A Bi-Polar Theory of Nominal and Clause Structure and Function

It is taken as axiomatic that grammar encodes meaning. Two key dimensions of meaning that get grammatically encoded are referential meaning and relational meaning. The key claim is that, in English, these two dimensions of meaning are typically encoded in distinct grammatical poles—a referential pole and a relational pole—with a specifier functioning as the locus of the referential pole and a head functioning as the locus of the relational pole. Specifiers and heads combine to form referring expressions corresponding to the syntactic notion of a maximal projection. Lexical items and expressions functioning as modifiers are preferentially attracted to one pole or the other. If the head of an expression describes a relation, one or more complements may be associated with the head. The four grammatical functions specifier, head, modifier and complement are generally adequate to represent much of the basic structure and function of nominals and clauses. These terms are borrowed from X-Bar Theory, but they are motivated on semantic grounds having to do with their grammatical function to encode referential and relational meaning

Small clause results revisited

The main purpose of this paper is to show that argument structure constructions like complex telic path of motion constructions (John walked to the store) or complex resultative constructions (The dog barked the chickens awake) are not to be regarded as "theoretical entities" (Jackendoff (1997b); Goldberg (1995)). As an alternative to these semanticocentric accounts, I argue that their epiphenomenal status can be shown iff we take into account some important insights from three syntactically-oriented works: (i) Hoekstra's (1988, 1992) analysis of SC R, (ii) Hale & Keyser's (1993f.) configurational theory of argument structure, and (iii) Mateu & Rigau’s (1999; i.p.) syntactic account of Talmy's (1991) typological distinction between 'satellite framed languages' (e.g., English, German, Dutch, etc.) and 'verb-framed languages' (e.g., Catalan, Spanish, French, etc.). In particular, it is argued that the formation of the abovementioned constructions involves a conflation process of two different syntactic argument structures, this process being carried out via a 'generalized transformation'. Accordingly, the so-called 'lexical subordination process' (Levin & Rapoport (1988)) is argued to involve a syntactic operation, rather than a semantic one. Due to our assuming that the parametric variation involved in the constructions under study cannot be explained in purely semantic terms (Mateu & Rigau (1999)), Talmy's (1991) typological distinction is argued to be better stated in lexical syntactic terms

A Study of Entanglement in a Categorical Framework of Natural Language

In both quantum mechanics and corpus linguistics based on vector spaces, the notion of entanglement provides a means for the various subsystems to communicate with each other. In this paper we examine a number of implementations of the categorical framework of Coecke, Sadrzadeh and Clark (2010) for natural language, from an entanglement perspective. Specifically, our goal is to better understand in what way the level of entanglement of the relational tensors (or the lack of it) affects the compositional structures in practical situations. Our findings reveal that a number of proposals for verb construction lead to almost separable tensors, a fact that considerably simplifies the interactions between the words. We examine the ramifications of this fact, and we show that the use of Frobenius algebras mitigates the potential problems to a great extent. Finally, we briefly examine a machine learning method that creates verb tensors exhibiting a sufficient level of entanglement.Comment: In Proceedings QPL 2014, arXiv:1412.810

A Generalised Quantifier Theory of Natural Language in Categorical Compositional Distributional Semantics with Bialgebras

Categorical compositional distributional semantics is a model of natural language; it combines the statistical vector space models of words with the compositional models of grammar. We formalise in this model the generalised quantifier theory of natural language, due to Barwise and Cooper. The underlying setting is a compact closed category with bialgebras. We start from a generative grammar formalisation and develop an abstract categorical compositional semantics for it, then instantiate the abstract setting to sets and relations and to finite dimensional vector spaces and linear maps. We prove the equivalence of the relational instantiation to the truth theoretic semantics of generalised quantifiers. The vector space instantiation formalises the statistical usages of words and enables us to, for the first time, reason about quantified phrases and sentences compositionally in distributional semantics

