Journal
Reference
Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual and Bilingual Grammars
SHIM, Ji Young (Guest Ed.), IHSANE, Tabea (Guest Ed.), PARAFITA COUTO, M. Carmen (Guest Ed.)
SHIM, Ji Young (Guest Ed.), IHSANE, Tabea (Guest Ed.), PARAFITA COUTO, M. Carmen (Guest Ed.). Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual and Bilingual Grammars.
Languages , 2017, vol. 2, Special issue
Available at:
http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:150424
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Editorial
Introducing the Special Issue: Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual
and Bilingual Grammars
Ji Young Shim1, Tabea Ihsane2,3,* and M. Carmen Parafita Couto4 ID
1 Department of Linguistics, University of Geneva Room L 306, Rue de Candolle 2, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland;
2 Department of English, University of Geneva Room L 306, Rue de Candolle 2, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland
3 University Priority Research Program (URPP) Language and Space, University of Zurich, Freiestrasse 16, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland
4 Leiden University Center for Linguistics, Van Wijkplaats 3, 2311 BX Leiden, The Netherlands;
* Correspondence: [email protected]
Academic Editors: Osmer Balam and Usha Lakshmanan
Received: 18 December 2017; Accepted: 21 December 2017; Published: 21 December 2017
To introduce this Special Issue entitled Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual and Bilingual Grammars, we begin by explaining what originally motivated this Special Issue. The first two co-editors (Ji Young Shim and Tabea Ihsane) worked on the research project entitled Selection at the Interfaces, in which various linguistic aspects (e.g., syntactic structure, interface with semantics, etc.) of clausal and nominal complements in monolingual grammars were explored.1 To extend an investigation of these issues to bilingual contexts, they organized a two-day workshop entitled Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual and Bilingual Grammars in June 2016, where the third co-editor (M. Carmen Parafita Couto) of this Special Issue was an invited speaker.2 The workshop aimed to investigate the left periphery of complements, in particular the left periphery of the clause and the nominal phrase and its edge, such as C(omplementizers) and D(eterminer) and other top-most functional layers, where languages may be parametrized differently, thus leading to linguistic variation.
Within generative grammar, it has long been assumed that language variation is due to variation in the domain of functional categories and their morpho-syntactic properties [1,2]. Following this tradition, the left periphery of the clause has been extensively investigated, confirming the hypothesis that the functional category C(omplementizer) and its morpho-syntactic properties may be parameterized differently across languages within research on monolingual grammar [3–6]. In addition, the left periphery of a nominal phrase has also been investigated to a great extent [7–9], based on the proposal that clauses and nominal phrases have parallel structures ([10] and in subsequent work).
In recent years, generative linguists have also started to pay attention to the left periphery of bilingual grammars, especially in relation to diverse patterns of code-switching, which is the mixed use of two or more languages in conversation, and which is frequently observed in bilingual speech.
Under the assumption that monolingual and bilingual grammars are subject to the same grammatical principles [11–14], several researchers have investigated the grammar of code-switching in various language pairs and showed that the left periphery of a particular functional category such as C, D, orvmay be parameterized differently across languages and derive certain patterns of code-switching,
1 The projected was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (#100012_146699/1), and the second Editor was the principal investigator of the project.
2 The workshop was funded by the University of Geneva and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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which confirm the validity of the linguistic proposals that are put forth to account for monolingual grammars [15–17].
While the workshop Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual and Bilingual Grammars motivated us to edit the current Special Issue with the same title, it is important to note that the present volume is not a report on the proceedings of the workshop. A separate call for papers for this volume was made through Languages. The Special Issue Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual and Bilingual Grammars comprises seven articles in total, which are theory-oriented and/or empirically based in nature. These articles collectively investigate one of the key theoretical issues that generative linguists have pursued for a long time: how languages are encoded similarly or differently. In so doing, three articles concentrate on nominal complements and clausal complements in monolingual grammars [18–20], and four articles focus on nominal and clausal complements in bilingual grammars [21–24].
For monolingual contexts, Christopher Laenzlinger compares the structure of clauses (Complementizer Phrases; CPs) and noun/determiner phrases (DPs) [18]. Working in the cartographic approach to the Generative Grammar framework, he reconsiders so-called clause/noun-phrase (non-)parallelism in terms of structure and derivation. Although he assumes that both clauses and nominal phrases have a similar structure, which is divided into three domains—theNachfeld (‘right periphery’), theMittelfeld(‘midfield’) and theVorfeld(‘left periphery’)—he argues that the inner structures of clauses and noun phrases are not strictly parallel, and in particular the left periphery of a clause is richer and more developed than that of a noun phrase. As a result, despite the similar possible types of movement occurring both in the CP and the DP domains (head movement and phrasal movement), there still exists non-parallelism in CPs and DPs in the application of these types of movement. To support the existence of non-parallelism between clauses and nominal phrases, Laenzlinger shows the respective orders of various elements such as adverbs/adjectives, DP/Prepositional Phrase (PP)-arguments and DP/PP-adjuncts in French in comparison with many other languages.
In addition to Laenzlinger’s analysis [18], two more papers focus on the structure of clausal complements in monolingual grammars. Marcel den Dikken [19] revisits Chomsky’s two earlier approaches to account for the structure of clausal complements of verbs—a preform analysis [25]
and a direct clausal embedding analysis [26], the latter of which has replaced the former and has become the generalized view in generative syntax. By comparing factive and non-factive clausal complements in Dutch and Hungarian, particularly the relative position of the verb vis-à-vis the clausal complement in Dutch and the co-occurrence of a proleptic noun with the clausal complement in Hungarian, den Dikken proposes that there are two structural positions for the object of verbs, the usual complement of the verb position and a specifier of VP (or a higher node). While the direct clausal embedding analysis accounts for the complement position of the object, it is the preform analysis (with a small modification) that can explain the specifier position of the object in these two languages.
