bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Interpreting in theory and practice
Authors: Wadensjö Cecilia
Published: March 2014

During the past decades Interpreting Studies has developed quite substantially. A number of initiatives have also been taken to summarize and synthesize research on interpreting of various kinds, performed in a range of settings, involving spoken as well as signed languages (e.g. Garzone and Viezzi 2002; Pöchhacker and Shlesinger 2002; Hertog and van der Veer 2006). The aim of this paper is less to report on the results presented in this growing body of literature, and more to discuss the development of what can be seen as two competing trends – an urge for evidence-based interpreting practice on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an interest in studies of interpreting as an academic field in its own right, i.e. studies designed to explore and explain how interpreting happens. In response to an urge for narrowing a supposed gap between theory and practice, this paper suggests keeping a critical distance.
Reflections on the literal translation hypothesis
Authors: Chesterman Andrew
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the well-known literal translation hypothesis and discusses its significance for translation theory. The hypothesis claims that as translators process a given text chunk, they tend to start from a literal version of the target text, and then work towards a freer version. The idea has been implied or explicitly studied by many scholars, and does not seem to have a single source. After some preliminary conceptual analysis an optimal formulation of the hypothesis is proposed. The paper then assesses the hypothesis in terms of the kinds of wider significance any hypothesis can have. The criteria discussed are testability, relations with other hypotheses, applicability, surprise value and explanatory power. Some of Englund Dimitrova’s research (2005) on the hypothesis is discussed. A rather different study by Nordman (2009) is argued to have implications for the broader contextualization of the hypothesis.
Innovative subtitling
Authors: Künzli Alexander , Ehrensberger-Dow Maureen
Published: March 2014

This paper presents the results of an experimental study investigating reception capacity and audience response to subtitled movies. Twenty-seven viewers were shown four movie excerpts, with commercially available standard subtitling or with innovative subtitling. The latter comprised additional information regarding language and culture-specific elements in the original soundtrack. Data were collected simultaneously with eye-tracking and consecutively with questionnaires. Eye-tracking measured fixation duration and percentage of gaze time in the various areas of interest, whereas the questionnaire assessed accuracy on questions about movie content and audience perception and satisfaction. The results show no significant differences in accuracy between the two conditions, indicating that viewers of subtitled audiovisual productions are able to process more information than established subtitling norms suggest.
Errors, omissions and infelicities in broadcast interpreting
Authors: Gile Daniel
Published: March 2014

Recordings and transcripts of simultaneous interpretation outputs of President Obama’s inaugural speech as broadcast by TV stations in French, German and Japanese were scrutinized and analyzed for errors, omissions and infelicities in an investigation of cognitive saturation and language-pair specific difficulties. Inter alia, it was found that many misinterpreted or omitted source-speech micro-units were simple and non-technical and that there were more errors and omissions in the Japanese renderings than in either the German or French renderings. Findings also suggest that there may be different interpreting styles in terms of preference given to language correctness versus information completeness. All these are consistent with the tightrope hypothesis, according to which interpreters tend to work close to cognitive saturation, which also makes language-specific and language-pair specific idiosyncrasies relevant parameters in the interpreting process. Findings also suggest that simple methodology and naturalistic studies can make valuable contributions in Interpreting Studies.
Effects of linguistic complexity on expert processing during simultaneous interpreting
Authors: Hild Adelina
Published: March 2014

Processing models of simultaneous interpreting (SI) have predicted that the linguistic complexity of the source-language text will adversely affect performance quality due to the increased storage and processing demands imposed by linguistically complicated constructions on a limited-capacity working memory (WM). The present paper reports an experimental expert-novice comparison study which examines this hypothesis by analysing the effect of four complexity metrics, validated in psycholinguistic research on interpreting performance: developmental level, amount of embedding, type of embedding and clause type. The results show a consistent effect of complexity metrics on novice performance, while for experts the effect was modulated by the overall level of textual redundancy. The findings suggest that syntactic complexity, as indexed by the measures used in this study, does not predict experts’ accuracy in a significant way. In line with Ericsson and Kintch’s theory of skilled WM, this indicates the somewhat diminished role of surface structure cues in skilled SI processing and suggests a strong component of strategic and macro processing in expert SI performance.
Process and product in simultaneous interpreting
Authors: Tiselius Elisabet , Jenset Gard B.
Published: March 2014

