Academic literature on the topic 'Preverbal marker'

Abstract The exclusive expression weiyi ‘sole/only’ in Mandarin can appear preverbally in a relative clause (e.g., wo weiyi xihuan de shu ‘the sole book I like’) but not in other types of clauses (e.g., *Wo weiyi xihuan shu, intended: ‘I only like books’). This paper first justifies the claim that weiyi may not only function as an adjectival modifier but also appear preverbally inside a relative clause, and then demonstrates how weiyi is related to definiteness and takes scope out of a relative clause. It is proposed that preverbal weiyi is part of a DP which undergoes overt A’-movement in the process of relativization. The syntactic structure and semantic composition of a matching analysis are offered to show how a uniform account can be given across adjectival and relative weiyi. A major implication of this paper is that Mandarin does not possess a relative pronoun but allows a DP-internal focus expression to mark syntactic movement in relativization. A comparison between relative constructions involving weiyi and English all-clefts is also discussed.

This paper describes variation in the grammar of aspect in Guyanese Creole. In particular, the various grammaticalized strategies for conveying ha-bituality, progressivity and imperfectivity are discussed. The paper contributes to an ongoing debate regarding the function of various preverbal markers and their interrelationships (see Bickerton, 1975; Edwards, 1984; Gibson, 1988; Ja-ganauth, 1994; Rickford, 1987; Winford, 1993a). Choice of preverbal marker is shown to be strongly conditioned by the stativity of the predicate (in the case of habituals). Drawing on the insights of Weinreich (1953), it is suggested that partial congruence between relatively independent grammatical systems encourages recurrent interlingual identifications.

Abstract Middle Low German (MLG) underwent Jespersen’s Cycle, a change in the expression of sentential negation, whereby a preverbal marker ni (stage I) was adjoined by an adverbial niht (stage II) in the transition towards MLG, and was eventually replaced by it (stage III). In this article, I argue that the single preverbal particle ne/en in MLG became a marker of negation which is located syntactically higher, i. e. above the clause boundary, than the clause in which ne/en appears. This analysis is based on a corpus study investigating MLG exceptive clauses (English unless-clauses). Both on semantic and syntactic grounds, it is shown that these clauses can be explained as being complements of an operator that subtracts the proposition in the exceptive clause from the modal domain of a universal quantifier.

Abstract The present study aims to examine the claim that the preverbal particle qad in the perfective is an aspectual marker of near past in Arabic, hence it corresponds to the present perfect in English. The authentic translational corpus drawn from two works (journalistic/scientific and literary discourse) clearly indicates that the preverbal qad is employed as a cohesive marker whose main function is to smooth and naturalize Arabic discourse. The study demonstrates that the translator’s choice between an Arabic simple past with or without qad is governed by the requirements of the flow of discourse rather than by aspectual marking. Failure to account for this discursive function of qad when translating from English into Arabic would in Arabic translations produce cohesion gaps which in English are usually taken care of by punctuation.

Modern Sea Island Gullah is unusual among Atlantic English-based creoles in reportedly not having no as a preverbal negator, ẽ or ɛ̃ ‘ain’t’ being used instead, and doubts have been expressed about any earlier extensive use of no. However, important authentic evidence of its earlier use is provided by the 1838–39 journal of Fanny Kemble (1863) and by letters written during Northern occupation in the Civil War. Among literary writers, Simms (1839/1845) used no 22% of the time vs. 8% for ain’t, while no is near-categorical in Harris (1881), though rare in Jones (1888), and absent in Christensen (1892) and Gonzales (1922). Turner (1949) recorded preverbal no co-occurring with another signature creole marker, Subject me, suggesting code-switching to a basilectal grammar. Hancock (1987) also found no in Gullah. The dominant use of preverbal no in Texas Afro-Seminole (Hancock 2006) could reflect its earlier greater prevalence in the Sea Islands. The evidence raises the possibility that Gullah speakers’ practice of avoiding basilectal use with outside interlocutors (the ‘observer’s paradox’) may have obscured recognition of its modern survival.