Den Dikken further builds up his proposal into analyzingwh-scope marking andwh-dependencies in Hungarian and German.
The distinction between factive and non-factive clausal complements is also discussed in detail by Ji Young Shim and Tabea Ihsane [20]. They investigate clausal complements of factive and non-factive predicates in English, with particular focus on the distribution of overt and nullthatcomplementizers.
To account for several differences between factive and non-factive clausal complements, including the distribution of the overt and null complementizers, they propose that overtthatclauses and nullthat clauses have different underlying structures responsible for their different syntactic behavior. Adopting Rizzi’s split CP structure with two C heads, Force and Finiteness [3], Shim and Ihsane suggest that nullthatclauses are FinPs (Finiteness Phrases) under both factive and non-factive predicates, whereas overtthatclauses have an extra functional layer above FinP, lexicalizing either the head Force under non-factive predicates or the light demonstrative headdunder factive predicates. The authors argue
that this analysis further provides an explanation for the distribution of overtthatclauses and nullthat clauses outside sentential complements, such as sentential subjects.
The interim conclusion of the papers by Laenzlinger [18], den Dikken [19] and Shim and Ihsane [20], which are based on the monolingual grammar of diverse languages, suggest that, despite the widely assumed structural parallelism between clauses and nominals, the clausal left periphery is more complex than the nominal left periphery, and the inner structure of the clausal left periphery also varies depending on its selection of predicates, such as factivity. Thus, to understand the precise nature of clausal and nominal left peripheries, we must also consider their interface with semantics and the lexical items that comprise them.
As for bilingual contexts, Robert-Tissot and Morel [21] use a Swiss corpus of code-switching text messages to test two principles proposed by González Vilbazo [27]: (i) the Principle of Functional Restriction (i.e., two functional heads X◦ and Y◦ have to be filled by lexical material of the same language if the functional category of YP is the complement of X◦and both heads are part of the same extended projection); and (ii) the Principle of Agreement (i.e., inside a phrase, agreement requirements have to be satisfied, regardless of the language providing the lexical material). They discuss specific examples that mostly confirm the validity of the principles, showing the structured nature of code-switching as well as contributing to the growing consensus that it is possible to predict the nature of grammatical and ungrammatical code- switched sequences.
In their article, López et al. [22] show how the theoretical construct “phase” can be used to account for a number of restrictions on code-switching, in particular those formalized under the Principle of Functional Restriction [27] and the Phonetic Form Interface Condition [28]. López et al. postulate the Block Transfer Hypothesis (BTH), stating that the material that is transferred to the interfaces within a phase is transferred in one block. It follows from the BTH that code-switching may take place at phase boundaries but not within the phase. They further posit that phases are empirically superior in scope, as they can explain code-switching phenomena not explained by previous accounts (e.g., switches between C and TP, progressive aspect, and switching within the word level). The authors take this as reinforcement for the fundamental hypothesis that code-switching should be studied using the same tools that we use for monolingual data, and suggest that phase theory, together with distributed morphology, may be the way forward.
In both studies (one by Robert-Tissot and Morel [21] and the other by López et al. [22]), the validity of the Principle of Functional Restriction (PFR) is tested. The PFR prohibits code-switching between two functional heads belonging in the same extended projection. Thus, it predicts that code-switching cannot occur in the left periphery of a nominal phrase (e.g., between a D(eterminer) and a Q(uantifier) and also in the left periphery of a clause (e.g., between a C(omplementizer) and T(ense)). However, both studies found counter-examples that allow code-switching in the left periphery of nominal and clausal domains. For instance, a switch may occur between a D (Italian) and a Q (French) [21] and between a C (Spanish) and T (German) if Spec C is not empty [22]. To account for these examples, Robert-Tissot and Morel resort to a non-structural account, whereas López et al. offer a phase-based syntactic analysis.
The left periphery of noun phrases in bilingual contexts is explored in two papers in this volume. In her contribution [23], Brita Ramsevik Riksem investigates the heritage language American Norwegian and provides a diachronic study of language-mixing within noun phrases, that is, the occurrence of English items in American Norwegian. By comparing data collected in the 1930s and 1940s with recently collected data, she shows that the overall pattern of language-mixing is stable but some systematic diachronic changes are attested, specifically concerning the categories of number and definiteness. These changes consist of the omission of functional exponents and usage of English functional exponents, such as the plural suffix-sand the determinerthe. She proposes two potential analyses of these patterns based on an exoskeletal approach to grammar, and a theoretical framework that separates abstract syntactic structure from its phonological exponents. These analyses consider both the structure and the exponents as the origins of the change. However, on the basis of
the observed patterns of change, Riksem argues that a structural reanalysis of American Norwegian grammar is occurring.
Finally, Blokzijl et al. explore the factors that influence the language of determiners in mixed nominal constructions in two bilingual corpora (Spanish-English speakers in Miami (USA), and Spanish-English creole speakers in Nicaragua) [24]. The results of their comparative analysis indicate that the language of the determiner matches the matrix language. Crucially, this match between the language of the determiner and the matrix language seems to be unaffected by any grammaticized features in the determiner, which is unlike that which has been previously argued [29]. Additionally, they found that the frequency of switching from the determiner to the noun was asymmetric in the Miami data, being more frequent from Spanish to English in the Miami data. In the Nicaragua data, on the other hand, they only observed switches from English creole to Spanish. These findings call into question the assumption that the same code-switching patterns surface in different bilingual communities, suggesting that we need to examine the interplay between social and grammatical factors more meticulously.
Overall, this Special Issue provides a timely collection of articles that discuss clausal and nominal complements in monolingual and bilingual grammars, especially in the form of code-switching.