The expertise approach (Ericsson 2008) has been used to explore the competence of translators and interpreters since the mid-1990s, and is now a well established sub-field in translation and interpreting process research (Jääskeläinen 2010). In the area of interpreting, Ivanova (1999), Liu (2001) and others have explored the expertise approach. The studies reported in this article follow up on this work, but go one step further and investigate both process and product. The aim of the two studies was to explore the differences in performance between interpreters with shorter and longer experience (possible experts). Participants (n = 9) with no, short or long experience interpreted the same speech and performed retrospection immediately after. The first study, dedicated to process, used Ivanova’s (1999) method for investigating the process. The second study, on product, let two groups, non-interpreters (n = 6) and interpreters (n = 6), rate the interpreting performances using Carroll’s (1966) scales for intelligibility and informativeness. It was found that the degree of experience influences the processing strategies used by interpreters and the types of problems they report. Experience also has an impact on how the product of experienced interpreters and that of less experienced interpreters is rated, both when rated by interpreters and by non-interpreters.
Results of the validation of the PACTE translation competence model
Authors: Beeby Allison , Fernández Mònica , Fox Olivia , Hurtado Albir Amparo , Kuznik Anna , Neunzig Wilhelm , Rodríguez Inés Patricia , Romero Lupe , Wimmer Stefanie
Published: March 2014

The PACTE Group has been carrying out experimental research into translation competence since 1977. The aim of this paper is to present the results obtained for one of our study variables: Identification and Solution of Translation Problems. A brief introduction to the PACTE Group’s research project on translation competence is followed by a description of the variable Identification and Solution of Translation Problems, its indicators, and the instruments used for data collection. Finally, the results obtained are presented. These show that the translation problems identified by subjects varied greatly depending on the individual; directionality plays a role in the definition of the difficulty of translation problems; there was no relation between subjects’ perception of the overall difficulty of a text to be translated and the acceptability of their solutions to translation problems; and, finally, the characterisation of translation problems would not appear to be a feature of translation competence.
Researching interpreting
Authors: Pöchhacker Franz
Published: March 2014

This chapter addresses some of the more fundamental issues in research on interpreting. After a reflection on the purpose and use of research on interpreting, the diversity of concepts, models and interdisciplinary approaches is used as a point of departure for a reflection on the identity of the field as a scientific discipline. Based on a review of basic epistemological positions and methodological choices, interpreting studies is portrayed as an empirical-interpretive discipline with an affinity to the social sciences and a natural sensitivity to constructivist orientations. Given the wide array of methodological options, mixed-methods designs are discussed and exemplified as a promising approach that transcends the quantitative-vs-qualitative controversy and is well attuned to the complexity of the object of study.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?
Authors: Napier Jemina
Published: March 2014

As an interdisciplinary research-based literature on interpreting emerges in spoken and signed language interpreting studies, this chapter provides an overview of publishing interpreting research for novice researchers seeking advice on publication. The chapter walks potential researchers through types of research projects and appropriate publication outlets. The importance of publishing interpreting research is discussed in light of the benefits for students, practitioners, educators, researchers, and other stakeholders. In particular, the chapter discusses how interpreters can become involved in conducting and publishing research through “interpreter fieldwork research”. The chapter emphasizes the need to draw together practice, experience and academic pursuit to make research accessible to all stakeholders in various forms of publications.
Through a historical lens
Authors: Adam Robert , Stone Christopher
Published: March 2014

Emphasis is often placed on new and innovative studies to advance the knowledge of the translation and interpreting field(s). These studies have yet to capture the language brokering, translation, and interpreting activities that took place historically within Deaf communities and still occurs to this day. We contend that by examining early interpreting work undertaken in the Deaf community, interpreting professionals are better able to understand how they have arrived at this point in their history. This examination provides novel insights into Deaf communities’ selection and use of Deaf people as language brokers. We argue that, within a historic paradigm, the emergence of the interpreting profession and how it is embedded within nascent Deaf communities may be more fully understood.
Verb typology
Authors: Willems Dominique
Published: March 2014

In this paper, I first briefly present a global classification of French verbs, based on a systematic empirical analysis of the constructional and lexical properties of some 3,000 verbs. I briefly present the heuristics, the results, and the limits of the proposed classification. Three important aspects of the relation between verb constructions and the verbal lexicon are further discussed: (1) the existence of three main construction types based on the formal nature of verb complementation: nominal vs. infinitival vs. finite clausal complements, and the hierarchical relations between them; (2) the need to distinguish on the lexical level between three lexical micro-systems and to analyze their impact on the verb typology; (3) finally I will show that a global macro-typology of verbs is a very useful tool for the analysis of verbal polysemy.
Is there a SE FAIRE V-er passive construction?
Authors: Raineri Sophie
Published: March 2014

