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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
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
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
Eskimo Word Order Variation and Its Contact-Induced Perturbation.
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Fortescue, Michael – Journal of Linguistics, 1993
Although Eskimo languages are commonly characterized as displaying rather "free" word order compared to major western European languages, West Greenlandic (WG) has a clearly dominant, pragmatically neutral ordering pattern. It is argued that WG behaves more like Slavic languages. (Contains 36 references.) (LB)
Descriptors: Contrastive Linguistics, Dialects, Eskimo Aleut Languages, Foreign Countries
Word Order Typology, Lexical Government, and the Prediction of Multiple, Graded Effects in L2 Word Order.
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Zobl, Helmut – Language Learning, 1986
A review of research about second language learning indicates that nonprimary acquisition is sensitive to the center-periphery distinction. There is clear evidence that this construct has reflexes in interlanguage word order with respect to the probability of native word order influence, difficulty, and order of emergence. (CB)
Descriptors: Contrastive Linguistics, Correlation, Discourse Analysis, Interference (Language)
International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics Proceedings (4th, Taipei, Taiwan, July 18-20, 1994).
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Ho, Dah-an, Ed.; Tseng, Chiu-yu, Ed. – 1994
This publication of proceedings, most in English and some in Chinese, of a conference on Chinese languages and linguistics include the following papers: "On Rule Effect and Dialect Classification" (Chin-Chuan Cheng); "Cross-Linguistic Typological Variation, Grammatical Relations, and the Chinese Language" (Bernard Comrie);…
Descriptors: Affixes, Chinese, Contrastive Linguistics, Diachronic Linguistics