Features and Functions: Decomposing the Neural and Cognitive Bases of Semantic Composition

In this dissertation, I present a suite of studies investigating the neural and cognitive bases of semantic composition. First, I motivate why a theory of semantic combinatorics is a fundamental desideratum of the cognitive neuroscience of language. I then introduce a possible typology of semantic composition: one which involves contrasting feature-based composition with function-based composition. Having outlined several different ways we might operationalize such a distinction, I proceed to detail two studies using univariate and multivariate fMRI measures, each examining different dichotomies along which the feature-vs.-function distinction might cleave. I demonstrate evidence that activity in the angular gyrus indexes certain kinds of function-/relation-based semantic operations and may be involved in processing event semantics. These results provide the first targeted comparison of feature- and function-based semantic composition, particularly in the brain, and delineate what proves to be a productive typology of semantic combinatorial operations. The final study investigates a different question regarding semantic composition: namely, how automatic is the interpretation of plural events, and what information does the processor use when committing to either a distributive plural event (comprising separate events) or a collective plural event (consisting of a single joint event)

Les composés relationnels français du type relations parents-enfants

L’objectif de la présente étude est d’analyser un échantillon représentatif des composés relationnels français du type « relations parents-enfants » extrait du corpus FrWac. Les composés relationnels comportent trois noms selon la structure N1 -N2a-N2b avec, d’une part, une relation subordonnée entre N1 et N2 et, d’autre part, une relation de coordination exocentrique entre N2a et N2b . L’analyse des données a permis de montrer que les composés relationnels français peuvent être décrits selon les mêmes paramètres que les composés relationnels italiens, à savoir : (a) la polyvalence / monovalence du nom-tête (N1 ); (b) la (non) autonomie du modifieur N2a-N2b; (c) le type de la relation subordonnée entre N1 et N2a-N2b; d) la nature de la relation de coordination entre N2a et N2b; et e) le fait que la relation entre N2a et N2b soit orientée ou non. Sur un plan plus général, le cadre de la Morphologie constructionnelle nous a permis d’identifier dans les données trois principales sources qui motivent la création des composés relationnels, à savoir : (a) la nature polyvalente du nom-tête; (b) le recours à la structure binaire itérative avec un modificateur «dvandva»; et (c) la fusion de deux composés binominaux subordonnés en un seul composé relationnel. À notre connaissance, ce dernier type n’a pas été mentionné dans les études précédentes sur le sujet.This study aims to analyze a representative sample of French relational compounds such as “relations parents-enfants” (“parents-children relationship”) extracted from the FrWac corpus. Relational compounds have been defined as constructions made up of three nouns according to the structure N1 -N2a-N2b with, on the one hand, a subordinative relation between N1 and N2 and, on the other hand, an exocentric coordinative relation between N2a and N2b. The analysis of extensive data from the FrWac corpus made it possible to show that French relational compounds can be described according to the same parameters as Italian relational compounds, namely: (a) the polyvalence / monovalence of the head noun (N1 ); (b) the (non-)autonomy of the modifier N2a-N2b; (c) the type of the subordinate relationship between N1 and N2a-N2b; (d) the nature of the coordinative relationship between N2a and N2b; and (e) the fact whether the relationship between N2a and N2b is oriented or not. On a more general level, the framework of Construction morphology made it possible to identify in the data the following three principal sources which lie behind the creation of the relational compounds: (a) the polyvalent nature of the head noun; (b) the use of the iterative binary structure with a “dvandva” modifier; and (c) the fusion of two binominal subordinate compounds into a single relational compound. To the best of the author’s knowledge, the last type has not been mentioned in previous studies on the topic.13115

Croatian

The article gives an introduction to contemporary Croatian word-formation and its research

Les composés relationnels français du type relations parents-enfants

L’objectif de la présente étude est d’analyser un échantillon représentatif des composés relationnels français du type « relations parents-enfants » extrait du corpus FrWac. Les composés relationnels comportent trois noms selon la structure N1 -N2a-N2b avec, d’une part, une relation subordonnée entre N1 et N2 et, d’autre part, une relation de coordination exocentrique entre N2a et N2b . L’analyse des données a permis de montrer que les composés relationnels français peuvent être décrits selon les mêmes paramètres que les composés relationnels italiens, à savoir : (a) la polyvalence / monovalence du nom-tête (N1 ); (b) la (non) autonomie du modifieur N2a-N2b; (c) le type de la relation subordonnée entre N1 et N2a-N2b; d) la nature de la relation de coordination entre N2a et N2b; et e) le fait que la relation entre N2a et N2b soit orientée ou non. Sur un plan plus général, le cadre de la Morphologie constructionnelle nous a permis d’identifier dans les données trois principales sources qui motivent la création des composés relationnels, à savoir : (a) la nature polyvalente du nom-tête; (b) le recours à la structure binaire itérative avec un modificateur «dvandva»; et (c) la fusion de deux composés binominaux subordonnés en un seul composé relationnel. À notre connaissance, ce dernier type n’a pas été mentionné dans les études précédentes sur le sujet

Croatian

The article gives an introduction to contemporary Croatian word-formation and its research

The intimate pulse of reality : sciences of description in fiction and philosophy, 1870-1920

textThis dissertation tracks a series of literary interventions into scientific debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showing how the realist novel generated new techniques of description in response to pressing philosophical problems about agency, materiality, and embodiment. In close conversation with developments in the sciences, writers such as George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Olive Schreiner portrayed human agency as contiguous with rather than opposed to the pulsations of the physical world. The human, for these authors, was not a privileged or even an autonomous entity but a node in a web of interactive and co-constitutive materialities. Focused on works of English fiction published between 1870-1920, I argue that the historical convergence of a British materialist science and a vitalistic Continental natural philosophy led to the rise of a dynamic realism attentive to material forces productive of “character.” Through the literary figure of character and the novelistic practice of description, I show, turn-of-the-century realists explored what it meant to be an embodied subject, how qualities in organisms emerge and develop, and the relationship between nature and culture more broadly.Comparative Literatur

An outline theory of art on cybernetic principles

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The object of this study is to draw art into the common net of organization, along with those other enterprizes more commonly associated with the exercise of intelligence. The method chosen for this is based upon the idea of effective procedures, namely by setting out to construct a (notional) 'art machine'. The argument falls into two parts, the first dealing with the general concept of authorship and the second with its products. Part I offers a definition of an abstract, rudimentary productive process and describes its observers. There is an examination of the relation between structure and purpose, which moves towards a general definition of authorship made in terms of extracting order from a surrounding. Principles of order extraction are examined, with particular reference to the Law of Requisite Variety. Examination of extracted order, as structure, heuristics and the like, leads to discussion of the transmission of purposes between purposeful systems, as well as general problems of constraint, and of regulation and control. Part I ends with a proposal for a paradigm for a rudimentary mechanical author. Part II concentrates on the products of authorship, seeking characterizing features of those that may be classified as art. There is discussion of objective knowledge and its value and of the characteristics of experience as a form of objective knowledge. It is suggested that art is concerned with experience and that this dictates its method, which is to produce simulation procedures based on a language constituted by the synthetic structures discussed in Part I. Lines are suggested for realizing an 'art machine' and there is a review of prospects. A section of notes consisting of speculative ideas and empirical applications connected with the conclusions of the text follows Part II