Proceedings 2014: Selected papers from the eighteenth college-wide conference for students in languages, linguistics & literature

Your voice, my voice: Literature, language, culture, and society. Selected papers from the eigtheenth annual college-wide conference for students in languages, linguistics & literature, at the University of Hawai`i at MānoaYour voice, my voice: Literature, language, culture, and society. Selected papers from the eigtheenth annual college-wide conference for students in languages, linguistics & literature, at the University of Hawai`i at MānoaSupport for the conference was provided by the UH College of Language, Linguistics & Literature; the National Foreign Language Resource Center; and the Center for Interpretation and Translation Studies

JTEC panel report on machine translation in Japan

The goal of this report is to provide an overview of the state of the art of machine translation (MT) in Japan and to provide a comparison between Japanese and Western technology in this area. The term 'machine translation' as used here, includes both the science and technology required for automating the translation of text from one human language to another. Machine translation is viewed in Japan as an important strategic technology that is expected to play a key role in Japan's increasing participation in the world economy. MT is seen in Japan as important both for assimilating information into Japanese as well as for disseminating Japanese information throughout the world. Most of the MT systems now available in Japan are transfer-based systems. The majority of them exploit a case-frame representation of the source text as the basis of the transfer process. There is a gradual movement toward the use of deeper semantic representations, and some groups are beginning to look at interlingua-based systems

Syntactic change in Xining Mandarin

PhD ThesisThis dissertation discusses the Xining Mandarin dialect (spoken in Qinghai province, northwest China), a variety in which head-final syntax has emerged on the model of local Mongolic languages and Tibetan. The underlying socio-historical scenario is explored in detail and analysed as a case of ‘fort creolization’ (Bickerton 1988). An overview is then provided of how head-final categories emerged in the dialect, namely through reanalysing Chinese form-meaning units to fulfil functions found in the substrate languages, with comparatively little reordering of grammatical devices inherent to Chinese or outright borrowing of substrate forms. The relevant changes are discussed in relation to Heine and Kuteva’s (2005) model of contact-induced grammaticalization and findings from creole studies. Detailed discussion of the dialect’s clausal syntax focuses on aspect marking, tense/mood marking, non-lexical functions of SAY and object scrambling. With regard to the aspectual system, an account is proposed of ZHE, which is typologically unusual in showing imperfective/perfective polysemy. Tense and modality is then considered with regard to the sentential particle lia, and its future marking function is seen to be conditioned by the aspectual class of the sentence, providing evidence of aspectually sensitive tenses (de Swart 1998) in Chinese. In terms of non-lexical functions of SAY, a range of clause-final uses are discussed, including as a complementizer and volitional mood marker, whilst discourse marking uses of SAY are interpreted in light of Traugott’s (1995, 2010) notion of (inter)subjectification. Finally, object fronting in the dialect is shown to possess the properties of Japanese style scrambling, despite the absence of this type of movement across other Chinese dialects. Its existence in the Xining dialect, where phrase-structure change has occurred from head-initial to head-final, is argued to provide broad support for the correlation between head-final syntax and scrambling formalized by the Generalized Holmberg Constraint (Wallenberg 2009).The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC

Papers in estonian cognitive linguistics

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Linguistic Nature of Prenasalization

The linguistic nature of the class of sounds which are traditionally called prenasalized consonants (PNCs) has never been adequately explored. The purpose of this work is to provide a descriptively adequate framework in which to characterize PNCs, and to express their behavior most generally. This is done within the theory of generative phonology (essentially the Standard Theory of Chomsky and Halle 1968), incorporating a theory of markedness and syllabification. It is argued that PNCs cannot be described adequately as monosegmental entities in linguistic theory. Rather, PNCs in all languages are claimed to be sequences of homorganic nasal and oral consonant in underlying phonological representations, which surface in systematic phonetic representation as (tautosyllabic) syllable onsets. For a language to exhibit such onsets, it must contain a costly (language-specific) syllabification rule which converts the unmarked syllabified string XN$CY (whose syllabification is given by universal convention) into the marked structure X$NCY, where $represents the syllable boundary. There is no linguistic level, nor any stage in phonological derivations, where PNCs must be represented monosegmentally, nor at which the characteristically brief nasal onset period must be referred to as an internal component of an oral consonant. Such properties as are necessary to fully characterize PNCs as physical-phonetic events are assigned to systematic phonetic$NC sequences by mechanisms within a phonetic performance theory. One of the very few languages where PNCs appear to contrast directly with ordinary heterosyllabic clusters of homorganic nasal and oral consonants is Sinhalese, an Indoeuropean language of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). An analysis of this language, and a similar case in the West African language Fula, are presented, and strong evidence is provided for the adequacy of a sequential analysis of prenasalization, in spite of the apparent contrast. The analysis of Sinhalese also reveals a rich interaction between the behavior of PNCs and the general syllable structure of the language. This relationship can be revealingly expressed only if the notion of the syllable is formally available in phonological theory

Automated Adaptation Between Kiranti Languages

McCloy, Daniel, M.A., December 2006 Linguistics Automated Adaptation Between Kiranti Languages Chairperson: Dr. Anthony Mattina Minority language communities that are seeking to develop their language may be hampered by a lack of vernacular materials. Large volumes of such materials may be available in a related language. Automated adaptation holds potential to enable these large volumes of materials to be efficiently translated into the resource-scarce language. I describe a project to assess the feasibility of automatically adapting text between Limbu and Yamphu, two languages in Nepal’s Kiranti grouping. The approaches taken—essentially a transfer-based system partially hybridized with a Kiranti-specific interlingua—are placed in the context of machine translation efforts world-wide. A key principle embodied in this strategy is that adaptation can transcend the structural obstacles by taking advantage of functional commonalities. That is, what matters most for successful adaptation is that the languages “care about the same kinds of things.” I examine various typological phenomena of these languages to assess this degree of functional commonality. I look at the types of features marked on the finite verb, case-marking systems, the encoding of vertical deixis, object-incorporated verbs, and nominalization issues. As this Kiranti adaptation goal involves adaptation into multiple target languages, I also present a disambiguation strategy that ensures that the manual disambiguation performed for one target language is fed back into the system, such that the same disambiguation will not need to be performed again for other target languages

Two Accounts of Moral Diversity: The Cognitive Science of Pluralism and Absolutism

Advances in cognitive science are relevant to the debate between moral pluralism and absolutism. Parametric structure, which plausibly underlies syntax, gives some idea of how pluralism might be true. The cognitive mechanisms underlying mathematical intelligence give some idea of how far absolutism is right. Advances in cognitive science should help us better understand the extent to which we are divided and how far we are potentially harmonious in our value

Reconstructing Syntax

Contributing to the vigorous discussion of the viability of syntactic reconstruction, this volume offers methods for identifying i) cognates in syntax, and ii) the directionality of syntactic change, thus providing historical syntacticians with evidence that syntactic reconstruction is indeed both theoretically and practically feasible.; Readership: This volume is of interest to all historical syntacticians and historial linguists, as well as to specialists within Indo-European, Semitic, Austronesian and native American languages