Employing geographical principles for sampling in state of the art dialectological projects

The aims of this paper are twofold: First, we locate the most effective human geographical methods for sampling across space in large-scale dialectological projects. We propose two geographical concepts as a basis for sampling decisions: Geo-demographic classification, which is a multidimensional method used for the socio-economic grouping of areas. We also develop an updated version of functional regions that can be used in sociolinguistic research. We then report on the results of a pilot project that applies these models to collect data regarding the acceptability of vernacular morpho-syntactic forms in the North-East of England. Following the method of natural breaks advocated for dialectology by Horvath and Horvath (2002), we interpret breaks in the probabilistic patterns as areas of dialect transitions. This study contributes to the debate about the role and limitations of spatiality in linguistic analysis. It intends to broaden our knowledge about the interfaces between human geography and dialectology

Automatic categorization of Ottoman poems

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This work is partially supported by the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) under the grant number 109E006.Authorship attribution and identifying time period of literary works are fundamental problems in quantitative analysis of languages. We investigate two fundamentally different machine learning text categorization methods, Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Naïve Bayes (NB), and several style markers in the categorization of Ottoman poems according to their poets and time periods. We use the collected works (divans) of ten different Ottoman poets: two poets from each of the five different hundred-year periods ranging from the 15th to 19 th century. Our experimental evaluation and statistical assessments show that it is possible to obtain highly accurate and reliable classifications and to distinguish the methods and style markers in terms of their effectiveness

Possessive expressions in Danish and Swedish in a diachronic and synchronic perspective

Wydział NeofilologiiPrzedmiotem rozprawy są nominalne wyrażenia dzierżawcze w językach duńskim i szwedzkim analizowane w ujęciu diachronicznym i synchronicznym. Do analizowanych konstrukcji dzierżawczych należą: dopełniacz -s, konstrukcja dzierżawcza z przyimkami, zaimki dzierżawcze zwykłe oraz zwrotne. Głównym celem naukowym projektu jest zbadanie dystrybucji oraz cech charakterystycznych wymienionych konstrukcji dzierżawczych ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem czynników, które mogą wpływać na wybór między dopełniaczem -s a konstrukcją przyimkową w językach duńskim i szwedzkim. Do badanych czynników należą między innymi żywotność, określoność, topikalność, długość grupy nominalnej oraz typ relacji dzierżawczej. Tło teoretyczne dysertacji opiera się na założeniach Gramatyki Funkcjonalnej, w szczególności zastosowane zostały pojęcia hierarchii żywotności, ikoniczności i ekonomii w języku oraz topikalności. Badania oparte zostały na korpusach duńskich i szwedzkich tekstów historycznych spisanych w latach 1250–1700 oraz tekstów współczesnych. Korpus tekstów liczy ok. 315 000 słów. Wyniki jednoznacznie wskazują na to, że konstrukcja z dopełniaczem -s i konstrukcja przyimkowa występują w znacznej mierze w dystrybucji komplementarnej. Referent ludzki, określony i znany występuje częściej z dopełniaczem, natomiast referent nieżywotny, nieokreślony i nieznany występuje częściej w konstrukcji przyimkowej. Taki układ czynników odzwierciedla motywację ekonomiczną w języku.The aim of this dissertation is to examine the distribution and characteristics of adnominal possessive constructions in Danish and Swedish from both a diachronic and synchronic perspective. The constructions in question are the following: the s-genitive, the prepositional construction, and pronominal constructions with both regular and reflexive possessive pronouns. The main research objective is to examine the factors that may influence the selection of the s-genitive vs. the prepositional construction. Among the factors taken into consideration are animacy, definiteness, topicality, length of an NP and type of possessive relation. The theoretical approach taken in this dissertation is based on various tenets of Functional Grammar; in particular the concepts of animacy hierarchy, iconicity and economy in language and topicality are invoked. The research is based on a corpus of Danish and Swedish historical texts written between 1250 and 1700 and a corpus of contemporary texts. The length of the corpora is ca. 315,000 words. Results indicate that the s-genitive and the prepositional construction are largely in a complementary distribution in Danish and Swedish. While a human, definite and familiar referent will frequently occur in an s genitive construction, an inanimate, indefinite and new referent will frequently occur in a prepositional construction. Such an array of factors reflects the economic motivation in language

The acute mania of King George III: A computational linguistic analysis.

