Evaluation of a Grammar of French Determiners

Existing syntactic grammars of natural languages, even with a far from complete coverage, are complex objects. Assessments of the quality of parts of such grammars are useful for the validation of their construction. We evaluated the quality of a grammar of French determiners that takes the form of a recursive transition network. The result of the application of this local grammar gives deeper syntactic information than chunking or information available in treebanks. We performed the evaluation by comparison with a corpus independently annotated with information on determiners. We obtained 86% precision and 92% recall on text not tagged for parts of speech.Comment: 10 page

Conjoining and the Weak/Strong Quantifier Distinction

Pietroski’s model of semantic composition is introduced and compared to the standard type hierarchy. Particular focus is then given to Pietroski’s account of quantifi cation. The question is raised of how the model might account for the weak/strong distinction in natural language quantifi cation. A number of options are addressed and one proposal is tentatively recommended

Generalised quantifiers and the semantics of the same

The notions of the nominative case extension of a type quantifier and of the dual of type quantifier are used to present the semantics of various, structurally different, expressions containing the sam

On the D-structure position of negative sentence adverbials in French

The author evaluates aspects of recent work by Pollock (1989), Belletti (1990) and Zanuttini (1991), in particular one fundamental assumption made there about the syntax of negative clauses in French. While accepting Pollock's claim that the clitic ne is generated as the X0 head of its own phrasal projection, the author rejects the claim (first made by Pollock (1989: 418) and subsequently endorsed by Belletti (1990: 30) and Zanuttini (1991: 35)) that pas is an Xmax phrasal category base-generated as the specifier of ne, i.e., in the specifier position within NegP. The author offers a three-sided argument against such an analysis, invoking: (a) a significant generalisation regarding the specifier position within functional projections; (b) the relationship between elements like pas and indefinite direct objects in clauses containing a transitive verb; and (c) the syntax of adverbials in general. The author goes on to consider Obenauer's (1983; 1984) work on `quantification at a distance' and Battye's (1989; 1991) work on `nominal quantification'. He argues for a unified account of negative sentence adverbials in French and posits accordingly that pas is generated in a lower position in clause structure, either adjoined to VP or as the head N of a determiner-less direct object indefinite DP

Problems in the Reconstruction of Proto-Philippine Construction Markers

This paper is the result of an attempt to try to define the problems that must be faced in reconstructing the construction markers of ProtoPhilippines. In order to understand what the problems are it is necessary first to make explicit some of our hypotheses about what we mean by ProtoPhilippines, and secondly to discuss what we mean by 'construction markers

Grammar practice : theory and practice

Fil: Luque Colombres, María Candelaria. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Meehan, Patricia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Oliva, María Belén. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Rius, Natalia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: de Maussion, Ana. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Neyra, Vanina Pamela. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Our main objective when writing this handbook has been to design some kind of material that would provide the first-year university student at Facultad de Lenguas with the basic foundations of English grammar. Although this handout could be used as a self-study grammar guide, the student should bear in mind it is meant to be used as a complement of class work. Therefore, the material included in the present publication has not been organized according to the level of difficulty, but rather in accordance with the syllabus of the subject. Each chapter brings along graded exercises which have been carefully designed to improve and consolidate the grammar topics included in the syllabus of the subject. Finally, we would like to point out that to round off each unit, we have decided to include texts (often authentic ones) in an attempt to offer the student a new perspective on the subject: one which relates grammatical structure systematically to meaning and use.Fil: Luque Colombres, María Candelaria. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Meehan, Patricia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Oliva, María Belén. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Rius, Natalia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: de Maussion, Ana. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Neyra, Vanina Pamela. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina