9 research outputs found

    Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

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    Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a constraint-based or declarative approach to linguistic knowledge, which analyses all descriptive levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) with feature value pairs, structure sharing, and relational constraints. In syntax it assumes that expressions have a single relatively simple constituent structure. This volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the framework. Various chapters discuss basic assumptions and formal foundations, describe the evolution of the framework, and go into the details of the main syntactic phenomena. Further chapters are devoted to non-syntactic levels of description. The book also considers related fields and research areas (gesture, sign languages, computational linguistics) and includes chapters comparing HPSG with other frameworks (Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Construction Grammar, Dependency Grammar, and Minimalism)

    Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

    Get PDF
    Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a constraint-based or declarative approach to linguistic knowledge, which analyses all descriptive levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) with feature value pairs, structure sharing, and relational constraints. In syntax it assumes that expressions have a single relatively simple constituent structure. This volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the framework. Various chapters discuss basic assumptions and formal foundations, describe the evolution of the framework, and go into the details of the main syntactic phenomena. Further chapters are devoted to non-syntactic levels of description. The book also considers related fields and research areas (gesture, sign languages, computational linguistics) and includes chapters comparing HPSG with other frameworks (Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Construction Grammar, Dependency Grammar, and Minimalism)

    Underspecifying and Predicting Voice for Surface Realisation Ranking

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    This paper addresses a data-driven surface realisation model based on a large-scale reversible grammar of German. We investigate the relationship between the surface realisation performance and the character of the input to generation, i.e. its degree of underspecification. We extend a syntactic surface realisation system, which can be trained to choose among word order variants, such that the candidate set includes active and passive variants. This allows us to study the interaction of voice and word order alternations in realistic German corpus data. We show that with an appropriately underspecified input, a linguistically informed realisation model trained to regenerate strings from the underlying semantic representation achieves 91.5 % accuracy (over a baseline of 82.5%) in the prediction of the original voice.

    Unpacking Creativity for Language Teaching

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    Before unlocking creativity, we must first unpack what it means. In this book, creativity is unravelled from various perspectives and the relevance for language teaching and learning is explored. Tin offers a coherent discussion of creativity, adopting an inclusive and integrated but, at the same time, focused approach to creativity. Divided into 12 chapters, the book covers: • A critical review of the way the term ‘creativity’ is used, defined and written about in various disciplines • Various models and theories of creativity, the product- and process-oriented views of creativity and their relevance for language teaching • Three pillars on which creative language pedagogy should be based • Over 60 practical tasks, applying theoretical arguments and principles of creativity to language teaching and learning. Based on the author’s own practice and research on creativity over the last two decades, the book provides exciting new ideas for scholars and practitioners interested in creativity and creative language pedagogy. The book serves as an important contribution for students, teachers and scholars in the field of applied linguistics, language teaching and education

    Unpacking Creativity for Language Teaching

    Get PDF
    Before unlocking creativity, we must first unpack what it means. In this book, creativity is unravelled from various perspectives and the relevance for language teaching and learning is explored. Tin offers a coherent discussion of creativity, adopting an inclusive and integrated but, at the same time, focused approach to creativity. Divided into 12 chapters, the book covers: • A critical review of the way the term ‘creativity’ is used, defined and written about in various disciplines • Various models and theories of creativity, the product- and process-oriented views of creativity and their relevance for language teaching • Three pillars on which creative language pedagogy should be based • Over 60 practical tasks, applying theoretical arguments and principles of creativity to language teaching and learning. Based on the author’s own practice and research on creativity over the last two decades, the book provides exciting new ideas for scholars and practitioners interested in creativity and creative language pedagogy. The book serves as an important contribution for students, teachers and scholars in the field of applied linguistics, language teaching and education

    Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Semantik

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    Sinn & Bedeutung - the annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Semantik - aims to bring together both established researchers and new blood working on current issues in natural language semantics, pragmatics, the syntax-semantics interface, the philosophy of language or carrying out psycholinguistic studies related to meaning. Every year, the conference moves to a different location in Europe. The 2010 conference - Sinn & Bedeutung 15 - took place on September 9 - 11 at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, organized by the Department for German Studies

