Object marking in affective constructions in Swahili

This paper seeks to examine the conditions that govern the occurrence or non- occurrence of the object marker in affective constructions (i.e., constructions involving Possessor Raising such as Alimshika mkono Ali ‘He held him (by the) hand Ali’ and Mwili ulimtetemeka ‘(her) body trembled (her)’) in Swahili. From data drawn from a corpus of affective constructions, this study demonstrates that the conditions for animate object marking in affective constructions differ from those for object marking elsewhere in Swahili syntax and may violate some rules such as ‘object selection prohibition rules’ in Mukama (1976)

A survey of studies in systemic functional language description and typology

Version of RecordPublishe

Climactic Effect Markers in Spoken and Written Narrative: Japanese Conditionals Tara and To

This paper compares two Japanese conditional constructions — tara and to — used as nonconditionals for narrative effect in spoken and written narratives collected from five native speakers of Japanese. These two constructions connect clauses where two unrelated past events happened in sequence as in: Miru to/Mitara, ame datta ‘When I looked, it was raining’. Examination of the spoken and written narratives revealed that tara is predominantly used in the spoken narratives while to is favored in the written narratives. Although both constructions are similar in the unexpected effect, the reason why the teller uses them differently can be attributed to the nature of the two different communicative modes. The teller in spoken narrative uses tara to intensify the heightened suspension whereby s/ he creates the surprising effect. The speaker-teller exploits the situatedness of the listener’s co-presence and recreates a story in the way the listener can share suspenseful moments and a sense of uncontrollability. The teller, when writing, uses the to construction to issue a narrator’s voice, Look what happened. The writer takes the omniscient narrator’s viewpoint and directs the reader to an unexpected result even when the writer is absent

Two places for causees in productive isiXhosa morphological causatives

Gave a guest lecture on my joint work with Zoliswa Mali on isiXhosa causatives.Othe

Editorial : acquisition of clause chaining

Research on the acquisition of complex syntax has largely overlooked a special type of complex sentence, found in hundreds of languages outside Western Europe: the clause chain. A clause chain contains as few as one and as many as 20 or more “medial” clauses, with verbal predicates that are under-specified for tense and other categories, and a single “final” (finite) clause, with a verbal predicate that is fully-specified for tense and, often, other categories. “Medial” clauses relate syntactically to other clauses in the chain without being subordinated to them. In some languages, each clause in a chain must indicate in advance whether the subject of the next clause will be the same as or different from that of the current clause, through “switch-reference” marking (Haiman and Munro, 1983; van Gijn and Hammond, 2016). Unlike English complex sentences, clause chains’ distribution is partially predictable in that it is often associated with description of temporally sequential events or actions

THE DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES OF THE ACQUISITION OF PAST TENSE-ASPECT MORPHOLOGY (Review of the literature)

This paper represents a conceptualization of L1 and L2 developmental stages of the acquisition of English past tense aspect verbal morphology. It constitutes the theoretical chapter of a PhD doctoral thesis that investigates the acquisition of past tense-aspect verbal morphology of EFL Moroccan university learners. The paper basically attempts to provide a recent review of related studies that account for the thesis topic. Primarily, it collects and reproduce the major and the prominent results that tackles the emergence of -ed and -ing past markers in the L1 and L2 context.  Various studies attempted to give an understanding the nature of English past markers in different contexts adopting longitudinal or cross-sectional method, either in the natural environment or in the instructed one. Actually, this paper attempts to provide a consistent body of literature to account for the nature of the processes responsible for the emergence the tense-aspect system which differs from L1 to EFL context. Despite discrepancies in the findings, there’s still a consensus on the route of acquisition that seems to be similar among L1 and L2 learners with some respect. Therefore, most researchers seek to investigate the emergence of past tenses marking system through approaching how the interplay between the situational aspect and viewpoint aspect took place. However, this paper will focus on a prototype-based account to explain the nature of past tense-aspect acquisition development

(How) is formulaic language universal? Insights from Korean, German and English

The existence of common expressions, also referred to as formulaic language or phraseological units, has been evidenced in a very large number of languages. However, the extent to which languages feature such formulaic material, how formulaicity may be understood across typologically different languages and whether indeed there is a concept of formulaic language that applies across languages, are questions that have been less commonly discussed. Using a novel data set consisting of topically matched corpora in three typologically different languages (Korean, German and English), this study proposes an empirically founded universal concept for formulaic language and discusses what the shape of this concept suggests for the theoretical understanding of formulaic language going forward. In particular, it is argued that the nexus of the concept of formulaic language cannot be fixed at any particular structural level (such as the phrase or the level of polylexicality) and incorporates elements specified at varying levels of abstraction (or schematicity). This means that a cross-linguistic concept of formulaic language fits in well with a constructionist view of linguistic structure

Lexical and Grammatical Aspect in On-line Processing of English Past Tense and Progressive Aspect by Mandarin Speakers

Previous studies have shown that the grammatical aspect of verb predicates has an effect on tense-aspect sentence processing. However, it remains unclear as to whether the interaction of lexical aspect and grammatical aspect can influence the form-meaning association in the second language (L2) tense-aspect sentence processing, especially for the learners whose native language is grammatically marked differently from their L2. This study conducts a psycholinguistic investigation to highlight how the prototypical and non-prototypical associations predicted in the Aspect Hypothesis and L2 proficiency level influence the processing of English past tense and progressive morphology by Mandarin Chinese learners at two proficiency levels and native English speakers. The results show that the prototypical associations of English tense-aspect categories predicted in the Aspect Hypothesis, such as achievement verbs with past tense and activity verbs with the progressive aspect, can engender shorter reading time than non-prototypical associations for both native speakers and second language learners. There is no significant difference between native speakers and Chinese learners of English in their processing of prototypical items, while significant differences exist in the processing of non-prototypical items. The L2 proficiency level does not have an effect on the processing of prototypes but on the processing of non-prototypes in the L2 tense-aspect marking. This study extends previous research, showing the interaction effect of lexical aspect and grammatical aspect in the form-meaning association in L2 tense-aspect sentence processing

(How) is formulaic language universal? Insights from Korean, German and English

The existence of common expressions, also referred to as formulaic language or phraseological units, has been evidenced in a very large number of languages. However, the extent to which languages feature such formulaic material, how formulaicity may be understood across typologically different languages and whether indeed there is a concept of formulaic language that applies across languages, are questions that have been less commonly discussed. Using a novel data set consisting of topically matched corpora in three typologically different languages (Korean, German and English), this study proposes an empirically founded universal concept for formulaic language and discusses what the shape of this concept suggests for the theoretical understanding of formulaic language going forward. In particular, it is argued that the nexus of the concept of formulaic language cannot be fixed at any particular structural level (such as the phrase or the level of polylexicality) and incorporates elements specified at varying levels of abstraction (or schematicity). This means that a cross-linguistic concept of formulaic language fits in well with a constructionist view of linguistic structure