911 research outputs found

    Un análisis de parecido familiar de la construcción media: un enfoque funcional-cognitivo

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    This doctoral dissertation aims at delimiting the lexical-semantic and discourse-pragmatic features that regulate well-formedness in middle expressions and which could legitimate the adscription of a particular nominal, verb, or adjunct to the middle construction in English. The middle construction is here analysed in terms of its prototype effects (cf. Taylor, 1995; Langacker, 2008; Sakamoto, 2001; Goldberg, 1995; and Marín Arrese, 2001 and 2013), hence accommodating not only prototypical instances but also marginal structures largely ignored in the literature. This dissertation examines the prototype effects of the middle construction by exploring the Agent-like features of the Subject entity, the aspectuality of the verb, the role of the implicit Agent, and the nature of the middle adjunct. The structures analysed here conform a family of intransitive constructions that are understood as segments on the Unergative – Middle – Ergative continuum. The idea that the middle construction can actually be considered as a prototype category accommodating central and marginal structures contrasts with the postulates of the projectionist model (cf. Pinker, 1989; Ackema and Schoorlemmer, 1994; Hale and Keyser, 2002; and Fagan, 1992). The projectionist approach cannot account for the process of lexical-constructional interaction of the middle construction in an entirely satisfactory way. This is so because it does not attend to the prototype effects and discourse-pragmatic factors surrounding the middle construction, since it merely focuses on the structural information (cf. Hundt, 2007: 60; and Lemmens, 1998: 4). Therefore, it seems to be pertinent to apply the notions of ‘family-resemblance’ (cf. Wittgenstein, 1958) and ‘prototype effects’ (cf. Taylor, 1995) to the study of the middle construction, following cognitive-linguistic perspectives such as those of Lakoff (1987), Langacker (1987, 1991, 2008), Taylor (1995), and Goldberg (1995, 2006). The theory of prototypes allows for the application of the idea of a family-resemblance relation among different but related structures in order to justify the accommodation of non-prototypical cases into the prototype category. This doctoral dissertation applies a usage-based methodology to carry out a corpus study of contextualised examples. The compilation process has been conducted through the ‘Concordance’ within the Sketch Engine tool. The total sample retrieved and analysed here is 14099 instances, based on colloconstructional schemas which combine ±Animate subject entities with 254 different verbal predicates (cf. Levin, 1993), collocated with middable adjuncts (cf. Davidse and Heyvaert, 2007). The family-resemblance analysis challenges the traditionally accepted restricting features associated with the middle construction, thus demonstrating that both central and marginal structures can be accommodated within the middle prototype category. This is due to the fact that the segments of the continuum share certain commonalities with respect to their syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and cognitive underlying schemas, as well as a functional symmetry in the underlying structure of the subject and the verb (cf. Rijkhoff, 1991, 2002, 2008a and 2008b). In addition, the family-resemblance analysis of the middle prototype category is also based on the similarities and differences found across the family members examined in terms of their processes of Compositional Cospecification (cf. Yoshimura, 1998; Yoshimura and Taylor, 2004). Such process involves the specification of the semantics of the predicate in accordance with the meaning of the nominal and the semantic value of the adjunct in the middle construction. The family of constructions analysed includes: (i) prototypical action-oriented middles; (ii) prototypical ergative-like middles; (iii) the metonymically-motivated extensions of the action-oriented prototype (namely, Locative, Means, and Circumstanceof- Instrument middles); and (iv) metonymically-motivated extensions from the ergativelike prototype (namely, Agent-Instrument and Experiencer-Subject middles). Corpus data reveal that prototypical ergative-like middles are the most productive group (with 6801 instances, 68.24%), followed by prototypical action-oriented-middles (with 3633 examples, 25.77%). Among the metonymically-motivated extensions, the most productive structures are Experiencer-Subject middles (with 1789 instances, 12.69%), followed by Agent-Instrument middles (with 286 examples, 2.03%), whereas the least frequent types are Locative middles (with 48 instances, 0.34%), Means middles (with 60 examples, 0.43%), and Circumstance-of-Instrument middles (with 7 instances, 0.05%). The rest of corpus examples belong to the semantic types of Destiny- and Resultoriented middles (with 1475 instances, 