We observe that SE FAIRE V-er is usually recognized as bearing a passive meaning along with its causative reading. Existing studies, however, show a lack of consensus on whether there is only one primarily causative construction, which may lend itself to a passive reading via pragmatic inference in the appropriate context, or two homonymous constructions. The paper reexamines the question within the framework of Construction Grammar, exploiting Cruse’s notion of ‘microsense’. In this frame, we demonstrate that SE FAIRE V-er has at least two ‘microsenses’ – passive and causative – each associated with one end of the subject referent responsibility continuum.
Être une/Faire partie de
Authors: Gréa Philippe
Published: March 2014

Most of the developments in the part-whole relationship in French are generally based on the predicate être une partie de ‘be a part of’ or on the auxiliary avoir ‘have’, and their comparison. We will look into a complex French predicate which, unlike the two previous ones, has not been the subject of a precise definition despite its numerous occurrences: faire partie de. As is the case of the two previous situations, this predicate esablishes a relationship between a part and a whole, but with some interesting specificities. In order to describe them, we will focus on a comparison between two constructions: NP0 faire partie de NP1 and NP0 être une partie de NP1. We will show the existence of a double constraint: the internal plurality of NP1 and the dependent character of NP0 in relation to NP1. We will show that it results in coercion effects as well as variations in profiling. These observations will allow us to turn to idiomatic expressions, such as [NP faire partie des {meubles/des murs/du paysage/du décor}] ‘NP is part of the furniture/the walls/ landscape/décor’ or [NP être la partie {visible/invisible} de l’iceberg.] ‘NP is the {visible/hidden} part of the iceberg’. We will show that these follow from the semantic properties of the two structures.
GIVE frames and constructions in French
Authors: Bouveret Myriam
Published: March 2014

This paper presents a corpus-based study of the French verb donner ‘give’. Even though the central meaning of the verb relies on a three-place predicate profiling, a concrete GIVING frame with an agent, an object and a recipient, the frequencies in our different corpora show that it is not the most frequent usage. We follow construction grammar in regarding grammatical constructions and idioms as having equal status. This paper considers the French verb from a construction grammar and frame semantics perspective (Fillmore, 1982, 1985). The particular case of [X donner (Y) à + infinitive (‘X give (Y) to be V-ed’)] is analyzed: donner à connaître ‘give to know’, donner à manger ‘feed’, donner sa voiture à réparer ‘give one’s car to repair’, donner du grain à moudre ‘give material for conversation’, donner du fil à retordre ‘give a hard time’.
Constructing ‘basic’ verbal constructions
Authors: Morgenstern Aliyah , Parisse Christophe
Published: March 2014

In this study, the development of verb constructions in young French speaking children is analyzed by focusing on spontaneous language data from three children of the Paris corpus (Leonard, Madeleine, Théophile) age 1;06 up to 3;06. The focus of the work is on six specific verbs which are quite frequent in young child speech and which clearly present different patterns of verbal constructions. Despite the differences between the verbal constructions analysed, the development of verbal constructions in young children follows a similar pattern. Some specific verb constructions are learned first and used in a highly frequent pattern. They belong to a specific subset: the most ‘simple’ constructions that can be produced with these verbs. Other constructions appear infrequently and much later. They form a more productive part of children’s language, although they do not seem to be the most frequent mode for spontaneous production. This opposition between frequent construction and unusual production is probably a key to understand children’s language development, as it offers them both a way to enter quickly and efficiently into language, and a way to be more “creative” and produce their own forms.
L2 acquisition of verbal constructions
Authors: Berthaud Sarah , Antonijević-Elliott Stanislava
Published: March 2014

The study examines the production of sentences describing motion in L2 learners, focusing on progress in learning verbal constructions, i.e. pairings of verbs of motion and their compatible syntactic frames in English and French. This is an important issue because verbs that are translational equivalents in the two languages do not necessarily share syntactic frames. Following the idea that the overall meaning of a verb is composed of its core meaning and structural meaning, we expected that after associating translational equivalents from L1 and L2, language learners would progressively associate L2 syntactic frames to the core meaning of the verb. However, this was only true for learners of French. Learners of English did not show improvement in sentence production corresponding to their proficiency level.
The impersonal value of demonstrative and middle constructions
Authors: Achard Michel
Published: March 2014

This chapter suggests a possible methodology for outlining the range of impersonals in French. The proposal relies on two main points. First, impersonals constitute a gradual category. Any structure will be considered impersonal if (i) it defocuses or backgrounds the agent of the profiled process, and (ii) its profiled process exhibits a degree of generality which makes it available to a generalized conceptualizer (anyone in the appropriate situation). These criteria can obviously be met in a variety of ways, and need to be evaluated within each participating structure. Secondly, even though the notions of defocusing and generality are abstract and scalar, their evaluation within specific structures, and thus the treatment of these structures as impersonals, is greatly facilitated by the clustering of closely related senses into specific “constructions” (Goldberg 1995, 2006, Langacker 1987, 1991, 2005). In some cases, these constructions are easily identified by morphosyntactic criteria, but in others, they only diverge from their structurally similar neighbors by incorporating a specific set of semantic or pragmatic distinctive features. Given the fluid nature of the proposed criteria, these constructions provide islands of regularity within which impersonals can reliably be identified, and therefore constitute one of the main organizing principles of the impersonal category in French. This chapter illustrates this methodology with an analysis of the demonstrative and middle impersonals.
Le prix est (de) 15 euros
Authors: Lauwers Peter
Published: March 2014

