Mandarin Word Order: Syntactic Typology

Case, Word Order, and Language Learnability: Insights from Connectionist Modeling Gary Lupyan (il24@cornell.edu) Morten H. Christiansen (mhc27@cornell.edu) Department of Psychology Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 USA Abstract How does the existence of case systems, and strict word order patterns a↵ect the learnability of a given language? We present a series of connectionist sim- ulations, suggesting that both case and strict word order may facilitate syntactic acquisition by a se- quential learning device. Our results are consis- tent with typological data concerning the frequen- cies with which di↵erent type of word order pat- terns occur across the languages of the world. Our model also accommodates patterns of syntactic de- velopment across several di↵erent languages. We conclude that non-linguistic constraints on general sequential-learning devices may help explain the re- lationship between case, word order, and learnabil- ity of individual languages. Introduction In language acquisition, children are faced with many formidable tasks, yet they normally acquire most of their native language within the first five years of life. One of the most difficult of these tasks involves mapping a sequence of words onto some sort of interpretation of what that sequence is supposed to mean. That is, in order for the child to under- stand a sentence, she needs to determine the gram- matical roles of the individual words so that she can work out who did what to whom. Although the chil- dren appear to bring powerful statistical learning mechanisms to bear on the acquisition tasks (e.g., Sa↵ran, Aslin, & Newport 1996), the existence of linguistic universals common across radically di↵er- ent languages (Greenberg 1963) points to the pres- ence of innate constraints on such learning. Without such constraints, it becomes difficult to explain why there are few, if any, Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) languages (van Everbroeck, 1999) even though in principle such a language appears to be as good as any other. In this paper, we propose that these con- straints may arise from non-linguistic limitations on the sequential learning of statistical structure, and examine how this perspective may shed light on how children learn to map the words in sentences onto their appropriate grammatical roles. There are two major ways in which languages signal syntactic rela- tionships and grammatical roles—word order (WO), and case markings. In a strict WO language like En- glish, declarative sentences follow a Subject-Verb- Object (SVO) pattern. It is the occurrence of the subject in the first position, and the object in the second, that allows the hearer to comprehend who did what to whom. In contrast, languages such as Russian or Japanese allow multiple word orders and rely on case markings to disambiguate subjects from objects. For instance, Masha lubit Petyoo (SVO), Petyoo lubit Masha (OVS), and Lubit Petyoo Masha (VOS) are all grammatical in Russian and all mean Mary loves Peter (albeit with di↵erent emphases on the constituents), due to the nominative -a, and ac- cusative -u case markers. While long-standing theories describe acquisition of language through an innate language acquisition device (e.g., Pinker, 1995), an alternative approach that is gaining ground is the adaptation of linguistic structures to the human brain rather than vice versa (e.g., Christiansen, 1994; Kirby, 1998). On this ac- count, language universals may reflect non-linguistic cognitive constraints on learning and processing of sequential structure, rather than constraints pre- scribed by an innate universal grammar. Previ- ous work has shown that sequential-learning devices with no language-specific biases are better able to learn more universal aspects of language as com- pared to aspects encountered in rare languages (e.g., Ellefson & Christiansen, 2000; Christiansen & De- vlin, 1997; Van Everbroeck, 1999, 2001). Here, we examine the ways in which case markings and word order may function as cues for a sequen- tial learning device acquiring syntactic structure. In simulation 1, we model di↵erent word orders, and hypothesize that typologically common languages should be easier to learn by a sequential-learning device than the more rare ones. We expand on this idea in simulation 2 by studying the performance of networks trained on languages of varying degrees of case markings and flexibility. Finally, in simulation 3, we establish that our trained networks are able to mimic syntactic performance of children learn- ing English, Italian, Turkish, and Serbo-Croatian (Slobin and Bever, 1982).

The article introduces a comparative analysis of the word order in the communicative structure of the sentence in Russian and Persian. The research also covered means and methods of expressing communicative structure, as well as the rules and patterns of word order on the communicative level. In both languages, the communicative aspect of the sentence is closely related to the word order, which is the main tool of expressing the semantic division of the sentence. However, the communicative word order patterns are different. In the neutral speech, both languages put the theme (background information) in front of the rheme (actual information). In expressive speech, the Russian rheme is placed at the beginning of the sentence while the theme follows it. In other words, the thought moves from the actual information to the background information. When the communicative division of the sentence changes, the word order also changes. Based on the analysis of the word order in neutral and expressive speech, direct and inverted word orders are associated with the function that these components perform in the theme-rheme relationship. Persian, however, has a fixed word order, and allows for no inversion: the theme and the rheme are fixed, and the background information always precedes the new one. In the Russian language, any part of the sentence can be the theme or the rheme. In Persian, the function of the theme or the rheme belongs to particular sentence components.

