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Write a Tag Pattern to Match Noun Phrases Containing Plural Head Nouns

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Sample records for phrases noun phrases

  1. Explaining word order in the noun phrase

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    1990-01-01

    This article argues that word order in the noun phrase is largely determined by three iconic principles of constituent ordering. The patterns that these principles predict for simple noun phrases are tested against data from various existing samples. It appears that the predicted patterns are all...

  2. Semantic and syntactic forces in noun phrase production

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Vigliocco, G.; Lauer, M.; Damian, M.F.; Levelt, W.J.M.

    2002-01-01

    Three experiments investigated semantic and syntactic effects in the production of phrases in Dutch. Bilingual participants were presented with English nouns and were asked to produce an adjective + noun phrase in Dutch including the translation of the noun. In 2 experiments, the authors blocked

  3. Heavy noun phrase constructions in the Afrikaans novel 'n Ander ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Heavy noun phrase constructions in the Afrikaans novel 'n Ander Land: a cognitive account of a stylistic feature. Luna Beard. Abstract. This article focusses on one grammatical construction, namely heavy noun phrase (NP) constructions in Afrikaans, and more specifically on those instances encountered in the Afrikaans ...

  4. Nicht-referentielle Nominalphrasen (Non-Referential Noun Phrases)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leys, Odo

    1973-01-01

    Appeared as Working Report No. 21 of the Linguistic Institute of the University of Cologne; critical observations on S. Kuno's Some Properties of Non-Refential Noun Phrases,'' in Studies in General and Oriental Linguistics, 1970. (RS)

  5. Descriptive and discourse-referential modifiers in a layered model of the noun phrase

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    2008-01-01

    This article argues that adnominal modifiers in a layered model of the noun phrase can be divided into two major subcategories: descriptive modifiers and discourse-referential modifiers. Whereas descriptive modifiers can be subdivided into classifying, qualifying, quantifying and localizing...... modifiers (section 2), discourse-referential modifiers in the noun phrase are concerned with the status of entities as referents in the world of discourse (section 3). I will pay particular attention to three issues: (i) formal reflections of the layered, semantic structure of the noun phrase (section 4...

  6. The Intonation of Noun Phrase Subjects and Clause- Modifying ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    FIRST LADY

    Oladipupo, Rotimi O. - Centre for Foundation Education, Bells University of. Technology ... native Englishes, especially at the level of phonology, this study investigates ... Keywords: Intonation tunes, Nigerian English, Noun Phrase Subjects,.

  7. Comparison of single-word and adjective-noun phrase production using event-related brain potentials

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lange, Violaine Michel

    2015-01-01

    stimuli varying in complexity -black and white line drawings, coloured line drawings, and arrays of drawings-in participants producing single nouns. Whilst naming latencies were similar for single noun production between visual stimuli conditions, ERPs differed between drawing arrays and single drawings...... in a time-window extending beyond early visual analysis. In a second experiment, different participants were asked to produce either single noun or adjective-noun dual-word phrases to black-and-white and coloured line drawings, respectively. Adjective-noun phrase production (2W) resulted in naming latencies...

  8. The Role of Sustained Attention in the Production of Conjoined Noun Phrases: An Individual Differences Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jongman, Suzanne R; Meyer, Antje S; Roelofs, Ardi

    2015-01-01

    It has previously been shown that language production, performed simultaneously with a nonlinguistic task, involves sustained attention. Sustained attention concerns the ability to maintain alertness over time. Here, we aimed to replicate the previous finding by showing that individuals call upon sustained attention when they plan single noun phrases (e.g., "the carrot") and perform a manual arrow categorization task. In addition, we investigated whether speakers also recruit sustained attention when they produce conjoined noun phrases (e.g., "the carrot and the bucket") describing two pictures, that is, when both the first and second task are linguistic. We found that sustained attention correlated with the proportion of abnormally slow phrase-production responses. Individuals with poor sustained attention displayed a greater number of very slow responses than individuals with better sustained attention. Importantly, this relationship was obtained both for the production of single phrases while performing a nonlinguistic manual task, and the production of noun phrase conjunctions in referring to two spatially separated objects. Inhibition and updating abilities were also measured. These scores did not correlate with our measure of sustained attention, suggesting that sustained attention and executive control are distinct. Overall, the results suggest that planning conjoined noun phrases involves sustained attention, and that language production happens less automatically than has often been assumed.

  9. Order in the noun phrase of the languages of Europe

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    1998-01-01

    The current investigation of the word order characteristics of the constituents of the noun phrase (NP) differs from other typological investigations of the issue in two major respects. First of all, it does not take for granted the existence of NPs or of the various NP-internal categories...... that it also has noun phrases: it may use a string of appositives rather than a proper, integral NP. The existence of NPs and the presence of various NP-internal categories is not an issue that has received considerable attention in typological word order studies. Yet how can we hope to establish the cross...... in a representative sample of European languages (Appendix 1), we first need to devote some attention to such basic questions as: Do all European languages have nouns? Do all European languages have proper NPs? Which NP-internal modifiers are attested in the European languages, and which are absent? These issues...

  10. Machine translation of noun phrases from English to Igala using the ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Due to the structural differences between English and Igala, noun phrases coupled with the non- availability of large amount of parallel aligned corpus for English and Igala language, the rule based technology was adopted to develop the model. The model was implemented using VB.net programming language as front ...

  11. Phrase frequency effects in language production.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Niels Janssen

    Full Text Available A classic debate in the psychology of language concerns the question of the grain-size of the linguistic information that is stored in memory. One view is that only morphologically simple forms are stored (e.g., 'car', 'red', and that more complex forms of language such as multi-word phrases (e.g., 'red car' are generated on-line from the simple forms. In two experiments we tested this view. In Experiment 1, participants produced noun+adjective and noun+noun phrases that were elicited by experimental displays consisting of colored line drawings and two superimposed line drawings. In Experiment 2, participants produced noun+adjective and determiner+noun+adjective utterances elicited by colored line drawings. In both experiments, naming latencies decreased with increasing frequency of the multi-word phrase, and were unaffected by the frequency of the object name in the utterance. These results suggest that the language system is sensitive to the distribution of linguistic information at grain-sizes beyond individual words.

  12. Early Acquisition of Gender Agreement in the Spanish Noun Phrase: Starting Small

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mariscal, Sonia

    2009-01-01

    Nativist and constructivist accounts differ in their characterization of children's knowledge of grammatical categories. In this paper we present research on the process of acquisition of a particular grammatical system, gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase, in children under three years of age. The design of the longitudinal study employed…

  13. A proposal of methodology for automatic indexation using noun phrases

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    Renato Rocha Souza

    2006-07-01

    Full Text Available It can be noticed that the indexing and representation strategies nowadays seems to be near the exhaustion, and it is worth to investigate new approaches to the indexing and information retrieving systems. Among these, a branch tries to consider the intrinsic semantics of the textual documents using noun phrases as descriptors instead of single keywords. We present in this article a methodology that was developed in the scope of a doctorate research.

  14. The Noun Phrase in Functional Discourse Grammar

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    reintroduce Dik's idea of Dynamic Term Construction and extend the current ontology of entities. The result would be a more cogent treatment of scope and NP syntax, which does not force the theory to abandon any of its fundamental methodological principles. Evelien Keizer (University of Amsterdam...... can account for NP-internal agreement phenomena, including speech errors, as attested in a large corpus of spoken German. Daniel García Velasco (University of Oviedo) examines the so-called Complex Noun Phrase Constraint within the context of FDG. The existence of restrictions on the displacement......, with regard to both form and content. Daniel García Velasco also wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Dept. of Anglogermanic and French Studies and the Research Vice-Rectorate of the University of Oviedo....

  15. PubMed Phrases, an open set of coherent phrases for searching biomedical literature

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Sun; Yeganova, Lana; Comeau, Donald C.; Wilbur, W. John; Lu, Zhiyong

    2018-01-01

    In biomedicine, key concepts are often expressed by multiple words (e.g., 'zinc finger protein'). Previous work has shown treating a sequence of words as a meaningful unit, where applicable, is not only important for human understanding but also beneficial for automatic information seeking. Here we present a collection of PubMed® Phrases that are beneficial for information retrieval and human comprehension. We define these phrases as coherent chunks that are logically connected. To collect the phrase set, we apply the hypergeometric test to detect segments of consecutive terms that are likely to appear together in PubMed. These text segments are then filtered using the BM25 ranking function to ensure that they are beneficial from an information retrieval perspective. Thus, we obtain a set of 705,915 PubMed Phrases. We evaluate the quality of the set by investigating PubMed user click data and manually annotating a sample of 500 randomly selected noun phrases. We also analyze and discuss the usage of these PubMed Phrases in literature search. PMID:29893755

  16. Tracking the time course of multi-word noun phrase production with ERPs or on when (and why) cat is faster than the big cat.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bürki, Audrey; Laganaro, Marina

    2014-01-01

    Words are rarely produced in isolation. Yet, our understanding of multi-word production, and especially its time course, is still rather poor. In this research, we use event-related potentials to examine the production of multi-word noun phrases in the context of overt picture naming. We track the processing costs associated with the production of these noun phrases as compared with the production of bare nouns, from picture onset to articulation. Behavioral results revealed longer naming latencies for French noun phrases with determiners and pre-nominal adjectives (D-A-N, the big cat) than for noun phrases with a determiner (D-N, the cat), or bare nouns (N, cat). The spatio-temporal analysis of the ERPs revealed differences in the duration of stable global electrophysiological patterns as a function of utterance format in two time windows, from ~190 to 300 ms after picture onset, and from ~530 ms after picture onset to 100 ms before articulation. These findings can be accommodated in the following model. During grammatical encoding (here from ~190 to 300 ms), the noun and adjective lemmas are accessed in parallel, followed by the selection of the gender-agreeing determiner. Phonological encoding (after ~530 ms) operates sequentially. As a consequence, the phonological encoding process is longer for longer utterances. In addition, when determiners are repeated across trials, their phonological encoding can be anticipated or primed, resulting in a shortened encoding process.

  17. Tracking the time course of multi-word noun phrase production with ERPs or on when (and why cat is faster than the big cat

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Audrey eBürki

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Words are rarely produced in isolation. Yet, our understanding of multi-word production, and especially its time course, is still rather poor. In this research, we use event-related potentials to examine the production of multi-word noun phrases in the context of overt picture naming. We track the processing costs associated with the production of these noun phrases as compared with the production of bare nouns, from picture onset to articulation. Behavioral results revealed longer naming latencies for French noun phrases with determiners and pre-nominal adjectives (D-A-N, the big cat than for noun phrases with a determiner (D-N, the cat or bare nouns (N, cat. The spatio-temporal analysis of the ERPs revealed differences in the duration of stable global electrophysiological patterns as a function of utterance format in two time windows, from ~190 ms to 300 ms after picture onset, and from ~530 ms after picture onset to 100 ms before articulation. These findings can be accommodated in the following model. During grammatical encoding (here from ~190 ms to 300 ms, the noun and adjective lemmas are accessed in parallel, followed by the selection of the gender-agreeing determiner. Phonological encoding (after ~530 ms operates sequentially. As a consequence, the phonological encoding process is longer for longer utterances. In addition, when determiners are repeated across trials, their phonological encoding can be anticipated or primed, resulting in a shortened encoding process.

  18. Searching the ASRS Database Using QUORUM Keyword Search, Phrase Search, Phrase Generation, and Phrase Discovery

    Science.gov (United States)

    McGreevy, Michael W.; Connors, Mary M. (Technical Monitor)

    2001-01-01

    To support Search Requests and Quick Responses at the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), four new QUORUM methods have been developed: keyword search, phrase search, phrase generation, and phrase discovery. These methods build upon the core QUORUM methods of text analysis, modeling, and relevance-ranking. QUORUM keyword search retrieves ASRS incident narratives that contain one or more user-specified keywords in typical or selected contexts, and ranks the narratives on their relevance to the keywords in context. QUORUM phrase search retrieves narratives that contain one or more user-specified phrases, and ranks the narratives on their relevance to the phrases. QUORUM phrase generation produces a list of phrases from the ASRS database that contain a user-specified word or phrase. QUORUM phrase discovery finds phrases that are related to topics of interest. Phrase generation and phrase discovery are particularly useful for finding query phrases for input to QUORUM phrase search. The presentation of the new QUORUM methods includes: a brief review of the underlying core QUORUM methods; an overview of the new methods; numerous, concrete examples of ASRS database searches using the new methods; discussion of related methods; and, in the appendices, detailed descriptions of the new methods.

  19. Planning in Sentence Production: Evidence for the Phrase as a Default Planning Scope

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    Martin, Randi C.; Crowther, Jason E.; Knight, Meredith; Tamborello, Franklin P., II; Yang, Chin-Lung

    2010-01-01

    Controversy remains as to the scope of advanced planning in language production. Smith and Wheeldon (1999) found significantly longer onset latencies when subjects described moving-picture displays by producing sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase than for matched sentences beginning with a simple noun phrase. While these findings are…

  20. Mixed metaphors: Electrophysiological brain responses to (un)expected concrete and abstract prepositional phrases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zane, Emily; Shafer, Valerie

    2018-02-01

    Languages around the world use spatial terminology, like prepositions, to describe non-spatial, abstract concepts, including time (e.g., in the moment). The Metaphoric Mapping Theory explains this pattern by positing that a universal human cognitive process underlies it, whereby abstract concepts are conceptualized via the application of concrete, three-dimensional space onto abstract domains. The alternative view is that the use of spatial propositions in abstract phrases is idiomatic, and thus does not trigger metaphoric mapping. In the current study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to examine the time-course of neural processing of concrete and abstract phrases consisting of the prepositions in or on followed by congruent and incongruent nouns (e.g., in the bowl/plate and in the moment/mend). ERPs were recorded from the onset of reference nouns in 28 adult participants using a 128-channel electrode net. Results show that congruency has differential effects on neural measures, depending on whether the noun is concrete or abstract. Incongruent reference nouns in concrete phrases (e.g., on the bowl) elicited a significant central negativity (an N400 effect), while incongruent reference nouns in abstract phrases (e.g., on the moment) did not. These results suggest that spatially incongruent concrete nouns are semantically unexpected (N400 effect). A P600 effect, which might indicate rechecking, reanalysis and/or reconstruction, was predicted for incongruent abstract nouns, but was not observed, possibly due to the variability in abstract stimuli. Findings cast doubt on accounts claiming that abstract uses of prepositions are cognitively and metaphorically linked to their spatial sense during natural, on-line processing. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  1. COLLOCATION PHRASES IN RELATION TO OTHER LEXICAL PHRASES IN CROATIAN

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    Goranka Blagus Bartolec

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper analyzes the semantic and lexicological aspects of collocation phrases in Croatian with tendency to separate them from other lexical phrases in Croatian (terms, idioms, names. The collocation phrase is defined as a special lexical phrase on a syntagmatic level, based on the semantic correlation of the two individual lexical components in which their meanings are specified.

  2. The Study of the Effect of Syntactic Complexity of Noun and Verb Phrase Structure on the Occurrence of Stuttering in 4-6 Year Pre-School Stuttering Persian Children

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    Abbas Ali Ahangar

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available Objective: The purpose of the present research was to investigate the effect of syntactic complexity of noun phrase and verb phrase on the occurrence of stuttering in 4-6 year Persian speaking children with stuttering. Materials & Methods: This descriptive-analytic research was done on 15 stuttering children, consisting of 12 boys and 3 girls, 4 to 6 years old monolingual Persian speaking who referred to Javad-Ol-Aemmeh speech therapy clinic in Mashhad city. The sampling approach was simple (available sampling method. To do this research, sampling was carried out in a quiet home of speech therapy where there were just the speech therapist, the parent, the child and the researcher. While speaking, the speech of the children was recorded by an MP3 with Creative brand. Finally, a 30-minute spontaneous speech sample was gathered from each of the given stuttering children. The children produced around 60 utterances during a verbal interaction with the speech therapist, parents (mother or father or the researcher. Then the produced spontaneous speech sample by any of these stuttering children was transcribed on paper. The data were analyzed only as groups and not individually. The data were analyzed using SPSS software and Paired T-test method. Results: The group analyses showed significant differences between fluent and stuttered utterances in terms of syntactic complexity of noun and verb phrase structures. Also, the results confirm that at phrasal level, in noun phrases, based on their three functions as subject, direct object and object of preposition, there is a meaningful relationship between the number of subject (P<0.001 and object of preposition (P=0.050 with the stuttering frequency. In verb phrases, based on the presence of the auxiliary verb, copula verb, and negative prefix, just there is a meaningful relationship between the presence of the auxiliary verb and the stuttering frequency (P=0.010. Conclusion: The research findings indicate

  3. Functional categories in the noun phrase: on jacks-of-all-trades and one-trick-ponies in Danish, Dutch and German

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    2010-01-01

    This paper deals with functionally defined modifier categories of the noun phrase in some Germanic languages, in particular Danish, Dutch and German. It is argued that functional categories, unlike semantic or form-based categories, are the only categories that can be applied within and across...... in German: attitudinal arm (e.g. Der arme Junge! 'The poor boy!')....

  4. Easy French phrase book over 700 phrases for everyday use

    CERN Document Server

    McCoy, Heather

    2012-01-01

    Over 700 French phrases and sentences include terms for modern telecommunications, idioms, and slang. Designed as a quick reference and study guide, this up-to-date volume is organized for quick access to phrases related to greetings, transportation, shopping, emergencies, and other common circumstances. A phonetic pronunciation accompanies each phrase.

  5. AHP 1:A RESPONSE TO WAYS AND THE SYNTAX OF NOUN PHRASES IN QĪNGHĂI CHINESE DIALECTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Keith Dede

    2009-06-01

    Full Text Available In the course of offering a review of Zhāng Chéngcái's Ways, this paper describes the syntax of noun phrases in the Chinese dialect of Huángshuĭ, in Qīnghăi Province. Unlike other Chinese dialects, this dialect employs several postpositions for indicating syntactic nominal relationships. The origin of this phenomenon in contact with non-Sinitic languages in the region and its significance are also explored.

  6. Novel figurative phrases and idioms: phrase characteristics over multiple presentations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schweigert, Wendy A; Cintron, Jennifer; Sullivan, Karin; Ilic, Emily; Ellis, Shannon; Dobrowits, Carrie; Roberts, Crystal

    2003-07-01

    In a series of three studies, characteristics of novel figurative phrases were compared with those of established idioms. Studies 1 and 2 found that certain correlations were found to be strong and in one direction for familiar idioms and comparably strong but in the opposite direction for novel figurative phrases, with the correlations for less familiar idioms usually falling partway between these extremes. Study 2 also noted that written or auditory presentation had minimal effects on characteristic ratings. In Study 3 the correlations among characteristics stayed relatively constant for familiar idioms after one, three, or six presentations, but for the novel figurative phrases, after multiple presentations the correlations changed in the direction of the established idioms.

