SYNTACTIC DISLOCATION PHENOMENA IN THE ADVERBIAL CLAUSES OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES – A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE –

Received: 24th August 2021; Revised: 01st December 2021, 12th January 2022, 17th January 2022; Accepted: 19th January 2022

Authors

  • Alice-Magdalena Bodoc PhD. Senior Lecturer, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Letters Transilvania University, Brașov, Romania

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20319/pijss.2022.73.169188

Keywords:

Adverbial Clauses, Information Structure, Word Order, Romance Languages

Abstract

Currently numerous studies have concerned themselves with reducing school dropout rates premised on school environment. This has resulted into limited impact of interventions fronted to reduce the high school dropout rates. If schools are to register high retention rates commensurate to the high enrollment levels, there is need for studies and interventions to look beyond school related factors which don’t influence school attendance in isolation but operate alongside other factors such as the individual characteristics of the children and their parents especially the household head, household structure and composition as well as the community factors. Therefore, this study aimed at determining non-school factors associated with school dropouts in Uganda. Assessment was done using the probit regression model and secondary data from Uwezo Uganda National Learning Assessment 2014 survey. Children aged 6-16 were assessed based on their household setting and supplementary data obtained through related surveys of their households, local communities and selected local schools where majority of the children in the community were enrolled. The likelihood of a child dropping out of school increased with the child’s age and reduced with; increase in years of preschool attendance and household heads education level. Furthermore, school dropouts were more likely among the disabled children and children with no biological parents in the household. The study recommended focusing on pupil retention, parent sensitization regarding the merits of formal education and the need to promote mandatory pre-school education where children’s’ reading, writing and numeracy can be nurtured at an early age. There is need to explore further the effect of other non-school factors that could influence school dropout directly or indirectly or interactively with school related factors including peer social capital, student loan scheme programmes, government education policies to curb school absenteeism and commitment to their implementation, migration among others.

References

Bailyn, J. F. (1995). A configurational approach to Russian “free” word order. Ph.D. thesis, New York: Cornell University.

Bailyn, J. F. (2003). Does Russian scrambling exist? S. Karimi (Eds), Word Order and Scrambling (pp. 156-176). Berlin: Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470758403.ch7

Baker, M. C. (2001). The Natures of Nonconfigurationality. M. Baltin & C. Collins (Eds.), The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory (pp. 407-438). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.https://doi.org/10.1038/35071216

Belletti, A., & Schlonsky, U. (1995). The order of verbal complements: A comparative study. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 13, 489-526. https://doi.org/10.1007 /BF00992739. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992739

Bussmann, H. (1996). Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. [Translated and edited by G. P. Trauth & K. Kazzazi]. London: New York Routledge.

Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, Consciousness and Time. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Cinque, G. (1990). Types of A' Dependencies. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: MIT Press.

Culicover, P. W., & Rochemont, M. (1983). Stress and focus in English. Language, 59, 123-165. https://doi.org/10.2307/414063

Diessel, H. (2019). Preposed adverbial clauses: Functional adaptation and diachronic inheritance. K. Schmidtke-Bode, N. Levshina, S. M. Michaelis, & I. A. Seržant, (Eds.), Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence (pp. 97-122). Berlin: Language Science Press.

Dryer, M. S. (2005). Order of Subject, Object, and Verb. M. Haspelmath, M. S. Dryer, D. Gil, & B. Comrie (Eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures (pp. 330-333). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Emonds, J. E. (1970). Root and Structure-Preserving Transformations. Ph.D. dissertation Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: MIT.

Erteschik-Shir, N. (1997). The Dynamics of Focus Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519949

Firbas, I. (1992). Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597817

Givón, T. (1979). On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-285451-4.50010-2

Gundel, J. K. (1975). Left dislocation and the role of topic-comment structure in linguistic theory. Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics, 18, 72-131.

Haegeman, L. (2012). Adverbial Clauses, Main Clause Phenomena, and Composition of the Left Periphery. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858774.001.0001

Hirschbühler, P. (1997). On the source of lefthand NPs in French. E. Anagnostopoulou, H. van Riemsdijk & F. Zwarts (Eds.), Materials on Left Dislocation [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 14] (pp. 55-66). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.14.06hir

Hooper, J. B., & Thompson, S. A. (1973). On the applicability of root transformations. Linguistic Inquiry, 4 (4), 465-497.

Jackendoff, R. (1972). Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

Junghanns, U., & Zybatow, G. (1997). Syntax and information structure of Russian clauses. W. Browne (Ed.), Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics (pp. 289-319) [The Cornell Meeting 1995]. Michigan: Michigan Slavic Publications.

Karimi, S. (Ed.). 2003. Word Order and Scrambling. Berlin: Blackwell Publishing Ltd https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470758403

Kiss, K. É. (1995). Introduction. K. É. Kiss (Ed.), Discourse Configurational Languages (pp. 3-27). New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Klein, W. (2012). The information structure of French. M. Krifka, & R. Musan, The Expression of Information Structure (pp. 95-127). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Krifka, M. (1999). Additive particles under stress. D. Strolovitch & A. Lawson (Eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 8 (pp. 111-128). Cornell University: Chicago Linguistic Society Publications. https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v8i0.2799

Lahousse, K., & Lamiroy, B. (2012). Word Order in French, Spanish and Italian: a. grammaticalization account. Folia Linguistica, 46 (2), 387-415. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2012.014

Lambrecht, K. (1994). Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620607

Ledgeway, A. (2011). Syntactic and Morphosyntactic Typology and Change. M. Maiden, J. C. Smith, and A. Ledgeway (Eds.) (2011). The Cambridge History of Romance Languages. I. Structures (pp. 382-471). Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521800723.010

Manoliu, M. M. (2011). Pragmatic and Discourse Changes. M. Maiden, J. Ch. Smith, & A. Ledgeway (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Romance Languages. I. Structures (pp. 472-531). Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521800723.011

Matić, D., van Gijn, R., & van Valin, Jr., R. D. (2014). Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences: An overview. R. van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matić, S. van Putten & A. V. Galucio (Eds.), Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences (1-44). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.105.01mat

Metzeltin, M. (2011). Gramatica explicativă a limbilor romanice. Sintaxă şi semantică. Iaşi: ‘Alexandru Ioan Cuza’ University Publishing House.

Miyagawa, S. (1997). Against optional scrambling. Linguistic Inquiry, 28 (1), 1-25.

Nicolae, A. (2015). Ordinea constituenților în limba română: o perspectivă diacronică. Structura propoziției și deplasarea verbului. Bucharest: Bucharest University Publishing House.

Ogle, R. (1981). Redefining the scope of root transformations. Linguistics, 19, 119-146. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1981.19.1-2.119

Pană Dindelegan, G., & Maiden, M. (Eds.). (2013). The Grammar of Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Poole, G. (2007). Interpolation and the Left Periphery in Old Spanish. M. Hussein, M. Kolokante, & C. Wright (Eds.), Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 13 (pp. 188-216). Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Newcastle.

Prince, E. (1981). Towards a taxonomy of given-new information. P. Cole (Ed.) Radical pragmatics (pp. 223-256). New York: Academic Press.

Reinhart, T. (1982). Pragmatics and Linguistics: An Analysis of Sentence Topics. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club.

Reinheimer, S., & Tasmowski, L. (2005). Pratique des langues romanes. II. Les pronoms personels. Paris: L’Hartamann.

Renzi, L., & Andreose, A. (2003). Manuale di linguistica e filologia romanza. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Renzi, L., Salvi, G., & Cardinaletti, A. (2001). Grande grammatica Italiana di consultazione. Rome: Il Mulino.

Rochemont, M. S. (1986). Focus on Generative Grammar. Studies in Generative Linguistic Analysis 4. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sigla.4

Shaer, B. (2009). German and English left-peripheral elements and the ‘orphan’ analysis of non-integration. B. Shaer, P. Cook, W. Frey, & C. Maienborn (Eds.), Dislocated Elements in Discourse. Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Perspectives (pp. 366-397). New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203929247

Sornicolà, R. (1994). On word-order variability: A case study from a corpus of Italian. Lingua e Stile, 29, 25-57.

Vallduví, E. (1992). The Informational Component. New York: Garland.

van Putten, S. (2014), Left dislocation and subordination in Avatime (Kwa). R. van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matić, S. van Putten & A. V. Galucio (Eds.), Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences (71-72). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.105.03van

Winkler, S. (2012). The information structure of English. M. Krifka, & R. Musan (Eds.), The Expression of Information Structure (pp.71-94). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110261608.71

Zubizarreta, M. L. (1998). Prosody, focus, and word order. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Downloads

Published

2022-01-20

How to Cite

Bodoc, A.-M. (2022). SYNTACTIC DISLOCATION PHENOMENA IN THE ADVERBIAL CLAUSES OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES – A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE –: Received: 24th August 2021; Revised: 01st December 2021, 12th January 2022, 17th January 2022; Accepted: 19th January 2022. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences, 7(3), 169–188. https://doi.org/10.20319/pijss.2022.73.169188