Complex interrogative pronouns in Romance

The recognition of a word makes available its semantic and syntactic properties. Using electrophysiological recordings, we investigated whether one set of these properties is available earlier than the other set. Dutch participants saw nouns on a computer screen and performed push-button responses: In one task, grammatical gender determined response hand (left/right) and semantic category determined response execution (go/no-go). In the other task, response hand depended on semantic category, whereas response execution depended on gender. During the latter task, response preparation occurred on no-go trials, as measured by the lateralized readiness potential: Semantic information was used for response preparation before gender information inhibited this process. Furthermore, an inhibition-related N2 effect occurred earlier for inhibition by semantics than for inhibition by gender. In summary, electrophysiological measures of both response preparation and inhibition indicated that the semantic word property was available earlier than the syntactic word property when participants read single words.

The analysis of Internal Localization Nouns (ILNs) is considered here in the framework of the general studies on part-whole relations or meronomies. Data from Basque and French indicate that these lexical elements have semantic and syntactic properties which clearly differentiate them from other meronomic relations, in particular from component nouns usually used for designating functional parts of spatial entities. Beyond a strict opposition, it seems that ILNs diachronicly derive from component nouns and acquire, during such an evolution, semantic properties which make them real relational markers of spatial localization. More generally, this study on ILNs of Basque and French seems to indicate that there exists a general concept of location which plays a great part in the linguistic and cognitive classification of spatial entities and underlies the functioning of several linguistic markers of space.

Who Knows What about Whom: What Role Does Common Ground Play in Accessing Distant Information?

Phrasal verbs (PVs) are notably essential for English language learners due to their common use in spoken and informal written language; however, English as a foreign language (EFL) learners may find it difficult to master phrasal verbs, not only at receptive but also productive levels. The syntactic and semantic complexities prove much more troublesome in academic writing for those learners whose mother tongue does not feature phrasal verb formations. Therefore, this study aims at exploring English majors’ difficulties with phrasal verbs in terms of syntactic, semantic properties, and formality and informality of phrasal verbs in academic writing at a tertiary institution in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The participants of the study consisted of 124 English majors. The quantitative and qualitative research methods were applied to collect data via questionnaire and semi-structured interview. The SPSS software (20.0) was used to process the quantitative data collected from questionnaires, while the content analysis was applied to analyze the qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews. The results revealed that research participants faced difficulties in academic writing most from the semantic property, followed by the formality and informality of phrasal verbs and the syntactic property. Such preliminary findings are hoped to contribute to a better understanding of English as a foreign language learners’ difficulties with phrasal verbs as well as to enhance the quality of academic teaching and learning.

<p>The present study is a contrastive analysis that delves into the demonstratives in Arabic (Standard Arabic) and English. The aim of the study is to reveal the similarities and differences between the demonstratives of the two languages by delineating their phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. Exposing these differences will specify what language teachers have to teach and what language learners whether Arabic or English learners have to learn.</p><p>The interesting point found is that both Arabic and English demonstratives share more linguistic similarities than differences. Regarding similarities, both demonstratives are indeclinable in both languages except for the Arabic dual case. The demonstratives’ phonemes and their referents are in some way obtained in both languages. English and Arabic languages use demonstratives in several positions within a sentence in consistent with the syntactic function of the demonstrative. Demonstratives in both languages are ambiguous words; their meaning can be defined through their context. As for the differences, English has only two-dimensional deictic points for demonstratives i.e., proximal or distal, but Arabic displays more deictic points i.e., proximal, medial, and distal.</p>

This paper is concerned with syntactic and semantic properties of ditransitive constructions in standard and dialectal German. A higher or lower extent of ‘ditransitivity’ can be observed by means of these properties. Canonical ditransitives, for instance, vary by allowing (geben ‘to give’) or prohibiting (gönnen ‘to grant’) a contextual ellipsis of the dative object. In addition, whether the proto-patient is either a concrete or an abstract noun can change the ditransitivity of the same construction. Non-canonical ditransitives (which contain e. g. complex predicates, certain APs or PPs that expand the valency of transitive verbs, a so-called ‘free dative’, or a ditransitive adjective) often remain unattended by studies on ditransitives. But none of these patterns differ from canonical geben with respect to their syntactic and semantic properties. Finally, only light verb constructions whose objects are categorically restricted represent the divide between (non-)canonical and idiomatic ditransitives.