  7. THE ANALYSIS OF SYNTACTICAL INTERFERENCE IN ENGLISH PHRASES IN STUDENTS' WRITING (A Descriptive Study at the Second Grade Students of SMP 2 Kuta Baro, Aceh Besar

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    Salwa Chaira

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available This qualitative-descriptive research attempts to describe Indonesian interference in building English phrases in writing. The research was undertaken to the second year students of SMP 2 Kuta Baro, Aceh Besar. This study aims to verify the Indonesian interference made by students in English phrases. The data were collected through document analysis which then the sample was selected to be analyzed. The sample of this study was twelve narrative texts composed by the students. The finding of data analysis reveals that there are some syntactical interference samples made by them as in scenery roads, voice strange, morning Sunday, water bath, garden flower, and advice future. These are resulted from Indonesian interference because they applied Indonesian structure in building English phrases. In conclusion, the research result shows that the students have lack of grammar knowledge in constructing English phrases. Therefore, they borrow Indonesian structure as a solution for their difficulties. For this reason, the teaching should focus more on how to build English phrases correctly by giving many samples of nounʸ + nounˣ (where nounˣ means head and nounʸ means modifier pattern all well as explaining the rule in English as the target language they are learning. It hopes that they will not transfer the Indonesian pattern when they are writing in English.Keywords: interference, syntactical, phrases

  8. Using noun phrases for navigating biomedical literature on Pubmed: how many updates are we losing track of?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Srikrishna, Devabhaktuni; Coram, Marc A

    2011-01-01

    Author-supplied citations are a fraction of the related literature for a paper. The "related citations" on PubMed is typically dozens or hundreds of results long, and does not offer hints why these results are related. Using noun phrases derived from the sentences of the paper, we show it is possible to more transparently navigate to PubMed updates through search terms that can associate a paper with its citations. The algorithm to generate these search terms involved automatically extracting noun phrases from the paper using natural language processing tools, and ranking them by the number of occurrences in the paper compared to the number of occurrences on the web. We define search queries having at least one instance of overlap between the author-supplied citations of the paper and the top 20 search results as citation validated (CV). When the overlapping citations were written by same authors as the paper itself, we define it as CV-S and different authors is defined as CV-D. For a systematic sample of 883 papers on PubMed Central, at least one of the search terms for 86% of the papers is CV-D versus 65% for the top 20 PubMed "related citations." We hypothesize these quantities computed for the 20 million papers on PubMed to differ within 5% of these percentages. Averaged across all 883 papers, 5 search terms are CV-D, and 10 search terms are CV-S, and 6 unique citations validate these searches. Potentially related literature uncovered by citation-validated searches (either CV-S or CV-D) are on the order of ten per paper--many more if the remaining searches that are not citation-validated are taken into account. The significance and relationship of each search result to the paper can only be vetted and explained by a researcher with knowledge of or interest in that paper.

  9. Dictionary of Idioms and Phrases in

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    the use of arrows to show the grammatical form from which the spoken form of a used word is derived, other phrases that may be formed from the head phrase, the numbering of the various meanings, . the explanation of head idioms and phrases in Tamil within their context and the advanced meanings of head idioms and ...

  10. Generic Adaptively Secure Searchable Phrase Encryption

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    Kissel Zachary A.

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available In recent years searchable symmetric encryption has seen a rapid increase in query expressiveness including keyword, phrase, Boolean, and fuzzy queries. With this expressiveness came increasingly complex constructions. Having these facts in mind, we present an efficient and generic searchable symmetric encryption construction for phrase queries. Our construction is straightforward to implement, and is proven secure under adaptively chosen query attacks (CQA2 in the random oracle model with an honest-but-curious adversary. To our knowledge, this is the first encrypted phrase search system that achieves CQA2 security. Moreover, we demonstrate that our document collection preprocessing algorithm allows us to extend a dynamic SSE construction so that it supports phrase queries. We also provide a compiler theorem which transforms any CQA2-secure SSE construction for keyword queries into a CQA2-secure SSE construction that supports phrase queries.

  11. The Morphosyntactic Structure of the Noun and Verb Phrases in Dholuo/Kiswahili Code Switching

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    Jael Anyango Ojanga

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available Code switching, the use of any two or more languages or dialects interchangeably in a single communication context, is a common linguistic practice owing to the trend of multilingualism in the world today. In many situations of language in contact, constituents of one language can be found within the constituents of another language in a number of linguistic phenomenon namely lexical borrowing, transferring, interference, code switching and diffusion (Annamalai, 1989. Codeswitching is one of the linguistic phenomenon claimed to be the most prevalent and common mode of interaction among multilingual speakers. Brock and Eastman (1971 suggest that topic discussed influences the choice of the language. Nouns and verbs have been found to be the most code switched elements in bilingual exchange. The study took a qualitative approach with the descriptive research design. It was guided by the Matrix Language Frame Model which was formulated by Myers-Scotton in1993. This model expounds on the realization and structure of the major word classes as used in code switching. Data was collected in Nyangeta Zone, Winam Division of Kisumu East District. Winam Division is mostly inhabited by elite Dholuo L1 speakers. A sample of twenty four teachers was purposively selected to provide data needed for the study. Focus group discussion was used to collect a corpus of Dholuo/Kiswahili data which was recorded through audio taping. The recorded data was then analyzed morphosyntactaically using the Matrix Language Frame Model. The data revealed that the noun and verb phrases were realized under three categories: Matrix Language Island constituent (ML Island ML+EL and Embedded Language Island (EL Island. Keywords: Code switching, multilingualism, morphosyntactic

  12. A Communication Style of Advertising Phrases : A Comparison of Advertising Phrases in Women's Magazines of Japan and Korea

    OpenAIRE

    具, 軟和

    2006-01-01

    Advertising phrases of women's magazines adopt various methods to achieve an effective communication with readers. Japanese advertising phrases show a tendency of providing readers firstly with background reasons of why they need a product and secondly with what kind of effects they can get if they buy it, trying to avoid to look too pushy. Korean advertising phrases show a tendency of making readers pay attentions on a product by providing product features directly. We can say in communicati...

  13. Inter-subject variability modulates phonological advance planning in the production of adjective-noun phrases.

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    Michel Lange, Violaine; Laganaro, Marina

    2014-01-01

    The literature on advance phonological planning in adjective-noun phrases (NPs) presents diverging results: while many experimental studies suggest that the entire NP is encoded before articulation, other results favor a span of encoding limited to the first word. Although cross-linguistic differences in the structure of adjective-NPs may account for some of these contrasting results, divergences have been reported even among similar languages and syntactic structures. Here we examined whether inter-individual differences account for variability in the span of phonological planning in the production of French NPs, where previous results indicated encoding limited to the first word. The span of phonological encoding is tested with the picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm using phonological distractors related to the noun or to the adjective of the NPs. In Experiment 1, phonological priming effects were limited to the first word in adjective NPs whichever the position of the adjective (pre-nominal or post-nominal). Crucially, phonological priming effects on the second word interacted with speakers' production speed suggesting different encoding strategies for participants. In Experiment 2, we tested this hypothesis further with a larger group of participants. Results clearly showed that slow and fast initializing participants presented different phonological priming patterns on the last element of adjective-NPs: while the first word was primed by a distractor for all speakers, only the slow speaker group presented a priming effect on the second element of the NP. These results show that the span of phonological encoding is modulated by inter-individual strategies: in experimental paradigms some speakers plan word by word whereas others encode beyond the initial word. We suggest that the diverging results reported in the literature on advance phonological planning may partly be reconciled in light of the present results.

  14. 1001 easy French phrases

    CERN Document Server

    McCoy, Heather

    2010-01-01

    The perfect companion for tourists and business travelers in France and other places where the French language is spoken, this book offers fast, effective communication. More than 1,000 basic words, phrases, and sentences cover everything from asking directions and renting a car to ordering dinner and finding a bank.Designed as a quick reference tool and an easy study guide, this inexpensive and easy-to-use book offers completely up-to-date terms for modern telecommunications, idioms, and slang. The contents are arranged for quick access to phrases related to greetings, transportation, shoppin

  15. Bilinguals' Plausibility Judgments for Phrases with a Literal vs. Non-literal Meaning: The Influence of Language Brokering Experience

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    Belem G. López

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Previous work has shown that prior experience in language brokering (informal translation may facilitate the processing of meaning within and across language boundaries. The present investigation examined the influence of brokering on bilinguals' processing of two word collocations with either a literal or a figurative meaning in each language. Proficient Spanish-English bilinguals classified as brokers or non-brokers were asked to judge if adjective+noun phrases presented in each language made sense or not. Phrases with a literal meaning (e.g., stinging insect were interspersed with phrases with a figurative meaning (e.g., stinging insult and non-sensical phrases (e.g., stinging picnic. It was hypothesized that plausibility judgments would be facilitated for literal relative to figurative meanings in each language but that experience in language brokering would be associated with a more equivalent pattern of responding across languages. These predictions were confirmed. The findings add to the body of empirical work on individual differences in language processing in bilinguals associated with prior language brokering experience.

  16. Building Fluency through the Phrased Text Lesson

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rasinski, Timothy; Yildirim, Kasim; Nageldinger, James

    2012-01-01

    This Teaching Tip article explores the importance of phrasing while reading. It also presents an instructional intervention strategy for helping students develop greater proficiency in reading with phrases that reflect the meaning of the text.

  17. Predicting binary choices from probability phrase meanings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wallsten, Thomas S; Jang, Yoonhee

    2008-08-01

    The issues of how individuals decide which of two events is more likely and of how they understand probability phrases both involve judging relative likelihoods. In this study, we investigated whether derived scales representing probability phrase meanings could be used within a choice model to predict independently observed binary choices. If they can, this simultaneously provides support for our model and suggests that the phrase meanings are measured meaningfully. The model assumes that, when deciding which of two events is more likely, judges take a single sample from memory regarding each event and respond accordingly. The model predicts choice probabilities by using the scaled meanings of individually selected probability phrases as proxies for confidence distributions associated with sampling from memory. Predictions are sustained for 34 of 41 participants but, nevertheless, are biased slightly low. Sequential sampling models improve the fit. The results have both theoretical and applied implications.

  18. 20 CFR 201.1 - Words and phrases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-04-01

    ... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Words and phrases. 201.1 Section 201.1 Employees' Benefits RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD REGULATIONS UNDER THE RAILROAD RETIREMENT ACT DEFINITIONS § 201.1 Words and phrases. For the purposes of the regulations in this chapter, except where the...

  19. 20 CFR 300.1 - Words and phrases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-04-01

    ... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Words and phrases. 300.1 Section 300.1 Employees' Benefits RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD REGULATIONS UNDER THE RAILROAD UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACT DEFINITIONS § 300.1 Words and phrases. For the purposes of the regulations in this part, except where the...

  20. Integrating source-language context into phrase-based statistical machine translation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Haque, R.; Kumar Naskar, S.; Bosch, A.P.J. van den; Way, A.

    2011-01-01

    The translation features typically used in Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation (PB-SMT) model dependencies between the source and target phrases, but not among the phrases in the source language themselves. A swathe of research has demonstrated that integrating source context modelling

  1. The phrase "information storage and retrieval" (IS&R)

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hjørland, Birger

    2015-01-01

    Scholars have uncovered abundant data about the history of the term "information", as well as some of its many combined phrases (e.g. "information science", "information retrieval" and "information technology"). Many other compounds involving "information" seem, however, not to have a known origi...... yet. In this article, further information about the phrase "information storage and retrieval" is provided. To know the history of terms and their associated concepts is an important prescription against poor terminological phrasing and theoretical confusion....

  2. Noun combination in interlanguage typology effects in complex determiner phrases

    CERN Document Server

    Bongartz, Christiane

    2002-01-01

    This study examines effects of L1 typology on the interlanguage of L2 learners of English. Czech learners use phrasal constructs (the song about love) significantly more often than Chinese learners, who prefer noun+noun compounds (the love song). Determiner properties and the process of noun incorporation systematically relate both options.

  3. 15000 useful phrases

    CERN Document Server

    Kleiser, Grenville

    1900-01-01

    This incredibly useful book will appeal to writers, public speakers and anyone else who would like to improve their vocabulary. It contains a huge number of phrases which you can use in everyday speech and at special occasions, which will help you express your thoughts, ideas and feelings in a brand new way. A classic reference work, this edition has been specially formatted for today's e-readers.

  4. Verbal behavior in Alzheimer's disease patients: Analysis of phrase repetition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cecato, Juliana Francisca; Martinellil, José Eduardo; Bartholomeu, Luana Luz; Basqueira, Ana Paula; Yassuda, Mônica Sanches; Aprahamian, Ivan

    2010-01-01

    Language problems in the elderly with AD are due to the fact that deterioration occurs not only in semantic memory, but in a group of cognitive factors, evidenced by a deficiency in search strategies for linguistic information. To evaluate phrase repetition in two cognitive tests, the MMSE and MoCA, in a group of Alzheimer disease patients (AD) and normal controls. A Cross-sectional study was conducted involving 20 patients who sought medical assistance at a geriatric institute in Jundiaí, São Paulo. The subjects underwent a detailed clinical examination and neuropsychometric evaluation. All subjects with AD met DSM-IV and NINCDS-ADRDA criteria. Ten patients received a diagnosis of AD and 10 were healthy subjects, forming the control group (CG). All participants correctly answered the phrase from the MMSE (phrase 1). The MoCA phrases (phrases 2 and 3) were correct in 80% and 90%, respectively in the CG and in 40% and 50%, respectively in the AD group. The MoCA test proved more effective in evaluating the echoic behavior in AD patients compared to the MMSE. The simpler phrase repetition task in the MMSE was found to be less sensitive in detecting mild language decline in AD patients.

  5. Verbal behavior in Alzheimer disease patients: Analysis of phrase repetition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juliana Francisca Cecato

    Full Text Available Abstract Language problems in the elderly with AD are due to the fact that deterioration occurs not only in semantic memory, but in a group of cognitive factors, evidenced by a deficiency in search strategies for linguistic information. Objectives: To evaluate phrase repetition in two cognitive tests, the MMSE and MoCA, in a group of Alzheimer disease patients (AD and normal controls. Methods: A Cross-sectional study was conducted involving 20 patients who sought medical assistance at a geriatric institute in Jundiaí, São Paulo. The subjects underwent a detailed clinical examination and neuropsychometric evaluation. All subjects with AD met DSM-IV and NINCDS-ADRDA criteria. Ten patients received a diagnosis of AD and 10 were healthy subjects, forming the control group (CG. Results: All participants correctly answered the phrase from the MMSE (phrase 1. The MoCA phrases (phrases 2 and 3 were correct in 80% and 90%, respectively in the CG and in 40% and 50%, respectively in the AD group. Conclusions: The MoCA test proved more effective in evaluating the echoic behavior in AD patients compared to the MMSE. The simpler phrase repetition task in the MMSE was found to be less sensitive in detecting mild language decline in AD patients.

  6. Iceberg Semantics For Count Nouns And Mass Nouns: Classifiers, measures and portions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fred Landman

    2016-12-01

    It is the analysis of complex NPs and their mass-count properties that is the focus of the second part of this paper. There I develop an analysis of English and Dutch pseudo- partitives, in particular, measure phrases like three liters of wine and classifier phrases like three glasses of wine. We will study measure interpretations and classifier interpretations of measures and classifiers, and different types of classifier interpretations: container interpretations, contents interpretations, and - indeed - portion interpretations. Rothstein 2011 argues that classifier interpretations (including portion interpretations of pseudo partitives pattern with count nouns, but that measure interpretations pattern with mass nouns. I will show that this distinction follows from the very basic architecture of Iceberg semantics.

  7. Interval Size and Phrase Position: A Comparison between German and Chinese Folksongs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Shanahan

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available It is well known that the pitch of the voice tends to decline over the course of a spoken utterance. Ladd (2008 showed that there is also a tendency for the pitch range of spoken utterances to shrink as the pitch of the voice declines. Motivated by this work, two studies are reported that test for the existence of "late phrase compression" in music where the interval size tends to decline toward the end of a phrase. A study of 39,863 phrases from notated Germanic folksongs shows the predicted decline in interval size. However, a second study of 10,985 phrases from Chinese folksongs shows a reverse relationship. In fact, the interval behaviors in Chinese and Germanic folksongs provide marked contrasts: Chinese phrases are dominated by relatively large intervals, but begin with small intervals and end with medium-small intervals. Germanic phrases are dominated by relatively medium intervals, but begin with large intervals and end with small intervals. In short, late phrase interval compression is not evident cross-culturally.

  8. An analysis of Pitch Patterns of English Adjective + Noun Pharases in Model Reading and Some Educational Implications

    OpenAIRE

    Iwai, Mie; Yamada, Jun

    2009-01-01

    A basic English accent rule for a noun phrase consisting of an adjective and a noun is that the head,o r noun,is accented unless the adjective is contrastively focused in the context. A question of interest for Japanese learners of English is to what extent this basic principle is observed in model reading to which the learners may be exposed in their English classrooms. This study measured F0 values of adjectives and nouns in noun phrases which appeared in model English reading on commercial...

  9. ClusType: Effective Entity Recognition and Typing by Relation Phrase-Based Clustering

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ren, Xiang; El-Kishky, Ahmed; Wang, Chi; Tao, Fangbo; Voss, Clare R.; Ji, Heng; Han, Jiawei

    2015-01-01

    Entity recognition is an important but challenging research problem. In reality, many text collections are from specific, dynamic, or emerging domains, which poses significant new challenges for entity recognition with increase in name ambiguity and context sparsity, requiring entity detection without domain restriction. In this paper, we investigate entity recognition (ER) with distant-supervision and propose a novel relation phrase-based ER framework, called ClusType, that runs data-driven phrase mining to generate entity mention candidates and relation phrases, and enforces the principle that relation phrases should be softly clustered when propagating type information between their argument entities. Then we predict the type of each entity mention based on the type signatures of its co-occurring relation phrases and the type indicators of its surface name, as computed over the corpus. Specifically, we formulate a joint optimization problem for two tasks, type propagation with relation phrases and multi-view relation phrase clustering. Our experiments on multiple genres—news, Yelp reviews and tweets—demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of ClusType, with an average of 37% improvement in F1 score over the best compared method. PMID:26705503

  10. The Dependency Structure of Coordinate Phrases: A Corpus Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Temperley, David

    2005-01-01

    Hudson (1990) proposes that each conjunct in a coordinate phrase forms dependency relations with heads or dependents outside the coordinate phrase (the "multi-head" view). This proposal is tested through corpus analysis of Wall Street Journal text. For right-branching constituents (such as direct-object NPs), a short-long preference for conjunct…

  11. Phrasing in the speech and reading of the hearing impaired.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gregory, J F

    1986-08-01

    The study reported here explored a partial explanation for the fourth-grade "bottleneck" in literacy advancement by hearing-impaired students. Speech samples from 21 deaf subjects were rated for degree of evident phrasal quality. Likewise, reading comprehension scores for each student were obtained under four reading conditions: reading in whole sentences, in phrases, in fragmented word groups, and in single words. Degree of rated speech phrasality was found to relate significantly and positively to correct recall answers to questions based upon silent reading of passages typed in meaningful word groups (but not when the passages were typed in whole sentences, fragmented word groups, or in single words). The results were taken to suggest that--whereas staccato-speaking deaf students may lack a sense of the phrase altogether--phrasal-speaking deaf youngsters fail to independently apply their phrase sense in the normal reading situation. Thus, both types of deaf youngsters have difficulty affecting the transition to phrase reading that is common for hearing students at or about the fourth-grade level. Finally, I argue that this phrase sense can be instilled in hearing-impaired students and that they can be trained to use it in reading.

  12. Adjunction, Labeling, and Bare Phrase Structure

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Norbert Hornstein

    2008-03-01

    Full Text Available The primary aim in this paper is to propose a phrase structure for adjunction that is compatible with the precepts of Bare Phrase Structure (BPS. Current accounts are at odds with the central vision of BPS and current practice leans more to descriptive eclecticism than to theoretical insight. A diagnosis for this conceptual disarray is suggested here: It stems from a deeply held though seldom formulated intuition; the tacit view that adjuncts are the abnormal case while arguments describe the grammatical norm. In actuality, it is argued, adjuncts are so well behaved that they require virtually no grammatical support to function properly. Arguments, in contrast, are refractory and require grammatical aid to allow them to make any propositional contribution. This last remark should come as no surprise to those with neo-Davidsonian semantic sympathies. Connoisseurs of this art form are well versed in the important role that grammatical (aka, thematic roles play in turning arguments into modifiers of events. Such fulcra are not required for meaningfully integrating adjuncts. into sentences. In what follows, we take this difference to be of the greatest significance and we ask ourselves what this might imply for the phrase structure of adjunction.

