Search results for "Topic marker"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Context and topic marking affect distinct processes during discourse comprehension in Japanese
2011
Abstract In languages like English or German, definite and indefinite markers serve to distinguish given/old from new information in the discourse model. Japanese, in contrast, lacks definiteness markers, but has a topic marker. The present paper examines how the information status of a noun phrase (NP) in Japanese is represented and integrated into the discourse model. An ERP experiment investigated the processing of topic-marked and non-topic-marked NPs following three different context sentences (making available a given, inferred, or new reading). The results revealed an increase in the N400 as a function of contextual cueing, i.e. the less accessible a referential expression is in the …
The grammaticalization and pragmaticalization of cleft constructions in Present-Day English
2012
The present paper examines the development of the variation between a marked and an unmarked infinitival complement clause in three types of cleft constructions in 20th century English. Data from corpora of written and spoken British (BrE) and American English (AmE) evidence a significantly divergent development of these clefts types in speaking when compared to writing. The written corpora show a steady increase in the frequency of clefts, and a decrease of the to-infinitive paired with an increase of the bare infinitive, thus a reversal of preferences in both varieties in all three types of clefts. This erosion of to as an (optional) grammatical marker leads to a higher degree of syntacti…