6,068 research outputs found
A tribute to Elizaveta Ubryatova: professional life and personal destiny
The article was submitted on 10.06.2015. Translated by Dr. Lilia Gorelova.In Russia, the name of prominent turkologist Elizaveta Ivanovna Ubryatova, at present is known mostly to specialists who study the languages spoken by the Northern peoples of the country. However, the essence of scientific research of a linguist of such a calibre includes naturally attentive and concerned attitude to the fate of the peoples residing in the North of Russia, which was especially important in the conditions of the Soviet era. Survival of the Northern peoples and their languages became for Ubryatova not only a scientific problem but also a mission of vital importance. Ubryatova’s scientific interests were not restricted to linguistic problems, she also purposefully studied the important monuments of folk literature and ethnography of indigenous peoples. This was due to her scientific breadth, social responsibility, and commitment to a supreme mastery of the research object. That is why she became the founder of the original linguistic and cultural school in the study of the history and structures of languages spoken by peoples living in the North of Russia. The scale of her bright personality, combined with her intelligence, patience, and feminine care about colleagues and students, made her a center of attraction for researchers in this field. She launched an extensive project of publishing works devoted to folklore of the peoples who inhabited the Northern territories of Russia, and whose traditional culture became a part of the world culture as a result. The languages of the Dolgans and Yakuts became the main topics of her research. In this article, we outline the major ideas proposed by Ubryatova in her works, viz., those concerning the origin of the Turkic languages, Dolgan and Yakut in particular, and principles of the organization of the Yakut syntax. In her works, devoted to syntactic problems, Ubryatova determined the fundamental characteristic features of systemic organization of Turkic languages, Yakut in particular, as the ability of these languages to link language units of different levels between each other by using the same grammatical means. In Turkic languages, almost all syntactic relations between clauses can be expressed grammatically, and this linguistic phenomenon entails the existence of a diverse and advanced system of non-finite verbal forms. These important findings can be successfully generalised to embrace all Altaic languages. Addressing a linguistic problem, Ubryatova combined her deep intuition with intensive field work and systematic theoretic investigation. Monographs and textbooks written by Ubryatova belong to the gold reserve of Turkology and cultural linguistics.Среди российских лингвистов имя Елизаветы Ивановны Убрятовой известно преимущественно специалистам, изучающим языки народов Севера. Однако суть научных изысканий лингвистов этого профиля закономерно включала в себя неравнодушное отношение к судьбе народов Севера в условиях советского времени, что для Убрятовой было не только научной, но и жизненной задачей. Елизавета Ивановна, путь которой отчасти случайно пересекся с исследованием не только языка, но и памятников фольклорной словесности и этнографии, отнюдь не случайно, а в результате научной добросовестности и стремления к доскональному знанию объекта исследования становится основателем оригинального лингвокультурологического направления в изучении истории и структуры языков народов, живущих на севере России. Масштаб личности, яркая индивидуальность в сочетании с настоящей интеллигентностью, терпением и женской заботой об окружающих сотрудниках и учениках сделали ее центром притяжения, позволили сформировать школу, запланировать и осуществить величественный проект издания фольклора народов Севера, где самобытная культура этой территории стала частью мировой культуры. Главными в ее исследовании стали тюркские языки - долганский и якутский. В статье прописаны основные тезисы работ Убрятовой по темам «Происхождение тюркских языков» и «Принципы организации синтаксиса якутского языка». В трудах по синтаксису Елизавета Убрятова определяет особенность системной организации тюркских языков, и якутского в частности, как способность единиц разного уровня соединяться при помощи одних и тех же средств. Идея Убрятовой о том, что почти все синтаксические отношения имеют грамматические выражения, что и определяет систему глагольных форм, как показано в статье, оказалась принципиально важна не только для тюркологии. В ее лингвистических изысканиях тонкая интуиция сочеталась с огромной полевой работой и системными исследованиями каждого вопроса. Научные сочинения Убрятовой составляют золотой фонд тюркологии
On validation of ATL transformation rules by transformation models
International audienceModel-to-model transformations constitute an important ingredient in model-driven engineering. As real world transformations are complex, systematic approaches are required to ensure their correctness. The ATLAS Transformation Language (ATL) is a mature transformation language which has been successfully applied in several areas. However, the executable nature of ATL is a barrier for the validation of transformations. In contrast, transformation models provide an integrated structural description of the source and target metamodels and the transformation between them. While not being executable, transformation models are well-suited for analysis and verification of transformation properties. In this paper, we discuss (a) how ATL transformations can be translated into equivalent transformation models and (b) illustrate how these surrogates can be employed to validate properties of the original transformation
Tibetan -las, -nas, and -bas
In descriptions of Tibetan grammar it is common to treat -las and -nas together in the discussion of case marking, signalling merely that -las is capable of forming comparisons whereas -nas is not. Similarly, in the discussion of comparison most authors make no distinction between the suffixes -bas and -las. A look at a few examples of these three morphemes demonstrates that they have quite distinct syntax and semantics
The size of things I
