Measuring redundancy: the relation between concord and complexity

Syntagmatic redundancy involves constructions in which a single meaning relates to more than one form in a clause or phrase. Redundancy has been claimed to facilitate language processing and acquisition, and to be a linguistic universal, because of these advantages. At the same time, the repeated expression of meaning has been argued to make languages more complex because of the violation of principles of economy and transparency. This paper first investigates the relation between redundancy and complexity by examining how redundancy scores on well-known metrics of complexity. This assessment shows that redundancy makes languages more complex according to metrics of objective complexity, while it has contradictory effects according to metrics of subjective complexity. To empirically test whether redundancy makes acquisition and processing easier or harder, a cross-linguistically valid way of measuring redundancy first needs to be established. The second part of the paper involves an attempt in this direction. It presents a typological study on cross-linguistic variation in four types of concord, showing that languages differ with respect to the number and types of redundancy constructions they allow. The ranking of the 50 sample languages as to their redundancy-based complexity serves as a testable hypothesis for acquisition and processing research

Transparent and non-transparent languages

Languages differ widely from one another in the extent to which they are transparent, i.e. obey one-to-one relationships between meaning and form. Transparency, in turn, is an important factor in the learnability of languages. This paper first sets out a framework for the study of transparency and subsequently studies cross-linguistic differences in transparency, using the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar as its point of departure. Transparent and non-transparent features of languages are systematically defined using the multi-level architecture of this model of language, representing them as mappings between and within levels. In applying this framework to a sample of 30 languages it is shown that the (non-)transparent features investigated can be ordered into an implicational transparency hierarchy, and that as a result the languages of the sample can be ranked in terms of their degrees of transparency as well. Finally, the consequences of these findings for the learnability of languages are discussed

Introduction: The compositionality and syntactic flexibility of verbal idioms

Introduction to Special Issue of Linguistics on the compositionality and syntactic flexibility of verbal idioms

How to make use of multilingualism of students in education of Dutch as a second language?: The webapp 'Native language in education of Dutch as a second language'

Al naar hun eerste les Nederlands brengen cursisten een schat aan taalvaardigheid mee: ze beheersen immers al een taal, of zelfs meerdere. Als docent kun je cursisten helpen dit taalkapitaal te benutten bij het leren van Nederlands, zodat hun meertaligheid echt meerwaarde krijgt. Maar daarvoor heb je wel kennis nodig van de bewuste talen. Aan de Universiteit Utrecht is afgelopen jaar een webapp ontwikkeld die zulke kennis toegankelijk maakt. Wat is de stand van zaken van het project? Wat zijn de ervaringen van docenten die de webapp gebruiken

Kijk, in jouw taal doen ze het zo! : T1-specifieke problemen in het NT2-onderwijs

In het Nt2-onderwijs is veel aandacht voor de alom bekende struikelblokken van het Nederlands: de of het, het woordje er, de uitspraak van de g en de ui. Terecht, want dit zijn problemen waar álle leerders tegenaan lopen. Maar leerders hebben daarnaast nog problemen die voortkomen uit een verschil tussen het Nederlands en hun eerste taal. Taalkundigen van de Universiteit Utrecht ontwikkelen een app met vergelijkingen tussen diverse moedertalen en het Nederlands, inclusief lesmateriaal. Daarmee kunnen docenten snel meer te weten komen over de specifieke uitdagingen van hun cursisten en ze een stapje verder helpen. Op het Lescongres presenteerde Sterre Leufkens de app (in ontwikkeling)

Transparency in language: a typological study

In this thesis I investigate the degree of transparency of 22 languages. Transparency is defined as the extent to which a language maintains one-to-one relations between units at different levels of organisation, i.e. pragmatics, semantics, morphosyntax and phonology. Languages are compared not only as regards the amount of non-transparent phenomena in their grammars, so as to rank them from relatively transparent to relatively non-transparent, but also to uncover an implicational pattern in the distribution of non-transparent features across languages. Transparency is discussed in connection to the notions of simplicity and learnability. Simplicity and transparency are shown to be different concepts that are both relevant in accounting for acquisition data. Whereas most definitions of simplicity take it to apply to particular domains of grammar, transparency is defined as a property of interfaces between levels within the grammar. The term is further operationalised using the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar. It turns out that all languages have at least some non-transparent features, most notably of the redundancy type. Fusion and domain disintegration are less commonly attested, but the non-transparent features that are found only in the least transparent languages are so-called form-based forms: highly syntacticised forms and structures that have no pragmatic or semantic motivation. Furthermore, non-transparent relations at the interfaces of the phonological and pragmatic levels are found in many languages, whereas it is less common to violate transparency at morphosyntactic and semantic interfaces. The attested implicational hierarchy of transparency proves that transparency is a relevant typological notion