Lexical Licensing in Formal Grammar

This paper discusses instances of restricted combinability of lexical items (words and multi-word units) with their contexts. Different subtypes of distributional idiosyncrasies are presented, which occur on the phonological, morpho-syntactical, and semantic levels. Notably, external sandhi, cranberry words, decomposable idioms and (idiosyncratic) polarity items are addressed. These phenomena reveal an interesting interplay with regular language as well as between the different levels themselves. A detailed lexicalist analysis is provided within a formal grammar framework, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. This approach motivates an architecture of grammar that includes a module to accommodate specific restrictions on the occurrence environment of a lexical unit

Spotting, collecting and documenting negative polarity items

As the nature of negative polarity items (NPIs) and their licensing contexts is still under much debate, a broad empirical basis is an important cornerstone to support further insights in this area of research. The work discussed in this paper is intended as a contribution to realizing this objective. The authors briefly introduce the phenomenon of NPIs and outline major theories about their licensing and also various licensing contexts before discussing our major topics: Firstly, a corpus-based retrieval method for NPI candidates is described that ranks the candidates according to their distributional dependence on the licensing contexts. Our method extracts single-word candidates and is extended to also capture multi-word candidates. The basic idea for automatically collecting NPI candidates from a large corpus is that an NPI behaves like a kind of collocate to its licensing contexts. Manual inspection and interpretation of the candidate lists identify the actual NPIs. Secondly, an online repository for NPIs and other items that show distributional idiosyncrasies is presented, which offers an empirical database for further (theoretical) research on these items in a sustainable way

Cranberry Expressions in English and in German

The authors describe two data sets submitted to the database of MWE evaluation resources: (1) cranberry expressions in English and (2) cranberry expressions in German. The first package contains a collection of 444 cranberry words in German (CWde.txt) and a collection of the corresponding cranberry expressions (CCde.txt). The second package consists of a collection of 77 cranberry words in English (CWen.txt) and a collection of the corresponding cranberry expressions (CCen.txt). The data included in these packages was extracted from the Collection of Distributionally Idiosyncratic Items (CoDII), an electronic linguistic resource of lexical items with idiosyncratic occurrence patterns. Each package contains a readme file, and can be downloaded from multiword.wiki.sourceforge.net/Resources

Proceedings of the Workshop on Negation and Polarity

This volume contains the papers presented at the Workshop on Negation and Polarity, held in Tübingen, March 8 – 10, 2007. They focus on the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of negation and polarity items. Both topics have been central to linguistic study in the last few decades. The reason for this is that these phenomena are to some extent universal: Every language has some mode to express negation and some set of lexical elements or (idiomatic) expressions that can only be felicitously uttered in negative contexts. However, languages exhibit strong differences with respect to the way this is executed. Hence, the study of negation and polarity phenomena requires on the one hand in-depth studies of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in particular languages, whereas on the other hand typological research of cross-linguistic differences is to be carried out. Especially the latter involves the application of linguistic database systems to collect and categorize data, observed in either the literature or during fieldwork. These proceedings not only contain a rich collection of different investigations on the above-mentioned phenomena, but also represent what is currently going on in the process of obtaining a better understanding of negation and polarity and therefore provide a proper overview of the state of the art in this branch of linguistics and philosophy

Requirements of a user-friendly, general-purpose corpus query interface

Abstract This article reports on a survey that was conducted among 16 projects of a collaborative research centre to learn about the requirements of a web-based corpus query interface. This interface is to be created for a collection of corpora that are heterogeneous with respect to their languages, levels of annotations, and their users' research interests. Based on the survey and a comparison of three existing corpus query interfaces we compiled a set of requirements. In the context of sustainable strategies of corpus storage and accessibility we point out how to design an interface that is general enough to cover multiple corpora and at the same time suitable for a wide range of users

Characteristics of gated treatment using an optical surface imaging and gating system on an Elekta linac