In a yeast two-hybrid screen designed to identify novel effectors of the G betagamma subunit of heterotrimeric G proteins, we found that G betagamma binds to histone deacetylase 5 (HDAC5), an enzyme involved in a pathway not previously recognized to be directly impacted by G proteins. Formation of the G beta1gamma2-HDAC5 complex in mammalian cells can be blocked by overexpression of G alpha(o), and this inhibition is relieved by activation of alpha2A-adrenergic receptor, suggesting that the interaction occurs in a signal-dependent manner. The C-terminal domain of HDAC5 binds directly to G betagamma through multiple motifs, and overexpression of this domain mimics the C terminus of G protein-coupled receptor kinase 2, a known G betagamma scavenger, in its ability to inhibit the G betagamma/HDAC5 interaction. The C terminus of HDAC4 shares significant similarity with that of HDAC5, and accordingly, HDAC4 is also able to form complexes with G beta1gamma2 in cultured cells, suggesting that the C-terminal domain of class II HDACs is a general G betagamma binding motif. Activation of a G(i/o)-coupled receptor results in a time-dependent activation of MEF2C, an HDAC5-regulated transcription factor, whereas inhibition of the interaction with a G betagamma scavenger inhibits MEF2C activity, suggesting a reduced potency of HDAC5-mediated inhibition. Taken together, these data imply that HDAC5 and possibly other class II HDACs can be added to the growing list of G betagamma effectors.

FACTIVES AND PROPOSITION LEVEL CONSTRUCTIONS IN MONTAGUE GRAMMAR

Research in Crosslinguistic Influence (CLI) has traditionally addressed two broad types of lexical CLI—transfer of form and transfer of meaning (Ringbom 1987)—which were reconceptualized by Jarvis (2009) as lexemic and lemmatic transfer, respectively. Whereas the former considers the phonological and graphemic structure of words, the latter is related to semantic and syntactic properties. These types of lexical CLI have been analysed in relation to L2 proficiency, but not in relation to factors such as Study Abroad (SA), which the present study aims to investigate. The oral production by 107 Catalan/Spanish learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) was analysed in terms of lexical CLI and the amount of input received during their SA. Results show an inverse relationship between the amount of input in SA and lexical CLI; that is, the higher the number of hours abroad, the fewer cases of lexical CLI. Statistical differences were found for lemmatic CLI and for one type of lexemic CLI. In light of these findings, it is suggested that learners that take part in SA programmes do not rely on L1-based resources when gaps in their knowledge arise.

Analyses of word embeddings have primarily focused on semantic and syntactic properties. However, word embeddings have the potential to encode other properties as well. In this paper, we propose a new perspective on the analysis of word embeddings by focusing on spelling variation. In social media, spelling variation is abundant and often socially meaningful. Here, we analyze word embeddings trained on Twitter and Reddit data. We present three analyses using pairs of word forms covering seven types of spelling variation in English. Taken together, our results show that word embeddings encode spelling variation patterns of various types to some extent, even embeddings trained using the skipgram model which does not take spelling into account. Our results also suggest a link between the intentionality of the variation and the distance of the non-conventional spellings to their conventional spellings.

Despite the numerous studies proposed to explain double nominative constructions (DNCs) in Korean, empirical approaches to the predicate types that license their essential complements for conversion into nominatives have attracted little attention from scholars. However, given that, from syntactic and semantic viewpoints, the DNCs result from diverse and complex linguistic realities, a rigorous examination of the predicate types is required before attempting to elaborate theoretical assumptions further. Based on a large database of 6,600 Korean adjectives, this study distinguishes two types of DNCs: Predicate-Dependent DNCs (PD-DNCs), where the two nominatives are essential arguments of the adjectival predicates; and Discourse-Dependent DNCs (DD-DNCs), where one of the two nominatives is not related to the argument structures, but either is generated by the split of one argument or is newly introduced at the discourse level. About 30% of the 6,600 adjectives license PD-DNCs. On this basis, the current study provides two findings on PD-DNCs. First, adjectives licensing PD-DNCs are classified into five syntactic and semantic sub-types, the predominant complement type that is convertible into a nominative being that in -EY. Second, the adjectives licensing their complements for conversion into nominatives mostly show certain peculiar syntactic properties: most of them permit two syntactic constructions in a subject-complement crossing (SCC) relation like 'N1-NOM N2-POS ADJ-DEC=N2-NOM N1-POS ADJ-DEC'. With regard to DD-DNCs, in this study the DNCs are divided into four sub-types, which exhibit various semantic and syntactic properties that are distinct from those of PD-DNCs.

This paper analyzes intransitive alternations in relation to manner/result transitivity patterns. We focus on productivity and distribution in Romance, Greek, and English, where a major asymmetry is created by the (un)availability of monadic alternates featuring a stative cause as the single participant (e.g. Caffeine dehydrates; Covid kills). These constructions are contrasted with intransitive alternatives generally considered in the literature, like the Characteristic Property of Agent Alternation (e.g. This dog bites). Criteria like eventivity, episodicity, agentivity, and intentionality/volitionality are examined. We find that the types contrasted correspond to two structurally distinct kinds of predication. Major differences emerge between originally transitive structures where the object, even if unexpressed/unspecified, is assigned a place in the configuration (the type traditionally explored) vs. original atransitive variants consisting only of the external-argument-licensing head, with consequently different semantic and syntactic properties. This distinction also explains the apparently striking distribution of intransitivity alternations in psych verbs. We note that certain verbs, even if eligible for psych predication like bother or intimidate, can have other uses related to manner-of-behavior predications. We identify central conditions (eventivity, animacy/agenthood, defeasibility) regulating argument/event realization: in languages like English, whereas structurally monadic variants with a cause subject are generally unavailable (*Madrid bewitches/fascinates), manner-type alternatives are fully productive for verbs with non-psych uses, offering less-constrained conditions for object drop/ non-specification. In Romance and Greek, both structures are systematically available, offering distinct syntactic and semantic computations for intransitive variants across different verb classes.

The study describes the indefinite pronouns in Assamese with its complexity and unique features and put emphasis on the morphological, semantic and syntactic properties. The term pronoun is used in the sense of the nominal expression and the substitution in the nominal slot only.

p-consequence is intended as a formalization of non-deductive reasoning. So far semantical or general properties have been presented more thoroughly ([2]–[5]). In the present paper we would like to focus on its syntactic properties.

This study highlights the linguistic specificities of loanwords and uses a theoretical model based on the assumption that the English lexicon is composed of different subsystems. Loanwords have specific phonological, letter-to-sound, semantic, morphological, segmental and syntactic properties that distinguish them from the items of the other subsystems. The first part of the study lists these properties and illustrates them with examples taken from dictionary data (Wells [2008]). The formation of the loanword subsystem is thus a product of the dynamic interaction between different linguistic systems (Dabouis & P. Fournier [2022]). The emergence of this subsystem reveals that the theoretical framework for loanwords is rooted in the principles of interaction, categorisation and gradience. The second part of the study proposes a conceptual and dynamic representation of the subsystem, mainly grounded in cognitive linguistic theory (Culioli [1990]; [1999a]; [1999b]; Lakoff [1987]; Taylor [1998]). The category of loanwords is represented by a set whose centre concentrates the prototypical and defining parameters of the category, and from which items that fall within this class are identified. A loanword is more or less close to the prototypical form according to the number of parameters it activates. The notions of gradience and boundary are essential in the conceptualisation of the system, because they contribute to defining the concept of loanword as a category based on a continuum. Less-prototypical elements of the subsystem are defined by a lower concentration of defining characteristics and may even shift to other subsystems. The theoretical model proposed in this study is grounded in the principles of prototypicity, gradience, and boundary and provides a dynamic representation of the loanword category, while also addressing the limitations of linguistic categorisation.