Complutense University of Madrid
Question
Asked 24 March 2017
Is there any categorization of complex sentences in French to mesure syntax in children?
Something equivalent to this:
Paul (1981, adapted by Thordardottir, Chapman & Wagner, 2002)
1. Conjoined sentences. Sentences in this category have two or more full clauses, containing, minimally, a subject and a verb within a single utterance. A conjunction such as and, but, so, before, or after may or may not be used to join the clauses. Clauses that were juxtaposed without an intonation boundary were coded as conjoined unless their content precluded such interpretation. Ex- amples are: “Here’s you and here’s Jenny”; “And there’s a big crack on the floor and water’s coming up from it.”
2. Simple infinitive clauses with equivalent subjects. These are clauses marked by the infinitive particle to, in which the subject is the same as that of the main clause. Catenatives (transcribed as gonna, wanna, hafta, sposta, liketa, and trynta) were considered to be semiauxiliary forms and so clauses including them were not part of this category. However, the fully pronounced versions (e.g., going to, have to) were included. Taking into consideration local dialect, the
Applied Psycholinguistics 23:2 171 Thordardottir et al.: Complex sentences in Down syndrome adolescents
construction try and [verb] was regarded as a variant of the more standard form, try to [verb]. Certain syntactically ambiguous forms were not counted as infini- tive clauses because they seemed to operate as prepositional phrases (e.g., go to sleep, which was considered parallel to go to bed). Examples are: “And cookie monster tried to get one from somebody too”; “I like to see Mr. Spock.”
3. Full propositional complements. These are complete clauses that may or may not be introduced by that and that occupy a complement position in a sentence. This category does not include clauses introduced by a wh-word. Direct and indirect quotes were not included in this category (see category 12). Examples are: “Bridget thought that they were swimming pools”; “I’m pretending these are from this year.”
4. Simple, noninfinitive wh- clauses. These are clauses that are introduced by a wh- word (e.g., when, what, where, why, how, if, or like), do not contain the infinitive particle to, and fill an obligatory spot in the main clause. Examples are: “I don’t know what it’s about”; “Looks like it still sank”; “That was when I was a little girl.”
5. Infinitive clauses with different subjects. These are clauses marked by the infinitive particle to, in which the subject is different from that of the main clause. In other respects, these clauses are like those in category 2. Examples are: “Tell Scott to bring me over to the park”; “I want you to hold Mr. Bear”; “His mom told him to put them back.”
6. Sentences with relative clauses. Relative clauses modify a noun. They may or may not be introduced by a relative pronoun (such as which, who, or that). Relative clauses were included in this category only if they were part of a fully formed sentence (in contrast, see category 14). Examples are: “It’s all I can remember”; “There was a lion who wanted to drink.”
7. Sentences with gerund clauses. Clauses in this category contain a gerund (-ing verb form) as part of a noun clause. Clauses in which the gerund was used with the verbs keep (on) [verbing] and go (on) [verbing] were considered paral- lel to the progressive with the auxiliary be (as in, “And then the water keep running down”). Examples are: “There’s grandma riding”; “Look at the panda lying there.”
8. Unmarked infinitive clauses. Infinitive clauses in this category are not intro- duced by the infinitive particle to but otherwise are similar to the clauses in categories 2 and 5. Examples are: “That makes it stay up”; “And they helped her do stuff”; “Watch me go”; “Go eat.”
9. Wh- infinitive clauses. Clauses in this category are marked by both a wh- word and the infinitive particle to. Examples are: “Because she knows how to drive one”; “My mama told me how to do it.”
Applied Psycholinguistics 23:2 172 Thordardottir et al.: Complex sentences in Down syndrome adolescents
10. Quotes as full clauses. This category contains both direct and indirect quotes that consist of a full clause. Both categories of quotes (10 and 15) contain quotes introduced by the verb go, meaning say. Examples are: “And he said ‘What are you doing?’”; “And Josh says he’s too heavy”; “And my mom said ‘wait.’ ”
Additional categories. Several additional categories were coded that were not included in the frequency count of complex sentences for either of two reasons. Categories 11, 12, and 13 reflect different kinds of multiple conjoined or embed- ded clauses. This coding is redundant in that each of the types of complex structures has already been coded in terms of categories 1 to 10. Categories 14–16 are not true complex sentences in that they do not have all the elements required to qualify them as such. Consequently, they were analyzed separately. Utterances of this type were considered to be of interest in that they might be primitive forms of, or precursors to, complex sentences. These additional cate- gories are outlined next.
11. Conjoined embeddings. These are utterances that contain a conjoined con- struction and, in addition, at least one other complex construction. Examples are: “My sister got married to my brother-in-law because he likes to take pic- tures”; “They were being quiet because they didn’t want them to know what they were doing.”
12. Multiple embeddings. Sentences may contain more than one type of com- plex constructions. In this category are utterances that contain more than one subordinate clause (i.e., at least two embedded clauses of any of the categories 2 to 10, but not including the conjoint main clause type, category 1). Examples are: “Then he went to find grass to eat”; “Bigbird has to go to find a family.”
13. Multiple conjoining. More than two full sentences (main clauses) are con- joined within a single utterance. Conjunctions such as and, but, so, before, or after may or may not be used. Examples are: “He rose from the dead and then the woman came and looked into cave”; “And then he took the sheep and put a fork into him and he get a knife and cut it.”
14. Relative clauses without a complete sentence. Utterances with a relative clause but without a completed main clause were coded in this category. Be- cause these utterances are not grammatically complete, they are not, strictly speaking, complex sentences. They were nevertheless coded because a number of clauses of this type were noted in the transcripts. Examples are: “A chair that is falling down the kitchen step”; “The lady that go with a doggie.”
15. Quotes without a full clause. This category contains direct and indirect quotes in which the quote is not a full clause. Examples are: “One goes gobblegobble and one goes moomoo”; “Gotta go byebye”; “Mama bear said, ‘Too soft.’”
16. Conjoined verb phrases. In this category, two or more verb phrases are conjoined within a single utterance. These are not truly complex sentences because the verb phrase does not contain a subject and is thus not a full clause. In many cases, verbs were conjoined that evidently had the same subject. In other utterances, although no subject might have been specified for one of the verbs, the context indicated that the verbs had different subjects (e.g., “cooking and water dump out”). These latter utterances especially could be viewed as a sim- plified form of conjoined clauses. Examples are: “They went and ate the cake all up”; “And go back and go eat”; “The ball gets all dirty and throw up in the sky”; “Cooking and water dump out.”
All Answers (3)
University Ferhat Abbas of Setif
You can see Doxilog project at Université de Franche-Comté
Centre de Recherche Lucien Tesnière
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