Background: Knowing the technical characteristics of gated radiotherapy equipment is crucial for ensuring precise and accurate treatment when using techniques such as Deep-Inspiration Breath-Hold and gating under free breathing. With one of the first installations of the novel surface imaging system Catalyst (TM) (C-RAD AB, Sweden) in connection with an Elekta Synergy linear accelerator (Elekta AB, Sweden) via the Elekta Response Interface, characteristics like dose delivery accuracy and time delay were investigated prior to clinical implementation of gated treatments in our institution. Methods: In this study a moving phantom was used to simulate respiratory motion which was registered by the Catalyst (TM) system. The gating level was set manually. Within this gating window a trigger signal is automatically sent to the linac initiating treatment delivery. Dose measurements of gated linac treatment beams with different gating levels were recorded with a static 2D-Diode Array (MapCheck2, Sun Nuclear Co.,USA) and compared to ungated reference measurements for different field sizes. In addition, the time delay of gated treatment beams was measured using radiographic film. Results: The difference in dose delivery between gated and ungated treatment decreases with the size of the chosen gating level. For clinically relevant gating levels of about 30%, the differences in dose delivery accuracy remain below 1%. In comparison with other system configurations in literature, the beam-on time delay shows a large deviation of 851 ms +/- 100 ms. Conclusions: When performing gated treatment, especially for free-breathing gating, factors as time delay and dose delivery have to be evaluated regularly in terms of a quality assurance process. Once these parameters are known they can be accounted and compensated for, e.g. by adjusting the pre-selected gating level or the internal target volume margins and by using prediction algorithms for breathing curves. The usage of prediction algorithms becomes inevitable with the high beam-on time delay which is reported here

Characteristics of gated treatment using an optical surface imaging and gating system on an Elekta linac

Background: Knowing the technical characteristics of gated radiotherapy equipment is crucial for ensuring precise and accurate treatment when using techniques such as Deep-Inspiration Breath-Hold and gating under free breathing. With one of the first installations of the novel surface imaging system Catalyst (TM) (C-RAD AB, Sweden) in connection with an Elekta Synergy linear accelerator (Elekta AB, Sweden) via the Elekta Response Interface, characteristics like dose delivery accuracy and time delay were investigated prior to clinical implementation of gated treatments in our institution. Methods: In this study a moving phantom was used to simulate respiratory motion which was registered by the Catalyst (TM) system. The gating level was set manually. Within this gating window a trigger signal is automatically sent to the linac initiating treatment delivery. Dose measurements of gated linac treatment beams with different gating levels were recorded with a static 2D-Diode Array (MapCheck2, Sun Nuclear Co.,USA) and compared to ungated reference measurements for different field sizes. In addition, the time delay of gated treatment beams was measured using radiographic film. Results: The difference in dose delivery between gated and ungated treatment decreases with the size of the chosen gating level. For clinically relevant gating levels of about 30%, the differences in dose delivery accuracy remain below 1%. In comparison with other system configurations in literature, the beam-on time delay shows a large deviation of 851 ms +/- 100 ms. Conclusions: When performing gated treatment, especially for free-breathing gating, factors as time delay and dose delivery have to be evaluated regularly in terms of a quality assurance process. Once these parameters are known they can be accounted and compensated for, e.g. by adjusting the pre-selected gating level or the internal target volume margins and by using prediction algorithms for breathing curves. The usage of prediction algorithms becomes inevitable with the high beam-on time delay which is reported here

Uniparental disomy of chromosome 16 unmasks recessive mutations of FA2H/SPG35 in 4 families

Objective: Identifying an intriguing mechanism for unmasking recessive hereditary spastic paraplegias. Method: Herein, we describe 4 novel homozygous FA2H mutations in 4 nonconsanguineous families detected by whole-exome sequencing or a targeted gene panel analysis providing high coverage of all known hereditary spastic paraplegia genes. Results: Segregation analysis revealed in all cases only one parent as a heterozygous mutation carrier whereas the other parent did not carry FA2H mutations. A macro deletion within FA2H, which could have caused a hemizygous genotype, was excluded by multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification in all cases. Finally, a microsatellite array revealed uniparental disomy (UPD) in all 4 families leading to homozygous FA2H mutations. UPD was confirmed by microarray analyses and methylation profiling. Conclusion: UPD has rarely been described as causative mechanism in neurodegenerative diseases. Of note, we identified this mode of inheritance in 4 families with the rare diagnosis of spastic paraplegia type 35 (SPG35). Since UPD seems to be a relevant factor in SPG35 and probably additional autosomal recessive diseases, we recommend segregation analysis especially in nonconsanguineous homozygous index cases to unravel UPD as mutational mechanism. This finding may bear major repercussion for genetic counseling, given the markedly reduced risk of recurrence for affected families