We used a computational linguistic approach, exploiting machine learning techniques, to examine the letters written by King George III during mentally healthy and apparently mentally ill periods of his life. The aims of the study were: first, to establish the existence of alterations in the King's written language at the onset of his first manic episode; and secondly to identify salient sources of variation contributing to the changes. Effects on language were sought in two control conditions (politically stressful vs. politically tranquil periods and seasonal variation). We found clear differences in the letter corpus, across a range of different features, in association with the onset of mental derangement, which were driven by a combination of linguistic and information theory features that appeared to be specific to the contrast between acute mania and mental stability. The paucity of existing data relevant to changes in written language in the presence of acute mania suggests that lexical, syntactic and stylometric descriptions of written discourse produced by a cohort of patients with a diagnosis of acute mania will be necessary to support the diagnosis independently and to look for other periods of mental illness of the course of the King's life, and in other historically significant figures with similarly large archives of handwritten documents

The perfect in Old English and Old Saxon: the synchronic and diachronic correspondence of form and meaning

The additional files accompanying this thesis are described in Appendix B.Most of the Germanic languages developed new tense forms allowing the grammatical expression of fine semantic distinctions, including periphrastic perfects and pluperfects; previously, the preterite alone had been used to express semantic content of this sort. In the absence of robust quantitative data regarding the subsequent development of these forms and distribution in the early Germanic languages, a relatively uncomplicated model has generally been assumed, in which there is little synchronic variation in their use and a steady, though not necessarily continuous, diachronic progress toward the state observed in the modern languages. The goal of this work is to provide accurate quantitative data regarding the apportionment of these semantic domains among the available grammatical forms in Old English and Old Saxon, in order to provide meaningful measurements of the synchronic and diachronic use of the periphrastic forms. Very different patterns were found in the use of these forms in the two languages. In Old Saxon the periphrastic forms are used freely, with a frequency similar to or greater than that of the preterites. In Old English there are no significant diachronic trends, but considerable variation exists synchronically among texts, with some making free use of the periphrastic forms and others preferring the preterite almost exclusively. A number of factors potentially responsible for this variation have been investigated, but none can account for the entire range of observed variation on its own. In the absence of any other account for the observed variation, the hypothesis is proposed that the periphrastic forms and the preterite differed in their perceived stylistic value, in a manner whose exact nature may be no longer recoverable; such a hypothesis would be in keeping with previous findings regarding languages such as Middle English and Middle High German. Old English and Old Saxon would therefore differ in the extent to which they make use of the potential for variation created by the absence of a paradigmatic opposition among the relevant grammatical categories.This work was supported by a St. John's College Benefactors' Scholarship

Every method counts : combining corpus-based and experimental evidence in the study of synonymy

In this study we explore the concurrent, combined use of three research methods, statistical corpus analysis and two psycholinguistic experiments (a forced-choice and an acceptability rating task), using verbal synonymy in Finnish as a case in point. In addition to supporting conclusions from earlier studies concerning the relationships between corpus-based and ex- perimental data (e. g., Featherston 2005), we show that each method adds to our understanding of the studied phenomenon, in a way which could not be achieved through any single method by itself. Most importantly, whereas relative rareness in a corpus is associated with dispreference in selection, such infrequency does not categorically always entail substantially lower acceptability. Furthermore, we show that forced-choice and acceptability rating tasks pertain to distinct linguistic processes, with category-wise in- commensurable scales of measurement, and should therefore be merged with caution, if at all.Peer reviewe

Neural models of language use:Studies of language comprehension and production in context

Artificial neural network models of language are mostly known and appreciated today for providing a backbone for formidable AI technologies. This thesis takes a different perspective. Through a series of studies on language comprehension and production, it investigates whether artificial neural networks—beyond being useful in countless AI applications—can serve as accurate computational simulations of human language use, and thus as a new core methodology for the language sciences

Language and Linguistics in a Complex World Data, Interdisciplinarity, Transfer, and the Next Generation. ICAME41 Extended Book of Abstracts

This is a collection of papers, work-in-progress reports, and other contributions that were part of the ICAME41 digital conference

Language and Linguistics in a Complex World Data, Interdisciplinarity, Transfer, and the Next Generation. ICAME41 Extended Book of Abstracts

This is a collection of papers, work-in-progress reports, and other contributions that were part of the ICAME41 digital conference