On the argument-adjunct distinction in the Polish “Semantic Syntax” tradition

On the argument-adjunct distinction in the Polish Semantic Syntax traditionThe aim of this paper is to examine the understanding of the Argument-Adjunct Distinction within the Polish Semantic Syntax (SS) tradition, associated with the name of Stanisław Karolak and presented in the nominally syntactic volume of the Grammar of contemporary Polish (Pol. Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego; Topolińska, 1984), especially in Karolak (1984) and Grochowski (1984), as well as in later work. Section 1 reviews the three approaches to determining the number and kind of arguments of a given predicate, as discussed in Karolak (1984), concentrating on the one that is endorsed there. Then, Sections 2–3 show that the key notions used in this approach have not been – and probably cannot be – made operational. Moreover, Section 4 briefly reviews some more recent Semantic Syntax work and shows that this lack of operational AAD in Karolak (1984) extends to the SS programme at large. Finally, Section 5 concludes that this deficiency, while common in linguistic theories, is particularly troublesome in the case of SS, which is founded on the notion of predicate-argument structure. O rozróżnieniu argumentów od modyfikatorów w polskiej tradycji „składni semantycznej”Artykuł poświęcony jest kwestii fundamentalnej dla szkoły „składni semantycznej” (kojarzonej przede wszystkim z nazwiskiem Stanisława Karolaka), a mianowicie kwestii odróżniania argumentów od modyfikatorów. Celem artykułu jest wykazanie, że w tradycji „składni semantycznej” nie została zaproponowana operacyjna procedura odróżnienia argumentów od modyfikatorów, choć istnienie takiej procedury wydaje się warunkiem koniecznym dla wyodrębnienia struktury predykatowo-argumentowej, głównego celu wielu prac zakorzenionych w tej tradycji

Y a-t-il une relation entre la valence (pleine) et la synonymie?

The article is devoted to the analysis of the possible relationships between (full) valency and synonymy. We first present a very short overview of positions on valency, then we proceed to present the position of researchers who see a relationship between valency (full, i.e., not distinguishing arguments from adjuncts and treating them all together as arguments) and synonymy. The article shows that since a more frequent word would appear in more contexts than a less frequent word, the more frequent word would tend to have more meanings, and therefore it will have more synonyms, and being more polysemous it would result in a greater number of full valency frames of that word. It has been shown that the hypothesis has not been sufficiently precise, because it is the word, as a form, that can be considered polysemous, but it cannot itself have synonyms: it is only a particular meaning of this polysemous word that can have them. Therefore, the analyses could not be sufficiently subtle to identify any relationship, if any, between the two phenomena. On the other hand, the results of the analyses from this not sufficiently precise starting point did not demonstrate that there is a significant correlation, let alone dependency, between the two phenomena. Kendall coefficient, which measures the ordinal association, was estimated at 0.18 in the case of the material analysed (for the range –1/+1). It was pointed out at the end that it is not possible to draw from the fact that the differentiation between arguments and adjuncts is often subtle and sometimes difficult to make, the conclusion that there is no difference between them, that the problem in fact does not exist, and to refrain from searching for satisfactory elements and criteria for differentiation of the two categories or to apply in a consequent way those at our disposal, namely, semantic implication

