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This study investigates negative simple sentences and negation structures in English and Albanian, two Indo-European languages with both similar and distinct linguistic backgrounds and syntactic features. The study sets out with two primary hypotheses. Firstly, negative simple sentences in English and Albanian have similar word order, but there are some differences regarding the particle location in some sentences due to their distinct syntactic and grammatical features. Secondly, the syntax of negation in both languages reflects unique language-specific characteristics. The objectives of this study encompass an analysis of word order patterns, negative particle usage, sentence structure and semantics. Through comparative analysis, this research aims to shed light on the aspects of negation in these languages. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into the differences and similarities in negation structures, i.e., negative sentences, in English and Albanian language. The analysis confirms the presence of distinct word order patterns in some sentences in English and Albanian language. These differences align with the broader word order tendencies observed in each language. Secondly, the study reveals variations in negative particle usage. English primarily employs a single particle ('not') and on different occasions ('no'), while Albanian utilizes both a pre-verbal particle ('nuk') and particles like 's'', 'jo', 'mos', etc. which are used to convey negative meaning. Other words with negative meaning are also analyzed in this paper. Another difference is the use of double negative in Albanian, a phenomenon not normally present in English language. These differences contribute to the richness and complexity of negation structures in Albanian. This research highlights the interaction between negation and the types of negation in sentences translated from English to Albanian and vice versa, and if different negation types affect word order in translated sentences. It also explores the semantics of negation, emphasizing mutual semantic effects while discovering differences that contribute to distinctions in meaning. In conclusion, this brief study advances our understanding of negation structures in English and Albanian, providing valuable insights into the syntax and semantics of negation in these languages. These findings contribute to the broader field of comparative linguistics and give insight into the nature of negation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do bilinguals mix adjectives and nouns from two languages with a word order conflict at the boundary between them? Prominently competing theories of code-switching (CS) that appeal to abstract features or to a matrix language remain in a stalemate, since their predictions have been reported to mostly coincide. Here, we contribute data from northern New Mexico bilingual community members who switch between Spanish and English in both directions. Beyond the NP-internal mixes within the purview of the theories, the widened data set encompasses all relevant mixes and positions: every adjective or associated noun at the boundary with the other language. We thus assess lone-item and multi-word mixing types, distinguishing also between multi-word CS at different points of the NP. Multi-word CS at the adjective-noun boundary is indeed rare. These bilinguals choose CS after the determiner with prenominal modifiers in English adjective-noun pairs, as previously observed, and at the external NP boundary. Furthermore, they disproportionately prefer the shared predicative position. Accounting for all adjective mixes, the Variable Equivalence hypothesis proposes that, where cross-language equivalence is not consistent due to language-internal variability, bilinguals prefer CS at alternative syntactic boundaries that are consistently equivalent and more frequent in their combined linguistic experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The natural ecology of language is conversation, with individuals taking turns speaking to communicate in a back-and-forth fashion. Language in this context involves strings of words that a listener must process while simultaneously planning their own next utterance. It would thus be highly advantageous if language users distributed information within an utterance in a way that may facilitate this processing–planning dynamic. While some studies have investigated how information is distributed at the level of single words or clauses, or in written language, little is known about how information is distributed within spoken utterances produced during naturalistic conversation. It also is not known how information distribution patterns of spoken utterances may differ across languages. We used a set of matched corpora (CallHome) containing 898 telephone conversations conducted in six different languages (Arabic, English, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish), analyzing more than 58,000 utterances, to assess whether there is evidence of distinct patterns of information distributions at the utterance level, and whether these patterns are similar or differed across the languages. We found that English, Spanish, and Mandarin typically show a back-loaded distribution, with higher information (i.e., surprisal) in the last half of utterances compared with the first half, while Arabic, German, and Japanese showed front-loaded distributions, with higher information in the first half compared with the last half. Additional analyses suggest that these patterns may be related to word order and rate of noun and verb usage. We additionally found that back-loaded languages have longer turn transition times (i.e., time between speaker turns). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the verb-initial independent declarative clauses with overt subjects (V1) in the Old English Bede on which the most complete witnesses disagree. It identifies the syntactic and textual environments in which the V1 clauses are altered or omitted and the types of changes they undergo. The article demonstrates that the majority of the alterations and omissions are recorded in the later manuscripts B and Ca. Most of them reflect the change to the V2 and V3 word order and the rise of the þa VS clauses in the V1 textual environments (e.g. reported discourse). Besides these widely attested developments in syntax and textual organisation, the corpus also exhibits the alterations that can be attributed to the individual scribes who modify or omit the V1 clauses to align the Old English translation with the Latin, eliminate asyndetic parataxis, homogenise the style, and streamline the narrative. The variants and scribal interventions uncovered by the present inquiry not only help form a more complete picture of the transmission and uses of the manuscripts of the Old English Bede but also contribute to the diachronic and synchronic study of the Old English language and style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A grammatical construction resembling Present-Day English locative inversion has already been found in Old English, with a fronted prepositional phrase prompting V2 word order, both in main and subordinate clauses. It has been demonstrated that several discourse-related factors influence the positioning of objects, fronted locatives, finite verbs and subjects in subordinate clauses. One of the main aims of the present paper is to provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the locative inversion construction in Old English subordinate clauses. The Old English data for this study were obtained from the York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose, and they were analysed using Corpus Studio. The results were compared with those for main clauses, and discourse-related factors such as PP anaphoricity or subject type were analysed in order to find the motivation for the existence of this alternation of word orders. PP anaphoricity proved not to be a determining factor in triggering finite verb inversion, while other factors such as subject weight and subject type do seem to motivate finite verb inversion, thus yielding an embedded PP-V-S word order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Alustath is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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.)

This study investigated the cross-language influence of a reader's first language (L1, German) grammar knowledge on the syntactic processing of sentences in their second language (L2, English), using a grammaticality judgement task and comparing results with monolingual L1 English-speakers. In Experiment 1, unbalanced bilinguals (N = 82) read sentences in their L1 German and L2 English that were either grammatical in German but not English, grammatical in English but not German, or ungrammatical in both languages. Sentences were presented in mixed-language blocks. Grammaticality judgements were less accurate and slower for ungrammatical L2 sentences that were grammatical in their literal L1 translation, compared with sentences that were ungrammatical in both languages. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with an independent German-English bilingual sample (N = 78), using monolingual language blocks. In Experiment 3, effects were absent in decision accuracy and weaker in decision latency for monolingual English readers (N = 54). A post hoc validation study with an independent sample of L1 English-speakers (n = 21) provided further evidence that the ungrammatical English sentences with German word order were indeed less natural and grammatically acceptable to L1 English-speakers than the grammatical English sentences. These findings suggest that, consistent with competition models of language comprehension, multiple languages are simultaneously active and can compete during syntactic processing. However, due to the complex nature of cross-language comparisons, the cross-language transfer effects are likely to be driven by multiple interacting factors, of which one is cross-language transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although extensive research has been carried out on opaque formulaic language where the meaning is not the sum of the individual words (i.e., idioms and many collocations), it is still not clear how cross-language congruency and frequency of exposure influence the learning of transparent formulaic language in an L2. In the current study, self-paced reading along with offline word order recognition tasks were used to investigate the role of cross-language congruency and the frequency of exposure on the learning and processing of fully transparent binomials. In the self-paced reading, Arabic second language learners of English and native English speakers encountered three types of binomial phrases either two or five times in English texts: English-only binomials, Arabic-only binomials that were translated into English, and congruent binomials (acceptable in English and Arabic). A subsequent offline task revealed that both native and non-native speakers developed knowledge of the 'correct' order of binomials (i.e., fish and chips, not chips and fish) after only two exposures in the self-paced reading. Native speakers were more accurate on congruent and English-only items than Arabic-only items, while non-natives speakers exhibited no differences in accuracy across the binomial types. The offline task showed that native speakers responded faster to congruent and English-only items than Arabic-only, and non-native speakers responded faster to congruent items than English-only and Arabic-only. The frequency of exposure had no effect, with no difference in response times and accuracy between two and five exposures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study dwells on some selected linguistic devices of syntactic variation known as word order between Arabic and English language. This is because the two languages under the study have a lot of functions in Nigeria and the globe at large. Some of these include: language of instruction, commerce, official and personal, national and international and many more. Based on this relevancy, this paper sees the need to offer a syntactic baseline between Arabic and English with emphasis on word order. The researchers use some sentences of Arabic and English from already existing literature which showcase that there is word order variation in some structural configurations. The method used for data collection is secondary as a result of scouting information from text books, journals and internet. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the syntactic variation of word order between Arabic and English language to add value to the existing knowledge in field of linguistics. The outcomes of this study demonstrate that the linguistic elements such as Subject, Predicator (Verb) and Object are mostly differ. This is as a result of the Arabic has VSO while English has SVO. Therefore, the two languages prove to have different syntactic environment for both Subject and Predicator but share only Object position as a syntactic environment according to this finding. So, the word order between the two languages could argue to be different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether cross-linguistic differences affect how adult second language (L2) learners use different types of verb subcategorization information for prediction in real-time sentence comprehension. Using visual world eye-tracking, we tested if first language (L1) German and L1 Turkish intermediate-to-advanced learners of L2 English make use of categorical and gradient probabilistic selectional information of ditransitive verbs to predict whether the verbs would be followed by prepositional-object or double-object dative constructions. L1 German learners used both categorical ("pay/*donate the woman the money") and gradient ("pay/#send the woman the money") constraints for prediction in a target-like manner. In contrast, L1 Turkish learners were delayed in recruiting categorical verb information and were only selectively sensitive to gradient verb information. We argue that target-like predictive processing across categorical and gradient verb information is attainable for L2 learners, but differences in L1-L2 word order may curtail the utility of prediction by verb subcategorization information in L2 processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies using a grammaticality decision task have revealed surprising flexibility in the processing of word order during sentence reading in both alphabetic and non-alphabetic scripts. Participants in these studies typically exhibit a transposed-word effect, in which they make more errors and slower correct responses for stimuli that contain a word transposition and are derived from grammatical as compared to ungrammatical base sentences. Some researchers have used this finding to argue that words are encoded in parallel during reading, such that multiple words can be processed simultaneously and might be recognised out of order. This contrasts with an alternative account of the reading process, which argues that words must be encoded serially, one at a