourse-sensitive construction, is problematic for Spanish-speaking children with SLI, 42 monolingual Spanish-speaking children, 21 with SLI and 21 age-matched typically-developing children, were recorded for 20–35 min sessions of narrative speech, in Mexico City. The children's ages ranged from 58 to 76 months. Utterances were coded for compliance with obligatory context, defined as whether or not they agreed with plausibly associated subjects in the grammatical context. Our results show that children with SLI produced significantly more errors in verb finiteness, taking into account obligatory context, than did their typically-developing counterparts. We conclude that the type and frequency of finiteness errors produced by the children with SLI indicate that these children do indeed pass through an Extended Optional Infinitive (EOI) Stage. Our measure of obligatory context enables the identification of a bare stem, non-finite verb form, previously unidentified in spontaneous speech studies of Spanish-speaking children with SLI. Consequences of these findings for 3 prominent theories of SLI are discussed.

This paper investigates the alternation between the Portuguese inflected and uninflected infinitive in adverbial contexts on the basis of extensive corpus analyses and from a cognitive-functional perspective. We propose a multifactorial analysis of several variables that could influence the choice between both infinitives. These variables are inscribed within three underlying principles proposed in former literature: higher autonomy of the infinitival clause, lower infinitival subject accessibility and stronger verbality of the infinitive would lead to an increased use of the inflected form. Both a classification tree and a logistic regression analysis offer converging evidence for the validity of autonomy and subject accessibility: infinitival clauses are more prone to the use of an inflected infinitive when they show more semantic–syntactic autonomy and when their subject is less accessible. As for the verbality principle, we found a difference between morphosyntactic and semantic verbality: infinitives that have explicit morphosyntactic marks of their verbal status are indeed more easily inflected. However, contrary to expectations, infinitives that are semantically less prototypical verbs (states and less dynamic verbs), are more easily inflected. We interpret these findings in terms of the “Differential Infinitive Marking” (analogous to differential object/subject marking) and clausality: the inflected infinitive marks the clausal nature of the infinitive construction.

The present paper analyses the semantic meaning of the subjunctive mood in complements of deontic and evaluative impersonal expressions. From the perspective of Cognitive Grammar, it is argued that the meaning of the subjunctive mood is to designate events that are located outside the conceptualizer’s dominion, whereas the impersonal expression puts focus on the relevant dominion, i.e. the dominion of effective control. Thus, the analysis shows that there is a conceptual relation between the conceptual content of the impersonal expression, on the one hand, and occurrence of the subjunctive mood, on the other hand. An additional analysis concerns the occurrence and the meaning of the inflected infinitive in contexts that imply a low degree of effective control.

In contemporary European Portuguese, causative and (direct) perception constructions represent two syntactic contexts in which an alternation between inflected and non-inflected infinitive exists. Aiming to find a ratio governing such an alternation, a study on the constructions at issue was made using the CETEMPublico corpus. The different types of constructions found in the corpus were organized in different classes according to (1) the type (Infl/non-Infl) of infinitive and its semantics, (2) the case and the form (lexical or cliticized) of the causee/perceived subject, and (3) the degree of iconicity of the construction. Significant differences between causative and perception constructions emerged, the concept of semantic integration being the most relevant parameter in the inflected/non-inflected infinitive alternation. Some unexpected data showing irregular use of the inflected infinitive were integrated in the analysis and in the classification of EP causative and perception constructions.

In this paper, I analyze a number of disparate behaviors of verbal particles in English verb particle constructions. I argue that there are three distinct structural configurations for verb particle constructions in English. English has two distinct forms of small clause particle constructions. In one the small clause is embedded by the root; in the other the predicate of the small clause embeds the root. English also has a complex head particle construction, where the particle is an unmodified head which occupies an argument position. The root embedding small clause particle can co-occur with the complex head particle—but no other combination of particles is permitted.

The Modal Existential construction (ModEx)—as in Russian Mne est’ cto pocitat’, ‘There is something for me to read’—has received much attention in the literature. This paper analyzes a related construction in Russian which contains in subject position, not a dative DP, but a PP headed by the preposition u, ‘at’—U menja est’ cto pocitat’, ‘I have something to read’. Because u marks possessors, I term this construction the Modal Possessive (ModPoss). Although both constructions contain an infinitival wh-clause embedded under an existential predicate, I identify several syntactic and semantic differences between ModPoss and ModEx, including: (1) the dative DP in ModEx, but not the possessor in ModPoss, is the subject of the infinitival clause, and (2) ModPoss, but not ModEx, asserts the existence of an individual in the actual world. I argue that the differences are fully explained by the presence of a Possessor Phrase (PossP) in ModPoss. PossP (1) introduces an additional argument and (2) requires that its complement be a set of individuals, forcing low existential closure of the world variable introduced by the infinitive. The present analysis also relates ModPoss to embedded questions, free relatives, and correlatives.

