Talk:Subject side parameter

RM Dechaine (talk) 05:48, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Articles about "adnominal/prenominal possessor"
Found 2 papers about "adnominal/prenominal possessor", don't know if it's helpful.

Resuming Reflexives

Abstract

In this paper, we offer an analysis for the prenominal possessor doubling construction (PPDC) as it occurs in Germanic, paying particular attention to the differences between Norwegian and West Flemish. Our analysis implements recent theoretical proposals concerning locality relations, the Anti-Locality Hypothesis, the idea that movement not only must not target a position too far away, but it cannot be too close either. Anti-Locality is formulated over derivational sub-domains relevant for the operation Spell Out, so-called Prolific Domains, and the ban on Domain-internal movement is PF-driven. In order to yield a well-formed PF-object, anti-local movement may be repaired by spelling out a copy with a different PF-shape; this operation of Copy Spell Out inserts a grammatical formative to save a PF-violation. We take pronominal elements to be grammatical formatives par excellence and develop an application of this approach to the nominal layer, focusing on the PPDC. This framework derives the occurrence of a possessive pronoun doubling the possessor, which we analyse in terms of an anti-local movement dependency in which the moved possessor spells out a lower copy as the doubling possessive pronoun. We further discuss comparisons across Germanic dialects. Our main proposal is that the doubling pronoun is a resumptive element, understood more generally as a spelled out copy of the (moved) possessor DP and as such inserted into the computation derivationally.

Evidential, raised possessor, and the historical source of the ergative construction in Indo-Iranian

Abstract

This paper argues (i) that the source of the ergative construction of the transitive verb in Indic and Iranian languages was anticausative but not passive as has widely been assumed, (ii) that it functioned as a modally marked evidential which indicated that the event in question was inferred or reported rather than directly witnessed, and (iii) that the agent was by origin a genitive-marked adnominal possessor raised out of its noun phrase and later reanalysed as the syntactic subject, its uniform instrumental-marking in Sanskrit being an innovation. In view of the fact that the possessive modifier precedes its head this analysis can account naturally for the position of the transitive agent at the beginning of the clause, preceding the object. It is, finally, suggested that the construction originated with non-agentive intransitive verbs and that it spread to transitives through the intermediary of ergative (ambitransitive) verbs which can have both intransitive-spontaneous and transitive-causative forms, a hypothesis which creates a diachronic link between lexical and structural ergativity.

Argentum 93 (talk) 07:59, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Clarity
The introduction section clearly explained the related term “specifier head parameter” and compared this concept with “head-directionality parameter.” However, there are a few points that can be made more clear. For example, categorizing the six word orders by subject parameter (either head-initial or head-final) may clarify the distinction between head parameter and word order. Also, the introduction paragraph ends with a “surprising” fact, which is explained in parentheses. It may be helpful to clarify this in two ways: (1) How is subject parameter related to head parameter? (2) Why is the contrast significant/notable? In addition, the first sentence in the history section would profit from some clarification by re-wording. For instance changing the sentence to: “Noam Chomsky presented his work on principles and parameters, which was first developed in the late 1960’s and was later introduced in his Lectures on Government and Binding (1981)” seems to be more readable than how it stands now. Finally, the article would benefit from giving more explication of the data. In Data (5), for instance, it is not very clear that the example shows a SVO structure because the morpheme gloss has the order of ‘Auxiliary-Subject-Verb-Object’ could be mistaken as ‘Verb-Subject-Verb-Object’. It might help to have a glossary at the end of the article for the acronyms, too, such as SGPST.

We added sub-category in each word order such as "specifier-head" "head-specifier" and "subject-medial" so that it is more clear and each word order can be explained more clearly with respect to X-bar Theory. By doing so, it shows how each word order is related to "specifier" and "head parameter" a little bit. More detailed explanation is under each section. Also, We removed "surprisingly" in the intro section Sanjen50 (talk) 07:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Verifiability and Citations
In terms of verifiability, there are many instances of uncited work. The examples from English and other languages need citations as per linguistic convention (as discussed in class). Any other generalizations or statements in the article also must be cited. For example, when saying the OSV word order is rare in the sub-section ‘OSV’, a source must be cited who made this claim. Some of the citations were very well done because there are direct links to the articles, but there are a couple of formatting errors in the references section. Most notably, there are two distinct citation styles in the references section. Being consistent with the style of notation within the article would be helpful. There are also some citations in this section that are not used in the text of the article. These either need to be deleted or incorporated into the text.