As evidenced by several papers in this collection, the inner structure of clausal and nominal edges differs from language to language and it further affects patterns of code-switching. We hope that the papers in this Special Issue will generate keen interest in this topic and offer a basis for further research on other related topics. In particular, more work needs to be conducted to examine diachronic structural changes in bilingual grammars and syntactic variation in bi/multilingual contexts involving lesser-studied languages such as Creoles (e.g., Nicaragua, Belize, Cape Verde, etc.; see, for instance, the volume edited by Sessarego [30]). This direction of research will have much to tell us about linguistic variation across time and space.
Acknowledgments: We thank all authors who contributed to this Special Issue and the reviewers of the manuscripts. Also we extend our thanks to the Editors ofLanguages(Osmer Balam and Usha Lakshmanan) and the editorial office for their support and patience to take a long journey with us. Without them, this Special Issue could not have been brought out. We hope that the seven papers included in this collection will provide readers with a deeper understanding of the structure of language and further their interest in the topic of clausal and nominal complements in monolingual and bilingual grammars.
Author Contributions: Ji Young Shim, Tabea Ihsane, and M. Carmen Parafita Couto contributed equally to this Editorial.
Conflicts of Interest:The authors declare no conflict of interest.
References
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2. Chomsky, N.The Minimalist Program, 1st ed.; MIT Press: Cambridge, UK, 1995.
3. Rizzi, L. The fine structure of left periphery. In Elements of Grammar; Haegeman, L., Ed.; Kluwer:
Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1997; pp. 289–330.
4. Rizzi, L. (Ed.)The Structure of CP and IP, 1st ed.; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2004.
5. Haegeman, L. Conditional clauses: External and internal syntax.Mind Lang.2003,18, 317–339. [CrossRef]
6. Saito, M. Semantic and discourse interpretation of the Japanese left periphery. InThe Sound Patterns of Syntax, 1st ed.; Erteschik-Shir, N., Rochman, L., Eds.; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2010; pp. 140–173.
7. Laenzlinger, C. French adjective ordering: Perspectives on DP-internal movement types. Lingua2005, 115, 645–689. [CrossRef]
8. Ihsane, T.The Layered DP, 1st ed.; John Benjamins: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2008.
9. Alexiadou, A.Multiple Determiners and the Structure of DP, 1st ed.; John Benjamins: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2014.
10. Abney, S. The English Noun Phrase in Its Sentential Aspect. Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1987.
11. Mahootian, S. A Null Theory of Code-Switching. Ph.D. Thesis, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, 1993.
12. Nishimura, S. Lexical categories and code-switching: A study of Japanese/English code-switching in Japan.
J. Assoc. Teach. Jpn.1997,31, 1–21.
13. MacSwan, J.A Minimalist Approach to Intrasentential Codeswitching, 1st ed.; Routledge: London, UK, 1999.
14. Chan, B.H.-S.Aspects of the Syntax, the Pragmatics, and the Production of Code-Switching, 1st ed.; Peter Lang:
New York, NY, USA, 2003.
15. Liceras, J.M.; Spradlin, K.T.; Fernández Fuertes, R. Bilingual early functional-lexical mixing and the activation of formal features.Int. J. Biling.2005,9, 227–251. [CrossRef]
16. González-Vilbazo, K.; López, L. Little v and parametric variation.Nat. Lang. Linguist. Theory2012,30, 33–77.
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17. Shim, J.Y. Mixed verbs in code-switching: The syntax of light verbs.Languages2016,1, 8. [CrossRef]
18. Laenzlinger, C. A view of the CP/DP-(non)parallelism from the cartographic perspective.Languages2017, 2, 18. [CrossRef]
19. Den Dikken, M. Clausal subordination and the structure of verbal phrase.Languages2017,2, 5. [CrossRef]
20. Shim, J.Y.; Ihsane, T. A new outlook of complementizers.Languages2017,2, 17. [CrossRef]
21. Robert-Tissot, A.; Morel, E. The role of functional heads in code-switching evidence from Swiss text messages (sms4science.ch).Languages2017,2, 10. [CrossRef]
22. López, L.; Alexiadou, A.; Veenstra, T. Code-switching by phase.Languages2017,2, 9. [CrossRef]
23. Riksem, B.R. Language mixing and diachronic change: American Norwegian noun phrases then and now.
Languages2017,2, 3. [CrossRef]
24. Blokzijl, J.; Deuchar, M.; Parafita Couto, M.C. Determiner asymmetry in mixed constructions: The role of grammatical factors in data from Miami and Nicaragua.Languages2017,2, 20. [CrossRef]
25. Chomsky, N.Syntactic Structures; Mouton: The Hague, The Netherlands, 1957.
26. Chomsky, N.Aspects of the Theory of Syntax; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 1965.
27. González-Vilbazo, K. Die Syntax des Code-Switching. Esplugisch: Sprachwechsel an der Deutschen Schule Barcelona. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany, 2005.
28. MacSwan, J.; Colina, S. Some consequences of language design: Code switching and the PF interface.
InGrammatical Theory and Bilingual Codeswitching; MacSwan, J., Ed.; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2014; pp. 185–200.
29. Liceras, J.; Fernández Fuertes, R.; Perales, S.; Pérez-Tattam, R.; Spradlin, K.T. Gender and gender agreement in bilingual native and non-native grammars: A view from child and adult functional-lexical mixings.Lingua 2008,118, 827–851. [CrossRef]
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© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
languages
Article
Determiner Asymmetry in Mixed Nominal
Constructions: The Role of Grammatical Factors in Data from Miami and Nicaragua
Jeffrey Blokzijl1,*, Margaret Deuchar2and M. Carmen Parafita Couto1 ID
1 Leiden University Center for Linguistics, Leiden University,
Van Wijkplaats 3, 2311 BX Leiden, The Netherlands; [email protected]
2 Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge, 9 West Road, CB3 9DP Cambridge, UK; [email protected]
* Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +31-615-484-221 Academic Editors: Usha Lakshmanan and Osmer Balam
Received: 28 February 2017; Accepted: 12 September 2017; Published: 6 October 2017
Abstract: This paper focuses on the factors influencing the language of determiners in nominal constructions in two sets of bilingual data: Spanish/English from Miami and Spanish/English creole from Nicaragua. Previous studies (Liceras et al. 2008; Moro Quintanilla 2014) have argued that Spanish determiners are preferred in mixed nominal constructions because of their grammaticised nature. However, those studies did not take the matrix language into account, even though Herring et al. (2010) found that the language of the determiner matched the matrix language.