  13. Increases in individualistic words and phrases in American books, 1960-2008.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Twenge, Jean M; Campbell, W Keith; Gentile, Brittany

    2012-01-01

    Cultural products such as song lyrics, television shows, and books reveal cultural differences, including cultural change over time. Two studies examine changes in the use of individualistic words (Study 1) and phrases (Study 2) in the Google Books Ngram corpus of millions of books in American English. Current samples from the general population generated and rated lists of individualistic words and phrases (e.g., "unique," "personalize," "self," "all about me," "I am special," "I'm the best"). Individualistic words and phrases increased in use between 1960 and 2008, even when controlling for changes in communal words and phrases. Language in American books has become increasingly focused on the self and uniqueness in the decades since 1960.

  14. Neural Correlates of Phrase Rhythm: An EEG Study of Bipartite vs. Rondo Sonata Form

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Antonio Fernández-Caballero

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available This paper introduces the neural correlates of phrase rhythm. In short, phrase rhythm is the rhythmic aspect of phrase construction and the relationships between phrases. For the sake of establishing the neural correlates, a musical experiment has been designed to induce music-evoked stimuli related to phrase rhythm. Brain activity is monitored through electroencephalography (EEG by using a brain–computer interface. The power spectral value of each EEG channel is estimated to obtain how power variance distributes as a function of frequency. Our experiment shows statistical differences in theta and alpha bands in the phrase rhythm variations of two classical sonatas, one in bipartite form and the other in rondo form.

  15. Implementation of the common phrase index method on the phrase query for information retrieval

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fatmawati, Triyah; Zaman, Badrus; Werdiningsih, Indah

    2017-08-01

    As the development of technology, the process of finding information on the news text is easy, because the text of the news is not only distributed in print media, such as newspapers, but also in electronic media that can be accessed using the search engine. In the process of finding relevant documents on the search engine, a phrase often used as a query. The number of words that make up the phrase query and their position obviously affect the relevance of the document produced. As a result, the accuracy of the information obtained will be affected. Based on the outlined problem, the purpose of this research was to analyze the implementation of the common phrase index method on information retrieval. This research will be conducted in English news text and implemented on a prototype to determine the relevance level of the documents produced. The system is built with the stages of pre-processing, indexing, term weighting calculation, and cosine similarity calculation. Then the system will display the document search results in a sequence, based on the cosine similarity. Furthermore, system testing will be conducted using 100 documents and 20 queries. That result is then used for the evaluation stage. First, determine the relevant documents using kappa statistic calculation. Second, determine the system success rate using precision, recall, and F-measure calculation. In this research, the result of kappa statistic calculation was 0.71, so that the relevant documents are eligible for the system evaluation. Then the calculation of precision, recall, and F-measure produces precision of 0.37, recall of 0.50, and F-measure of 0.43. From this result can be said that the success rate of the system to produce relevant documents is low.

  16. Incorporating Pass-Phrase Dependent Background Models for Text-Dependent Speaker verification

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sarkar, Achintya Kumar; Tan, Zheng-Hua

    2018-01-01

    -dependent. We show that the proposed method significantly reduces the error rates of text-dependent speaker verification for the non-target types: target-wrong and impostor-wrong while it maintains comparable TD-SV performance when impostors speak a correct utterance with respect to the conventional system......In this paper, we propose pass-phrase dependent background models (PBMs) for text-dependent (TD) speaker verification (SV) to integrate the pass-phrase identification process into the conventional TD-SV system, where a PBM is derived from a text-independent background model through adaptation using...... the utterances of a particular pass-phrase. During training, pass-phrase specific target speaker models are derived from the particular PBM using the training data for the respective target model. While testing, the best PBM is first selected for the test utterance in the maximum likelihood (ML) sense...

  17. Stereotypic and complex phrase types provide structural evidence for a multi-message display in humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Murray, Anita; Dunlop, Rebecca A; Noad, Michael J; Goldizen, Anne W

    2018-02-01

    Male humpback whales produce a mating display called "song." Behavioral studies indicate song has inter- and/or intra-sexual functionality, suggesting song may be a multi-message display. Multi-message displays often include stereotypic components that convey group membership for mate attraction and/or male-male interactions, and complex components that convey individual quality for courtship. Humpback whale song contains sounds ("units") arranged into sequences ("phrases"). Repetitions of a specific phrase create a "theme." Within a theme, imperfect phrase repetitions ("phrase variants") create variability among phrases of the same type ("phrase type"). The hypothesis that song contains stereotypic and complex phrase types, structural characteristics consistent with a multi-message display, is investigated using recordings of 17 east Australian males (8:2004, 9:2011). Phrase types are categorized as stereotypic or complex using number of unit types, number of phrase variants, and the proportion of phrases that is unique to an individual versus shared amongst males. Unit types are determined using self-organizing maps. Phrase variants are determined by Levenshtein distances between phrases. Stereotypic phrase types have smaller numbers of unit types and shared phrase variants. Complex phrase types have larger numbers of unit types and unique phrase variants. This study supports the hypothesis that song could be a multi-message display.

  18. [Stimuli phrases of adductor spasmodic dysphonia phonatory break in mandarin Chinese].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ge, Pingjiang; Ren, Qingyi; Chen, Zhipeng; Cheng, Qiuhui; Sheng, Xiaoli; Wang, Ling; Chen, Shaohua; Zhang, Siyi

    2015-12-01

    To investigate the characteristics of adductor spasmodic dysphonia phonatory break in mandarin Chinese and select the stimuli phrases. Thirty-eight patients with adductor spasmodic dysphonia were involved in this study. Standard phrase " fù mŭ xīn" and a speech corpus in mandarin Chinese with 229 syllables covering all vowel and constant of mandarin Chinese were selected. Every patient read the phrases above twice in normal speed and comfortable voice. Two auditory perpetual speech pathologists marked phonatory break syllables respectively. The frequency of phonatory break syllables and their located phrases were calculated, rated and described. The phrases including the most phonatory break syllables were selected as stimuli phrases, the phonatory break frequency of which was also higher than that of standard phrase "fù mŭ xīn". Phonatory break happened in the reading of all patients. The average number of phonatory break syllables was 14 (3-33). Phonatroy break occurred when saying 177 (77.3%) syllables in the speech corpus. The syllables "guŏ, rén, zāng, diàn, chē, gè, guăn, a, bā, ne, de" broke in 23.1%-41.0% patients. These syllables belonged to the phrases "pĭng guŏ, huŏ chē, shì de, nĭ shì gè hăo rén, wŏ mén shì yŏu zŏng shì bă qĭn shì nong dé hĕn zāng, wŏ mén nà biān yŏu wăng qiú yùn dong chăng, cān gŭan, jiŭ bā hé yī gè miàn bāo dìan, tā shì duō me kāng kăi a,wŏ yīng gāi zài xìn lĭ xiĕ yī xiē shén mē ne?". Thirty-seven patients (97.3%) had phonatory break in above mentioned words. Ratios of these words phonatory break also were more than "fù mŭ xīn". Adductor spasmodic dysphonic patients exhibited different degrees of phonatory break in mandarine Chinese. The phrases" shì de, pĭng guŏ, huŏ chē, nĭ shì gè hăo rén, wŏ mén nà biān yŏu wăng qiú yùn dong chăng, cān gŭan, jiŭ bā hé yī gè miàn bāo dìan, tā shì duō me kāng kăi a" were recommended as stimuli

  19. Increases in Individualistic Words and Phrases in American Books, 1960–2008

    Science.gov (United States)

    Twenge, Jean M.; Campbell, W. Keith; Gentile, Brittany

    2012-01-01

    Cultural products such as song lyrics, television shows, and books reveal cultural differences, including cultural change over time. Two studies examine changes in the use of individualistic words (Study 1) and phrases (Study 2) in the Google Books Ngram corpus of millions of books in American English. Current samples from the general population generated and rated lists of individualistic words and phrases (e.g., "unique," "personalize," "self," "all about me," "I am special," "I'm the best"). Individualistic words and phrases increased in use between 1960 and 2008, even when controlling for changes in communal words and phrases. Language in American books has become increasingly focused on the self and uniqueness in the decades since 1960. PMID:22808113

  20. The relationship between positive or negative phrasing and patients' coping with lateral epicondylitis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Dong Oh; Gong, Hyun Sik; Kim, Jeong Hwan; Rhee, Seung Hwan; Lee, Young Ho; Baek, Goo Hyun

    2014-04-01

    Research suggests that phrases with negative content can affect patients' response to medical procedures and how they cope with medical illnesses. We hypothesized that patients with lateral epicondylitis who describe their condition in positive phrases cope better than those who do not. We prospectively followed up 91 patients with lateral epicondylitis for 12 months. The patients indicated their baseline coping status based on the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) and were discharged with a wait-and-see policy. During follow-up interviews, the patients described the nature of their condition in their own words and were then categorized into either positive or negative phrasing groups. We compared these two groups regarding current coping status and whether they had sought additional treatment. We also analyzed for the factors associated with these outcomes. There were no significant differences in baseline PCS scores between the two groups. At follow-up, patients in the positive phrasing group (n = 62) had significantly lower PCS scores and were less likely to seek additional treatment than those in the negative phrasing group (n = 29). Multivariable analyses showed that positive phrasing and low pain levels were independently associated with improvement in PCS scores and that negative phrasing and depression were independently associated with patients' seeking additional treatment. Patients' positive phrasing about their condition are associated with improvement in their coping status and with less use of medical resources in the case of lateral epicondylitis. This study suggests that patients with more positive attitudes toward their illness cope and comply better when a wait-and-see treatment is recommended by their physicians. Copyright © 2014 Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery Board of Trustees. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. On Directionality of Phrase Structure Building

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chesi, Cristiano

    2015-01-01

    Minimalism in grammatical theorizing (Chomsky in "The minimalist program." MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995) led to simpler linguistic devices and a better focalization of the core properties of the structure building engine: a lexicon and a free (recursive) phrase formation operation, dubbed Merge, are the basic components that serve in…

  2. Language Mixing in the Nominal Phrase: Implications of a Distributed Morphology Perspective

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michèle Burkholder

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available This paper investigates a pattern found in Spanish–English mixed language corpora whereby it is common to switch from a Spanish determiner to an English noun (e.g., la house, 'the house', but rare to switch from an English determiner to a Spanish noun (e.g., the casa, 'the house'. Unlike previous theoretical accounts of this asymmetry, that which is proposed here follows assumptions of the Distributed Morphology (DM framework, specifically those regarding the relationship between grammatical gender and nominal declension class in Spanish. Crucially, and again in contrast to previous accounts, it is demonstrated that this approach predicts no such asymmetry for French–English. This hypothesis is tested experimentally using an acceptability judgment task with self-paced reading, and as expected, no evidence is found for an asymmetry. This experiment is also used to test predictions regarding how English nominal roots in mixed nominal phrases are assigned grammatical gender, and the impact of language background factors such as age of acquisition. Evidence is found that bilinguals attempt to assign analogical gender if possible, but that late sequential bilinguals have a stronger preference for this option than do simultaneous bilinguals.

  3. What Constitutes a Phrase in Sound-Based Music? A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Perception and Acoustics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Olsen, Kirk N; Dean, Roger T; Leung, Yvonne

    2016-01-01

    Phrasing facilitates the organization of auditory information and is central to speech and music. Not surprisingly, aspects of changing intensity, rhythm, and pitch are key determinants of musical phrases and their boundaries in instrumental note-based music. Different kinds of speech (such as tone- vs. stress-languages) share these features in different proportions and form an instructive comparison. However, little is known about whether or how musical phrasing is perceived in sound-based music, where the basic musical unit from which a piece is created is commonly non-instrumental continuous sounds, rather than instrumental discontinuous notes. This issue forms the target of the present paper. Twenty participants (17 untrained in music) were presented with six stimuli derived from sound-based music, note-based music, and environmental sound. Their task was to indicate each occurrence of a perceived phrase and qualitatively describe key characteristics of the stimulus associated with each phrase response. It was hypothesized that sound-based music does elicit phrase perception, and that this is primarily associated with temporal changes in intensity and timbre, rather than rhythm and pitch. Results supported this hypothesis. Qualitative analysis of participant descriptions showed that for sound-based music, the majority of perceived phrases were associated with intensity or timbral change. For the note-based piano piece, rhythm was the main theme associated with perceived musical phrasing. We modeled the occurrence in time of perceived musical phrases with recurrent event 'hazard' analyses using time-series data representing acoustic predictors associated with intensity, spectral flatness, and rhythmic density. Acoustic intensity and timbre (represented here by spectral flatness) were strong predictors of perceived musical phrasing in sound-based music, and rhythm was only predictive for the piano piece. A further analysis including five additional spectral

  4. Young children pause on phrase boundaries in self-paced music listening: The role of harmonic cues.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kragness, Haley E; Trainor, Laurel J

    2018-05-01

    Proper segmentation of auditory streams is essential for understanding music. Many cues, including meter, melodic contour, and harmony, influence adults' perception of musical phrase boundaries. To date, no studies have examined young children's musical grouping in a production task. We used a musical self-pacing method to investigate (1) whether dwell times index young children's musical phrase grouping and, if so, (2) whether children dwell longer on phrase boundaries defined by harmonic cues specifically. In Experiment 1, we asked 3-year-old children to self-pace through chord progressions from Bach chorales (sequences in which metrical, harmonic, and melodic contour grouping cues aligned) by pressing a computer key to present each chord in the sequence. Participants dwelled longer on chords in the 8th position, which corresponded to phrase endings. In Experiment 2, we tested 3-, 4-, and 7-year-old children's sensitivity to harmonic cues to phrase grouping when metrical regularity cues and melodic contour cues were misaligned with the harmonic phrase boundaries. In this case, 7 and 4 year olds but not 3 year olds dwelled longer on harmonic phrase boundaries, suggesting that the influence of harmonic cues on phrase boundary perception develops substantially between 3 and 4 years of age in Western children. Overall, we show that the musical dwell time method is child-friendly and can be used to investigate various aspects of young children's musical understanding, including phrase grouping and harmonic knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  5. Individual and combined effects of enactment and testing on memory for action phrases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kubik, Veit; Söderlund, Hedvig; Nilsson, Lars-Göran; Jönsson, Fredrik U

    2014-01-01

    We investigated the individual and combined effects of enactment and testing on memory for action phrases to address whether both study techniques commonly promote item-specific processing. Participants (N = 112) were divided into four groups (n = 28). They either exclusively studied 36 action phrases (e.g., "lift the glass") or both studied and cued-recalled them in four trials. During study trials participants encoded the action phrases either by motorically performing them, or by reading them aloud, and they took final verb-cued recall tests over 18-min and 1-week retention intervals. A testing effect was demonstrated for action phrases, however, only when they were verbally encoded, and not when they were enacted. Similarly, enactive (relative to verbal) encoding reduced the rate of forgetting, but only when the action phrases were exclusively studied, and not when they were also tested. These less-than-additive effects of enactment and testing on the rate of forgetting, as well as on long-term retention, support the notion that both study techniques effectively promote item-specific processing that can only be marginally increased further by combining them.

  6. What can children tell us about the fixedness of idiomatic phrases? The psycholinguistic relevance of a linguistic model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kleopatra Diakogiorgi

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available The present paper contains two distinct yet intricately linked studies concerning idiomatic phrases in Greek: a linguistic study and a psycholinguistic study. The linguistic study aims at investigating the degree of fixedness of idiomatic phrases, through a semantic-lexical categorization of 470phrases with fixed subject. Three phrase categories were distinguished: typical phrases characterized by a strong semantic-lexical articulation between their constituents, and non-typical phrases, in which the constituents have a certain semantic autonomy. Non-typical phrases were further categorized into a quasi-phrases and b conventionalized phrases, the constituents of which have the highest degree of semantic autonomy. Α linguistic model was developed named "graded fixedness model", and the psycholinguistic relevance of the model assessed by examining idiom comprehension in Greek elementary school children, aged 7.5 and 9.5 years old. To achieve this, a psycholinguistic study was then carried out. Children were presented with 8 typical, 8 quasi and 8 conventionalized phrases. For each phrase, they were asked to choose the one they thought correct out of three interpretations proposed (idiomatic, literal and other. The research findings presented and discussed herein provide evidence supporting the psychological reality of the notion of semantic autonomy even for the younger children's processing which was overall quite poor: thus, the greater the semantic autonomy of a phrase's constituents, the easier the access to its idiomatic meaning.Le présent article comporte deux études distinctes mais étroitement liées concernant les phrases idomatiques en grec : une étude linguistique et une étude psycholinguistique. L'étude linguistique vise à examiner le degré de figement des phrases idiomatiques, à travers une catégorisation sémantico-lexicale de 470phrases à sujet fixe. Trois catégories de phrases ont été distingu

  7. Comparison of Word Intelligibility in Spoken and Sung Phrases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lauren B. Collister

    2008-09-01

    Full Text Available Twenty listeners were exposed to spoken and sung passages in English produced by three trained vocalists. Passages included representative words extracted from a large database of vocal lyrics, including both popular and classical repertoires. Target words were set within spoken or sung carrier phrases. Sung carrier phrases were selected from classical vocal melodies. Roughly a quarter of all words sung by an unaccompanied soloist were misheard. Sung passages showed a seven-fold decrease in intelligibility compared with their spoken counterparts. The perceptual mistakes occurring with vowels replicate previous studies showing the centralization of vowels. Significant confusions are also evident for consonants, especially voiced stops and nasals.

  8. Dealing with Phrase Level Co-Articulation (PLC) in speech recognition: a first approach

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; van Hessen, Adrianus J.; van Leeuwen, David A.; Robinson, Tony; Renals, Steve

    1999-01-01

    Whereas nowadays within-word co-articulation effects are usually sufficiently dealt with in automatic speech recognition, this is not always the case with phrase level co-articulation effects (PLC). This paper describes a first approach in dealing with phrase level co-articulation by applying these

  9. Chinese-English Sourcebook of Classified Educational Phrases

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chinese Education, 1976

    1976-01-01

    Official translation from Chinese to English of words and phrases commonly used in education and library work. Classifications include sayings of Chairman Mao, revolutionary mass criticism, revolution in education, "May 7" cadre schools, teaching methods and materials, disciplines and curricula, school names and terms, and library…

  10. Installing the ARL Phrase Book Android Application and Configuring its Dependencies

    Science.gov (United States)

    2015-02-01

    application contains several third - party applications, which add additional steps to the installation process. Due to these dependencies, the installation...military terms, additional Dari terms, etc.) were added to the Phrase Book app. In addition, third - party apps (e.g., Carnegie Mellon University's...Phrase Book app uses 2 third - party apps from the Google Play Store, Google's app store. The Google Play Store is accessible by clicking on the white

  11. Distinct ERP Signatures of Word Frequency, Phrase Frequency, and Prototypicality in Speech Production

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hendrix, Peter; Bolger, Patrick; Baayen, Harald

    2017-01-01

    Recent studies have documented frequency effects for word n-grams, independently of word unigram frequency. Further studies have revealed constructional prototype effects, both at the word level as well as for phrases. The present speech production study investigates the time course of these effects for the production of prepositional phrases in…

  12. An "Alms-Basket" of "Bric-a-Brac": "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable".

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bunge, Charles A.

    1999-01-01

    Describes the development and history of "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," a reference source first published in 1870 that includes the etymology of phrases, allusions and words. Discusses reviews that reflected and shaped its status as a standard reference book, describes the current edition, and considers its enduring value.…

  13. Influencing feelings of cancer risk: direct and moderator effects of affectively laden phrases in risk communication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Janssen, Eva; van Osch, Liesbeth; Lechner, Lilian; de Vries, Hein

    2015-01-01

    Evidence is accumulating for the importance of feelings of risk in explaining cancer preventive behaviors, but best practices for influencing these feelings are limited. This study investigated the direct and moderational influence of affectively laden phrases in cancer risk messages. Two experimental studies were conducted in relation to different cancer-related behaviors--sunbed use (n = 112) and red meat consumption (n = 447)--among student and nonstudent samples. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (a) a cognitive message using cognitively laden phrases or (b) an affective message using affectively laden phrases. The results revealed that affective phrases did not directly influence feelings of risk in both studies. Evidence for a moderational influence was found in Study 2, suggesting that affective information strengthened the relation between feelings of risk and intention (i.e., participants relied more on their feelings in the decision-making process after exposure to affective information). These findings suggest that solely using affective phrases in risk communication may not be sufficient to directly influence feelings of risk and other methods need to be explored in future research. Moreover, research is needed to replicate our preliminary indications for a moderational influence of affective phrases to advance theory and practice.

  14. The determiner phrase in Etsako: A minimalist approach ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This paper seeks to analyse the Determiner Phrase in Etsako within the theoretical framework of the Minimalist Program, the most recent version of Chomsky's Generative Grammar. We shall argue that the functional category of Determiner is Head of all nominal projections in Etsako as against earlier accounts in favour of ...

  15. THE DISCUSSION OF NOUN COMPLEMENTS WITH NO SUFFIXES AND THE RELATION BETWEEN WORD CLASSES AND PHRASES TAKISIZ AD TAMLAMASI TARTIŞMASI VE TÜR – ÖBEK İLİŞKİSİ

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Caner KERİMOĞLU

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available The discussion of compound nouns with no suffixes has an important place in Turkish grammar writing. Recently, it is seen that this discussion has come to an end and the constructions like tahta kaşık "wooden spoon", altın kolye "golden necklace" are accepted as adjective complements. In this study, firstly these discussions are evaluated and then the roles of word classes in phrases are discussed with regard to nouns and adjectives. Takısız ad tamlaması tartışması Türkçe dil bilgisi yazımında önemli bir yere sahiptir. Son yıllarda bu konuyla ilgili tartışmaların azaldığı ve akademik yayınların çoğunda tahta kaşık, altın kolye dizilişindeki yapıların sıfat tamlaması kabul edildiği görülmektedir. Bu çalışmada takısız ad tamlaması tartışmaları değerlendirildikten sonra, kelime türlerinin öbek kurmadaki rolleri sıfat ve ad türleri temelinde tartışılmaktadır.

  16. 7 CFR 15f.4 - What do certain words and phrases in these regulations mean?

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... 7 Agriculture 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false What do certain words and phrases in these regulations mean? 15f.4 Section 15f.4 Agriculture Office of the Secretary of Agriculture ADJUDICATIONS UNDER....4 What do certain words and phrases in these regulations mean? Agency means the USDA agency, office...

  17. Investigating the Usefulness of Lexical Phrases in Contemporary Coursebooks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koprowski, Mark

    2005-01-01

    Over the past decade, lexical theory, corpus statistics, and psycholinguistic research have pointed to the pedagogical value of lexical phrases. In response, commercial publishers have been quick to import these insights into their materials in a bid to accommodate consumers and to profit from the "lexical chunk" phenomenon. Contemporary British…

  18. The Noun Phrase

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    of modifier categories. He introduces the notion of Seinsart or 'mode of being' as the nominal counterpart of Aktionsart or 'mode of action' in lexical verb semantics. He furthermore proposes a new grammatical category of nominal aspect (cf. verbal aspect) and an implicational universal concerning...

  19. The Economy of Fluent Speaking: Phrase-Level Reduction in a Patient with Pure Apraxia of Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Staiger, Anja; Ruttenauer, Anna; Ziegler, Wolfram

    2010-01-01

    The term "phrase-level reduction" refers to transformations of the phonetic forms of words in connected speech. They are a characteristic property of fluent speech in normal speakers. Phrase-level reductions contribute to a reduction of articulatory-motor effort and constitute an important aspect of speech naturalness. So far, these phenomena have…

  20. Complexity Matters: On Gender Agreement in Heritage Scandinavian

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johannessen, Janne Bondi; Larsson, Ida

    2015-01-01

    This paper investigates aspects of the noun phrase from a Scandinavian heritage language perspective, with an emphasis on noun phrase-internal gender agreement and noun declension. Our results are somewhat surprising compared with earlier research: We find that noun phrase-internal agreement for the most part is rather stable. To the extent that we find attrition, it affects agreement in the noun phrase, but not the declension of the noun. We discuss whether this means that gender is lost and has been reduced to a pure declension class, or whether gender is retained. We argue that gender is actually retained in these heritage speakers. One argument for this is that the speakers who lack agreement in complex noun phrases, have agreement intact in simpler phrases. We have thus found that the complexity of the noun phrase is crucial for some speakers. However, among the heritage speakers we also find considerable inter-individual variation, and different speakers can have partly different systems. PMID:26733114

  1. Fully automatic multi-language translation with a catalogue of phrases – successful employment for the Swiss avalanche bulletin

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Winkler, K.; Kuhn, T.

    2016-01-01

    The Swiss avalanche bulletin is produced twice a day in four languages. Due to the lack of time available for manual translation, a fully automated translation system is employed, based on a catalogue of predefined phrases and predetermined rules of how these phrases can be combined to produce

  2. Dictogloss or Dicto-Phrase: Which Works Better for Listening Comprehension?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marashi, Hamid; Khaksar, Mojgan

    2013-01-01

    This research compared the effect of using dictogloss and dicto-phrase tasks on EFL learners' listening comprehension. To fulfill the purpose of the study, a piloted sample Key English Test (KET) was administered to a total number of 90 Iranian female teenage EFL learners at Kish Language School, Tehran, and then 60 were selected based on their…

  3. The On-Line Processing of Verb-Phrase Ellipsis in Aphasia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poirier, Josee; Shapiro, Lewis P.; Love, Tracy; Grodzinsky, Yosef

    2009-01-01

    We investigate the on-line processing of verb-phrase ellipsis (VPE) constructions in two brain injured populations: Broca's and Anomic aphasics. VPE constructions are built from two simple clauses; the first is the antecedent clause and the second is the ellipsis clause. The ellipsis clause is missing its verb and object (i.e., its verb phrase…

  4. Commit* to change? A call to end the publication of the phrase 'commit* suicide'.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nielsen, Emma; Padmanathan, Prianka; Knipe, Duleeka

    2016-12-06

    Background. Countering stigma is a fundamental facet of suicide prevention efforts.  Integral to this is the promotion of accurate and sensitive language.  The phrase 'commit* suicide' has prompted marked opposition primarily due to the connotations of immorality and illegality.  Methods. The study investigated the frequency of the use of the wordstem 'commit', in relation to self-harm and suicidal behaviours, in the three leading suicide-specific academic journals between 2000 and 2015.  Results. One third (34%) of articles published since the year 2000 used the word 'commit*' when describing an act of self-harm or suicide. Over half of these articles (57%) used the phrase on more than one occasion, with 6% using it more than 10 times in the same manuscript. The percentage of papers utilising the word 'commit*' has fluctuated over time, but there is a promising downward trend in the use of this phrase from 33% in 2000 to 13% in 2015 ( p suicide. Whilst we call for collective responsibility amongst academics and clinicians, editors hold a unique position in ensuring that outdated, inaccurate and stigma-laden terms are expunged from the scientific literature.

  5. Relevance and Phrase Searching in Summon: looking under the hood

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thomas Hodge

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available This article briefly examines the mechanisms behind seemingly counter-intuitive phrase search results in Serials Solutions' discovery platform Summon. The authors use the platform's search API to explain why users sometimes encounter greater numbers of results when typically they would expect fewer. The article explores the reasons behind the search results and the implications for library instruction.

  6. English Words and Phrases in Croatian: A Small-Scale Study of Language Awareness and Attitudes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marija Perić

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available The focus of this paper is on language attitudes towards English words and phrases in the Croatian language. In order to prevent loanwords, linguistic purism has arisen as a theory about what languages should be like. The tradition of linguistic purism in Croatia has been shaped by various socio-historical factors. English may be viewed as a language of opportunity, or as a threat to the survival of other, usually minority and endangered, languages. In order to provide an insight into the use of English words and phrases in the Croatian context, a questionnaire about language attitudes and awareness was conducted on 534 participants. The aim of the questionnaire was to determine participants' language attitudes and familiarity with English words and phrases. The results show that although people in Croatia generally like English, many of them are not familiar with English words, especially older participants and those with little or no knowledge of the English language. Moreover, the results indicate that the younger generation is more inclined towards English than the older generation; however, they are not as familiar with Croatian equivalents as they claim.

  7. Commit* to change? A call to end the publication of the phrase 'commit* suicide'

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nielsen, Emma; Padmanathan, Prianka; Knipe, Duleeka

    2016-01-01

    Background. Countering stigma is a fundamental facet of suicide prevention efforts.  Integral to this is the promotion of accurate and sensitive language.  The phrase 'commit* suicide' has prompted marked opposition primarily due to the connotations of immorality and illegality.  Methods. The study investigated the frequency of the use of the wordstem 'commit', in relation to self-harm and suicidal behaviours, in the three leading suicide-specific academic journals between 2000 and 2015.  Results. One third (34%) of articles published since the year 2000 used the word 'commit*' when describing an act of self-harm or suicide. Over half of these articles (57%) used the phrase on more than one occasion, with 6% using it more than 10 times in the same manuscript. The percentage of papers utilising the word 'commit*' has fluctuated over time, but there is a promising downward trend in the use of this phrase from 33% in 2000 to 13% in 2015 ( p suicide. Whilst we call for collective responsibility amongst academics and clinicians, editors hold a unique position in ensuring that outdated, inaccurate and stigma-laden terms are expunged from the scientific literature. PMID:28286872

  8. Dvandvas, Blocking, and the Associative: The Bumpy Ride from Phrase to Word

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kiparsky, Paul

    2010-01-01

    The oldest form of Sanskrit has a class of expressions that are in some respects like asyndetically coordinated syntactic phrases, in other respects like single compound words. I propose to resolve the conflicting evidence by drawing on prosodic phonology, stratal optimality theory, and the lexicalist approach to morphological blocking. I then…

  9. Memory-Based Shallow Parsing

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Tjong Kim Sang, E.F.

    2002-01-01

    We present memory-based learning approaches to shallow parsing and apply these to five tasks: base noun phrase identification, arbitrary base phrase recognition, clause detection, noun phrase parsing and full parsing. We use feature selection techniques and system combination methods for improving

  10. Children with autism spectrum disorders who do not develop phrase speech in the preschool years.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Norrelgen, Fritjof; Fernell, Elisabeth; Eriksson, Mats; Hedvall, Åsa; Persson, Clara; Sjölin, Maria; Gillberg, Christopher; Kjellmer, Liselotte

    2015-11-01

    There is uncertainty about the proportion of children with autism spectrum disorders who do not develop phrase speech during the preschool years. The main purpose of this study was to examine this ratio in a population-based community sample of children. The cohort consisted of 165 children (141 boys, 24 girls) with autism spectrum disorders aged 4-6 years followed longitudinally over 2 years during which time they had received intervention at a specialized autism center. In this study, data collected at the 2-year follow-up were used. Three categories of expressive language were defined: nonverbal, minimally verbal, and phrase speech. Data from the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-II were used to classify expressive language. A secondary objective of the study was to analyze factors that might be linked to verbal ability, namely, child age, cognitive level, autism subtype and severity of core autism symptoms, developmental regression, epilepsy or other medical conditions, and intensity of intervention. The proportion of children who met the criteria for nonverbal, minimally verbal, and phrase speech were 15%, 10%, and 75%, respectively. The single most important factor linked to expressive language was the child's cognitive level, and all children classified as being nonverbal or minimally verbal had intellectual disability. © The Author(s) 2014.

  11. Generating descriptive visual words and visual phrases for large-scale image applications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Shiliang; Tian, Qi; Hua, Gang; Huang, Qingming; Gao, Wen

    2011-09-01

    Bag-of-visual Words (BoWs) representation has been applied for various problems in the fields of multimedia and computer vision. The basic idea is to represent images as visual documents composed of repeatable and distinctive visual elements, which are comparable to the text words. Notwithstanding its great success and wide adoption, visual vocabulary created from single-image local descriptors is often shown to be not as effective as desired. In this paper, descriptive visual words (DVWs) and descriptive visual phrases (DVPs) are proposed as the visual correspondences to text words and phrases, where visual phrases refer to the frequently co-occurring visual word pairs. Since images are the carriers of visual objects and scenes, a descriptive visual element set can be composed by the visual words and their combinations which are effective in representing certain visual objects or scenes. Based on this idea, a general framework is proposed for generating DVWs and DVPs for image applications. In a large-scale image database containing 1506 object and scene categories, the visual words and visual word pairs descriptive to certain objects or scenes are identified and collected as the DVWs and DVPs. Experiments show that the DVWs and DVPs are informative and descriptive and, thus, are more comparable with the text words than the classic visual words. We apply the identified DVWs and DVPs in several applications including large-scale near-duplicated image retrieval, image search re-ranking, and object recognition. The combination of DVW and DVP performs better than the state of the art in large-scale near-duplicated image retrieval in terms of accuracy, efficiency and memory consumption. The proposed image search re-ranking algorithm: DWPRank outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithm by 12.4% in mean average precision and about 11 times faster in efficiency.

  12. Technology-Enhanced L2 Reading: The Effects of Hierarchical Phrase Segmentation

    OpenAIRE

    Park, Youngmin

    2016-01-01

    Sentence processing skills contribute to successful L2 reading, and require understanding and manipulation of the order and interdependence of words within a sentence. Acknowledging that this syntactic awareness is significant but challenging in language development, a small number of researchers have explored whether modified text format increases reading abilities by raising syntactic awareness. This mixed within- and between-subjects study aims to examine whether phrase-segmented format, s...

  13. Key-phrase based classification of public health web pages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dolamic, Ljiljana; Boyer, Célia

    2013-01-01

    This paper describes and evaluates the public health web pages classification model based on key phrase extraction and matching. Easily extendible both in terms of new classes as well as the new language this method proves to be a good solution for text classification faced with the total lack of training data. To evaluate the proposed solution we have used a small collection of public health related web pages created by a double blind manual classification. Our experiments have shown that by choosing the adequate threshold value the desired value for either precision or recall can be achieved.

  14. 20 CFR 345.302 - Definition of terms and phrases used in experience-rating.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-04-01

    ... for the current calendar year. This ratio is computed to four decimal places. (k) Pooled credit ratio... employer for the calendar year involved in the computation. This ratio is computed to four decimal places... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Definition of terms and phrases used in...

  15. Symmetric and Asymmetric Patterns of Attraction Errors in Producing Subject-Predicate Agreement in Hebrew: An Issue of Morphological Structure

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deutsch, Avital; Dank, Maya

    2011-01-01

    A common characteristic of subject-predicate agreement errors (usually termed attraction errors) in complex noun phrases is an asymmetrical pattern of error distribution, depending on the inflectional state of the nouns comprising the complex noun phrase. That is, attraction is most likely to occur when the head noun is the morphologically…

  16. Noun Phrase Structure and Movement

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wood, Johanna; Vikner, Sten

    2011-01-01

    /solch to follow the article. We discuss two possible syntactic derivations, predicate raising (e.g. Corver 1998, Bennis, Corver & den Dikken 1998) and XP movement from an attributive adjective position within the nominal (e.g. Matushansky 2002). The analysis links up with the morphological agreement facts...

  17. Spanish comparative phrases of equality with a definite article

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    P. Pablo Devís Márquez

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available In the long-standing controversy over the so-called constructions with an emphatic or quantifying definite article in Spanish, a few authors have noticed the comparative import of constructions with a quantifying article or with article and a null quantifying modifier (No es lo inteligente que era su padre. The aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive analysis capable of drawing a grammatical distinction between constructions with a definite article and comparative value and non-comparative structures with an emphatic definite article. In the former case, the article is not an independent quantifier, but a discontinuous constituent in a phrase functioning as the quantifying modifier of the comparative head.

  18. THE NOMINAL PREDICATE (ALBANIAN - ENGLISH)

    OpenAIRE

    Shkelqim Millaku

    2017-01-01

    The aim of this paper is to description the nominal of predicate between two languages (Albanian – English). The purpose of the following discussing is to show that some noun phrases, namely predicate nominal's, do not seem to exhibit. What is considering the typical behavior of noun phrase? First, they do not seem to be assigned case. Second, they may not assign are roles in normal sense so that they are probably as Theta-marker arguments, unlike referential Noun Phrases.[1] In Albanian lang...

  19. The Language of Energy: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Used in the Energy Industry.

    Science.gov (United States)

    American Petroleum Inst., Washington, DC.

    Provided is an alphabetical list or words and phrases commonly used in the energy industry. Entries range from such general terms as biomass, fossil fuels, and wetlands to such highly specific terms as Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 and Exxon Donor Solvent (EDS) Process. (JN)

  20. The Effects of the Literal Meaning of Emotional Phrases on the Identification of Vocal Emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shigeno, Sumi

    2018-02-01

    This study investigates the discrepancy between the literal emotional content of speech and emotional tone in the identification of speakers' vocal emotions in both the listeners' native language (Japanese), and in an unfamiliar language (random-spliced Japanese). Both experiments involve a "congruent condition," in which the emotion contained in the literal meaning of speech (words and phrases) was compatible with vocal emotion, and an "incongruent condition," in which these forms of emotional information were discordant. Results for Japanese indicated that performance in identifying emotions did not differ significantly between the congruent and incongruent conditions. However, the results for random-spliced Japanese indicated that vocal emotion was correctly identified more often in the congruent than in the incongruent condition. The different results for Japanese and random-spliced Japanese suggested that the literal meaning of emotional phrases influences the listener's perception of the speaker's emotion, and that Japanese participants could infer speakers' intended emotions in the incongruent condition.

  1. The Process of Word Formation and Phrase Structure of Android Application Names

    OpenAIRE

    Handayani, Heny

    2013-01-01

    Android is an operating system for mobile device, such as smartphones and tablet computers that was developed by Google. In this era, android is a popular operating system that is searched by people because of necessary of information. The process and structure of android application names are interesting to be analyzed since they have different structure of words in general. The purpose research is to describe and explain which word formation processes and phrase structure that are commonly ...

  2. A developmental analysis of generic nouns in Southern Peruvian Quechua.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mannheim, Bruce; Gelman, Susan A; Escalante, Carmen; Huayhua, Margarita; Puma, Rosalía

    2010-01-01

    Generic noun phrases (e.g., "Cats like to drink milk") are a primary means by which adults express generalizations to children, yet they pose a challenging induction puzzle for learners. Although prior research has established that English speakers understand and produce generic noun phrases by preschool age, little is known regarding the cross-cultural generality of generic acquisition. Southern Peruvian Quechua provides a valuable comparison because, unlike English, it is a highly inflected language in which generics are marked by the absence rather than the presence of any linguistic markers. Moreover, Quechua is spoken in a cultural context that differs markedly from the highly educated, middle-class contexts within which earlier research on generics was conducted. We presented participants from 5 age groups (3-6, 7-9, 10-12, 14-35, and 36-90 years of age) with two tasks that examined the ability to distinguish generic from non-generic utterances. In Study 1, even the youngest children understood generics as applying broadly to a category (like "all") and distinct from indefinite reference ("some"). However, there was a developmental lag before children understood that generics, unlike "all", can include exceptions. Study 2 revealed that generic interpretations are more frequent for utterances that (a) lack specifying markers and (b) are animate. Altogether, generic interpretations are found among the youngest participants, and may be a default mode of quantification. These data demonstrate the cross-cultural importance of generic information in linguistic expression.