Time reference in Indo-European languages is marked on the verb. With tensed verb forms, the speaker can refer to the past (wrote, has written), present (writes, is writing) or future (will write). Reference to the past through verb morphology has been shown to be particularly vulnerable in agrammatic aphasia (Bastiaanse, 2008; Yarbay Duman & Bastiaanse, 2009) and both agrammatic and non-brain-damaged individuals have longer RTs with verb forms referring to the past than with verb forms referring to the present (Faroqi-Shah & Dickey, 2009). It has been argued that these results are due to the discourse-linking nature of past tense (Bastiaanse et al., 2011). This article reports ERP and behavioral (reaction time and acceptability rating) data on the processing of time reference violations in which verb forms do not match a time frame previously set by an adverb (present adverb-past tense verb; past adverb-present tense verb). The results show that violation by a present tense verb yields a P600 time-locked to the verb. No such response is found for violation by a past tense verb. These ERP results are similar to ERP findings on locally bound and discourse-linked pronominal processing and when related to behavioral findings on identical violations, support the claim that in present tense processing co-reference is established with the speech time (local binding), while past tense processing involves co-reference with some other event time (discourse-linking). (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In Russian infinitives of impersonal verbs have a peculiar distribution: they are not acceptable in most syntactic contexts, but there are also syntactic contexts in which they are perfectly acceptable. Based on a qualitative analysis of data from corpora, the Internet and an acceptability survey, it is argued that the restrictions on impersonals in infinitival constructions can be explained if both morphological and semantic–syntactic factors are taken into account. As is shown, the infinitive in Russian is easily associated with a human (arbitrary) subject. The restrictions on infinitives can be accounted for in terms of a semantic–syntactic incompatibility between the meaning of the impersonal verb, which lacks a subject, and the meaning of the infinitive, which is easily associated with a human subject. This analysis not only explains the data from Russian, but also makes predictions about similar data from other languages.

English-speaking children's emerging knowledge of control is investigated by focusing on the complementation of the verb want , a verb that permits both obligatory control and raising to object (RtO) complements. Children show an intriguing developmental pattern in their use of the infinitival marker to . Initially children produce complements with and without to ; our diary data show that among those complements without to are ones in which the null subject is not controlled by the matrix subject. These non-control utterances disappear as children's use of to increases over time. At the time when to reaches ceiling in control complements, it is entirely absent from raising to object complements. The developmental data are analyzed using Landau's (2000, 2004, 2006) Agree-based theory of control. On Landau's account, different kinds of clausal complements (e.g. indicative, infinitive, etc.) result from different assignments of tense and agreement on the C and I heads. The acquisition stages are argued to reflect the child's progressive grammatical hypotheses about the feature composition of possible complements for want . For both control and RtO complements, children initially assign features that result in subjunctive complements. Children's ‘non-adult’ utterances are all viewed as legitimate complement types made available by Universal Grammar.

This paper addresses the relationship between the frequency of morphological, lexical and syntactic forms in the input and children's language acquisition. The problem of obtaining reliable frequency measures under different sampling regimes is discussed. Since children are not simple associationist processors onto which the frequency of hearing or producing a string maps directly, a number of factors that interact with frequency are reviewed: form-function mappings, neighbourhood relations and multiple cues. These factors raise the problem of the level of granularity at which we test for a frequency-based explanation which can only be established through empirical research. Studies showing a relationship between the relative frequency of forms in the input and children's errors, including morphological errors, optional infinitive errors and accusative-for-nominative errors in English are discussed. The final section of the paper deals more briefly with some counter-arguments to the importance of frequency effects in the learning of grammar.

In this paper, we examine in some detail the syntactic distribution and semantic properties of French tensed clausal complements introduced by a/de ce que. We argue that the clausal determiner analysis put forth in Zaring (1992) is inadequate for explaining their distribution and that an extension of Kayne's (1999) treatment of a and de + infinitive to a/de ce que is also unlikely to yield the right results since a number of contexts reveal that the distribution of so-called prepositional complementizers in infinitives and that of a/de ce que only partially overlap. We propose instead that a/de ce que are noncompositional elements of the C system that are restricted to tensed clausal complements to verbs, nouns and adjectives that form coherent semantic classes. This type of selection and distribution is shown to be strongly reminiscent of that of indirect interrogative si. Finally we argue, based on topic placement, that given Rizzi's (1997, 2001) multi-layered approach to the C system, de ce que, just like que, occupies the head of ForceP while a ce que appears in a lower position: head of IntP.

Certain modal auxiliary and control constructions in Thai differ only in the choice between a modal or control verb. Despite a possibility to analyze them as (subject) raising vs. control predicates, the present study argues that their counterparts with the marker thii may not be derived via the raising vs. control conventions. The reasons include the presence of thii caʔ which marks infinitival complements and a possible connection between modal auxiliaries and lexical control verbs revealed by a test on Thai clausal idioms. This study proposes an additional functional category, Mood (Irrealis) Phrase, M(I)P, to account for the co-occurrence restrictions of thii and non-assertive (irrealis) infinitival complements, and develops a unified analysis for modal and control constructions with thii , parallel to Kayne's (2000) approach to control infinitives with di in Italian. The analysis developed here is consequential to the syntax and semantics of modals and control infinitives, cross-linguistically. Firstly, it suggests that modals that behave identically to control predicates be analyzed by means of the control approach, rather than the raising predicate approach, which has been held customarily. Secondly, it establishes the role of the MIP, which enables the expression of a hypothetical tense that occurs in infinitival complements introduced by markers (i.e. thii in Thai, di in Italian, and de in French).

