The article revisits the canonical (Dem>Num>A>N) and non-canonical (A>Dem>Num>N & Dem>A>Num>N) prenominal patterns in Mandarin Chinese, from the perspective of the Labeling Algorithm. It shows that the syntactic distribution of adjectives are different, depending on the attributive-predicative sources and the…

This study reports findings from two truth value judgment experiments to address two research questions on Mandarin: (i) whether children and adults have the knowledge of the structural constraint Principle C in their pronoun resolution; and (ii) whether adults and children show the prohibition effect of the cyclic-c-command constraint or the QR…

Tourism has been growing fast as a global industry. Promoting national tourism is therefore an important part of a country's economic plan and can contribute to its economic success. Tourism slogans have always been part of the promotion of national tourism. Almost every country has their own catchy, pungent taglines to attract new tourists. This…

The so-called compound use of ki 'im has been interpreted mainly either with exceptive ("except" or "unless") or adversative meaning ("but" or "rather"), although it has sometimes also been interpreted in other ways such as "only" or "surely". These various meanings have been applied…

Taking up analytical issues raised primarily in Dixon (2000) and Dixon & Aikhenvald (2000), this dissertation combines descriptive work with a medium-sized (50-language) typological study. Chapter 1 situates the dissertation against a concise survey of typological-functional work on causative constructions from the last few decades, and…

Structural priming (or syntactic priming) is a speaker's tendency to reuse the same structural pattern as one that was previously encountered (Bock, 1986). This study investigated (a) whether the implicit learning processes involved in long-lag structural priming lead to differential second language (L2) improvement in producing two structural…

Syntactic differences between languages are the focus of attention in this approach to contrastive study of grammatical categories. The categories of the first language are listed in a "translation-paradigm" opposite the possible categories of the target language after translation of the corpus. Three examples which contrast the clause, verbal…

Too often in teaching English to speakers of other languages, the patterns of intonation, stress, and juncture are neglected; as a result, the student's comprehension and power of expression are reduced. After the basic suprasegmental patterns are taught, the teacher should continue to teach the patterns which are useful in distinguishing meanings…

This paper focuses on the temporal and modal meanings associated with root infinitives (RIs) and other non-finite clauses in several typologically diverse languages--English, Russian, Greek and Dutch. I discuss the role that event structure, aspect, and modality play in the interpretation of these clauses. The basic hypothesis is that in the…

This paper argues: (1) that one of the major syntactic constraints adopted by many proponents of the Extended Standard Theory, namely the Specified Subject Condition (SSC), is empirically inadequate with respect to "unbounded" extraction phenomena; and (2) that the unbounded extraction data which the SSC purported to account for need to be…

In many languages, the article cannot occur when a possessive phrase is present in the noun phrase (NP). Argues that these patterns can be understood in terms of economic motivation because possessed NPs are very likely to be definite. Shows how the performance motivation of economy creates the competence pattern in diachronic change. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the bare-noun phrase (NP) complementation pattern of the Spanish verb "tener" (have). Shows that the maximality of the complement NP is dependent upon three factors: (1) idiosyncratic valence requirements; (2) encyclopedic knowledge related to possession; and (3) contextualized semantic construal. (Author/VWL)