From deep dyslexia to agrammatic comprehension on silent reading

We report on a case of a French-speaking patient whose performance on reading aloud single words was characteristically deep dyslexic (in spite of preserved ability to identify letters), and whose comprehension on silent sentence reading was agrammatic and strikingly poorer than on oral reading. The first part of the study is mainly informative as regards (i) the relationship between letter identification, semantic paralexias and the ability to read nonwords, (ii) the differential character of silent and oral reading tasks, and (iii) the potential modality-dependent character of the deficits in comprehension encountered. In the second part of the study we examine the patient's sensitivity to verb-noun ambiguity and probe her skills in the comprehension of indexical structures by exploring her ability to cope with number agreement and temporal and prepositional relations. The results indicate the patient's sensitivity to certain dimensions of these linguistic categories, reveal a partly correct basis for certain incorrect responses, and, on the whole, favor a definition of the patient's disorders in terms of a deficit in integrating indexical information in language comprehension. More generally, the present study substantiates a microgenetic approach to neuropsychology, where the pathological behavior due to brain damage is described as an arrest of microgenesis at an early stage of development, so that patient's responses take the form of unfinished "products" which would normally undergo further development

UNDERSTANDING PREPOSITIONS THROUGH COGNITIVE GRAMMAR. A CASE OF IN

Poly - semantic nature of prepositions has been discussed in linguistic literature and confirmed by language data. In the majority of research within cognitive linguistics prepositions have been approached as predicates organising entities in space, with less attention paid to the search for a meaning schema sanctioning the numerous uses. Cognitive Grammar analytic tools allow for the analysis which results in discovering one meaning schema sanctioning the uses of the English preposition in. The present analysis is based on the assumption that the meaning schema of in profiles a relation of conceptual enclosure between two symbolic structures, one of which conceptually fits in the other. Accordingly, I argue that the speaker employs in to structure a real scene not because one element of the scene can physically enclose the other one, but due to conceptual ‘fitting in’ holding between the predication ‘preceding’ the preposition and the one that ‘follows’. In formal terms, the usage of in is conditioned and sanctioned by compatibility of active zones in the predications used to form the complex language expression involved. Peculiarities of physical organization may be ignored in such conceptualisation, though the speaker can choose to encode all peculiarities of physical organisation of real world objects employing different linguistic devices

A functional view on prototypes

The human mind may produce prototypization within virtually any realm of cognition and behavior. A "comparative prototype-typology" might prove to be an interesting field of study – perhaps a new subfield of semiotics. This, however, would presuppose a clear view on the samenesses and differences of prototypization in these various fields. It seems realistic for the time being that the linguist first confine himself to describing prototypization within the realm of language proper. The literature on prototypes has steadily grown in the past ten years or so. I confine myself to mentioning the volume on Noun Classes and Categorization, edited by C. Craig (1986), which contains a wealth of factual information on the subject, along with some theoretical vistas. By and large, however, linguistic prototype research is still basically in a taxonomic stage - which, of course, represents the precondition for moving beyond. The procedure is largely per ostensionem, and by accumulating examples of prototypes. We still lack a comprehensive prototype theory. The following pages are intended, not to provide such, a theory, but to do the first steps in this direction. Section 2 will feature some elements of a functional theory of prototypes. They have been developed by this author within the frame of the UNITYP model of research on language universals and typology. Section 3 will bring a discussion of prototypization with regard to selected phenomena of a wide range of levels of analysis: Phonology, morphosyntax, speech acts, and the lexicon. Prototypization will finally be studied within one of the universal dimensions, that of APPREHENSION - the linguistic representation of the concepts of objects – as proposed by Seiler (1986)

Typologies of agreement: some problems from Kayardild

In this paper I describe a number of agreement-type phenomena in the Australian language Kayardild, and assess them against existing definitions, stating both the boundaries of what is to be considered agreement, and characteristics of prototypical agreement phenomena. Though conforming, prima facie, to definitions of agreement that stress semantically based covariance in inflections on different words, the Kayardild phenomena considered here pose a number of challenges to accepted views of agreement: the rich possibilities for stacking case-like agreement inflections emanating from different syntactic levels, the fact that inflections resulting from agreement may change the word class of their host, and the semantic categories involved, in particular tense/aspect/mood, which have been claimed not to be agreement categories on nominals. Two types of inflection, in particular - 'modal case' and 'associating case' - lie somewhere between prototypical agreement and prototypical government. Like agreement, but unlike government, they are triggered by inflectional rather than lexical features of the head, and appear on more than one constituent; like government, but unlike agreement, the semantic categories on head and dependent are not isomorphic. Other types of inflection, though unusual in the categories involved, the possibility of recursion, and their effects on the host's word class, are close to prototypical in terms of how they fare in Corbett's proposed tests for canonical agreement