THE IMPLEMENTATION OF GRAMMATICAL FUNCTIONS IN FUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE GRAMMAR

underlying representation in a more or less across the board fashion, only taking into consideration the language dependent semantic function hierarchy. This approach bypasses a number of constraints on subject assignment that may be gathered from typological data, and observed from the actual behaviour of speakers. In this contribution, we make an attempt to reinterpret FG syntactic functions in the light of the FDG model. Following ideas from Givón (1997), we propose a treatment of Subject assignment on the basis of a combination of semantic and pragmatic factors of the relevant referents and other functional aspects of underlying representations. The assignment rules adhere to the respective hierarchies as discussed in the typological literature. In our proposal, Subject (and Object) assignment are now located in the expression component, more specifically in the dynamic version of the expression rules as proposed in Bakker (2001)

Inferentials in spoken English

Although there is a growing body of research on inferential sentences (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 1990, 1995, 2001, Koops 2007, Pusch 2006), most of this research has been on their forms and functions in written discourse. This has left a gap with regards to their range of structural properties and allowed disagreement over their analysis to linger without a conclusive resolution. Most accounts regard the inferential as a type of it-cleft (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 2001, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Lambrecht 2001), while a few view it as an instance of extraposition (Collins 1991, Schmid 2009). More recently, Pusch's work in Romance languages proposes the inferential is used as a discourse marker (2006, forthcoming). Based on a corpus study of examples from spoken New Zealand English, the current paper provides a detailed analysis of the formal and discoursal properties of several sub-types of inferentials (positive, negative, as if and like inferentials). We show that despite their apparent formal differences from the prototypical cleft, inferentials are nevertheless best analysed as a type of cleft, though this requires a minor reinterpretation of “cleft construction.” We show how similar the contextualized interpretations of clefts and inferentials are and how these are a function of their lexis and syntax

The Hausa perfective tense-aspect used in wh-/focus constructions and historical narratives: a unified account

In this paper I revisit and elaborate some of the ideas I outlined in the earlier paper, concentrating on the semantic characteristics of the paired Perfective tense-aspects in a major (universal) discourse context—spontaneously-produced past-time narrative. The main focus is on the role of the paradigm known traditionally (and unfortunately) as the “Relative Perfective”, a set which is in partial complementary distribution with the “General/Neutral Perfective”. This specially inflected tense-aspect form is the one exploited at discourse-level to assert prominent events on the time-axis in foregrounded narrative sequences, but it is also required in classic clause-level wh-constructions, i.e., wh-interrogatives, declarative focus constructions, and relative clauses, operations which often share structural properties across languages. The central claim is that the fronted focus/wh- constructions and pivotal foregrounded portions of past-time narratives utilize the same specialized Perfective tense-aspect morphology because they achieve the same discourse-pragmatic goals—they all supply the most communicatively PROMINENT and focal NEW information

An interdisciplinary, cross-lingual perspective

Multiword expressions (MWEs), such as noun compounds (e.g. nickname in English, and Ohrwurm in German), complex verbs (e.g. give up in English, and aufgeben in German) and idioms (e.g. break the ice in English, and das Eis brechen in German), may be interpreted literally but often undergo meaning shifts with respect to their constituents. Theoretical, psycholinguistic as well as computational linguistic research remain puzzled by when and how MWEs receive literal vs. meaning-shifted interpretations, what the contributions of the MWE constituents are to the degree of semantic transparency (i.e., meaning compositionality) of the MWE, and how literal vs. meaning-shifted MWEs are processed and computed. This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary selection of seven papers on recent findings across linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-based and computational research fields and perspectives, discussing the interaction of constituent properties and MWE meanings, and how MWE constituents contribute to the processing and representation of MWEs. The collection is based on a workshop at the 2017 annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) that took place at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, German

The role of constituents in multiword expressions

Multiword expressions (MWEs), such as noun compounds (e.g. nickname in English, and Ohrwurm in German), complex verbs (e.g. give up in English, and aufgeben in German) and idioms (e.g. break the ice in English, and das Eis brechen in German), may be interpreted literally but often undergo meaning shifts with respect to their constituents. Theoretical, psycholinguistic as well as computational linguistic research remain puzzled by when and how MWEs receive literal vs. meaning-shifted interpretations, what the contributions of the MWE constituents are to the degree of semantic transparency (i.e., meaning compositionality) of the MWE, and how literal vs. meaning-shifted MWEs are processed and computed. This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary selection of seven papers on recent findings across linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-based and computational research fields and perspectives, discussing the interaction of constituent properties and MWE meanings, and how MWE constituents contribute to the processing and representation of MWEs. The collection is based on a workshop at the 2017 annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) that took place at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany

The Radical Unacceptability Hypothesis: Accounting for Unacceptability without Universal Constraints

The Radical Unacceptability Hypothesis (RUH) has been proposed as a way of explaining the unacceptability of extraction from islands and frozen structures. This hypothesis explicitly assumes a distinction between unacceptability due to violations of local well-formedness conditions—conditions on constituency, constituent order, and morphological form—and unacceptability due to extra-grammatical factors. We explore the RUH with respect to classical islands, and extend it to a broader range of phenomena, including freezing, A′ chain interactions, zero-relative clauses, topic islands, weak crossover, extraction from subjects and parasitic gaps, and sensitivity to information structure. The picture that emerges is consistent with the RUH, and suggests more generally that the unacceptability of extraction from otherwise well-formed configurations reflects non-syntactic factors, not principles of grammar.Peer Reviewe

