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Postverbal Nominal Subjects and Verb-Second in Middle French: Syntax and Information Structure
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Scott A. Evans – ProQuest LLC, 2024
Although a growing body of research has sought to understand the relationship between word order and information structure, previous information structure (IS) analyses of verb-subject order have produced conflicting results for Medieval French, which have subsequently led to conflicting claims about the importance of IS to its word order as well…
Descriptors: French, Word Order, Medieval Literature, Literary Genres
Unidirectional Multilingual Convergence: Typological and Social Factors
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Yakpo, Kofi – International Journal of Multilingualism, 2023
Suriname represents an interesting case of unidirectional multilingual convergence in a linguistic area. The multilingual ecology of Suriname is hierarchical. The Germanic language Dutch exerts structural and lexical influence 'downwards', but other languages do not do so 'upwards' to the same degree. This study analyses the development of word…
Descriptors: Multilingualism, Language Classification, Indo European Languages, Foreign Countries
Historical Linguistics and the Case for Sign Language Families
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Reagan, Timothy – Sign Language Studies, 2021
This article offers a brief overview of historical linguistics and explores the value of historical "sign" linguistics. The specific focus of the article is on the question of the extent to which the concept of "sign language families" is a legitimate and useful one. It is suggested that although lateral transmission and…
Descriptors: Sign Language, Diachronic Linguistics, Correlation, Language Classification
Word Order Typology Interacts with Linguistic Complexity: A Cross-Linguistic Corpus Study
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Yadav, Himanshu; Vaidya, Ashwini; Shukla, Vishakha; Husain, Samar – Cognitive Science, 2020
Much previous work has suggested that word order preferences across languages can be explained by the dependency distance minimization constraint (Ferrer-i Cancho, 2008, 2015; Hawkins, 1994). Consistent with this claim, corpus studies have shown that the average distance between a head (e.g., verb) and its dependent (e.g., noun) tends to be short…
Descriptors: Word Order, Computational Linguistics, Contrastive Linguistics, Psycholinguistics
Word-Order Typology and the Acquisition of Case Marking: A Self-Paced Reading Study in Latin as a Second Language
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VanPatten, Bill; Smith, Megan – Second Language Research, 2019
This article reports the findings of a study in which we investigated the possible effects of word order on the acquisition of case marking. In linguistic typology (e.g. Greenberg, 1963) a very strong correlation has been shown between dominant SOV (subject object verb) word order and case marking. No such correlation exists for SVO (subject verb…
Descriptors: Word Order, Second Language Learning, Grammar, Language Classification
A Large-Scale Cross-Linguistic Investigation of the Acquisition of Passive
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Armon-Lotem, Sharon; Haman, Ewa; de López, Kristine Jensen; Smoczynska, Magdalena; Yatsushiro, Kazuko; Szczerbinski, Marcin; van Hout, Angeliek; Dabašinskiene, Ineta; Gavarró, Anna; Hobbs, Erin; Kamandulyte-Merfeldiene, Laura; Katsos, Napoleon; Kunnari, Sari; Nitsiou, Chrisa; Olsen, Lone Sundahl; Parramon, Xavier; Sauerland, Uli; Torn-Leesik, Reeli; van der Lely, Heather – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2016
This cross-linguistic study evaluates children's understanding of passives in 11 typologically different languages: Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Polish. The study intends to determine whether the reported gaps between the comprehension of active and passive and between short and…
Descriptors: Language Research, Form Classes (Languages), Language Processing, Language Acquisition