First verbs : On the way to mini-paradigms

This 18th issue of ZAS-Papers in Linguistics consists of papers on the development of verb acquisition in 9 languages from the very early stages up to the onset of paradigm construction. Each of the 10 papers deals with first-Ianguage developmental processes in one or two children studied via longitudinal data. The languages involved are French, Spanish, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanien, Finnish, English and German. For German two different varieties are examined, one from Berlin and one from Vienna. All papers are based on presentations at the workshop 'Early verbs: On the way to mini-paradigms' held at the ZAS (Berlin) on the 30./31. of September 2000. This workshop brought to a close the first phase of cooperation between two projects on language acquisition which has started in October 1999: a) the project on "Syntaktische Konsequenzen des Morphologieerwerbs" at the ZAS (Berlin) headed by Juergen Weissenborn and Ewald Lang, and financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and b) the international "Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition" coordinated by Wolfgang U. Dressler in behalf of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

First tentative conclusions on the early development of verb morphology

In these conclusions we can deal only with some of the tentative comparative results of the workshop papers on the early development of verb morphology. The main focus is on criteria of how the child detects morphology and how this emerging morphological competence develops in its earliest phases. In view of the purpose and tentative character of these conclusions, all references will be limited to the papers of the workshop and to earlier studies by workshop participants within the "Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition". Much more will be given in the projected final publication

On the Typology of Inflection Class Systems

Inflectional classes are a property of the ideal inflecting-fusional language type. Thus strongly inflecting languages have the most complex vertical and horizontal stratification of hierarchical tree structures. Weakly inflecting languages which also approach the ideal isolating type or languages which also approach the agglutinating type have much shallower structures. Such properties follow from principles of Natural Morphology and from the distinction of the descendent hierarchy of macroclasses, classes, subclasses, subsubclasses etc. and homogeneous microclasses. The main languages of illustration are Latin, Lithuanian, Russian, German, French, Finnish, Hungarian and Turkis

Acquisition of verbs in Croatian, French and Austrian German - an outline of a comparative analysis

Research of child language acquisition, i. e. comparisons of acquisition in typologically different languages, play a significant role in shedding some light on universal linguistic features. The aim of our paper is to compare acquisition of verbal morphology in three languages belonging to different branches of IndoEuropean languages and to compare developing verbal systems in children as well as the order of emergence of verbal forms in each of them. Furthermore, the results on regularities occurring in all three languages have been discussed. The analysis of process of developing verbal system within each particular language is based on tense and mood. Provided error analysis gave us some further insights into the linguistically active role that child takes at certain stage of its linguistic development. The intention of this paper is to point to relevant aspects of developing linguistic system common to all three analysed languages, but at the same time drawing the attention to those language segments that need to be taken into consideration due to the limitations imposed by the language variations

Multitask Learning on Graph Neural Networks: Learning Multiple Graph Centrality Measures with a Unified Network

The application of deep learning to symbolic domains remains an active research endeavour. Graph neural networks (GNN), consisting of trained neural modules which can be arranged in different topologies at run time, are sound alternatives to tackle relational problems which lend themselves to graph representations. In this paper, we show that GNNs are capable of multitask learning, which can be naturally enforced by training the model to refine a single set of multidimensional embeddings $\in \mathbb{R}^d$ and decode them into multiple outputs by connecting MLPs at the end of the pipeline. We demonstrate the multitask learning capability of the model in the relevant relational problem of estimating network centrality measures, focusing primarily on producing rankings based on these measures, i.e. is vertex $v_1$ more central than vertex $v_2$ given centrality $c$?. We then show that a GNN can be trained to develop a \emph{lingua franca} of vertex embeddings from which all relevant information about any of the trained centrality measures can be decoded. The proposed model achieves $89\%$ accuracy on a test dataset of random instances with up to 128 vertices and is shown to generalise to larger problem sizes. The model is also shown to obtain reasonable accuracy on a dataset of real world instances with up to 4k vertices, vastly surpassing the sizes of the largest instances with which the model was trained ($n=128$). Finally, we believe that our contributions attest to the potential of GNNs in symbolic domains in general and in relational learning in particular.Comment: Published at ICANN2019. 10 pages, 3 Figure

Photoproduction of pions and etas in nuclei

We calculate the cross sections for inclusive one-pion, two-pion and eta photoproduction in nuclei in the photon energy range from 300 MeV to 900 MeV within the framework of a semi-classical BUU transport model. Our results are compared with existing experimental data and discussed with respect to a calculation of the total photoabsorption cross section.Comment: 30 pages LaTeX including 13 postscript figure

Acquisition of verbs in Croatian, French and Austrian German - an outline of a comparative analysis

Research of child language acquisition, i. e. comparisons of acquisition in typologically different languages, play a significant role in shedding some light on universal linguistic features. The aim of our paper is to compare acquisition of verbal morphology in three languages belonging to different branches of IndoEuropean languages and to compare developing verbal systems in children as well as the order of emergence of verbal forms in each of them. Furthermore, the results on regularities occurring in all three languages have been discussed. The analysis of process of developing verbal system within each particular language is based on tense and mood. Provided error analysis gave us some further insights into the linguistically active role that child takes at certain stage of its linguistic development. The intention of this paper is to point to relevant aspects of developing linguistic system common to all three analysed languages, but at the same time drawing the attention to those language segments that need to be taken into consideration due to the limitations imposed by the language variations

School principals' social support and teachers' basic need satisfaction: the mediating role of job demands and job resources

Many teachers report high levels of occupational stress. Teachers' basic need satisfaction is essential for teachers' well-being at work. Social support from school principals is assumed to play an important role for teachers' basic need satisfaction. However, the underlying mechanisms of the relationship between social support from school principals and teachers' basic need satisfaction are mostly unknown. Previous research suggests that job demands and job resources may play an important mediating role. Therefore, we examine whether teachers' perceived job demands and job resources serve as mediators between social support from the school principal and teachers' basic need satisfaction. Using longitudinal data of N = 1071 teachers over the course of one school year, we applied structural equation modelling to test the hypothesised mediation model. Results showed that the relationship between social support from the school principal and teachers' basic need satisfaction was mediated by teachers' perceived job demands and job resources. Particularly, the job demand 'unclear organisational conditions' and job resource 'social support from colleagues' indicated the strongest effects on teachers' basic need satisfaction. These findings emphasise the responsibility of school principals to provide social support to their teachers and create a well-structured and supportive workplace. In doing so, school principals contribute to a work environment in which teachers can thrive.Education and Child Studie