Therefore, we hypothesise that the matrix language is the main influence on the language of the determiner in both mixed and unmixed nominal constructions. The results are consistent with our hypothesis that the matrix language of the clause provides the language of the determiner in mixed and unmixed Determiner Phrases (DPs). Once the matrix language is controlled for, the Miami data show a greater tendency for Spanish determiners to appear in mixed DPs than English determiners.
However, in the Nicaragua data, we found only mixed DPs with an English creole determiner. This suggests that bilingual communities do not always follow the same pattern, and that social rather than grammatical factors may be at play. We conclude that while the language of the determiner is influenced by clause-internal structure, that of its noun complement and the matrix language itself depends on extralinguistic considerations.
Keywords: code-switching; matrix language; determiner-phrases; Spanish; English; Nicaraguan Creole English
1. Introduction
Since the 1980s, code-switching, “an activity which may be observed in the speech (or writing) of bilinguals who go back and forth between their two languages in the same conversation” [1], has been the focus of intensive study and debate. This linguistic phenomenon is not uncommon and can be found in various bilingual contexts [2]. Previous data have shown that individual utterances can combine elements from more than one language [3,4]. To date, the Spanish/English language pair is one of the most frequently examined, possibly because of the large number of speakers of both languages and the availability of collected data, such as can be found at the BangorTalk website [5].
We shall use the Spanish/English language pair to illustrate the range of possible combinations involving English and Spanish determiners and nouns. Examples (1a) and (1b) show Determiner Phrases (DPs) where the determiner and noun come from the same language, while examples (2a) and
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(2b) illustrate mixed DPs where the determiner and noun are in different languages. Spanish words are shown in italics below, and determiners in both languages are shown in bold font.
1. English unmixed DP
a. The house
DET1.DEF N
Spanish unmixed DP
b. La casa
DET.DEF.F.S N.F.S
2. Mixed DP
a. La house
DET.DEF.F.S N
b. The casa
DET.DEF. N.F.S
It has been reported previously that among mixed DPs, type (2a) occurs more frequently than type (2b), or in other words, Spanish determiners occur more frequently in mixed DPs than English determiners. For example, Liceras et al. reported, from their review of research on mixed Spanish–English DPs in spontaneous adult speech and their own study of child speech, that mixed DPs with Spanish determiners are far more frequent than with English determiners [6]. In their own study of child speech, only about 5% of the mixed DPs had English determiners; in adult speech, Jake et al.
found 161 instances of Spanish determiners followed by English nouns, but no examples of English determiners followed by Spanish nouns [7]. However, Liceras et al. [6] do not provide information about the morphosyntactic frame in which the mixed DPs appeared, which Herring et al. [8] found to be relevant, as will be described below. Liceras et al. also do not consider the proportion of mixed vs. unmixed DPs with a given determiner, in case unmixed Spanish DPs should be more common than unmixed English DPs [6]. Instead, they explain the apparently greater frequency of Spanish determiners in mixed DPs in terms of the “intrinsic Gender feature of the Spanish Noun and the intrinsic Gender Agreement feature of the Spanish Determiner” [6] (p. 828), both of which features are absent in English. Moro Quintanilla also reports that Spanish determiners in mixed DPs are far more frequent in the Gibraltar data collected by Moyer than English determiners (only 2/243), and, like Liceras et al. [6], explains the distribution in terms of the “presence of an uninterpretable gender feature on the Spanish determiner, as opposed to its absence on the English determiner” [9] (p. 222). However, Moro Quintanilla also does not consider the morphosyntactic frame of the mixed DP or compare them with unmixed DPs [9]. Myers-Scotton and Jake also appear to concur with Liceras et al. [6], and Moro Quintanilla [9] on the assumption that the gender feature on Spanish determiners requires them to be ‘elected’ earlier in the language production process and that early election is related to greater frequency [10]. However, their earlier work had drawn attention to the importance of the morphosyntactic frame of the clause ‘or matrix language’ in influencing the language of the determiner.
The matrix language framework (MLF) was developed by Myers-Scotton [11] in order to account for common patterns found in intraclausal code-switching. Its main contribution is to capture a common asymmetry between the two languages involved, such that one provides the morphosyntactic frame or matrix language, and the other (the ”embedded language”). The matrix language can be identified by the word order of the clause (the Morpheme Order Principle) and by the language source of particular ”system morphemes” (the System Morpheme Principle). System morphemes are
1 DET = Determiner, DEF = Definite, F = Feminine, N = Noun, S = Singular.
categorized as either ”early” or ”late”. Early system morphemes are “conceptually activated to express a part of speakers’ meanings that they wish to communicate” [10] (p. 344) and include plural marking on nouns as well as determiners. Early system morphemes in a clause with code-switching can come from either the matrix language or the embedded language, but they are more likely to come from the matrix language. Late system morphemes have less semantic content than early system morphemes and a particular subcategory of late system morphemes, “outsider late system morphemes”, can only come from the matrix language and are thus important in determining the matrix language of a given clause. Examples of outsider late system morphemes are case markers or verb inflections which encode subject–verb agreement.
