Syntax Commons^™

How Phonological And Syntactic Overlap Impact Cognate Processing Speeds In Bilinguals, Ella Marie Peterson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper investigates individuals who are proficient in two languages (bilinguals) and the speeds at which bilinguals process cognates (words with comparable form and meaning across languages). This paper cites two ongoing experiments: The Language Identification (LID) task and the Self-Paced Listening (SPL) task. Findings from the LID suggest that phonological overlap in cognates facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in isolation. Findings from the SPL suggest that syntactic overlap in cognates also facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in sentences. These findings are significant in that the tasks present cognates to participants in …

Acquisition Of Main-Clause Wh-Questions In Egyptian Arabic-English And Spanish-English Bilingual Children, Riham H. Mohamed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the production and judgment of Egyptian Arabic (henceforth EA) main-clause wh-questions in EA-English bilingual children living in Ontario, Canada, or in the United Kingdom. The three comparison groups are EA monolingual children and EA monolingual adults living in Egypt, and first-generation Egyptian immigrants. The results are compared to previous research on the acquisition of obligatory subject-verb (S-V) inversion in Spanish wh-questions.

The focus of this study is to investigate the potential role of cross-linguistic influence in narrow syntactic structures. Until fairly recently, it was believed that only structures that exhibit syntax-pragmatics interfaces are vulnerable to cross-linguistic influence …

Non-Argumental Clitics In Spanish And Galician: A Case Study Of The Distribution Of Solidarity And Ethical Clitics, Susana Huidobro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the properties of what traditional grammars call “superfluous elements” or non-arguments, so-called Ethical Dative Clitics (Bello 1954, Seco 1962 among others) and Solidarity Clitics (Álvarez, Rosario, X.L. Regueira & H. Monteaguedo 1986) in Spanish and Galician. This research fills an important gap in the existing formal literature on these forms, providing the first thorough syntactic and typological investigation of the latter phenomenon.

The study of non-argumental datives encounters difficulties at different levels: at a descriptive/empirical as well as at a theoretical level. From a descriptive point of view, there are no, so far in the literature, clear …

Clitic Doubling: The Case Of Nariño Andean Spanish, Jessica Paola Jurado Eraso

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This thesis examines the behavior of clitic doubling in Nariñense, a little-studied Andean Spanish variety spoken in the southwest of Colombia, and compares it to well-studied varieties such as standard Peninsular, Rioplatense, and other Andean Spanish varieties. Its aim is to present novel data about clitic doubling in order to shed more light into the extensive literature about this phenomenon in Spanish. Through spontaneous speech recordings obtained from thirty native speakers of Nariñense, 133 sentences involving clitic doubling were analyzed. Features such as agreement matching between the clitic and the doubled NP, use of the preposition a to introduce the …

Spanish Nominalizations And Case Assignment, Dr. Jeff Renaud, Tania Leal

Celebration of Learning

Nominalizations are syntactic structures wherein verbal roots co-occur with verbal and nominal properties, classifying them as verbal (VN) (El andar el niño tan tarde) or nominal (NN) (El andar errabundo del niño). While NNs mark agents genitive (del niño), VNs require nominative agents (el niño). NNs co-occur with adjectives (errabundo), whereas VNs co-occur with adverbs (tan tarde). Alexiadou et al. (2011) posit separate syntactic structures for the two. In this study, we investigate via self-paced reading task the types of case available in each structure, providing evidence of …

Spanish And Polish Heritage Speakers In Canada: The Overt Pronoun Constraint, Ewelina Barski

Ewelina Barski, PhD

No abstract provided.

La Restricción Del Pronombre Explícito En Los Hablantes De Herencia Hispano, Ewelina Barski

Ewelina Barski, PhD

A talk given on my dissertation topic, discussing Spanish heritage speakers in Canada and their interpretation of the Overt Pronoun Constraint. The talk was presented at a 4th year Spanish linguistics class - Spanish in Contact (SP4412F) - at Western University. The presentation was done in Spanish.

The Opc In Spanish And Polish Monolingual Speakers, Ewelina Barski

Ewelina Barski, PhD

A variety of studies have documented the acquisition of the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) (Montalbetti, 1984) in second language speakers (Kanno 1997, Pérez-Leroux & Glass 1999, Rothman & Iverson, 2007) but none have looked at the OPC from an experimental perspective. This paper takes an experimental approach to the OPC focusing on the mental representation of the OPC in Spanish and Polish monolinguals going beyond L2 speakers and probing into the interpretations that monolinguals assign to pronouns (null and overt) with quantified and referential antecedents. Specifically, I aim to investigate whether there is a difference in how monolinguals treat different …

Eventive And Stative Passives: The Role Of Transfer In The Acquisition Of Ser And Estar By German And English L1 Speakers, Joyce Bruhn De Garavito

Joyce Bruhn de Garavito

This paper reports on an empirical study that examined knowledge of the properties of the two passives in the L2 Spanish grammar of L1 speakers of English and German. The Full Transfer Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse 1994) predicts that learners should be able to acquire the relevant properties, but German speakers may have an advantage in noticing the difference. The study comprised three groups of speakers: an English L1 group, a German L1 group, and a Spanish native speaker control group. The tasks consisted of a Grammaticality Judgment Task and a Sentence Selection Task. Results showed that (a) the English …

Optimality And Inversion In Spanish, Eric Baković

Eric Baković

No abstract provided.

The Application Of Proverbs To The Teaching Of Foreign Languages, Cesar Romero Borrome

MA TESOL Collection

No abstract provided.