In language and second language acquisition research, it is important to have a measure for tracking the proficiency level of participants. Lexical competence is fundamental for communicative purposes in a given language, and vocabulary tests are a reliable measure to assess lexical proficiency. That is why vocabulary tests have a central role in language proficiency assessment. Although many people study Italian as second language (L2), an easy-to-use vocabulary test to measure lexical proficiency is still missing. In this work, we aim to fill this gap by presenting LexITA, which is an objective, reliable, and quick assessment of Italian receptive vocabulary. LextITA was validated on students of Italian L2 and showed to be a valid measure to assess vocabulary knowledge of L2 speakers spanning different levels of proficiency.
Our goal in this paper is to analyze the even-construction in Mandarin Chinese and Italian and the preposed object in the low periphery of Mandarin Chinese. In the first part of the paper, we shall see that the even-construction can play two roles: focus and topic. Although in both cases their semantics stay fundamentally the same, their syntax is crucially different. We shall see that when an even-phrase occurs in sentence-initial position, it is a topic construction; while when it occurs sentence-internally, it is a focus construction. In the second part of the paper, we study the nature of the preposed object in the low periphery of Mandarin. Contrary to the traditional analysis that considers it as a focus item (Ernst and Wang 1995; Shyu 1995, 2001, Zhang 1996, among others), we argue that the preposed object is a Contrastive Topic (i.e., a syntactic topic that gets contrastive stress). We also discuss the fact that the even-construction and the preposed object within the low periphery differ from the elements in the high periphery because they are dislocated via A-movement. Our investigation points to notions of the rules of topic and focus that are more fine-grained than what was traditionally thought. Specifically, we maintain that while the domain of topic has specific syntactic features, its semantics doesn't always have to pertain to old information. We shall also identify interesting differences between the projections in the high periphery versus those in the low periphery. 1 [ 34 ] Cartography of Chinese Syntax [ 36 ] Cartography of Chinese Syntax (8) ??Lian Xiaoyu j , Zhangsan i a, t i dou piping le t j. even Xiaoyu Zhangsan top all criticize fp 'Even Xiaoyu, as for Zhangsan, he didn't criticize.' (9) Hua, lian meiguihua j , t j dou hen pianyi. Flowers even roses all very cheap 'As for flowers, even roses are cheap.' (10) *Lian meiguihua j , hua, t j dou hen pianyi. Even roses flowers all very cheap (11) Gei Xiaoyu, lian na ben hen gui de shu i , To Xiaoyu even that cl very expensive de book, Lisi dou mai le t i. Lisi all buy fp 'For Xiaoyu, even that expensive book, Lisi bought.' (12) *Lian na ben hen gui de shu i , gei Xiaoyu, Lisi even that cl very expensive de book to Xiaoyu Lisi dou mai le t i. all buy fp (13) Zhangsan i , wo gei [na ge shazi] i ji le Zhangsan I to that cl imbecile send asp yi feng xin! one cl letter 'Zhangsan, I sent a letter to that imbecile!' (14) *Wo gei [na ge shazi] i Zhangsan i , ji le yi I to that cl imbecile Zhangsan send asp one feng xin! cl letter When different kinds of topics co-occur, their relative order is fixed. The highest position is occupied by the Aboutness Topic, followed by the Hanging Topic and the Left Dislocaton is in the lowest part in the 'Topic Field' 2 (Badan and Del Gobbo 2010). The lian-XP in sentence initial position occupies always the lowest position of the whole CP, that is it has to be always to the right of all the topics. 2.2. Perfino: Grammatical Outline As lian, perfino can introduce various types of phrases: DP, PP, VP, CP, and time adv...
In this article, we propose an analysis of the so-called echo wh-questions in situ in Italian at syntax–prosody interface. We conduct a prosodic analysis under an experimental approach, showing that a focalized wh-word in echo wh-questions shows its own peculiar properties, different from informative and corrective focus, so that we can analyze it as an instance of Mirative focus. We demonstrate that the wh-word in echo wh-questions occupies a focus position in the low periphery of the clause. We also argue that this position has syntactic properties that, interlaced together with the prosodic properties, lead us to define the projection as a dedicated focus projection for Mirative focus. Crucially, the focus position within the low periphery activated in an echo wh-question, has different syntactic, prosodic and interpretive properties with respect to the informational focus, and to the corrective focus. Therefore, at a general level, our analysis strengthens the idea that partly different intonations and interpretations are associated to positions within the low periphery as opposed to the positions in the left periphery.
This paper deals with exclamatives in Mandarin and has two main objectives. The first is the application of the exclamativity tests proposed in the literature to identify " true " sentential exclamatives in Mandarin. The second goal is to establish the essential components of sentential exclamatives in Mandarin, in order to understand the necessary components in exclamatives cross-linguistically. Our starting point is Zanuttini and Portner's (2000, 2003) proposal, which argue that the two fundamental syntactic components that identify a clause as an exclamative are a factive operator and a wh-operator. They identify the force of exclamatives, with a semantic operation called widening, which is connected to the surprise reading generally considered to be associated with exclamatives. In this paper, we show that there are only two types of true exclamatives in Mandarin, both involving scalar degree adverbs. These two types of exclamatives reveal that, contra Zanuttini and Portner, neither wh-elements, nor surprise is an essential property of exclamatives. We argue that scalar focus, ego-evidentiality as well as factivity form an integral part of exclamatives
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