We can illustrate the identification of the matrix language in examples (3) and (4)2below:
3. my mom got themanguera, hosepipe
‘My mom got the hosepipe.’ [herring9: CLA]3
4. eso fue en elfront desk en elreception
that was at the at the
‘That was at the front desk, at the reception.’ [zeledon1: CAR]
Example (3) has an English matrix language or morphosyntactic frame on the basis of the finite verbgotbeing English, whereas example (4) has a Spanish matrix language because the finite verb fue‘was’ is Spanish (word order is not relevant here to distinguish between an English and a Spanish matrix language).
Returning to the issue of whether or not Spanish determiners occur more frequently in mixed DP constructions, Myers-Scotton and Jake argue for the influence of the matrix language (ML) [10]
(p. 356) even though they had appeared to support the viewpoints of Liceras et al. [6], and Moro Quintanilla [9]. They state that “If Spanish is the ML in any CS corpus, then it is likely Spanish determiners will dominate for this reason alone under an analysis based on the MLF model” [10]
(p. 356). This prediction had already been captured in the ‘Bilingual NP Hypothesis’ proposed by Jake et al. [7] and was motivated by the Uniform Structure Principle according to which the “structures of the matrix language are always preferred” [11] (p. 8).
Herring et al. attempted a preliminary evaluation of the influence of the matrix language on the determiner by using Welsh–English and Spanish–English data to assess the extent to which the matrix language matched the source language of the determiner in mixed DP constructions [8]. If we look again at examples (3) and (4) above, we can see that the language of the determiner in (3) is English, and thus matches the English matrix language of (3), while the language of the determiner in (4) is Spanish and thus matches the Spanish matrix language of (4). So, in both these two examples, the language of the determiner and the finite verb match.
In the small amount of the data analysed by Herring et al. [8], there was only one example out of 89 of a determiner (Spanish) and matrix language (English) mismatching. The matrix language of the clauses was Spanish in 90% of the cases, and the proportion of mixed DPs with a Spanish determiner found in those clauses was 91%, supporting the idea of a close relation between the language of the determiner and the matrix language of the clause. The distribution of the data also provides a possible explanation for the quantitative results reported by Liceras et al. [6] and Moro Quintanilla [9], i.e., the reason why the majority of mixed DPs appeared in clauses with Spanish as matrix language was that Spanish was the matrix language in the majority of cases. In other words, Spanish determiners
2 In examples (3) and (4), English words appear in normal type while Spanish words appear in italics. The mixed DPs are underlined.
3 [filename: speaker’s pseudonym]
could have been preferred to English determiners in mixed nominal constructions simply because speakers selected a Spanish morphosyntactic frame, or matrix language in which they inserted their mixed DPs.
Recent experimental evidence provides support from two types of acceptability judgments for Herring et al.’s conclusion. To experimentally test these two sets of predictions regarding the language of the determiner in nominal constructions, Parafita Couto and Stadthagen-González tested two separate groups of 40 early Spanish–English bilinguals [12]. Their task was to evaluate the acceptability of sentences with code-switches between the determiner and the noun that reflected the predictions of the Minimalism Program, the MLF, both or none. The first group rated them on a Likert scale, while the second group performed a two-alternative forced-choice acceptability task (2AFC). Both experiments yielded converging evidence supporting Herring et al.’s [8] suggested preference for a match between the language of the determiner and the matrix language.
In the present study, we attempted to build on Herring et al.’s [8] work by investigating the link between the language of the determiner and the matrix language in a larger dataset than used previously. We focus on both mixed and unmixed nominal constructions in order to try to come closer to an empirically supported account of the regularities involved. Controlling for the matrix language, we measure the proportion of mixed DPs with each determiner as a proportion of the total number of DPs with the same determiner. Thus, we take into account the possibility that Spanish determiners might precede nouns more frequently than English determiners for internal linguistic reasons [13–19].4 Our data will come from two language pairs: Spanish–English from Miami, USA, and Spanish–English creole from the south Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Although the language pairs in the two communities are similar, the differing distribution of matrix languages and determiners will allow us to consider the relative influence of linguistic and social factors on the code-switching patterns found.
2. Data for This Study
For our study, we used two bilingual corpora, one collected from conversations between Spanish–English speakers in Miami (FL, USA) [5], and the other from sociolinguistic interviews with Spanish–English creole speakers in various cities of the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua. These two corpora have been chosen for comparative analysis because of the fact that English creole, also called Nicaraguan Creole English or Miskito Creole English [20,21], shares with English the absence of gender or number marking on its determiner, unlike Spanish, which the two corpora have in common. This means that if Liceras et al. [6] and Moro Quintanilla [9] are correct in assuming the overriding importance of grammatical features in influencing the appearance of Spanish vs. English determiners in mixed nominal constructions, then we would expect to find a significantly higher proportion of Spanish determiners in both corpora, regardless of the matrix language of the clause.
2.1. Miami Corpus
The Miami corpus [5] was collected in 2008 by Jon Herring and local assistants [22]. From the 1960s onwards, Miami has undergone an influx of Spanish speakers, resulting in intensive language contact between English and Spanish [23,24]. The first movement of Spanish-speaking immigrants were Cubans that sought to escape the Cuban revolution. The younger generation of Cuban immigrants became bilingual in English and Spanish. In the 1980s, there was a second influx of young immigrants from Central American countries that were suffering from civil wars. Nowadays, the Spanish speakers
4 Frequency counts also suggest that Spanish determiners are produced more often than English determiners (cf. for example, the rate of Spanish vs. English definite determiners per million words: Spanish 49,820.26 per million words vs. English definite determiners: 9999.99 per million words) [18,19].
in Miami are not only from Cuba or Central America but from a wide range of Latin American countries, and immigration continues. The corpus has 84 bilingual speakers of Spanish and English and provides a total time of 35 h of natural speech conversation. The data have been transcribed, glossed and coded. We analysed the entire dataset, yielding 8586 nominal constructions in 7115 clauses, with some clauses having more than one DP. However, because the Miami data are relatively large, we used an automatic analysis to codify the matrix language of the clauses and identify the nominal constructions as mixed or unmixed [25]. In order to test the automatic analyses, we took a sample of the data (10%) that we checked manually. From this sample, only 7% of clauses had a wrong matrix language assigned. In other words, we can safely conclude that the automatic analysis is reliable.