Studies on complementation in English and other languages have traditionally focused on syntactic issues, most notably on the constituent structures of different complement types. As a result, they have neglected the role of meaning in the choice of different complements. This paper investigates the semantics of complementation within the theoretical framework of cognitive grammar. In particular, I examine the extent to which two morphosyntactically different complement types in modern English, to infinitival and -ing complements, reflect differences in meaning and whether there is any semantic patterning in the sets of matrix predicates that select for each type. The analysis argues that the occurrence of one or the other complement type is not semantically arbitrary, but rather semantically motivated by the meanings of the matrix predicates and the meanings of the grammatical elements to and -ing found in each kind of complement. Consequently, in spite of its clear grammatical function, infinitival to is meaningful in all its uses, retaining aspects of its original path-like sense via well-established routes of semantic extension. In general, all to infinitival complements evoke the notion of conceptual distance of some kind between the matrix and subordinate clauses. In addition, in all its uses -ing is also meaningful in evoking some kind of conceptual overlap between the matrix and subordinate clauses.

In the linguistic literature Hungarian infinitival clauses are claimed to project a full CP with all the left peripheral projections of a finite clause present, and the very same restrictions on the order of these constituents. However, in certain infinitival structures pointed out in the present paper the order of typical left peripheral phrases fails to obey the expected restrictions. Moreover, matrix constituents can mingle with constituents of the infinitival clause which may lead one to suppose a mono-clausal structure. This paper presents data that support a bi-clausal rather than a mono-clausal approach to restructuring. Adopting Hinterholzl's (1999, 2006) bi-clausal approach to restructuring and his scope-based analysis of scrambling, an analysis will be proposed that captures the seemingly contradictory properties of the relevant infinitives.

A group of 20 patients with probable Alzheimer disease (AD) and a control group were tested in a verb generation task, in a verb synonym task and several cognitive tests. Three types of verbs and novel verbs were presented in simple sentence frames, in two different conditions. In one condition participants were presented with the verb in the infinitive, providing information about the conjugation of the verb and the most likely type of past participle mapping required. The second was an ambiguous condition in which the suffix of the input verb did not provide any clue to the conjugation. The aim was to investigate if different types of verbs and input mapping affected patients' performance, and to what extent the deficit increased when the illness became more severe. Dependent measures were accuracy rates, rates of different morpho-phonological transformations and error type rates. Patients showed a more marked deficit in verb generation, when input was ambiguous. Correlation between the verb synonym test and accuracy in verb generation indicated that a deficit in lexical-semantic memory was partially responsible for impaired performance. Data suggest that patients maintained information about frequency distribution of different verb types and verb classes in each conjugation, but were impaired in operating complex phonological transformations.

Research on pausing strategies, particularly in speaking, has been in place for the past few decades. Within this framework, this study reports on the audio recordings produced by native speakers of English, and aims to describe different silent pausing strategies as they were employed by these speakers in English. The audio recordings were provided in a twofold procedure: while 9 participants watched a film and then commented on various themes of the film, 11 participants read a mini Disney story aloud. Considerable attention was given to pausing preceding (PP) and pausing following (PF) the to particle in to-infinitive phrases as well as to the duration of this particle. Obtained results display significant differences between pausing preceding and following to both in spontaneous and read speech. While pausing preceding to was observed to be significantly longer than the following position in read speech, in spontaneous speech it was just the opposite. This observation, partly, justifies the theory of principles and parameters (PPT). Findings of this research may have significant implications for reading and speaking skills of EFL learners in particular, and L2 learners in general.

English and German children aged 2 years 4 months and 4 years heard both novel and familiar verbs in sentences whose form was grammatical, but which mismatched the event they were watching (e.g., ‘ The frog is pushing the lion ’, when the lion was actually the ‘agent’ or ‘doer’ of the pushing). These verbs were then elicited in new sentences. All children mostly corrected the familiar verb (i.e., they used the agent as the grammatical subject), but there were cross-linguistic differences among the two-year-olds concerning the novel verb. When English 2-year-olds used the novel verb they mostly corrected. However, their most frequent response was to avoid using the novel verb altogether. German 2-year-olds corrected the novel verb significantly more often than their English counterparts, demonstrating more robust verb-general representations of agent- and patient-marking. These findings provide support for a ‘graded representations’ view of development, which proposes that grammatical representations may be simultaneously abstract but ‘weak’.

This article focuses on the syntax of a number of subcategories of verb in French which are compatible\ud with a following bare infinitive and which express various kinds of grammatical tense, mood, modality, aspect and voice, as well as such (more lexical?) notions as perception, causation and locomotion.\ud The article starts by cataloguing a number of properties that these verbs display, and outlines various traditional accounts. It then sketches recent proposals by Cinque (1999, 2006a) [Cinque, Guglielmo, 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford University Press; Cinque, Guglielmo, 2006a. Restructuring and Functional Heads. Oxford University Press]\ud regarding functional clause structure. Finally, the article uses Cinque’s framework to account for\ud the properties identified.

