Gender assignment and gender agreement in advanced French interlanguage: a cross-sectional study

An analysis of 519 gender errors (out of 9,378 modifiers) in the advanced French interlanguage of 27 Dutch L1 speakers confirms earlier findings that gender assignment and/or agreement remain problematic for learners at all levels. A hypothesis derived from Pienemann's Processability Theory (1998a) that accuracy rates would be higher for gender agreement in structures involving no exchange of grammatical information between constituents was not confirmed. The analysis of interindividual and intra-individual variation in gender accuracy rates revealed effects from avoidance and generalisation strategies, from linguistic variables, sociobiographical variables and psycholinguistic variables. We argue that gender errors can originate at the lemma level, at the gender node level, or at the lexeme level. Different psycholinguistic scenarios are presented to account for intra-individual variation in gender assignment and agreement

Processing Patterns of Focusing – An Experimental Study on Pragmatic Scales Triggered by the Spanish Focus Operator incluso

In communication, individuals do not attribute the same informative value to the different elements that constitute an utterance. Hence, individuals not only consider what they want to communicate, they also consider the mental state of the addressee. They organize the discourse in a determined way in order to generate a relevant ostensive stimulus that could be felicitously integrated in the common ground by the addressee (cfr. Sperber and Wilson 1995 [1986], Lambrecht 1994:XIII, Krifka 2008:245, Portolés 2010:283-284). Thus, it can also be assumed that not all utterances present the same processing effort. Consequently, languages have elements that allow to regulate this cognitive effort. Elements with procedural meaning, such as focus operators can precisely fulfill this regulation-effect. They restrict the inferential processes in an accessible context due to their morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties and guide the addressee to the intended communicated assumption, while optimizing the processing effort (cfr. Sperber and Wilson 1995 [1986], Blakemore 1987, 2002, Portolés 2001 [1998], Wilson and Sperber 2002). Due to its procedural meaning the Spanish inclusive focus operator incluso evokes a specific information structure and thereby regulates the processing effort of utterances: it informatively highlights an element of the paradigm as the most relevant element in a specific and accessible context. The instruction of the focus operator conventionally triggers a contrastive relation between focus and alternative and leads to the interpretation of a scalar implicature (cfr. Rooth 1985, 1996, König 1991:10, Portolés 2007, 2010, 2011, DPDE online) The aim of the experimental study presented in this dissertation is to examine whether different focusing structures (marked by the Spanish focus operator incluso) evoke different cognitive patterns during processing (via an online eye tracking study), and whether they trigger different comprehension strategies (via an offline comprehension test). More specifically, the study aimed to analyze: a) if there exist correlations between the morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of the focus operator incluso and the informative structure of the utterance, b) how the focus operator affects the implicated elements of the focusing operation, and c) to what extend the presence of incluso determines the recovery of inferences. Therefore, different linguistic variables are considered that enable to analysis to what extent processing patterns and comprehension strategies differ, if a focus operator is present or absent in an utterance, if the position of the focus operator is prepositional or postpositional in relation to the focus element, or if the conceptual meaning and the procedural meaning are co- or anti-oriented to the common ground of the reader. Additionally, these three linguistic variables are analyzed in three different informative structures regarding the alternative information: implicit alternative, explicit single alternative and explicit complex alternative. In line with the findings of the study, it can be argued that different syntactical, semantical and informative alterations generate different processing structures. In relation to focus marking, the general results reflect that a marked focusing structure never demands more processing effort than the same utterance without procedural device. Further, the position of the focus operator regarding the focus element is strictly correlated with the processing of focusing structures. In this regard, it is argued that the more common and frequent the focus operator position is, the lower the processing effort. At last, the degree of informativity produces an impact in the processing of these types of structures. The co-orientation of conceptual and procedural information regarding the common ground accelerates processing. Any conflict between the two meanings result in a conflict-resolution strategy in which an accommodation attempt is conducted. In terms of comprehension, it can be concluded that the rigidity of the procedural mark leads to an interpretation of a conventional scalar implicature, and that a focus operator becomes indispensable for the construction of contrastive relations

The use of data-mining for the automatic formation of tactics

This paper discusses the usse of data-mining for the automatic formation of tactics. It was presented at the Workshop on Computer-Supported Mathematical Theory Development held at IJCAR in 2004. The aim of this project is to evaluate the applicability of data-mining techniques to the automatic formation of tactics from large corpuses of proofs. We data-mine information from large proof corpuses to find commonly occurring patterns. These patterns are then evolved into tactics using genetic programming techniques

Coping with Alternate Formulations of Questions and Answers

We present in this chapter the QALC system which has participated in the four TREC QA evaluations. We focus here on the problem of linguistic variation in order to be able to relate questions and answers. We present first, variation at the term level which consists in retrieving questions terms in document sentences even if morphologic, syntactic or semantic variations alter them. Our second subject matter concerns variation at the sentence level that we handle as different partial reformulations of questions. Questions are associated with extraction patterns based on the question syntactic type and the object that is under query. We present the whole system thus allowing situating how QALC deals with variation, and different evaluations

Diversity, competition, extinction: the ecophysics of language change

As early indicated by Charles Darwin, languages behave and change very much like living species. They display high diversity, differentiate in space and time, emerge and disappear. A large body of literature has explored the role of information exchanges and communicative constraints in groups of agents under selective scenarios. These models have been very helpful in providing a rationale on how complex forms of communication emerge under evolutionary pressures. However, other patterns of large-scale organization can be described using mathematical methods ignoring communicative traits. These approaches consider shorter time scales and have been developed by exploiting both theoretical ecology and statistical physics methods. The models are reviewed here and include extinction, invasion, origination, spatial organization, coexistence and diversity as key concepts and are very simple in their defining rules. Such simplicity is used in order to catch the most fundamental laws of organization and those universal ingredients responsible for qualitative traits. The similarities between observed and predicted patterns indicate that an ecological theory of language is emerging, supporting (on a quantitative basis) its ecological nature, although key differences are also present. Here we critically review some recent advances lying and outline their implications and limitations as well as open problems for future research.Comment: 17 Pages. A review on current models from statistical Physics and Theoretical Ecology applied to study language dynamic