Search

This study investigates the written production of direct object (DO) anaphora in L2 Spanish by adult English native speakers. It focuses on the use of clitics and full DPs in topic continuity, where highly salient topics are typically recovered by clitics in native Spanish. A combination of pragmatic factors in subject anaphora resolution (referential ambiguity and distance) and morphosyntactic factors in the acquisition of clitics (gender and animacy) was analyzed in 5 subcorpora from the CEDEL2 (Corpus Escrito del Español L2). Following Learner Corpus Research methodology, 773 anaphoric DOs and their antecedents were tagged across 150 texts (from low-intermediate to upper-advanced proficiency). Results showed that as learner proficiency increases, the predominant anaphoric strategy shifts from redundant DP overuse to felicitous pronominalization. Clitic avoidance is the general strategy intimately related to clitics' morphosyntactic deficits at advanced levels, but also to pragmatic principles supporting the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis (Lozano, 2016). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The paper proposes a novel structural analysis of Hittite determinate relative clauses on the basis of a corpus study considering a wider and fuller array of Hittite data than ever before. In Hittite, relative wh-phrases attest a wide range of linear positions: first/initial, clause-second, immediately preverbal or even postverbal. We build upon the current assumption that wh-pronouns are clitics and thus their placement is determined by the syntax-prosody interface. As for the syntactic component, we argue against the in situ construal of wh-elements. Instead, we propose that what linearly appears to be clause-second, preverbal or postverbal position of the wh-pronoun is structurally associated with Spec, FinP. The prosodic component is provided by the standardly acknowledged prosodic inversion, but the prosodic domain for the placement of wh-clitics is not clausal (CP), it is rather to be identified with a smaller domain within CP, namely, FinP. We also provide the first ever systematic treatment of split wh-phrases which are highly problematic for existing approaches but are fully accounted for by our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Spanish, the pronominal clitics show the possibility of variation when accompanying a verbal complex, since they can go before or after it. This possibility has been dealt with from formalist approaches, diachronic views and, to a lesser extent, with sociolinguistic criteria. From this last perspective, we have contributions on Canarian Spanish (Troya & Pérez, 2011), Venezuelan (Navarro, 1990; Zabalegui, 2008), Mexican (Schwenter & Torres Cacoullos, 2014) and Castilian Spanish (Illamola & Vila, 2015). These are studies with disparity of scope, corpus and criteria, so it is necessary to study this phenomenon in a monolingual corpus, which can be replicated in other Hispanic areas. After setting forth some previous methodological issues derived from the nature of the corpus data, we have found that unusual cases are relevant, such as verbal semantism and the presence of the lexical subject, along with the factors already pointed out in previous studies. However, the main input of this work is the verification of the influence of the social factor 'level of education', which is depicted in a curvilinear pattern where the intermediate group presents postposition percentages superior to the other groups. Women, adults and old age groups are particularly contributing to this pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Asia-Pacific Language Variation (APLV) is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. 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.)

Practices of word segmentation in French and Moroccan Arabic by beginning and advanced bilingual writers in two historically and linguistically divergent settings are analysed in a threefold perspective: (1) In the different sociocultural contexts of linguistically heterogeneous France in the 1870's and a town with remarkable immigration from Morocco in Germany in 2000, dictations constitute monolingual settings of language policy and normativity; (2) structurally, open and closed spellings of (clitic) function and content words indicate constraints of different orthographies, focussing either phonology or morphosyntax; (3) in the framework of contact linguistics, bilingual students write in one of their languages (French, Moroccan Arabic) with resources of other languages (like Breton, German, Classical Arabic). The results show that the students' writings are influenced by graphematic structures not directly related to the language dictated. In French Brittany, a great importance of closed spellings may be supported by the agglutinative feature of the Breton language, while the apostrophe as a striking feature of French orthography is used primarily, but often only emblematically, by the students in Gascony. Moroccan Arabic writers in Germany are influenced indirectly by their first school language, German, in the way they mark word boundaries in prepositional phrases (PP) and imperfective verb forms. Classical Arabic, however, remains of marginal influence although both varieties are historically and structurally closely related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the linguistic situation of pronominal clitics used as direct objects (DO) in two Spanish speech communities, Malaga and Madrid, which use, respectively, the etymological system and referential system, the two basic clitic systems that have been described for Spanish. The initial hypothesis is that both communities are undergoing a process of convergence with the educated pan-Hispanic model, which permits leísmo (use of le) with a masculine, singular person. Thus, the analyses successively restricted the corpus of clitics with the aim of determining how linguistic and social conditions affect each type of leísmo: apparent and real leísmo, leísmo with things, leísmo with a feminine person, leísmo with animals, leísmo with a masculine, plural person, and leísmo with a masculine, singular person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the general distribution and interpretation of bare noun phrases (BNPs) in Reunion Creole (RC). To set the required background for this description, it also discusses the count-mass distinction and offers an insight into the determiner system since elements such as prenominal lo and postnominal -la have received rather divergent designations and analyses in the literature. Observations rely on oral data and felicity judgments. We show that RC BNPs can occupy the same positions as noun phrases (NPs) modified by a determiner and that they can be left-dislocated, clefted and topicalized. We provide evidence that, except for some specific contexts, monosyllabic BNPs are not licensed and that the form lo is mandatory to build a grammatical NP out of nouns formed by a unique light syllable. We also demonstrate that, in these cases, lo is actually a semantically empty element. BNPs are number-neutral; we argue that existential BNPs are pseudo-incorporated in some cases but that they always have weak reference. BNPs can receive generic and kind readings, as well as an existential and a certain definite interpretation: they are weak definites, i.e. they are semantically, never pragmatically definite (following Löbner 1985, 1998, 2011, 2015). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Object markers (OMs) in Bantu languages have long been argued to be either incorporated pronouns or agreement morphemes, distinguished mainly by their ability (or not) to co-occur with (i.e. double) in situ objects. Lubukusu appears to be an instance of OMs-as-incorporated pronouns, as OMs in neutral discourse contexts cannot double in situ objects in a broad range of syntactic contexts. As we show, however, certain pragmatic contexts in fact do license OM-doubling; we demonstrate that OM-doubling in Lubukusu is licit only on a verum (focus) interpretation. We analyze OM-doubling within a Minimalist framework as the result of an Agree relation between the object and a verum-triggering Emphasis head (Emph°). The non-doubling OM results from an incorporation operation. We therefore claim that Lubukusu displays two distinct syntactic derivations of OMs (generating doubling and non-doubling) with the interpretive effects of OM-doubling arising from the semantic/pragmatic properties of Emph°. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the expression of Catalan clitics en and hi, which have no grammatical equivalent in Spanish, in the adult grammar of Catalan-Spanish early bilinguals. Participants (N = 57), born and raised in Catalonia, are divided into 3 groups according to their onset of acquisition and language use: Spanish-dominant (n = 20), Balanced Bilinguals (n = 15) and Catalan-dominant (n = 22). The results of an Acceptability Judgment Task and an Elicited Production Task indicated that Spanish-dominant bilinguals have a divergent grammar compared to that of the Catalan-dominant speakers, overaccepting ungrammatical omission and doubling of the clitics. The bilingual group patterned with the Catalan-dominant group in some of their judgments, but with the Spanish-dominant group in their production. It is argued that onset of acquisition cannot be the only explanation for the differences between the bilingual groups, and that quantity and quality of input play an important