time. We examined, in English, whether the transposed-word effect provides evidence for a parallel-processing account, employing the same grammaticality decision task used in previous research and display procedures that either allowed for parallel word encoding or permitted only the serial encoding of words. Our results replicate and extend recent findings by showing that relative word order can be processed flexibly even when parallel processing is not possible (i.e., within displays requiring serial word encoding). Accordingly, while the present findings provide further evidence for flexibility in the processing of relative word order during reading, they add to converging evidence that the transposed-word effect does not provide unequivocal evidence for a parallel-processing account of reading. We consider how the present findings may be accounted for by both serial and parallel accounts of word recognition in reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we address the major word order patterns in Old English (OE) embedded clauses and examine to what extent it is possible to capture the motivation behind the variation observed in purely syntactic terms. As a representative of the syntacticocentric approach, we take the account by Biberauer and Roberts (2005) and critically evaluate it against the larger empirical background, while also pointing out certain theoretical challenges it faces. We then attempt to characterize the various information-structural inferences (focus, topicality, givenness, pragmatic presupposition) that arise for different word order patterns, and that must be taken into consideration in any successful analysis. We leave it open whether the IS/pragmatic effects we describe arise because notions like [+Focus] are represented in the syntax, or because languages exploit the contrasts that are independently generated by the syntax for discourse-pragmatic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes quantitatively the effect of five linguistic features on the position of the object in Early Middle English. Four of them have long been explored in the literature: object type, object length, clause type and type of verbal cluster (±auxiliary). The fifth feature, lability, has so far been given less attention. Lability is the possibility that a given verb alternates between an unaccusative and transitive frame without morphological coding. This makes lability an instance of morphological syncretism. This study tests the hypothesis that, for disambiguation purposes, labile transitive verbs show a more consistent word order (VO in this case) than non-labile transitives. If confirmed, the hypothesis would point to a non-trivial connection between the increase of labile verbs and the move towards a fixed word order in Early Middle English. Such a connection has gone unnoticed in the existing literature, which, as far as the influence of morphological syncretism on word order is concerned, has focused almost exclusively on the effect of the loss of case marking. A total of 961 transitive clauses with labile and non-labile verbs were tagged for the above-mentioned five variables. Their effect on the choice between VO and OV is measured using statistical analysis. The conclusion is that verb lability is a significant predictor of VO in the period under scrutiny, with labile verbs thus spearheading the shift towards a stable word order pattern (VO) in English. The correlation between verb lability and word order rigidification demonstrated for Early Middle English in this article may be relevant for studies on word order from multiple perspectives: language-specific, typological, synchronic and diachronic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Adab Al-Kufa is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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.)

Background: The typology of word order in Hindi (Subject-Object-Verb, SOV) differs from that of English (Subject-Verb-Object, SVO). Bilinguals whose two languages have conflicting word order provide a unique opportunity to understand how word order affects language processing. Earlier behavioural and event-related brain potential (ERP) studies with Spanish-Basque bilinguals showed longer reading times and more errors in the comprehension of OSV sentences than SOV sentences in Basque language, indicating that non-canonical word orders (OSV) were difficult to process than canonical word order (SOV). Purpose: This study was designed to explore how the difference in word order in Hindi and English languages affects N400 parameters in proficient Hindi−English bilinguals, using semantic congruity paradigm. Methods: Twenty-five proficient Hindi−English bilingual subjects were asked to silently read the congruent and incongruent sentences presented in one word at a time in both the languages. ERPs were recorded from midline frontal, central and parietal sites. Results: The mean amplitude of the N400 effect at the parietal sites in Hindi−English proficient bilinguals was larger for English than for Hindi but there was no significant difference in the N400 latencies. Conclusion: Hindi−English bilingual subjects processed SOV and SVO sentences with equal ease as evidenced by the N400 latencies. Higher amplitude of the N400 effect with English sentences indicate that placing 'Object' as the final word makes sentences more predictable than verb as the final word. Understanding the word order difference might help to unravel the neurophysiological mechanisms of language comprehension and may offer some insights in terms of functional advantage of a particular word order in bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text focuses on the formal realization of the communicative function of exclamation in Czech. Since Czech exclamative sentences do not constitute a separate formally distinct sentence type, we apply a contrastive (English -- Czech) corpus-assisted approach to identify the formal indicators of exclamations at various language levels. Following Michaelis (2001), exclamations are defined as expressions of the speaker's affective response to a situation; they comprise two components, namely the speaker's assessment of a situation as extreme or non-canonical and the recoverability of the propositional content. Although there is no unambiguous conventional pairing between the exclamative function and its formal expression in Czech, the analysis has shown that the exclamation is typically indicated by the accumulation of marked linguistic means pertaining to various language levels, such as intonation/punctuation, expressive lexis, intensifying adverbs and particles and deviations from the canonical word order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word order is crucial when we study the functions of words in different sentences and constructions. The position of