This article investigates word order of clitics in L2 Slovak and the possible impact of cognitive factors on it. Based on data from the learner corpus, the article makes a first attempt at a more ...thorough inquiry of ordering patterns in the interlanguage of non-native speakers of Slovak to assess whether cognitive principles of contiguity, relevance, and verb–object bonding possibly have an effect on preferential clitics placement. As proxies for cognitive effects on word order, linguistic and (psycho)linguistic predictors are used, such as proficiency level to consider the possible developmental patterns of word order competence and L1 language group of speakers. The dataset includes 1,051 sentences with the annotated erroneous placement of clitics from learner corpus errkorp-1.0. The data are further annotated manually with respect to relevant variables (type of clitic component, syntactic environment in which this component occurs, expected and actual distance of clitic component from matrix verb in terms of linear dependency segments and syntactic words, actual and expected position of clitic component on right or left periphery of the matrix verb, and proficiency level according to CEFR and L1 language group of speakers). Correspondence analysis based on corpus data demonstrates the relevance of proficiency levels and the irrelevance of the L1 speaking group for preferential orders in the interlanguage. It is thus concluded that the interference hypothesis has little explanatory power for clitic placement in Slovak as L2. It is shown, however, that preferential ordering patterns in the interlanguage can be explained as being regulated by cognitive principles that operate irrespectively of L1.
Of the six possible orderings of the three main constituents of language (subject, verb, and object), two—SOV and SVO—are predominant cross‐linguistically. Previous research using the silent gesture ...paradigm in which hearing participants produce or respond to gestures without speech has shown that different factors such as reversibility, salience, and animacy can affect the preferences for different orders. Here, we test whether participants’ preferences for orders that are conditioned on the semantics of the event change depending on (i) the iconicity of individual gestural elements and (ii) the prior knowledge of a conventional lexicon. Our findings demonstrate the same preference for semantically conditioned word order found in previous studies, specifically that SOV and SVO are preferred differentially for different types of events. We do not find that iconicity of individual gestures affects participants’ ordering preferences; however, we do find that learning a lexicon leads to a stronger preference for SVO‐like orders overall. Finally, we compare our findings from English speakers, using an SVO‐dominant language, with data from speakers of an SOV‐dominant language, Turkish. We find that, while learning a lexicon leads to an increase in SVO preference for both sets of participants, this effect is mediated by language background and event type, suggesting that an interplay of factors together determines preferences for different ordering patterns. Taken together, our results support a view of word order as a gradient phenomenon responding to multiple biases.
Spanish, contrary to Catalan, French and Italian, allows causees to appear in pre-infinitival position. This paper takes as initial point of departure the asymmetries between the pre-infinitival ...position vs. the post-infinitival discussed in Ordóñez and Saab (2017). I provide a cartographic account in which more than one site for causees must be posited. This proposal follows the same reasoning that posits more than one subject position in the clausal spine (see for instance Cardinaletti 2004). I characterize the higher pre-infinitival position as a criterial position in the sense of Rizzi (2006, 2007). Following that proposal, I address the question of the interaction of case in this higher causee projection. I adopt Baker and Vinokurova’s (2010) proposal that UG must allow two ways for case resolution: case via agreement and dependent case. I will show that Spanish spoken in Catalonia is uniform in its case assignment solution of dative case for causees. I propose that the higher causee projection is an applicative head which assigns dative uniformly. However, for Catalan, Italian and French and many other dialects of Spanish, case assignment depends on the transitivity of the infinitival verb. In these varieties I invoke dependent case.
The extent to which the linguistic system-its architecture, the representations it operates on, the constraints it is subject to-is specific to language has broad implications for cognitive science ...and its relation to evolutionary biology. Importantly, a given property of the linguistic system can be "specific" to the domain of language in several ways. For example, if the property evolved by natural selection under the pressure of the linguistic function it serves then the property is domain-specific in the sense that its design is tailored for language. Equally though, if that property evolved to serve a different function or if that property is domain-general, it may nevertheless interact with the linguistic system in a way that is unique. This gives a second sense in which a property can be thought of as specific to language. An evolutionary approach to the language faculty might at first blush appear to favor domain-specificity in the first sense, with individual properties of the language faculty being specifically linguistic adaptations. However, we argue that interactions between learning, culture, and biological evolution mean any domain-specific adaptations that evolve will take the form of weak biases rather than hard constraints. Turning to the latter sense of domain-specificity, we highlight a very general bias, simplicity, which operates widely in cognition and yet interacts with linguistic representations in domain-specific ways.
Conventional neural autoregressive decoding commonly assumes a fixed left-to-right generation order, which may be sub-optimal. In this work, we propose a novel decoding algorithm— InDIGO—which ...supports flexible sequence generation in arbitrary orders through insertion operations. We extend Transformer, a state-of-the-art sequence generation model, to efficiently implement the proposed approach, enabling it to be trained with either a pre-defined generation order or adaptive orders obtained from beam-search. Experiments on four real-world tasks, including word order recovery, machine translation, image caption, and code generation, demonstrate that our algorithm can generate sequences following arbitrary orders, while achieving competitive or even better performance compared with the conventional left-to-right generation. The generated sequences show that InDIGO adopts adaptive generation orders based on input information.
This article first gives an overview of the different uses of French apposition and then focuses on nominal appositions, a kind of supplementive clause introduced by a nominal group (NG) without an ...article. Only translations of initial nominal appositions are examined, i.e. those which are placed at the beginning of the sentence and where the content of the initial structure is expressed by an apposition or NG as the subject. In this context, word order and the use of commas are discussed, which are often of importance for Slovenian language users. Based on the FraSloK corpus, the following conclusions can be drawn: (a) sentence-initial position is maintained much more often in novels than in newspaper articles; (b) the expression of the content of initial structures with an apposition and an NG, which functions as a subject, is fairly evenly represented in more than half of the cases from newspaper articles, while in novels the subject function is prominent; (c) apart from the change in sentence position, Slovenian apposition corresponds to the source structure, and when its content is expressed by an NG with subject function, there are changes at different levels compared to French; (d) the (non-)use of the comma cannot be satisfactorily justified on the basis of the present corpus, but the examples suggest that it is based on translators’ personal choices and also depends on the possibilities of expression in the target language. Suggestions have already been made to change the rules and usage examples, which are not tenable in our cases, and would require further consideration.
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