Locative subject alternation constructions show variation within and across languages in terms of subject agreement pattern and the type of predicates involved. In Kiwoso, the preverbal locative DPs with and without locative morphology are best analysed as canonical subjects, as evidenced by the subject diagnostics, such as subject-verb agreement and its occurrence as a subject of passive verb and relative verb clauses. The examined examples demonstrate that the postverbal subject neither behaves like canonical subject nor shows features of canonical object in that it cannot passivize in alternation constructions or appear on the verb as an object marker (i.e., cannot be object marked). However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the preverbal locative (subject) DP in Kiwoso locative-subject alternation constructions is a grammatical subject. As in most languages, locative-subject constructions in Kiwoso serve a pragmatic-discourse function of presentational focus. The locative subject argument of the locative-subject alternation constructions is interpreted as a topic, whereas the postverbal thematic subject of these sentences is understood as focus. The postverbal subject provides information which is usually discourse new in relation to preverbal locative DPs. The data examined from Kiwoso challenges the view that formal and semantic locative inversions cannot co-exist in a single language.

This article reports a study that sought to determine whether non-native sentence comprehension can show sensitivity to two different types of Spanish case marking. Sensitivity to case violations was generally more robust with indirect objects in ditransitive constructions than with differential object marking of animate direct objects, even among native speakers of Spanish, which probably reflects linguistic differences in the two types of case. In addition, the overall outcome of two experiments shows that second language (L2) processing can integrate case information, but that, unlike with native processing, attention to a case marker may depend on the presence of a preverbal clitic as an additional cue to the types of postverbal arguments that might occur in a stimulus. Specifically, L2 readers showed no sensitivity to differential object marking with a in the absence of clitics in the first experiment, with stimuli such as Verónica visita al/el presidente todos los meses ‘Veronica visits the[ACC/NOM]president every month’, but the L2 readers in the second experiment showed native-like sensitivity to the same marker when the object it marked was doubled by the clitic lo, as in Verónica lo visita al/el presidente todos los meses. With indirect objects, on the other hand, sensitivity to case markers was native-like in both experiments, although indirect objects were also always doubled by the preverbal clitic le. The apparent first language / second language contrast suggests differences in processing strategy, whereby non-native processing of morphosyntax may rely more on the predictability of forms than does native processing.

In this paper we argue that Kîîıtharaka in situ and ex situ object focus constructions are exhaustive. Sentences with a preverbal focus marker are argued to be nonexhaustive. Our conclusions are based on felicity in mention-some contexts, simple and multiple questions and entailment relations.

Abstract This paper discusses the agreement system of five Kuki-Chin (KC) languages of Barak valley, viz. Saihriem, Hrangkhol, Chorei, Sakachep, and Ronglong. The paper has an introduction, and five sections dedicated to agreement in different contructions: intransitive structures, transitive structures, agreement with the same person, agreement with ditransitive verbs, and agreement in hortative and imperative constructions. The discussion of agreement is further divided into subparts by paradigm; non-future, future and negative; and by languages. As in most KC languages, the Barak valley KC languages exhibit both preverbal and postverbal agreement clitics. The preverbal agreement clitics are homophonous with the possessive pronouns which occur before a noun. In intransitive constructions, the future affirmative paradigm has the same subject agreement clitics as the non-future paradigm. But unlike the non-future paradigm, the agreement clitics occur mostly after the verb and before the future tense marker in the future paradigm. In intransitive constructions, the postverbal agreement clitic shows up only in the future negative paradigm. As in the case of preverbal agreement clitics, the subject NP of an intransitive verb in the future negative paradigm can be dropped, and it can be recovered from its corresponding postverbal agreement clitics. Across the Barak valley KC languages, a transitive verb agrees with its object for the 1st person. Saihriem is the only language which shows number distinction for the second person object. If a verb takes more than one object, one with an inanimate direct object and the other with an indirect human object, the human indirect object takes precedence over the inanimate direct object for agreement. The Imperative construction takes the regular pre-verbal subject agreement marker for 1st and 3rd person in both the singular and plural form. On the contrary, the second person does not take any agreement marker. However, the number (singular and plural of the person) is distinguished in the imperative marker itself.