It is cross-linguistically common for languages to undergo a diachronic increase in the range of adverbial notions that can be expressed by means of infinitival constructions, and the Romance languages are a good example of this process. Examining the development of adverbial ‘prepositional infinitive’ constructions in Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, this paper draws on diachronic corpus data to provide detailed evidence for the increase of such constructions, both in terms of types and tokens, over the centuries. It is shown that, in all three languages, different prepositions begin to appear in the infinitival construction individually at different times, before experiencing a gradual rise in token frequency. It is of particular interest that the order in which different prepositions, expressing different adverbial notions, begin to participate in the construction is very similar in all three languages, despite the fact that we are clearly dealing with separate, unconnected developments. A hierarchy [purposive > abessive > temporal > concessive] can be identified, in which the purposive notion is the earliest and most frequent to be expressed by means of an infinitival construction. The second part of the paper is concerned with identifying what causes this development to proceed in such a parallel fashion in different languages, showing that subject coreference between main and adverbial clause is a crucial factor. A diachronic survey reveals that subject coreference is statistically far more likely with some adverbial notions than with others, and that this likelihood is remarkably stable through time and across languages. Those adverbial notions with a greater likelihood of coreference are the earliest and most frequent to be expressed by means of an infinitival construction. It is therefore concluded that the frequency and statistical likelihood of real-world usage patterns is responsible for the hierarchical sequence in which specific adverbial notions come to be expressed infinitivally, and for the overall spread of these structures. Furthermore, it is argued that the cross-linguistically common association of certain adverbial clause types (notably purpose clauses) with infinitival structures is not primarily due to the infinitive’s lack of overt tense morphology, but rather to its lack of morphological subject agreement.

This paper investigates the semantic distribution of two morphological forms of the Russian verb of volition хотеть. Three hypotheses for semantic grounds for the grammatical distribution are proposed. The hypotheses are checked by statistical analysis of distribution of the infinitive made on the data obtained from the National Russian Corpus. The analysis reveals groups of verbs which show more deviation in their behavior when used with one of the volition verbs than would be expected. The results of the analysis do not favor any of the preliminary hypotheses. A close-up look at the semantics of the constructions with the infinitives that show non-standard behavior helps to understand the semantic opposition realized by the two constructions.

This article observes how the principle of seriality is embodied in Kharms's poem ‘Zvonit'letet'’. The author concentrates on the subjects and predicates which form serial constructions. The seriality of subjects is based on a variety of “concrete” subjects, whereas the seriality of the predicates is based on the repetition of words with the roots -let- and zvon-/zven-. Special attention is paid to the infinitive, which is regarded as a “pre-form” of the verb.

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the processing of the empty category PRO and the time-course of this in Spanish. Eye movements were recorded while participants read sentences in which a matrix clause was followed by a subordinate infinitival clause, so that the subject or the object of the main clause could act as controller of PRO, and therefore as implicit grammatical subject of the infinitive. In Experiment 1, verb control information was manipulated: The matrix clause contained either subject-control verbs like prometer (‘promise’) or object-control verbs like forzar (‘force’). In Experiment 2, the preposition that headed adverbial subordinate clauses was manipulated: Two different kinds of infinitival adverbial clauses were used, expressing purpose (preposition para) and reason (preposition por) and in which control information is primarily induced by the prepositions (para tends to trigger subject-control; por object-control). Experiment 1 showed that readers make immediate use of verb control information to recover the antecedent of the empty category PRO in Spanish obligatory control constructions. The data obtained in Experiment 2 suggest that during the processing of the empty category PRO in purpose vs. reason adverbial subordinate infinitival clauses the control information induced by the prepositions por vs. para is not initially used as a constraint to guide the selection of the nominal antecedent of PRO. In addition, both experiments showed that PRO antecedent selection is a very fast process and that, together with verb control information, recency played an important role. The results are discussed in terms of current psycholinguistic hypotheses about empty categories and in relation to formal linguistic hypotheses about PRO control. We argue that obligatory control ties (which are co-referential ties) are processed fast because they are launched from the same lexical platform that launches all fast syntactic connections (complements, as opposed to modifiers). In short, that such lexically-specified co-referential ties are regulated by linguistic form.

The paper examines two questions concerning Irish non-finite clauses, i.e.: (1) the free variation between overt subjects and PRO and (2) dialectal variation. As regards the first issue, it is argued that Irish non-finite clauses represent two types, namely: clauses with PRO which exhibit anaphoric Agr in T checking PRO's null Case and non-finite clauses which exhibit non-anaphoric Agr in T checking nominative Case of the subject. The mechanism licensing overt subjects and PRO can be used to account for distinct word orders found in Northern and in Southern dialects. While the former allow overt object shift in the presence of either the overt subject or PRO, hence yielding the following orders: S+O+particle+V and PRO+O+particle+V, the latter trigger overt object shift only in the presence of PRO and never in the presence of an overt subject, hence giving rise to the following patterns: S+particle+V+O and PRO+O+particle+V. In order to account for this dialectal variation, the particle a is taken to represent a marker of transitivity in Northern dialects and hence to appear in v. Object shift is triggered by the necessity to satisfy the v's EPP-feature and subject raising from Spec, vp is triggered by the EPP-feature of T. For Southern dialects the following assumptions are made: (1) the particle a has always a Case feature to check, (2) the particle a can appear in v or in T, when it appears in v, it checks the Case of the object and when it appears in T, it checks the Case of the subject, (3) overt subjects are licensed by the particle a , which is an overt realisation of non-anaphoric Agr in T, and (4) PRO is licensed by anaphoric Agr in T. Under these assumptions, the order S+particle+V+O arises if a is in T, whereas the order PRO+O+particle+V surfaces if a occurs in v. It is further suggested that subject and object raise in Southern dialects for Case reasons, not for EPP-checking. The pattern S+O + particle + V is impossible in Southern dialects, as in order to license the overt subject a must be in Agr, whereas in order to license object shift a must appear in v. Since a cannot occupy two positions simultaneously, this order is never attested.