We made sure all the ideas suggested in the articles are cited properly, either right after the idea is suggested or under "reference" section at the very bottom of the article. We kept one citation style for consistency. We revised the reference section as well as all citations to make sure there is no errors. Sanjen50 (talk) 07:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

We have incorporated your suggested changes into our article. The rarity of the OSV structure has been cited. Also, the formatting of the citations has been fixed and we have deleted the citations that are not used in the text. We have updated all of our grey example boxes with proper citations that include the author of the paper, year, page number and example number as well. Cnchia (talk) 07:51, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality
The articles shows both good and bad use of neutrality. There are some cases of non neutral language. For example, in the introduction, the phrase, “Compared to head-directionality parameter quite surprisingly, there are few subject last languages (as head-directionality appears to occur roughly half of the time),” shows non-neutral context due to the use of the phrase “quite surprisingly”. If this were taken out, the language would be more neutral. Common cases of an infraction in neutrality occur due to the addition of adjectives and point of view words that show bias. Language should be written in terms of proving fact, eliminating all opinionated phrases, points of view and bias. A suggestion would be to elaborate on Baker’s opinion because this is a mainstream form of data and opinion for this topic. Stating this type of opinion from a cited source is encouraged and it will lead you away from stating your own opinion. There was however good use and example of neutrality in the article. The use of different scholars for the different data portions of your article is a positive factor to the neutrality of your article because it shows no bias to one form of research data.

We took out the word "surprisingly" and tried to avoid using any adjectives in the article. Sanjen50 (talk) 07:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC) We introduced only the ideas that are suggested by some linguists or the articles with evidence. If there was a theory, we mentioned that it was a theory along with by whom the theory was suggested. Sanjen50 (talk) 07:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Quality of research & Comprehensiveness
The quality of research in this article varies in terms of the specific research and sources that were chosen for this article. The references that were cited were not all influential references. Only some of the articles that were cited have been cited many times in other forms of text on the topic. Some of the references that were used have only been cited a handful of times, which shows the quality and reliability of them are not as strong as they should be. Another flaw is that the proper citations that correspond to these references were not used in the text of the wikipedia article. It is important to remember that any generalized ideas that have been taken from prior existing articles needs to be recognized in the form of a citation. The fact that only some of these articles are influential affects the comprehensiveness of the article. The article lacks details about the word orders, such as providing the percentage of languages with each word order, as well as why particular languages were chosen as examples for each word order.

We looked at more academic articles to make the article richer. We also added more readings and related pages under "see also" section and "additional readings". Sanjen50 (talk) 07:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

As per your suggestion, we added a table on the percentages of language orders. We have tried to find more research on theories for our section on word ordering. We did not cite the papers we used in the actual Wikipedia article, but included them below in the references section. Cnchia (talk) 07:56, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Lay-out
In terms of the lay-out, each word order has a separate section and example given, as well as a “See also” and “Additional reading” section. The organization is nicely separated in clear sections, with examples and tree diagrams as a visual aid, but a suggestion would be to group the 6 word orders in the theory under two main sections: subject first (specifier-head) and subject final (head -specifier). Then under subject first and subject final sections you can further divide which word orders are base-generated and which are derived. On another note, the footnotes can be put in a separate section from the references, list the author and year of publication as footnotes, and the full information of the articles in the references.

We added some charts and more tables so that the article looks more neat. We revised categorizing each sections so that the article is more easier to read. Sanjen50 (talk) 07:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Images
There is good use of images throughout the article that help clarify the corresponding material. It would be helpful to have uniformity in the formation of the caption; All of the captions read ‘XXX word order,’ except the VOS image. This one should be changed to fit the rest. It may also be helpful to insert an image showing the syntactic movement (V-fronting) described in section ‘VSO’.