The status of copular constructions expressing quantification, such as “le prix est (de) 15 euros) is examined with respect to prototypical specificational constructions (Le prix est quinze euros) and to predicational constructions involving quantification. It appears that the copular construction expressing quantification ([NP_Cop_de_Q NP]) is a hybrid construction combining properties of both specificational and predicational copular constructions. In this sense, and according to the inheritance network advocated by Construction Grammar, ([NP_Cop_de_Q NP]) inherits features from both the specificational (e.g. the relationship between NP1 and NP2) and the predicational construction, but also develops its own idiosyncrasy.
French property nouns based on toponyms or ethnic adjectives
Authors: Dal Georgette , Namer Fiammetta
Published: March 2014

We examine a case of base variation related to property noun formation, viz.-ité-suffixed French nouns expressing the character proper both to those who belong/are related to a place (town, country…) and/or to the place itself (henceforth Ethnic Property Nouns (EPNs)). The study is based on a web-extracted corpus and shows that speakers largely coin EPNs either from toponyms (portugal > portugalité ‘Portugal-ness’ = ‘Portugueseness’), from related ethnic adjectives (afrique ‘Africa’ > africain ‘African’ > africanité ‘Africanness’) or from both (belgique ‘Belgium‘ > belgicité ‘Belgium-ness’; belge ‘Belgian’ > belgité ‘Belgianness’). The examples show that these base variations are unrelated to meaning but rather correlate with four formal competing constraints: one of them, i.e. what we call ‘lexical pressure’, can explain the form of the output. We then describe a survey experiment, which corroborates our analysis. Finally, the scope of our conclusions goes beyond French EPNs, as they apply to other word formation rules in many languages.
The invisible hand of grammaticalization
Authors: Gaeta Livio
Published: March 2014

Grammaticalization may have therapeutic and pathological effects on morphology. The paper will focus on these latter with special regard to the occurrence of a morpheme in an unexpected form as is the case for the West- Germanic substitutive infinitive. The reason for this mysterious case of formmeaning mismatch must be sought in the grammaticalization of the Germanic telic prefix *ga-. As a consequence of its grammaticalization in the past participle, a semantic incompatibility prevented the so-called AcI-verbs from being touched by the grammaticalization wave spreading the perfect periphrasis throughout the whole verbal system. Thus, the arguably default form came in, namely the infinitive, whereby the perfect periphrasis could be completely paradigmaticized even though at the cost of a form/meaning mismatch. In this light, the long-wave effect of grammaticalization can be made responsible for the anomaly preserved until today in all West-Germanic dialects, in which ge- was grammaticalized as an inflectional marker.
Areal-typological aspects of word-formation
Authors: Kiefer Ferenc
Published: March 2014

Aktionsart is defined as the modification of verb meaning by morphological means. The article claims that languages in which aktionsarten are derived by preverbs form a Sprachbund. The central area of the Sprachbund is occupied by Slavic languages. The Sprachbund includes Yiddish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, and to a lesser extent German and Romani. English and Romance don’t have any aktionsarten. In the discussion of the aktionsarten in the area Russian is taken as the language of reference. The development of aktionsarten may follow various paths. In Yiddish most aktionsarten were developed under the influence of Slavic. In Hungarian, on the other hand, no direct Slavic influence can be identified but borrowing from German played a role in the development of aktionsarten. Language contact and parallel development have brought about very similar aktionsart systems in genetically unrelated languages. At the same time, languages may differ in the number of aktionsarten, in the range of base verbs for which the derivation is possible, and in the productivity of aktionsart-formation.
Compounding versus derivation
Authors: Ralli Angela
Published: March 2014

This chapter examines the demarcation of compounds and derivative items. It is argued that the two types of constructions belong to word-formation, and intermingle in such a way that only the same grammatical domain could handle them properly. This domain is considered to be morphology, and claims and proposals are exemplified with data drawn from Standard Modern Greek and its dialects.The following issues are tackled:a. The order of application of the two processes. It is shown that there are cases which advocate a non-linear order between the two.b. The existence of a specific constraint, which demonstrates the close interaction of the two processes, since the structure of derivative items seems to be accessible to compounding and affected by its application.c. A peculiar borderline case, according to which a free lexical item in Standard Modern Greek has acquired a fuzzy categorial status in one dialect, but has become a pure prefix into another. To this end, the chapter focuses on the crucial role of dialectal evidence.
Units in compounding
Authors: Montermini Fabio
Published: March 2014