10.46%).El propósito de esta tesis es delimitar las características léxico-semánticas y discursivo-pragmáticas que regulan la formación de expresiones medias y que podrían legitimar la adscripción de un determinado nominal, verbo o adjunto a la construcción media inglesa. La construcción media se analiza en términos de sus efectos prototípicos (cf. Taylor, 1995; Langacker, 2008; Sakamoto, 2001; Goldberg, 1995; y Marín Arrese, 2001 y 2013), acomodando no sólo ejemplos centrales sino también estructuras marginales generalmente ignoradas en la literatura. Esta tesis doctoral examina los efectos prototípicos de la construcción media mediante la exploración de las características pseudo-agentivas de la entidad sujeto, la aspectualidad del verbo, el rol del argumento agente implícito y la naturaleza del adjunto. Las estructuras analizadas forman una familia de construcciones intransitivas que se entienden como segmentos del continuo Inergativo – Medio – Ergativo. La idea de que la construcción media, de hecho, pueda considerarse como una categoría prototípica que acomoda estructuras centrales y periféricas contrasta con los postulados del modelo proyeccionista (cf. Pinker, 1989; Ackema y Schoorlemmer, 1994; Hale y Keyser, 2002; y Fagan, 1992). Dicho modelo no puede dar cuenta del proceso de interacción léxico-construccional de la construcción media de forma satisfactoria. Esto se debe a que el modelo proyeccionista no atiende a los efectos prototípicos y los factores discursivo-pragmáticos de la construcción media, ya que se centra únicamente en la información estructural (cf. Hundt, 2007: 60; y Lemmens, 1998: 4). Por ello, parece pertinente aplicar las nociones de ‘parecido familiar’ (cf. Wittgenstein, 1958) y ‘efectos prototípicos’ (cf. Taylor, 1995) al estudio de la construcción media, siguiendo perspectivas cognitivistas tales como las de Lakoff (1987), Langacker (1987, 1991, 2008), Taylor (1995) y Goldberg (1995, 2006). La teoría de los prototipos permite la aplicación de la idea de una relación de parecido familiar entre estructuras distintas pero relacionadas, justificando así la acomodación de casos marginales dentro de la categoría prototípica. Esta tesis doctoral aplica una metodología basada en el uso para llevar a cabo un estudio de corpus de ejemplos contextualizados. El proceso de compilación se ha llevado a cabo a través de la sección ‘Concordancia’ de la herramienta Sketch Engine. La muestra total analizada aquí es de 14099 ejemplos, basados en esquemas colo-construccionales en los que se combinan entidades de sujeto ±Animadas y 254 predicados verbales distintos (cf. Levin, 1993), colocados con adverbios compatibles con la construcción media (cf. Davidse y Heyvaert, 2007). El análisis de parecido familiar cuestiona las características restrictivas tradicionalmente asociadas con la construcción media, demostrando así que tanto las estructuras centrales como las marginales pueden acomodarse dentro de la categoría prototípica media. Esto se debe a que todos los segmentos del continuo comparten ciertas semejanzas con respecto a sus esquemas subyacentes de naturaleza sintáctica, semántica, pragmática y cognitiva, así como una simetría funcional en la estructura subyacente del sujeto y el predicado (cf. Rijkhoff, 1991, 2002, 2008a y 2008b). Además, el análisis de parecido familiar de la categoría prototípica media también se basa en las similitudes y diferencias encontradas entre los miembros de la familia de estructuras examinadas en función de sus procesos de Coespecificación Composicional (cf. Yoshimura, 1998; Yoshimura y Taylor, 2004). Dicho proceso se refiere a que la semántica del verbo se especifica de acuerdo con el significado del nominal y el valor semántico del adjunto en la construcción media. La familia de construcciones analizadas incluye: (i) medias prototípicas orientadas a la acción; (ii) medias prototípicas de naturaleza ergativa; (iii) extensiones metonímicamente motivadas de las medias prototípicas orientadas a la acción (concretamente, locativas, de medio e instrumentales de circunstancia); y (iv) extensiones metonímicamente motivadas de las medias prototípicas de naturaleza ergativa (concretamente, agentivo-instrumentales y de sujeto experimentador). Los datos del corpus examinado revelan que las medias prototípicas de naturaleza ergativa son las más productivas (con 6801 ejemplos, 68.24%), seguidas de las medias prototípicas orientadas a la acción (con 3633 ejemplos, 25.77%). Entre las extensiones motivadas metonímicamente, las estructuras más productivas son las medias de sujeto experimentador (con 1789 ejemplos 12.69%), seguidas de las medias agentivo-instrumentales (con 286 ejemplos, 2.03%), mientras que las menos frecuentes pertenecen a la clase de locativas (con 48 ejemplos, 0.34%), de medio (con 60 ejemplos, 0.43%), e instrumentales de circunstancia (con 7 ejemplos, 0.05%). El resto de ejemplos del corpus pertenecen a los tipos semánticos de medias orientadas al Destino y Resultado (con 1475 ejemplos, 10.46%)