  3. P.R. Subramanian (Chief Editor). Tarkalat Tamil Maraputtotar Akarati (Tamil-Tamil-Ankilam) (Dictionary of Idioms and Phrases in Contemporary Tamil (Tamil-Tamil-English)

    OpenAIRE

    G. Murugan

    2012-01-01

    Review of P.R. Subramanian (Chief Editor). Tarkalat Tamil Maraputtotar Akarati (Tamil-Tamil-Ankilam) (Dictionary of Idioms and Phrases in Contemporary Tamil (Tamil-Tamil-English)

    Resensie van P.R. Subramanian (Chief Editor). Tarkalat Tamil Maraputtotar Akarati (Tamil-Tamil-Ankilam) (Dictionary of Idioms and Phrases in Contemporary Tamil (Tamil-Tamil-...

  4. Individual Differences in L2 Processing of Multi-word Phrases: Effects of Working Memory and Personality

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kerz, E.; Wiechmann, D.; Mitkov, R.

    2017-01-01

    There is an accumulating body of evidence that knowledge of the statistics of multiword phrases (MWP) facilitates native language learning and processing both in children and adults. However, less is known about whether adult second language (L2) learners are able to develop native-like sensitivity

  5. Generation of Dutch referring expressions using the D-TUNA corpus

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hoek, Marissa; Theune, Mariet; Gatt, A.; van Gompel, R.; Gurman-Bard, E.; Krahmer, E.; van Deemter, K.

    This paper describes our research into generating Dutch noun phrases as descriptions of furniture objects or people. This is usually done in two steps: attribute selection and realisation. This research focuses only on the realisation step: generating a noun phrase from given attributes. The

  6. La quantification en Kabiye: une approche linguistique | Pali ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    ... which is denoted by lexical quantifiers. Quantification with specific reference is provided by different types of linguistic units (nouns, numerals, adjectives, adverbs, ideophones and verbs) in arguments/noun phrases and in the predicative phrase in the sense of Chomsky. Keywords: quantification, class, number, reference, ...

  7. FRASA BAHASA ACEH

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohammad Rizqi

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available The study aims to describe the structure and the constituents of phrases, to describe the types of phrases, to explain the sense relation of the phrase constituents, and to illustrate the possibility of the Acehnese phrases to be placed in each syntactic function. This research is a qualitative descriptive research that focuses on phrase study on Acehnese. The written data is taken from primary school books, the spoken data is taken from local news of RRI Banda Aceh and folklore. The results show that there are uniqueness of the constituents which form the coordinative phrase constructions in which they are always related by conjunctions. Numeral phrases which are formed by numeral and noun always use classifier. The structure of noun phrases which is formed of noun and noun is permanent. It means that the position of the modifier is always behind main constituents. The structure of verbal phrases, adjectival phrases, numeral phrases, and pronominal phrases are not permanent. It means that the constituent that become a modifier can be placed before or after the main constituent. The prepositional phrase has a permanent structure.   ABSTRAK Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memerikan struktur dan unsur pembentuk frasa, mendeskripsikan jenis frasa, menjelaskan hubungan makna antarunsur pembentuk frasa, dan menggambarkan kemungkinan frasa dalam bahasa Aceh untuk dapat menduduki setiap fungsi sintaksis. Penelitian ini termasuk dalam penelitian linguistik deskriptif kualitatif dengan memusatkan perhatiannya pada telaah frasa dalam bahasa Aceh. Sumber data tulis dalam penelitian ini berupa buku pelajaran tingkat sekolah dasar, sedangkan data lisan diambil dari berita daerah RRI stasiun Banda Aceh dan data dari cerita rakyat. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa ada keunikan dari unsur-unsur yang membentuk konstruksi frasa koordinatif, yaitu selalu dihubungkan oleh konjungsi. Frasa numeralia yang terbentuk atas konstituen numeralia dan nomina selalu

  8. Development and evaluation of fixed phrase registration function for disaster response management system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Suzuki, Takeyasu; Tsuda, Teppei

    2012-01-01

    It is important that three elements such as what happened, how it will advance, and how people should act are intelligibly transferred in disaster information from administrative organs to local residents. In this paper, authors developed the fixed phrase registration function and it was implemented in disaster response management system authors have previously developed. The system was applied to disaster response exercise in Mitsuke City, Niigata prefecture and the function was highly evaluated by employees of Mitsuke City. (author)

  9. Memory-Based Shallow Parsing

    OpenAIRE

    Sang, Erik F. Tjong Kim

    2002-01-01

    We present memory-based learning approaches to shallow parsing and apply these to five tasks: base noun phrase identification, arbitrary base phrase recognition, clause detection, noun phrase parsing and full parsing. We use feature selection techniques and system combination methods for improving the performance of the memory-based learner. Our approach is evaluated on standard data sets and the results are compared with that of other systems. This reveals that our approach works well for ba...

  10. Subsequent to suppression: Downstream comprehension consequences of noun/verb ambiguity in natural reading

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stites, Mallory C.; Federmeier, Kara D.

    2015-01-01

    We used eye-tracking to investigate the downstream processing consequences of encountering noun/verb (NV) homographs (i.e., park) in semantically neutral but syntactically constraining contexts. Target words were followed by a prepositional phrase containing a noun that was plausible for only one meaning of the homograph. Replicating previous work, we found increased first fixation durations on NV homographs compared to unambiguous words, which persisted into the next sentence region. At the downstream noun, we found plausibility effects following ambiguous words that were correlated with the size of a reader's first fixation effect, suggesting that this effect reflects the recruitment of processing resources necessary to suppress the homograph's context-inappropriate meaning. Using these same stimuli, Lee and Federmeier (2012) found a sustained frontal negativity to the NV homographs, and, on the downstream noun, found a plausibility effect that was also positively correlated with the size of a reader's ambiguity effect. Together, these findings suggest that when only syntactic constraints are available, meaning selection recruits inhibitory mechanisms that can be measured in both first fixation slowdown and ERP ambiguity effects. PMID:25961358

  11. Response to Biber, Gray, and Poonpon (2011)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, WeiWei

    2013-01-01

    The recent "TESOL Quarterly" article by Biber, Gray, and Poonpon (2011) raises important considerations with respect to the use of syntactic complexity (SC) measures in second language (L2) studies. The article draws the field's attention to one particular measure--complexity of noun phrases (NP) (i.e., noun phrases with modifiers, such as…

  12. Frasa Bahasa Bali Kuna dan Perkembangannya ke Bahasa Bali Modern

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ni Luh Sutjiati Beratha

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract The Balinese language is the language is only known fromBalinese inscriptions dated to 882 – 1050 AD, then evolvedto Modern Balinese. This article discusses about Old Balinesephrases and their development to Modern Balinese,i.e. by explaining the structure or word order of the phrases.The Old and Modern Balinese phrases will be analysedby applying a theory of structural linguistic typologywhich is developed by Greenberg, while the analysis of theinternal structure of the phrases uses sub-theory of Governmentand Binding (GB which developed by Chomskyand his followers, particularly X-bar theory. The claim ofthis theory is a phrase always has a head from the samecategory of a phrase as a whole, and this means that thestructure of phrases is always endocentric. Formation roleof a phrase is projected from lexicon and in this article theanalysis will be presented using a tree diagram.It appears that the Old Balinese and Modern Balinesephrases are endocentric, consisted of noun phrases, verbphrases, adjective phrases, and prepositional phrases whichtheir head are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions.It is interesting to note that in its development (from OldBalinese to Modern Balinese, there are innovations orsome changes have taken place from Old Balinese phrasesto Modern Balinese phrases. Innovations in word orderchange consisted of reversal of word order, simplificationor reduction, and elaboration. These innovations areinternal and regular.

  13. Index der Titelbestandteile zu Dilwyn Jones: An Index of Ancient Egyptian Titles, Epithets and Phrases of the Old Kingdom

    OpenAIRE

    Schweitzer, Simon D.

    2006-01-01

    Vorliegender Index erschließt die nicht-ersten Titelbestandteile der in Dilwyn Jones: An index of ancient Egyptian titles, epithets and phrases of the Old Kingdom. Oxford : Archaeopress, 2000, verzettelten Titel und Epitheta des Alten Reiches.

  14. Prepositional phrases with verba dicendi from Dalmatin's translation of the Bible (1584 in relation to foreign language translations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Irena Orel

    2006-12-01

    Full Text Available In a diachronic perspective from the 16th century to the present, this article inves­ tigates translated interlinguistic agreement and difference in the use of the temporally marked Slovenian prepositional phrases that appeared in the semantic group of verba dicendi in the first two books of the Old Testament and the New Testament of the old­ est Slovenian translation of the Bible, from 1584, and that were replaced in the mod­ em literary language in the 19th century by the introduction of prepositionless or other prepositional patterns. A comparison is made on the basis of Internet publications of parallel sections of six foreign language translations (Latin, German, two English [17th century and modem], French and Russian, and the extent to which these preposition­ al phrases are covered by older or modem literary Slovenian syntactic patterns is deter­ mined .

  15. NOUN PHRASES (NPs-MOVEMENT IN SASAK

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lalu Erwan Husnan

    2017-11-01

    Moreover, passive verbs in Sasak can be followed by preposition of locative or not depend on the notion of the verbs used. It has the same analogy with unaccusativity verbs. They lack of internal argument and cannot assign accusative case.

  16. Conceptual plural information is used to guide early parsing decisions: Evidence from garden-path sentences with reciprocal verbs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Patson, Nikole D; Ferreira, Fernanda

    2009-05-01

    In three eyetracking studies, we investigated the role of conceptual plurality in initial parsing decisions in temporarily ambiguous sentences with reciprocal verbs (e.g., While the lovers kissed the baby played alone). We varied the subject of the first clause using three types of plural noun phrases: conjoined noun phrases (the bride and the groom), plural definite descriptions (the lovers), and numerically quantified noun phrases (the two lovers). We found no evidence for garden-path effects when the subject was conjoined (Ferreira & McClure, 1997), but traditional garden-path effects were found with the other plural noun phrases. In addition, we tested plural anaphors that had a plural antecedent present in the discourse. We found that when the antecedent was conjoined, garden-path effects were absent compared to cases in which the antecedent was a plural definite description. Our results indicate that the parser is sensitive to the conceptual representation of a plural constituent. In particular, it appears that a Complex Reference Object (Moxey et al., 2004) automatically activates a reciprocal reading of a reciprocal verb.

  17. Electrocorticographic language mapping with a listening task consisting of alternating speech and music phrases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mooij, Anne H; Huiskamp, Geertjan J M; Gosselaar, Peter H; Ferrier, Cyrille H

    2016-02-01

    Electrocorticographic (ECoG) mapping of high gamma activity induced by language tasks has been proposed as a more patient friendly alternative for electrocortical stimulation mapping (ESM), the gold standard in pre-surgical language mapping of epilepsy patients. However, ECoG mapping often reveals more language areas than considered critical with ESM. We investigated if critical language areas can be identified with a listening task consisting of speech and music phrases. Nine patients with implanted subdural grid electrodes listened to an audio fragment in which music and speech alternated. We analysed ECoG power in the 65-95 Hz band and obtained task-related activity patterns in electrodes over language areas. We compared the spatial distribution of sites that discriminated between listening to speech and music to ESM results using sensitivity and specificity calculations. Our listening task of alternating speech and music phrases had a low sensitivity (0.32) but a high specificity (0.95). The high specificity indicates that this test does indeed point to areas that are critical to language processing. Our test cannot replace ESM, but this short and simple task can give a reliable indication where to find critical language areas, better than ECoG mapping using language tasks alone. Copyright © 2015 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Case Grammar in Philippine Languages. Preliminary Draft.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stevens, Alan M.

    This paper presents evidence from Philippine languages which suggests a number of modifications in the theory of case grammar. Philippine languages and adjacent related languages mark the case relationship between the verb and one noun phrase in the sentence by a particle on the noun phrase and an affix on the verb, a phenomenon which in recent…

  19. 77 FR 6138 - Draft Policy on Interpretation of the Phrase "Significant Portion of Its Range" in the Endangered...

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-02-07

    ... Portion of Its Range'' in the Endangered Species Act's Definitions of ``Endangered Species'' and... interpreting the phrase ``significant portion of its range'' in the Endangered Species Act's (Act's...'' in the Act's definitions of ``endangered species'' and ``threatened species'' will consider...

  20. The first Russian «Encyclopedic Dictionary of Biblical Phrases»: its objectives and ways of their achievement

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Кира Николаевна Дубровина

    2010-12-01

    Full Text Available The article deals with the aims and objectives of «Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Biblical Phrases» and establishes the base of its acute necessity. The article considers the ways of fulfilling these special tasks and cites examples of similarities and peculiarities of modern Russian biblical expressions and their prototypes found in the Bible.

  1. Working memory and planning during sentence production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martin, Randi C; Yan, Hao; Schnur, Tatiana T

    2014-10-01

    Speakers retrieve conceptual, syntactic and lexical information in advance of articulation during sentence production. What type of working memory (WM) store is used to hold the planned information before speaking? To address this question, we measured onset latencies when subjects produced sentences that began with either a complex or a simple initial noun phrase, while holding semantic, phonological or spatial information in WM. Although we found that subjects had longer onset latencies for sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase, showing a phrasal scope of planning, the magnitude of this complexity effect was not affected by any type of WM load. However, subjects made more syntactic errors (but not lexical errors) for sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase, suggesting that advance planning for these phrases occurs at a syntactic rather than lexical-semantic level, which may account for the lack of effect with various types of WM load in the current study. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. The Interface of Syntax with Pragmatics and Prosody in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Terzi, Arhonto; Marinis, Theodoros; Francis, Kostantinos

    2016-08-01

    In order to study problems of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with morphosyntax, we investigated twenty high-functioning Greek-speaking children (mean age: 6;11) and twenty age- and language-matched typically developing children on environments that allow or forbid object clitics or their corresponding noun phrase. Children with ASD fell behind typically developing children in comprehending and producing simple clitics and producing noun phrases in focus structures. The two groups performed similarly in comprehending and producing clitics in clitic left dislocation and in producing noun phrases in non-focus structures. We argue that children with ASD have difficulties at the interface of (morpho)syntax with pragmatics and prosody, namely, distinguishing a discourse prominent element, and considering intonation relevant for a particular interpretation that excludes clitics.

  3. The Agreement between Conjoined Subjects and Predicate: Croatian Church Slavonic Corpus Analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ana Kovačević

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available The abundance of grammatical categories in Slavonic and their overlap are particularly evident in the agreement between conjoined subjects and predicate. When they are accompanied by agreement conditions, such as word order and animacy in Slavic languages, different agreement patterns, dependent also on concrete context and speaker, are to be expected. In this paper the study of the agreement between conjoined subjects and predicate is based on an analysis of the medieval Glagolitic Croatian Church Slavonic corpus. Number, gender, and person are grammatical categories, i. e., features of conjoined noun phrases and predicate agreement. The analysis includes noun phrases conjoined by coordinating and some non-coordinating conjunctions as well as noun phrases conjoined by a gradational ‛not only [. . .] but also' structure. Comitative and reciprocal noun phrases are included as well. The research in the given corpus shows that the conjoined noun phrases with predicate agreement can be syntactic (predicate showing agreement with one conjunct or semantic (predicate showing agreement with all conjuncts. Syntactic agreement appears as the so-called contact agreement (predicate showing agreement with the closest conjunct and as distant agreement (predicate showing agreement with the most distant conjunct. Semantic agreement is applied mostly in accordance with G. G. Corbett's resolution rules for Slavic languages. However, the analysis shows that some resolution rules for number should be revised due to dual number. Although absent from the majority of contemporary Slavic languages, it is precisely in historical Slavic idioms that dual number reveals its identity, highlighted in agreement study as well.

  4. Survival Words and Phrases for Professionals Who Work with Students Who Are Bilingual and Severely/Multiply Handicapped, and with Their Families.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Silberman, Rosanne K.; Correa, Vivian I.

    1989-01-01

    The paper offers a rationale for bilingual special education, provides suggestions for developing bilingual lessons for severely/multiply handicapped students, and includes a list of Spanish words and phrases used most frequently by students and their parents. (JDD)

  5. Proactive interference effects on sentence production

    OpenAIRE

    FERREIRA, VICTOR S.; FIRATO, CARLA E.

    2002-01-01

    Proactive interference refers to recall difficulties caused by prior similar memory-related processing. Information-processing approaches to sentence production predict that retrievability affects sentence form: Speakers may word sentences so that material that is difficult to retrieve is spoken later. In this experiment, speakers produced sentence structures that could include an optional that, thereby delaying the mention of a subsequent noun phrase. This subsequent noun phrase was either (...

  6. On the co-variation between form and function of adnominal possessive modifiers in Dutch and English

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    2009-01-01

    in the noun phrase (section 3); a tentative explanation is given in section 4. The more general point this paper wants to make is that functional modifier categories like CLASSIFYING MODIFIER or QUALIFYING MODIFIER can be characterized in grammatical terms and, furthermore, that important grammatical...... that the remarkable variation in the grammatical properties of this possessive construction directly correlates with the kind of modifier function it has in the noun phrase. It is first shown that lexical possessive modifiers with van 'of' ("adnominal possessives" for short) are used to express most of the modifier...... functions recognized in a semantic, five-layered model of the noun phrase (section 2). I will then argue that the values for certain grammatical parameters (here subsumed under the labels MODIFICATION, PREDICATION, REFERENCE) correlate with the kind of modifier function the adnominal possessive has...

  7. Structural Packaging in the Input to Language Learning: Contributions of Prosodic and Morphological Marking of Phrases to the Acquisition of Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morgan, James L.; And Others

    1987-01-01

    The role of cues in language acquisition was examined in three experiments. When the cue marked the phrase structure of sentences, adult subjects successfully learned syntax. When input was identical but lacked that cue, subjects failed to learn significant portions of syntax. (Author/GDC)

  8. Noun phrases: with or without an article

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sonia Montero Gálvez

    2014-12-01

    The proposed approaches and suggestions are in line with those proposed in a doctoral thesis that is currently in progress. Therefore, we should take into account that both this didactical proposal as well as the doctoral thesis on which it is based are not legitimised yet by the academic and scientific community. However, we are venturing to share this work because it may be helpful in the teaching and learning of Spanish as a Second Language.

  9. Effects of testing on subsequent re-encoding and long-term forgetting of action-relevant materials: On the influence of recall type.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kubik, Veit; Nilsson, Lars-Göran; Olofsson, Jonas K; Jönsson, Fredrik U

    2015-10-01

    Testing one's memory of previously studied information reduces the rate of forgetting, compared to restudy. However, little is known about how this direct testing effect applies to action phrases (e.g., "wash the car") - a learning material relevant to everyday memory. As action phrases consist of two different components, a verb (e.g., "wash") and a noun (e.g., "car"), testing can either be implemented as noun-cued recall of verbs or verb-cued recall of nouns, which may differently affect later memory performance. In the present study, we investigated the effect of testing for these two recall types, using verbally encoded action phrases as learning materials. Results showed that repeated study-test practice, compared to repeated study-restudy practice, decreased the forgetting rate across 1 week to a similar degree for both noun-cued and verb-cued recall types. However, noun-cued recall of verbs initiated more new subsequent learning during the first restudy, compared to verb-cued recall of nouns. The study provides evidence that testing has benefits on both subsequent restudy and long-term retention of action-relevant materials, but that these benefits are differently expressed with testing via noun-cued versus verb-cued recall. © 2015 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  10. Believing in God the Father: Interpreting a phrase from the Apostle's Creed

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marcel Sarot

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available In our days, the creedal phrase 'I believe in God the Father almighty' is interpreted primarilyalong Trinitarian lines: It is applied to God as the Father of Jesus Christ. Here I argue that ithas a dual background: in Jesus' prayer practice, in which He consistently addressed God as'Father', and in the Hellenistic habit of referring to the Creator as 'Father'. I discuss Jesus' useof the term 'Father' against its Old Testament background, and argue that it primarily pointsto the intimacy of Jesus' relationship with His father. Against the Hellenistic background,however, the metaphor 'Father' means 'he who brings forth effortlessly'. Finally, I discusssome gender issues connected with the use of the term 'Father' for God.

