The effect of syntactic and semantic argument structure on sentence production in aphasia

The complexity of a verb’s argument structure influences accuracy of sentence production in aphasia. Here we report preliminary evidence from five participants with aphasia that semantic argument structure and/or syntactic phrase structure contribute to processing difficulty in persons with aphasia in ways that cannot be accounted for as length effects. We contrasted repetition of sentences containing verb particles and prepositional object structures that were balanced for length and lexical content. Results indicated that the verb particles were used correctly significantly more often than the prepositions in sentence repetition

A modal ambiguity in for-infinitival relative clauses

This squib presents two puzzles related to an ambiguity found in for-infinitival relative clauses (FIRs). FIRs invariably receive a modal interpretation even in the absence of any overt modal verb. The modal interpretation seems to come in two distinct types, which can be paraphrased by finite relative clauses employing the modal auxiliaries should and could. The two puzzles presented here arise because the availability of the two readings is constrained by factors that are not otherwise known to affect the interpretation of a relative clause. Specifically, we show, first, that “strong” determiners require the FIR to be interpreted as a SHOULD-relative while “weak” determiners allow both interpretations (the Determiner-Modal Generalization). Secondly, we observe that the COULD-interpretation requires a raising (internally headed) structure for the FIR, while the SHOULD-interpretation is compatible with either a raising or a more standard matching (externally headed) structure (the Raising/Matching Generalization)

Existential sentences in English

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, 1974.Vita.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-259).by Gary Lee Milsark.Ph.D

On the structure and development of Saxon-type genitives in Mauritian Creole and the processes of creole formation

This paper revisits the discussion of Saxon-type genitives in French-based Mauritian Creole. These genitives also occur in Seychelles Creole, Louisiana Creole, Karipuna Creole, and Guyanese Creole, but, interestingly, not in any of the other French creoles (e.g. Haitian Creole). How did they develop, and why do they only occur in a handful of these creoles? Several attempts have been made to explain their development and distribution. Focusing mainly on their occurrence in Mauritian Creole, Corne (1986) argues that they have their root in the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in Mauritius. Syea (1994, 1995) and Heine and Kuteva (2001), on the other hand, both reject this explanation and suggest, instead, that their presence is a consequence of internal developments. This paper offers a new solution which, while maintaining the internal development approach of Syea (1994, 1995), extends its empirical base with data from other French creoles and suggests that Saxon-type genitives in Mauritian Creole and the other French creoles originated in French doubling possessives such as sa maison à lui/Marie (lit. his/her house to him/Marie ‘his/Mary's house’). It argues that this development was made possible by a downgrading of the possessive pronoun from clitic in French to agreement marker in French creoles. The discussion is couched in the framework of Principles and Parameters (Chomsky 1981) and Minimalism (Chomsky 1995, 2000)

The Role of Presuppositionality in the Second Language Acquisition of English Articles

This article investigates the role of presuppositionality (defined as the presupposition of existence) in the second language (L2) acquisition of English articles. Building upon the proposal in Wexler 2003 that young English-acquiring children overuse the with presuppositional indefinites, this article proposes that presuppositionality also influences article (mis)use in adult L2 acquisition. This proposal is supported by experimental results from the L2 English of adult speakers of Korean, a language with no articles. The experimental findings indicate that presuppositional indefinite contexts trigger overuse of the with indefinites in adult L2 acquisition, as in child L1 acquisition (cf. Wexler 2003). The effects of presuppositionality are teased apart from the effects of other semantic factors previously examined in acquisition, such as scope (Schaeffer and Matthewson 2005) and specificity (Ionin, Ko, and Wexler 2004). The results provide evidence that overuse of the in L2 acquisition is a semantic rather than pragmatic phenomenon. Implications of these findings for overuse of the in L1 acquisition are discussed. This article also has implications for the study of access to Universal Grammar in L2 acquisition, as well as for the number and type of semantic universals underlying article choice crosslinguistically