The head the construct: Construct state nominals as a novel window to syntactic movement difficulties in hearing impairment

What it is about

The authors test a syntactic claim about Hebrew Construct State nominals (CSN): the head noun moves to the determiner position (N-to-D), so no determiner can stand before the head. They read this as a diagnostic. In a study of 32 hearing-impaired children (aged 9;1–12;2) and 18 hearing controls, the children read aloud 63 CSNs in ten paragraphs (831 words). The impaired children added a definite determiner before the head in 72 cases (71 of them in definite CSNs); the controls almost never did (mean 0.2%). Fourteen of the 32 children read the head in its Free form, against one of 18 controls (44% vs 6%, χ² = 8, p = .005). The twelve children with clear CSN errors were also impaired on V-to-C movement and object A-bar dependencies. The paper supports a movement analysis of CSN and reports a deficit in N-to-D movement.

Ideas

• I1. A rule for the CSN head: a noun in its Construct form (for example -at, -ey, or the bare construct) followed by a complement with ha- is a CSN head, and a ha- before that head is a violation to flag. Lexicalised compounds (beged-yam, 'swimsuit') are listed in the lexicon so that they are not treated as CSNs; the paper notes that native speakers do this.
• I2. Use the paper's condition types as a test set for the head and determiner check: bare head; prefix me- or še- before ha-; and the fused prepositions b- and l-, which hide the determiner in unpointed spelling. The fused case is the hard one, and the test shows whether the segmenter can see the difference.
• I3. Count Construct-form heads as a measure of the CSN reading: the share of heads read in the Free form is the signal the paper uses. A Mova check can report the same kind of count on a text, with the reasons written out.

For Mova

I1 goes into 7. Syntax (CSN and possessive structures) and the lexicon note in 8. Lexicon and register. I2 is a test set for the unpointed-text handling in 2. Script and spelling. I3 is a measurement to run over a Modern Hebrew text once the reader exists.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.5334/gjgl.674

@article{friedmann2018head,
  title = {{The head the construct: Construct state nominals as a novel window to syntactic movement difficulties in hearing impairment}},
  author = {Friedmann, Naama and Szterman, Ronit and Belletti, Adriana and Rizzi, Luigi},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.5334/gjgl.674},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.674}
}