  11. Développement de la mémoire de travail et traitement des phrases complexes : Quelle relation ?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Frauenfelder Ulrich

    2012-07-01

    Full Text Available La complexité syntaxique d'une phrase en langage oral peut se caractériser par le nombre et la nature des opérations syntaxiques nécessaires à son élaboration, et notamment par la profondeur de son enchâssement. Cette complexité influence l'âge d'acquisition des différentes structures syntaxiques, les énoncés les plus complexes étant maîtrisés plus tardivement par l'enfant. Certains auteurs attribuent cette acquisition de la syntaxe complexe à des contraintes développementales externes au système linguistique lui-même et notamment à des limitations dans les capacités de mémoire de travail (Jakubowicz, 2007. Ainsi, le traitement d'une phrase complexe engendrerait un coût cognitif important et constituerait une surcharge pour des capacités de mémoire de travail davantage limitées chez le jeune enfant. La maturation normale de ce système mnémonique permettrait ensuite à l'enfant de comprendre et de produire des énoncés de plus en plus complexes. La présente recherche a pour objectif d'éclaircir les liens entre le développement de la mémoire de travail et le traitement des phrases complexes chez l'enfant tout-venant âgé de 5 à 12 ans. Suivant le modèle de la mémoire de travail de Baddeley & Hitch (1986 et les travaux de Barrouillet & Camos (2001, 2007, nous avons appréhendé les compétences de la boucle phonologique via des épreuves d'empans simples (empan direct de chiffres, répétition de mots et de pseudo-mots et la mémoire de travail verbale via des tâches d'empans complexes (empan indirect de chiffres, counting span et running span. Les habiletés syntaxiques des enfants ont été évaluées en compréhension et en répétition d'énoncés complexes. Une analyse d'échantillons de langage spontané a enfin permis de récolter les données liées à l'utilisation de la syntaxe complexe en contexte écologique (LME, taux de subordination et taux d'enchâssement profond. Les

  12. Portmanteau constructions, phrase structure and linearization

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brian Hok-Shing Chan

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available In bilingual code-switching which involves language-pairs with contrasting head-complement orders (i.e. head-initial vs head-final, a head may be lexicalized from both languages with its complement sandwiched in the middle. These so-called portmanteau sentences (Nishimura, 1985, 1986; Sankoff, Poplack, and Vanniarajan, 1990, etc. have been attested for decades, but they had never received a systematic, formal analysis in terms of current syntactic theory before a few recent attempts (Hicks, 2010, 2012. Notwithstanding this lack of attention, these structures are in fact highly relevant to theories of linearization and phrase structure. More specifically, they challenge binary-branching (Kayne, 1994, 2004, 2005 as well as the Antisymmetry hypothesis (ibid.. Not explained by current grammatical models of code-switching, including the Equivalence Constraint (Poplack, 1980, the Matrix Language Frame Model (Myers-Scotton, 1993, 2002, etc., and the Bilingual Speech Model (Muysken, 2000, 2013, the portmanteau construction indeed looks uncommon or abnormal, defying any systematic account. However, the recurrence of these structures in various datasets and constraints on them do call for an explanation. This paper suggests an account which lies with syntax and also with the psycholinguistics of bilingualism. Assuming that linearization is a process at the Sensori-Motor (SM interface (Chomsky, 2005; 2013, this paper sees that word order is not fixed in a syntactic tree but it is set in the production process, and much information of word order rests in the processor, for instance, outputting a head before its complement (i.e. head-initial word order or the reverse (i.e. head-final word order. As for the portmanteau construction, it is the output of bilingual speakers co-activating two sets of head-complement orders which summon the phonetic forms of the same word in both languages. Under this proposal, the underlying structure of a portmanteau

  13. Portmanteau Constructions, Phrase Structure, and Linearization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chan, Brian Hok-Shing

    2015-01-01

    In bilingual code-switching which involves language-pairs with contrasting head-complement orders (i.e., head-initial vs. head-final), a head may be lexicalized from both languages with its complement sandwiched in the middle. These so-called "portmanteau" sentences (Nishimura, 1985, 1986; Sankoff et al., 1990, etc.) have been attested for decades, but they had never received a systematic, formal analysis in terms of current syntactic theory before a few recent attempts (Hicks, 2010, 2012). Notwithstanding this lack of attention, these structures are in fact highly relevant to theories of linearization and phrase structure. More specifically, they challenge binary-branching (Kayne, 1994, 2004, 2005) as well as the Antisymmetry hypothesis (ibid.). Not explained by current grammatical models of code-switching, including the Equivalence Constraint (Poplack, 1980), the Matrix Language Frame Model (Myers-Scotton, 1993, 2002, etc.), and the Bilingual Speech Model (Muysken, 2000, 2013), the portmanteau construction indeed looks uncommon or abnormal, defying any systematic account. However, the recurrence of these structures in various datasets and constraints on them do call for an explanation. This paper suggests an account which lies with syntax and also with the psycholinguistics of bilingualism. Assuming that linearization is a process at the Sensori-Motor (SM) interface (Chomsky, 2005, 2013), this paper sees that word order is not fixed in a syntactic tree but it is set in the production process, and much information of word order rests in the processor, for instance, outputting a head before its complement (i.e., head-initial word order) or the reverse (i.e., head-final word order). As for the portmanteau construction, it is the output of bilingual speakers co-activating two sets of head-complement orders which summon the phonetic forms of the same word in both languages. Under this proposal, the underlying structure of a portmanteau construction is as simple as an

  14. GENERATIVE WORDS OF ALBANIAN AND ENGLISH SENTENCE

    OpenAIRE

    Shkelqim Millaku

    2017-01-01

    This studies or the aim of the research is to deals the generative "morphems, words or "simple or compound[1]" sentence. The full congrast of Albanian and English language in this phenomena of generative is in morphology and in syntactic structure. This accepts of studies will comparted, contrasted and generated between two languages. This studies deals with noun (noun phrase), verb (verb phrase) of syntactic structure between Albanian and English language. In both of languages, most linguis...

  15. A typology of split conjunction

    OpenAIRE

    Palancar , Enrique L.

    2012-01-01

    International audience; In this paper, I study instances of noun phrase conjunction where the conjoined noun phrase is subject and the referents of the conjuncts are human, of the type 'John and Mary are having lunch'. More specifically, I study different, possible splits that occur in such structures, which involve the disruption of the phrasal continuity of the conjuncts, resulting in structures roughly equivalent to 'they are having lunch with Mary' and 'John are having lunch with Mary'. I...

  16. Anthropocentric language theory and Serbian case systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Topolinjska Zuzana

    2002-01-01

    Full Text Available The author understands case as a relationship of syntactic dependence between a subordinated noun phrase and the governing syntactic construction (predicative expression and/or another noun phrase. The above definition construes case as a universal category characteristics of all the languages sharing the nomen vs verbum opposition. Particular cases are conceived as primarily semantically motivated. The two relevant semantic parameters are /+/ -human / (or /+/ -animated/ and /+/ -localized/, i. e. - in other words - the so-called hierarchy of animateness and the spatial location of the objects that the corresponding noun phrases refer to. N and D are being characterized as /+ hum/, A and I as /-hum/ and L as belonging to another semantic paradigm is defined simply as /+ loc/. Results of the analyses of morphological syncretism's and of syntactic exponents of the NPs-dependence found in Serbian case systems support the above tentative interpretation of the case as a (semantic and syntactic category.

  17. The Recipe for Success: Syntactic Features of "la chronique gastronomique."

    Science.gov (United States)

    Engel, Dulcie M.

    1997-01-01

    Analyzes the syntactic structure of noun phrases and verb phrases in recipes and cookery articles in the French press and argues that the complexity of writing about cooking parallels the complexity of the cooking process itself, demonstrating how syntax can reflect function and meaning in a restricted text-type. (Author/MSE)

  18. The beneficial effect of a speaker's gestures on the listener's memory for action phrases: The pivotal role of the listener's premotor cortex.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ianì, Francesco; Burin, Dalila; Salatino, Adriana; Pia, Lorenzo; Ricci, Raffaella; Bucciarelli, Monica

    2018-04-10

    Memory for action phrases improves in the listeners when the speaker accompanies them with gestures compared to when the speaker stays still. Since behavioral studies revealed a pivotal role of the listeners' motor system, we aimed to disentangle the role of primary motor and premotor cortices. Participants had to recall phrases uttered by a speaker in two conditions: in the gesture condition, the speaker performed gestures congruent with the action; in the no-gesture condition, the speaker stayed still. In Experiment 1, half of the participants underwent inhibitory rTMS over the hand/arm region of the left premotor cortex (PMC) and the other half over the hand/arm region of the left primary motor cortex (M1). The enactment effect disappeared only following rTMS over PMC. In Experiment 2, we detected the usual enactment effect after rTMS over vertex, thereby excluding possible nonspecific rTMS effects. These findings suggest that the information encoded in the premotor cortex is a crucial part of the memory trace. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  19. "Oniryczny" słownik Bolesława Leśmiana

    OpenAIRE

    Pomykała, Joanna

    2006-01-01

    The aim of my article is to describe the word "dream" and its meanings in the Leśmian's poetry. The phrase itself is one of the most significant words which adds to Leśmian's works. In the first part I have done analyzis of grammatical categories of the word "dream" and I have distinguished three of them - verbal, adjectival and noun. Besides, I have analized the phrase-in question's word-formation. The conclusion I have drawn is that the nouns have been transformed with low fr...

  20. Improving patients' understanding of terms and phrases commonly used in self-reported measures of sexual function.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alexander, Angel M; Flynn, Kathryn E; Hahn, Elizabeth A; Jeffery, Diana D; Keefe, Francis J; Reeve, Bryce B; Schultz, Wesley; Reese, Jennifer Barsky; Shelby, Rebecca A; Weinfurt, Kevin P

    2014-08-01

    There is a significant gap in research regarding the readability and comprehension of existing sexual function measures. Patient-reported outcome measures may use terms not well understood by respondents with low literacy. This study aims to test comprehension of words and phrases typically used in sexual function measures to improve validity for all individuals, including those with low literacy. We recruited 20 men and 28 women for cognitive interviews on version 2.0 of the Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System(®) (PROMIS(®) ) Sexual Function and Satisfaction measures. We assessed participants' reading level using the word reading subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test. Sixteen participants were classified as having low literacy. In the first round of cognitive interviews, each survey item was reviewed by five or more people, at least two of whom had lower than a ninth-grade reading level (low literacy). Patient feedback was incorporated into a revised version of the items. In the second round of interviews, an additional three or more people (at least one with low literacy) reviewed each revised item. Participants with low literacy had difficulty comprehending terms such as aroused, orgasm, erection, ejaculation, incontinence, and vaginal penetration. Women across a range of literacy levels had difficulty with clinical terms like labia and clitoris. We modified unclear terms to include parenthetical descriptors or slang equivalents, which generally improved comprehension. Common words and phrases used across measures of self-reported sexual function are not universally understood. Researchers should appreciate these misunderstandings as a potential source of error in studies using self-reported measures of sexual function. This study also provides evidence for the importance of including individuals with low literacy in cognitive pretesting during the measure development. © 2014 International Society for Sexual Medicine.

  1. Effective Web and Desktop Retrieval with Enhanced Semantic Spaces

    Science.gov (United States)

    Daoud, Amjad M.

    We describe the design and implementation of the NETBOOK prototype system for collecting, structuring and efficiently creating semantic vectors for concepts, noun phrases, and documents from a corpus of free full text ebooks available on the World Wide Web. Automatic generation of concept maps from correlated index terms and extracted noun phrases are used to build a powerful conceptual index of individual pages. To ensure scalabilty of our system, dimension reduction is performed using Random Projection [13]. Furthermore, we present a complete evaluation of the relative effectiveness of the NETBOOK system versus the Google Desktop [8].

  2. Quelles images de la phrase dans les écrits d'élèves de fin d'école primaire française ? Description linguistique et réponses didactiques aux difficultés des élèves

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rossi-Gensane Nathalie

    2012-07-01

    Full Text Available Les écrits d'élèves constituent un corpus complexe à décrire pour le chercheur. Les productions ne sont pas homogènes d'un élève à un autre et l'enseignant est souvent démuni devant une telle diversité. Notre objectif est d'interroger la syntaxe écrite d'élèves de fin d'école primaire, en particulier sur le plan de la segmentation. Nous rappelons tout d'abord que, dans la grammaire scolaire, il est principalement fait référence à une phrase « graphique », pourtant critiquée, voire rejetée, par de nombreux linguistes. Nous proposons par la suite de recourir à une phrase que nous dénommons « syntaxique » (définie dans Feuillard (1989 et nous nous efforçons de montrer que la phrase « syntaxique » est une unité opératoire possible pour rendre compte des compétences effectives des élèves. En effet, en mesure de segmenter des productions écrites non normées, elle permet notamment de dissocier la segmentation elle-même et les effets de la segmentation que sont les signes de ponctuation et/ou les connecteurs. Les textes d'élèves observés sont décrits et analysés grâce, d'une part, au découpage en phrases « syntaxiques » et, d'autre part, à la mise en regard des phrases « syntaxiques » et des phrases « graphiques ». La segmentation est ensuite ramenée à la question du passage à l'écrit, examinée d'un côté à travers l'oralité, dont les textes, produits par des élèves dotés d'un « savoir-faire [d'abord] oral » (Béguelin, 2000, comportent des traces, mais aussi d'un autre côté à travers la brièveté. En effet, les productions d'écrits scolairement valorisées, autrement dit les productions vues comme marquant un passage à l'écrit réussi, semblent se caractériser par un moins grand écart entre le nombre de phrases « syntaxiques » et le nombre de phrases « graphiques ». Nous concluons notre propos en adoptant le point de vue

  3. Focus, accent, and argument structure: effects on language comprehension.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Birch, S; Clifton, C

    1995-01-01

    Four experiments investigated the effect of syntactic argument structure on the evaluation and comprehension of utterances with different patterns of pitch accents. Linguistic analyses of the relation between focus and prosody note that it is possible for certain accented constituents within a broadly focused phrase to project focus to the entire phrase. We manipulated focus requirements and accent in recorded question-answer pairs and asked listeners to make linguistic judgments of prosodic appropriateness (Experiments 1 and 3) or to make judgments based on meaningful comprehension (Experiments 2 and 4). Naive judgments of prosodic appropriateness were generally consistent with the linguistic analyses, showing preferences for utterances in which contextually new noun phrases received accent and old noun phrases did not, but suggested that an accented new argument NP was not fully effective in projecting broad focus to the entire VP. However, the comprehension experiments did demonstrate that comprehension of a sentence with broad VP focus was as efficient when only a lexical argument NP received accent as when both NP and verb received accent. Such focus projection did not occur when the argument NP was an "independent quantifier" such as nobody or everything. The results extend existing demonstrations that the ease of understanding spoken discourse depends on appropriate intonational marking of focus to cases where certain structurally-defined words can project focus-marking to an entire phrase.

  4. ONTOGRABBING: Extracting Information from Texts Using Generative Ontologies

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nilsson, Jørgen Fischer; Szymczak, Bartlomiej Antoni; Jensen, P.A.

    2009-01-01

    We describe principles for extracting information from texts using a so-called generative ontology in combination with syntactic analysis. Generative ontologies are introduced as semantic domains for natural language phrases. Generative ontologies extend ordinary finite ontologies with rules...... for producing recursively shaped terms representing the ontological content (ontological semantics) of NL noun phrases and other phrases. We focus here on achieving a robust, often only partial, ontology-driven parsing of and ascription of semantics to a sentence in the text corpus. The aim of the ontological...... analysis is primarily to identify paraphrases, thereby achieving a search functionality beyond mere keyword search with synsets. We further envisage use of the generative ontology as a phrase-based rather than word-based browser into text corpora....

  5. Keeping it simple: Studying grammatical encoding with lexically-reduced item sets

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alma eVeenstra

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Compared to the large body of work on lexical access, little research has been done on grammatical encoding in language production. An exception is the generation of subject-verb agreement. Here, two key findings have been reported: (1 Speakers make more agreement errors when the head and local noun of a phrase mismatch in number than when they match (e.g., the key to the cabinet(s; and (2 this attraction effect is asymmetric, with stronger attraction for singular than for plural head nouns. Although these findings are robust, the cognitive processes leading to agreement errors and their significance for the generation of correct agreement are not fully understood. We propose that future studies of agreement, and grammatical encoding in general, may benefit from using paradigms that tightly control the variability of the lexical content of the material.We report two experiments illustrating this approach. In both of them, the experimental items featured combinations of four nouns, four color adjectives, and two prepositions. In Experiment 1, native speakers of Dutch described pictures in sentences such as the circle next to the stars is blue. In Experiment 2, they carried out a forced-choice task, where they read subject noun phrases (e.g., the circle next to the stars and selected the correct verb-phrase (is blue or are blue with a button press. Both experiments showed an attraction effect, with more errors after subject phrases with mismatching, compared to matching head and local nouns. This effect was stronger for singular than plural heads, replicating the attraction asymmetry. In contrast, the response times recorded in Experiment 2 showed similar attraction effects for singular and plural head nouns. These results demonstrate that critical agreement phenomena can be elicited reliably in lexically-reduced contexts. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings and the potential and limitations of studies using lexically simple

  6. Dealing with phraseology in business dictionaries: focus on dictionary functions – not phrases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leroyer, Patrick

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available The language of written business communication is characterised by the extensive use of phraseology, not only in terms of collocations and idiomatic expressions, but also of standard phrases in prototypical business genres. In any case, the phraseological information should be included in business dictionaries (in the following referred to as BDs in accordance with the planned dictionary functions. Hence, the selection and presentation of the phraseological information should be decided by the lexicographer on the basis of the user needs alone and not on the recommendations of the phraseological literature about lexicographical practice. In this paper, I will firstly explain why lexicography and phraseology, although closely associated in a large number of studies, are quite different disciplines, and how their shared interest for dictionary practice in general is based on radically different views. I will then discuss the dictionary functions of BDs and focus on a number of concepts featuring extensive phraseological solutions to show and argue that dealing with phraseology in BDs should always keep focus on dictionary functions.

  7. Lexical Planning in Sentence Production Is Highly Incremental: Evidence from ERPs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Li-Ming; Yang, Yu-Fang

    2016-01-01

    The scope of lexical planning, which means how far ahead speakers plan lexically before they start producing an utterance, is an important issue for research into speech production, but remains highly controversial. The present research investigated this issue using the semantic blocking effect, which refers to the widely observed effects that participants take longer to say aloud the names of items in pictures when the pictures in a block of trials in an experiment depict items that belong to the same semantic category than different categories. As this effect is often interpreted as a reflection of difficulty in lexical selection, the current study took the semantic blocking effect and its associated pattern of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as a proxy to test whether lexical planning during sentence production extends beyond the first noun when a subject noun-phrase includes two nouns, such as "The chair and the boat are both red" and "The chair above the boat is red". The results showed a semantic blocking effect both in onset latencies and in ERPs during the utterance of the first noun of these complex noun-phrases but not for the second noun. The indication, therefore, is that the lexical planning scope does not encompass this second noun-phrase. Indeed, the present findings are in line with accounts that propose radically incremental lexical planning, in which speakers plan ahead only one word at a time. This study also provides a highly novel example of using ERPs to examine the production of long utterances, and it is hoped the present demonstration of the effectiveness of this approach inspires further application of ERP techniques in this area of research.