2.2. Nicaragua Corpus
The Nicaragua data contain sociolinguistic interviews from the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua collected in 2006 by A. Koskinen [26]. This area was first colonised by the British. In fact, by 1630, the British dominated the total Atlantic area of Central America [21].
The British allowed the indigenous populations, the African slaves, and the refugees from Jamaica, to create their own state [20]. The result was creolisation of the English language that was also influenced by indigenous languages (Miskito, Rama, etc.) of the area. This English creole variety is now known as Nicaraguan Creole English (NCE). However, in 1860, this area became part of Nicaragua due to intervention from the United States [21,27]. From that moment onwards, the area became populated by Nicaraguans from other regions who brought the Spanish language with them.
Spanish also became the official language [28]. Nowadays, all citizens of the cities in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCS) are bilingual in both the creole language and Spanish, with both languages being taught at school. The Nicaragua corpus consists of a total of 16 h of recordings of 42 bilingual speakers being interviewed in creole at home, work or in school. The data used for this study consist of 3222 clauses and 3506 determiner phrases that were manually extracted and coded. Data from clauses to which a matrix language could not be assigned were excluded.
The main characteristics of the two corpora are summarised in Table1below.
Table 1.Summary of the main characteristics of the two corpora.
Miami Nicaragua
Languages Spanish–English Spanish–Nicaraguan Creole English Type of data Natural speech conversation Sociolinguistic interviews
Number of speakers 84 42
Time 35 h 12 h
Clauses 7115 3222
Determiner Phrases 8586 3506
3. Analysis of Data
All clauses containing a determiner phrase were extracted and coded according to the matrix language of the clause in which they appeared. The automatic analysis of the Miami data included DPs with both definite and indefinite articles, while the manual analysis of the Nicaragua data also included demonstratives and possessives to compensate for the difference in corpus size. Because the word order of Spanish, English, and NCE are similar (Subject-Verb-Object), we used the language of the finite verb to determine the matrix language of the clause in our automatic analysis. Non-finite clauses were excluded. The nominal constructions were coded according to the language of the determiner, the language of the noun and whether or not the determiner and noun were in the same language (‘unmixed’) or not (‘mixed’). This allowed us to study the proportion of mixed and unmixed DPs in clauses of each matrix language and to determine the extent of match between the language of the determiners and the finite verb. Examples (5) and (6) provide examples of an extracted mixed and unmixed DP respectively.
5. She was trying to be a turista
DET.INDEF N. [maria31: MAR]
In example (5), the underlined mixed DP consists of an English determiner and a Spanish noun, and the matrix language is English. In example (6), below the matrix language is also English but the DP is unmixed since the determiner and noun are both in English.
6. or are you still a turist in your own city
DET.INDEF N. [maria31: MAR]
In example (7), the underlined mixed DP consists of an English creole determiner followed by a Spanish noun, and the matrix language is English creole. After the mixed DP, the speaker produces another DP that is unmixed.
7. an he uz to fight for ur luna, di moon
DET.POSS N. DET.DEF N.
‘and he used to fight for our moon, the moon.’ [F-BLU-9-07]
Table2provides an example of our data coding.
Table 2.Example of data coding.
Clause DP Language of
Determiner Language of Noun Type Finite Verb Language of Verb she was trying to
be aturista! aturista English Spanish mixed was English
or are you still a tourist in your own
city state?
a tourist English English unmixed are English
an he uz to fight for
urluna, di moon ur luna NCE Spanish mixed uz NCE
an he uz to fight for
urluna, di moon di moon NCE NCE unmixed uz NCE
she put it in
theboca theboca English Spanish Mixed put English
no pero tal vez consigue un
roommate
unroommate Spanish English Mixed consigue Spanish
di king wife went
to waz to dizpila di king wife NCE NCE unmixed went NCE
di king wife went
to waz to dizpila dizpila NCE Spanish Mixed went NCE
DP: Determiner Phrase; NCE: Nicaraguan Creole English.
4. Results
The results of the Miami data analysis can be found in Table3. The rows show mixed and unmixed DPs and the total number of DPs, while the middle columns indicate the frequency of the determiners matching vs. not matching the matrix language, with the results for Spanish and English as matrix languages given separately. As the Table shows, there is a match of 98.1% between the language of the determiner and the matrix language. Thus, the overwhelming majority of both unmixed and mixed DPs have a determiner with the same language as the finite verb of the clause.
Table 3.Results of Miami data analysis: mixed and unmixed DPs with matching and non-matching matrix language (ML).
Language of Determiner Matching ML Not Matching ML Total
Unmixed DP Spanish 3579 94
8310 (96.8%)
English 4574 63
Mixed DP Spanish 240 8
276 (3.2%)
English 28 0
Total 8421 (98.1%) 165 (1.9%) 8586 (100%)
On the other hand, 1.9% of all DPs have a determiner that does not match the matrix language.
Still, of this group, 95.15% (157/165) are embedded language islands. These are all of the unmixed DPs which do not match the ML, as shown in the above table. An example of such an island is given in example (8). The clause in example (8) has an English matrix language, yet the determiner phrase una pareja‘a couple’ has both the determiner and the noun in Spanish.
8. I hope mom doesn’t think they’re una pareja you know
a couple [sastre12: MAD]
In embedded language islands, the grammar of the Embedded Language temporarily prevails and so we expect its internal constituents to appear unaffected by the matrix language [10] (p. 139).
