A Study of Verb-Second Phenomena in MedievalSpanish Complex Sentences

This study aimed to describe tertiary students’ difficulties in combining English clauses to generate complex sentences. A descriptive quantitative method was applied by involving 30 tertiary English students at IAIN Curup as the samples. They were selected using a quota sampling technique. The present study revealed that many students (62.82%) had difficulties in combining between adjective clauses and independent clauses to generate English complex sentences. They also found it difficult to use subordinate connectors “who, whose, whom, and which” properly. Some students (42.64%) had difficulties in combining between adverbial clauses and independent clauses to generate English complex sentences. They found it difficult to use some subordinate connectors such as “after, if, before, nevertheless, nonetheless, and however” appropriately. Subsequently, many students (69.31%) had difficulties in combining between noun clauses and independent clauses to generate English complex sentences. They found it difficult to use subordinate connectors such as “what, where, why, whose, when, and how” properly. Further studies are expected to conduct experimentations and classroom-action research to help improve students’ English grammatical competence.Key words:Independent clause, dependent clause, complex sentence

Beyond dichotomies and continua?: an interactional approach to the grammar of clause combining in Japanese

\n Com base nos pressupostos teórico-metodológicos da Sociolinguística Variacionista (LABOV, 2008 [1972]; 2001), esta pesquisa investiga o emprego de formas verbais subjuntivas e indicativas em três contextos de subordinação orações adverbiais, substantivas (na posição de complemento do verbo da oração principal) e relativas. Os dados foram extraídos de 36 entrevistas sociolinguísticas com paulistanos e 36 entrevistas com ludovicenses, estratificadas de acordo com o sexo/gênero dos informantes, sua faixa etária (18 a 35; 36 a 59; e 60 anos ou mais) e seu nível de escolaridade (médio superior). Examinam-se as variáveis linguísticas e sociais que se correlacionam à ocorrência dessas formas. Entre as linguísticas, incluem-se variáveis como o tempo verbal da oração subordinada; o tipo de subordinador (tais como se e embora, no caso das orações adverbiais); o verbo da oração principal e o tempo verbal da oração principal (no caso das orações substantivas). Propõe-se que, em português, formas subjuntivas e indicativas funcionam como variantes de uma variável apenas nas orações adverbiais, ao passo que, nos outros dois contextos, tais formas se alternam mas não constituem sempre formas de dizer a mesma coisa (LABOV, 1972; 1978). A análise quantitativa dos dados foi feita com o pacote estatístico GoldVarb X (SANKOFF, TAGLIAMONTE, SMITH, 2005). Os resultados indicam que, no geral, é maior a tendência de ocorrência do modo indicativo em São Paulo relativamente a São Luís. Por outro lado, há indício de mudança na fala ludovicense, na direção do indicativo, em orações adverbiais e substantivas.\n

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The paper discusses ways of expressing temporal relations of simultaneity in the German language. Although the relations can be expressed by participle phrases, noun phrases, prepositional phrases and infinitive phrases, the adverbial clause is the most frequent means of expressing the relations. The temporal adverbial clause has an almost unlimited range of application, which stretches from a vaguely hinted relation to absolute necessity, and from general statements and clarifications to definite emotionally motivated utterances. Wherever there is an obvious connection between facts, events, actions, relations as well as personal will and feeling, it can be expressed by means of a temporal structure. The subject of the paper is the influence of conjunctions während, als, wenn, seit(dem) and solange on the time arrangement of situations introduced into the time clause and the main clause with regard to morphological, syntactic and semantic elements and dependence on the relation of the correspondence between events in the time clause and events in the main clause in German.

This book presents an analysis of Spanish prepositional clauses (< P + CP >) - complement and adverbial clauses. The goal is to examine the syntax and evolution of those clauses and their components in Spanish, contrasting them with other European languages. Prepositional argument and adjunct clauses are grammatical in present-day Spanish. However, Medieval Spanish only attests the latter; the former were not frequent until the 16th/17th centuries. Both types are examined in their syntactic evolution and properties, including clausal nominality, argumenthood, nature of prepositions, and optionality. Latin and Portuguese, French, and Italian - both in their present-day and past forms - are studied and compared to Spanish. Likewise, several Germanic languages are surveyed. These languages show variable grammatical degrees of < P + CP >. The comparison reveals aspects which challenge the commonly accepted conclusions about the clausal patterns of each language. This study offers a novel approach to the analysis of Spanish prepositional clauses by looking at its properties and formation not only from within but also in contrast with other languages. It argues for cross-linguistically valid categories and explanations in order to comprehend the properties of human language.

