On the processing of agreement morphology

The paper deals with the role played by morphology in core syntax within a generative minimalist framework: more specifically it deals with the theory of valuation of agreement or phi-features (that is, person and number features) and the valuation of tense or t-features (that is, features like [+/-present]), and there is a second part where I focus on the computation of both kinds of features according to the neuroimaging literature. The core idea that I aim to defend is that agreement features and tense features are each valued by a distinct head, namely 'v' and T. I argue that the number of steps in the 'real' processing or computation of agreement features and of tense feaures must be the same, irrespective of whether the morphological realization is 'zero' (as is frequently the case in a language like English) or not (as is typically the case in a Romance language like Spanish).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Arguing against obligatory feature inheritance: Evidence from French transitive participle agreement

In this article, we accept the view that the relevant type of case/agreement features originate on phase heads, but argue against a strong view of the Percolation Hypothesis on which uninterpretable features obligatorily percolate down from a phase head onto a selected head: on the contrary, we maintain that there are structures in which uninterpretable case/agreement features remain on the phase head throughout the derivation. The main empirical evidence we adduce in support of our claim comes from a novel analysis of French past participle agreement which builds on earlier work by Radford and Vincent (2007) and Vincent (2007). In section 2, we briefly characterise French past participle agreement, and outline the key assumptions which our analysis makes. We show how our analysis handles past participle agreement with a local direct object in section 3, and go on to show how it correctly specifies when (and why) agreement can take place with the subject of an embedded infinitive complement in section 4. In section 5, we present further empirical evidence against the Percolation Hypothesis from a range of independent phenomena, and highlight some theoretical inadequacies of the hypothesis, as well as reconsidering the motivation for feature percolation. Finally, in section 6 we summarize our overall conclusions

Robust Modeling of Epistemic Mental States

This work identifies and advances some research challenges in the analysis of facial features and their temporal dynamics with epistemic mental states in dyadic conversations. Epistemic states are: Agreement, Concentration, Thoughtful, Certain, and Interest. In this paper, we perform a number of statistical analyses and simulations to identify the relationship between facial features and epistemic states. Non-linear relations are found to be more prevalent, while temporal features derived from original facial features have demonstrated a strong correlation with intensity changes. Then, we propose a novel prediction framework that takes facial features and their nonlinear relation scores as input and predict different epistemic states in videos. The prediction of epistemic states is boosted when the classification of emotion changing regions such as rising, falling, or steady-state are incorporated with the temporal features. The proposed predictive models can predict the epistemic states with significantly improved accuracy: correlation coefficient (CoERR) for Agreement is 0.827, for Concentration 0.901, for Thoughtful 0.794, for Certain 0.854, and for Interest 0.913.Comment: Accepted for Publication in Multimedia Tools and Application, Special Issue: Socio-Affective Technologie

In support of long distance agree

In the recent literature the phenomenon of long distance agreement has become the focus of several studies as it seems to violate certain locality conditions which require that agreeing elements in general stand in clause-mate relationships. In particular, it involves a verb agreeing with a constituent which is located in the verb's clausal complement and hence poses a challenge for theories that assume a strictly local relationship for agreement. In this paper we present empirical evidence from Greek and Romanian for the reality of long distance agreement. Specifically, we focus on raising constructions in these two languages and we show that they do not involve movement but rather instantiate long distance agreement. We further argue that subjunctives allowing long distance agreement lack both a CP layer and semantic Tense. However, since the embedded verb also bears phi-features, these constructions pose a further problem for assumptions that view the presence of phi-features as evidence for the presence of a C layer. Finally, we raise the question of the common properties that these languages have that lead to the presence of long distance agreement

THE NATURE OF FEEDBACK:HOW DIFFERENT TYPES OF PEER FEEDBACK AFFECT WRITING PERFORMANCE

Although providing feedback is commonly practiced in education, there is general agreement regarding what type of feedback is most helpful and why it is helpful. This study examined the relationship between various types of feedback, potential internal mediators, and the likelihood of implementing feedback. Five main predictions were developed from the feedback literature in writing, specifically regarding feedback features (summarization, identifying problems, providing solutions, localization, explanations, scope, praise, and mitigating language) as they relate to potential causal mediators of problem or solution understand and problem or solution agreement, leading to the final outcome of feedback implementation.To empirically test the proposed feedback model, 1073 feedback segments from writing assessed by peers was analyzed. Feedback was collected using SWoRD, an online peer review system. Each segment was coded for each of the feedback features, implementation, agreement, and understanding. The correlations between the feedback features, levels of mediating variables, and implementation rates revealed several significant relationships. Understanding was the only significant mediator of implementation. Several feedback features were associated with understanding: including solutions, a summary of the performance, and the location of the problem were associated with increased understanding; and explanations to problems were associated with decreased understanding. Implications of these results are discussed

Radiomics of Lung Nodules: A Multi-Institutional Study of Robustness and Agreement of Quantitative Imaging Features.

Radiomics is to provide quantitative descriptors of normal and abnormal tissues during classification and prediction tasks in radiology and oncology. Quantitative Imaging Network members are developing radiomic "feature" sets to characterize tumors, in general, the size, shape, texture, intensity, margin, and other aspects of the imaging features of nodules and lesions. Efforts are ongoing for developing an ontology to describe radiomic features for lung nodules, with the main classes consisting of size, local and global shape descriptors, margin, intensity, and texture-based features, which are based on wavelets, Laplacian of Gaussians, Law's features, gray-level co-occurrence matrices, and run-length features. The purpose of this study is to investigate the sensitivity of quantitative descriptors of pulmonary nodules to segmentations and to illustrate comparisons across different feature types and features computed by different implementations of feature extraction algorithms. We calculated the concordance correlation coefficients of the features as a measure of their stability with the underlying segmentation; 68% of the 830 features in this study had a concordance CC of ≥0.75. Pairwise correlation coefficients between pairs of features were used to uncover associations between features, particularly as measured by different participants. A graphical model approach was used to enumerate the number of uncorrelated feature groups at given thresholds of correlation. At a threshold of 0.75 and 0.95, there were 75 and 246 subgroups, respectively, providing a measure for the features' redundancy