This chapter addresses such questions as ‘what kind of linguistic units are compounds?’ and ‘what kind of linguistic units are they made of?’ In order to answer these questions a strictly word-based approach is adopted, in which words (lexemes) are considered as the basic units of morphological and lexical organization cross-linguistically. Several examples in which canonical and non-canonical words appear as inputs and outputs of compounding are analyzed. It is claimed that, unlike derivation, compounding constructs both typical lexical units, and units which are not made to be lexicalized. This conclusion is consistent with the common assumption that compounding constitutes a case of mismatch between morphology and syntax.
The head in compounding
Authors: Scalise Sergio , Fábregas Antonio
Published: March 2014

This chapter deals with the notion of head inside compounds. We will first focus on the unproblematic cases which have led researchers to determine that compounds contain a head (Section 1). Then we will analyse more problematic cases, showing that some of the properties of heads (such as their position inside the word) are not completely understood (Section 2). Problematic cases of exocentricity or multiple headedness inside compounds will be considered in Section 3, while Section 4 briefly explores the possibility that compounds contain more than one head. The main conclusion of this paper is that there are empirical grounds to propose the existence of heads inside compounds, but the determination of their properties and the identification of the units that play this role for a given feature require detailed language-particular and typological research yet to be done, although some generalizations can already be made.
The typology of exocentric compounding
Authors: Bauer Laurie
Published: March 2014

On the basis of a survey of types of exocentric compound found in a large number of languages, a small set of basic types is established. Even one of these is considered marginal. These basic types are described and exemplified, with problems of nomenclature and description being discussed. The marginality of exocentricity is discussed. The potential for other, rarer, types is considered.
Coordination in compounding
Authors: Arcodia Giorgio Francesco , Grandi Nicola , Wälchli Bernhard
Published: March 2014

This chapter deals with the expression of coordination relations in compounding. Two macro-types of compounds are identified, namely hyperonymic coordinating compounds (co-compounds), where the referent of the compound is in a superordinate relationship to the meaning of the parts (as Mandarin dao-qiang ‘sword+spear, weapons’), and hyponymic coordinate compounds, where the referent is in a subordinate relationship to the meaning of the parts (as English actor-director). The chapter also argues that the distribution of these two macro-types is not random but, rather, areally skewed: whereas co-compounds are common in the Eastern part of Eurasia, New Guinea and Mesoamerica, they seem to be absent in Standard Average European languages, where hyponymic coordinating compounds are formed quite freely. Moreover, while co-compounds may belong to different word classes, hyponymic coordinating compounds are (probably) never verbs.
Synthetic compounds
Authors: Gaeta Livio
Published: March 2014

This chapter focuses on a traditional issue of word formation, namely synthetic compounds. The three basic approaches to the question will be reviewed and analyzed with the help of a large text corpus. The latter is of paramount importance for the analysis because dictionaries usually are not reliable for investigating highly productive word formation patterns and especially German compounding. It is shown that purely syntactic approaches do not cope well with the data, whereas a lexical approach like Construction Morphology is able to grasp the fine-grained distributional properties displayed by compounds. Furthermore, the corpus-based analysis allows us to shed some light on the complex network of semantic properties guiding the selective solidarity between deverbal head and nominal modifier by representing argument structure as a bundle of Dowty’s base-roles.
Frequency effects in compound processing
Authors: Baayen Harald , Kuperman Victor , Bertram Raymond
Published: March 2014

This chapter discusses the role of compound token frequency, head and modifier token frequency, and head and modifier compound family sizes (type frequencies) in the comprehension of English and Dutch compounds, using data from word naming, visual lexical decision, and eye-tracking studies. Using generalized additive regression modeling, it is shown that these frequency measures enter into many complex interactions. These interactions argue against current staged models and argue for morphological processing as part of a complex dynamic system.
Sign languages and compounding
Authors: Meir Irit , Aronoff Mark , Sandler Wendy , Padden Carol A.
Published: March 2014

Compounding is one of the few sequential word formation processes found across sign languages. We explore familiar properties of compounds in established sign languages like American Sign Language, as well as a modality-specific type of simultaneous compounding, in which each hand contributes a separate morpheme. Sign languages also offer the opportunity to observe the way in which compounds first arise in a language, since as a group they are quite young, and some sign languages have emerged very recently. Our study of compounds in a language that came into being only about 75 years ago (Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language) provides insight into the way in which compounds arise and acquire structure. We find in our data a relationship between conventionalization and grammaticalization of compounds: as particular forms become conventionalized in the community, both morphological and phonological structures begin to emerge.
First language acquisition of compounds
Authors: Dressler Wolfgang U. , Lettner Laura E. , Korecky-Kröll Katharina
Published: March 2014

This chapter discusses early phases of first language acquisition of compounds in German based on longitudinal data of two Austrian children and compares these data to results on compound acquisition in other languages. The first compounds to emerge in German (simultaneously with the emergence of noun and verb inflection and of diminutives) were subordinate and endocentric two-member noun-noun compounds without linking elements. The first correct linking element which emerged later on is -n after word-final schwa of the first member. Order of emergence of compound patterns can be related to factors such as frequency, productivity, morphotactic and morphosemantic transparency. Left-headed and exocentric compounds had not yet emerged in our child speech corpora, and only one coordinate compound appeared.
Subject pronoun expression in bilinguals of two null subject languages
Authors: Barnes Hilary
Published: March 2014

This paper examines subject pronoun expression in the speech of Spanish-Veneto bilinguals in central Mexico. Non-target subject expression has been found among adult language learners, heritage speakers, and speakers undergoing L1 attrition. Such patterns have been variously attributed to transfer/interference and loss of discourse-pragmatic constraints, among other factors. The situation discussed here is unique in that both languages are null subject languages in an environment of sustained bilingualism. Drawing on a variationist analysis of naturalistic data, the present work reveals a marked increase in overall rates of pronoun expression in Chipilo contact Spanish relative to monolingual Mexican Spanish; however, the patterning of overt pronoun use is similar to that of monolingual varieties of Mexican Spanish. The increase is explained in terms of cognitive economy.
Where are hiatuses left?
Authors: Colantoni Laura , Limanni Anna
Published: March 2014

We investigate the realization of iV sequences in a contact (CV) and non-contact (NCV) variety of Argentine Spanish. We test the following hypotheses: (1) diphthongization is increasing in CV; (2) diphthongization is sensitive to the etymological origin of the sequence; (3) delateralization in CV is an attractor for diphthongization. Results only support (1) and (2). While hiatuses are more frequent in CV, both varieties share the pan-Hispanic preference for diphthongs. However, CV and NCV differ from each other and from Peninsular varieties in the environments where hiatuses are left: NCV maintains few exceptional hiatuses and CV is less sensitive to the etymological origin of the sequence. Additionally, CV and NCV differ in the realization of diphthongs and of the diphthong/hiatus contrast: CV diphthongs are more coarticulated with V2 and more clearly differentiated from hiatuses. Thus, we argue that different varieties exploit different coarticulatory strategies to achieve a similar percept.
Relativization, intonational phrases and rich left peripheries
Authors: Herdan Simona
Published: March 2014

This paper provides an analysis of relativizer restrictions in relatives headed by bare quantifiers. I argue that the restriction arises from violations of the requirement to phonetically mark the edge of an intonational phrase. Consequently, the structural position of the relativizer determines grammaticality. I also show that the availability of D in the nominal domain has an effect on the relativizer choice.
Stress domain effects in French phonology and phonological development
Authors: Rose Yvan , dos Santos Christophe
Published: March 2014

In this paper, we discuss two distinct data sets. The first comes from the allophonic process of closed-syllable laxing in Québec French, which targets final (stressed) vowels even though these vowels should in theory be syllabified in open syllables in lexical representations (e.g. lune [Öly.n(6)]; *[Öly.n(6)]). The second is found in the forms produced by a first language learner of European French, who displays an asymmetry in her production of CVC versus CVCV target (adult) forms. The former displays full preservation (with concomitant manner harmony) of both consonants (e.g. passe --> [Öpat]). The latter undergoes deletion of the initial syllable if the consonants are not manner-harmonic in the input (e.g. appétit --> [piÖti] versus tennis --> [Öni]). We argue that both patterns can be explained in an approach that draws a formal distinction between phonological representation and phonetic implementation.
Syntactic realizations of plural in Romance and Germanic nominalizations
Authors: Alexiadou Artemis , Iordachioaia Gianina , Soare Elena
Published: March 2014

This paper offers a syntactic account for the various ways in which Plural is expressed within Argument-Supporting Nominals (ASNs) in Romance and Germanic. We first show, starting from Romanian data, that pluralization is connected to aspectual properties like (a)telicity and (un)boundedness. These properties may be realized under the syntactic category of verbal Aspect, that of nominal Number, or encoded by a [±count] features on the nominal category Classifier.We then support our theory with a comparison between the Romanian Infinitive/Supine and Spanish Nominal Infinitives (SNIs). The latter are fully nominal, but lack plural and we relate this to a [–count] feature in their Classifier. The comparison with English also shows the relevance of inner Aspect to nominalizations. The picture we get allows a better understanding of morphological and syntactic processes at work in nominalizations and of their nominal and verbal properties.
Modal ellipsis in French, Spanish and Italian
Authors: Dagnac Anne
Published: March 2014

