Academic literature on the topic 'Non-configurationality'

Abstract Non-configurationality is a linguistic property associated with free word order, discontinuous constituents, including NPs, and null anaphora of referential arguments. Quantitative metrics, based both on local networks (syntactic trees and word order within sentences) and on global networks (incorporating the relations within a whole treebank into a shared graph), can reveal correlations among these features. Using treebanks we focus on diachronic varieties of Ancient Greek and Latin, in which non-configurationality tapered off over time, leading to the largely configurational nature of the Romance languages and of Modern Greek. A property of global networks (density of their spectra around zero eigenvalues) measuring the regularity in word order is shown to be strengthened from classical to late varieties. Discontinuous NPs are traced by counting the words creating non-projectivity in dependency trees: these drop dramatically in late varieties. Finally, developments in the use of null referential direct objects are gauged by assessing the percentage of third-person personal pronouns among verb objects. All three features turn out to change over time due to the decay of non-configurationality. Evaluation of the strength of their pairwise correlation shows that null direct objects and discontinuous NPs are deeply intertwined.

The article argues that a particular implementation of phase theory makes it possible to account for seemingly contradictory facts of Hungarian that no other framework has been able to handle. Namely, (a) Hungarian word order is fixed preverbally and free postverbally. The fixed word order of a string is liberated when it is crossed by V-movement. (b) Grammatical phenomena sensitive to c-command provide evidence of both configurationality and nonconfigurationality. The proposal is based on the following assumptions: The derivation of the Hungarian sentence involves a lexical phase (PredP) and a functional phase (a TP or a FocP), both headed by the raised V. When the functional phase is constructed, the silent lower copies of the V and their projections are deleted, which results in the flattening of the phasal domain. Grammatical phenomena indicative of a hierarchical structure are interpreted on the hierarchical domain of the lexical phase, whereas those indicative of a flat structure are interpreted on the flattened domain of the functional phase. The sister constituents of the flattened domain of the functional phase can be linearized in a free order in PF.

Meskwaki, like many polysynthetic Algonquian languages, is often analyzed as having a non-configurational structure because it exhibits the three core characteristics of non-configurationality: free word order, discontinuous expressions, and null anaphora (Hale 1983). While free surface form word order is attributed to a preverbal discourse-based hierarchy, non-topic/focus NPs are in a post-verbal, non-hierarchical XP structure (Dahlstrom in progress). This paper posits that Meskwaki has an underlying configurational syntactic structure based on novel and prior data showing (1) discontinuous NP ordering restrictions with locality constraints, (2) superiority effects in multiple wh-phrases, and (3) long-distance movement and island effects.

A formalism for lexical projection in a Lexical Functional Grammar based syntactic processing environment, where lexical items may consist of more than one word, has been discussed. It is an extension of an earlier formalism that assumed single-worded lexical entities. It has been shown that traditional approaches of handling multi-worded lexical entities in an LFG environment are not quite suitable for Bangla, the language under study, because these approaches assume configurationality whereas Bangla is non-configurational. A “Supra-Lexical” level of analysis has been proposed and a formalism for such analyses introduced. The proposed formalism consists of two phases—an off-line specification phase and an implementation phase. Some tools that are required, along with the syntax for supra-lexical specification has been introduced with examples. Compilation of the specifications has been discussed.

This article considers a range of evidence relevant to the determination of the configurational/non-configurational character of clause structure in Modern Greek (an issue that has led to some recent controversy, see Catsimali (1991) versus Tsimpli (1990, 1992)), and also re-examines the status of preverbal subjects in that language; some linguists (e.g. Tsimpli 1992; Philippaki-Warburton 1985, 1987, 1990) have argued that these are invariably topicalized, while others (e.g. Horrocks 1983, 1984) have maintained that they may, just like postverbal subjects, function simply as subjects. The overall conclusion supports that of Woolford (1991), who has queried the current fashion for universally configurational analyses, but at the same time new evidence is offered in favour of the view that preverbal subjects in Greek may indeed simply be subjects, lacking formal topic status.

Abstract The subject of this paper is discourse-related word order variation associated with nominals in Eastern Armenian. Hale (1983) proposes that there are some languages which are non-configurational, i.e. lacking hierarchical syntactic structure. The properties that he proposed to be characteristic of non-configurational languages are a) free word order b) extensive use of null anaphora and c) discontinuous constituents. Armenian possesses all of these characteristics. However, since Hale’s original proposal, it has been pointed out that many apparently non-configurational languages do in fact have hierarchical syntactic structure, but that the surface patterns are determined primarily by discourse properties rather than by grammatical relations. These languages have been termed ‘discourse configurational’, defined by É. Kiss (1995) as follows: a language is discourse configurational if (discourse-) semantic functions topic (what sentence is ‘about’) and/or focus (identification) are associated with particular structural positions. It has been argued that this is indeed the case for the clause in Eastern Armenian (see e.g. Comrie (1984), Megerdoomian (2011) and Tamrazian (1994)). Making use of data from approximately 10,000 words of transcribed spontaneous speech by native speakers of Eastern Armenian discussion with native speaker consultants, and the Eastern Armenian National Corpus (www.eanc.net), I argue that the noun phrase exhibits similar discourse configurational properties to those found in the clause, and that these are responsible for word order variation within it. The interaction between noun-phrase-internal discourse-related movement and analogous discourse-related movement operations within the clause is responsible for the appearance of apparently discontinuous noun phrases. Thus the existence of Hale’s ‘non-configurational’ properties in EA does not justify the proposal that this language lacks hierarchical syntactic structure.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the syntactic structure of Guerrero Nahuatl using Baker’s proposed Polysynthesis Parameter (1996). Baker (1996) claims that polysynthetic languages must have common features that aggregate to the concept of the Polysynthesis Parameter, which suggests that polysynthetic languages employ morphology for syntactic functions. Baker (1996) suggests that in polysynthetic languages, &thetas;-roles are assigned through either an agreement relationship (agreement morphemes) or a movement relation (Noun Incorporation). As a result, Baker (1996) claims that polysynthetic languages must be non-configurational due to the flexibility of the word order and the absence of true quantifiers which indicates that all overt NPs are adjuncts. Prior researchers have made competing claims regarding the structure of the Nahuatl languages and Baker (1996) Polysynthesis Parameter. In this thesis, I show that Guerrero Nahuatl is a non-configurational polysynthetic language. I provide data showing that &thetas;-roles are assigned through either an agreement relationship or through a movement relation (NI) as Baker (1996) predicated for polysynthetic languages. I also argue that Guerrero Nahuatl has free word order and no occurring true quantifiers. I provide evidence that all overt NPs are in adjunct positions rather than in actual A-positions. In addition, I show that there is an extensive use of null anaphora, and an absence of reflexive overt NPs.

