Publikation:

The interaction of animacy and number agreement: An experimental investigation

Lade...
Vorschaubild

Dateien

Zu diesem Dokument gibt es keine Dateien.

Datum

2014

Herausgeber:innen

Kontakt

ISSN der Zeitschrift

Electronic ISSN

ISBN

Bibliografische Daten

Verlag

Schriftenreihe

Auflagebezeichnung

URI (zitierfähiger Link)
ArXiv-ID

Internationale Patentnummer

Angaben zur Forschungsförderung

Projekt

Open Access-Veröffentlichung
Core Facility der Universität Konstanz

Gesperrt bis

Titel in einer weiteren Sprache

Publikationstyp
Zeitschriftenartikel
Publikationsstatus
Published

Erschienen in

Lingua. 2014, 148, pp. 254-277. ISSN 0024-3841. eISSN 1872-6135. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2014.06.005

Zusammenfassung

This paper investigates subject–verb agreement in Turkish with particular focus on the role the animacy of plural subjects plays in verbal number marking. Previous descriptive grammars of Turkish (e.g., Sezer, 1978) report an asymmetry in number marking for plural subjects: if the plural subject denotes an animate entity, both plural and singular verbs are possible, whereas only singular verbs are possible when the plural subject denotes an inanimate entity. Using the magnitude estimation method, we measured the well-formedness of simple Turkish sentences consisting of a plural subject and a verb in two groups of participants that differ only in age (mean: 28 years old and 43 years old). The overall results provide an empirical validation of the proposed split between animate and inanimate subjects and suggest that the acceptability of plural agreement is sensitive to even more fine-grained distinctions of animacy. In particular, the plural dispreference was reduced for inanimates with a teleological capacity (in the sense of Folli and Harley, 2008) and for body parts, in comparison to true inanimates (e.g., furniture and clothes). Accordingly, we propose an animacy hierarchy for Turkish that is in line with typological observations (e.g., 0075 and 0080) and augment it with a further distinction between quasi-animates and inanimates.


Although less pronounced in sentences with animate subjects, we observed a higher preference for singular verbs over plural verbs across all conditions. This suggests that the singular marking on the verb, which is zero marked in Turkish, is the default. Furthermore, we find a significant effect of age: in the older group, the singular preference is less pronounced across the conditions and almost absent in sentences with an animate subject. Moreover, the older participants made finer distinctions in the animacy hierarchy, further differentiating between two types of quasi-animates (teleologically capable entities vs. entities with inherited animacy). The two generations in our study share the animate–inanimate split as well as the sharp contrast between singular and plural agreement in sentences with inanimate subjects; they differ, however, in degree of optionality. Altogether, these results suggest a decrease in the degree of optionality across generations. As in research on language attrition and bilingualism (0215, 0300 and 0400), the results accord with the idea that interface phenomena are vulnerable to change; however, non-convergence between generations in our study stemmed from areas that yield gradient rather than categorical results.

Zusammenfassung in einer weiteren Sprache

Fachgebiet (DDC)
400 Sprachwissenschaft, Linguistik

Schlagwörter

Subject verb agreement in Turkish, Number marking, Animacy, Optionality, Gradience, Semantics morphosyntax interface, Language change