role in the acquisition process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We utilize variationist methodology to explore the conventionalization and pragmatics of 3rd person direct object clitic placement in Spanish periphrastic constructions. Analysis of 652 tokens extracted from three Mexico City speech corpora indicates that while proclitic position is the majority variant, the rate of enclitic position depends on particular [finite + non-finite verb] constructions, distinguished by frequency measures and more grammaticalized meanings. At the same time, enclisis is favored by propositional or non-referential direct objects and by direct objects of low topic persistence, measured by subsequent mentions. In contrast, proclitic position is favored more by inanimate than human referents, especially those that show topic persistence and whose previous mention was in the syntactic role of direct object in the same or preceding clause. These quantitative patterns suggest that proclisis indicates prototypical DOs in non-prototypical use, i.e. topical inanimates. Thus, despite conventionalization of the general proclitic schema, particular constructions and semanticpragmatic considerations are operative factors in the variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determining the morphosyntactic status of verbal constructions is an enduring issue in African linguistics. In Wolof, most verbal constructions are split predicate constructions involving a predicative marker, which encodes the greater part of the grammatical content, and a verb, which contributes to the lexical content. The aim of the current paper is to investigate the morphosyntactic status of these complex predicates. Based on several kinds of criteria (phonology, morphology and semantics), I show that the predicative markers must be analysed as phonologically dependent words (clitics). Thus, Wolof complex predicates clearly display syntactic construction features and cannot therefore be considered as morphological units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the gradient nature of acceptability judgements and grammatical variants in the bilectal population of Cyprus, by comparatively discussing the findings of two recent experiments on (i) exhaustivity effects in Cypriot Greek clefts and embu 'it is that'-structures (Leivada et al. 2013) and (ii) clitic placement and how it is affected by lexical and syntactic stimulation (Papadopoulou et al. 2014). The analysis lays emphasis on the intra-dialectal variation observed across speakers' performance in both experiments. Variation is discussed in relation to socio-syntactic aspects of language use, such as (i) the existence of competing grammars (Tsiplakou 2007, in press) and competing motivations (Grohmann & Leivada 2012, to appear) in bilectal environments such as the one in Cyprus, (ii) the notion of gradience existent within a dialect-standard continuum (e.g. Cornips 2006 for Dutch, Leivada et al. 2013 for Greek), and (iii) syntactic/semantic factors that inform our participants' performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article provides a new syntactic analysis of the Hittite phraseological construction involving the verbs pai- 'come' or uwa- 'go' and a second finite verb. Most approaches have treated the construction as monoclausal in terms of verb serialization (Garrett 1990). This study will take a different approach, arguing that pai- and uwa- select a phrasal complement. The features that apparently set the construction apart from other cases of embedding in Hittite will be explained as effects of Restructuring (Rizzi 1982), a phenomenon Hittite also exhibits outside of the construction in question. It will further be argued that uwa- functions as a raising verb while pai- functions as a control verb, accounting for the differences in syntactic behavior between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The struggle of L1 English learners of Spanish with the clitic se has been documented (Montrul, 2000; Toth, 2000; Zyzik, 2006), but there have not been studies to document the use of the Spanish se by L1 Portuguese speakers. Although Portuguese is structurally similar to Spanish in many ways, including the existence of se, this clitic has subtle usage differences in the two languages. In Spanish, Whitley (2002) and Zyzik :2006) have identified seven different categories of se; Portuguese has fewer uses and applies it less frequently (Azevedo, 2005; Cunha &Cintra, 2001; Scherre, 2005). The current study, which is a modified replication of Zyzik (2004), examines the use of se by L1 Brazilian Portuguese (BP) students of Spanish. These northeastern Brazilian students narrated a short story from the picture book Pancakss for Breakfast (DePaola, 1978) and then performed a stimulated recall task. Using this data, correct uses of se, omissions of se in obligatory contexts, and overgeneralizations of se by the L1 BP participants were analyzed. In addition, the participants' noticing of errors with se was also examined through an analysis of the stimulated recall, and the results indicate that the participants did not notice any of their errors with the clitic se. The results also indicate that positive L1 transfer can partially account for the Li Portuguese speakers' interlanguage; however, factors other than L1 transfer need to be considered when discussing interlanguage development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of an experiment into the syntactic constraints on auxiliary change under restructuring in Italian L2 grammars which are possibly at the end state. Its aim is to test the prediction of the original version of the Interface Hypothesis that narrow syntactic properties are fully acquirable in the L2. In Italian restructuring constructions with embedded unaccusatives, the change of auxiliary from avere (‘have’) to essere (‘be’) is either optional or obligatory depending on clitic presence and placement. A group of highly proficient L1 Croatian adult L2 learners of Italian and a group of adult Italian native speakers used Magnitude Estimation to express their auxiliary preferences in restructuring constructions with embedded unaccusatives. The L2 learners were shown not to know when auxiliary change is optional and when obligatory. Such findings are not consistent with the version of the Interface Hypothesis tested. Possible reasons for the incomplete acquisition of the phenomenon under scrutiny are discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Dutch, Frisian and German dialects, bewildering morphological variation is found in the person-marking system (e.g., the Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects for Dutch and Frisian, and Goossens 1994, Weiss 2005 and Fuss 2005 for German). One type of variation concerns the formation of subject clitics in clauses with inverted word order, i.e. with the subject following the verb. These elements are subsequently extended to other syntactic positions through analogy, via a pathway described by Kathol (2001): originally enclitic elements spread first to the position enclitic to the complementiser, then to verbs in sentences with regular word order, and finally, in a rare number of cases, to verbs in the sentence-final position in subclauses. This paper shows that Kathol’s proposed pathway actually comprises two similar but not identical pathways, i.e. one for specifically enclitic elements, and one for elements occurring both pro- and enclitically. This implies that developments must be modelled as an ‘analogical map’ rather than a pathway, which will be illustrated extensively with data from Dutch, Frisian and German dialects. The map will be shown to apply to more data than Kathol’s original pathway: it not only captures the extension of clitics, but also the spread of many innovative agreement markers and pronouns, and, hence, a range of person marking phenomena, including complementiser agreement (e.g., Carstens 2003, Weiss 2005), clitic doubling (e.g., Fuss 2005) and double agreement (e.g., Zwart 1997). Finally, following Hill (2007), some of the motivations underlying the change and the factors determining their direction are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the role of Universal Grammar (UG) and its interaction with L1 in the acquisitional process of a variety of Spanish constructions with datives including the Spanish double object construction (Marta le dio un beso a Juan 'Marta gave John a kiss') and its morphosyntactic and semantic properties by Polish-speakers. The DOC in Spanish differs from its Polish counterpart in its morphosyntactic properties (i.e. the dative clitic or the pseudopreposition "a" and only slightly in semantics (interpretation of arguments and in turn restriction on the construction). Results show that L2 learners are mostly sensitive to the morphosyntactic properties of constructions where datives combine with unaccusative and unergative verbs. This provides evidence of UG-constrained acquisition of the L2 learners due to their sensitivity to the morphosyntactic properties not instantiated in their L1, ie. the dative clitic. However, given the variability among the native speakers, we argue that the performance of the L2 learners can be attributed to a matter of "usage acquisition" with unaccusative and unergative verbs, which is separate from the acquisition on competence needed for clitic doubling in Spanish in general. Our results demonstrate that knowledge and the use of it do not always coincide for clitic doubling in Spanish with unaccusative and unergative verbs, non-transfer predicates and verbs of construction/creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study discusses psycholinguistic evidence for a difference between paradigmatic and extraparadigmatic morphology by investigating the processing of Finnish inflected and cliticized words. The data are derived from three sources of Finnish: from single-word reading performance in an agrammatic deep dyslectic speaker, as well as from visual lexical decision and wordness/learnability ratings of cliticized vs. inflected items by normal Finnish speakers. The agrammatic speaker showed awareness of the suffixes in multimorphemic words, including clitics, since he attempted to fill in this slot with morphological material. However, he never produced a clitic — either as the correct response or as an error — in any morphological configuration (simplex, derived, inflected, compound). Moreover, he produced more nominative singular errors for case-inflected nouns than he did for the cliticized words, a pattern that is expected if case-inflected forms were closely associated with their lexical heads, i.e., if they were paradigmatic and cliticized words were not. Furthermore, a visual lexical decision task with normal speakers of Finnish, showed an additional processing cost (longer latencies and more errors on cliticized than on case-inflected noun forms). Finally, a rating task indicated no difference in relative wordness between these two types of words. However, the same cliticized words were judged harder to learn as L2 items than the inflected words, most probably due to their conceptual/semantic properties, in other words due to their lack of word-level translation equivalents in SAVE languages. Taken together, the present results suggest that the distinction between paradigmatic and extraparadigmatic morphology is psychologically real. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]