words in sentences and their function are closely observed in comparative studies. Function is not solely determined by the position of words in sentences. There are languages with fixed word order (like English language) and languages with flexible word order (like Albanian language). An important difference discussed in this paper is that English is a non-null subject language which means that subjects are grammatically mandatory. On the other hand, Albanian language is a null subject language and there are various sentences without a subject. Having in mind that the term empty subject is some how new in English, questions are raised whether there are empty subjects in other languages and if they are recognized as syntactic constituents. The empty subject expressed with the pronoun ‘it’ is used to introduce a clause or provide a grammatical structure with no clear referent, but serves as a grammatical necessity. Examples with empty subjects in English language are translated to Albanian language in order to see if there are similarities or differences, or if there are empty subjects in Albanian language. However, the analysis in this paper found no such equivalents in translated sentences to Albanian language, especially when talking about empty subjects.Subjects in Albanian language are expressed explicitly and clearly and there is no need of an empty subject when the grammar of Albanian language and the word order allows sentences with no subject. Subjects, whether they are real or empty subjects (semantically empty), are usually found in the initial position in English. While this is generally true in English language, with some exceptions, it is not always the case with Albanian language because of the word order and null subject properties. Empty subjects have been studied for some time in English language, but there are not vast studies comparing empty subjects in English and Albanian language. The pronoun ‘it’ is an essential feature of English language to refer to time, weather, emotions and more (It is ten o’clock. It is sunny. It is unbelievable!). The pronoun ‘it’ in English language is not used only to express empty/dummy subjects. It can also be used as anticipatory ‘it’, which means that ‘it’ can be used to refer to a real subject found after the verb (It is likely that we will be late.). These are not rare occasions in English, but when these sentences are translated from English to Albanian language there are differences, including different word order or no subject at all in Albanian language (It is late./Është vonë.). Another important use of the pronoun ‘it’ is that it can be used in passive constructions as an empty subject (It is believed that he is guilty./Besohet se është me faj.) and the real subject is extraposed. Empty subject ‘it’ can be challenging for non-native speakers to master its varied uses and functions. Learners must master the use of ‘it’ in a variety of contexts and understand nuances and differences in meaning with translated sentences from English to Albanian language.The analysis of similarities and differences highlights divergences between these two languages. These findings contribute to understand the syntax and semantics of English and Albanian language by highlighting cross-linguistic variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the College Of Basic Education is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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.)

We use Lambek’s pregroups and the framework of compositional distributional models of language (“DisCoCat”) to study translations from Japanese to English as pairs of functors. Adding decorations to pre-groups, we show how to handle word order changes between languages [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Linguistika: Buletin Ilmiah Program Magister Linguistik Universitas Udayana is the property of Program Studi Magister Linguistik Program Pascasarjana Universitas Udayana 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.)

English Part of Speech like noun, verb, adverb, adjective, pronoun, preposition, interjection, conjunction is somewhat similar in Hindi but not exactly the same. Hindi grammar has different Part of Speech (POS) based on its morphological features and the occurrence of a word/lexeme in a sentence. The existing techniques used in English language for POS tagging may not work properly for Indian language like Hindi. It is because the grammatical structure of the relatively free word order language like Hindi differs from English. Stochastic taggers may not give good performance as morphological information is not taken into account. The available Hindi word corpora usually have less frequency for individual tags. As a result, a larger size corpus having diversity in the type of sentences can provide better results. But, even after using smoothing techniques most these taggers fail to provide correct results in the presence of unknown words. Considering these aspects, this paper proposes an Intelligent POS tagger for Hindi language based on VITERBI and K-Nearest Neighbour, capable of providing more accurate results than VITERBI in the presence of unknown words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss one property of specificational copular sentences and pseudoclefts, the apparent reversibility of the order of their two major constituents. In English, this manifests itself in reversible surface word order. It has been argued in the literature that reversibility in specificational pseudoclefts does not indicate reversibility in the syntax, meaning that the two word orders are not derivationally related (den Dikken et al. 2000). In copular sentences, on the other hand, the reversal of the order is generally argued to be the result of inversion in the syntax. Copular sentences and pseudoclefts in Wolof provide us with the opportunity to observe a part of their derivational history, as the focused referential expression A′-moves to Spec,CP, with the other element being topicalized. A′-extraction in Wolof is morphosyntactically marked on the complementizer, which exhibits a subject/non-subject asymmetry, and therefore reveals whether an element has moved there from Spec,IP or another position. This straightforward diagnostic shows that in specificational pseudoclefts either of the two constituents, the FR or the NP, can in fact raise to Spec,IP, contra the claim in den Dikken et al. (2000) for English. The same kind of reversibility is not found in specificational copular sentences; specifically, only the non-referential expression can move to Spec,IP. The focused NP, which is extracted to Spec,CP, cannot move there from Spec,IP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Jezikoslovlje is the property of University of Osijek, Faculty of Philosophy 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.)

