80 research outputs found
From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches
Synopsis:
This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction
Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language.
The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The nativism hypothesis, which assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge, is critically examined and alternative models of language acquisition are discussed. The second part then addresses controversial issues of current theory building such as the question of flat or binary branching structures being more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non-visible entities should play a role in syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a chapter showing how properties common to all languages or to certain classes of languages can be captured.This book is a new edition of http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/25, http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/195, http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/255 , and http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/287.Fifth revised and extended editio
Assuming Data Integrity and Empirical Evidence to The Contrary
Background: Not all respondents to surveys apply their minds or understand
the posed questions, and as such provide answers which lack coherence, and
this threatens the integrity of the research. Casual inspection and limited
research of the 10-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10), included in the dataset of
the World Values Survey (WVS), suggested that random responses may be
common.
Objective: To specify the percentage of cases in the BRI-10 which include
incoherent or contradictory responses and to test the extent to which the
removal of these cases will improve the quality of the dataset.
Method: The WVS data on the BFI-10, measuring the Big Five Personality (B5P), in South Africa (N=3 531), was used. Incoherent or contradictory responses were removed. Then the cases from the cleaned-up dataset were analysed for their theoretical validity.
Results: Only 1 612 (45.7%) cases were identified as not including incoherent
or contradictory responses. The cleaned-up data did not mirror the B5P- structure, as was envisaged. The test for common method bias was negative. Conclusion: In most cases the responses were incoherent. Cleaning up the data did not improve the psychometric properties of the BFI-10. This raises concerns about the quality of the WVS data, the BFI-10, and the universality of B5P-theory. Given these results, it would be unwise to use the BFI-10 in South Africa. Researchers are alerted to do a proper assessment of the
psychometric properties of instruments before they use it, particularly in a
cross-cultural setting
Leading Towards Voice and Innovation: The Role of Psychological Contract
Background: Empirical evidence generally suggests that psychological
contract breach (PCB) leads to negative outcomes. However, some literature
argues that, occasionally, PCB leads to positive outcomes.
Aim: To empirically determine when these positive outcomes occur, focusing
on the role of psychological contract (PC) and leadership style (LS), and
outcomes such as employ voice (EV) and innovative work behaviour (IWB).
Method: A cross-sectional survey design was adopted, using reputable
questionnaires on PC, PCB, EV, IWB, and leadership styles. Correlation
analyses were used to test direct links within the model, while regression
analyses were used to test for the moderation effects.
Results: Data with acceptable psychometric properties were collected from 11
organisations (N=620). The results revealed that PCB does not lead to
substantial changes in IWB. PCB correlated positively with prohibitive EV, but did not influence promotive EV, which was a significant driver of IWB. Leadership styles were weak predictors of EV and IWB, and LS only partially moderated the PCB-EV relationship. Conclusion: PCB did not lead to positive outcomes. Neither did LS influencing the relationships between PCB and EV or IWB. Further, LS only partially influenced the relationships between variables, and not in a manner which positively influence IWB
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Course Catalog 2022-2023
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Comparative Policy Agendas
The Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) brings together data on government activities in over twenty countries, and provides a consistent categorizing system to understand when a given institution of government in a particular country took action on any issue of public policy. All topics are covered, comprehensively, over several decades, in some countries going back to World War II. Because of the open-data philosophy that animates the international network of scholars involved in the project and their meticulous attention to comparability and common data coding conventions, the databases of the CAP represent an unprecedented resource for the study of public policy across national borders. In this major new book, leaders of each national team provide the background and information needed for anyone to understand how best to make use of these newly available historical databases. Interested users will range from novice students of public policy to accomplished scholars, from interested citizens to professional journalists, political or partisan activists, and professional staff of legislative assemblies or national administrative agencies. The book’s sections include chapters introducing the CAP to a new audience, describing each national project, illustrating various cross-national uses and analyses that the CAP data allow, and concluding with ideas for further practical and research uses
Dynamical systems via domains:Toward a unified foundation of symbolic and non-symbolic computation
Non-symbolic computation (as, e.g., in biological and artificial neural networks) is astonishingly good at learning and processing noisy real-world data. However, it lacks the kind of understanding we have of symbolic computation (as, e.g., specified by programming languages). Just like symbolic computation, also non-symbolic computation needs a semantics—or behavior description—to achieve structural understanding. Domain theory has provided this for symbolic computation, and this thesis is about extending it to non-symbolic computation. Symbolic and non-symbolic computation can be described in a unified framework as state-discrete and state-continuous dynamical systems, respectively. So we need a semantics for dynamical systems: assigning to a dynamical system a domain—i.e., a certain mathematical structure—describing the system’s behavior. In part 1 of the thesis, we provide this domain-theoretic semantics for the ‘symbolic’ state-discrete systems (i.e., labeled transition systems). And in part 2, we do this for the ‘non-symbolic’ state-continuous systems (known from ergodic theory). This is a proper semantics in that the constructions form functors (in the sense of category theory) and, once appropriately formulated, even adjunctions and, stronger yet, equivalences. In part 3, we explore how this semantics relates the two types of computation. It suggests that non-symbolic computation is the limit of symbolic computation (in the ‘profinite’ sense). Conversely, if the system’s behavior is fairly stable, it may be described as realizing symbolic computation (here the concepts of ergodicity and algorithmic randomness are useful). However, the underlying concept of stability is limited by a no-go result due to a novel interpretation of Fitch’s paradox. This also has implications for AI-safety and, more generally, suggests fruitful applications of philosophical tools in the non-symbolic computation of modern AI
On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses
"On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory.
Grammatical theory: From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches. Second revised and extended edition.
This book is superseded by the third edition, available at http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/255.
This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language.
The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The nativism hypothesis, which assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge, is critically examined and alternative models of language acquisition are discussed. The second part then addresses controversial issues of current theory building such as the question of flat or binary branching structures being more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non-visible entities should play a role in syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a chapter showing how properties common to all languages or to certain classes of languages can be captured.
The book is a translation of the German book Grammatiktheorie, which was published by Stauffenburg in 2010. The following quotes are taken from reviews:
With this critical yet fair reflection on various grammatical theories, Müller fills what was a major gap in the literature. Karen Lehmann, Zeitschrift für RezenÂsioÂnen zur gerÂmanÂisÂtisÂchen SprachÂwisÂsenschaft, 2012
Stefan Müller’s recent introductory textbook, GramÂmatikÂtheÂoÂrie, is an astonishingly comprehensive and insightful survey for beginning students of the present state of syntactic theory. Wolfgang Sternefeld und Frank Richter, Zeitschrift für SprachÂwissenÂschaft, 2012
This is the kind of work that has been sought after for a while [...] The impartial and objective discussion offered by the author is particularly refreshing. Werner Abraham, Germanistik, 2012
This book is a new edition of http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/25
A typological and diachronic study
The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language whose strongest cross-linguistic patterns are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure. Syllable patterns involving long sequences of consonants are both typologically rare and theoretically marginalized, with few approaches treating these as natural or unproblematic structures. This book is an investigation of the properties of languages with highly complex syllable patterns. The two aims are (i) to establish whether these languages share other linguistic features in common such that they constitute a distinct linguistic type, and (ii) to identify possible diachronic paths and natural mechanisms by which these patterns come about in the history of a language. These issues are investigated in a diversified sample of 100 languages, 25 of which have highly complex syllable patterns
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