General considerations In this chapter the linking between semantic representations and syntactic representations in complex sentences is explored. An important question to be investigated is the extent to which the linking algorithms proposed in chapter 5 for simple sentences must be modified to deal with complex sentences. Most complex sentences pose no particular difficulties for the linking system developed in chapter 5. Clausal junctures, for example, are composed of clauses, each of which links like an independent clause. Moreover, nuclear junctures act for linking purposes like simple clauses containing a complex predicate, and they basically follow the algorithms for simple sentences. The real challenge comes from non-subordinate core junctures with their obligatory sharing of a core argument, as discussed in section 6.2. Accordingly, linking in clausal and nuclear junctures will be examined first. After the discussion of linking in the different juncture–nexus types and in complex NPs, reflexivization in complex constructions will be investigated, and again the question arises as to the extent to which the principles proposed in section 5.3 will have to be modified to deal with these new phenomena. In the final section an account of the restrictions on so-called ‘long-distance dependencies’ involved in WH-question formation, topicalization and relativization will be proposed. These restrictions, which fall under the principle known as ‘subjacency’ in the generative literature, are significant for linguistic theory, for theories of language acquisition and for related theories of cognitive organization.

Veterinary RecordVolume 156, Issue 14 p. 454-454 Short Communication Corneal papilloma in a dog M-S. Kim DVM, M-S. Kim DVM Department of Veterinary Surgery and Ophthalmology, Seoul National University, San...

Hittite attests a set of complex sentences in which (mostly) relative clauses (other subordinate clauses are also attested) appear in linear syntax to be within another subordinate (usually conditional, rarely temporal) clause or main clause. The relative clause can be preceded by a very limited array of constituents from the matrix clause, e.g., mān ‘if’ or the quotative particle ⸗wa(r). There are also examples which attest the conditional subordinator and the irrealis particle in two positions simultaneously, at the left edge of the whole sentence and in the conditional clause (= main clause for the relative clause). I provide a fine-grained descriptive and structural analysis of the structure and show that the type cannot be explained as bare indefinites, embedded relative clauses or parenthetic clauses. It is shown that, structurally, the sentences containing subordinate (mostly relative) clauses within other clauses are heterogenous and of three types. The difference lies in the elements that precede the relative clause and in the structure of the sentences, whereby a standard Hittite relative clause adjoins at different heights. All three types display the same mismatch between prosodic domains and syntax/semantics—the constituent that is part of the main clause from the semantic and syntactic perspective is prosodically part of the relative clause. Since there is a clause boundary delimiting the end of the subordinate clause within the main clause, it makes sense to treat the surface structure as a distinct taxonomic unit, which is correspondingly labelled a mismatch sentence. The new evidence allows us to obtain a fuller understanding of the Hittite left periphery than was previously possible. It thus offers an important window into hitherto unrecognized aspects of the underlying structure of the complex sentence in Hittite.

Looking for an easy-to-use guide to English grammar? This handy introduction covers all the basics of the subject, using a simple and straightforward style. Students will find the book's step-by-step approach easy to follow and be encouraged by its non-technical language. Requiring no prior knowledge of English grammar, the information is presented in small steps, with objective techniques to help readers apply concepts. With clear explanations and well chosen examples, the book gives students the tools to understand the mysteries of English grammar as well as the perfect foundation from which to move on to more advanced topics.

Chinese has the basic word order of Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), yet it is also known as a topic-prominent language, where an object can be topicalized from within a relative clause as well as from a main clause. In parsing Topic-Subject-Verb (TSV) structures, will a Chinese comprehender have difficulties in recognizing the second noun phrase (NP2) as the subject and in integrating the initial topic noun with the verb? Experience/surprisal-based theories and memory-based theories make testable predications at the NP2 and critically, at the verb. Focusing on these two regions in three self-paced reading experiments, we compared reading time patterns between TSVs and canonical SVOs in simple or complex sentences. Converging evidence showed processing costs at or prior to the NP2 in TSVs compared to SVOs, but no retrieval or integration costs at the verb regardless of dependency lengths. Our results are not predicted by memory-based theories, but are consistent with the predictions of experience/surprisal-based theories, suggesting that Chinese TSV processing is guided by structural frequencies and a universal subject-reading bias, with completion of dependency between topic and the verb (or empty category) likely to be fundamentally semantic.

