Priority Information Determining the Canonical Word Order of Written Sinhalese Sentences

Kanduboda, A. B. Prabath; Tamaoka, Katsuo

doi:10.4236/ojml.2012.21004

Cited by 6 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…This greatly flexible word order alternation indicates a "flat" phrase structure that lacks VP or other phrasal projections within sentences, which supports for the non-configurationality hypothesis (e.g., Farmer, 1984;Hale, 1980Hale, , 1982Hale, , 1983. Thus, all five altered word orders should be compared together with the presently proposed-canonical order of SOV (Kanduboda & Tamaoka, 2009, 2010 in order to ascertain what the true canonical order is in the Sinhalese language. The present study, therefore, investigated the effects of word order alternation in the processing of written (Experiment 1) and spoken (Experiment 2) Sinhalese sentences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Effects of Word Order Alternation on the Sentence Processing of Sinhalese Written and Spoken Forms

Tamaoka¹,

Kanduboda²,

Sakai³

2011

OJML

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In both written and spoken forms, the Sinhalese language allows all six possible word orders for active sentences with transitive verbs (i.e., SOV, OSV, SVO, OVS, VSO, and VOS), even though its unmarked order is subject-object-verb (SOV) (e.g., Gair, 1998; Miyagishi, 2003; Yamamoto, 2003). Reaction times for sentence correctness decisions showed SOV < SVO = OVS = OSV = VSO = VOS for the written form, and SOV < SVO = OVS < OSV = VSO = VOS for the spoken form. The different degrees of reaction times may correspond to the three different types of word order alternation. First, the fastest reaction time for SOV word order corresponds to the canonical order SOV without any structural change, represented as [ TP S [ VP O V] ] for both the written and spoken forms. Second, word order alternation at the same structural level is involved in both SVO and OVS, [ TP S [ VP t1 V O1] ] for SVO and [ TP t1 [ VP O V ] S1 ] for OVS, resulting in a slower reaction speed than SOV. Third, and again for only the spoken form, word order alternation takes place at a different structural level, [ TP’ O1 [ TP S [ VP t1 V ] ] ] for OSV, [ TP’ V1 [ TP S [ VP O t1] ] ] for VSO, and double word order alternations take place within the same level as [ TP t1 [ VP t2 V O2 ] S1] for VOS. These word order alternations for OSV, VSO and VOS require an extra cognitive load for sentence processing, even heavier than for a single word order alternation of SVO and OVS taking place at the same structural level. The present study thus provided evidence that the speed of sentence processing can be predicted from the cognitive load involved in word order alternation in a configurational phrase structure

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Effects of Word Order Alternation on the Sentence Processing of Sinhalese Written and Spoken Forms

Tamaoka¹,

Kanduboda²,

Sakai³

2011

OJML

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“…Parallel results from the processing of orthographically and phonologi-Experimental syntax: Word order in sentence processing cally presented sentences have been reported for many other languages, including Dutch (Frazier and Flores d'Arcais 1989), Finnish (Kaiser and Trueswell 2004), German (Grewe et al 2007;Rösler et al 1998;Weyerts et al 2002), Korean (Kim 2012), Russian (Sekerina 1997), and Sinhalese (Kanduboda and Tamaoka 2012), among many others. Parallel results from the processing of orthographically and phonologi-Experimental syntax: Word order in sentence processing cally presented sentences have been reported for many other languages, including Dutch (Frazier and Flores d'Arcais 1989), Finnish (Kaiser and Trueswell 2004), German (Grewe et al 2007;Rösler et al 1998;Weyerts et al 2002), Korean (Kim 2012), Russian (Sekerina 1997), and Sinhalese (Kanduboda and Tamaoka 2012), among many others.…”

Section: Order Of Adjunctsmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…Based on psycho-and neurolinguistic studies, it is known that relative to a language's syntactically basic word order, its other word orders (= derived word orders) have syntactic structures that are more complex when produced or comprehended by the brain (Mazuka, Ito, and Kondo 2002;Miyamoto and Takahashi 2002;Ueno and Kluender 2003;Kaiser and Trueswell 2004;Tamaoka et al 2005;Caplan, Chen and Waters 2008;Grewe et al 2007;Kinno et al 2008;Kanduboda and Tamaoka 2012). Many recognized sentence processing theories predict that derived word orders with a filler-gap dependency have a higher processing load during sentence comprehension than the corresponding syntactically basic word order (Pritchett and Whitman 1995;Gibson 2000;Hawkins 2004).…”

Section: Syntactically Basic Word Ordermentioning

confidence: 99%

13. Experimental syntax: Word order in sentence processing

Koizumi¹

2015

Handbook of Japanese Psycholinguistics

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Masatoshi Koizumi 13 Experimental syntax: Word order in sentence processing Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 8/7/15 8:28 PM Masatoshi Koizumi Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 8/7/15 8:28 PM assumes a patient-agent order. Primus (1999) argued that the agent-patient order is preferred to the patient-agent order because the patient's involvement in an event depends on the agent (and his or her actions), rather than vice versa (see also Keenan and Comrie 1977). If so, it is likely that (1a) is easier to process than (1b) because the former represents the preferred thematic role order.A third method of characterizing the word orders in (1) involves case marking. (1a) has a nominative-accusative order, whereas (1b) has an accusative-nominative order. Just as there are dependency relations among thematic roles, there are dependency relations among cases, as well. In particular, the presence of cases other than the nominative case in a finite clause presupposes the presence of the nominative case in that clause (Shibatani 1978;Marantz 1992). Therefore, it is possible that (1a) is easier to process than (1b) because of the difference between their respective case orders.In sum, there are three linguistically significant methods to characterize the two word orders in (1), each of which provides us with a means with which to construct a hypothesis as to why (1a) is easier to process than (1b). The three hypotheses are summarized in (3).(3) a. The Grammatical Functions Hypothesis:The human cognitive system is developed in such a manner that the Subject-NonSubject (S-NS) order is easier to process than the NonSubject-Subject (NS-S) order.b. The Thematic Roles Hypothesis: The human cognitive system is developed in such a manner that the Agent-NonAgent (A-NA) order is easier to process than the NonAgent-Agent (NA-A) order.c. The Case Marking Hypothesis: 2 The human cognitive system is developed in such a manner that the Nominative-NonNominative (N-NN) order is easier to process than the NonNominative-Nominative (NN-N) order.2 In ergative languages, the presence of cases other than the absolutive case presupposes the presence of the absolutive case. Therefore, the counterpart of (3c) in ergative languages should be (i).(i) The Case Marking Hypothesis in Ergative Languages: The human cognitive system is developed in such a manner that the Absolutive-NonAbsolutive (A-NA) order is easier to process than the NonAbsolutive-Absolutive (NA-A) order.This hypothesis is consistent with the results of the Kaqchikel sentence processing experiment discussed in Section 3.3. It has been reported, however, that in Basque, an SOV ergative language with pro-drop, SOV (= Ergative-Absolutive-V) sentences are easier to process than corresponding OSV (= Absolutive-Ergative-V) sentences (Erdocia et al. 2009). This, together with the results of the other experiments reviewed in this chapter, suggests that in ergative languages as well as in nominative languages...

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“…An overall outline of Sinhala language 2 Long vowel as a in 'car' 3 Pronounced as light-lighter 4 English 'lo' is pronounced in katakana as 'ro' 5 It is not the first paper to introduce the term Singlish as it has been used in some other previous studies (for example, Dissanayaka, 2007). Thus a further explanation will be omitted.…”

Section: Substitution Of English Lexicons In Sinhala Context -Sinhalamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main typological element between Japanese language and Sinhala language lies in word order phenomenon; in which both languages belong to Subject-Object-Verb word order class and they both possess a free-word-order phenomenon mostly in their colloquial styles [Kanduboda & Tamaoka, 2009;Tamaoka, Kanduboda, and Sakai, 2010;Kanduboda, 2014]. The English language is also being used in both Japan and Sri Lanka for long time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Substitution and Transition of English Lexicons: Focusing on Japglish and Singlish

Kanduboda

2015

TPLS

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Abstract-This article examined the use of English lexicons (i.e., loan words) in the contexts of Japanese language and Sinhala language. Japanese language and Sinhala language are said to be identical in many linguistic aspects. Moreover, with the development of English language education, both languages have successfully adopted many lexicons from English into their own contexts. A comparison was conducted on Japanese and Sinhala languages with relation to the use of English loan words. This study, first, examined the transitional system in Japanese context (alias Japglish), and the substitution system in Sinhala language (alias Singlish). Then, the two systems are compared to seek whether, the processes of adaptation, and the nature of use, show any typological facts that linguistically binds both languages. The review showed that in Japanese language, the transition system allows to use four types of English loan words. In Sinhala language on the other hand, there are three types of English loan words that are being used by the substitution system. A further analysis showed that both systems possess unique aspects, though not identical conversely. Overall, this study concludes that, Japglish and Singlish demonstrate typologically incongruence in the process of adaptation and the nature of use.

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Priority Information Determining the Canonical Word Order of Written Sinhalese Sentences

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

Effects of Word Order Alternation on the Sentence Processing of Sinhalese Written and Spoken Forms

Effects of Word Order Alternation on the Sentence Processing of Sinhalese Written and Spoken Forms

13. Experimental syntax: Word order in sentence processing

Substitution and Transition of English Lexicons: Focusing on Japglish and Singlish

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