The aim of this article is to focus on the arrangement of words in phrase, clause and sentence structures in English discourse and its importance in achieving successful communication, for example, when doing inverse translation. Positioning syntax is considered as a contributing factor in the construction of expression of meaning in coherent and unified pieces of translated discourse. After several years of teaching inverse translation (Spanish-English) to proficient English L2 students, I have observed that for them mastering word order in Spanish L1-English L2 translated texts is extremely challenging and more complex than is often presumed; bringing awareness of this into the classroom is worthwhile. One of the main obstacles students must overcome when producing discourse in English is that of L1 interference; misapplication of the descriptive rules of word order in their own, or any other, language, will lead to stumbling blocks in the process of communication. By providing carefully selected samples of language for analysis, together with clear explanations, this article attempts to offer a practical approach to dealing with this aspect of grammar. For the purposes of illustration, Spanish, the source language in the examples included in the study, has been used for comparative reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Technology & Information Education is the property of Palacky University in Olomouc 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.)

This paper dwells on an interesting contrast between Romance (Romanian, Spanish a.o.) and Germanic languages (English, German a.o.) with respect to the syntax and the interpretation of the direct object (DO). One structural difference between these two groups of languages amounts to the fact that the former clitic double (CD) and differentially object mark (DOM) their direct objects while the latter do not. This leads to important interpretive consequences when it comes to phenomena such as Subject-Object binding dependences: Non-CD languages rely on the c-command configuration and surface word order in resolving binding relations (the antecedent must ccommand the element containing the bound pronoun. As a consequence, a natural way for the DO to bind into the Subject is to have it moved to the left, in a preceding, c-commanding position). As will be shown, in CD languages, the word order configuration is not decisive: the direct object may bind the subject without having to precede it at the same time. The paper draws a parametric difference between configurational languages (where binding is closely linked to the c-command configurations and is sensitive to surface word order) and nonconfigurational languages, where the same semantic properties can be derived from the internal structure of the direct object (through its featural specification). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the six possible orderings of the three main constituents of language (subject, verb, and object), two—SOV and SVO—are predominant cross‐linguistically. Previous research using the silent gesture paradigm in which hearing participants produce or respond to gestures without speech has shown that different factors such as reversibility, salience, and animacy can affect the preferences for different orders. Here, we test whether participants' preferences for orders that are conditioned on the semantics of the event change depending on (i) the iconicity of individual gestural elements and (ii) the prior knowledge of a conventional lexicon. Our findings demonstrate the same preference for semantically conditioned word order found in previous studies, specifically that SOV and SVO are preferred differentially for different types of events. We do not find that iconicity of individual gestures affects participants' ordering preferences; however, we do find that learning a lexicon leads to a stronger preference for SVO‐like orders overall. Finally, we compare our findings from English speakers, using an SVO‐dominant language, with data from speakers of an SOV‐dominant language, Turkish. We find that, while learning a lexicon leads to an increase in SVO preference for both sets of participants, this effect is mediated by language background and event type, suggesting that an interplay of factors together determines preferences for different ordering patterns. Taken together, our results support a view of word order as a gradient phenomenon responding to multiple biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted a broad-coverage investigation of the effects of syntactic distance and word order on language processing against a dependency-annotated reading time corpus of English. A combined method of quantitative syntax and psycholinguistic analyses was adopted to yield converging evidence. It was found that (i) head-initial structures allow greater structural complexity, i.e., larger head-dependent distance, than head-final structures in both language comprehension and production; (ii) within the capacity limit of working memory, syntactic distance is a positive predictor of reading time for a word with a preceding head, whereas a negative predictor of reading time for a word with a following head; and (iii) at the sentence level, syntactic distance is a significant predictor of sentence reading time. These results suggest that (i) different word orders may enjoy different processing mechanisms in terms of cognitive difficulty and processes, which can be explained by an incremental language parser; and (ii) in addition to distance, word order should also be considered as a factor affecting language processing, which is an important extension to distance-based language processing models. Taken as a whole, our study paves the way for corpus-based integration of quantitative linguistic and psycholinguistic methods into understanding language processing and its underlying cognitive mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the word order ranking effect of English language retrieval, based on machine learning algorithms, this paper combines a semionline model to construct an artificial intelligence ranking model for English word order based on a semionline model and establishes a semisupervised ELM regression model. Moreover, this paper derives the mathematical model of semisupervised ELM in detail and uses FCM clustering to screen credible samples, ELM collaborative training to mark each other's samples, and the marked samples to calculate the output weights of semisupervised ELM regression. In addition, based on continuous learning of OSELMR, this paper uses confidence evaluation to screen out credible unlabeled samples, OSELM collaborative training to mark the credible samples with each other, and credible unlabeled samples to calculate the output weight of SSOSELMR. Finally, this paper designs a control experiment to analyze the model algorithm, compares and counts the parameters, and draws a statistical graph. The research results show that the model constructed in this paper is effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Middle English was a period of transition between the free word order of Old English, with functional variation of adjective form and position with respect to the head noun, and the fixed prenominal placement of single attributive adjectives in Modern English. Aided by the PPCME2 of the Penn-Helsinki corpora, this corpus-driven study explores the range of adjectives attested frequently after the head noun, as well as their relative attraction to the position and, sampling the ME period with emphasis on variables in the corpus metadata, compares the frequencies of postnominally placed adjectives in various genres, capturing their declining overall frequency over time. These general tendencies are commented against the background of postpositives in PDE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to highlight the mixing and switching of codes of English into Urdu through Chomsky's (1970) x - bar theory and to clearly provide the mixing and switching point at syntactic level. Urdu allows mixed approach to prepositional phrase unlike Spanish/English code mixing (see Pfaff, 1979; Bokamba, 1988; Muysken, 2000) as Urdu prepositional phrase is mostly identical to English prepositional phrase from syntactic point of view; whereas, nouns, adjectives and adverbs match with surface word order of both the languages in context (Pffaf, 1979). The shifting of the verb in Urdu always follows the derivational suffix (see Bokamba, 1988) of Urdu infinitive کرنا (Kәrna) changed to suffix کرتا (Kәrta:) and کرتے (Kәrt eː) and auxiliary ہونگیں (ho:ngĩ:), ہوگا (ho:ga:), ہو (ho:), ہے (ha:), تھے (tha:), تھا (tha:), تھیں (thĩ:) etc. Adjunct from English (see Atawneh, 1992) is also mixed in Urdu as both the languages follow almost identical rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was conducted to explore the cross-linguistic transfer of L1 and L2 in learning French word order as L3. In order to conduct the present study, 30 Iranian students studying French as their L3 in Iran language institute were selected. The participants were all native speakers of Persian, and they had previously learned English as their L2. A grammaticality judgement/correction task (GJCT) was administered to the learners studying at three elementary classes of this institute. This task was intended to assess the participants' word order recognition in sentence order and adjective-noun patterns. The data were analyzed using SPSS 21 statistical software. The findings revealed that Iranian French language learners were more affected by the word order of their L2 (English) rather than their L1 (Persian). These results confirm L2 Status Factor Model proposed by Hammarberg (2001). Based on this model, since an L3 structures are learned in the same way as an L2 structure (explicitly), and L1 is learned rather implicitly, transfer will be observed among the two languages that are learned and stored in same way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores the viewpointing function of word order inversion and associated stylistic strategies across languages, comparing English-Chinese multiple parallel texts as illustration. In particular, I investigate whether the cognitive strategy of inverting the word order to create a subjective construal is similar in both languages, to what extent, and if the languages differ, what systematic contingency plans there are. To answer the question, I examined selected excerpts with inversion written in English and their multiple translations in Mandarin Chinese, to see how the subjective construals in the English originals are rendered. I find that in addition to inversion, the English samples exhibit a zoom-in effect through use of punctuation, the participial clause, and an ad hoc schema of [some] – [X] with the middle three instantiations sharing an identical phonological schema. The identical phonological schema and the shared narrative viewpoint makes the three instantiations iconic. In comparison, the Chinese renditions employ the presentative construction and a focus particle to approximate the character-based viewpoint, but the zoom-in effect is not present in any of the Chinese versions. Another important difference is the generally longer iconic part in the Chinese versions, due to the productivity of four-character templates at the phonological pole in Mandarin Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper focuses on the ways of maintaining cohesive links in the translation process in the Polish-English language pair. Of primary interest is how the thematic/rhematic structure of Polish sentences can be successfully rendered in English to produce cohesive, natural-sounding and communicative target texts with a proper information flow. These aspects have implications for translation teaching. It has been observed that, in view of the differences between Polish and English word order, university students at the start of their translator training experience two general problems as they attempt to translate longer stretches of text into English: (1) they produce cohesive passages, which contain errors in word order (due to syntactic interference from Polish) or (2) they produce grammatically correct sentences, which, however, form incohesive passages (i.e. ones in which the thematic/rhematic progression is not retained) with an inappropriate information structure. For this reason, students need to become acquainted with some practical solutions that help build cohesion in Polish-English translation. These include (1) shifts from active to passive, (2) other shifts in syntactic functions, (3) fronting, and (4) inventing sentence subjects out of broader context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is challenging to make empirical arguments either for or against the existence of verb-raising in head-final languages like Japanese since word order facts are not informative in such languages unlike in head-initial languages such as English and French. This article aims to make a novel argument for the existence of verb-raising in Japanese, based on facts about VP-fronting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent psycholinguistic studies have revealed an important distinction in narrative discourse between bounded and unbounded language use. Bounded language use is typical of Germanic languages other than English and involves the holistic presentation of situations, with clauses construed as self-contained units attaining a point of completion. Unbounded language use, in turn, groups events into larger complexes of roughly simultaneous events, each event of which is still open when the next one begins. This contrast between English and the other Germanic languages has been accounted for by the claim that English began its history as a bounded language, but shifted to unbounded following the decline, from the fifteenth century onwards, of the Verb-second (V2) constraint on word order. According to this hypothesis, the loss of V2 made possible the grammaticalization of the be progressive, a device that encourages unboundedness. The present article expands on this line of research and examines seven constructions which developed at around the same time and which together are taking English in the direction of unbounded construal; it is argued that the drift in English from a bounded to an unbounded system may have been instigated by the contact situation between Old English speakers and Old Norse speakers in the Danelaw area. • English has shifted from a bounded to an unbounded system of discourse construal. • The shift from bounded to unbounded can be interpreted as a typological drift. • The change was instigated by language contact in the Danelaw area. • Motion and progressive constructions are devices encouraging unboundedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammatical cues are sometimes redundant with word meanings in natural language. For instance, English word order rules constrain the word order of a sentence like "The dog chewed the bone" even though the status of "dog" as subject and "bone" as object can be inferred from world knowledge and plausibility. Quantifying how often this redundancy occurs, and how the level of redundancy varies across typologically diverse languages, can shed light on the function and evolution of grammar. To that end, we performed a behavioral experiment in English and Russian and a cross-linguistic computational analysis measuring the redundancy of grammatical cues in transitive clauses extracted from corpus text. English and Russian speakers (n = 484) were presented with subjects, verbs, and objects (in random order and with morphological markings removed) extracted from naturally occurring sentences and were asked to identify which noun is the subject of the action. Accuracy was high in both languages (∼89% in English, ∼87% in Russian). Next, we trained a neural network machine classifier on a similar task: predicting which nominal in a subject-verb-object triad is the subject. Across 30 languages from eight language families, performance was consistently high: a median accuracy of 87%, comparable to the accuracy observed in the human experiments. The conclusion is that grammatical cues such as word order are necessary to convey subjecthood and objecthood in a minority of naturally occurring transitive clauses; nevertheless, they can (a) provide an important source of redundancy and (b) are crucial for conveying intended meaning that cannot be inferred from the words alone, including descriptions of human interactions, where roles are often reversible (e.g., Ray helped Lu/Lu helped Ray), and expressing non-prototypical meanings (e.g., "The bone chewed the dog."). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper exhibits the ways in which English let's is borrowed into contemporary Japanese. It shows that, in addition to the insertion of English phrases containing let's into a matrix of Japanese, let's alone is borrowed, whose process involves relexification. This relexification, however, diverges from the standard one, because the English word order introduced by let's is also borrowed into Japanese. In other words, a verbal element always comes after let's, while the Japanese word order is basically SOV. Hortative and volition are expressed in Japanese usually by a sentence final particle -yoo or -oo, which is attached to verbs. Let's, or rettsu in Japanese, relexifies this Japanese sentence final particle, when rettsu is followed by a verb (e.g. Rettsu ikou 'lit. Let's go') or a verbal noun (Rettsu kukkingu 'lit. Let's cooking'). When rettsu is followed by a simple noun (Rettsu buraunii 'lit. Let's brownie'), rettsu relexifies a Japanese verbal element as well as the sentence final particle. In cases such as the latter, the simple noun following rettsu needs to satisfy the first sister principle of the implicit verb relexified by rettsu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Dependency measures were used to study complexity in interpreted, L2, and L1 speech. • Interpreted English has the lowest mean dependency distance. • Interpreted English features more head-final structures than native English. • Simplification in interpreted speech is attributed to higher cognitive load. This study investigates the simplification hypothesis in interpreting, as well as its cognitive implications, by examining features of syntactic dependency in three language varieties: English speech simultaneously interpreted from Chinese, original English speech produced by native speakers (L1 speech), and original English speech produced by non-native speakers (L2 speech). Two measures of the dependency relation, namely dependency distance and dependency direction, are employed to explore the distinction among the three language varieties in terms of their syntactic complexity, amount of cognitive demand, and the typological property of word order. The findings reveal that interpreted speech has the lowest mean dependency distance (MDD), followed by L2 speech and L1 speech, which indicates that interpreted English speech is syntactically more simplified than original English speech. The lowest MDD in interpreted speech is associated with the high cognitive demand in simultaneous interpreting, suggesting that increased cognitive demand in language processing is likely to lead to simplification of the syntactic structure of the linguistic output. Furthermore, dependency direction analysis of the three language varieties indicates that interpreted English tends to be more head-final than L1 English speech, confirming a typological word order distinction between translational and original language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning another language which is crucial for academic and professional purposes has been an important focus of research. While learning second language, certain forces related to the language affect this process. One of those forces is the interest of this study. Thus, current study investigates how the mother tongue affects students writing abilities, who are taking English as a compulsory subject in middle school whose native languages are Urdu and Punjabi. Without language, education process in classroom would not be possible. Students experience difficulties in native language when speaking and writing English due to interference. Current research focuses on influence of mother tongue on Pakistani pupils' development of writing skills while studying English as compulsory subject in the classroom. A random sample of 50 pupils in grades 6, 7, and 8 aged amid 11-14 years was chosen from 3 schools, all speaking Urdu and Punjabi as their mother tongues. The Contrastive Analysis Model developed by Robert Lado (1957), proposed by Ellis (1985) was used to analyse data. Results reveal that errors in word order, grammar, and spelling were caused by L1's interference in pupils' writing in target language. Findings suggest that teachers should do the need analysis of the students at beginning of sessions with help of relevant and appropriate tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a Feature-enhanced Attention Network to improve the performance of target-dependent Sentiment classification (FANS). Specifically, we first learn the feature-enhanced word representations by leveraging the unigram features, part of speech features and word position features. Second, we develop an multi-view co-attention network to learn a better multi-view sentiment-aware and target-specific sentence representation via interactively modeling the context words, target words and sentiment words. We conduct experiments to verify the effectiveness of our model on two real-world datasets in both English and Chinese. The experimental results demonstrate that FANS has robust superiority over competitors and sets state-of-the-art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse analysis has drawn people's attention to micro levels in the discourse. This means that some subtle issues that were ignored in the past may carry with them some implicit meanings when looked at in the context. In this regard, topicality in Chinese usually indicates definiteness, whereas this definiteness is signaled by articles, pronouns in English texts. The difference between the two systems can result in problems in translation if not handled properly. Therefore it should be stressed that the management of theme-rheme structures should be dealt with much care from micro text levels, along with an interpretation of the macro intention of the text, so that the translation process should be highlighted. By incorporating the model of discourse analysis, the interaction between the original and translation can be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study investigating how native and non-native speakers of English process temporarily ambiguous sentences such asWhile the gentleman was eating the burgers were still being reheated in the microwave, in which an initially plausible direct-object analysis is first ruled out by a syntactic disambiguation (were) and also later on by semantic information (being reheated). Both participant groups showed garden-path effects at the syntactic disambiguation, with native speakers showing significantly stronger effects of ambiguity than non-native speakers in later eye-movement measures but equally strong effects in first-pass reading times. Ambiguity effects at the semantic disambiguation and in participants’ end-of-trial responses revealed that for both participant groups, the incorrect direct-object analysis was frequently maintained beyond the syntactic disambiguation. The non-native group showed weaker reanalysis effects at the syntactic disambiguation and was more likely to misinterpret the experimental sentences than the native group. Our results suggest that native language (L1) and non-native language (L2) parsing are similar with regard to sensitivity to syntactic and semantic error signals, but different with regard to processes of reanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between human language behavior and cognition can be reflected by the Figure-Ground Theory in cognitive science. In the frame of cognition, figure is more prominent. It is the focus of attention; ground is less prominent and it provides the cognitive reference for the figure. In English expression, figure is usually put on the prominent position. This article points out the similarities and differences between English and Chinese word order by comparing English and Chinese sentences from The Moonstone written by Wilkie Collins. It delves into their cognitive differences through cognition pattern. English adopts cognitive model from figure to ground, while Chinese takes the order from ground to figure. According to the analysis of the article, a conclusion is made that the difference between English and Chinese word order lies in different cognitive models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study is an attempt to evaluate empirical adequacy of MacSwan (2000, 2005, 2009, 2010) proposal that feature strength of V0 determines SVO/SOV order of constituents in intra-sentential code-switching (CS). In order to determine the potential of this proposal in predicting switching patterns, it employs a corpus of naturally-occurring Urdu/English CS. The corpus consists of 1767 sentences in the form of 29 recorded interactions among 42 competent Urdu/English bilinguals in natural settings. The examination of the data under consideration reveals that SVO/SOV order of constituents in Urdu/English CS is not determined by feature strength of V0. The data provide multiple instances of complement DP placed at pre-head position, resulting in OV order, in VP in spite of having an English V0s as its head which requires OV order due to its weak feature. MacSwan s claim that V0 and 10 must be supplied by a single lexicon because of restriction on word-internal switching is also falsified by the empirical evidence from the data. The data provide numerous mixed sentences in which V0 and f are supplied by two different languages instead of one as claimed by MacSwan; hence, they must have same feature strength. Thus, SV/VS orders also depend upon feature strength of Urdu or English V0 in MacSwan' terms. However, the data examined demonstrate that SV order remains fixed no matter it is English T0 sharing weak feature or Urdu T0 sharing strong feature of its respective V0. Thus, MacSwan s proposal completely fails in predicting linear order of constituents when the languages involved have conflicting grammatical requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Available corpus data show that adverbs with modifying meanings, already, also, and only, occur at the clause-final or sentence-final position more often in 'Asian Englishes' (Hong Kong English and Singapore English) than British English and Canadian English. This paper posits a link between the motivation of sentence-final adverbs in Asian English and substrate transfer due to linguistic (both grammatical and pragmatic) structures of influential non-English languages in the regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]