54,999 research outputs found

    English Right Dislocation

    Get PDF
    A number of researchers claim that the derivation of the Right Dislocation Construction (RDC) involves movement (e.g.

    Cross-linguistic influence in Cantonese-English bilingual children: the case of right-dislocation

    Get PDF
    Poster PresentationThe paper investigates the conditions on and directionality of cross-linguistic influence in bilingual acquisition by looking at the development of right-dislocation in Cantonese-English bilingual children. Hulk and MĂŒller (2000) hypothesize two conditions on cross-linguistic influence in bilingual acquisition: (1) the structure involves the interface of two modules of grammar and (2) the structure in which cross-linguistic influence occurs is one where two languages overlap. If the hypothesis is correct, then one might expect cross-linguistic influence to occur in the bilingual acquisition of right-dislocation (RD) constructions, as RD is a phenomenon at the interface of syntax and pragmatics, and shows 
published_or_final_versio

    The Semantics and Pragmatics of Right Dislocation: Odd thing, that.

    Get PDF
    The sentence "She's a smart one, that Diana" is a so-called right dislocation construction: the noun phrase "that Diana" occurs at the right edge of the sentence and the sentence itself only realizes a pronoun ("she") to refer to Diana. This construction is particularly common among British English speakers. Whereas prior research has focused on the structure and interpretation of the construction, my research explores the hypothesis that speakers use the construction when they expect their interlocutors to agree with them about the propositional content of the utterance (e.g., that Diana is a smart person, in the aforementioned example). In summer 2017 I ran an experiment with 38 native British English speakers, administering a survey in which each participant rated the acceptability of a target sentence in context on a 6-point Likert scale. Target sentences varied minimally between right dislocated and non-dislocated variants, and contexts were either such that the speaker would expect the listener to agree with the propositional content of the utterance, or such that the speaker would expect the listener to disagree. Each target sentence was judged within both contexts. While no significant difference was found between the agree and disagree contexts among the right dislocated target sentences as a whole, the variation in response patterns both between participants and between items reveal potential routes for further exploration of right dislocation constructions' social meaning in the future.Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Research ScholarshipArts & Sciences International Research GrantNo embargoAcademic Major: ChineseAcademic Major: Linguistic

    An Argument for Japanese Right Dislocation as a Feature-driven Movement

    Get PDF
    This paper argues that Japanese Right Dislocation involves a feature-driven movement. By using the so-called sika-nai construction, it will be shown that Japanese Right Dislocation does not allow reconstruction. Since typical feature-driven movement such as English wh-movement and topicalization does not allow reconstruction while scrambling does allow reconstruction, it will be concluded that Japanese Right Dislocation is a feature-driven movement. This conclusion supports the parameter value preservation (PVP) measure proposed in Fukui 1993 which predicts that a rightward movement in a head-final language is costly and must be feature-driven

    On Left and Right Dislocation: A Dynamic Perspective

    Get PDF
    The paper argues that by modelling the incremental and left-right process of interpretation as a process of growth of logical form (representing logical forms as trees), an integrated typology of left-dislocation and right-dislocation phenomena becomes available, bringing out not merely the similarities between these types of phenomena, but also their asymmetry. The data covered include hanging topic left dislocation, clitic left dislocation, left dislocation, pronoun doubling, expletives, extraposition, and right node raising, with each set of data analysed in terms of general principles of tree growth. In the light of the success in providing a characterisation of the asymmetry between left and right periphery phenomena, a result not achieved in more wellknown formalisms, the paper concludes that grammar formalisms should model the dynamics of language processing in time.Articl

    Left dislocation in Zulu

    Get PDF
    This paper examines left dislocation constructions in Zulu, a Southern Bantu language belonging to the Nguni group (Zone S 40). In Zulu left dislocation configurations, a topic phrase in the beginning of the sentence is linked to a resumptive element within the associated clause. Typically, the resumptive element is an incorporated pronoun (cf. Bresnan & Mchombo 1987), as illustrated by the examples in (1) and (2). In these examples, the object pronoun (in italics) is part of the verbal morphology and agrees with the noun class (gender) of the dislocate. This situation is schematically illustrated in (3), where co-indexation represents agreement: ..

    Clitic Left Dislocation in Absence of Clitics: a Study in Trilingual Acquisition

    Get PDF
    This paper discusses an unusual structure in the English of a trilingual child acquiring English, Italian and Scottish Gaelic. The child uses a structure where it appears that an object DP is “dou-bled” by a pronoun for an extended period of time (10 months): (1) He don\u27t like it dinosaur (2) He forget it the teddy In Italian, sentences that contain old information take two possible structures: they might contain a left dislocated topic resumed by a clitic: (3) Il libro, l\u27ho letto the book it-have.1SG read \u27The book, I have read it\u27 These are called Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) structures in the literature. Alternatively, the topic (the given information) can be introduced as a right dislocated element, again linked to a clitic: (4) L\u27ho letto, il libro It-have.1SG read the book ‘I have read it, the book’ These are called clitic right dislocation (CLRD) structures. The structures produced in English by the subject of this study seem to be similar in some fundamental ways to this second kind of topi-calisation strategy. We suggest that this reflects a deep: transfer of CLRD structures from Italian, even though at the stage when the doubling structures occur, there is no evidence of overt clitics in the child’s Italian. Our paper contributes to the debate in the literature concerning the existence or not of some form of transfer in multilingual acquisitio

    What goes left and what goes right

    Get PDF

    Prolific domains and the left periphery

    Get PDF
    The left periphery has enjoyed extensive study over the past years, especially drawn against the framework of Rizzi (1997). It is argued that in this part of the clause, relations are licensed that have direct impact on discourse interpretation and information structure, such as topic, focus, clause type, and the like. I take this line of research up and argue in favour of a split CP on the basis of strictly left-peripheral phenomena across languages. But I also want to link the relation of articulated clause structure, syntactic derivations, and information structure. In particular, I outline the basics of a model of syntactic derivation that makes explicit reference to the interpretive interfaces in a cyclic, dynamic manner. I suggest a return to older stages of generative grammar, at least in spirit, by proposing that clausal derivation stretches over three important areas which I call prolific domains: the part of the clause which licenses argument/thematic relations (V- or Ξ-domain), the part that licenses agreement/grammatica1 relations (T- or ϕ-domain), and the part that licenses discourse/information-relevant relations (C- or ω-domain). It is thus a rather broad and conceptual notion of "adding" and "omitting" that I am concerned with here, namely licensing of material to relate to information structure, and the desire to find an answer to the question which elements might be added or omitted across languages to establish such links

    Clitic-doubling and (non-)configurationality

    Get PDF
    In this paper we investigate Greek, an optional clitic doubling language not subject to Kaynes generalization (Jaeggli 1982), and we argue that in this language, doubled DPs are in A-positions. We propose that Greek clitics are formal features that move, permitting DPs in argument positions. This leads to a typology according to which there are two types of clitic/agreement languages -configurational and nonconfigurational ones-, depending upon whether clitics are instantiations of formal features or not
    • 

    corecore