Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T11:49:51.071Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Preposition copying and pruning in present-day English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2012

ANDREW RADFORD ,
CLAUDIA FELSER  and
OLIVER BOXELL
ANDREW RADFORD
Affiliation:
Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQUKradford@essex.ac.uk
CLAUDIA FELSER
Affiliation:
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Campus Golm, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24–25, 14476 Potsdam, Germanyclaudia.felser@uni-potsdam.de, boxell@uni-potsdam.de
OLIVER BOXELL
Affiliation:
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Campus Golm, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24–25, 14476 Potsdam, Germanyclaudia.felser@uni-potsdam.de, boxell@uni-potsdam.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates the nature of preposition copying and preposition pruning structures in present-day English. We begin by illustrating the two phenomena and consider how they might be accounted for in syntactic terms, and go on to explore the possibility that preposition copying and pruning arise for processing reasons. We then report on two acceptability judgement experiments examining the extent to which native speakers of English are sensitive to these types of ‘error’ in language comprehension. Our results indicate that preposition copying creates redundancy rather than ungrammaticality, whereas preposition pruning creates processing problems for comprehenders that may render it unacceptable in timed (but not necessarily in untimed) judgement tasks. Our findings furthermore illustrate the usefulness of combining corpus studies and experimentally elicited data for gaining a clearer picture of usage and acceptability, and the potential benefits of examining syntactic phenomena from both a theoretical and a processing perspective.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 403 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abels, Klaus. 2003. Successive cyclicity, anti-locality and adposition stranding. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Alami, Lahcen. In prep. Word order, agreement and resumption in the Tashelhit variety of Berber. PhD dissertation, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Arnold, Jennifer, Wasow, Thomas, Asudeh, Ash & Alrenga, Peter. 2004. Avoiding attachment ambiguities: The role of constituent ordering. Journal of Memory and Language 51, 55–70.Google Scholar
Barbiers, Sjef, Koeneman, Olaf & Lekakou, Marika. 2008. Syntactic doubling and the structure of chains. In Chang, Charles B. & Haynie, Hannah J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings, 77–86.Google Scholar
Blackwell, Arshavir, Bates, Elizabeth & Fisher, Dan. 1996. The time course of grammaticality judgment. Language and Cognitive Processes 11, 337–406.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1961. Syntactic blends and other matters. Language 37, 366–81.Google Scholar
Bošković, Željko. 2001. On the nature of the syntax-phonology interface: Cliticization and related phenomena. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Camacho, Juan. 2002. Wh-doubling: Implications for the syntax of wh-movement. Linguistic Inquiry 33, 157–64.Google Scholar
Cheng, Lisa. 2007. Verb copying in Mandarin Chinese. In Corver, Norbert & Nunes, Jairo (eds.), The copy theory of movement, 151–74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On phases. In Freidin, Robert, Otero, Carlos P. & Zubizaretta, María-Luisa (eds), Foundational issues in linguistic theory, 133–66. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coppock, Elizabeth. 2010. Parallel encoding of alternatives in sentence production: Evidence from syntactic blends. Language and Cognitive Processes 25, 38–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowart, Wayne. 1997. Experimental syntax: Applying objective methods to sentence judgments. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Duffield, Nigel, Matsuo, Ayumi & Roberts, Leah. 2007. Acceptable ungrammaticality in sentence matching. Second Language Research 23, 155–77.Google Scholar
Felser, Claudia. 2004. Wh-copying, phases, and successive cyclicity. Lingua 114, 543–74.Google Scholar
Fleischer, Jürg. 2002. Preposition stranding in German dialects. In Barbiers, Sjef, Cornips, Leonie & van der Kleij, Susanne (eds.), Syntactic microvariation. Online proceedings – Workshop on Syntactic Microvariation. 30–31 August 2000, 116–51. Amsterdam: Meertens Instituut.Google Scholar
Forster, Ken & Forster, Jonathan. 2003. DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracy. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 35, 116–24.Google Scholar
Gibson, Edward. 1998. Syntactic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition 68, 1–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glaser, Elvira & Frey, Natascha. 2007. Doubling phenomena in Swiss German dialects. In Barbiers, Sjef, van der Ham, Margreet & Lekakou, Marika (eds.), European dialect syntax project: Papers presented at the Workshop on Syntactic Doubling. Amsterdam, March 2006. www.meertens.knaw.nl/projecten/edisyn.Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan. 2002. Preposition stranding in English: Predicting speakers’ behaviour. In Samiian, Vida (ed.), Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics, vol. 12, California State University, Fresno, CA, 230–41.Google Scholar
Hofmeister, Philip, Jaeger, T. Florian, Sag, Ivan A., Arnon, Inbal & Snider, Neal. 2007. Locality and accessibility in wh-questions. In Featherston, Samuel & Sternefeld, Wolfgang (eds.), Roots: Linguistics in search of its evidential base. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert & Weinberg, Amy. 1981. Case theory and preposition stranding. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 55–91.Google Scholar
Langendoen, D. Terence & Bever, Thomas G.. 1973. Can a not unhappy man be called a not sad one? In Anderson, Stephen R. & Kiparsky, Paul (eds.). A festschrift for Morris Halle, 392–409. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Langendoen, D. Terence. 1979. The role of grammar in the use of language. In Aaronson, Doris and Rieber, Robert W. (eds.), Psycholinguistic research: Applications and implications, 229–40. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Myers, James. 2008. Syntactic judgment experiments. Language and Linguistics Compass 3, 406–23.Google Scholar
Wörterbuch, Niedersächsisches. Ed. Dieter Stellmacher. Institut für Historische Landesforschung der Universität Göttingen, Arbeitsstelle Niedersächsisches Wörterbuch. Bd. 4: F/V. Bearbeitet von Ulrich Scheuermann. Neumünster: Wachholtz Verlag 1994.Google Scholar
Nunes, Jairo. 1995. The copy theory of movement and linearization of chains in the Minimalist Program. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Nunes, Jairo. 2004. Linearization of chains and sideward movement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nykiel, Joanna. 2010. Competence, performance and extra prepositions. Journal of English Linguistics 38, 143–66.Google Scholar
Ouhalla, Jamal. 2005. Clitic-placement, grammaticalization and reanalysis. In Cinque, Guglielmo & Kayne, Richard (eds.), The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax. 607–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pesetsky, David. 2000. Phrasal movement and its kin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pullum, Geoffrey K. 2007. Could preposition doubling be headed our way? Language Log, 15 May 2007. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004498.html, accessed on 10/07/2011.Google Scholar
Radford, Andrew. 2009. Analysing English sentences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Radford, Andrew. 2010a. Real relatives: The syntax of relative clauses in live radio and TV broadcasts. Paper presented at the Essex Which Hunt conference, 4 June 2010.Google Scholar
Radford, Andrew. 2010b. The syntax of wh-clauses in live radio and TV broadcasts. Paper presented at the Generative Grammar in the 21st Century conference, University of Essex, 7 July 2010.Google Scholar
Radford, Andrew & Felser, Claudia. 2011. On preposition copying and preposition pruning in wh-clauses in English. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 60.2, Dept of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Reintges, Chris H., Philip, LeSourd & Chung, Sandra. 2006. Movement, wh-agreement and apparent wh-in-situ. In Cheng, Lisa & Corver, Norbert (eds.), Wh-Movement: Moving on, 165–94. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativised minimality. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sato, Mikako. 2007. Sensitivity to syntactic and semantic information in second language sentence processing. PhD dissertation, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Schütze, Carson. 1996. The empirical base of linguistics: Grammaticality judgments and linguistic methodology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sobin, Nicholas. 1997. Agreement, default rules and grammatical viruses. Linguistic Inquiry 28, 318–43.Google Scholar
Staum, Laura & Sag, Ivan A. 2008. Antilocality in ungrammaticality: Nonlocal grammaticality violations are easier to process. Poster presented at CUNY 2008 in Chapel Hill, NC.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 2002. I wonder what kind of construction that this example illustrates. In Beaver, David I., Martínez, Louis D. Casillas, Clark, Brady Z. & Kaufmann, Stefan (eds.), The construction of meaning, 219–48. Chicago: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar