Denominal verb formationin English and Modern Greek

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Nikos Koutsoukos
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Strong Preference ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Boundary Permeability ◽  
Category Assignment

Abstract Cross-linguistically, there are different patterns for denominal verb formation and languages show preferences for certain patterns (cf. McIntyre, 2015). In this paper, I focus on denominal verb formation in English and Modern Greek. The analyzed data come from the TenTen corpora (Sketch Engine, Kilgariff et al., 2014). The first aim is to quantify the use of the patterns of denominal verb formations in both languages. The results of the analysis corroborate the findings of previous analyses, such as the strong preference for conversion for denominal verb formation in English and for suffixation in Modern Greek. However, the present paper aims to go a step further. The second aim is to discuss why English and Modern Greek show these preferences. I propose that the preferences can be explained if we correlate the parameters of inflectional marking, word order/configurationality, system of lexical category assignment and boundary permeability.

Turkish and the Southwestern Turkic (Oghuz) languages

2020 ◽  
pp. 392-410
Author(s):  
Jaklin Kornfilt
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Modern Standard

The Southwestern (Oghuz) branch of Turkic consists of languages that are largely mutually intelligible, and are similar with respect to their structural properties. Because Turkish is the most prominent member of this branch with respect to number of speakers, and because it is the best-studied language in this group, this chapter describes modern standard Turkish as the representative of that branch and limits itself to describing Turkish. The morphology of Oghuz languages is agglutinative and suffixing; their phonology has vowel harmony for the features of backness and rounding; their basic word order is SOV, but most are quite free in their word order and are wh-in-situ languages; their relative clauses exhibit gaps corresponding to the clause-external head, and most embedded clauses are nominalized. Fully verbal embedded clauses are found, too. The lexicon, while largely Turkic, also has borrowings from Arabic, Persian, French, English, and Modern Greek and Italian.

The DINOUS parser

1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-173
Author(s):  
ANTHONY DRAGGIOTIS ◽  
MARIA GRIGORIADOU ◽  
GIORGOS PHILOKYPROU
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Free Word ◽  
The Way

This paper deals with the development of parsing techniques for the analysis of natural language sentences. We present a paradigm of a multi- path shift-reduce parser which combines two differently structured computational subsystems. The first uses information concerning native speakers' preferences, and the second deals with the linguistic knowledge. To apply preferences on parsing, we propose a method to rank the alternative partial analyses on the basis of parse context and frequency of use effects. The method is mainly based on psycholinguistic evidence, since we hope eventually to build a parser working as closely as possible to the way native speakers analyse natural sentences. We also discuss in detail techniques for optimizing the effectiveness of the proposed model. The system has worked successfully in parsing sentences in Modern Greek, a language where the relatively free word order characteristic results in many ambiguity problems. The proposed parsing model is consistent with many directions in the field of preference-based parsing, and it is proved to be adequate in building effective and maintainable natural language analysers. It is believed that this model can also be used in parsing sentences in languages other than Greek.

scholarly journals Subject-verb word order in Spanish interrogatives

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther L. Brown ◽  
Javier Rivas
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Question Type ◽  
Strong Preference ◽  
Conversational Speech ◽  
Puerto Rican Spanish ◽  
Rule Analysis ◽  
Subject Expression

We conduct a quantitative analysis of conversational speech from native speakers of Puerto Rican Spanish to test whether optional non-inversion of subjects in wh-questions (¿qué tú piensas?) is indicative of a movement in Spanish from flexible to rigid word order (Morales 1989; Toribio 2000). We find high rates of subject expression (51%) and a strong preference for SV word order (47%) over VS (4%) in all sentence types, in line with assertions of fixed SVO word order. The usage-based examination of 882 wh-questions shows non-inversion occurs in 14% of the cases (25% of wh-questions containing an overt subject). Variable rule analysis reveals subject, verb and question type significantly constrain interrogative word order, but we find no evidence that word order is predicted by perseveration. SV word order is highest in rhetorical and quotative questions, revealing a pathway of change through which word order is becoming fixed in this variety.