The comprehension of HS, an Indonesian-speaking man with non-fluent aphasia, was investigated using an act-out task. HS was tested on VP-conjoined and center-embedded constructions in Indonesian that contained either two active verbs or two passive verbs, an active verb in the first clause and a passive verb in the second clause, or vice versa. Another type of center-embedded construction contained an object-preposed verb in the embedded clause and either an active or passive verb in the matrix clause. HS enacted the first clause accurately on all sentence types, yet he consistently predicated the second verb of the NP with the role of agent in the first clause. This strategy resulted in appropriate enactments of sentences with an active verb in the first clause, but it led to ungrammatical interpretations of sentences whose first clause contained a passive or object-preposed verb, since in these constructions the subject of the second verb is the NP with the role of theme in the first clause. HS's response pattern supports a new computational model, the Thematic Prominence Model, which posits that in thematically oriented, free word order languages like Indonesian, the thematic prominence of arguments is more important for predication than their linear positions.

Speakers tend to reproduce syntactic structures that they have recently comprehended or produced. This structural or syntactic priming occurs despite differences in the particular conceptual or event roles expressed in prime and target sentences (Bock & Loebell, 1990). In two sentence recall studies, we used the tendency of speakers to paraphrase the finite complements of object-raising verbs as infinitive complements (e.g., “John believed that Mary was nice” as “John believed Mary to be nice”) to test whether an additional conceptual role would affect priming. Prime constructions with identical constituent orders as object-raising infinitives but an additional conceptual role (“John persuaded Mary to be nice”) resulted in fewer paraphrases. Contrasts with other constructions suggest that the critical difference between primes was this extra conceptual role. Thus, subtle differences in conceptual structures can affect how speakers grammatically encode message elements.

This paper examines the status of syntactic rules, such as they are given in formal frameworks, by discussing the case assignment to the Russian semipredicatives sam (‘self’) and odin (‘alone’) when they occur with the infinitive. The paper focuses in particular on the appearance of these semipredicates in the dative case, the so-called ‘second dative’. It is argued that formal approaches to the second dative suffer from a number of shortcomings which can all be contributed to the fact that they do not take the semantics of the relevant expressions (dative, nominative, infinitive, lexical meaning of sam and odin) into consideration in the linguistic analysis. The negligence of semantics leads to (i) the use of non-motivated rules and notions, (ii) circularity in the explanation, (iii) arbitrariness in the distinction of linguistic data, and, in some cases (iv) wrong predictions. In this paper it is shown that an analysis that proceeds from the semantic (or conceptual) basis of morphological case adds a deeper level of explanation and understanding to formal analyses of the second dative. By discussing the different contexts in which the second dative occurs, it is shown that the syntactic combination of the second dative and the infinitive expresses that there is a force directed at the realization of the infinitive situation by the participant expressed by odin or sam. The nominative occurs if the idea of assigning a situation is absent, and the subject of the infinitive (which is associated with the participant expressed by the semipredicative) and the infinitive situation, are conceptualized as manifestations of the same scene.

The processing of verbs and differences in the availability of verbs and nouns has recently become a topic of interest among psycholinguists, researchers into language acquisition and aphasiologists. The present paper provides a detailed review of the literature during the last decade devoted to verb/noun differences and verb processing in aphasia patients. The first part of the review discusses three topics. The first is the relationship between verb/noun deficits and diagnostic categories such as Broca's aphasia and anomia. The second discusses studies that assume that verb/noun differences are lexical and evaluate the evidence concerning the level(s) on current models of lexical processing at which verb/noun differences might occur. The third deals with studies that argue that verb/noun differences derive from semantic differences and are reducible to imageability effects or to loss of functional or perceptual features. The second part of the paper discusses the literature devoted to verbs. It contains a short tutorial on arguments, stucture of verbs and their structural realization (syntactic subcategorization) and provides a critical account of the studies that relate verb deficits to their argument structure. Finally, studies devoted to verb semantics are discussed.

The general characteristics and specific language deficits of seven native speakers of Persian who became aphasic (with three different etiologies) are discussed. Three major linguistic deficits related to site and size of lesion and to individual differences emerge from the data: breakdown of the verb, deletion of free grammatical morphemes, and substitution of bound grammatical morphemes. Four types of language-specific agrammatic deficits are described: (a) substitution of a filler verb / budan / ‘to be’ as a default for all kinds of verbs, including transitive active verbs; (b) substitution of the polymorphemic infinitive for the contextually proper inflected form of the verb; and (c) tendency to omit the ezafe linking morpheme / -e / and the NP-internal conjunction / va / ‘and’.

This article presents an approach to the English to-infinitive where to is a preposition with a bare infinitive complement and ECM and object control complements receive a small clause analysis. Crucial to this approach is the positioning of PRO, which always occurs in the subject position of to's complement. This positioning allows a complementary distribution of PRO, lexical NPs, and NP-trace. The distribution of these elements, in conjunction with the small clause approach, creates multiple advantages including the elimination of current inconsistencies in the theory of null case, the reduction of control to anaphoric binding, and a general and uniform theory of complementation.