Of the mixed constructions, only 2.9% (8/276 DPs) did not match the matrix language. This is a very small number but we can note some similarities between those eight cases, of which three examples are given below.
9. pero aquí[en elnorth side]AdvPwe don’t ever get direct sun.
but here on the north side [María1: MAR]
10. [en losdorms]AdvPthey have a laundry room
in the dorms [Herring14: CON]
11. they did a sonogram blah blah blah
tumor en [en elspleen]AdvP.
tumor in in the spleen [Zeledon8: MAR]
Examples (9)–(11) contain mixed DPs that appear in Spanish adverbial phrases introduced by the Spanish prepositionen, ‘on’ in example (9) and ‘in’ in example (10). In the case of (9) and (10), the switch from a Spanish determiner to an English noun may have been anticipating the change of matrix language to English which occurs in the following clause (we don’t ever get direct sunin (9) and they have a laundry roomin (10)). All three of these examples could be characterised by what Muysken has called “alternational” switching [29], in which the switch occurs at a peripheral place in the clause.
Adverbial phrases can be considered peripheral since they are not involved in the argument structure of the verb.
In addition to investigating the link between the language of the determiner and the matrix language, a second aim of our study was to measure the proportion of mixed DPs with each determiner as a fraction of the total number of DPs with the same determiner. We conducted this analysis on a subset of the data represented in Table 3, in particular the data shown in the column headed
“Matching ML”, where the determiner matched the ML. This was the case for 98.1% of the data as shown above. The results of this second analysis are shown in Table4. As the Table shows, there is
indeed a higher proportion5(6.3%) of Spanish determiners followed by an English noun than English determiners followed by a Spanish noun (0.6%). Given the tendency of determiners to match the matrix language, this means that bilingual speakers are more likely to switch language after Spanish determiners than after English determiners.
Table 4.Results of Miami data analysis: proportion of mixed DPs.
Unmixed DP Mixed DP Proportion of Mixed DPs
English determiner and English matrix language 4574 28 0.6%
Spanish determiner and Spanish matrix language 3579 240 6.3%
Total 8153 268 3.1%
Nicaragua Data
The results of the analysis of the Nicaragua data can be found in Table5. As in Table3, the rows show mixed and unmixed DPs and the total number of DPs, while the middle columns indicate the frequency of the determiners matching vs. not matching the matrix language. Next to each figure, we provide the percentage out of the total number of DPs. Table5shows that there is a match of 99.7%
between the language of the determiner and the matrix language.
Table 5. Results of Nicaragua data analysis: mixed and unmixed DPs with matching and non-matching ML.
Language of Determiner Matching ML Not Matching ML Total
Unmixed DP Spanish 9 9
3364 (96%)
NCE 3346 0
Mixed DP Spanish 0 0
142 (4.0%)
NCE 142 0
Total 3497 (99.7%) 9 (0.3%) 3506 (100%)
The results of the Nicaragua data support the predictions of the MLF: only 0.3% of the DPs do not have a match between the language of the determiner and the matrix language of the clause. As in the case of the Miami data, the mismatched cases involve embedded language islands. An example of such an island is given in example (12). The clause in example (12) has an English creole matrix language, yet the DPla escuela‘the school’ is entirely in Spanish. All the islands found were Spanish determiner phrases in a NCE matrix language clause.
12. di refreshment, hav dicelebración de la escuela the have the celebration of the school
‘the refreshment, have the celebration in the school.’ [F-BLU-1-06]
All mixed constructions matched the matrix language.
Table6shows the numbers of unmixed and mixed DPs for each determiner and matrix language.
As is clear, use of a Spanish matrix language is very rare in Nicaragua. However, a Fisher test (p= 0.63) suggests no significant difference between the proportion of mixed DPs with a Spanish determiner and with an NCE determiner.
5 The results of a chi square test showed that the difference is significant:p< 0.01.
Table 6.Results of Nicaragua data analysis: proportion of mixed DPs.
Unmixed DP Mixed DP Proportion of Mixed DPs
NCE determiner and NCE matrix language 3346 142 4%
Spanish determiner and Spanish matrix language 9 0 0%
Total 3355 142 4%
5. Discussion
Our results suggest that speakers do not appear to have much choice regarding the language of the determiner: instead, this is influenced by the language of the morpho-syntactic frame or matrix language, and it is in selecting the matrix language that speakers do appear to have some choice. Once they have done this and have selected a matching determiner, the next option is whether or not to switch to a different language when selecting the noun following the determiner. We have noted that this happens more often where the matrix language (and determiner) is Spanish in the Miami data. In the Nicaragua data, however, we have only a small number of clauses with Spanish matrix language, and no statistical indication of a difference in the proportion of switched nouns following Spanish as opposed to NCE determiners. However, in trying to account for the asymmetry that we find in the Miami data, we may note that previous work by Bhatt on Indian data has suggested that the directionality of switches tends to be towards the language of power, or the language with superior social status [30]. Our findings seem consistent with this suggestion in that English has been the official language of Florida, the state where Miami is located, since 1988 [31]. So the more numerous6switches from Spanish determiners to English nouns than the reverse are in the direction of the official language.
In Nicaragua, we can see that even though there is no significant difference between the proportion of mixed DPs with a Spanish determiner and with an NCE determiner, all the switches observed are from creole to Spanish. If this trend is confirmed in further studies, it would once again indicate switching in the direction of the language of higher prestige [28,30]. Koskinen reports that although the regional languages of the Caribbean coast including English creole were made official in 1993, creole was not used officially in education until 2007 [28]. Koskinen also reports that although the other regional languages have gained in status, creole “continues to be considered a form of ‘broken English’ or
‘bad English’” [28] (p. 143). Spanish, on the other hand, is described as the “national language” [28]
(p. 153) and is clearly superior in prestige.