scholarly journals The origins of the Romance analytic passive: Evidence from word order

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieven Danckaert
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Strong Preference ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Phonological Process ◽  
Present Tense

This chapter argues that despite formal resemblances, Latin perfect tense BE-periphrases of the type amatus sum ‘I was loved’ are not the historical source of Romance present tense passives like Italian sono amato and French je suis aimé (both meaning ‘I am (being) loved’). Evidence comes from the observation that Late Latin has a very strong preference for the head-final order ‘past participle–BE’, which goes against the otherwise general tendency for the language to move towards a strictly head-initial TP. As an alternative, I propose that amatus sum perfects disappeared from the language, and that the analytic present tense passives are new formations. The Late Latin preference for head-final BE-periphrases is explained in terms of phonological weakening of the auxiliary. I conclude by comparing this phonological process to the oft-discussed grammaticalization of HAVE (habeo) as a marker of futurity.

WORD ORDER IN MODERN GREEK

2008 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Philippaki-Warburton
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Modern Greek

Syntactic and morphosyntactic phenomena in Modern Greek dialects: The state of the art

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-159
Author(s):  
Angela Ralli
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Section 8 ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
The University ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

AbstractIn this paper I give an overview of several syntactic and morpho-syntactic phenomena applying to a range of Modern Greek dialects. I present a descriptive account of these phenomena, and refer to some possible theoretical analyses put forward by a number of well-known linguists. In certain cases, I offer evidence for the cross-dialectal occurrence of a phenomenon as a contribution to the establishment of syntactic isoglosses, and report some hints of its diachronic development when the available sources permit. <br /> My data are drawn not only from written sources, but also from the oral material that has been collected in the last six years from several Greek areas, and stored in the Modern Greek Dialects Laboratory (MGDL) of the University of Patras. <br /> The paper has the following structure: Section 1 contains some general observations with respect to the study and development of Modern Greek dialects. Dialectal word order is presented next (Section 2), followed by certain observations on the use of complementizers (Section 3), negation (Section 4), and sentential particles (Section 5). The issues of infinitival forms and periphrastic tenses (perfect and future) are examined in Section 6, while elements appearing in wh-questions constitute the topic of Section 7. The case form of the indirect object is tackled next (Section 8), and the paper ends with the well-described topic of verbal clitics, which is presented in Section 9. The paper concludes with remarks stressing the importance of research in the field of Modern Greek dialectology.

scholarly journals Information Structure in Modern Greek

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Skopeteas
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Pitch Accents

This chapter deals with the prosodic and syntactic reflexes of information structure in Modern Greek. The relevant properties of this language are: (a) the word order is sensitive to information structure, such that topics and foci target positions in the left periphery and background information is right dislocated; (b) the intonational nucleus depends on the focus domain and is realized through pitch accents; and (b) definite complements must be doubled through co-referent clitic pronouns if they are not accented, which depends on information structure. This chapter introduces these phenomena and outlines their interaction for the expression of information structural notions.

Profiling vocabulary acquisition in Irish

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
CIARA O'TOOLE ◽  
PAUL FLETCHER
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Vocabulary Acquisition ◽  
Vocabulary Development ◽  
Parent Report ◽  
Strong Preference ◽  
Closed Class

ABSTRACTInvestigations into early vocabulary development, including the timing of the acquisition of nouns, verbs and closed-class words, have produced conflicting results, both within and across languages. Studying vocabulary development in Irish can contribute to this area, as it has potentially informative features such as a VSO word order, and semantically rich prepositions. This study used a parent report adapted for Irish, to measure vocabulary development longitudinally for children aged between 1 ; 04 and 3 ; 04. The findings indicated that the children learned closed-class words at relatively smaller vocabulary sizes compared to children acquiring other languages, and had a strong preference for nouns.

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