Final Review Flashcards
Which word class is most likely to express evidentiality?
Verb
What is the semantic role of the stick in the following sentence:
The stick was used to crack open the can.
Instrument
What do we call a verb that does not inflect for all the normal verbal
categories?
Non-finite
What do we call a dependent that is optional and not selected by
the head?
Adjunct
What do we call a clause that may have other clauses embedded
within it, but is not itself embedded in any other clause? (Three
possible answers, point for each one)
Root-independent/main
*not matrix
What do we we call it when two clauses are conjoined, but neither is
subordinate to the other
coordination
What is the order of head and dependent in the following example?
What is the locus of marking?
liga-i ‘eirau
hand-POSS 1DU.EXCL
‘our hand(s)’
head-initial and head-marking
What do we call it when a sentence has more than one possible
constituency structure?
structural/syntactic ambiguity
Identify as many multi-word constituents as you can in the following sentence:
The boy started running with the scissors.
The boy
Started running with the scissors
Running with the scissors
With the scissors
The scissors
The boy started running with the scissors
What broad kind of constituency test is exemplified by the following
sentences:
I watched the plane take off. vs. It was the plane that I watched take off.
cleft or movement/displacement
According to the textbook, what word class other than verb can be
transitive or intransitive?
preposition/adposition
Give me an example of an intransitive preposition (not a phrasal verb).
he walked up
How are grammatical relations marked in the following English
sentence? (multiple points possible)
She misses me.
Word/constituent order
Indexing/agreement (head marking)
Case marking (dependent marking)
What term refers to head-marking at the clause level?
indexing
What are the two most common clausal constituent orders?
SOV & SVO
What is the name for the alignment of a language in which some S
arguments are expressed the same as A, but others are expressed the
same as P?
agent-patient alignment
What morphosyntactic alignment is represented by the following:
A = P =/= S
Horizontal alignment
In an ergative-absolutive language, which case marks the A?
Ergative
Consider the following sentence:
[The ?ger followed the duck] and [got lost]
If the duck got lost, what kind of pivot does the language have?
absolutive
What valency-changing operation adds a new P argument?
applicative
What valency-changing operations can turn an Ergative argument into
an Absolutive argument? (multiple points possible)
antipassive & causative
How does English generally form causatives?
lexically
What do we call the syntactic operation that demotes an S but does not
promote any other argument to S?
impersonal construction
Why do we have valency-changing operations? (multiple points
possible)
To (de-)emphasize a participant
For information structure
To ”feed” other syntactic operations
What do we call the (empty) original position of a constituent that has
(allegedly) undergone movement?
gap
Name as many English interrogative pronouns as you can.
Who What When Where Why How
Give me an English sentence with a wh-word in situ.
You did what?
What position is relativized in the following sentence:
I used to see him in the store that Wal-mart is cheaper than.
object of comparison
Give me the full Accessibility Hierarchy in order.
Subject
Direct object
Object of adposition
Possessor
Object of comparison
Which article that we read showed that syntactic phenomena can be
subject to sociolinguistic variation?
Upadhyay/Gender agreement in Nepal
What were the two types of frequency in the Bybee & Thompson
article?
Token and type
Cross-linguistically, which patient-like argument in a ditransitive is more likely to be animate and definite?
Recipient (R)
What do we call a phrase whose meaning is not compositional (i.e., not composed of the meanings of the words)?
idiom
Consider the following sentences:
I wash myself.
*Myself wash me.
What term do generative approaches use to describe this asymmetry which refers to the relative positions of the arguments in a syntactic tree?
C-command