The purpose of this research is to examine the types of English sentences based on function consisting of declarative sentence, interrogative sentence, exclamatory sentence, and imperative sentence found in the folklore “Jack and The Beanstalk”. The method in this research was descriptive qualitative with research source obtained from the American Literature website. The results of this research showed that in the folklore “Jack and The Beanstalk” there were four types of English sentences based on function. Type of sentence that appeared most frequently in the folklore “Jack and The Beanstalk” was declarative sentences (46 times), followed by the exclamatory sentences (13 times). Meanwhile, the types of sentences that appeared the least were interrogative sentences (2 times) and imperative sentences (2 times). Or in percentage form, as many as 73% of the sentences in the folkore “Jack and The Beanstalk” were declarative sentences, as many as 21% were exclamatory sentences, as many as 3% were an interrogative sentences, and as many as 3% were imperative sentences.

In this paper, we investigate the effect of information structure on word order in Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives, and whether these two languages differ from each other. To this end, we conducted two empirical studies. In a parallel text corpus study, we compared the frequency of the word order patterns ‘why’SV and ‘why’VS, as well as the distribution of focal and non-focal subjects in the two languages. In order to get a deeper understanding of the impact of the information structural categories focus and givenness on word order in ‘why’-interrogatives, we conducted a forced-choice experiment. The results indicate that word order is affected by focus in Italian, while it is not determined by any information structural category in Peninsular Spanish. We show that Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives differ from each other in two ways. First, non-focal subjects occur preverbally in Italian, while they occupy the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish. Second, Italian reveals a lower level of optionality with respect to word order patterns. Even though we find a high preference for the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish, we argue that this limitation is related to a higher flexibility regarding word order in Peninsular Spanish than in Italian which does not allows for ‘why’VSO in contrast to Peninsular Spanish.

This paper presents an examination of syntactic constructions that are associated with the mirative interpretation of marking propositional content as being surprising or unexpected to the speaker. I report experimental evidence showing that certain options of marked word order in German are particularly suitable in mirative contexts. Cross-linguistic evidence offers good reasons to assume that mirative marking is also reflected in word order patterns. Having identified word order variation as one option to trigger mirative interpretations of utterances, I discuss the issue of distinguishing between information-structural and mirative effects of marked syntactic configurations.

Grammatical structuring in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia in Finnish

WORD ORDER AND RECONSTRUCTION OF BALTIC SENTENCE TYPE Summary The article deals with mutual relations between word order patterns in Lithuanian and Lettish and points out their importance for the reconstruction of earlier Baltic sentence structure. Statis­tic evidence reveals the greater frequency of the OV pattern (from 51% to 75%) in dialects and folklore, especially in the older recordings, in comparison with standard language. The ancient character of this pattern is corroborated by the order of components in nominal compounds such as Lith. kraugerys “blood-sucker”, varkalys (Lett, varkalis) “copper-smith”, bitkopis (Lett, bis kuopis) “honey-taker”. The (S)OV order of the major sentence constituents is in accordance with the majority of phrase constituent patterns in which the modifier (operator) precedes the modified (operandum): AdjNom, PronNom, NumNom, GenNom; AdvV, Adv'Adv, etc. Other patterns with the preceding modifier can be reconstructed for the earlier history of the Baltic languages. The ancient use of postpositions reflect the locatives with -pi< *pie, *en, -na (Lith. Namop(i), lauke, laukuosna), adverbs Lith. kodėl, todėl, kodrin, todrin, Lett, kāpēc tāpēc etc. The standard of compar­ison precedes adjective in the majority of gnomic expressions, proverbs and riddles of Lithuanian folklore and especially in such periphrastic comparatives as Lith. visų gerasis (geriausias), Lett. vislabaks “best of all”. Nominal phrases with definite adjectives, f. i. Lith. gerasis (<*geras+jis) tėvas, represent ancient determinative constructions preceding nouns while the use of -gu in Old Lithuanian shows the postposition of interrogative particles (even after negative particles, cf. Lith. negu “as”). The historical survey of word order patterns reveals the ancient ambivalence between (S)OV and (S)VO types in Baltic with the prevalence of constructions representing the (S)OV type. In this connection the Baltic languages give evidence of an earlier state of development in compari­son with Slavic and manifest a great similarity to Homeric Greek and early Latin. The tendency to fix the position of some modifiers after the modifieds in the history of Baltic languages influ­enced the prepositional constructions earlier and more consistently than it did the standard of comparison (AdjSt) and major sentence constituents (V, O). The syntactic structure of languages with an ambivalent word order is supposed to be depending not only on the order of the most variable sentence constituents (S, 0, V) but mainly on the complex of more fixed patterns reflected in the distribution of stressed and unstressed positions in the sentence.

This study aims to describe the acquisition of Indonesian children aged 5-6 years who are examined on the types of Indonesian sentences and patterns of Indonesian sentence structure obtained by Muhammad Ragil Satria Putra Agung. The method used is descriptive method. The form of qualitative research. The data source is Muhammad Ragil Satria Putra Agung and the research data are all the utterances produced by Muhammad Ragil Satria Putra Agung in the form of sentences according to the selected problem formulation. The data collection technique used is the conversational engagement technique, recording technique and note-taking technique on the data card. The technique of testing the validity of the data is the persistence of observations and the adequacy of references. The results showed that: declarative sentences (news) as many as 272 sentences, imperative sentences (commands) as many as 32 sentences, interrogative sentences (questions) as many as 71 sentences. Based on the data classification, the patterns of Indonesian sentence structure obtained by Muhammad Ragil Satria Putra Agung include: (SP) 246 patterns, (SPO) 8 patterns, (SP-Pel) 138 patterns, (SP-Ket) 29 patterns, (SPO- Note) 3 patterns, (SPO-Mop) 5 patterns, and (SP-Pel-Ket) 14 patterns. From the results of data analysis, the most dominant sentences obtained are declarative sentences, which are 272 sentences, while the sentence structure pattern that is most widely used is the Subject-Predicate (SP) pattern, which is 246 patterns. Keywords: Indonesian language acquisition, children aged 5-6 years, psycholinguistics.

This study aims to describe the forms and types of conversational implicatures in the 2020 Sambas Regent and Deputy Regent Candidate Debate. The research method used is descriptive with a qualitative research form. The data from this study are declarative sentences, imperative sentences, introgative sentences, general and specific conversational implicature in the 2020 Sambas Regent and Deputy Regent Candidate Pair Debate. The source of data was taking from the 2020 Sambas Regent and Deputy Regent candidate pair debate which is broadcast through the Sambas Regency Comunications and Information Agency youtube page which was broadcast live on November 21, 2020, lasted 3 hours 26 minutes 25 detik. The data collection technique in this research is a documentary study technique. Based on the results of the analysis in the 2020 Sambas regent and Deputy Regent Candidate Debate, it can be concluded that there are 23 forms af declarative implicature sentences, 21 forms of interrogative implicature sentences, 41 forms of imperative implicature sentences, 7 forms of general conversational implicature sentences, and 78 specific conversational implicature sentences. In addition, this research can also be used as teaching material in learning Indonesian for grade X second semester in senior high school level as the debate material.Keywords: Conversational Implicature, Debate, Implicatur

Objectives: Patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD) often struggle to understand the tone of others during communication and have difficulties expressing their own intentions. This study aims to examine the intonation characteristics of sentence-final endings in patients with RHD.Methods: The study included a total of 38 participants (13 patients with right hemisphere cerebral infarction and 25 healthy adults). The study employed a sentence reading task (pitch, intensity range, intonation patterns), a prosodic perception/ difficulty scale (prosodic perception/difficulty scores), and a sentence type selection task (perception rates of sentence types).Results: The group with RHD exhibited lower pitch ranges for imperative and interrogative sentences, as well as lower intensity ranges for imperative sentences compared to the healthy control (HC) group. An ascending intonation pattern was observed in declarative and imperative sentences in the RHD group, which was not seen in the HC group, while a descending intonation pattern was noted in interrogative sentences. Additionally, the RHD group tended to underestimate their own prosodic difficulties. HC listeners experienced challenges in identifying the sentence type based on the speech of patients with RHD.Conclusion: This study provides a multifaceted confirmation of the vulnerable prosodic characteristics of patients with RHD. It objectively highlights the potential limitations that these prosodic difficulties may impose on the social participation of individuals with RHD in daily life.