This book focuses on the role size plays in grammar. Under the umbrella term size fall the size of syntactic projections, the size of feature content, and the size of reference sets. The contributions in this first volume discuss size and structure building. The most productive research program in syntax where size plays a central role revolves around clausal complements. Part 1 of Volume I contributes to this program with papers that argue for particular structures of clausal complements, as well as papers that employ sizes of clausal complements to account for other phenomena. The papers in Part 2 of this volume explore the interaction between size and structure building beyond clausal complements, including phenomena in CP, vP, and NP domains. The contributions cover a variety of languages, many of which are understudied. The book is complemented by Volume II which discusses size effects in movement, agreement, and interpretation
The size of things I
This book focuses on the role size plays in grammar. Under the umbrella term size fall the size of syntactic projections, the size of feature content, and the size of reference sets. The contributions in this first volume discuss size and structure building. The most productive research program in syntax where size plays a central role revolves around clausal complements. Part 1 of Volume I contributes to this program with papers that argue for particular structures of clausal complements, as well as papers that employ sizes of clausal complements to account for other phenomena. The papers in Part 2 of this volume explore the interaction between size and structure building beyond clausal complements, including phenomena in CP, vP, and NP domains. The contributions cover a variety of languages, many of which are understudied. The book is complemented by Volume II which discusses size effects in movement, agreement, and interpretation
The Role of Formulaic Language in the Creation of Grammar
Research in the field of Formulaic Language has shown it to be a very diverse phenomenon in both the form it takes and the functions it performs (e.g., Erma and Warren, 2000; Wray, 2002). The proposal made by Sinclair (1991) states that language as a system is organized according to two principles, the idiom principle\u27, which includes the use of all multi-word prefabricated sequences, and \u27the open choice principle,\u27 which covers word-for-word operations. Formulaic language is the embodiment of the idiom principle and constitutes the core of linguistic structure. Therefore, it must be subjected to scientific scrutiny from the variety of perspectives \u2013 typological, psycholinguistic, socio-pragmatic, and language acquisition. This dissertation reports on the percentage of formulaic sequences - prefabs - in spoken and written Russian; the distribution of prefab types across two spoken and four written genres, and their interaction with non-prefabricated language and the impact that prefabs have on the structure of a particular language type. Russian is the language typologically and structurally different from English. The main structural difference between English and Russian is that the Russian language has a free word order, wide inflectional system to code grammatical relations, and a satellite verb system. I hypothesize that these structural differences influence the quantity and the nature of formulaic sequences used in the language, the nature of alternation of prefabricated and non-prefabricated strings, and the preference of the speakers for one rather than the other aforementioned principles. The method applied in the analysis of Russian prefabs is developed by Erman and Warren (2000) and originally was applied to the analysis of the English texts. This dissertation seeks to address a methodological issue of applying this method to typologically different languages. It has been argued (Garcia and Florimon van Putte, 1989) that the fixedness of the English word order contributes to the co-occurrence of elements and the formation of formulaic sequences in English. In this case, formulaic language becomes a language-specific tendency pertaining to English, and not a universal mechanism for language storage, processing, production and use. The findings support the usage-based approaches driven by forces resulting from the frequency of use, discourse and communicative functions, grounded in the fine balance between the economy principle and the power of language creativity. The results of the study are used to draw implications for language processing and language modeling. As we continue to perfect the methods of identification, classification and analysis of formulaic sequences, we will be in a better position to describe not only the amount but the nature of formulaic language, its interaction with non-formulas, and the impact this alternation has on the linguistic structure as a whole. The current study investigates the nature of formulaic language in a free word order language. We seek to apply the method of identification, classification and analysis of prefabs, its interaction with each other and with non-formulaic language, as well as the estimation of choices made in producing spoken and written language. My dissertation results suggest that a free word order language uses at least as many prefabs as a fixed word order language. On average, in a free word order language like Russian 65% of spoken and 58% of written language is composed of multiword formulaic sequences. The results strengthen the hypothesis that the idiom principle is a mechanism of global linguistic organization and processing. The proportion and distribution or prefabs is less affected by language type than by spoken written medium distinction and genre variation. In addition, the results show that prefabs are frozen structures not amicable to standard syntactic transformations even in a free word order language. The results support the dual system of language processing, i.e., holistic and analytic, present in a free word order language
The Functional structure of infinitive relatives in Romance : consequences for the cartographic approach
Relative clauses have been a major concern in syntax, semantics, acquisition, and processing studies, however, the focus has been placed, for obvious reasons, on finite prototypical cases. In this paper, we are moving to a less explored terrain, infinitive relatives, with three main goals in mind. First, we will provide a description of left periphery of infinitival relatives in Romance, which is structurally defective in different degrees. Second, we will argue that the truncated left periphery of infinitival relatives in Romance helps us explain certain interpretive properties, namely their particular modal readings. Finally, we will discuss the consequences that our analysis of infinitive relatives has for cartographic analyses involving remnant movement to a rich left periphery
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