873 research outputs found

    Fuzzy Natural Logic in IFSA-EUSFLAT 2021

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    The present book contains five papers accepted and published in the Special Issue, “Fuzzy Natural Logic in IFSA-EUSFLAT 2021”, of the journal Mathematics (MDPI). These papers are extended versions of the contributions presented in the conference “The 19th World Congress of the International Fuzzy Systems Association and the 12th Conference of the European Society for Fuzzy Logic and Technology jointly with the AGOP, IJCRS, and FQAS conferences”, which took place in Bratislava (Slovakia) from September 19 to September 24, 2021. Fuzzy Natural Logic (FNL) is a system of mathematical fuzzy logic theories that enables us to model natural language terms and rules while accounting for their inherent vagueness and allows us to reason and argue using the tools developed in them. FNL includes, among others, the theory of evaluative linguistic expressions (e.g., small, very large, etc.), the theory of fuzzy and intermediate quantifiers (e.g., most, few, many, etc.), and the theory of fuzzy/linguistic IF–THEN rules and logical inference. The papers in this Special Issue use the various aspects and concepts of FNL mentioned above and apply them to a wide range of problems both theoretically and practically oriented. This book will be of interest for researchers working in the areas of fuzzy logic, applied linguistics, generalized quantifiers, and their applications

    Ditransitives in germanic languages. Synchronic and diachronic aspects

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    This volume brings together twelve empirical studies on ditransitive constructions in Germanic languages and their varieties, past and present. Specifically, the volume includes contributions on a wide variety of Germanic languages, including English, Dutch, and German, but also Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, as well as lesser-studied ones such as Faroese. While the first part of the volume focuses on diachronic aspects, the second part showcases a variety of synchronic aspects relating to ditransitive patterns. Methodologically, the volume covers both experimental and corpus-based studies. Questions addressed by the papers in the volume are, among others, issues like the cross-linguistic pervasiveness and cognitive reality of factors involved in the choice between different ditransitive constructions, or differences and similarities in the diachronic development of ditransitives. The volume’s broad scope and comparative perspective offers comprehensive insights into well-known phenomena and furthers our understanding of variation across languages of the same family

    On marked declaratives, exclamatives, and discourse particles in Castilian Spanish

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    This book provides a new perspective on prosodically marked declaratives, wh-exclamatives, and discourse particles in the Madrid variety of Spanish. It argues that some marked forms differ from unmarked forms in that they encode modal evaluations of the at-issue meaning. Two epistemic evaluations that can be shown to be encoded by intonation in Spanish are linguistically encoded surprise, or mirativity, and obviousness. An empirical investigation via an audio-enhanced production experiment finds that mirativity and obviousness are associated with distinct intonational features under constant focus scope, with stances of (dis)agreement showing an impact on obvious declaratives. Wh-exclamatives are found not to differ significantly in intonational marking from neutral declaratives, showing that they need not be miratives. Moreover, we find that intonational marking on different discourse particles in natural dialogue correlates with their meaning contribution without being fully determined by it. In part, these findings quantitatively confirm previous qualitative findings on the meaning of intonational configurations in Madrid Spanish. But they also add new insights on the role intonation plays in the negotiation of commitments and expectations between interlocutors

    Recent Advances in Research on Island Phenomena

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    In natural languages, filler-gap dependencies can straddle across an unbounded distance. Since the 1960s, the term “island” has been used to describe syntactic structures from which extraction is impossible or impeded. While examples from English are ubiquitous, attested counterexamples in the Mainland Scandinavian languages have continuously been dismissed as illusory and alternative accounts for the underlying structure of such cases have been proposed. However, since such extractions are pervasive in spoken Mainland Scandinavian, these languages may not have been given the attention that they deserve in the syntax literature. In addition, recent research suggests that extraction from certain types of island structures in English might not be as unacceptable as previously assumed either. These findings break new empirical ground, question perceived knowledge, and may indeed have substantial ramifications for syntactic theory. This volume provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on island phenomena primarily in English and the Scandinavian languages, focusing on how languages compare to English, with the aim to shed new light on the nature of island constraints from different theoretical perspectives

    Semantic verb classes in Tima (Niger-Congo)

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    The dissertation explores the correlations between the lexical meaning of verbs and their morphosyntactic behavior in terms of valency alternation patterns in the Niger-Congo language Tima spoken in Sudan

    Approximation in Morphology

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    This Special Issue "Approximation in Morphology" has been collated from peer-reviewed papers presented at the ApproxiMo 'discontinuous' workshop (2022), which was held online between December 2021 and May 2022, and organized by Francesca Masini (Bologna), Muriel Norde (Berlin) and Kristel Van Goethem (Louvain)

