We ‘Hear’ the Structure Our Mind Creates

journal articl

The ordering of obliques and adpositional elements

The order of verbs (V) and their object (O) has been of great interest among researchers.  However, few studies have examined the order of obliques (X) with respect to V and O.  Dryer (with Gensler) (2013) find the asymmetry between VO and OV languages in terms of the position of X: unlike VO languages, all three types of OV languages (XOV, OXV, and OVX) are widely attested.  Hawkins (2008) tries to explain this asymmetry by the interaction of three patterns, (i) Verb & Object Adjacency, (ii) Object & X on Same Side of Verb, and (iii) Object before X.  Although his analysis is successful in explaining the word order data in the world’s languages, there are still some problems.  In this paper, we argue that we can predict the possible word orders using only Hawkins’s (2004, 2008) Minimize Domains (MiD).  We also argue that compared to the prepositional counterparts, postpositions, postpositional clitics, and case suffixes are more likely to be connected to their noun (phrase) complement phonologically and morpho-syntactically.  In other words, the juncture between noun and adposition/clitic/affix in head-final languages is tighter than that in head-initial languages.  Assuming that adjuncts (X) consist of noun and adposition/clitic/affix, the domain of constituent recognition is different in the possible word orders of O, X and V.  We assume that postpositions/postpositional clitics/suffixes need only half of a word (^ = 0.5) for domain recognition because they are closely attached to the adjacent noun (phrase).  We conclude that any ordering of O, X and V is possible if the domain size is less than 4.  This analysis has advantages over Hawkins’s (2008) analysis because it is simpler and does not need to assume Hawkins’s principle of Argument Precedence

The order of OVX and the argument-adjunct distinction

As for the order of verb (V), object (O), and oblique (X), Dryer (with Gensler) (2013) finds the asymmetry between VO and OV languages in terms of the position of X: VO languages are almost exclusively VOX, and OV languages are of all three types (XOV, OXV, and OVX). Hawkins (2008) argues that “[t]he OVX languages should be more head-initial and have head ordering correlations more like those of VO” (e.g., preposition: OVX 33%, VO 86%). However, we claim that high percentages of OVX languages have head-final orders unlike VO languages in complement-head orders (e.g., postposition: OVX 67%, VO 14%). We also claim that OVX languages have more head-initial orders than XOV and OXV languages in head-adjunct orders (e.g., Noun-Adjective: OVX 100%, XOV 56%, OXV 67%).  We propose the universal tendency to complement-head-adjunct order

Prosody and branching direction of phrasal compounds

This paper investigates the prosody of phrasal compounds in Japanese, English and German. In a Japanese phrasal compound, a prosodic boundary can occur within a modifier phrase but not between the phrase and the head noun. Japanese phrasal compounds contrast with English and German phrasal compounds, where a pause may occur between the modifier phrase and the head noun but not within the modifier phrase. I argue that the prosodic differences between these languages are due to the branching direction of modifier phrases: Japanese phrasal compounds have left-branching modifiers while English and German phrasal compounds have right-branching modifiers. It is argued that the data of prosodic phrasing in these languages pose some problems for Match Theory (Elfner 2012), the edge-based theory (Selkirk & Tateishi 1988) and Generalized Insertion (Ackema & Neeleman 2004)