This paper argues that the traditional view of experience-dependent properties (learned properties) of language as developing late and non-experience-dependent properties as developing early is in fact often wrong. Parameters are set correctly very early (Very Early Parameter-Setting) and properties of inflectional items are also learned very early. On the other hand, some universal properties of language emerge later, presumably under a genetically-driven maturational program. The Optional Infinitive(OI) Stage (Wexler, 1990, 1992, 1994) of grammatical development is explained by the AGR/TNS Omission Model (ATOM) of Schutze and Wexler, (1996). This paper derives this model via a new proposal for a developmental constraint: the Unique Checking Constraint (UCC), which prevents a D-feature on DP from checking more than one D-feature on functional categories, thus forcing either AGR or TNS to be omitted. The Minimalist framework of Chomsky 1995 is assumed — in particular the assumption that a D-feature and not a case feature is the driving force for the Extended Projection Principle. With AGR and TNS both having a D-feature, UCC predicts that finite sentences will not converge. The model also predicts that subjects of OI's will raise to a higher functional projection, even when case is not assigned by INFL, thus solving a traditional problem in the theory of OI's. With natural assumptions on the nature of null-subject languages, the Null-Subjection/Optional Infinitive Correlation of Wexler (1996) is derived from the UCC — that OI's exist in early child language if and only if the adult grammar is not an INFL-licensed null-subject language. Thus the UCC is seen as a fundamental explanatory force for a range of phenomena in early child grammar. Moreover the child data provide strong evidence for the claim that a D-feature motivates the raising of the subject in UG, thus unifying child and adult grammar and demonstrating the usefulness of the investigation of child grammar in the study of UG.

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of utterances containing ‘yes’, ‘okay’, ‘so’, the structure ‘may [infinitive] but’ and interrogatives such as ‘Good?’ in texts of women's magazines. The hypothesis to be investigated is that utterances containing these expressions may be read as the writer's responses to readers' potential, and implicit, comments or questions. In addition, this paper has a second, methodological aim. The view of reading as a writer-reader interaction through written text encounters the limitations inherent to speech-act-based analyses of interaction. For this reason, the examination of written text is carried out from the interpretive standpoint associated with conversation analysis, and takes into consideration the receivers' interpretation of the utterances under investigation.

Attempts to describe ‘what auxiliaries are and why they behave the way they do’ on the basis of syntactic criteria have not been successful. This study, which approaches the problem from the point of view of meaning, postulating that any word is used for the meaning it expresses, focuses on the nature of DO, the auxiliary usually considered a ‘dummy’ word. It proposes for DO a residual lexical meaning, the representation of a stretch of duration, as well as the grammatical meaning of any verb in the indicative. On the basis of this meaning combined with that of the infinitive, an explanation of usage in interrogative, negative and positive sentences is proposed. This analysis provides a starting point for exploring the system of auxiliaries in English and the nature of compound verbs.

This paper proposes an explanation, in exclusively semantic terms, of the distribution of the infinitive form of the verb when used with wh- words in contemporary English in both independent and subordinate clauses. The explanation proposed is based on the meaning of the infinitive, the meaning of to and the pragmatic implications of the meanings of the whwords as regards the existence of what they refer to. The method followed shows that linguistic semantics can contribute in a significant way to the explanation of what would appear to be mere distributional or syntactic facts.

The hypothesis that readers use verb argument structure information to generate and evaluate likely syntactic alternatives and assign provisional interpretations was evaluated using wh-questions. such as Which client did the salesman visit while in the city? Using a word by word, self-paced reading task with a "makes sense" judgment, we manipulated the plausibility of the wh-phrase with respect to the semantic role that it would play if it were the direct object. We also manipulated the preferred argument structure of the verb, using (1) transitive verbs that typically occur with only a direct object; (2) objective control verbs that typically are used with both a direct object and an infinitive complement; and (3) dative verbs that are typically used with both a direct object and an indirect object. The results showed clear and immediate effects of argument structure. Sentences with implausible wh-phrases were judged to stop making sense at the verb for simple transitive verbs. However, sentences with object control verbs and dative verbs were judged to make sense as long as the wh-phrase could be plausibly interpreted as one of the verb′s arguments. Thus, the bias to initially interpret a wh-phrase as the direct object of a verb was blocked when the filler was implausible in the direct object role if the verb provided another argument position. In addition, interpretation of the wh-phrase began at the verb, prior to the gap, even when the syntactic position of the gap was ambiguous. The results are taken as support for constraint-based lexicalist models of processing.

This article updates Paradis and El Fenne (1991, 1992). The C/0 alternation (including the Ṽ/VN one) in French verbal inflection (e.g. dort [dor]/dorment [dorm] ‘to sleep’ 3sg. and 3pl. Present Indicative), which occurs in 588 regular (non-suppletive and non-defective) verbs, is explained and related naturally to the C/0 alternation found in many other morphological and syntactic environments. More specifically, we maintain that the notion of ‘floating consonant’ (i.e. a consonant without a timing slot) along with two principles, the No Empty Onset Principle and the Licensing Principle, used in the framework of the Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies (cf. Paradis, 1988a,b), suffices to handle the C/0 alternation in verbal inflection and elsewhere. Not only does the system we propose result in a considerable simplification of French verbal inflection (it gets rid of numerous thematic segments and ad hoc - when not contradictory - context rules), it makes important new predictions concerning the selection of Infinitive suffixes in relation to the nature of a stem-final consonant (floating/non-floating). We show that these predictions are confirmed by the results of production tests, administered by El Fenne (1994), which clearly indicate that the floating consonant system we propose reflects the competence of French speakers.

The paper attempts a comparative analysis of the Japanese complex verb forms V-te-i-ru and V-te-ar-u . It morphologically analyzes the forms as compound predicates consisting of a complex verb stem (a perfective verb stem adjoined to an imperfective verb stem /-i-/ or /-ar-/ by /-te-/) and the tense morpheme /-(r)u-/. It is argued that both forms characterize the duration of situations identified by the perfective verb stems and that the choice between the two forms is determined in terms of whether the subject entity is seen from the dynamic or from the static point of view. The diverse and versatile usage of these verb forms is thus accounted for in a principled manner.

A detailed analysis of the to-infinitives in Old English shows that the ‘structural parallelism hypothesis’ (Chomsky 1981, Koster and May 1982, Wilder 1988) that the infinitival clauses have a complete IP/CP structure isomorphic to finite sentences is not universally valid. Specifically, it is argued that OE to-infinitives have a simple AGRP structure in the sense of Pollock (1989), and that the infinitival marker to, identified as AGR, represents the external argument of an infinitive verb. This lexical property of to's external γ-role absorption accounts for a number of seemingly peculiar syntactic phenomena in Old English, among them the absence of morphologically passive to-infinitives, the unavailability of subject-relation infinitival relatives, the lack of both a lexical and a PRO subject in to-infinitives, and the frequent occurrence of ‘retroactive infinitives’. It is also argued that the Spec of AGRP, which is dethermatized by to, has a dual function of A- and A-bar positions, thus questioning the validity of the absolute A/A-bar distinction.

When a verb is followed by an infinitival complement, the particular verb determines whether its subject or object is the understood subject of the infinitive. Thus, the verb “controls” the interpretation of the infinitive (e.g., John promised/persuaded Mary to wash ). Frazier and colleagues have argued that verb control information is not immediately accessed and used in sentence processing based on whole-sentence comprehension times. The studies reported here examined the use of verb control using an on-line plausibility monitoring task. Subjects immediately detected incongruities that depended upon their having correctly used control information, indicating that verb control information is rapidly accessed and used. It is argued that the results support an approach to language comprehension that emphasizes the importance of lexical representations in rapidly integrating many of the different sources of linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge that need to be coordinated during language comprehension.

Epistemic deontic Be (as in Keats was to die young and in This door is to remain closed all day ) only occurs in finite positions, even though the verb Be is not morphologically defective and has an infinitive, an -Ing form and a participle. This brings out the insufficiency of McCawley's (1971) argument that English modals occur only as finites because of their defective morphology. It is demonstrated that epistemic deontic Be cannot be accommdated in the rule system by means of which Akmajlan, Steele and Wasow (1979) stipulate the positions of English auxiliary verbs. Hence this system must be modified. It is argued in the light of the theory on tense in Rigter that, contrary to Akmajian et al's proposal, modals are auxiliary verbs and belong to the same position class as epistemic deontic Be . The syntactic stipulation in Akmajian (1977) and in Akmajian et al (1979) that complements of perception verbs contain neither a perfect nor a modal is shown to be semantically motivated. Evidence is adduced that the progressive does occur in structures underlying perception verb complements. It is suggested that the distribution of semantic material over stacked structures is subject to a semantico-syntactic ordering principle which places the more objective predications in the scope of the more subjective predications.

This paper argues, within the Government-Binding framework, that the German infinitive marker zu is a complementizer morpheme, not an INFL morpheme, as is standardly assumed; and that subject-Raising is possible in the presence of a complementizer, again contrary to the standard view. Treating zu as a complementizer allows for a simple and unified account, not previously available, for the absence of interrogative infinitives, of accusative subjects, and of verb-second effects in infinitives containing zu. The existence of subject-Raising in constructions with zu-infinitives creates a problem insofar as subject-Raising entails S'-deletion — i.e. the absence of a complementizer — according to the standard version of the theory. Since, however, by contrast with other languages, there is no independent evidence for S'-deletion in the relevant constructions of German, it is argued here that the relevant part of the theory — the Empty Category Principle — should be revised so as to permit Raising without S'-deletion in just the German case. The second part of the paper makes a specific proposal to this effect within the terms of Chomsky's (1986) ‘Barriers’ framework.

In the present article the distribution of lexically governed participles and infinitive clauses in Modern German is described within a topological framework according to which sentences and clauses are subdivided into ‘fields’. Following Bech (1955, 1957), a basic distinction is made between a ‘coherent’ and an ‘incoherent construction’. In the ‘coherent construction’, the infinite verb form stands in final position and its dependent elements are integrated within the superordinate matrix sentence or clause. In the ‘incoherent construction’, the infinite verb and its dependent elements basically form a continuous sequence, as is the case in four different ‘simple positions’ (extraposition, medial position, relative position, initial position). However, these may to a certain extent be broken up. Hence five different discontinuous incoherent constructions may also secondarily arise. The latter cases are generally rather unusual and more often than not subject to heavy restrictions.

Reasons are given for accepting the proposal that the Latin accusative and infinitive developed from a reanalysis of the arguments of verbs of ordering . It is claimed that reanalysis took place as a result of the existence of the alternative ut clause complement that verbs of ordering could govern. Distinctions between Latin infinitival complement types are drawn, and it is concluded that, whereas the Equi complement types should be analysed as VPs, the accusative and infinitive complements must be derived from underlying sentences. It is further shown that accusative and infinitive complements are themselves subclassifiable on the basis of the illocutionary force of their underlying sentence. Suggestions are made for the synchronic analysis of Latin infinitival complementation, taking these various factors into account, and implications for the study of diachronic syntax are discussed.

