This study aims to analyze the derivation of weak active participles (APs) from triconsonantal imperfective verbs within the X-slot model of autosegmental phonology. The first stage of the research involves building a corpus of APs from a well-established corpus-based dictionary, namely [characters omitted] 'Dictionary of Modern Arabic Language'.…

This paper explores the application of quantitative methods to study the effect of various factors on phonetic word duration in ten languages. Data on most of these languages were collected in fieldwork aiming at documenting spontaneous speech in mostly endangered languages, to be used for multiple purposes, including the preservation of cultural…

In this paper, I provide an analysis of 'verbless' sentences in Arabic (mainly, the Standard variety, SA) in light of the claims of the feature-based probe-goal-Agree system of Chomsky (2001, 2004) and such assumptions as held by Biberauer et al. (2010) about probe-goal Agree relations being parameterized according to the feature-structure of…

This paper examines how causality is related to coreferential and reciprocal structures, looking at how they are conceived and expressed in Ewe. It deals with one particular type of causative constructions, namely the periphrastic causative construction, where the CAUSER is coreferential with the CAUSEE. This is the case where the CAUSER and the…

This paper addresses the issues with current systems of categorisation and measurement of linguistic metaphoricity, which have coloured most research into the area to-date. The paper discusses the role of metaphor as a form of creative language and a deviation from more linguistic norms and conventionalities. Two current theories are discussed as…

Cognitive linguists claim that verb-particle constructions are compositional and analyzable, and that the particles contribute to the overall meaning in the form of image schemas. This article examined this claim with a behavioral experiment, in which participants were asked to judge the sensibility of short sentences primed by image-schematic…

This paper aims to give an overview of studies on phrasal verbs in three decades to present the theoretical and methodological issues, as well as the findings of research. Moreover, this review reveals the developments and paradigm shifts occurred in this area. Previous studies have shown that the research findings have not been incorporated into…

This article focuses on the acquisition of mood in early complement clauses of European Portuguese (EP). Two semantic features are involved in the EP mood system--epistemicity and veridicality. An elicited production task administered to 80 children aged 4 to 9 showed that, even though children use the subjunctive in [-- epistemic] contexts, the…

When native speakers judge the acceptability of novel sentences, they appear to implicitly take competing formulations into account, judging novel sentences with a readily available alternative formulation to be less acceptable than novel sentences with no competing alternative. Moreover, novel sentences with a competing alternative are more…

Negation in modern Mongolian was analyzed by scholars namely: Luvsanvandan Sh (1968, 2000), Wonsoo Yu (1991), Mönkh-Amgalan Yu (1998), Purev-Ochir B. (1998, 2001), Byambasan P. (2006), Kunihiko Hasimoto (2008), BatIreedui J.(2009), Ravdan E. (2009), Mönkh-Amgalan Yu & Kan Shin (2014). Sentential negation in modern Mongolian is not sufficiently…

This article demonstrates how the Comparative Method can be applied to cross-linguistic research on language acquisition. The Comparative Method provides a systematic procedure for organizing and interpreting acquisition data from different languages. The Comparative Method controls for cross-linguistic differences at all levels of the grammar and…

There has been considerable research both intra- and inter-linguistically on hedging in a variety of languages (e.g. Myers 1989; Markannen & Schroder 1997; Hyland 2005), primarily concentrating on its use in academic writing and identifying cultural differences in the propensity to hedge between different communities of practice. Furthermore,…

Research findings concerning verb-level influences on past-tense morphology carry implications for the careful selection of treatment targets. Using 6 of the broad criteria for "good verbs to choose" proposed by D. Crystal (1985) more than 25 years ago as a framework, this article summarizes some of the more recent research with a nod…

This article examines the acquisition of embedded verb placement in Swedish children, focusing on Neg-V and V-Neg order. It is proposed that a principle of economy of movement creates an overuse of V-Neg order in embedded clauses and that the low frequency of the target-consistent Neg-V order in child-directed speech obstructs children from…

This article focuses on the syntactic level of the grammar of Saudi Arabian Sign Language by exploring some word orders that occur in personal narratives in the language. Word order is one of the main ways in which languages indicate the main syntactic roles of subjects, verbs, and objects; others are verbal agreement and nominal case morphology.…