Thanks for your comment. We have corrected the description of each word order images to make it consistent. We added a new image for VSO, however, we are unable to make a tree form for OSV word order. As we have stated that this type of word order doesn't fit with the X-bar Theory. --Kathyhht (talk) 03:50, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Style
The writing style is generally academic, using passive voice and the avoidance of first-person narrative. Some details that you may want to pay attention to include the following: There are some words that are can be substituted with more accurate ones like “usual” in the first sentence of SOV, whose meaning can be better expressed with “common”, and “modified from” in this sentence can also be replaced with a more grammatical phrase. Also a few sentences (e.g. the second sentence in the History section) can be more can be better rephrased.

We changed the "usual" to "common" and also rephrased the sentence with "modified from". Sanjen50 (talk) 07:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Additional Resources
Here are some resources you may find helpful when building the rest of the article.

-Percentage of languages with each word order: http://wals.info/feature/81A#2/18.0/152.8

-For VSO and SOV languages you may try: Carnie, A. & Guilfoyle, E. 2000, The Syntax of Verb Initial Languages, Oxford University Press (US), New York (http://lib.myilibrary.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/Open.aspx?id=53067) Carnie, A., Dooley, S.A. & Harley, H. 2005, Verb first: on the syntax of verb-initial languages, John Benjamins Pub, Amsterdam; Philadelphia. (http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ubc/reader.action?docID=10074863)

-For diachronic change and language acquisition you may try: Roberts, I. 2007, Diachronic syntax, Oxford University Press, GB (http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ubc/reader.action?docID=10271411)

Thanks for your resources, we used some of the references you provided. E.g. we included the percentage of languages with its word orders from WALS, for VOS word order, we used (Carnie, A. & Guilfoyle, E. 2000) to help explaining the existence of this word order.--Kathyhht (talk) 03:57, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Discussion
(To respond, use : followed by no space and your comment. Remember to sign your comments)

What exactly is the history of subject-side parameter. I have nailed it down to Chomsky, but he began talk about parameters in general. I also found that it went, roughly: parameters > head-direction > subject-side. Beyond that, I do not know who coined the term, where it first appeared, etc.--Danachos (talk) 06:36, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * One of the first times I see the term "subject-side parameter" is in Baker's book "The Atoms of Language", but that was published only in 2001, which leads me to believe I am missing a lot.--Danachos (talk) 06:38, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Avoid steering towards discussion about head-direction on this page. There is seemingly a lot more work done in regard to head-direction than subject-side parameter, and they are similar enough to get confused.--Danachos (talk) 06:36, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

I think there's another group doing the head-direction. We can add it to see also section since it is relevant to our topic. I assume we should mainly focus on the subject position in different structure patterns?--Kathyhht (talk) 17:58, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

I am having trouble finding articles on explaining how SVO/SOV structures are formed according to X-bar theory and I am not sure how to explain these word orders with X-bar thoery... I've been searching articles by "SVO" "SOV" "Specifier-head" "X-bar Theory". Could anyone help with this? --Sanjen50 (talk) 06:11, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

=Page outline=

Differences in word ordering
Word ordering appears to play a role in the placement of the subject.

SVO
testing:insert picture --Kathyhht (talk) 06:00, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

VOS
Malagasy language--Kathyhht (talk) 05:52, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

VSO & OSV
Welsh, Irish--Kathyhht (talk) 03:24, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Additional explanations
Some languages may abandon parameters and use other methods? Cnchia (talk) 18:21, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
 * it should be difference of theories rather than language facts. A particular word order is what is observed for languages but people could explain it differently. For example, VOS can be analyzed to follow the parameter with subject following [VO], but can be also analyzed by moving [VO] over Subject from an underlying SVO. You should have found these different viewpoints in your references Lingfan (talk) 03:52, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but can you explain this further? We do not understand what you mean at all. Danachos (talk) 02:09, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I found you've incorporated this in the article: (a) you presented possible word orders in lgs, (b) you discussed viewpoint different from X'-theory. You may not need an additional section called "other explanations for word ordering" but enrich the theoretic discussion of each word order. For example, to see if languages which have the same word order receive different accounts in the literature and evidence/reasons for them.Lingfan (talk) 01:09, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Why are some word orders more common?
maybe some languages are more easy to produce? Cnchia (talk) 18:28, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Changes over time
research claiming the original word order was SOV. The other word orders are derivation of it. --Kathyhht (talk) 02:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Controversies
--Danachos (talk) 05:27, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