Over-extension of prefixal m - marking on certain classes of verbs by Hebrew-speaking children at the stage of early morpho-syntax is analyzed in relation to the learner's task in acquiring a wide range of verb inflections to encode, inter alia , distinctions of tense (present, past, future) and mood (imperative, infinitive). Children's widespread, although shortlived, use of such forms as * mi-zaher ‘take care’ versus normative nizhar , * mi-kanes ‘go in’ versus nixnas might be due to over-generalization of a specific morphological pattern—cf. li-kanes ‘to go in’, mi-cayer ‘draws’ (Berman 1981b). However, in morphological terms, this usage occurs only in those verb-classes which make no overt distinction between past and present tense in the unmarked 3rd masculine singular ( nixnas means ‘goes in’ or ‘went in’, shar ‘is singing’ or ‘sang’); and semantically, it is confined to verbs referring to current or ongoingactivities. This indicates strongly that children initially adopt prefixal m - as a unique marker of present-tense, a feasible strategy since most Hebrew verb-pattern conjugations do, in fact, have m - initial prefixes in present tense. Implications of these findings are considered in terms of (1) the nature and role of children's “interim schemata” en route to productive rules subject to adult constraints, (2) the interpretation of “errors” in child language studies, and (3) the relation between children's construals and grammatical description—in this case, concerning the precedence of verb-tense over verb-pattern binyan systems in both language development (Berman 1980) and linguistic theory (Bolozky 1979).

The present paper deals with prepositional infinitive constructions with imperative force, such as A callar! (‘Shut up!’), A trabajar! (‘Go to work!’) and Pues a hacerlo tu, entonces (‘So you do it!’). It is argued that prepositional infinitives belong to the class of impositive speech acts, which are a subclass of directive speech acts. By means of a systematic comparison between the imperative and the prepositional infinitive it is demonstrated that the latter has a more emphatic force than the former. The semantic analysis of the construction shows that the speaker using it wants the corresponding command to be carried out immediately. As for the syntactic structure of the prepositional infinitive, its transformational relationship with the ir a + infinitive periphrasis is discussed, as well as the possibilities of deriving both from a single performative deep structure. Lastly, the surface realizations of the subject are examined.

1. 1. This is a report of the development of a computerized scoring system for use with content analysis scales of speech. The goal has been to surpass the content analysis of single, isolated words in natural language and to focus the analysis on the quality and quantity of meaning carried in clauses or sentences and, eventually, in a broader contextual framework. 2. 2. Using the Gottschalk-Gleser content analysis Hostility scales, the first step taken was the use of an efficient parser that contained a sufficiently powerful grammar to characterize the subset of English that is often encountered in psychiatric interviews. Wood's Augmented Transition Network Parser was modified to run on a PDP-10 computer, and its grammar was enlarged to cover certain linguistic constructions that frequently occur in spoken discourse. In addition, a small dictionary of several hundred entries was created, permitting the maintenance of this dictionary in core. 3. 3. Since the Gottschalk-Gleser content analysis method derives a score on the basis of the action verb in a clause in conjunction with the noun-phrases that function as actors and recipients of this action, a technique was developed for assigning “meaning” to each of these constituents. Accordingly, verbs were assigned semantic features called verb-types based on the thematic categories and weights of the Gottschalk-Gleser Hostility Outward scale. 4. 4. The infinitive form of the verb in each spoken clause was retrieved from the parse and looked up in the semantic-features dictionary. The parser performed the required morphological analysis and stripped the inflectional ending of the verb, yielding its infinitive or root form. 5. 5. The computer next assigned semantic features to the noun-phrases that function as actors and recipients of the action verbs. In the simplest instances, the noun-phrase received the semantic features of its head noun. In more complex instances, for example in prepositional-phrases, noun-phrases were located as semantic markers for the initial noun-phrase. 6. 6. The scoring algorithm for arriving at the score for each clause was obtained after examining the set of semantic features assigned to the above-mentioned noun-phrases and head verb. An information structure (scoretree) was used for advice on how to interpret the combinations of noun-phrases and head verbs, and it was indexed by the verb-type. At present, each scoretree has only two levels; the first level is made up of tests for the features of the subject of the clause in question and the second level is composed of tests for the object. Which scoretree to access is determined by locating the verb-type of the head verb in the clause; the first-level node is obtained by overlapping the features of the subject noun-phrase with the features of successive first-level nodes until some partial match is achieved. The second-level node is located from the first-level node overlapping the features of the object noun-phrase with successive nodes until another partial match is achieved. Associated with the second-level node is the score that the total clause is to receive. 7. 7. In testing this automated method on 100 sentences taken at random from the manual of instructions for using the Gottschalk-Gleser content analysis scales, 60% of them were correctly parsed and scored. As another preliminary test of the information retrieved by this computerized method, six 5-min speech samples were scored by human content analysis technicians, and their scores were compared to the computerized scoring system at its present level of development. A Spearman rank difference correlation of 0.80 was obtained between the ranked scores using the two methods. 8. 8. The shortcomings and further steps to take in the development of this content analysis method are outlined and discussed.