The focus here is on the semantics of a complex sentence that expresses a causality relation. To deal with semantics of a complex sentence we first address the coreference relations holding among several roles appearing in a main clause or a subordinate clause. In order to make clear the real problem for dealing with coreference relations, we need to know the syntactic and semantic status of a complex sentence. The status of a complex sentence is somewhere between discourse and a simple sentence. Then we think of anaphora resolution of complex sentence because coreference analysis is a part of it. As for anaphora resolution, on the one hand, GB theory gives us a sophisticated framework for a simple sentence with to-phrase (Sells 1985). In a complex sentence, however, pronouns or Japanese zero pronouns are sometimes pro, which means that we have to find their antecedents not syntactically but pragmatically or contextually. On the other hand, many researchers have investigated this problem from the viewpoint of discourse structure. For instance, Hobbs (1979) suggested that there are systematic relations between coreference and discourse structure. Recently, centering theories (Brennan, Friedman & Pollard 1987; Walker et al. 1994; Kameyama 1988) have shown the algorithms to infer coreference relations among consecutive sentences in discourse. In Japanese, however, if we apply these centering algorithms to a subordinate clause and its main clause, sometimes they make wrong predictions of coreference relation (Nakagawa & Nishizawa 1994). Then we need a more sophisticated approach to improve the quality of predicting coreference relations.KeywordsOutermost LayerSemantic RoleMain ClauseComplex SentenceModality PartThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This collective volume explores clause-linkage strategies in a cross-linguistic perspective with greater emphasis on subordination. Part I presents some theoretical reassessment of syntactic terminologies and distinctive criteria for subordination, as well as typological methods based on sets of variables and statistics allowing cross-linguistic comparability. Part II deals with strategies relating to clause-chaining, conjunctive conjugations, converbial constructions, masdars. Part III centers on the interaction between the syntax, pragmatics, and semantics of clause-linking and subordination, in relation to informa­tional structure, to referential hierarchy, and correlative constructions. Part IV presents insights in the clause-linking and subordinating functions of some T.A.M. markers, verbal inflectional morphology and conjugation systems, which may also interact with informa­tional hierarchy, via the backgrounding effects and lack of illocutionary force of some aspect and mood forms. The volume is of particular interest to linguists and typologists working on clause-linkage systems and on the interface between syntax, pragmatics, and semantics.

This paper investigates Turkish subordinate constructions in 201 fictional narratives told by 102 bilingual Turkish-Swedish children (age 4 to 7), growing up in Sweden with Turkish as a heritage language. All narratives were elicited with the picture sequences of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN, Gagarina et al., 2012). We analyze the characteristics of the Turkish relative, complement and adverbial clauses in the children’s narratives and in their responses to story comprehension questions from quantitative and qualitative points of view. The children produce a wide variety of subordinate constructions, going beyond what is typically reported for Turkish heritage language acquisition elsewhere. In the cross-sectional data sampled, there is considerable individual variation concerning subordination, but relatively little development from age 4 to 7, as some of the youngest children already master Turkish nonfinite subordination, and older children do not necessarily use subordination more frequently or in more adultlike ways than younger ones. Certain types of subordination are rare (e.g. relativization) or even absent in the data (complementation with object control). Other types of subordinate constructions are very frequent and nearly always conform to standard adult Turkish (e.g. complementation with subject control; adverbialization with simple converbs). However, the precise morphological form and function of subjunctors in causal and purposive adverbial clauses (an aspect rarely discussed in the Turkish acquisition literature) is not yet mastered by the oldest children in the sample (age 7). In general, the Turkish-Swedish data point to relatively successful and early acquisition of nonfinite subordination morphology, unlike what has been reported by a number of earlier studies of children acquiring Turkish in a bilingual and/or heritage language context in other countries (e.g. Boeschoten, 1990; Pfaff, 1991, 1993; Aarssen 2001; Herkenrath &amp; Karakoç, 2002; Rehbein &amp; Herkenrath, 2015). Our finding that bilingual children acquiring Turkish are able to produce much more complex sentences than originally claimed in the literature is suggested to be due to differences in setting, sampling and data elicitation.

This paper discusses word order effects in German adverbial clauses: often, the matrix clause can exhibit either V2 or V3 word order. I argue that adverbial clauses with V3 word order have an obligatory ‘biscuit’ interpretation and receive a speech act modifying interpretation, as has previously only been argued for ‘biscuit conditionals’. I show that this phenomenon holds more generally. On the other hand, a pragmatic analysis for V2 biscuit conditionals remains necessary.