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.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4986619
This study investigated whether early bilingualism and early musical training positively influence the ability to discriminate between prosodic patterns corresponding to different syntactic structures in otherwise phonetically identical sentences in an unknown language. In a same-different discrimination task, participants (N?=?108) divided into four groups (monolingual non-musicians, monolingual musicians, bilingual non-musicians, and bilingual musicians) listened to pairs of short sentences in a language unknown to them (French). In discriminating phonetically identical but prosodically different sentences, musicians, bilinguals, and bilingual musicians outperformed the controls. However, there was no interaction between bilingualism and musical training to suggest an additive effect. These results underscore the significant role of both types of experience in enhancing the listeners' sensitivity to prosodic information.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4982779
How does linguistic structure affect children’s acquisition of early number word meanings? Previous studies have tested this 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 took advantage of the morphosyntactic variation in the grammatical-number systems among dialects of Slovenian: we investigated number word learning in four groups of Slovenian children who share the same cultural background (are growing up in the same society/country) but differ chiefly with respect to how their dialects grammatically mark number. We found that learning a Slovenian dialect which features dual morphology accelerated children’s acquisition of the number word 'two' relative to learning a non-dual Slovenian dialect.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4474107
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.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3713531
To answer the question how does cross-linguistic variation in linguistic structure affect children’s acquisition of early number word meanings, we investigated 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.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2935803
The paper argues that Bošković’s (2011) generalization concerning the island-voiding effect of incorporation can be captured naturally within minimalist bare phrase structure if head movement (a) is a syntactic operation and (b) leaves no trace/copy. É. Kiss’s (2008) “domain-flattening” phenomena are also expected under the proposed account. Further empirical consequences are discussed.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2605307
Under the predominant view about the syntaxsemantics interface, Quantifier Raising (QR) is indispensible as a syntactic operation that feeds interpretation. However, proponents of this view have often been criticized for assuming a movement operation which has not been clearly shown to be subject to standard constraints. We discuss a view that QR is subject to the principle of Superiority. We make this claim precise by establishing a correlation based on observations about crosslinguistic variation: a language shows Superiority with QR if and only if it shows Superiority with wh-movement.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1130491
This article discusses the cartography of structural placement of wh-adjuncts how and why. It is argued that each of these items encodes more than one lexical entry in some languages, and, furthermore, different lexical entries display different syntactic distribution. We characterize the syntactic distribution of how and why controlling for their different crosslinguistic varieties. The second, theoretical, focus of the paper is a proper mechanism for licensing whin situ, and, in a broader sense, whitems lower than CP. On the basis of diverse cross linguistic material, we provide a number of arguments strengthening the Unselective Binding approach to licensing whin situ and show how potential challenges can be met in a revealing and explanatory manner.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1130235
The experimental literature on the pragmatic abilities of bilinguals is rather sparse. The only study investigating adult second language (L2) learners (Slabakova, 2010) found an increase of pragmatic responses in that population relative to monolinguals. The results of studies on early bilingual children are unclear, some finding a significant increase in pragmatic responses in early bilingual children (preschoolers) relative to monolinguals (Siegal et al., 2007), while another (Antoniou and Katsos, 2017), testing school children, does not. We tested adult French L2 learners of English and Spanish (in their two languages) as well as French monolingual controls in Experiment 1 and Italian-Slovenian early bilingual children (in both languages) and Slovenian monolingual controls in Experiment 2. Our results were similar to those of Antoniou and Katsos (2017) in early bilingual children, but different from those of Siegal et al. (2007). We found no pragmatic bias in adult L2 leaners relative to adult monolinguals.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4990459
The Slovenian TA is discussed in light of its position inside the AP. Given that it only occurs in APs and given it's meaning, it is proposed that TA is actually a definite article that quantifies over degrees. A nice parallel between APs and DP emerge.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3068667