Negation is a universal category and languages differ in many respects in the way they express the latter (see Klima 1964). In this regards, some languages express sentential negation (a subcategorization of negation) with one marker (Dutch, German, English, etc.) while others like French uses two markers. Alongside markers used to express sentential negation, other items, among which Negative Polarity Items, mark negation and tight a particular element within its domain. In this paper, I aim at providing a picture of the expression of negation in Awing (a Bantu Grassfield langue of the Ngemba Group spoken in the North West region of Cameroon). Accordingly, sentential negation is expressed with two discontinuous markers kě…pô. One fact important to the presence of this negative marker is the movement of postverbal elements to a preverbal position turning the SVO structure in non-negative clause to an SOV pattern in negative clauses. In addition, the study describes other negative elements and negation subcategories. In last, the study of negative concord reveals that Awing belongs to the group of Strict Negative Concord (SNC) languages in which n-words must co-occur with negative marker to yield negation.

Cette thèse propose pour la première fois une étude comparative de deux créoles indianocéaniques avec une langue centrafricaine, à partir des marqueurs préverbaux. Elle s’appuie sur une constatation empirique : il existe un marqueur préverbal a en sango (langue nationale de République centrafricaine) dont la fonction syntaxique peut être comparée à celle du i en créole réunionnais et du créole seychellois. Ce parallélisme forme le point de départ d’une interrogation qui s’est exprimée ainsi : peut-on définir une règle expliquant la restructuration du pronom personnel de la 3e personne en différents morphèmes, quelles que soient les langues d’origine ?Pour répondre à cette question, j’ai comparé les pronoms personnels d’une trentaine de langues de contact présentées dans The Atlas of Pidgin & Creole Language Structures, et j’ai cherché à comprendre les logiques de restructuration qui ont abouti à la formation d’autres morphèmes, notamment des copules et des marqueurs préverbaux. Je constate des logiques parallèles entre quelques langues oubanguiennes et deux créoles indianocéaniques à base française, notamment dans la « fabrication » d’un marqueur préverbal, lui-même issu de la restructuration d’un pronom personnel de la langue-cible. En revanche, la proximité phonologique du préfixe pluralisateur a- avec le marqueur préverbal a du sango ne se retrouve pas dans les créoles indianocéaniques, qui ont chacun un pluralisateur très différent du marqueur préverbal i.à l’instar du a du sango, le marqueur préverbal i est réservé à la 3e personne en seychellois, alors qu’il s’est étendu à toutes les personnes du réunionnais. Ces spécificités ne s’expliquent pas par un présumé « substrat » africain des créoles, car l’étude de divers morphèmes des langues africaines (et du malgache) contributrices des créoles ne montre pas de traces syntaxiques de ces langues. Seule la présence d’un pronom a dans les créoles du golfe de Guinée, issu de l’edo, constitue une exception qui s’explique par l’histoire du peuplement de cette région. Cette particularité n’a pas été reproduite dans les créoles indianocéaniques.Cette thèse montre le caractère « normal » (au sens des règles d’évolution des langues) des créoles réunionnais et seychellois, tout en insistant sur leurs singularités. Réunionnais et seychellois sont les seuls créoles à base française à posséder un marqueur prédicatif, en l’occurrence de forme i, et celui-ci n’obéit pas aux mêmes règles en réunionnais et en seychellois. Cette thèse montre que ces singularités s’expliquent plus par des logiques internes que par des contacts de langues. Elle appelle d’autres comparaisons avec d’autres langues, pour tenter notamment de préciser les descriptions morphosyntaxiques des différents i seychellois
This thesis proposes for the first time a comparative study of two Indian Oceanic Creoles with a Central African language, with particular reference to preverbal markers. It is based on empirical observation: there is a preverbal marker a in Sango (national language of the Central African Republic) whose syntactic function can be compared to that of i in Reunion and Seychelles Creoles. This parallelism forms the starting point of an interrogation that expresses itself as follows: can we define a rule accounting for the restructuring of the 3rd person pronoun into different morphemes, regardless of the original languages?To answer this question, I compare the personal pronouns of about thirty contact languages presented in The Atlas of Pidgin & Creole Language Structures, and I try to understand the restructuring principles resulting in the formation of other morphemes, including copulas and preverbal markers. I note parallel principles between some Oubanguian languages and two French-based Indian Creoles, particularly in the creation of a pre-verbal marker, itself resulting from the restructuring of a personal pronoun of the target language. On the other hand, the phonological proximity of the pluralizing prefix a- with the preverbal marker a of Sango is not found in the Indian Oceanic Creoles, each of which has a pluralizer that is very different from the preverbal marker i.Like the a of Sango, the preverbal marker i is reserved for the 3rd person in Seychelles Creole, while it has been extended to all persons in Reunion Creole. These specificities cannot be accounted for by an alleged African “substrate” of the Creoles, because the study of various morphemes of the African languages (and Malagasy) which contributed to these Creoles does not show any syntactic traces of these languages. Only the presence of a pronoun a in the Creoles of the Gulf of Guinea, inherited from Edo, constitutes an exception which can be accounted for by the history of settlement in this region. This peculiarity has not been reproduced in the Indian Oceanic Creoles.This thesis shows the “normal” character (in the sense of rules of linguistic change) of Reunion and Seychelles Creoles, while insisting on their singularities. Reunion and Seychelles Creoles are the only French-based Creoles possessing a predicative marker (more precisely, a morpheme i). This unit does not obey the same rules in Reunion and Seychelles Creole. This thesis aims to show that these singularities are best explained by internal dynamics than by language contacts. It calls for further comparisons with other languages, in particular in order to try to clarify the morphosyntactic descriptions of the different Seychelles Creole i

