Semantics of Database Transformations

Database transformations arise in many different settings including database integrations, evolution of database systems, and implementing user views and data-entry tools. This paper surveys approaches that have been taken to problems in these settings, assesses their strengths and weaknesses, and develops requirements on a formal model for specifying and implementing database transformations. We also consider the problem of insuring the correctness of database transformations. In particular, we demonstrate that the usefulness of correctness conditions such as information preservation are hindered by the interactions of transformations and database constraints, and the limited expressive power of established database constraint languages. We conclude that more general notions of correctness are required, and that there is a need for a uniform formalism for expressing both database transformations and constraints, and reasoning about their interactions. Finally we introduce WOL, a declarative language for specifying and implementing database transformations and constraints. We briefly describe the WOL language and its semantics, and argue that it addresses many of the requirements of a formalism for dealing with general database transformations

Nominalisation and inherent control

In a series of works, Landau (1999, 2000) defends a typology of obligatory control predicates that distinguishes between verbs of exhaustive control (EC) and verbs of partial control (PC). These distinct classes are furthermore associated with a number of robust empirical correlations that remain consistent across clausal complement constructions in a number of different languages. This dissertation is foremost an investigation of the empirical effects of the EC/PC split as it applies to non-clausal, non-canonical complement domains, with specific focus on event-denoting nominalisations. First, it is discovered that the effects of EC as they exist in clausal environments also manifest in controlled English de-verbal nominalisations. Furthermore, it is found that the effects of PC are almost entirely absent in this same environment, save for the temporal properties associated with the selecting predicate. We thus defend a framework of control based on Wurmbrand (1998, 2001, 2002), such that the EC/PC split corresponds to a semantic/syntactic division of labour, respectively. // We first provide a fundamental analysis of English de-verbal nominalisation based on the novel observation that argument-structure does not disambiguate event-denoting nominals (contra Grimshaw 1990). Based on work by Adger (2012) and Moulton (2014), we lay out a framework in which compositionality – not verbal argument-structure – is at the heart of the nominal paradigm. We then propose an account of semantic control, as invoked by verbs of EC. First, we provide a simplified semantic representation of aspectual predicates, such that control is entailed. Furthermore, we show that this semantic analysis – when combined with an (anti-)causative syntax – can derive the raising/control ambiguity without further stipulation. Next, we motivate an account of try, such that the predicate encodes two separate arguments: an action and an intention. We provide an analysis such that any interpretable control effects result from the relation between these two arguments

Az adverbiumok mondattani és jelentéstani kérdései = The syntax and syntax-semantics interface of adverbial modification

A határozószók és a határozók alaktani, mondattani és funkcionális kérdéseit vizsgáltuk a generatív nyelvelmélet keretében, főként magyar anyag alapján. Olyan leírásra törekedtünk, melyből a különféle határozófajták mondattani viselkedése, hatóköre, valamint hangsúlyozása egyaránt következik. A különféle határozótípusok PP-ként való elemzésének lehetőségét bizonyítottuk. A határozók mondatbeli elhelyezése tekintetében a specifikálói pozíció (Cinque 1999) ellen és az adjunkciós elemzés (Ernst 2002) mellett érveltünk. Megmutattuk, hogy a határozók szórendjének levezetéséhez bal- és jobboldali adjunkció feltételezése egyaránt szükséges. A különféle határozófajták szórendi helyét mondattani, jelentéstani és prozódiai tényezők összjátékával magyaráztuk. A jelentéstani tényezők között pl. a határozók inkorporálhatóságát korlátozó típusmegszorítást, a negatív határozók kötelező fókuszálását előidéző skaláris megszorítást, egyes határozófajták és igefajták komplex eseményszerkezetének inkompatibilitását vizsgáltuk. Az ige mögötti határozók szórendjét befolyásoló prozódiai tényező például a növekvő összetevők törvénye. Megfigyeltük az intonációskifejezés- újraelemzés kiváltódásának feltételeit és jelentéstani következményeit is. A helyhatározói igekötők egy típusát a mozgatási láncok sajátos fonológiai megvalósulásaként (a fonológiailag redukált kópia inkorporációjaként) elemeztük. A tárgykörben mintegy 60 tanulmányt publikáltunk. Adverbs and Adverbial Adjuncts at the Interfaces (489 old.) c. könyvünket kiadja a Mouton de Gruyter (Berlin). | This project has aimed to clarify (on the basis of mainly Hungarian data) basic issues concerning the category "adverb", the function "adverbial", and the grammar of adverbial modification. We have argued for the PP analysis of adverbials, and have claimed that they enter the derivation via left- and right-adjunction. Their merge-in position is determined by the interplay of syntactic, semantic, and prosodic factors. The semantically motivated constraints discussed also include a type restriction affecting adverbials semantically incorporated into the verbal predicate, an obligatory focus position for scalar adverbs representing negative values of bidirectional scales, cooccurrence restrictions between verbs and adverbials involving incompatible subevents, etc. The order and interpretation of adverbials in the postverbal domain is shown to be affected by such phonologically motivated constraints as the Law of Growing Constituents, and by intonation-phrase restructuring. The shape of the light-headed chain arising in the course of locative PP incorporation is determined by morpho-phonological requirements. The types of adverbs and adverbials analyzed include locatives, temporals, comitatives, epistemic adverbs, adverbs of degree, manner, counting, and frequency, quantificational adverbs, and adverbial participles. We have published about 60 studies; our book Adverbs and Adverbial Adjuncts at the Interfaces (pp. 489) is published in the series Interface Explorations of Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin

Transforming Databases with Recursive Data Structures

This thesis examines the problems of performing structural transformations on databases involving complex data-structures and object-identities, and proposes an approach to specifying and implementing such transformations. We start by looking at various applications of such database transformations, and at some of the more significant work in these areas. In particular we will look at work on transformations in the area of database integration, which has been one of the major motivating areas for this work. We will also look at various notions of correctness that have been proposed for database transformations, and show that the utility of such notions is limited by the dependence of transformations on certain implicit database constraints. We draw attention to the limitations of existing work on transformations, and argue that there is a need for a more general formalism for reasoning about database transformations and constraints. We will also argue that, in order to ensure that database transformations are well-defined and meaningful, it is necessary to understand the information capacity of the data-models being transformed. To this end we give a thorough analysis of the information capacity of data-models supporting object identity, and will show that this is dependent on the operations supported by a query language for comparing object identities. We introduce a declarative language, WOL, based on Horn-clause logic, for specifying database transformations and constraints. We also propose a method of implementing transformations specified in this language, by manipulating their clauses into a normal form which can then be translated into an underlying database programming language. Finally we will present a number of optimizations and techniques necessary in order to build a practical implementation based on these proposals, and will discuss the results of some of the trials that were carried out using a prototype of such a system

Types With Extents: On Transforming and Querying Self-Referential Data-Structures (Dissertation Proposal)

The central theme of this paper is to study the properties and expressive power of data-models which use type systems with extents in order to represent recursive or self-referential data-structures. A standard type system is extended with classes which represent the finite extents of values stored in a database. Such an extended type system expresses constraints about a database instance which go beyond those normally associated with the typing of data-values, and takes on an important part of the functionality of a database schema. Recursion in data-structures is then constrained to be defined via these finite extents, so that all values in a database have a finite representation. The idea of extending a type system with such classes is not new. In particular [2] introduced a type system and data models equivalent to those used here. However such existing work focuses on the expressive power of systems which allow the dynamic creation of recursive values, while we are concerned more with the properties of querying and manipulating databases containing known static extensions of data-values

Towards a lexicogrammar of Mekeo

This dissertation represents a first broad sketch of the grammar of the dialects of Mekeo, an Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea. The dissertation consists of an evaluation of a finite corpus of data and a preliminary analysis of this data, with some incidental discussion of issues raised bv it. A more definitive description of these four dialects will be some years in the coming. Mekeo represents the western limit of Austronesian expansion along the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. There are four distinct varieties of Mekeo (one of these a convergent dialect, hitherto unreported). One of these varieties has been - and indeed still is by its speakers - called 'Kovio'. This dialect (spoken only in two small villages) appears to have no special linguistic relationship with Lapeka Kuni, despite persistent folk-historical claims to the contrary. Mekeo is a predominantly head-marking language. This feature is shared by certain Oceanic languages, and with most of the Papuan languages, facts of no tittle importance for historical linguistics. As a head-marking language Mekeo is characterised by the absence of a governing relation between the verb and its nominal arguments, and a unilateral syntactic dependency of the noun on the verb. The verb on the other hand ’depends on’ the nouns for the denotational meaning of its incorporated pronominal arguments. I describe Mekeo grammar on a number of simultaneous levels of structure, but chiefly the syntactic and the discourse-pragmatic. Mekeo, tike other head-marking languages, has pronominal arguments incorporated in the verb word. It is also a non-configurational language, and nominals can have an attributive or a predicative function. Mekeo compares in this with Warlpiri, which is however a double-marking language. Mekeo displays a general lack of mophosyntactic reference-tracking mechanisms, although fronting conventions constrain the possibilities of coreference somewhat. There is consequently a relatively high degree of referential indeterminacy, which may be functional in the culture. Pragmatic anaphora - or coherence - is the main source of definiteness, which is largely unmarked. There are no inherent form-function classes corresponding to nouns and verbs, though most roots function typically as one or the other. However, any lexical root can function either as an unmarked non-verbal topic or as the nucleus of a verb word, and in this latter case takes all the morphosyntactic marking that that entails. Even very abstract terms for modes of locomotion or mental reaction function as possessable, countable topics, and what seem to be very concrete terms appear as inchoative verbs. However, while there is no noun-verb dichotomy, there is a complex system of verb classes, defined in terms of their derivational potential, to which all roots belong. The notion of fixed case-frames subcategorised by given verbs is replaced here by the system of verb classes, each of which belongs to one of two systems of verbal alternations, the system of transitivity and the system of causativity. Mekeo operates with a lexical index of pragmatically specifiable scenes, and roots are unspecified in advance for the number and function of obligatory case roles. The speaker and the hearer are largely free to perspectivise these scenes in whichever way they wish. Syntactically speaking, word order in Mekeo is free apart from the verb word, which always functions as a part of the predicate and which (with a very few exceptions) is always clause-final. However, the order of pre-verbal elements in a predication is in effect constrained by coreference restrictions on a fronted topic. Often neither word order nor morphology reflect a distinction between predicative and attributive constructions. However, when an utterance ceases to function as a predication and is embedded in another, it loses the illocutionary force of an assertion. I refer to this as rankshift rather than embedding, since the former term connotes the absence of structural change which marks the change of function. This situation drastically simplifies an account of the grammar in terms of the number of different structures to be described. I have documented the morphosyntactic resources of the language across all its four dialects, and charted fashions of use. Usage is compared across all four dialects whenever the data permits - they way things are actually said as opposed to ways in which they can be said. However, the limits of the sayable remain to be ascertained, and a more thoroughgoing analysis of the lexicogrammar is already planned. A central theoretical question of this dissertation was: "How can Mekeo tolerate such high levels of referential indeterminacy?" I show that one answer to this question lies in the dicourse-pragmatic exploitation of a specialised kind of specificational relative clause, with an abstract nominal head, which is as it were designed to answer the constant query: "Which one of those do you mean?