Although in the early days of generative linguistics Slovenian was rarely called on in the development of theoretical models, the attention it gets has subsequently grown, so that by now it has ...contributed to generative linguistics a fair share of theoretically important data. With 13 chapters that all build on Slovenian data, this book sets a new milestone. The topics discussed in the volume range from Slovenian clitics, which are called on to shed new light on the intriguing Person-Case Constraint and to provide part of the evidence for a new generalization relating the presence of the definite article and Wackernagel clitics, to functional elements such as the future auxiliary and possibility modals, the latter of which are discussed also from the perspective of language change. Even within the relatively well-researched topics like wh-movement, new findings are presented, both in relation to the structure of the left periphery and to the syntax of relative clauses.
How does cross-linguistic variation in linguistic structure affect children’s acquisition of early number word meanings? We tested this question by investigating number word learning in two unrelated ...languages that feature a tripartite singular-dual-plural distinction: Slovenian and Saudi Arabic. We found that learning dual morphology affects children’s acquisition of the number word two in both languages, relative to English. Children who knew the meaning of two were surprisingly frequent in the dual languages, relative to English. Furthermore, Slovenian children were faster to learn two than children learning English, despite being less-competent counters. Finally, in both Slovenian and Saudi Arabic, comprehension of the dual was correlated with knowledge of two and higher number words.
How does linguistic structure affect children's acquisition of early number word meanings? Previous studies have tested this question by comparing how children learning languages with different ...grammatical representations of number learn the meanings of labels for small numbers, like 1, 2, and 3. For example, children who acquire a language with singular-plural marking, like English, are faster to learn the word for 1 than children learning a language that lacks the singular-plural distinction, perhaps because the word for 1 is always used in singular contexts, highlighting its meaning. These studies are problematic, however, because reported differences in number word learning may be due to unmeasured cross-cultural differences rather than specific linguistic differences. To address this problem, we investigated number word learning in four groups of children from a single culture who spoke different dialects of the same language that differed chiefly with respect to how they grammatically mark number. We found that learning a dialect which features "dual" morphology (marking of pairs) accelerated children's acquisition of the number word two relative to learning a "non-dual" dialect of the same language.
Number words allow us to describe exact quantities like sixty-three and (exactly) one. How do we derive exact interpretations? By some views, these words are lexically exact, and are therefore unlike ...other grammatical forms in language. Other theories, however, argue that numbers are not special and that their exact interpretation arises from pragmatic enrichment, rather than lexically. For example, the word one may gain its exact interpretation because the presence of the immediate successor two licenses the pragmatic inference that one implies “one, and not two”. To investigate the possible role of pragmatic enrichment in the development of exact representations, we looked outside the test case of number to grammatical morphological markers of quantity. In particular, we asked whether children can derive an exact interpretation of singular noun phrases (e.g., “a button”) when their language features an immediate “successor” that encodes sets of two. To do this, we used a series of tasks to compare English-speaking children who have only singular and plural morphology to Slovenian-speaking children who have singular and plural forms, but also dual morphology, that is used when describing sets of two. Replicating previous work, we found that English-speaking preschoolers failed to enrich their interpretation of the singular and did not treat it as exact. New to the present study, we found that 4- and 5-year-old Slovenian-speakers who comprehended the dual treated the singular form as exact, while younger Slovenian children who were still learning the dual did not, providing evidence that young children may derive exact meanings pragmatically.
We test the hypothesis that children acquire knowledge of the successor function — a foundational principle stating that every natural number n has a successor n + 1 — by learning the productive ...linguistic rules that govern verbal counting. Previous studies report that speakers of languages with less complex count list morphology have greater counting and mathematical knowledge at earlier ages in comparison to speakers of more complex languages (e.g., Miller & Stigler, 1987). Here, we tested whether differences in count list transparency affected children’s acquisition of the successor function in three languages with relatively transparent count lists (Cantonese, Slovenian, and English) and two languages with relatively opaque count lists (Hindi and Gujarati). We measured 3.5- to 6.5-year-old children’s mastery of their count list’s recursive structure with two tasks assessing productive counting, which we then related to a measure of successor function knowledge. While the more opaque languages were associated with lower counting proficiency and successor function task performance in comparison to the more transparent languages, a unique within-language analytic approach revealed a robust relationship between measures of productive counting and successor knowledge in almost every language. We conclude that learning productive rules of counting is a critical step in acquiring knowledge of recursive successor function across languages, and that the timeline for this learning varies as a function of count list transparency.