The goal of this study is to investigate the properties and functions of preverbal subject markers in Ivie. Ivie like most African languages and Romance languages, has features that indicate number in both verbs and nouns, gender and case in nouns, and person in verbs. In Romance languages such as French and Italian, information about these features is normally given by verbal desinences which are invariably suffixed to such verbs. These desinences realized on verbs indicate person and number. In Ivie, these same features (number and person) are marked on the verb in form of preverbal subject markers which occur between the nominal subject and the verb. Their presence is obligatory in all Ivie sentences. This thesis discusses these preverbal subject markers with a view to determining their grammatical status in the language.The descriptions of these elements are based on some assumptions of the Checking Theory within the Minimalist Framework (Chomsky 1993, 1995), together with ideas from other applicable theories. In the literature, similar grammatical elements have been variously described as clitics, incorporated pronouns and agreement markers. In languages like Quebec French (Roberge 1990), the Northern Italian dialects of Trentino and Fiorentino (Brandi and Cordin 1989) among others, it has been argued that sentences containing noun phrases together with these elements instantiate the phenomenon of subject doubling. Ivie seems to exemplify this phenomenon in view of the obligatory presence of preverbal pronominal elements with subject phrases in all Ivie grammatical constructions. In this work, a number of questions related to the properties and functional roles of the subject markers are elucidated. In particular, we showed that they are not clitic pronouns but rather agreement morphemes necessary between subjects and their verbs due to the lack of overt inflection on Ivie verbs. Drawing on theoretical foundation from morphology, syntax and phonology, as well as analogy and comparison from similar processes in many other languages, we showed that: (i) Ivie subject markers represent subject-verb agreement; and (ii) they are neither weak nor clitic pronouns since they are never in complementary distribution with Determiner phrases (DPs). This fact is further strengthened by the presence of pro when subjects are dropped in sentences. This evidence also shows that subject markers are realized in non-argumental positions in Ivie. In addition, our analysis indicates that only independent subject pronouns are attested in the language. Therefore, there is no basis to label the preverbal subject markers as weak or clitic pronoun as no overt dependent subject pronoun exists in the language. We have shown that subject markers are nothing but manifestations of subject-agreement in the language. Aside from subject-verb agreement, agreement is also triggered in a variety of other contexts in the language.