French, Spanish and Italian, reputedly non-VP-ellipsis allowing languages, can display gaps after root modals. I argue that these gaps are instances of ellipsis, viewed as PF-deletion of a constituent. They indeed allow for A’-movement, which an alternative null proform analysis cannot capture. Yet, they differ from English VP-ellipsis, in particular wrt the kind of remnants they allow, their tolerance to voice mismatches, and by displaying a constraint on subjects in Antecedent Contained Deletion. I propose that these differences follow from the status of the modals in these languages and the size of the deleted structure, which is a TP in the three Romance languages vs a VP in English.
Optional prepositions in Brazilian Portuguese
Authors: Kato Mary Aizawa
Published: March 2014

This paper discusses the phenomenon of preposition optionallity in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), starting from Bouchard’s (1981) observation that the preposition of a strictly subcategorized PP complement in French can be absent in the “chopping” type of relativization, though the same sort of “deletion” is ruled out in wh-questions, a contrast that leads him to propose that movement is absent in such relatives. My aim in this paper is (a) to show that this phenomenon is not restricted to relative clauses, (b) to propose a uniform analysis of preposition optionallity in several domains, (c) to argue that prepositions which encode inherent case are optional in the numeration, and (d) to claim that absence of the preposition involves only A’-positions, where the DP can have a “default” case. The paper ends up with a discussion on contrastive topicalization, assumed to be derived from VP-topicalization.
Aspect shift in stative verbs and their arguments
Authors: Rodriguez Joshua
Published: March 2014

This paper offers an alternative explanation for coercion effects or ‘aspect shift’ with stative verbs in combination with the progressive or the aspectually specific and distinct Spanish past tenses. The account follows Rodriguez (2007) in exploiting lexical ambiguities to provide a richer set of VP Aktionsarten via normal compositional semantics. Crucially it is the addition of aspectually specific morphology that functions to filter out those VP interpretations which have incompatible Aktionsarten. The purported shifting effect therefore derives from one or another VP meaning (potentially including alternating NP denotations as well) in association with corresponding morphology via aspectual compatibility. The analysis provides a natural means for explaining why certain cases of ‘aspect shift’ do not occur, namely on the basis of the lack of the underlying semantic potentials of the words involved. The proposal investigates three cases in depth, with implied applicability to a broader range of examples.
Experimenting with wh-movement in Spanish
Authors: Goodall Grant
Published: March 2014

This paper provides evidence for an analysis of subject inversion in wh-questions in Spanish and demonstrates that techniques of experimental syntax play an important role in developing such analyses. The techniques used show that there is gradience in judgments of wh-questions depending on the nature of the filler and of the intervening subject. The facts fall out from the interplay of straightforward properties of the syntax (e.g. wh-movement, preverbal or postverbal placement of the subject) with straightforward properties of the processor (a common pool of limited resources to process wh-dependencies and establish discourse referents). The analysis predicts a correlation between the Overt Pronoun Rate in any given variety and the ability of a wh-dependency to tolerate an intervening subject, and the difference between Caribbean and mainland Latin American Spanish confirms this.
How Spanish phonotactics informs psycholinuistic models of speech production
Authors: Shelton Michael , Gerfen Chip , Palma Nicolás Gutiérrez
Published: March 2014

This study emphasizes the importance of close examination of language-specific phonotactic patterns when testing models of language processing. The results of a delayed naming task testing native speakers’ reactions to nonwords containing licit vs. proscribed patterns of stress and syllable structure offer empirical data to inform models of speech production. While the findings generally support a postlexical locus of syllable-level encoding (Levelt et al. 1999), the data also pose challenges for this model. It is argued that the model must identify more clearly the locus of and the interaction between stress-level and syllable-level encoding. The findings also suggest that the self-monitoring system may track phonotactic patterns in addition to conceptual accuracy.
Tracking and explaining variation and change in the grammar of American English
Authors: Rudanko Juhani
Published: March 2014