When linearity prevails over hierarchy in syntax Gold, Jana Willer; Arsenijević, Boban; Batinić, Mia ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
01/2018, Letnik:
115, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Hierarchical structure has been cherished as a grammatical universal. We use experimental methods to show where linear order is also a relevant syntactic relation. An identical methodology and design ...were used across six research sites on South Slavic languages. Experimental results show that in certain configurations, grammatical production can in fact favor linear order over hierarchical structure. However, these findings are limited to coordinate structures and distinct from the kind of production errors found with comparable configurations such as “attraction” errors. The results demonstrate that agreement morphology may be computed in a series of steps, one of which is partly independent from syntactic hierarchy.
Advances in Formal Slavic Linguistics 2017 is a collection of fifteen articles that were prepared on the basis of talks given at the conference Formal Description of Slavic Languages 12.5, which was ...held on December 7-9, 2017, at the University of Nova Gorica. The volume covers a wide array of topics, such as control verbs, instrumental arguments, and perduratives in Russian, comparatives, negation, n-words, negative polarity items, and complementizer ellipsis in Czech, impersonal se-constructions and complementizer doubling in Slovenian, prosody and the morphology of multi-purpose suffixes in Serbo-Croatian, and indefinite numerals and the binding properties of dative arguments in Polish. Importantly, by exploring these phenomena in individual Slavic languages, the collection of articles in this volume makes a significant contribution to both Slavic linguistics and to linguistics in general.
In this paper we report on the results of five experiments documenting the existence of three distinct grammars of conjunct agreement in Slovenian, found both within and across individuals: agreement ...with the highest conjunct, agreement with the closest conjunct, or agreement with the Boolean Phrase itself. We show that this variation is constrained and that some of these mechanisms can be blocked and/or forced depending on the properties of the conjuncts. Finally, we offer the suggestion that the presence of intraindividual variation arises because of ambiguous properties of the primary linguistic data.
A recurring hypothesis about the agreement phenomena generalized as closest‐conjunct agreement takes this pattern to result from reduced clausal conjunction, simply displaying the agreement of the ...verb with the nonconjoined subject of the clause whose content survives ellipsis (Aoun, Benmamoun & Sportiche 1994, 1999; see also Wilder 1997). Closest‐conjunct agreement is the dominant agreement pattern in the South Slavic languages Slovenian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. A natural question is whether closest‐conjunct agreement in these varieties may indeed be analyzed as entirely derived from conjunction reduction. In this article, we report on two experiments conducted to test this. The results reject the hypothesis as far as these languages are concerned, thereby upholding the relevance of models developed to account for closest‐conjunct agreement within theories of agreement.
The hyperintensional South Slavic involuntary state/FEEL-LIKE construction is interesting in that it is restricted to a peculiar syntactic frame (dative subject and reflexive-impersonal or ...reflexive-passive verb) but has no overt element encoding its desiderative meaning and its intensionality. Recently it received two very different analyses. For Marušič and Žaucer (2006a), the construction is biclausal, with its desiderative meaning coming from a phonologically null verb. For Rivero (2009), its "modal" meaning arises from a viewpoint-aspect imperfective operator in a monoclausal structure. The aspect-based account poses a challenge for the theory of null verbs, since it cancels what had been considered a rare attestation of the theory's logical possibility of having a null matrix verb. It also poses a challenge for the sententionalist view of hyperintensionality, since it posits that the latter can arise outside a clausal complement. This paper demonstrates that the aspect-based account is problematic in several respects and reinstates the null-verb analysis.
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