  8. The Mental Representation of Polysemy across Word Classes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anastasiya Lopukhina

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Experimental studies on polysemy have come to contradictory conclusions on whether words with multiple senses are stored as separate or shared mental representations. The present study examined the semantic relatedness and semantic similarity of literal and non-literal (metonymic and metaphorical senses of three word classes: nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Two methods were used: a psycholinguistic experiment and a distributional analysis of corpus data. In the experiment, participants were presented with 6–12 short phrases containing a polysemous word in literal, metonymic, or metaphorical senses and were asked to classify them so that phrases with the same perceived sense were grouped together. To investigate the impact of professional background on their decisions, participants were controlled for linguistic vs. non-linguistic education. For nouns and verbs, all participants preferred to group together phrases with literal and metonymic senses, but not any other pairs of senses. For adjectives, two pairs of senses were often grouped together: literal with metonymic, and metonymic with metaphorical. Participants with a linguistic background were more accurate than participants with non-linguistic backgrounds, although both groups shared principal patterns of sense classification. For the distributional analysis of corpus data, we used a semantic vector approach to quantify the similarity of phrases with literal, metonymic, and metaphorical senses in the corpora. We found that phrases with literal and metonymic senses had the highest degree of similarity for the three word classes, and that metonymic and metaphorical senses of adjectives had the highest degree of similarity among all word classes. These findings are in line with the experimental results. Overall, the results suggest that the mental representation of a polysemous word depends on its word class. In nouns and verbs, literal and metonymic senses are stored together, while

  9. The Mental Representation of Polysemy across Word Classes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lopukhina, Anastasiya; Laurinavichyute, Anna; Lopukhin, Konstantin; Dragoy, Olga

    2018-01-01

    Experimental studies on polysemy have come to contradictory conclusions on whether words with multiple senses are stored as separate or shared mental representations. The present study examined the semantic relatedness and semantic similarity of literal and non-literal (metonymic and metaphorical) senses of three word classes: nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Two methods were used: a psycholinguistic experiment and a distributional analysis of corpus data. In the experiment, participants were presented with 6–12 short phrases containing a polysemous word in literal, metonymic, or metaphorical senses and were asked to classify them so that phrases with the same perceived sense were grouped together. To investigate the impact of professional background on their decisions, participants were controlled for linguistic vs. non-linguistic education. For nouns and verbs, all participants preferred to group together phrases with literal and metonymic senses, but not any other pairs of senses. For adjectives, two pairs of senses were often grouped together: literal with metonymic, and metonymic with metaphorical. Participants with a linguistic background were more accurate than participants with non-linguistic backgrounds, although both groups shared principal patterns of sense classification. For the distributional analysis of corpus data, we used a semantic vector approach to quantify the similarity of phrases with literal, metonymic, and metaphorical senses in the corpora. We found that phrases with literal and metonymic senses had the highest degree of similarity for the three word classes, and that metonymic and metaphorical senses of adjectives had the highest degree of similarity among all word classes. These findings are in line with the experimental results. Overall, the results suggest that the mental representation of a polysemous word depends on its word class. In nouns and verbs, literal and metonymic senses are stored together, while metaphorical senses are

  10. The Mental Representation of Polysemy across Word Classes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lopukhina, Anastasiya; Laurinavichyute, Anna; Lopukhin, Konstantin; Dragoy, Olga

    2018-01-01

    Experimental studies on polysemy have come to contradictory conclusions on whether words with multiple senses are stored as separate or shared mental representations. The present study examined the semantic relatedness and semantic similarity of literal and non-literal (metonymic and metaphorical) senses of three word classes: nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Two methods were used: a psycholinguistic experiment and a distributional analysis of corpus data. In the experiment, participants were presented with 6-12 short phrases containing a polysemous word in literal, metonymic, or metaphorical senses and were asked to classify them so that phrases with the same perceived sense were grouped together. To investigate the impact of professional background on their decisions, participants were controlled for linguistic vs. non-linguistic education. For nouns and verbs, all participants preferred to group together phrases with literal and metonymic senses, but not any other pairs of senses. For adjectives, two pairs of senses were often grouped together: literal with metonymic, and metonymic with metaphorical. Participants with a linguistic background were more accurate than participants with non-linguistic backgrounds, although both groups shared principal patterns of sense classification. For the distributional analysis of corpus data, we used a semantic vector approach to quantify the similarity of phrases with literal, metonymic, and metaphorical senses in the corpora. We found that phrases with literal and metonymic senses had the highest degree of similarity for the three word classes, and that metonymic and metaphorical senses of adjectives had the highest degree of similarity among all word classes. These findings are in line with the experimental results. Overall, the results suggest that the mental representation of a polysemous word depends on its word class. In nouns and verbs, literal and metonymic senses are stored together, while metaphorical senses are stored

  11. The interaction of morphological and stereotypical gender information in Russian

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alan eGarnham

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available Previous research, for example in English, French, German, and Spanish, has investigated the interplay between grammatical gender information and stereotype gender information (e.g. that secretaries are usually female, in many cultures, in the interpretation of both singular noun phrases (the secretary and plural nouns phrases, particularly so-called generic masculines – noun that have masculine grammatical gender but that should be able to refer to both groups of men and mixed groups of men and women. Since the studies have been conducted in cultures with broadly similar stereotypes, the effects generally reflect differences in the grammatical systems of the languages. Russian has a more complex grammatical gender system than the languages previously studied, and, unlike those languages frequently presents examples in which grammatical gender is marked on the predicate (in an inflection on the verb. In this study we collected stereotype norms for 160 role names in Russian, providing a useful resource for further work in this language. We also conducted a reading time study examining the interaction of grammatical and stereotype gender information in the interpretation of both Russian singular noun phrases, and plurals that were (potentially generic masculines. Our results show that, although both types of gender information are used, as available, the effects of grammatical marking on the predicate are not as strong as those.

  12. Left cytoarchitectonic BA 44 processes syntactic gender violations in determiner phrases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heim, Stefan; van Ermingen, Muna; Huber, Walter; Amunts, Katrin

    2010-10-01

    Recent neuroimaging studies make contradictory predictions about the involvement of left Brodmann's area (BA) 44 in processing local syntactic violations in determiner phrases (DPs). Some studies suggest a role for BA 44 in detecting local syntactic violations, whereas others attribute this function to the left premotor cortex. Therefore, the present event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated whether left-cytoarchitectonic BA 44 was activated when German DPs involving syntactic gender violations were compared with correct DPs (correct: 'der Baum'-the[masculine] tree[masculine]; violated: 'das Baum'--the[neuter] tree[masculine]). Grammaticality judgements were made for both visual and auditory DPs to be able to generalize the results across modalities. Grammaticality judgements involved, among others, left BA 44 and left BA 6 in the premotor cortex for visual and auditory stimuli. Most importantly, activation in left BA 44 was consistently higher for violated than for correct DPs. This finding was behaviourally corroborated by longer reaction times for violated versus correct DPs. Additional brain regions, showing the same effect, included left premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, right middle and superior frontal cortex, and left cerebellum. Based on earlier findings from the literature, the results indicate the involvement of left BA 44 in processing local syntactic violations when these include morphological features, whereas left premotor cortex seems crucial for the detection of local word category violations. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  13. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORD CLASSES AND PHRASAL CATEGORIES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mevlüt ERDEM

    2010-10-01

    Full Text Available Phrasal categories in traditional studies increase because of the structural and semantic connection between the head and complements. However, the syntactic category of the head identifies the type of a phrasal category. The lexical classes which act as a head are nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and postpositions. Therefore, the phrasal categories are noun phrases, adjectival phrases, adverbial phrases, verb phrases and postpositional phrases. Modern linguistic studies evaluate phrasal categories differently. In modern linguistic studies, the essential part of the sentence is verb phrase. Verb phrase reflects lexical categories as well as grammatical relations (subject, object etc.. The arguments which belong to verb phrase express certain semantic roles. Moreover, according to modern linguistic approach, even one word is enough to constitute a phrasal category Geleneksel çalışmalarda sözcük öbekleri ana ve yardımcı unsurlar arasında kurulan çeşitli anlam ilgisi ve yapısal ilgilerden dolayı sayıca fazlalaşır. Fakat sözcük öbeklerinin türünü başın sentaktik kategorisi belirler. Ana unsur olan sözlüksel türler ad, sıfat, zarf, fiil ve edattır ve öbekler de AÖ, SÖ, ZÖ, FÖ ve EÖ'dür. Modern dilbilimsel çalışmalar öbek yapılarını da farklı değerlendirir. Modern çalışmalarda cümlenin temelini fiil öbeği oluşturur. Fiil öbeği, sözlüksel kategorilerle birlikte cümlenin gramatik ilişkilerini (özne, nesne vb. de yansıtır. Fiil öbeğine ait unsurlar belli anlamsal roller de ifade eder. Modern anlayışa göre bir sözcük tek başına bir öbek kurabilir.

  14. K významu substantiv s převahou plurálových tvarů

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Michalec, Vít; Veselý, Vojtěch

    2016-01-01

    Roč. 77, č. 3 (2016), s. 163-184 ISSN 0037-7031 R&D Projects: GA MK DF13P01OVV011 Keywords : mass noun * plural form of a noun * collective meaning * quantifier * measure phrase Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics Impact factor: 0.625, year: 2016

  15. Planning at the Phonological Level during Sentence Production

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schnur, Tatiana T.; Costa, Albert; Caramazza, Alfonso

    2006-01-01

    In two picture-word interference experiments we examined whether phrase boundaries affected how far in advance speakers plan the sounds of words during sentence production. Participants produced sentences of varying lengths (short determiner + noun + verb or long determiner + adjective + noun + verb) while ignoring phonologically related and…

  16. Introduction (of 'The Noun Phrase in Functional Discourse Grammar')

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    García Velasco, Daniel; Rijkhoff, Jan

    2008-01-01

    ).    In order to contextualize the papers in the present volume, we will first lay out the main differences between FG and FDG and explain why some FG scholars felt that a general reorganization of the model was necessary. Section 2 gives a brief overview of the history of the way NPs have been analysed in F....... This study contains several new facts and ideas, which made it an interesting challenge to investigate to what extent the proposals he put forward could or should be integrated into the new FDG model (see also Rijkhoff this volume). All in all, the time seemed ripe for a detailed investigation of the way NPs...

  17. Age of Acquisition and Sensitivity to Gender in Spanish Word Recognition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Foote, Rebecca

    2014-01-01

    Speakers of gender-agreement languages use gender-marked elements of the noun phrase in spoken-word recognition: A congruent marking on a determiner or adjective facilitates the recognition of a subsequent noun, while an incongruent marking inhibits its recognition. However, while monolinguals and early language learners evidence this…

  18. Identification of vowel length, word stress and compound words and phrases by postlingually-deafened cochlear implant listeners

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Morris, David Jackson; Magnusson, Lennart; Faulkner, Andrew

    2013-01-01

    Background: The accurate perception of prosody assists a listener in deriving meaning from natural speech. Few studies have addressed the ability of cochlear implant (CI) listeners to perceive the brief duration prosodic cues involved in contrastive vowel length, word stress, and compound word...... word stress, vowel length, and compound words or phrases all of which were presented with minimal-pair response choices. Tests were performed in quiet and in speech-spectrum shaped noise at a 10 dB signal- to-noise ratio. Also, discrimination thresholds for four acoustic properties of a synthetic vowel...... recipients' ability to perceive brief prosodic cues. This is of interest in the preparation of rehabilitation materials used in training and in developing realistic expectations for potential CI candidates. Key Words: Cochlear implants, speech acoustics, speech intelligibility...

  19. Phrase Lengths and the Perceived Informativeness of Prosodic Cues in Turkish.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dinçtopal Deniz, Nazik; Fodor, Janet Dean

    2017-12-01

    It is known from previous studies that in many cases (though not all) the prosodic properties of a spoken utterance reflect aspects of its syntactic structure, and also that in many cases (though not all) listeners can benefit from these prosodic cues. A novel contribution to this literature is the Rational Speaker Hypothesis (RSH), proposed by Clifton, Carlson and Frazier. The RSH maintains that listeners are sensitive to possible reasons for why a speaker might introduce a prosodic break: "listeners treat a prosodic boundary as more informative about the syntax when it flanks short constituents than when it flanks longer constituents," because in the latter case the speaker might have been motivated solely by consideration of optimal phrase lengths. This would effectively reduce the cue value of an appropriately placed prosodic boundary. We present additional evidence for the RSH from Turkish, a language typologically different from English. In addition, our study shows for the first time that the RSH also applies to a prosodic break which conflicts with the syntactic structure, reducing its perceived cue strength if it might have been motivated by length considerations. In this case, the RSH effect is beneficial. Finally, the Turkish data show that prosody-based explanations for parsing preferences such as the RSH do not take the place of traditional syntax-sensitive parsing strategies such as Late Closure. The two sources of guidance co-exist; both are used when available.

  20. Phonological Planning during Sentence Production: Beyond the Verb.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schnur, Tatiana T

    2011-01-01

    The current study addresses the extent of phonological planning during spontaneous sentence production. Previous work shows that at articulation, phonological encoding occurs for entire phrases, but encoding beyond the initial phrase may be due to the syntactic relevance of the verb in planning the utterance. I conducted three experiments to investigate whether phonological planning crosses multiple grammatical phrase boundaries (as defined by the number of lexical heads of phrase) within a single phonological phrase. Using the picture-word interference paradigm, I found in two separate experiments a significant phonological facilitation effect to both the verb and noun of sentences like "He opens the gate." I also altered the frequency of the direct object and found longer utterance initiation times for sentences ending with a low-frequency vs. high-frequency object offering further support that the direct object was phonologically encoded at the time of utterance initiation. That phonological information for post-verbal elements was activated suggests that the grammatical importance of the verb does not restrict the extent of phonological planning. These results suggest that the phonological phrase is unit of planning, where all elements within a phonological phrase are encoded before articulation. Thus, consistent with other action sequencing behavior, there is significant phonological planning ahead in sentence production.

  1. Aspects de la communication orale dans les parlers de la vallée inférieure de Suceava : le nom

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maria DOLHĂSCU-ALEXANDRIUC

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available The noun is an open lexical-grammatical class, bounded by some semantic-referential and grammatical features. In the dialect of the lower valley of Suceava, the form of nouns is sometimes modified in the phonetic processes and some other times the prepositional phrases are expressing the possession as secondary significance.

  2. "Formative ""Use"" of Assessment Information: It's a Process, so Let's Say What We Mean"

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robert Good

    2011-02-01

    Full Text Available The term formative assessment is often used to describe a type of assessment. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the use of this phrase given that formative assessment as a noun phrase ignores the well-established understanding that it is a process more than an object. A model that combines content, context, and strategies is presented as one way to view the process nature of assessing formatively. The alternate phrase formative use of assessment information is suggested as a more appropriate way to describe how content, context, and strategies can be used together in order to close the gap between where a student is performing currently and the intended learning goal.

  3. Cues, quantification, and agreement in language comprehension.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tanner, Darren; Bulkes, Nyssa Z

    2015-12-01

    We investigated factors that affect the comprehension of subject-verb agreement in English, using quantification as a window into the relationship between morphosyntactic processes in language production and comprehension. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read sentences with grammatical and ungrammatical verbs, in which the plurality of the subject noun phrase was either doubly marked (via overt plural quantification and morphological marking on the noun) or singly marked (via only plural morphology on the noun). Both acceptability judgments and the ERP data showed heightened sensitivity to agreement violations when quantification provided an additional cue to the grammatical number of the subject noun phrase, over and above plural morphology. This is consistent with models of grammatical comprehension that emphasize feature prediction in tandem with cue-based memory retrieval. Our results additionally contrast with those of prior studies that showed no effects of plural quantification on agreement in language production. These findings therefore highlight some nontrivial divergences in the cues and mechanisms supporting morphosyntactic processing in language production and comprehension.

  4. An Object-Oriented Approach to the Development of Computer-Assisted Instructional Material Using Hypertext

    Science.gov (United States)

    1988-12-01

    350-353). In this encapsulated manner, there exists a bond between an object, its data types, and the operations which act on or are exported by the...whose subject is a single concept-relationship pair. The subject name is a noun or noun phrase, e.g. "books." The module's callable components are

  5. Machine Translation of Noun Phrases from English to Igala using ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    PROF. OLIVER OSUAGWA

    2014-06-01

    Jun 1, 2014 ... among social groups, to exhibit habits etc which can be ... for easier processing of concepts This clearly shows that ... develop Igala language and elevate it to the level of .... tokenization which is the breaking up of raw text or ...

  6. [Predictive value of early phrase echocardiography and cardiac biological markers in patients with severe sepsis: a five-year single-center retrospective study].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zang, Xuefeng; Chen, Wei; Sheng, Bo; Zhao, Lei; Gu, Xuyun; Zhen, Jie; Liu, Ping

    2018-04-01

    To assess the predictive value of early phrase echocardiography and cardiac biomarkers in patients with severe sepsis. A retrospective analysis of severe septic patients (patients with acute coronary syndrome and end stage renal disease were excluded) in department of intensive care unit of Capital Medical University Affiliated Beijing Shijitan Hospital from January 2013 to December 2017 was conducted. The acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II (APACHE II) score, N-terminal prohormone of brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), cardiac troponin I (cTnI), myoglobin (MYO), creatine kinase (CK), MB isoenzyme of creatine kinase (CK-MB) within 6 hours after admission, and bedside echocardiography indexes [left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), the ratio of the peak blood flow velocity in the early stage of the mitral valve and the peak blood flow rate of the mitral valve (E/A ratio)] within 6 hours after diagnosis were recorded. The differences of indexes between patients with decreased contractile function (LVEF value in severe sepsis patients. (1) A total of 316 patients were enrolled in the survey period. Decreased cardiac systolic function (LVEF value for prognosis in severe sepsis patient, among which NT-proBNP and cTnI had higher predictive value [the area under ROC curve (AUC) were 0.920 and 0.901 respectively, both P values measured by echocardiography in early phrase were unrelated to 28-day prognosis. APACHE II score, E/A ratio, NT-proBNP, cTnI, MYO, CK and CK-MB were related to 28-day prognosis. APACHE II scores and NT-proBNP were independent prognostic factors in severe sepsis patient.

  7. Swearing Used in Richard Wright's Black Boy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Giyatmi Giyatmi

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available This research aims at finding the types of swearing expressions and linguistic forms of English swearing used in Richard Wright's Black Boy. This is a descriptive qualitative research since it describes the phenomena of swearing used in the novel. The data of the research are all the conversations or sentences used swearing in the novel written by Richard Wright namely Black Boy as the main data source. The method of collecting data in this research is observation and teknik lanjut catat. After all the data had been collected then they are coded using the coding system such as data number/title of novel/chapter/page/data. There is no data reduction since all the data are analyzed in this research. This research used theory triangulation. Kind of swearing expressions found in this novel dealing with God and religion terms, name of  animals and plants, part of body, racial terms, stupidity terms, name of occupation, sexual terms, family terms. The linguistic forms of English swearing used in this novel are word, phrase, and clause. The swearing in the form of words consists of (1 noun referring to place, person, occupation, animal, and idea (2 verb and (3 adjective. Phrase consists of (1 noun phrase with swearing functioning as headword, modifier, and both headword and modifier, (2 adjective phrase with swearing functioning as modifier. Swearing expression is also found in the form of sentence.