    Direction and directedness in language change: an evolutionary model of selection by trend-amplification

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    Human languages are not static entities. Linguistic conventions, whose social and communicative meaning are understood by all members of a speech community, are gradually altered or replaced, whether by changing their forms, meanings, or by the loss of or introduction of altogether new distinctions. How do large speech communities go about re-negotiating arbitrary associations in the absence of centralised coordination? This thesis first provides an overview of the plethora of explanations that have been given for language change. Approaching language change in a quantitative and evolutionary framework, mathematical and computational modelling is put forward as a tool to investigate and compare these different accounts and their purported underlying mechanisms in a rigorous fashion. The central part of the thesis investigates a relatively recent addition to the pool of mechanisms that have been proposed to influence language change: I will compare previous accounts with a momentum-based selection account of language change, a replicator-neutral model where the popularity of a variant is modulated by its momentum, i.e. its change in frequency of use in the recent past. I will discuss results from a multi-agent model which show that the dynamics of a trend-amplifying mechanism like this are characteristic of language change, in particular by exhibiting spontaneously generated s-shaped transitions. I will also discuss several empirical predictions made by a momentum-based selection account which contrast with those that can be derived from other accounts of language change. Going beyond theoretical arguments for the role of trends in language change, I will go on to present fieldwork data of speakers’ awareness of ongoing syntactic changes in the Shetland dialect of Scots. Data collected using a novel questionnaire methodology show that individuals possess explicit knowledge about the direction as well as current progression of ongoing changes, even for grammatical structures which are very low in frequency. These results complement previous experimental evidence which showed that individuals both possess and make use of implicit knowledge about age-dependent usage differences during ongoing sound changes. Echoing the literature on evolutionary approaches to language change, the final part of the thesis stresses the importance of explicitly situating different pressures either in the domain of the innovation of new or else the selection of existing variants. Based on a modification of the Wright-Fisher model from population genetics, I will argue that trend-amplification selection mechanisms provide predictions that neatly match empirical facts, both in terms of the diachronic dynamics of language change, as well as in terms of the synchronic distribution of linguistic traits that we find in the world

    Towards an understanding of the use of indefinite expressions for definite reference in English discourse

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    This study examines the nature of a particular type of atypical reference. In [1], it is possible to understand ‘a man who…’ as a newly introduced referent or ‘type’. But once seen in context, where the identity of this particular man has been firmly established, it becomes clear that its function is more definite than indefinite. [1] […] a man who achieved the rare feat of becoming a pivotal member of the Cameron inner circle in the space of just a few months in the summer and autumn of 2007 Expressions such as that in [1], with the structure A(n)+NOUN+RESTRICTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSE are examined in the context of British English journalistic opinion writing from four different, but related perspectives: - Readers’ interpretations: Empirical evidence from two experiments shows that readers largely do not interpret the expression as referring to a ‘type’, but rather to the previously mentioned, fully-identified entity. The results also suggest that the amount and detail of conceptual information in the relative clause plays a role in the interpretation. - Cognitive processes in referring: The expression is examined and analysed alongside cognitive models of referring and it is shown that these expressions are considered ‘accessible’ in the mind of the addressee. - Lexical cohesive ties: The meaning relation of co-extension (Hasan 1985) is exploited to explain how these expressions become functionally definite within their specific context. Cohesive semantic ties (i.e. similarity chains)between the expression and the preceding text and on-going discourse aid the transformation from formally indefinite to functionally definite. - Insights on the discourse: Insights from linguists and journalists are brought together to examine the function of these expressions. It is suggested that they have a dual function, to refer to the identified individual as well as to others with similar features. This study concludes that this atypical expression carries both definite and indefinite information and to fully capture its use and function, the entire discourse event needs to be taken into consideration
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