Zašto Modrić i Real prije nego Real i Modrić? O redoslijedu vlastitih imena u koordiniranim konstrukcijama

The order of the constituents within a coordinated NP construction is in theory open, i.e. either constituent can occupy either the initial or the final position. When it comes to specific realizations of the coordinate constructional template, the choice of the initial constituent need not be random at all. It is well-known that in some phraseological units, i.e. in the so-called irreversible binomials, their order is as a rule quite fixed (e.g. duša i tijelo ‘body and soul,’ kruh i sol ‘bread and salt,’ život i smrt ‘life and death,’ iće i piće ‘drinks and food,’ muž i žena ‘husband and wife’) and seems to be dictated by a number of cognitive factors, among which iconic principles play an important role. Apart from such conventionalized phraseological pairs, the relative order of constituents seems to be guided by the speaker’s communicative intentions, and therefore in principle be quite flexible. However, it appears that in cases of coordination of proper nouns denoting parts and wholes there is a clear preference for the construction in which the part precedes the whole (Osijek i Slavonija rather than Slavonija i Osijek, Modrić i Real rather than Real i Modrić, etc.). The differences between their distributions on the one hand, and the distributions found with comparable inanimate nouns and animate common nouns in coordination on the other, are explained in terms of the reference point construction (Langacker 1993). The proper noun denoting a person functions as a cognitive reference point facilitating the resolution of indeterminacy due to the fact that the second proper noun in coordination can have more than one metonymically related sense. Such coordinated constructions are shown to be functionally similar to associative plurals as they are also a means of referring to heterogeneous collectives that have a prominent, focal member.Redoslijed je sastavnica unutar konstrukcije s koordiniranim imenicama je u teoriji posve otvoren, tj. svaka od sastavnica se može pojaviti u početnom ili završnom položaju. U nekim specifičnim slučajevima realizacije konstrukcijskog okvira koordiniranog imenskog izraza njihov redoslijed ne mora biti tako proizvoljan. Dobro je poznato da je njihov poredak u nekim frazeološkim jedinicama, tzv. frazeološkim parovima, u pravilu nepromjenjiv (napr. duša i tijelo, kruh i sol, život i smrt, iće i piće, muž i žena) te je određen nizom kognitivnih čimbenika među kojima ikonična načela igraju veliku ulogu. Osim takvih konvencionaliziranih frazeoloških parova, relativni se poredak sastavnica čini vođen govornikovim komunikacijskim namjerama i stoga je u načelu prilično fleksibilan. Čini se, međutim, da u slučaju koordinacije vlastitih imenica koje označuju dijelove i cjelinu postoji očita sklonost prema konstrukcijama u kojima dio prethodi cjelini (Osijek i Slavonija prije nego Slavonija i Osijek, Modrić i Real prije nego Real i Modrić itd.) Te se razlike u njihovoj distribuciji i distribuciji koja se nalazi kod usporedivih imenica za neživo i općih imenica za živo u koordinaciji objašnjavaju pojmom konstrukcije s referentnom točkom (Langacker 1993). Unutar te konstrukcije vlastita imenica funkcionira kao referentna točka koja olakšava razrješavanje neodređenosti u slučaju da druga vlastita imenica ima više od jedne metonimijski povezane moguće interpretacije. Pokazuje se da su takve konstrukcije s koordinacijom funkcionalno bliske asocijativnoj množini kao sredstvu pomoću kojega se može referirati na heterogene kolektive koje odlikuje prisutnost nekog istaknutog ili fokalnog člana

Cognitive constraints and island effects

Competence-based theories of island effects play a central role in generative grammar, yet the graded nature of many syntactic islands has never been properly accounted for. Categorical syntactic accounts of island effects have persisted in spite of a wealth of data suggesting that island effects are not categorical in nature and that nonstructural manipulations that leave island structures intact can radically alter judgments of island violations. We argue here, building on work by Paul Deane, Robert Kluender, and others, that processing factors have the potential to account for this otherwise unexplained variation in acceptability judgments. We report the results of self-paced reading experiments and controlled acceptability studies that explore the relationship between processing costs and judgments of acceptability. In each of the three self-paced reading studies, the data indicate that the processing cost of different types of island violations can be significantly reduced to a degree comparable to that of nonisland filler-gap constructions by manipulating a single nonstructural factor. Moreover, this reduction in processing cost is accompanied by significant improvements in acceptability. This evidence favors the hypothesis that island-violating constructions involve numerous processing pressures that aggregate to drive processing difficulty above a threshold, resulting in unacceptability. We examine the implications of these findings for the grammar of filler-gap dependencies

The role of constituents in multiword expressions

Multiword expressions (MWEs), such as noun compounds (e.g. nickname in English, and Ohrwurm in German), complex verbs (e.g. give up in English, and aufgeben in German) and idioms (e.g. break the ice in English, and das Eis brechen in German), may be interpreted literally but often undergo meaning shifts with respect to their constituents. Theoretical, psycholinguistic as well as computational linguistic research remain puzzled by when and how MWEs receive literal vs. meaning-shifted interpretations, what the contributions of the MWE constituents are to the degree of semantic transparency (i.e., meaning compositionality) of the MWE, and how literal vs. meaning-shifted MWEs are processed and computed. This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary selection of seven papers on recent findings across linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-based and computational research fields and perspectives, discussing the interaction of constituent properties and MWE meanings, and how MWE constituents contribute to the processing and representation of MWEs. The collection is based on a workshop at the 2017 annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) that took place at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany