Efficient deep processing of japanese

We present a broad coverage Japanese grammar written in the HPSG formalism with MRS semantics. The grammar is created for use in real world applications, such that robustness and performance issues play an important role. It is connected to a POS tagging and word segmentation tool. This grammar is being developed in a multilingual context, requiring MRS structures that are easily comparable across languages

Metarepresentation, tense, aspect and narratives: the case of Behdini-Kurdish and Estonian

This paper looks at three sets of data, two from Behdini-Kurdish and one from Estonian, where a metarepresentational use analysis enhances the linguistic analysis of certain linguistic forms. The aspective marker da in Behdini is used in two ways, as a near counterfactual past and a distant habitual past: (1) ew da genim-ê çîn-in They IM wheat-OBL.M.SG grow-3PL 1. 'They set out to sow wheat (but where prevented from doing it)' 2. 'They used to grow wheat (in old times; of the people of a village)' My claim is that da encodes a procedure to embed the proposition expressed under a higher order respresentation such as 'the speaker intends the addressee to imagine a situation where P holds,' and I'll argue that the attested uses can be pragmatically explained on the basis of this semantics. Thus it appears that metarepresentations can explain some phenomena normally attributed to the category of aspect. The future marker dê in Behdini is used syntactically in a very similar way: (2) ew dê xwarin-ê çêk-in they FUT meal-OBL.F.SG prepare-3PL 'they will prepare the meal' I present arguments both from within Behdini as well as cross-linguistically that the future tense in Behdini should be analysed as procedurally encoding metarepresentational use: the proposition expressed is to be embedded under a higher-order representation of the form 'the speaker intends the addressee to imagine a situation where P holds and P has not yet occured'. This analysis raises a number of questions for the analysis of future tense markers cross-linguistically. Finally, I argue that the so-called 'quotative mood' in Estonian is better analysed as attributive interpretive use marker. One of the many advantages of this analysis is the fact that it sheds light on the use of the quotative in narratives, especially folk tales: narrative exploits metarepresentations in various ways, hence it is not surprising to find interpretive use markers used as narrative forms. This raises the question whether other so-called 'narrative verb forms' in other langauges should be re-analysed as interpretive use markers

Adverbial clauses and adverbial concord

This paper speculates that the merge site of an adverbial clause, i.e. its external syntax, is determined by its derivational history, i.e. its internal syntax. Starting from the distinction between central adverbial clauses and peripheral adverbial clauses, it is first shown that the degree of integration of an adverbial clause correlates with its internal syntax, i.e. the availability of left peripheral functional material. The correlation can be informally stated as follows "the more structure is manifested in the adverbial clause, the higher it is merged". This paper develops a derivational account for this correlation. The proposal adopts the movement derivation of adverbial clauses, according to which, like relative clauses, adverbial clauses are derived by movement of a specialized IP-related operator (aspectual, temporal, modal, etc) to the left periphery. The paper explores observations drawn from the traditional literature on Japanese grammar (Minami 1974; Noda 1989; 2002) to the effect that the amount of TP-internal functional structure in an adverbial clause also correlates with the presence of specialized functional particles in the matrix clause with which the clause merges. Specifically, we explore Japanese data discussed in Endo (2011; 2012). It is proposed that the merger of an adverbial clause with the associated main clause is determined by the label of the adverbial clause, itself the result of the movement derivation

A MT System from Turkmen to Turkish employing finite state and statistical methods

In this work, we present a MT system from Turkmen to Turkish. Our system exploits the similarity of the languages by using a modified version of direct translation method. However, the complex inflectional and derivational morphology of the Turkic languages necessitate special treatment for word-by-word translation model. We also employ morphology-aware multi-word processing and statistical disambiguation processes in our system. We believe that this approach is valid for most of the Turkic languages and the architecture implemented using FSTs can be easily extended to those languages

Russia's Power Politics and North Korea

The sharp rise of oil and gas prices has enabled Moscow to utilise its mammoth energy reserves to achieve domestic and foreign policy goals. The new Russian ‘power politics’ have already been tested on the Baltic States, Belarus, Ukraine, and recently the Czech Republic. Russia’s Far Eastern frontier is now turning into the place where energy export becomes a political tool in shaping the country’s relations with regional neighbours. China, the two Koreas, and Japan are hungry for energy, natural resources and, at the same time, strive for economic and political cooperation. In such circumstances, the opportunities offered by trans-national railroads and pipelines appear to be more powerful than weapons. Given this new leverage and understanding, can Russia exert its soft and hard power upon North Korea in promoting the goals set in the Six-Party Talks