This study is a detailed investigation of a number of issues in colloquial Sinhala morphosyntax. These issues primarily concern grammatical relations, argument structure, phrase structure and focus constructions. The theoretical framework of this study is Lexical Functional Grammar.¶Chapter 1 introduces the issues to be discussed, followed by a brief introduction of some essential aspects of colloquial Sinhala as background for the discussion in the following chapters. In Chapter 2 we present basic concepts of the theoretical framework of Lexical Functional Grammar.¶ The next three chapters mainly concern grammatical relations, argument structure and clause structure in colloquial Sinhala. Chapter 3 examines grammatical relations. The main focus lies in establishing the subject grammatical relation in terms of various subjecthood diagnostics. We show that only a very small number of diagnostics are reliable, and that the evidence for subject is weaker than assumed previously. All the subjecthood diagnostics that were examined select the most prominent argument in the argument structure as the subject, i.e. 'logical subject'. However, there appear to be no processes in the language that are sensitive to the subject in the grammatical relations structure, i.e. 'gr-subject'. Further, there is no evidence for other grammatical relations like objects. In Chapter 4 we discuss the agentless construction and related valency alternation phenomena. It was previously assumed that the agentless construction, valency alternation phenomena and the involitive construction are all related. We argue that the agentless construction should be treated as a different construction from the involitive construction. We also show that the agentless construction and the involitive construction have contrasting characteristics, and that treatment of them as separate constructions can account for some phenomena which did not receive an explanation previously. The valency alternation phenomena are related to the agentless construction, therefore there is no valency alternation in involitive constructions. It will be shown that verbs undergoing the valency alternation can be distinguished from the other verbs in terms of the lexical semantic properties of individual verbs. Chapter 5 examines the structure of non-verbal sentences in terms of a number of morphosyntactic phenomena. It was previously argued that verbal sentences and non-verbal sentences in colloquial Sinhala differ in terms of clause structure. However, the present study shows evidence to the contrary.¶ The next two chapters deal with modelling contrastive focus and the phrase structure of the language. Chapter 6 is a detailed analysis of the contrastive focus (cleft) construction in various clause types in the language, and proposes a unified syntactic treatment of contrastive focus. Contrastive focus is in some constructions morphologically encoded, while in others it involves both morphological and configurational assignment of focus. The complex interaction between focus markers and verb morphology in various focus constructions is accounted for by general well-formedness conditions applying to the f-structure, and the principles of Functional Uncertainty and Morphological Blocking. In Chapter 7, we discuss the phrase structure of the language, in particular such issues as its non-configurational nature and the lack of evidence for VP. We propose non-configurational S and some functional projections to account for word order freedom under S and to explain certain morphosyntactic phenomena, such as configurational focus assignment. Finally, Chapter 8 summarises the conclusions made in previous chapters.

This chapter provides an overview of the notion ofdiscourse-configurationality, a parametric property of languages in which at least one category of the Information Structural notions Topic and Focus is associated with a particular phrase structure configuration. The chapter clarifies the relation between discourse-configurationality and the concept of (non-)configurationality, and it compares discourse-configurationality to the more inclusive notion of discourse-prominence. A survey of the major parameters in cross-linguistic variation is presented, distinguishing different types of discourse-configurationality both within and across its two main manifestations: namely topic-configurationality and focus-configurationality. The concluding part outlines several prominent theoretical approaches to the syntax of discourse-configurationality, raising issues of grammatical architecture that centre around the hypothesis of the Autonomy of Syntax.

The focus of this book is Latin word order, and in particular the relative ordering of direct objects and lexical verbs (OV vs. VO), and auxiliaries and non-finite verbs (VAux vs. AuxV). One aim of the book is to offer a first detailed, corpus-based description of these two word order alternations, with special emphasis on their diachronic development in the period from ca. 200 BC until 600 AD. The corpus data reveal that some received wisdom needs to be reconsidered. For one thing, there is no evidence for any major increase in productivity of the order VO during the eight centuries under investigation. In addition, the order AuxV only becomes more frequent in clauses with a modal verb and an infinitive, not in clauses with a BE-auxiliary and a past participle. A second goal is to answer a more fundamental question about Latin syntax, namely whether or not the language is ‘configurational’, in the sense that a phrase structure grammar (with ‘higher-order constituents’ such as verb phrases) is needed to describe and analyse facts of Latin word order. Four pieces of evidence are presented which suggest that Latin is indeed a fully configurational language, despite its high degree of word order flexibility. Specifically, it is shown that there is ample evidence for the existence of a verb phrase constituent. The book thus contributes to the ongoing debate whether configurationality (phrase structure) is a language universal or not.