Implementing a formal model of inflectional morphology

International audienceInflectional morphology as a research topic lies on the crossroads of many linguistic subfields, such as linguistic description, linguistic typology, formal linguistics and computational linguistics. However, the subject itself is tackled with diverse objectives and approaches each time. In this paper, we describe the implementation of a formal model of inflectional morphology capturing typological generalisations that aims at combining efforts made in each subfield giving access to every one of them to valuable methods and/or data that would have been out of range otherwise. We show that both language description and studies in formal morphology and linguistic typology on the one hand, as well as NLP tool and resource development on the other benefit from the availability of such a model and an implementation thereof

Judgement and adjective complementation patterns in biographical discourse: a corpus study

This thesis, drawing on insights from Appraisal Theory, Pattern Grammar and Corpus Linguistics, explores the association between grammar patterns and attitudinal meanings. Particular attention is paid to adjective complementation patterns and Judgement, i.e. the ethical evaluation of human behaviour and character. Using a corpus compiled of biographical discourse, this study addresses four research questions: 1) whether the current JUDGEMENT system is sufficiently comprehensive and systematic to deal with the Judgement resources identified in this corpus, 2) what insights a detailed scrutiny of adjective-in-pattern exemplars can offer into the description and characterisation of attitudinal resources, 3) how local grammars of evaluation can be developed with the help of grammar patterns, and 4) what local grammars of evaluation may be useful for. It is suggested that the original JUDGEMENT system should be refined so as to enable it to deal effectively with the Judgement resources found. Drawing on evidence from both personality psychology and corpus analysis, Emotivity is proposed as a new sub-type of Judgement to account for those resources which construe attitudes towards emotional types of personality traits. The examination of adjective-in-pattern exemplars in terms of Attitude shows that grammar patterns are of limited use in distinguishing types of attitudinal meanings but that grammar patterns are a very useful heuristic to investigate attitudinal resources. Further, it is demonstrated that grammar patterns are a good starting point for the construction of local grammars of evaluation, which is exemplified by the local grammar of Judgement developed in the current study. Lastly, it is argued that local grammars of evaluation, in theory, provide an alternative way to model attitudinal meanings, and in practice, offer some insights into the automation of appraisal analysis. Other related issues (e.g. local grammar analyses of some special cases, replicability of the methodology) are also discussed

Linking endangerment databases and descriptive linguistics: An assessment of the use of terms relating to language endangerment in grammars

The world harbours a diversity of some 6,500 mutually unintelligible languages. As has been increasingly observed by linguists, many minority languages are becoming endangered and will be lost forever if not documented. The increased urgency has led to the development of several global endangerment databases and a more fine-grained understanding of the language endangerment progression as well as its possible reversal. In the present paper, we explore the terminological correlates of this development as found in the descriptive linguistic literature, using a corpus of over 10,000 digitized grammatical descriptions. Comparing this with existing endangerment databases, we find that simply counting terms related to endangerment does signal endangerment, but the degree of endangerment is more difficult to assess from grammatical descriptions. The label endangered seems to be an umbrella term that covers different situations ranging from moribund languages with less than ten speakers to minority languages with several thousand speakers. For many languages considered endangered in existing databases, explicit terms to this effect cannot be found in their descriptions. The discrepancy is due to incompleteness of the searchterm set, gaps in the literature, and projected rather than observed information in the databases. Our explorations illustrate the potential for database curation assisted by computational searches both to maintain accuracy of the databases and to investigate assumed language endangerment. Future work includes a larger cloud of search terms, usage of term frequencies, and prescreening of descriptive literature for the existence of a relevant section. From the perspective of descriptive linguistics, this study calls for a more careful correlation between the language endangerment indexes, as developed in the global endangerment databases, and the treatment of the endangerment status of individual languages in descriptive grammars.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity : Volume II: World-wide comparative studies

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