    A distributional investigation of German verbs

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    Diese Dissertation bietet eine empirische Untersuchung deutscher Verben auf der Grundlage statistischer Beschreibungen, die aus einem großen deutschen Textkorpus gewonnen wurden. In einem kurzen Überblick über linguistische Theorien zur lexikalischen Semantik von Verben skizziere ich die Idee, dass die Verbbedeutung wesentlich von seiner Argumentstruktur (der Anzahl und Art der Argumente, die zusammen mit dem Verb auftreten) und seiner Aspektstruktur (Eigenschaften, die den zeitlichen Ablauf des vom Verb denotierten Ereignisses bestimmen) abhängt. Anschließend erstelle ich statistische Beschreibungen von Verben, die auf diesen beiden unterschiedlichen Bedeutungsfacetten basieren. Insbesondere untersuche ich verbale Subkategorisierung, Selektionspräferenzen und Aspekt. Alle diese Modellierungsstrategien werden anhand einer gemeinsamen Aufgabe, der Verbklassifikation, bewertet. Ich zeige, dass im Rahmen von maschinellem Lernen erworbene Merkmale, die verbale lexikalische Aspekte erfassen, für eine Anwendung von Vorteil sind, die Argumentstrukturen betrifft, nämlich semantische Rollenkennzeichnung. Darüber hinaus zeige ich, dass Merkmale, die die verbale Argumentstruktur erfassen, bei der Aufgabe, ein Verb nach seiner Aspektklasse zu klassifizieren, gut funktionieren. Diese Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass diese beiden Facetten der Verbbedeutung auf grundsätzliche Weise zusammenhängen.This dissertation provides an empirical investigation of German verbs conducted on the basis of statistical descriptions acquired from a large corpus of German text. In a brief overview of the linguistic theory pertaining to the lexical semantics of verbs, I outline the idea that verb meaning is composed of argument structure (the number and types of arguments that co-occur with a verb) and aspectual structure (properties describing the temporal progression of an event referenced by the verb). I then produce statistical descriptions of verbs according to these two distinct facets of meaning: In particular, I examine verbal subcategorisation, selectional preferences, and aspectual type. All three of these modelling strategies are evaluated on a common task, automatic verb classification. I demonstrate that automatically acquired features capturing verbal lexical aspect are beneficial for an application that concerns argument structure, namely semantic role labelling. Furthermore, I demonstrate that features capturing verbal argument structure perform well on the task of classifying a verb for its aspectual type. These findings suggest that these two facets of verb meaning are related in an underlying way

    Headedness and/or grammatical anarchy?

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    Synopsis: In most grammatical models, hierarchical structuring and dependencies are considered as central features of grammatical structures, an idea which is usually captured by the notion of “head” or “headedness”. While in most models, this notion is more or less taken for granted, there is still much disagreement as to the precise properties of grammatical heads and the theoretical implications that arise of these properties. Moreover, there are quite a few linguistic structures that pose considerable challenges to the notion of “headedness”. Linking to the seminal discussions led in Zwicky (1985) and Corbett, Fraser, & Mc-Glashan (1993), this volume intends to look more closely upon phenomena that are considered problematic for an analysis in terms of grammatical heads. The aim of this book is to approach the concept of “headedness” from its margins. Thus, central questions of the volume relate to the nature of heads and the distinction between headed and non-headed structures, to the process of gaining and losing head status, and to the thought-provoking question as to whether grammar theory could do without heads at all. The contributions in this volume provide new empirical findings bearing on phenomena that challenge the conception of grammatical heads and/or discuss the notion of head/headedness and its consequences for grammatical theory in a more abstract way. The collected papers view the topic from diverse theoretical perspectives (among others HPSG, Generative Syntax, Optimality Theory) and different empirical angles, covering typological and corpus-linguistic accounts, with a focus on data from German

    Headedness and/or grammatical anarchy?

    Get PDF
    In most grammatical models, hierarchical structuring and dependencies are considered as central features of grammatical structures, an idea which is usually captured by the notion of “head” or “headedness”. While in most models, this notion is more or less taken for granted, there is still much disagreement as to the precise properties of grammatical heads and the theoretical implications that arise of these properties. Moreover, there are quite a few linguistic structures that pose considerable challenges to the notion of “headedness”. Linking to the seminal discussions led in Zwicky (1985) and Corbett, Fraser, & Mc-Glashan (1993), this volume intends to look more closely upon phenomena that are considered problematic for an analysis in terms of grammatical heads. The aim of this book is to approach the concept of “headedness” from its margins. Thus, central questions of the volume relate to the nature of heads and the distinction between headed and non-headed structures, to the process of gaining and losing head status, and to the thought-provoking question as to whether grammar theory could do without heads at all. The contributions in this volume provide new empirical findings bearing on phenomena that challenge the conception of grammatical heads and/or discuss the notion of head/headedness and its consequences for grammatical theory in a more abstract way. The collected papers view the topic from diverse theoretical perspectives (among others HPSG, Generative Syntax, Optimality Theory) and different empirical angles, covering typological and corpus-linguistic accounts, with a focus on data from German
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