Preface i1 Core Concepts 11.1 What is a sentence? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.1 Utterances, propositions and sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.2 Acceptability, grammaticality and stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1.3 Form and order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51.2 Tacit Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61.3 Syntactic theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101.4 Back to Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Morphosyntactic features 172.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172.2 Introducing Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172.3 What are features? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202.3.1 Feature Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212.3.2 Interface Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242.4 Motivating Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252.4.1 Major Category Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262.4.2 More on the content of words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282.4.3 Some more minor features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 Constituency and Theta Roles 483.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483.2 Constituents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483.3 Fundamental notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533.4 Determining the head . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573.5 Predicting the head - θ-roles and selectional features . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603.5.1 θ Roles and the θ-Criterion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613.5.2 Unassigned θ-roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643.5.3 Selectional Features and Lexical Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . 653.5.4 S-selectional Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683.6 Triggering Merge by feature checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711

http://roozbehhormozi.persiangig.com/document/core%20syntax%20a%20minimalist%20approach.pdf

Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach

The effect of outliers on reaction time analyses is evaluated. The first section assesses the power of different methods of minimizing the effect of outliers on analysis of variance (ANOVA) and makes recommendations about the use of transformations and cutoffs. The second section examines the effect of outliers and cutoffs on different measures of location, spread, and shape and concludes using quantitative examples that robust measures are much less affected by outliers and cutoffs than measures based on moments. The third section examines fitting explicit distribution functions as a way of recovering means and standard deviations and concludes that unless fitting the distribution function is used as a model of distribution shape, the method is probably not worth routine use.

Methods for Dealing With Reaction Time Outliers

In this paper, I discuss the distribution and interpretation of free choice items (FCIs) in Greek, a language exhibiting a lexical paradigm of such items distinct from that of negative polarity items. Greek differs in this respect from English, which uniformly employs any. FCIs are grammatical only in certain contexts that can be characterized as nonveridical (Giannakidou 1998, 1999), and although they yield universal-like interpretations in certain structures, they are not, I argue, universal quantifiers. Evidence will be provided that FCIsare indefinites; the quasi-universal effect is shown to be the result of binding by an operator with universal force. Additionally, the limited distribution of FCIs in non veridical contexts can be accounted for by analyzing them as indefinites which must always be interpreted in an intensional type. The difference between ``regular'' indefinites and FCIs, therefore, is reduced to a type difference which captures the fact that only the latter exhibit limited distribution: because of their intensional type, FCIs will be grammatical only in contexts providing alternatives (worlds or situations), and nonveridical contexts do exactly this. By contrast, FCIs are excluded from veridical and episodic contexts because these provide no alternatives and hence do not satisfy the lexical semantic requirement ofFCIs. The proposed analysis is supported by data from other languages as well (Spanish, Catalan,French) and has important consequences regarding the analysis of English any. If FCIs are not universal quantifiers but indefinites, then the usual ambiguity thesis (free choice any being universal, negative polarity any an existential) can no longer be maintained, at least not as one in terms of quantificational force.

/pdf/the-meaning-of-free-choice-4av4jq7ohi.pdf

The meaning of free choice

Phonological mean length of utterance (PMLU) is a whole word measure for measuring phonological proficiency. It measures the length of a child’s word and the number of correct consonants. The present study investigated the phonological length of utterance in native Kannada speaking children of 3 to 7 years age. A total of 400 subjects in the age range of 3-7 years participated in the study. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited from each child and analyzed for PMLU as per the rules suggested by Ingram. Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test were employed to compare the differences between the means of PMLU scores across the gender and the age respectively. The result revealed increase in PMLU score as the age increased suggesting a developmental trend in PMLU acquisition. No statistically significant differences were observed between the means of PMLU scores across the gender.

/pdf/language-in-india-strength-for-today-and-bright-hope-for-dfy0rj03tc.pdf

LANGUAGE IN INDIA Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

How does sign language compare with gesture, on the one hand, and spoken language on the other? Sign was once viewed as nothing more than a system of pictorial gestures without linguistic structure. More recently, researchers have argued that sign is no different from spoken language, with all of the same linguistic structures. The pendulum is currently swinging back toward the view that sign is gestural, or at least has gestural components. The goal of this review is to elucidate the relationships among sign language, gesture, and spoken language. We do so by taking a close look not only at how sign has been studied over the past 50 years, but also at how the spontaneous gestures that accompany speech have been studied. We conclude that signers gesture just as speakers do. Both produce imagistic gestures along with more categorical signs or words. Because at present it is difficult to tell where sign stops and gesture begins, we suggest that sign should not be compared with speech alone but should be compared with speech-plus-gesture. Although it might be easier (and, in some cases, preferable) to blur the distinction between sign and gesture, we argue that distinguishing between sign (or speech) and gesture is essential to predict certain types of learning and allows us to understand the conditions under which gesture takes on properties of sign, and speech takes on properties of gesture. We end by calling for new technology that may help us better calibrate the borders between sign and gesture.