Both to infinitive and to -ing complement clauses selected by adjectival heads may involve subject control in English, but there are syntactic differences between them. In spite of the differences, some matrix predicates have shown variation and change between the two types of sentential complement in recent times. The article examines the adjective accustomed from this point of view, with evidence from the TIME Corpus. It is observed that in the first decade covered by the corpus, from 1923 through 1932, to infinitives were slightly more frequent than to -ing complements, but that in the 1960s the to -ing pattern had become predominant in comparison with the to infinitive pattern. The article points to such variation and change affecting the sentential complements of accustomed in one particular text type of American English, and identifies two explanatory principles to account for the variation observed. The first is the Extraction Principle, which is defined more broadly than in some earlier work, and the second is the postulation of a semantic contrast between the two complementation patterns. It is argued that both the Extraction Principle and the semantic distinction are statistically significant in explaining variation at one stage in the overall process of change that has been called the Great Complement Shift.
Prevent and the battle of the -ing clauses
Authors: Sellgren Elina
Published: March 2014

The article discusses the variation between the two most common sentential complements of the verb prevent, as in prevent me from going and prevent me going, from a semantic point of view. The variant me going became significantly more common in British English in the twentieth century, competing with the variant with from. Mair (2002) has suggested that a similar phenomenon may be incipient with semantically similar verbs like hinder and stop, signalling a more general grammatical change that is restricted to British English. With data from the British National Corpus, the article proposes a semantic distinction, a consequence of the recent competition, in order to partially explain the variation. The distinction links the notion of hypotheticality to the -ing clause in the prepositional variant, whereas the -ing clause without from expresses a realized event, or an existing property of the object NP of prevent.
On the idiomatization of “give + O + to” constructions
Authors: Akimoto Minoji
Published: March 2014

This paper discusses the idiomatization process of the “give + O + to” construction (e.g. give rise to and give way to). Investigation of this construction from Middle English to Present-Day English based on various corpora shows that, in the process of change of “give + indirect object + direct object” to “give + O + to”, the latter construction has strengthened its idiomatic nature leading to the development of many idioms based on this construction in Present-Day English. The function of eventive objects without suffixes (e.g. credit and rise) as direct objects is essential in this process of idiomatization. Of various factors contributing to the idiom formation of the “give + O + to” construction, weakening of nouniness of the direct object, construction and frequency, and French influence play the most important roles.
The clausal complementation of good in extraposition constructions
Authors: Van linden An
Published: March 2014

This article develops a functional synchronicLdiachronic description of the clausal complement patterns found with good in extraposition constructions (ECs), and compares these to the patterns found with other deontic-evaluative adjectives, such as appropriate, important and fitting. The adjectives studied can currently take either mandative complements expressing desired action, or propositional complements describing arguable claims. Good differs from adjectives such as appropriate and important in that it currently favours propositional toLclauses. More specifically, I will argue that it occurs in two types of partially filled constructions in the sense of Goldberg (1995) featuring such complements, viz. the locative pattern and the knowledge/acquisition of knowledge (KAK) pattern. The diachronic data will reveal that good started to prefer propositional toLclauses only recently, amongst others through the emergence of the KAK pattern in Late Modern English and its subsequent rise in frequency. In addition, the presentLday occurrence of purely evaluative adjectives like nice and great in the locative and KAK constructions suggests that analogy with this class of adjectives may have played a role as well.
Current change in the modal system of English
Authors: Close Joanne , Aarts Bas
Published: March 2014

This paper takes the variation between must, have to and have got to as a window through which to view changes in the modal system in Present-Day British English (1960s–1990s). The results from this study show a dramatic decrease in frequency of the core modal must and a significant increase in frequency of the semi-modal have to in the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE). Changes in the modal system affect both epistemic and root uses of must, although have to is only an active rival to root must; epistemic instances of have to (and have got to) are rare in the corpus. We suggest that a tendency to avoid expressions of strong commitment is the cause of the decline in must. This is supported by similar falls in the frequency of should and ought found by Leech et al. (2009).
Discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English
Authors: Bartnik Artur
Published: March 2014

The paper deals with discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English. It concludes that quantificational constructions in Old English are heterogeneous because they can result from movement, that is separation of the quantifier and the rest of the phrase, or base-generation when the separated nominal elements are generated in places in which they occur. Essentially, structures which display full morphological agreement result from movement. The movement types included in the paper are topicalization, scrambling, extraposition and NP (Noun Phrase) shift. By contrast, base-generated constructions do not show morphological agreement. Quantifiers in such structures are adverbial in nature.
Genitive variation in letters, history writing and sermons in Late Middle and Early Modern English
Authors: Juvonen Teo
Published: March 2014

This paper analyzes genitive variation from about 1420 to 1640 in three genres, letters, history writing and sermons. The corpus material is selected from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition (PPCME2), the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME) and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC). The occurrences of the genitive variants, the sLgenitive and the ofLgenitive, are quantified and categorized according to the factors of possessor weight, topicality and genitive relation. The corpus analysis shows that these factors have a significant impact on genitive variation in all the genres. The analysis also shows that the genres differ significantly from each other. However, the study shows no clear change over time, neither within the genres nor over the period as a whole.