Abstract This chapter analyzes the syntactic distribution of SCLs in the hundred varieties of the corpus. The following hypothesis is presented: in NIDs, it is possible to isolate four classes of SCLs on the basis of the set of morphological features they encode. Each class is merged in a distinct syntactic position. Several syntactic tests (illustrated in section 2.1.2) are used to prove that four distinct positions are necessary. A few of these tests are already known in the literature and concern the coordination and relative order of SCLs with respect to negation. Others are totally new, for example, those regarding the interaction between SCLs and C° Section 2.2 considers the position of the preverbal negative marker and SCLs. The Zanuttini (1997) typology of preverbal negative markers is adopted, and analysis is restricted to “strong” preverbal negative markers, analyzed by Zanuttini as heading an independent NegP projection (p. 24).

Abstract Differential object marking has been described for many typologically different spoken languages and seems to be also a prevalent property of agreement marking in the visual-gestural modality. Many studies on agreement in sign languages have shown that object agreement in sign languages is subject to specific restrictions which are very similar to the restrictions described for differential object marking in spoken languages. In addition, unrelated sign languages have developed a specific marker which seems to be mainly used to mark object agreement. It is thus not a surprise that recent studies have analysed (at least certain instances of) object agreement marking as an instance of differential object marking. This chapter proceeds as follows. First, the discussion of differential object marking in sign language is embedded in a broad evaluation of recent empirical studies on agreement marking in German Sign Language. Secondly, based on the results of the empirical studies, a unified analysis of agreement marking in DGS is developed. Two main insights are presented: (a) DGS has two different kinds of agreement markers, a preverbal differential object marker and a postverbal agreement marker. (b) These two markers constitute two different stages of the same grammaticalization process.

In the previous chapter, I reported that children sometimes fail to give the right affrmative answer when the question has a cleft or the focus marker s only in preverbal position. Children give a verbal answer to these questions instead of the required sim yes or SER be answers. At that point, the discussion was left open as to whether the problem was children's comprehension of the structure of a verbal answer or their comprehension of the question. is chapter presents the results of a small experiment designed to obtain an answer to this particular question.

Abstract The only clear case of a partial Set II verbal system is attested in Panare, where it gives rise to some of the most frequently used inflections. The Partial Set II system is similar to the Full Set II system in having preverbal free absolutive nouns in complementary distribution with absolutive prefixes on the verb. Similarly, auxiliaries are allowed, and word order is securely OVA. The two systems differ in that the Partial Set II system has more nominative properties: the A does not bear the ergative case marker, the auxiliary agrees with A/S, and free NS nominals nearly always occur postverbally (see Gildea 1993a; D. Payne 1994a).

Abstract A discussion of prepositions and their uses belongs to lexicon and syntax. But it may be noted here that a number of the G and L prepositions are historically related, even though in some cases their meanings have widely diverged. The parent language seems to have had fewer such elements than the daughters. Relationships between nouns were expressed by case markers, and nuances of verb-object relations were expressed though preverbs marking the verbs themselves. The latter were not necessarily literally attached to the verb, though, and especially when separated from the verb by intervening words might shade into something very much like our prepositions. The difference between preverbs and prepositions may be easily grasped in English. In the phrase look up, up is a preposition in a sentence like Edwin looked up the chimney; it is a particle (in effect, a preverb except that in English it follows the verb) in a sentence like Edwin looked up the address. It appears that the PIE forms directly ancestral to our prepositions were mainly like what is seen in look up (the address), that is, elements which altered the meaning of the action or state expressed by the verb. Such elements came to be reinterpreted as relating to the noun they are apparently in construction with.