Do particle verbs share a representation with their root verbs? Evidence from structural priming

This study delves into the translational challenges Arabic translators face in preserving the dynamism and multifaceted meanings of ‘come’ and ‘go’ phrasal verbs during translation using machine tools. Though existing literature has focused on linguistic and cultural equivalence, the ‘translational force’ of specific words is still under-researched. The aim of this study is to verify the accuracy of the output across tools, and to conclude how effective these applications were in the given language pair. The study adopts a mixed methods approach with a survey used to identify the most frequently used machine tools for translation by 27 learners of Translation Studies at Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia. Thereafter, a set of frequently used phrasal verbs in English that use the root verbs ‘come’ and ‘go’ were translated by a convenience sample of 27 final year students of translation as well as by using the popular and free translation tools in the English-Arabic language pair. Results indicated that Saudi students enrolled in translation studies used MateCAT, Google Translate, Reverso to a limited extent, but relied more on online dictionaries for translation to and from English. In addition to this, translation of English phrasal verbs was found to be most accurate in MateCat and there too, accuracy in back translation was found to be more accurate in the case of the phrasal verbs formed with ‘come’ at the root than with ‘go’ verb. Finally, it was found that the translation students preferred ‘soft tools’ like English movies for learning, recall, and use of English phrasal verbs in practice. This study is expected to provide a deeper understanding of the concept of "translational force" and its implications for translating dynamic words in the English-Arabic language pair in the realm of machine-based translation tools.

PRO is a theoretically attractive empty category proposed to fill the subject position in non-finite clauses. This chapter is concerned with the empirical evidence for PRO. We investigate reactivation patterns in Control sentences in Norwegian with data from two reaction time experiments. We use a picture recognition task to measure the time and position of PRO antecedent reactivation during sentence processing. The data analysis explores a baseline that has the ability to separate syntactic priming (correct PRO antecedent reactivation) and repetition priming. We find a significant effect of position and an effect of syntactic priming for Subject Control using mixed effects models. We discuss possible theoretical implications and necessary future research.

In Kalam, a Trans New Guinea language spoken in Papua New Guinea, there are two main types of serial verb construction (SVC), showing different degrees of morphosyntactic complexity. Compact SVCs contain from two to four verb roots that form a single, semantically and syntactically very tight-knit verb phrase. Narrative SVCs depict a sequence of events that make up a familiar episode. They contain from two to five small verb phrases, compressed into a single clause–lik e construction. The paper will discuss the functions and origins of these two constructions and reflect on the paradox that while condensing multi-clause constructions into a single clause may simplify the task of speech planning it has creates a clause type of exceptional complexity.

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualize motion events, as suggested by behavioral evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was compared to that of two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioral pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages.

This thesis is a reference grammar of the Eibela language, also referred to as Aimele (Ethnologue code: AIL). Eibela has approximately 300 speakers living primarily in Lake Campbell, Western Province, Papua New Guinea. The majority of the data for this thesis was gathered in Lake Campbell, with some addition research taking place in Wawoi Falls, Western Province. In Lake Campbell, Eibela is the dominant language of the community, and is the language of day-to-day life. English and Tok Pisin are becoming more prominent as languages of commerce, and are preferred for written communication. Most members of the Lake Campbell community are also adept at speaking the languages of the surrounding communities.

This autosegmental analysis of Kabiye verbal derivations and inflections demonstrates that tone patterns on adjectives and locative nominalizations are not the underlying forms of verb roots, as claimed by previous researchers, because they are in complementary distribution. Rather, verb roots are analyzed as being underlyingly /H, L/, and two additional morphological elements – verbal extensions and TAM prefixes – both reveal a ternary /H, -L, -∅/ contrast. In toneless extensions, this resolves an adjacency issue with regard to polarity of the TAM suffix, while the three floating tonal TAM prefixes either block, pre-empt or permit L tone spread from the subject pronoun onto the stem. The result is an integrated analysis of derivational and inflectional forms that dovetails with a previous analysis of the associative noun phrase.

I discuss the semantics and syntax of a phenomenon often called lexical subordination and here called conflation, in which a VP with a single verb expresses both an activity and a result predication, although only the former is licensed by the verb's permanent lexical entry. Alongside standard cases such as resultatives and particle verbs, I discuss what I call event-path structures in English and German. In these, an activity is argued to conflate with a predication expressing a (sometimes metaphoric) path of the activity. These little-known data challenge many argument-structure theories because the path expressions sometimes disallow the linking of the verb's normal object. They require a theory where the lexical verb does not contribute arguments in conflation structures, a conclusion motivated empirically. I present a theory of syntax-semantics mapping which relies on VP shells with meaningful light verbs which constrain the interpretations of their specifiers and complements. Conflation is treated as compounding of a verb root to one of the light verbs. This accounts simply for the argument-structural patterns of resultatives and event-path structures. None of the argumentation appeals to operations at a lexical-semantic level between conceptual structure and syntax.