Konferenz

Rezension
undefined / . - undefined, undefined

Forschungsvorhaben

Organisationseinheiten

Zeitschriftenheft

Zugehörige Datensätze in KOPS

Zitieren

ISO 690BAMYACI, Elif, Jana HÄUSSLER, Baris KABAK, 2014. The interaction of animacy and number agreement: An experimental investigation. In: Lingua. 2014, 148, pp. 254-277. ISSN 0024-3841. eISSN 1872-6135. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2014.06.005
BibTex
@article{Bamyaci2014inter-29276,
  year={2014},
  doi={10.1016/j.lingua.2014.06.005},
  title={The interaction of animacy and number agreement: An experimental investigation},
  volume={148},
  issn={0024-3841},
  journal={Lingua},
  pages={254--277},
  author={Bamyaci, Elif and Häussler, Jana and Kabak, Baris}
}
RDF
<rdf:RDF
    xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:bibo="http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/"
    xmlns:dspace="http://digital-repositories.org/ontologies/dspace/0.1.0#"
    xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"
    xmlns:void="http://rdfs.org/ns/void#"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#" > 
  <rdf:Description rdf:about="https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/server/rdf/resource/123456789/29276">
    <dc:date rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime">2014-11-22T10:17:20Z</dc:date>
    <dcterms:issued>2014</dcterms:issued>
    <dcterms:abstract xml:lang="eng">This paper investigates subject–verb agreement in Turkish with particular focus on the role the animacy of plural subjects plays in verbal number marking. Previous descriptive grammars of Turkish (e.g., Sezer, 1978) report an asymmetry in number marking for plural subjects: if the plural subject denotes an animate entity, both plural and singular verbs are possible, whereas only singular verbs are possible when the plural subject denotes an inanimate entity. Using the magnitude estimation method, we measured the well-formedness of simple Turkish sentences consisting of a plural subject and a verb in two groups of participants that differ only in age (mean: 28 years old and 43 years old). The overall results provide an empirical validation of the proposed split between animate and inanimate subjects and suggest that the acceptability of plural agreement is sensitive to even more fine-grained distinctions of animacy. In particular, the plural dispreference was reduced for inanimates with a teleological capacity (in the sense of Folli and Harley, 2008) and for body parts, in comparison to true inanimates (e.g., furniture and clothes). Accordingly, we propose an animacy hierarchy for Turkish that is in line with typological observations (e.g., 0075 and 0080) and augment it with a further distinction between quasi-animates and inanimates.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Although less pronounced in sentences with animate subjects, we observed a higher preference for singular verbs over plural verbs across all conditions. This suggests that the singular marking on the verb, which is zero marked in Turkish, is the default. Furthermore, we find a significant effect of age: in the older group, the singular preference is less pronounced across the conditions and almost absent in sentences with an animate subject. Moreover, the older participants made finer distinctions in the animacy hierarchy, further differentiating between two types of quasi-animates (teleologically capable entities vs. entities with inherited animacy). The two generations in our study share the animate–inanimate split as well as the sharp contrast between singular and plural agreement in sentences with inanimate subjects; they differ, however, in degree of optionality. Altogether, these results suggest a decrease in the degree of optionality across generations. As in research on language attrition and bilingualism (0215, 0300 and 0400), the results accord with the idea that interface phenomena are vulnerable to change; however, non-convergence between generations in our study stemmed from areas that yield gradient rather than categorical results.</dcterms:abstract>
    <dc:creator>Häussler, Jana</dc:creator>
    <dc:contributor>Häussler, Jana</dc:contributor>
    <bibo:uri rdf:resource="http://kops.uni-konstanz.de/handle/123456789/29276"/>
    <dc:creator>Kabak, Baris</dc:creator>
    <void:sparqlEndpoint rdf:resource="http://localhost/fuseki/dspace/sparql"/>
    <foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://localhost:8080/"/>
    <dc:creator>Bamyaci, Elif</dc:creator>
    <dspace:isPartOfCollection rdf:resource="https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/server/rdf/resource/123456789/45"/>
    <dcterms:available rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime">2014-11-22T10:17:20Z</dcterms:available>
    <dcterms:title>The interaction of animacy and number agreement: An experimental investigation</dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:isPartOf rdf:resource="https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/server/rdf/resource/123456789/45"/>
    <dc:contributor>Bamyaci, Elif</dc:contributor>
    <dc:language>eng</dc:language>
    <dc:contributor>Kabak, Baris</dc:contributor>
  </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

Interner Vermerk

xmlui.Submission.submit.DescribeStep.inputForms.label.kops_note_fromSubmitter

Kontakt
URL der Originalveröffentl.

Prüfdatum der URL

Prüfungsdatum der Dissertation

Finanzierungsart

Kommentar zur Publikation

Allianzlizenz
Corresponding Authors der Uni Konstanz vorhanden
Internationale Co-Autor:innen
Universitätsbibliographie
Nein
Begutachtet
Diese Publikation teilen