    Mapping natural language procedures descriptions to linear temporal logic templates: an application in the surgical robotic domain

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    Natural language annotations and manuals can provide useful procedural information and relations for the highly specialized scenario of autonomous robotic task planning. In this paper, we propose and publicly release AUTOMATE, a pipeline for automatic task knowledge extraction from expert-written domain texts. AUTOMATE integrates semantic sentence classifcation, semantic role labeling, and identifcation of procedural connectors, in order to extract templates of Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) relations that can be directly implemented in any sufciently expressive logic programming formalism for autonomous reasoning, assuming some low-level commonsense and domain-independent knowledge is available. This is the frst work that bridges natural language descriptions of complex LTL relations and the automation of full robotic tasks. Unlike most recent similar works that assume strict language constraints in substantially simplifed domains, we test our pipeline on texts that refect the expressiveness of natural language used in available textbooks and manuals. In fact, we test AUTOMATE in the surgical robotic scenario, defning realistic language constraints based on a publicly available dataset. In the context of two benchmark training tasks with texts constrained as above, we show that automatically extracted LTL templates, after translation to a suitable logic programming paradigm, achieve comparable planning success in reduced time, with respect to logic programs written by expert programmer

    Animation From Instructions

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    We believe that computer animation in the form of narrated animated simulations can provide an engaging, effective and flexible medium for instructing agents in the performance of tasks. However, we argue that the only way to achieve the kind of flexibility needed to instruct agents of varying capabilities to perform tasks with varying demands in work places of varying layout is to drive both animation and narration from a common representation that embodies the same conceptualization of tasks and actions as Natural Language itself. To this end, we are exploring the use of Natural Language instructions to drive animated simulations. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between instructions and behavior that underlie our work and the overall structure of our system. We then describe in some what more detail three aspects of the system - the representation used by the Simulator, the operation of the Simulator and the Motion Generators used in the system

    Understanding natural language about multiple eventualities and continuous eventualities

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    The main task that this thesis deals with is the provision of a comprehensive analysis covering a meaningful subset of English and developing a computational implementation that is able to show understanding of this language subset, in part via limited visualisation.There is a well accepted analogy that says that eventualities exist in time, in ways that are similar to how objects exist in space. This analogy is used as a framework to investigate in detail those activities that are the eventuality analogue of plural and mass objects—multiple instances of an activity, or continuous occurrence of an activity respectively. These are called extended activities.We examine the ways in which natural language is used to describe these kinds of activities, and discuss ways in which the meanings of such language can be represented. We concentrate on language that is in the form of instructions, and discuss the special relationship between instructions and activities.Using the idea that some of our understanding of language comes from the context within which the language is being understood, we identify those parts of language about extended activities that are independent of context and indicate the places where context would play a part. Focusing on the context-independent part, the development of a grammar that can be used in an understanding system demonstrates that it is feasible to interpret important aspects of such language computationally. Further, the system includes a semi-graphical visualisation component that depicts in space the internal structure of the extended activity in time.The work in this thesis relies on the notion that language about extended activities is playing a role analogous to that of object quantification. That is, instead of the more common view that such language is playing the role of event modification, we take the view that it plays the role of event quantification. This notion has been introduced by Moltmann, and taking this approach allows the identification and representation of meanings that would otherwise be omitted. Further, incorporating this into the computational framework is feasible, and an established approach to object quantification is used to implement event quantification

    Advances in the Analysis of Spanish Exclamatives

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    'Advances in the Analysis of Spanish Exclamatives' is the first book entirely devoted to Spanish exclamatives, a special sentence type often overlooked by contemporary linguists and neglected in standard grammatical descriptions. The seven essays in this volume, each by a leading specialist on the topic, scrutinize the syntax, as well as the semantic and pragmatic aspects, of exclamations on theoretical grounds. The book begins by summarizing, commenting on, and evaluating previous descriptive and theoretical contributions on Spanish exclamatives. This introductory overview also contains a detailed classification of Spanish exclamative grammatical types, along with an analysis of their main properties

    Young children's use of the definite and in definite articles in referring expressions

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    It is argued that the theoretical framework used in earlier studies of children's use of the articles is inadequate, failing in some important ways to capture even normal adult usage. A new theory of article usage is proposed which is based on the concept of mental models. Previous psychological investigations are evaluated in the light of this theory and the major issues raised are investigated experimentally. Nine experiments involving approximately 310 three to seven-year old children and 65 parents are reported. The experiments were designed to investigate the effects of two main factors on children’s use of the articles, namely, the knowledge of the listener and the composition of the referential array. Different kinds of tasks were employed which required responses varying from article plus noun to single sentences and extended narratives. The results of the experiments showed that although young children can, and do, take into account the status of an object within a referential array, the over-riding factor in their choice of referring expression is their perception of the knowledge of the listener. When they judge that the listener's model does not contain the same number and kind of objects as their own (the listener is ignorant), children will use an indefinite description to introduce a referent regardless of the status of that referent in the array. However, when the listener is knowledgeable indefinite descriptions are reserved for one of several identical or similar objects and definite descriptions are used for objects which are known to be unique in the listener's model. Other factors which influence children’s use of the articles include the difficulty of the task, the child’s perception of the purpose of the task, and the range of descriptions in the child's linguistic repertoire

    Designing Statistical Language Learners: Experiments on Noun Compounds

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    The goal of this thesis is to advance the exploration of the statistical language learning design space. In pursuit of that goal, the thesis makes two main theoretical contributions: (i) it identifies a new class of designs by specifying an architecture for natural language analysis in which probabilities are given to semantic forms rather than to more superficial linguistic elements; and (ii) it explores the development of a mathematical theory to predict the expected accuracy of statistical language learning systems in terms of the volume of data used to train them. The theoretical work is illustrated by applying statistical language learning designs to the analysis of noun compounds. Both syntactic and semantic analysis of noun compounds are attempted using the proposed architecture. Empirical comparisons demonstrate that the proposed syntactic model is significantly better than those previously suggested, approaching the performance of human judges on the same task, and that the proposed semantic model, the first statistical approach to this problem, exhibits significantly better accuracy than the baseline strategy. These results suggest that the new class of designs identified is a promising one. The experiments also serve to highlight the need for a widely applicable theory of data requirements.Comment: PhD thesis (Macquarie University, Sydney; December 1995), LaTeX source, xii+214 page

    Representing meaning: a feature-based model of object and action words

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    The representation of word meaning has received substantial attention in the psycholinguistic literature over the past decades, yet the vast majority of studies have been limited to words referring to concrete objects. The aim of the present work is to provide a theoretically and neurally plausible model of lexical-semantic representations, not only for words referring to concrete objects but also for words referring to actions and events using a common set of assumptions across domains. In order to do so, features of meaning are generated by naïve speakers, and used as a window into important aspects of representation. A first series of analyses test how the meanings of words of different types are reflected in features associated with different modalities of sensory-motor experience, and how featural properties may be related to patterns of impairment in language-disordered populations. The features of meaning are then used to generate a model of lexical-semantic similarity, in which these different types of words are represented within a single system, under the assumption that lexical-semantic representations serve to provide an interface between conceptual knowledge derived in part from sensory-motor experience, and other linguistic information such as syntax, phonology and orthography. Predictions generated from this model are tested in a series of behavioural experiments designed to test two main questions: whether similarity measures based on speaker- generated features can predict fine-grained semantic similarity effects, and whether the predictive quality of the model is comparable for words referring to objects and words referring to actions. The results of five behavioural experiments consistently reveal graded semantic effects as predicted by the feature-based model, of similar magnitude for objects and actions. The model's fine-grained predictive performance is also found to be superior to other word-based models of representation (Latent Semantic Analysis, and similarity measures derived from Wordnet)
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