/pdf/gesture-sign-and-language-the-coming-of-age-of-sign-language-498fvr3mn0.pdf

Gesture, sign and language: The coming of age of sign language and gesture studies

Introduction There are numerous popular misconceptions about sign languages. One of these misconceptions has it that sign languages are “languages on the hands,” that is, that sign language lexemes as well as morphologically and syntactically complex structures are articulated entirely by the hands (and possibly the lower arm). In the course of this chapter, we will show that this statement is far from appropriate. Surely, the hands play an important role in the articulation of signed utterances, but other articulators – the body, the head and (parts of) the face – are just as important. All linguistically significant elements that are not expressed by the hands are referred to as “nonmanual markers” or just “nonmanuals.” Actually, it has been shown that signers, while communicating, do not focus their attention on each other's hands but rather on the face, where essential grammatical information is encoded nonmanually (Siple 1978, Swisher, Christie & Miller 1989). Linguistically significant nonmanuals have to be distinguished from purely affective nonmanual markers such as facial expressions or head movements expressing disgust, disbelief or surprise, which are used by signers just as they are used by speakers. Differentiating between the two types of markers is not always straightforward, but certain distinguishing criteria have been suggested. The scope and the timing of linguistic nonmanual behaviors, for instance, is linguistically constrained relative to the manual sign(s) they accompany in a way that affective markers are not (e.g., Baker-Shenk 1983, Reilly & Anderson 2002).

https://www.cnlse.es/sites/default/files/Nonmanuals.their%20grammatical%20and%20prosodic%20roles.pdf

Nonmanuals: their grammatical and prosodic roles

The linguistic resources displayed by sign languages (SLs) in order to reproduce someone else’s utterances or thoughts have remained absent from the semantic research on reported discourse till very recently. This paper aims at contributing some fresh SL data to the discussion about the proper characterization of indexical interpretation in reported discourse/thought contexts. I will defend a unified treatment of quotational and non-quotational use of role shift in SLs, in line with Zucchi (2004) and other previous research. A covert Point of View Operator will be held responsible for the morphological and semantic properties of role shift constructions. One partial conclusion will be that the crosslinguistic validity of the “Shift-Together Constraint” by Anand & Nevins (2004) might not be instantiated in the SLs examined. The new data discussed comes mainly from Catalan Sign Language (LSC), the SL used by the Deaf Community in Catalonia. However, I also undertake limited crosslinguistic comparisons with published American Sign Language (ASL), Lingua Italiana dei Segni (LIS) and Danish Sign Language (DSL) data.

/pdf/context-shift-and-indexical-variables-in-sign-languages-3cf9imffo6.pdf

Context Shift and Indexical Variables in Sign Languages

Lexical access in Catalan Signed Language (LSC) production.

Twists of mood: the distribution and interpretation of indicative and subjunctive

The selection of clausal complement type by embedding predicates constitutes a privileged domain for the assessment of interface issues between different modules of the grammar. This article addresses the selectional problem posed by embedded if-questions (of semantic type (t, t) appearing as arguments of noninterrogative predicates like 'admit' or 'say' (which are assumed to select a that-clause of type t). We show that such UNSELECTED EMBEDDED QUESTIONS (UEQs) are semantically sensitive to the same set of elements as POLARITY SENSITIVE ITEMS, and this sensitivity constrains their distribution and interpretation. The proposal is that UEQs are headed by a semantically sensitive determiner Δ, which is covert in English (a counterpart of either) but overt in Basque. After raising, the UEQ leaves a variable of type t, thus solving the selectional problem. The interplay between s-selection, c-selection and lexical semantic specifications is argued to account for a number of other puzzles in clausal complementation.

Josep Quer

Papers

Nonmanuals: their grammatical and prosodic roles

Context Shift and Indexical Variables in Sign Languages

Lexical access in Catalan Signed Language (LSC) production.

Twists of mood: the distribution and interpretation of indicative and subjunctive

The Syntax and Semantics of Unselected Embedded Questions