References

41 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Belletti, Adriana. 1999. Italian/Romance Clitics: Structure and Derivation. In Henk Van Riemsdijk (ed.), Clitics in the Languages of Europe, 543–579. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. ISBN: 3110157519 Berent, Gerald P. 1988. An assessment of syntactic capabilities. In Michael Strong (ed.), Language learning and deafness, 133–161. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524483.008 ↗
2. Berent, Gerald P. 1996. Learnability constraints on deaf learners’ acquisition of English wh-questions. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 39. 625–643. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3903.625 Berman, Ruth Aronson. 1978. Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects. ↗
3. Berman, Ruth Aronson. 2009. Children’s acquisition of compound constructions. In Rochelle Lieber & Pavol Štekauer (eds.), Handbook of compounding, 298–322. Oxford University Press. find
4. Borer, Hagit. 1988. On the morphological parallelism between compounds and constructs. Yearbook of Morphology 1. 45–65. find
5. Borer, Hagit. 1999. Deconstructing the construct. In Beyond principles and parameters, 43–89. Springer, Dordrecht. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4822-1_3 ↗
6. Borer, Hagit. 2008. Compounds: The view from Hebrew. In The Oxford handbook of compounds, 491–511. find
7. Cinque, Guglielmo. 2000. On Greenberg’s universal 20 and the Semitic DP. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics 10. 45–61. find
8. Danon, Gabi. 2008. Definiteness spreading in the Hebrew construct state. Lingua 118(7). 872–906. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2007.05.012 ↗
9. Danon, Gabi. 2012. Two structures for numeral-noun constructions. Lingua 122(12). 1282–1307. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.07.003 ↗
10. Danon, Gabi. 2017. Imagine no possession: John Lennon in the construct state. A paper presented at the 33rd IATL meeting. Israel. de Villiers, Jill G., Peter A. de Villiers & Esme Hoban. 1994. The central problem of functional categories in the English syntax of oral deaf children. In Helen Tager-Flusberg (ed.), Constraints on language acquisition: Studies of atypical children, 9–47. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. de Villiers, Peter A. 1988. Assessing English syntax in hearing-impaired children: Elicited production in pragmatically motivated situations. In Richard R. Kretschmer & Laura W. Kretschmer (eds.), Communication assessment of hearing-impaired children: From conversation to classroom (The journal of Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology 21), 41–72. find
11. Delage, Hélène & Laurice Tuller. 2007. Language development and mild-to-moderate hearing loss: Does language normalize with age? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50. 1300–1313. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2007/091) ↗
12. Doron, Edit & Irit Meir. 2013. Construct state: Modern Hebrew. In The encyclopedia of Hebrew language and linguistics 1. 581–589. find
13. Friedmann, Naama & Manar Haddad-Hanna. 2014. The comprehension of sentences derived by syntactic movement in Palestinian Arabic speakers with hearing impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics 35(3). 473–513. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0142716412000483 Friedmann, Naama & Ronit Szterman. 2006. Syntactic movement in orally-trained children with hearing impairment. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 11. 56–75. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enj002 ↗
14. Friedmann, Naama & Ronit Szterman. 2011. The comprehension and production of Wh questions in children with hearing impairment. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 16. 212–235. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enq052 ↗
15. Friedmann, Naama, Ronit Szterman & Manar Haddad-Hanna. 2010. The comprehension of relative clauses and Wh-questions in Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic hearing impairment. In Ana Castro, João Costa, Maria Lobo & Fernanda Pratas (eds.), Language acquisition and development: Generative approaches to language acquisition 2009. Cambridge: C ambridge Scholars Press/CSP. find
16. Haddad-Hanna, Manar & Naama Friedmann. 2009. The comprehension of s yntactic structures by Palestinian Arabic-speaking individuals with hearing impairment. Language and Brain 9. 79–104. find
17. Haddad-Hanna, Manar & Naama Friedmann. 2014. The comprehension and production of sentences with syntactic movement in Palestinian Arabic-speaking individuals with hearing impairment. In Tova Most & Dalia Ringwald-Frimermen (eds.), Rehabilitation and Education of Children and adults hard of hearing and deaf: Theoretical and implementation aspects, 295–351. Tel Aviv: Mofet institute. find
18. Kayne, Richard S. 1998. Overt vs. covert movements. Syntax 1(2). 128–191. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1111/1467-9612.00006 Koopman, Hilda Judith & Anna Szabolcsi. 2000. Verbal complexes (No. 34). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.‏ Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994a. Reference and Proper Names. Linguistic Inquiry 25. 609–665. ↗
19. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994b. A case of construct state in Romance. In Roberto Ajello & Saverio Sani (eds.), Scritti linguistici e filologici in onore di Tristano Bolelli. Pisa: Pacini. find
20. Quigley, Stephen Patrick, N. L. Smith & Ronnie Bring Wilbur. 1974a. Comprehension of relativized sentences by deaf students. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 17. 325–341. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.1703.325 ↗
21. Quigley, Stephen Patrick, Ronnie B. Wilbur & Dale S. Montanelli. 1974b. Question formation in the language of deaf students. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 17. 699–713. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.1704.699 ↗
22. Ravid, Dorit. 1997. Between syntax and the lexicon: The parallel between N-N compounds and N-A strings in acquisition. In Antonella Sorace, Caroline Heycock, & Richard Shillcock (eds.), Proceedings of the GALA 1997 Conference on Language Acquisition, 138–141. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. find
23. Ritter, Elizabeth. 1988. A head-movement approach to construct-state noun phrases. Linguistics 26(6). 909–930. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1988.26.6.909 ↗
24. Rizzi, Luigi & Ian Roberts. 1989. Complex inversion in French. Probus 1(1). 1–30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/prbs.1989.1.1.1 ↗
25. Shlonsky, Ur. 2004. The form of Semitic noun phrases. Lingua 114(12). 1465–1526. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2003.09.019 ↗
26. Siloni, Tal. 1996. Hebrew noun phrases: Generalized noun raising. In Parameters and functional heads, 239–267. find
27. Siloni, Tal. 1997. Noun phrases and nominalizations: The syntax of DPs 40. Springer Science & Business Media. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8863-8 ↗
28. Siloni, Tal. 2001. Construct states at the PF interface. In Linguistic variation yearbook 1(1). 229–266. find
29. Szterman, Ronit & Naama Friedmann. 2003. The deficit in comprehension of movement-derived sentences in children with hearing impairment. Lir’ot et Hakolot 2. 20–29. find
30. Szterman, Ronit & Naama Friedmann. 2007. How do children with hearing impairment produce relative clauses? Israeli Journal of Language, Speech, and Hearing Disorders 28. 58–71. find
31. Szterman, Ronit & Naama Friedmann. 2014a. The syntactic abilities of children with hearing impairment in school ages and its influence on reading comprehension. In Tova Most & Dalia Ringwald-Frimermen (eds.), Rehabilitation and Education and of Children and adults hard of hearing and deaf: Theoretical and implementational aspects, 239–294. Tel Aviv: Mofet institute. find
32. Szterman, Ronit & Naama Friedmann. 2014b. Relative clause reading in hearing impairment: Different profiles of syntactic impairment. Frontiers in Psychology: Language Sciences 5(1229). 1–16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01229 ↗
33. Szterman, Ronit & Naama Friedmann. 2015. Insights into the syntactic deficit of c hildren with hearing impairment from a sentence repetition task. In Cornelia Hamann & Esther Ruigendijk (eds.), Language acquisition and development: Generative approaches to language acquisition, 492–505. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. find
34. Szterman, Ronit & Naama Friedmann. 2017. Comprehension and production of sentences with verb movement to C in children with hearing impairment. Language and Brain 12. 53–87. find
35. Tuller, Laurice & Celia Jakubowicz. 2004. Développement de la morphosyntaxe du français chez des enfants sourds moyens. Le Langage et l’homme 39(2). 191–207. find
36. Volpato, Francesca. 2008. Clitic pronouns and past participle agreement in Italian in three hearing impaired bilinguals Italian/LIS. Rivista di Linguistica 20(2). 308–345. find
37. Volpato, Francesca & Flavia Adani. 2009. The subject/object relative clause asymmetry in Italian hearing-impaired children: Evidence from a comprehension task. In Proceedings of the XXXV Incontro di Grammatica Generativa. find
38. How to cite this article: Friedmann, Naama, Ronit Szterman, Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi. 2018. The head the construct: Construct state nominals as a novel window to syntactic movement difficulties in hearing impairment. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3(1): 134. 1–15, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.674 ↗ our card
39. Accepted: 29 September 2018 find
40. Published: 14 December 2018 find
41. Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Ubiquity Press. OPEN ACCESS ↗

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/lingbulk-2018-friedmann-head-construct-construct-state-nominals/