=Articles from 70's onward (bibliographies)=

1970s
The article analyzes the change of sentence structure from SVO to SOV in Mandarin Chinese, which began about two millennia ago. According to the article, when the verb is polysyllabic, both SOV and SVO are possible but when the verb is morphologically complex or modified, SOV form is preferred. Also, bei- is used to form with SOV word order for passive sentences. This article will be a good example of language that takes both SVO and SOV word orders, depending on the category and function of the verbs. It will also be good evidence that a language selects the possible simplest form by stating that if a verb is simple, native speakers never change the sentences into complex one. The article is written in observing Mandarin Chinese language, comparing modern version and ancient version. It may be lacking evidence of changes in SVO/SOV word order process because it only looks at Mandarin Chinese. Besides that, the article discusses how and why the word order changes took place very thoroughly so that it will be helpful to understand the purpose of word order changes. Sanjen50 (talk)

This article re-analyses a deep structure of English word order that was presented in the fifteenth century. It states that SOV languages have modifiers in prenominal position and SVO languages noun followed by modifiers. The author also suggests that the change of SOV-SVO change of English influenced it to have adjectives and genitives preceding their NPs, rather than getting influenced by foreign languages. This article will be very useful article to study Modern English, which is a language that has SVO order but has some main characteristics of SOV languages. It also provides some evidence that root transformation provide initial locus of syntactic change that we can use to explain subject parameter’s characteristics. The article is written by comparing Old English and Modern English, in terms of syntactics and applied some general characteristics of SVO/SOV languages. However, because many of new theories have been introduced since the article was written, some tree structures and concepts may be outdated. I believe that out group can still use some examples and ideas that author suggests in order to briefly talk about subject parameter structure in English. Sanjen50 (talk)

1980s
Flynn and Espina further explored the role of subject side parameter in Chinese speaking adults learning English as their second language. They used this comparison because Chinese is a head-final language and English is a head-start language. Their findings support arguments that the head parameter is a distinct learning entity from word order parameters, and that those learning new languages with a head parameter setting need to cognitively take this into account. The significance of this in relation to our Wikipedia project is that it supports the idea languages each have their own subject side parameter setting and these can differ depending on the language. In language learning, the learner has to take into account where the head is placed and this may make second language acquisition more difficult. This work is written by researchers of second-language acquisition who have previously studied Japanese adults acquisition English. Their motive for doing this study is to provide further experimental evidence for their model of a parameter setting in second-language acquisition because although Chinese is similar to English in its basic word order being SVO, Japanese, although SOV, is similar to Chinese because they are both head-final languages. Possible bias in this work could be due to the fact that these investigators pioneered the head parameter model of L2 acquisition. However, the findings seem realistic and I liked how the methodology remained consistent in both Japanese and Chinese ESL studies for comparison’s sake. Cnchia (talk) 20:49, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

The researcher’s argument is that languages can evolve over time from the more common SOV to the less common VSO. He finds evidence from Classical Arabic and Jordanian Arabic which is a younger dialect of arabic which shows that Arabic has moved from VSO to SOV parameter settings over the course of history. This finding is of significance because it shows that languages are not all that static in their subject side parameter settings. This is an important point to consider for our Wikipedia project because languages that we deem as a certain subject side parameter setting, may actually change over time, or may not have originated like that. This study was conducted by a researcher who is testing a hypothesis made in 1963, by linguist Joseph Greenberg, who states that VSO languages are becoming a minority. A possible shortcoming of this work is that it only investigates Arabic and one can not conclude that the world’s languages are shifting from VSO to SOV based off of that one language. However, this is good evidence and a good basis to precipitate more research in the evolution of head parameter in languages that are currently SOV but were possibly VSO before. Cnchia (talk) 20:48, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

1990s
There are two different types of analysis regarding the derivation of post-verbal subjects. One of the analysis claimed that those post-verbal subjects are resulted as movements. The other analysis said it should be locally occurred. In Spanish, it allows post-verbal subjects in sentences. There are some scholars proposed different reasons for such ‘movement’ to occur. On the other hand, there are some non-movements proposal from some scholars too. The reviewer includes both sides of argument. However, at the end of the paper, the reviewer is actually supports the ‘movement’ analysis by providing some additional data result. Nonetheless, this review gives us insight about VS structure.--Kathyhht (talk) 03:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

This paper focuses on Malagasy language which has a VOS word ordering. There are not many languages have this minority word ordering. Interestingly, complements and adverbial predicates are allowed to be placed after the subject like the normal subject head order. Also, the word ordering in this language indicates the degree of topicalization. There are many useful examples of head final sentences which gives us another perspective of word ordering. The reviewer of this paper provides sufficient information about Malagasy. Those examples support the general word form for this language. However, why this language has such unique word order is questionable. Nonetheless, this is a useful source to introduce a different type of word ordering.--Kathyhht (talk) 03:59, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

2000s
This article talks about the subject/object drop pattern in Korean, compared to other languages, including English and French. It also discusses how children acquire language, regardless the position of subject, focusing on children’s acquisition of overt subjects. The author extends his idea with introducing nonsyntactic factors that affects initial nonproduction of overt subjects. This is a significant article for our group as we will be using some examples from Korean language, which has SOV order and which whole subject parameters are often dropped. Also, we would be able to look at how the subject parameter influences children’s acquisition of a language and some advantages compared to other languages. The author wrote the article by observing Korean children, starting to acquire the language. Hence, it may lack of examples that are used among Korean adults. Even with such possible shortcoming, I believe it will be very useful article as we can see some actual example of Korean language and in what age children recognize something as a subject by observing when they start to drop the subject. Sanjen50 (talk)

In this article, Georgiafentis and Sfakianaki try to claim a special context that VOS order occurs in Greek language, and when it occurs more frequently. Its main focus is on syntactic structure of the environment of when VOS becomes available or unavailable. At the end, the authors claim that what matters is some constituent other than the subject in the VOS order. In the wikiproject, we will be able to use this article to get more information about the syntactic structure of VOS languages and the circumstances the order occurs in reference to Greek language. The authors conduct study in which some adult native speakers of Greek who were given sentences to utter with VOS order. This allows us to see the actual spoken language, but at the same time, spoken language may not be as grammatically accurate. I personally found this article very helpful because it explains its main argument by using syntax by using DP-subject structure. This is very closely related to what we learn in class and therefore will be very easy for everyone to understand the materials. Sanjen50 (talk)

2010-2014
Schouwstra and Swart’s article focusses mainly on the topic of word order. There has been a suggestion that all other word orders were originated from SOV (subject-object-verb). In order to test such hypothesis, an experiment is conducted so that participants were to convey messages from a given picture only through gesture. The result suggests that the verb in a sentence is the key point in determining the word order; furthermore, it also suggests that instead of an actual pre-set basic word order, there is a scope of different factors affecting the options of forming a sequence of words. This significant finding shows that there is generally no fixed universal word order across linguistically, but a vague parameter that sets the range of options a language can choose from. More explicitly, it suggests that the different word orders we have today are the results of linguistic evolution. The authors conducted such an experiment for the purpose of arguing whether the suggestion — SOV was the origin of all other word orders — was a fair one. In order to do so, the experiment uses not only explicit verbs (i.e. throw) as in other studies did, but also included implicit verbs (i.e. think). A shortcoming of this article could be that it only focuses on participants of Turkish and Dutch, whose word orders are SOV and SVO. A different outcome might result if speakers of less popular word order (i.e. OSV or OVS) were used as participants. Nevertheless, the findings of this article will indeed help in leading us to further researches regarding the relationship between the perception of the world and the production of language — especially in the domain of word order. --Kathyhht (talk) 03:31, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Chinese English learners” (Wang et al. 2011). Through experiment, they find that although the outcome is not as explicit as the native speakers, subject preference does occur among the Chinese English learners. This result suggests that when both the mother tongue (Chinese) and the second language (English) have SVO word order, subject preference is quite likely to occur. Such findings can definitely help us in further researches at this direction (i.e. see if object preference occurs for language learners with an SOV word order). The experiment was conducted among third-year university students at Dalian University of Technology, where the results only represent young language learners, but excluding people from other age scopes. As the authors explained, the shortcoming of their study would be that English proficiency and total number of participants could have affected the results, and that if a greater range of participants were studied, the subject preference phenomenon might become more significant. Overall, this article contains a good example of one of the things that ESL learners may experience during the process of acquiring language. We can take this as the first step into deeper studies around this topic.--Kathyhht (talk) 03:35, 3 October 2014 (UTC)