In the history of English one finds a mixture of V2 and non-V2 word order in declaratives for several hundred years, with frequencies suggesting a relatively gradual development in the direction of non-V2. Within an extended version of a cue-based approach to acquisition and change, this paper argues that there are many possible V2 grammars, differing from each other with respect to clause type...

In the current work, we test the hypothesis that 'at-issue' and 'not-at-issue' content (Potts, 2005) are processed semi-independently. In a written rating study comparing restrictive relative clauses and parentheticals in interrogatives and declaratives, we observe a significantly larger length penalty for restrictive relative clauses than for parentheticals. This difference cannot be attribute...

This paper argues for a new way of thinking about semantic and pragmatic effects of particular sentence intonation patterns. The main focus of the paper is on the so-called rising declaratives, i.e. sentences that have the surface structure of a declarative sentence but are pronounced with a rising pitch contour. Rising declaratives differ from both declaratives with a falling pitch contour and...

Children pass through a stage in development when they produce utterances that contain auxiliary BE (he's playing) and utterances where auxiliary BE is omitted (he playing). One explanation that has been put forward to explain this phenomenon is the presence of questions in the input that model S-V word order (Theakston, Lieven & Tomasello, 2oo3). The current paper reports two studies that inve...

Abstract We model the conventional meaning of utterances that combine two distinct clause types: a (positive) declarative or imperative (in rare cases, interrogative) anchor and (negative) interrogative tag, such as won’t you? . argue express single speech act, in fact, update conversational scoreboard. The proposed this effect is straightforward extension prior proposals for semantics declarat...

This study focuses on the description of argument structure and word order in Saudi Sign language (SSL). The nature syntactic level grammar SSL is clarified. Since often considered most important part grammar, this details various options that are available for major constituents (Subject, Verb, Object) independent any connection to spoken Arabic syntax. In SSL, like other languages, arguments ...

As South Connaught Irish typically uses the same (falling) tune type in both questions and declaratives, this paper examines whether sentence mode might be differentiated in this dialect by other aspects of the contour realization, namely declination slope, peak height and pitch level. A set of matched declaratives (DEC), whquestions (WHQ) and yes/no questions (YNQ) of two phrase lengths (with ...

In this paper the distribution of nuclear accents in declaratives of four major dialects of Irish is described. The findings show considerable variation, particular between northern and southern dialects. Speakers of the northern dialect of Donegal show a propensity for rising nuclear accents (L*+H) in declaratives, while speakers of the other, more southern, dialects of Mayo, South Connaught a...

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the tonal grammar of Icelandic and to complement the tone inventory as previously described in the literature (Árnason 1998). Specifically, types of pitch accents and edge tones and their combinations in neutral declaratives and questions, and in utterances containing narrow focus are addressed. Two pitch accent types (H∗ and L∗) and two edge tones ...

The primary goal of the present study is to describe the basic prosodic differences between declaratives and polar questions in Fataluku, an underdocumented Papuan language spoken in the island nation of East Timor. Two robust prosodic differences between statements and questions are observed, namely, the duration of the final vowel and the intonational tune at the right margin of the sentence....