Předložková fráze s předložkou at jakožto valenční komplement substantiv

Diplomová práce se zabývá problematikou valence substantiv, jejím vztahem k referenci a faktory podmiňujícími realizaci valenčního potenciálu substantiv. Teoretická část práce se věnuje jak valenci obecně, tak konkrétněji valenci substantiv. V obecnějších oddílech jsou vymezeny základní termíny a koncepty uplatňované ve valenčních popisech různého zaměření. V oddílech věnovaných substantivní valenci jsou mimo jiné vymezeny některé rozdíly mezi valencí substantiv a sloves a je odůvodněno vyloučení konstrukcí typu make an attempt z popisovaných dat. Vedle toho je upozorněno na vztah valence a slovotvorby a na vztah valence substantiv a reference, resp. kontextové určenosti. Empirická část práce je rozdělena do několika oddílů; všechny vycházejí z dat z Britského národního korpusu. Kvantitativní část analýzy ukazuje, že substantiva attempt a ability vyžadují obligatorně vyjádřený komplement, jsou-li determinována neurčitým členem vyjadřujícím kontextovou nezapojenost. Tím je potenciálně zpochybněno jak v literatuře běžné tvrzení, že vyjádření valenčního potenciálu substantiv není nikdy obligatorní, tak tvrzení, že substantiva (resp. některá z popisovaných substantiv) vůbec nemají valenci. Kvalitativní část analýzy popisuje možná vyjádření prvního argumentu substantiv attempt, ability a failure, ale...The present thesis deals with noun valency, its relation to reference, and factors underlying the realization of the valency potential of nouns. The theoretical part examines valency in general, delineating the basic terminology and concepts usually employed in the descriptions of valency couched within various linguistic frameworks. The theoretical part subsequently focuses more specifically on the valency of nouns, pointing out in what ways it differs from the valency of verbs. The support verb construction is introduced, and it is explained why the construction is not examined in the present thesis. Two interfaces are introduced, viz. that of valency and word-formation, and that of valency and reference, or contextual boundness. The empirical part of the thesis is divided into several parts, all relying on data from the British National Corpus. The quantitative part of the analysis shows that the nouns attempt and ability obligatorily take an explicit complement when they are immediately preceded by an indefinite article marking their newness in discourse. This could possibly challenge both the widespread claim that the expression of the valency potential of a noun is never obligatory and the claim that (these) nouns are avalent. The qualitative part of the analysis examines the expression of...Ústav anglického jazyka a didaktikyDepartment of the English Language and ELT MethodologyFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Proceedings

Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories. Editors: Markus Dickinson, Kaili Müürisep and Marco Passarotti. NEALT Proceedings Series, Vol. 9 (2010), 268 pages. © 2010 The editors and contributors. Published by Northern European Association for Language Technology (NEALT) http://omilia.uio.no/nealt . Electronically published at Tartu University Library (Estonia) http://hdl.handle.net/10062/15891

The acquisition of prepositional relative clauses in european portuguese by native chinese speakers

