2,861 research outputs found
On past participle agreement in transitive clauses in French
This paper provides a Minimalist analysis of past participle agreement in French in transitive
clauses. Our account posits that the head v of vP in such structures carries an (accusativeassigning) structural case feature which may apply (with or without concomitant agreement)
to case-mark a clause-mate object, the subject of a defective complement clause, or an
intermediate copy of a preposed subject in spec-CP. In structures where a goal is extracted
from vP (e.g. via wh-movement) v also carries an edge feature, and may also carry a
specificity feature and a set of (number and gender) agreement features. We show how these
assumptions account for agreement of a participle with a preposed specific clausemate object
or defective-clause subject, and for the absence of agreement with an embedded object, with
the complement of an impersonal verb, and with the subject of an embedded (finite or nonfinite) CP complement. We also argue that the absence of agreement marking (in expected
contexts) on the participles faitmade and laissélet in infinitive structures is essentially viral in
nature. Finally, we claim that obligatory participle agreement with reflexive and reciprocal
objects arises because the derivation of reflexives involves A-movement and concomitant
agreement
Extra argumentality - affectees, landmarks, and voice
This article investigates sentences with additional core arguments of a special type in three languages, viz. German, English, and Mandarin. These additional arguments, called extra arguments in the article, form a crosslinguistically homogeneous class by virtue of their structural and semantic similarities, with so-called "raised possessors" forming just a sub-group among them. Structurally, extra arguments may not be the most deeply embedded arguments in a sentence. Semantically, their referents are felt to stand in a specific relation to the referent of the/a more deeply embedded argument. There are two major thematic relations that are instantiated by extra arguments, viz. affectees and landmarks. These thematic role notions are justified in the context of and partly in contrast to, Dowty's (1991) proto-role approach. An affectee combines proto-agent with proto-patient properties in eventualities that are construed as involving causation. A landmark is a ground with respect to some spatial configuration denoted by the predication at hand, but a figure at the highest level of gestalt partitioning that is relevant in a clause. Thereby, both affectees and landmarks are inherently hybrid categories. The account of extra argumentality is couched in a neo-Davidsonian event semantics in the spirit of Kratzer (1996, 2003), and voice heads are assumed to introduce affectee arguments and landmark arguments right above VP
Ditransitives in germanic languages. Synchronic and diachronic aspects
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
Applied Language Typology:Applying typological insights in professional practice
In this paper we introduce and outline a new research area, Applied Language Typology (ALT). ALT builds on fundamental typological findings in morphology, syntax and semantics. ALT examines the attested and potential practical consequences of these contrasts for different professional contexts of communication, such as translation, the law and second language learning and teaching. We propose three general organising principles that underlie ALT, illustrating how these principles enable us to identify exact points of language contrasts that result in significant practical difficulty, and we suggest future directions in ALT research for the benefit of academics and language practitioners
German particle verbs: Compositionality at the syntax-semantics interface
Particle verbs represent a type of multi-word expression composed of a base verb and a particle. The meaning of the particle verb is often, but not always, derived from the meaning of the base verb, sometimes in quite complex ways. In this work, we computationally assess the levels of German particle verb compositionality, with the use of distributional semantic methods. Our results demonstrate that the prediction of particle verb compositionality is possible with statistical significance. Furthermore, we investigate properties of German particle verbs that are relevant for their compositionality: the particular subcategorization behavior of particle verbs and their corresponding base verbs, and the question in how far the verb particles can be attributed meaning by themselves, which they contribute to the particle verb
The effect of Cross-Linguistic Influence in Mandarin learners of English on interpreting state-change verbs in English
This thesis covers the discussion of the role of L1 Mandarin in the course of L2 English acquisition. I focus specifically on state-change verbs where English and Mandarin share some properties but diverge in interpretations, as a way of examining if Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2007, 2008, 2009) is extendable to other domains of grammar that are not explicitly discussed in previous literature. Noticeably, I don’t aim to test the predictions of the model in this thesis but use the model to examine the process of reassembling the state- change feature and investigate whether FRH can be extended to domains beyond syntax and morphosyntax
Proceedings of the Conference on Natural Language Processing 2010
This book contains state-of-the-art contributions to the 10th
conference on Natural Language Processing, KONVENS 2010
(Konferenz zur Verarbeitung natĂĽrlicher Sprache), with a focus
on semantic processing.
The KONVENS in general aims at offering a broad perspective
on current research and developments within the interdisciplinary
field of natural language processing. The central theme
draws specific attention towards addressing linguistic aspects
ofmeaning, covering deep as well as shallow approaches to semantic
processing. The contributions address both knowledgebased
and data-driven methods for modelling and acquiring
semantic information, and discuss the role of semantic information
in applications of language technology.
The articles demonstrate the importance of semantic processing,
and present novel and creative approaches to natural
language processing in general. Some contributions put their
focus on developing and improving NLP systems for tasks like
Named Entity Recognition or Word Sense Disambiguation, or
focus on semantic knowledge acquisition and exploitation with
respect to collaboratively built ressources, or harvesting semantic
information in virtual games. Others are set within the
context of real-world applications, such as Authoring Aids, Text
Summarisation and Information Retrieval. The collection highlights
the importance of semantic processing for different areas
and applications in Natural Language Processing, and provides
the reader with an overview of current research in this field
- …