Other explanations for the asymmetrical pattern of switching following determiners in the Miami data would require more exploration, but Fricke and Kootstra’s work on the Miami data has established the importance of priming by material in the previous discourse, and this could be investigated in our data [32]. This account would be supported by the exposure-driven account posited by Valdés-Kroff [33], whereby bilingual speakers converge upon conventional production patterns. Such an emergent approach would offer an alternative as to how to account for asymmetrical structural distributions such as the ones we observed in our Miami and Nicaragua data. Another avenue to pursue would be the idea that code-switching tends to mark high information content as proposed by Myslin and Levy [34]. They consider words with high information content to be less predictable than those of lower information content, and to signal to the listener that special attention is needed. In relation to our data, we would need to examine whether there is evidence of the switches to nouns in the minority language having higher information content than those in the official language.
Another variable that could be considered would be the language proficiency or dominance of the speaker. For example, Liceras et al. argued that it is possible to gain insights from the code-switching patterns and preferences which differentiate child and adult native speakers, simultaneous bilingual
6 Although we focused specifically on switches between the determiner and the noun, it is interesting to note that Fricke and Kootstra [32] (p. 11), using the same Miami corpus, also found fewer switches of any kind in bilingual clauses with English matrix language than with Spanish matrix language.
speakers and L2 speakers [35]. This, they say, could account for the conflicting evidence observed in the spontaneous switches produced in different communities of code-switchers.
One question that remains to be addressed is that of what determines the selection of the matrix language, since we have argued that the language of the determiner follows from this choice. We expect extralinguistic factors such as age of acquisition, language proficiency and the language of social networks to be all relevant, and hope to explore this question in the future.
6. Conclusions
The first objective of this study was to build on previous research that suggested that the language of determiners in mixed nominal constructions depends on the matrix language of the clause. The results confirm our hypothesis that the language of the determiner in mixed and unmixed nominal constructions generally does match the matrix language. The match between the language of the determiner and the matrix language seems to be unaffected by any grammaticised features in the language of the determiner.
The second objective was to compare the occurrence of mixed and unmixed DPs with English and Spanish determiners. We found that the frequency of switching from the determiner to the noun was asymmetric in the Miami data, being more frequent from Spanish to English in the Miami data. In the Nicaragua data, we only observed switches from the NCE to Spanish. We considered some explanations for our findings, and provisionally suggested that the relative prestige of the two languages may help to account for the asymmetry in the Miami data.
To summarise, we found that the matrix language was the most influential factor affecting the language of the determiner in mixed nominal constructions. However, extralinguistic factors seem to influence whether or not there is a switch after the determiner.
Acknowledgments:We would like to express our gratitude to the following persons: K. Donnelly, for providing us the automatic analysis of the Miami corpus, A. Koskinen for allowing us to use the Nicaragua corpus, and E. Bierings for her support in analyzing the Nicaragua corpus. We are also thankful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.
Author Contributions:All the authors contributed equally to this work.
Conflicts of Interest:The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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languages
Article
A View of the CP/DP-(non)parallelism from the Cartographic Perspective
Christopher Laenzlinger ID
Département de Linguistique, University of Geneva, 2 rue de Candolle, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland;
[email protected]; Tel.: +41-22-379-7306
Academic Editors: Maria del Carmen Parafita Couto and Usha Lakshmanan Received: 1 February 2017; Accepted: 21 August 2017; Published: 21 September 2017
Abstract:The aim of this paper is to reconsider some aspects of the so-called clause/noun-phrase (non-)parallelism (Abney 1987 and much subsequent work). The question that arises is to find out what is common and what is different between the clause as a Complementizer Phrase (CP)-structure and the noun as a Determiner Phrase (DP)-structure in terms of structure and derivation. An example of structural parallelism lies in the division of the clause and the noun phrase into three domains:
(i) theNachfeld(right periphery), which is the thematic domain; (ii) theMittelfeld(midfield), which is the inflection, agreement, Case and modification domain and (iii) theVorfeld(left periphery), which is the discourse- and operator-related domain. However, we will show following Giusti (2002, 2006), Payne (1993), Bruening (2009), Cinque (2011), Laenzlinger (2011, 2015) among others that the inner structure of theVorfeldand of theMittelfeldof the clause is not strictly parallel to that of the noun phrase. Although derivational parallelism also lies in the possible types of movement occurring in the CP and DP domains (short head/X-movement, simple XP-movement, remnant XP-movement and pied-piping XP-movement), we will see that there is non-parallelism in the application of these sorts of movement within the clause and the noun phrase. In addition, we will test the respective orders among adverbs/adjectives, DP/Prepositional Phrase (PP)-arguments and DP/PP-adjuncts in theMittelfeldof the clause/noun phrase and show that Cinque’s (2013) left–right asymmetry holds crosslinguistically for the possible neutral order (without focus effects) in post-verbal/nominal positions with respect to the prenominal/preverbal base order and its impossible reverse order.
Keywords: Generative Grammar; cartography; noun phrase/clause-(non)parallelism; types of movement; left–right asymmetry; head-final vs. head initial languages
1. Introduction
Since the very beginning of Generative Grammar the parallelism between the deverbal nominal constructionthe enemy’s recent destruction of the cityand the clauseThe enemy recently destroyed the city has been questioned. Lees proposes that such derived nominals are the result of transformational rules that apply in syntax [1]. Chomsky argues against this syntactic approach and assumes that such constructions are derived through lexical rules within the framework of what will be called the Lexicalist Hypothesis [2].
The structural parallelism between the noun phrase (NP) and the clause has emerged more strikingly from Abney’s [3] Determiner Phrase (DP)-hypothesis and has been further developed and discussed in much subsequent work (Cinque [4], Giusti [5–7], Payne [8],
Languages2017,2, 18; doi:10.3390/languages2040018 www.mdpi.com/journal/languages