The access of adult learners of a second language (L2) to Universal Grammar (UG) has been widely studied in generative L2 acquisition research. Following the Representational Deficit Hypothesis (RDH), certain features not available in the native language (L1) are not accessible in adult L2 acquisition (Hawkins, 2005; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007, among others). On the contrary, according to the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH), adults can access UG to acquire configurations that are not present in their L1 nor in the explicit input (e.g. Lardiere, 2008; Slabakova, 2016). This dissertation aims at contributing to this debate through the study of the L2 acquisition of prepositional relative clauses (RCs) in European Portuguese (EP) by Mandarin Chinese (MC) native speakers. EP displays wh-movement in prepositional RCs formed with standard Pied-Piping (PiP) and non-standard P-Chopping (P-Chop). Non-standard resumptive RCs do not involve movement (Alexandre, 2000). In MC, prepositional RCs involve a mandatory resumptive pronoun (RP), without movement. P-Chop is also attested in the L2 acquisition of prepositional RCs and wh-questions (Klein, 1993; Jourdain, 1996; Perpiñán, 2010), being analyzed as a developmental stage (Perpiñán, 2010, 2020) or evidence of a wild grammar (Klein, 1993). In MC, prepositional RCs display a mandatory resumptive pronoun (Pan, 2016a, 2016b, a.o.), not involving movement (Wen, 2020). The main goals of this dissertation are to understand if MC learners of EP L2: 1) transfer resumption from the L1 into the L2; 2) can acquire new functional features or reorganize (reassemble) L1 features to configure wh-movement in the L2, producing and accepting PiP and P-Chop RCs; 3) show a developmental path in the acquisition of prepositional RCs. To achieve these goals, an oral production task and two self-paced reading acceptability judgement tasks (SPR-AJTs) were used. One SPR-AJT targets relativization strategies and the other focuses on the learner’s implicit knowledge of wh-movement, both contrasting argument and adjunct prepositional RCs. Intermediate (n=36) and advanced (n=36) native MC learners of EP L2, and native EP speakers (N=30) participated in this study. Results show that: 1) learners do not transfer resumption from their L1; 2) both groups of learners produce and accept preferentially PiP RCs; 3) intermediate learners have larger percentages of production of P-Chop with adjuncts than advanced learners; 4) in island configurations, argument RCs are rated worse than adjunct RCs; and 5) RPs do not rescue islands for any group. Overall, these results support the FRH, indicating that L2ers are able to acquire the features that trigger wh-movement, producing PiP and P-Chop. The results also corroborate that P-Chop exists as a developmental stage (Perpiñán, 2010, 2020), with distinct properties from P-Chop in native EP, arguing against previous research that treats P-Chop as evidence of a wild grammar (e.g., Klein, 1993). Finally, the results with syntactic islands challenge the idea that RPs improve these structures in both native and non-native grammars. The convergence between EP natives and Chinese speakers rejecting argument RCs more assertively than adjunct RC also indicates that adult Chinese learners are sensitive to the same grammatical constraints and processing principles of native speakers, and that L2 learners are able to reassemble the wh-features accordingly.O acesso de aprendentes adultos de uma segunda língua (L2) à Gramática Universal (GU) tem sido muito estudado no âmbito da gramática generativa. De acordo com a Hipótese de Défice Representacional (RDH, em inglês) (Hawkins, 2005; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007, e.o.), determinados elementos não adquiridos na língua nativa (L1) não estão acessíveis na aquisição de uma L2 na idade adulta. Pelo contrário, a Hipótese de Reconfiguração de Traços (FRH, em inglês) (Lardiere, 2005, 2008, 2009) defende que os falantes adultos de uma L2 podem aceder à GU para adquirir elementos novos, não disponibilizados na sua L1. A presente dissertação pretende contribuir para este debate através do estudo da aquisição de orações relativas preposicionadas em português europeu (PE) L2 por falantes nativos de chinês mandarim (CM). Em PE, as frases relativas preposicionadas envolvem movimento-wh quando são formadas através das estratégias de arrastamento da preposição (PiP) (standard) e cortadora (não standard). Podem ainda ser formadas, não convencionalmente, com um pronome resumptivo (PR), não implicando movimento (Alexandre, 2000). A estratégia cortadora é igualmente descrita na aquisição de L2 de relativas e interrogativas preposicionadas (Klein, 1993; Jourdain, 1996; Perpiñán, 2010), sendo analisada como uma fase de desenvolvimento (Perpiñán, 2010, 2020) ou uma gramática selvagem (Klein, 1993). Em CM, as frases relativas preposicionadas são formadas com um elemento resumptivo obrigatório (Pan, 2016a, 2016b), não envolvendo movimento (Wen, 2020). Nesta dissertação, pretende-se compreender se os falantes nativos de CM, aprendentes de PE L2: 1) transferem a estratégia resumptiva da sua L1 para a L2; 2) adquirem novos traços ou reconfiguram traços existentes na L1 para adquirir o movimento-wh na L2, produzindo e aceitando frases relativas com PiP e cortadoras; 3) mostram um percurso de desenvolvimento na aquisição de frases relativas preposicionadas. Para responder a estas questões, foram aplicadas uma tarefa de produção oral e duas tarefas de julgamento de aceitabilidade com leitura automonitorizada (SPR-AJT, em inglês). Uma das tarefas SPR-AJT visa as estratégias de relativização e a outra testa o conhecimento implícito de movimento-wh. Ambas as experiências SPR-AJT contrastam relativas preposicionadas argumentais e adjuntas. Quanto aos participantes neste estudo, eles distribuem-se por falantes nativos de CM, aprendentes intermédios (n= 36) e avançados (n= 36) de PE e falantes nativos de PE (n= 30), o grupo de controlo. Os resultados mostram que: 1) os aprendentes não transferem a estratégia resumptiva da sua L1 para a L2; 2) os dois grupos de aprendentes produzem e aceitam preferencialmente PiP; 3) os falantes intermédios apresentam percentagens mais altas de produção da estratégia cortadora com adjuntos do que com argumentos; 4) as frases relativas argumentais formadas com extrações de ilhas são pior classificadas por todos os grupos do que as adjuntas; 5) os PRs não melhoram as extrações de ilhas para nenhum grupo. Estes resultados corroboram a FRH, indicando que os aprendentes de uma L2 podem adquirir os traços que desencadeiam o movimento-wh. Os resultados também indicam que a estratégia cortadora (P-Chop) surge como uma fase de desenvolvimento na L2 (Perpiñán, 2010, 2020), tendo propriedades distintas da estratégia cortadora no PE L1, contra a proposta de gramática selvagem (Klein, 1993). Os resultados com as ilhas sintáticas desafiam os estudos que indicam que os PRs melhoram a aceitabilidade destas construções, na gramática nativa e não nativa. Finalmente, a convergência dos falantes nativos e não nativos na rejeição mais expressiva de frases relativas argumentais do que adjuntas, nas ilhas sintáticas, indica que os aprendentes são sensíveis a restrições gramaticais e princípios de processamento idênticos aos dos falantes nativos, e que os aprendentes acedem à UG para reconfigurar adequadamente os traços que definem o movimento-wh na L2