In Turkology, the aspectual status of verb forms is understudied, as are, especially, the compositional means of realizing aspect distinctions. Difficulties arise from specificities of the Turkish language such as its agglutinative nature, lack of articles, the relatively free word order. The verb has a complex paradigm whereby certain forms have tense meanings, some aspectual but the root morpheme itself is neutral vis-à-vis aspect. This paper employs Verkuyl’s two aspect schemata – perfective and imperfective, as an analytical tool, and when these schemata and the compositional aspect theory in general are applied to Turkish, many intriguing questions arise, for example: how does the preterit realize the perfective-imperfective contrast? How is aspect expressed in both the past domain and outside it? How will accusative forms, that are definite, be realized in subjects, indirect objects and adverbial nominals from the point of view of the compositional aspect theory? The paper is a broad initial attempt for preliminary answers to these and similar complex issues. The main generalizations are that the compositional realization of aspect in Modern Turkish is located at the sentence-level and that it takes place predominantly through the definite-indefinite contrast in direct objects, through case values and word order patterns according to the functional sentence perspective, as well as through various other means that are subject to future in-depth research. Keywords: Modern Turkish; Turkish aspect; compositional aspect; perfectivity-imperfectivity contrast

The article examines a persistent word order pattern in Bulgarian, from classical tenth-century Old Bulgarian through Early Modern Bulgarian to the present day. It is characterised by discontinuity between the subject and the predicate due to the insertion of adjuncts. By analysing the attested occurrences in the text of the Bible in Greek, as well as in contemporary Ukrainian, Polish, and Czech, we find that the studied word order pattern is typical of these languages as well. On the basis of these observations, we make conclusions about the possible universality of this word order model.

Research on the use of language, sentence, the content of pornography and connotations of pornography, and the content of character education in the campursari song text are aimed to describing at: (1) language, (2) sentence variations, (3) pornographic content and pornographic connotations, and (4) content character education in the campursari song text. This study included qualitative descriptive research. The research data are in the form of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. The data source for this study is ten songs downloaded from the internet. The results of the study: (1) ten songs analyzed by nine song texts used Javanese as the title and one song used the Javanese language and Indonesian language. Of the ten songs, all song texts use Javanese, there are mixed Indonesian language codes into Javanese, mixed Javanese language codes and English into Indonesian, Indonesian language code switching to Javanese, and there are letters written that violate General Guidelines Enhanced Javanese Spelling (PUEBJYD), (2) the use of sentences consists of: (a) declarative sentences, (b) interrogative sentences, and (c) imperative sentences, (3) there are six songs containing pornography and connotations of pornography, and (4) the value of prominent character education is creative, besides that it is a violation of polite and religious values.

This qualitative study presents the research results on Pragmatics politeness in the language of English teachers in Islamic elementary schools. The problem formulation of this research focuses on what and how Pragmatics politeness is in the language of English teachers in Islamic elementary schools. The objectives of this study are (i) to describe the form of Pragmatics speech in the language of English teachers; (ii) to describe the tools used in using Pragmatics politeness in the teacher's language, English. The research approach used is qualitative research. Data were collected from various communication events in teaching English in the classroom between teachers and students by participating in observation techniques, note-taking/recording techniques, and interviews. Structurally, the various sub-illocutions were delivered with one core speech unit alone or with a combination of core speech (TI) and supporting speech units (TD) in the form of asking questions, commanding acts, and opening speech units (TB) in the form of greetings. Pragmatics politeness speech acts of English teachers and students are generally expressed in imperative sentences (active and passive), declarative sentences, and interrogative sentences. Second, the tools of Pragmatics politeness in the language of English teachers in Islamic elementary schools found in the speech of the teaching process can function as an action stimulator, a request for approval of the action, an invitation.Keywords: Politeness, Pragmatics, Islamic elementary school.

Syntax is a branch of linguistics that studies phrases, clauses, and sentences. In this article, the focus is more on discussing the analysis of sentences in a text, in which the sentence itself is part of the syntax, namely syntactic units composed of basic constituents, usually in the form of clauses, supplemented by conjunctions when needed, and accompanied by final intonation. This article’s text is anecdotal from the Class X Indonesian Language Book of the Merdeka Curriculum. The anecdotal texts in the book are then analyzed for sentences to know whether direct or indirect sentences and sentences are standard. Analyzing a sentence certainly uses a method or method used. The method itself uses a qualitative descriptive method. The qualitative descriptive method is used to make a detailed description of a particular object which is carried out systematically, factually, and accurately. The results of this study found effective sentences, ineffective sentences, declarative sentences, interrogative sentences, and imperative sentences. Based on the results of the analysis found five anecdotal texts. This research can be used as a source of learning, for example in learning about types of sentences. In addition, it can be used to measure literacy levels. As well as b improving language competence, it can also shape students' character conceptually and in the form of humor, which has become a part of life today.