Perceptions of participation and inclusion among adolescents with disabilities: experiences from South India

Disability is an issue of human rights and equal opportunity and is no longer focused on impairment and medical intervention. Adolescents with disabilities (AWD) are marginalised throughout the world (UNICEF, 2005), particularly in low- and middle-income countries where they are affected by poor access to resources, and by stigma and local taboos. Poverty has been shown to accentuate the impact of disability. The cycle of poverty and disability is marked by poor access to education, vocational training, and employment. The need of AWD for inclusion and participation in education, health and social life are the same as their non-disabled peers. For many AWD, these needs continue to go unmet (Groce, 2004). The research question was: ‘How do adolescents with physical disabilities perceive the factors that determine their participation and inclusion in their communities in South India?’ Quantitative and qualitative techniques were used. Thirty-seven AWD, 25 parents of AWD, and 24 non-disabled adolescent peers participated in the study in Bangalore, India. A background information questionnaire and two measures of quality of life (QOL) were conducted with all participants. Qualitative data was gathered with each participant group using interviews and focus group discussions (FGD). Photography was used with the AWD to facilitate discussions. Analysis of QOL data revealed no differences between AWD and parent-proxy scores. Differences exist in QOL scores between AWD and their peers. Analysis of interview and FGD data revealed three key themes that influence the perception of Participation and Inclusion among AWD. These are: 1) Personal Factors; 2) Interpersonal Relationships; and 3) External Factors. Belief in themselves and parental support were two key facilitators of participation. Negative attitudes of others, physical barriers, and poorly implemented legislation were significant barriers to participation. Recommendations are suggested to enhance the participation and inclusion of AWD and to facilitate success in adulthood

Child-widows silenced and unheard: a neglected human rights agenda in Tanzania

It is commonly assumed that widows are adult women; hence, there has been a lack of research on violations of child-widows' inheritance rights. This study explores the circumstances under which the girl-child encounters early marriage and is then widowed under a plural legal system; and searches for solutions. It examines legal pluralism in Tanzania and its relevancy in this study and applies a qualitative grounded approach in analysing the interplay between the law and the realities of child-widows' lives.Child-widowhood is one of the worst repercussions of child marriage in a variety of situations and contexts due to their age, gender and immaturity. The study reveals that most customary laws of inheritance and customs discriminate against childwidows. They face profound violations of their human rights in coping with widowhood problems. Access to courts is difficult, so their problems are mainly solved at clan level. Ironically, customary norms, such as the care of widows have been manipulated; widows are often left with no inheritance. The harm inflicted by customary law includes impoverishment, violence, the lack of education and the risk of HIV infection.The study identifies features for and against the favourable realisation of gender equality for child-widows through local norms and practices. Although there are significant obstacles, local norms are still central in facilitating or constraining people's abilities to claim or exercise whatever rights are available to them. Thus, the study suggests possibilities of mediating customary norms through the international human rights law, using the principles of gender equality and non-discrimination. The prerequisites for this include political will and the legislativeframework