  8. LANGUAGE FORM AND FUNCTION OF CARETAKERS FOUND IN NANNY MCPHEE AND THE BIG BANG MOVIE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aditya Putri Kusuma Andani

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available This study deals with the form and the function of caretaker speech which is found in caretaker's utterance in Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang Movie. The objectives of this study are (1 to describe the type of language form of the caretaker and (2 to describe the type of language function of the caretaker found in Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang Movie. The type of this research is descriptive qualitative research. The data of this research are the utterance from the caretaker found in manuscript of Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang Movie. The data collection technique is documentation. The technique of analyzing data are descriptive qualitative. The writer uses the theories from Frank (1972 to analyze the type of language form, and M.A.K. Halliday (1977 to analyze the type of language function. The result of this study shows that (1 there are four types of word: noun, verb, adjective, and adverb; three types of phrase: noun phrase, verb phrase, and adverb phrase; and two types of sentence categorized into two. The first category is based on type, namely: declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory sentence; the second one by number of full predication, namely: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentence. (2 The writer found 6 types of language function, they are: regulatory function, instrumental function, representational function, personal function, interactional function, and imaginative function.

  9. In a manner of speaking phrases, expressions, and proverbs and how we use and misuse them

    CERN Document Server

    McNairn, Colin

    2015-01-01

    What do "the whole kit and caboodle," "the whole shebang," "the whole megillah," "the whole enchilada," "the whole nine yards," "the whole box and dice," and "the full Monty" have in common? They're all expressions that mean "the entire quantity," and they're all examples of the breadth and depth of the English-speaking world's vocabulary. From the multitude of words and phrases in daily use, the author of this delightful exploration into what we say and why we say it zeroes in on those expressions and sayings and their variations that are funny, quirky, just plain folksy, or playfully dressed up in rhyme or alliteration. Some may have become clichés that, as it's said with "tongue in cheek," should be "avoided like the plague." Others have been distorted, deemed politically incorrect, or shrouded in mystery and must bear some explanation. Among the topics the author delves into are expressions that shouldn't be taken literally ("dressed to kill" and "kick the bucket"), foreign expressions that c...

  10. THE FUNCTION OF SIMPLE SENTENCE BETWEEN ALBANIAN AND ENGLISH

    OpenAIRE

    Shkelqim Millaku

    2017-01-01

    In Albanian and English we have same kind of sentences (simple, compound or complex sentence). The major of elements or constituents that can be found in clauses are subject, predicate, object, complement etc. For Albanian and English most linguists agree on the needs to recognize at least the following word classes: noun, verb, adjective, preposition, adverb, determinative and conjunction. Each of these words classes is illustrated in the sentence below. The noun or noun phrase can be subjec...

  11. DOCUMENT REPRESENTATION FOR CLUSTERING OF SCIENTIFIC ABSTRACTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    S. V. Popova

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available The key issue of the present paper is clustering of narrow-domain short texts, such as scientific abstracts. The work is based on the observations made when improving the performance of key phrase extraction algorithm. An extended stop-words list was used that was built automatically for the purposes of key phrase extraction and gave the possibility for a considerable quality enhancement of the phrases extracted from scientific publications. A description of the stop- words list creation procedure is given. The main objective is to investigate the possibilities to increase the performance and/or speed of clustering by the above-mentioned list of stop-words as well as information about lexeme parts of speech. In the latter case a vocabulary is applied for the document representation, which contains not all the words that occurred in the collection, but only nouns and adjectives or their sequences encountered in the documents. Two base clustering algorithms are applied: k-means and hierarchical clustering (average agglomerative method. The results show that the use of an extended stop-words list and adjective-noun document representation makes it possible to improve the performance and speed of k-means clustering. In a similar case for average agglomerative method a decline in performance quality may be observed. It is shown that the use of adjective-noun sequences for document representation lowers the clustering quality for both algorithms and can be justified only when a considerable reduction of feature space dimensionality is necessary.

  12. Research Article Special Issue

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    pc

    2017-10-17

    Oct 17, 2017 ... Noun Phrase (NP) based TF-IDF weighting scheme in order to empowe ... Text similarity is the measure used to determine the key point in text ..... with emphasis on concept extraction from text in concept-level text analysis.

  13. Amplitude modulation of sexy phrases is salient for song attractiveness in female canaries (Serinus canaria).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pasteau, Magali; Ung, Davy; Kreutzer, Michel; Aubin, Thierry

    2012-07-01

    Song discrimination and recognition in songbird species have usually been studied by measuring responses to song playbacks. In female canaries, Serinus canaria, copulation solicitation displays (CSDs) are used as an index of female preferences, which are related to song recognition. Despite the fact that many studies underline the role of song syntax in this species, we observed that short segments of songs (a few seconds long) are enough for females to discriminate between conspecific and heterospecific songs, whereas such a short duration is not sufficient to identify the syntax rules. This suggests that other cues are salient for song recognition. In this experiment, we investigated the influence of amplitude modulation (AM) on the responses (CSDs) of female canaries to song playbacks. We used two groups of females: (1) raised in acoustic isolation and (2) raised in normal conditions. When adult, we tested their preferences for sexy phrases with different AMs. We broadcast three types of stimuli: (1) songs with natural canary AM, (2) songs with AM removed, or (3) song with wren Troglodytes troglodytes AM. Results indicate that female canaries prefer and have predispositions for a song type with the natural canary AM. Thus, this acoustic parameter is a salient cue for song attractiveness.

  14. Count Nouns - Mass Nouns, Neat Nouns - Mess Nouns

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fred Landman

    2010-12-01

    Full Text Available In this paper I propose and formalize a theory of the mass-count distinction in which the denotations of count nouns are built from non-overlapping generators, while the denotations of mass nouns are built from overlapping generators. Counting is counting of generators, and it will follow that counting is only correct on count denotations. I will show that the theory allows two kinds of mass nouns: mess mass nouns with denotations built from overlapping minimal generators, and neat mass nouns with denotations built from overlapping generators, where the overlap is not located in the minimal generators. Prototypical mass nouns like meat and mud are of the first kind. I will argue that mass nouns like furniture and kitchenware are of the second type. I will discuss several phenomena—all involving one way or the other explicitly or implicitly individual classifiers like stuks in Dutch—that show that both distinctions mass/count and mess/neat are linguistically robust. I will show in particular that nouns like kitchenware pattern in various ways like count nouns, and not like mess mass nouns, and that these ways naturally involve the neat structure of their denotation. I will also show that they are real mass nouns: they can involve measures in the way mess mass nouns can and count nouns cannot. I will discuss grinding interpretations of count nouns, here rebaptized fission interpretations, and argue that these interpretations differ in crucial ways from the interpretations of lexical mass nouns. The paper will end with a foundational problem raised by fission interpretations, and in the course of this, atomless interpretation domains will re-enter the scene through the back door.ReferencesBarner, D. & Snedeker, J. 2005. 'Quantity judgements and individuation: evidence that mass nouns count'. Cognition 97: 41–66.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2004.06.009PMid:16139586Bunt, H. 1985. Mass Terms and Model Theoretic Semantics. Cambridge

  15. The subject marker in Bantu as an antifocus marker*

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    KATEVG

    I argue that the class 5 subject noun phrase ikati ("cat") and the ...... that its key mechanism is a well-established phenomenon in the syntax of natural .... If head movement is subject to the familiar extraction constraints, it should not be possible ...

  16. Phrase-Final Words in Greek Storytelling Speech: A Study on the Effect of a Culturally-Specific Prosodic Feature on Short-Term Memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loutrari, Ariadne; Tselekidou, Freideriki; Proios, Hariklia

    2018-02-27

    Prosodic patterns of speech appear to make a critical contribution to memory-related processing. We considered the case of a previously unexplored prosodic feature of Greek storytelling and its effect on free recall in thirty typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 12 years, using short ecologically valid auditory stimuli. The combination of a falling pitch contour and, more notably, extensive final-syllable vowel lengthening, which gives rise to the prosodic feature in question, led to statistically significantly higher performance in comparison to neutral phrase-final prosody. Number of syllables in target words did not reveal substantial difference in performance. The current study presents a previously undocumented culturally-specific prosodic pattern and its effect on short-term memory.

  17. Effects of parallel planning on agreement production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Veenstra, Alma; Meyer, Antje S; Acheson, Daniel J

    2015-11-01

    An important issue in current psycholinguistics is how the time course of utterance planning affects the generation of grammatical structures. The current study investigated the influence of parallel activation of the components of complex noun phrases on the generation of subject-verb agreement. Specifically, the lexical interference account (Gillespie & Pearlmutter, 2011b; Solomon & Pearlmutter, 2004) predicts more agreement errors (i.e., attraction) for subject phrases in which the head and local noun mismatch in number (e.g., the apple next to the pears) when nouns are planned in parallel than when they are planned in sequence. We used a speeded picture description task that yielded sentences such as the apple next to the pears is red. The objects mentioned in the noun phrase were either semantically related or unrelated. To induce agreement errors, pictures sometimes mismatched in number. In order to manipulate the likelihood of parallel processing of the objects and to test the hypothesized relationship between parallel processing and the rate of agreement errors, the pictures were either placed close together or far apart. Analyses of the participants' eye movements and speech onset latencies indicated slower processing of the first object and stronger interference from the related (compared to the unrelated) second object in the close than in the far condition. Analyses of the agreement errors yielded an attraction effect, with more errors in mismatching than in matching conditions. However, the magnitude of the attraction effect did not differ across the close and far conditions. Thus, spatial proximity encouraged parallel processing of the pictures, which led to interference of the associated conceptual and/or lexical representation, but, contrary to the prediction, it did not lead to more attraction errors. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  18. Preservation of memory-based automaticity in reading for older adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rawson, Katherine A; Touron, Dayna R

    2015-12-01

    Concerning age-related effects on cognitive skill acquisition, the modal finding is that older adults do not benefit from practice to the same extent as younger adults in tasks that afford a shift from slower algorithmic processing to faster memory-based processing. In contrast, Rawson and Touron (2009) demonstrated a relatively rapid shift to memory-based processing in the context of a reading task. The current research extended beyond this initial study to provide more definitive evidence for relative preservation of memory-based automaticity in reading tasks for older adults. Younger and older adults read short stories containing unfamiliar noun phrases (e.g., skunk mud) followed by disambiguating information indicating the combination's meaning (either the normatively dominant meaning or an alternative subordinate meaning). Stories were repeated across practice blocks, and then the noun phrases were presented in novel sentence frames in a transfer task. Both age groups shifted from computation to retrieval after relatively few practice trials (as evidenced by convergence of reading times for dominant and subordinate items). Most important, both age groups showed strong evidence for memory-based processing of the noun phrases in the transfer task. In contrast, older adults showed minimal shifting to retrieval in an alphabet arithmetic task, indicating that the preservation of memory-based automaticity in reading was task-specific. Discussion focuses on important implications for theories of memory-based automaticity in general and for specific theoretical accounts of age effects on memory-based automaticity, as well as fruitful directions for future research. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  19. The processing of free and bound gender-marked morphemes in speech production: Evidence from Dutch

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Lemhöfer, K.M.L.; Schriefers, H.J.; Jescheniak, J.D.

    2006-01-01

    In many languages, the production of noun phrases requires the selection of gender-marked elements like determiners or inflectional suffixes. There is a recent debate as to whether the selection of freestanding gender-marked elements, such as determiners, follows the same processing mechanisms as

  20. Frequency and Informativeness of Gestural Cues Accompanying Generic and Particular Reference

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meyer, Meredith; Gelman, Susan A.; Stilwell, Sarah M.

    2015-01-01

    Generic noun phrases, or generics, refer to abstract categories ("Dogs" bark) rather than particular individuals ("Those dogs" bark). Study 1 investigated how parents use gestures in association with generic versus particular reference during naturalistic interactions with their 2- and 3-year-old children. Parents provided…

  1. PHRASAL COMPOUNDS IN AFRIKAANS: A GENERATIVE ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    phrase may be generated by a rule/rules similar to that/ those required to generate .... is adjoined to a noun exists on the level of syntactic surface struc- ture. ...... cat and lOOuse games. "cat and .... aI, derivational and syntactic processes. [70J.

  2. Terminology extraction from medical texts in Polish.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marciniak, Małgorzata; Mykowiecka, Agnieszka

    2014-01-01

    able to filter out all improperly constructed noun phrases from the top of the list. Careful choice of noun phrases is crucial to the usefulness of the created terminological resource in applications such as lexicon construction or acquisition of semantic relations from texts.

  3. Synchronic and diachronic evidence for parallels between noun phrases and sentences

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    2008-01-01

    Both formal and functional linguists have developed models in which clauses and NPs can at least partly be analyzed in a similar fashion. But whereas formal approaches to grammar have concentrated on similarities between the (underlying) syntactic structure of the NP and the clause (e.g. Jackendoff...... 1977, Abney 1989), functional theories such as Functional Grammar have investigated parallels between the underlying semantic structure of the NP and clause (Rijkhoff 1989, 1992, 2002). This article has two main goals: [a] to present a revised and expanded version of the layered (semantic) NP...

  4. Enactment effects and integration processes in younger and older adults' memory for actions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feyereisen, Pierre

    2009-05-01

    The positive effects of gesturing on memory are robust but their interpretation is still controversial. To clarify the issue, recognition and cued recall of action phrases were compared in 24 younger (M=20 years) and 20 older adults (M=68 years), in three encoding conditions--purely verbal tasks (VTs), subject-performed tasks (SPTs), and experimenter-performed tasks (EPTs)--for well- and poorly integrated phrases. As expected, the effects of these factors were significant, but there was no interaction between age-related differences, enactment effects, and semantic association. In particular, both SPT and EPT displayed similar advantages over VT conditions in both age groups and in the two memory tasks. These results are discussed in relation to the debate between Engelkamp on one side, and Kormi-Nouri and Nilsson on the other side, about the role of motor components in the episodic integration of verbs and nouns in action phrases.

  5. Pointing As a Socio-Pragmatic Cue to Particular vs.Generic Reference

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meyer, Meredith; Baldwin, Dare A.

    2013-01-01

    Generic noun phrases, or generics, refer to abstract kind categories ("Dogs" bark) rather than particular individuals ("Those dogs" bark). How do children distinguish these distinct kinds of reference? We examined the role of one socio-pragmatic cue, namely pointing, in producing and comprehending generic versus particular…

  6. Distinctiveness and encoding effects in online sentence comprehension

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Philip eHofmeister

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available In explicit memory recall and recognition tasks, elaboration and contextual isolation both facilitate memory performance. Here, we investigate these effects in the context of sentence processing: targets for retrieval during online sentence processing of English object relative clause constructions differ in the amount of elaboration associated with the target noun phrase, or the homogeneity of superficial features (text color. Experiment 1 shows that greater elaboration for targets during the encoding phase reduces reading times at retrieval sites, but elaboration of non-targets has considerably weaker effects. Experiment 2 illustrates that processing isolated superficial features of target noun phrases --- here, a green word in a sentence with words colored white --- does not lead to enhanced memory performance, despite triggering longer encoding times. These results are interpreted in the light of the memory models of Nairne 1990, 2001, 2006, which state that encoding remnants contribute to the set of retrieval cues that provide the basis for similarity-based interference effects.

  7. Phrase Mining of Textual Data to Analyze Extracellular Matrix Protein Patterns Across Cardiovascular Disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liem, David Alexandre; Murali, Sanjana; Sigdel, Dibakar; Shi, Yu; Wang, Xuan; Shen, Jiaming; Choi, Howard; Caufield, J Harry; Wang, Wei; Ping, Peipei; Han, Jiawei

    2018-05-18

    Extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins have been shown to play important roles regulating multiple biological processes in an array of organ systems, including the cardiovascular system. By using a novel bioinformatics text-mining tool, we studied six categories of cardiovascular disease (CVD), namely ischemic heart disease (IHD), cardiomyopathies (CM), cerebrovascular accident (CVA), congenital heart disease (CHD), arrhythmias (ARR), and valve disease (VD), anticipating novel ECM protein-disease and protein-protein relationships hidden within vast quantities of textual data. We conducted a phrase-mining analysis, delineating the relationships of 709 ECM proteins with the six groups of CVDs reported in 1,099,254 abstracts. The technology pipeline known as Context-aware Semantic Online Analytical Processing (CaseOLAP) was applied to semantically rank the association of proteins to each and all six CVDs, performing analyses to quantify each protein-disease relationship. We performed principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering of the data, where each protein is visualized as a six dimensional vector. We found that ECM proteins display variable degrees of association with the six CVDs; certain CVDs share groups of associated proteins whereas others have divergent protein associations. We identified 82 ECM proteins sharing associations with all six CVDs. Our bioinformatics analysis ascribed distinct ECM pathways (via Reactome) from this subset of proteins, namely insulin-like growth factor regulation and interleukin-4 and interleukin-13 signaling, suggesting their contribution to the pathogenesis of all six CVDs. Finally, we performed hierarchical clustering analysis and identified protein clusters associated with a targeted CVD; analyses revealed unexpected insights underlying ECM-pathogenesis of CVDs.

  8. West African Journal of Industrial and Academic Research - Vol 11 ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Machine translation of noun phrases from English to Igala using the rule-based approach · EMAIL FREE FULL TEXT EMAIL FREE FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT ... A model of virtual organization for corporate visibility and competitiveness · EMAIL FREE FULL TEXT EMAIL FREE FULL TEXT · DOWNLOAD FULL ...

  9. Quantification Scope Ambiguity Resolution: Evidence from Persian and English

    Science.gov (United States)

    Asadollahfam, Hassan; Lotfi, Ahmad Reza

    2010-01-01

    This study investigates the interpretation of scopally ambiguous sentences containing noun phrases with double quantified constituents from a processing perspective. The questions this study tried to answer were: whether or not the preferred interpretation for doubly quantified ambiguous sentences in English was influenced by English learners' L1…

  10. Characteristics of Syntactic Comprehension Deficits Following Closed Head Injury versus Left Cerebrovascular Accident.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Butler-Hinz, Susan; And Others

    1990-01-01

    Two studies examined the ability to assign thematic roles and to coindex referentially dependent noun phrases in closed head injured adults (N=20), adult stroke patients (N=20), and normal adults (N=20). Results suggested that syntactic comprehension disturbances are similar following left cerebral hemisphere infarction and closed head injury.…

  11. Input Subject Diversity Enhances Early Grammatical Growth: Evidence from a Parent-Implemented Intervention

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hadley, Pamela A.; Rispoli, Matthew; Holt, Janet K.; Papastratakos, Theodora; Hsu, Ning; Kubalanza, Mary; McKenna, Megan M.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: The current study used an intervention design to test the hypothesis that parent input sentences with diverse lexical noun phrase (NP) subjects would accelerate growth in children's sentence diversity. Method: Child growth in third person sentence diversity was modeled from 21-30 months (n = 38) in conversational language samples obtained…

  12. Developmental relationships between speech and writing: is verb-phrase anaphora production a special case?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Donaldson, Morag L; Cooper, Lynn S M

    2013-09-01

    Young children's speech is typically more linguistically sophisticated than their writing. However, there are grounds for asking whether production of cohesive devices, such as verb-phrase anaphora (VPA), might represent an exception to this developmental pattern, as cohesive devices are generally more important in writing than in speech and so might be expected to be more frequent in children's writing than in their speech. The study reported herein aims to compare the frequency of children's production of VPA constructions (e.g., Mary is eating an apple and so is John) between a written and a spoken task. Forty-eight children participated from each of two age groups: 7-year-olds and 10-year-olds. All the children received both a spoken and a written sentence completion task designed to elicit production of VPA. Task order was counterbalanced. VPA production was significantly more frequent in speech than in writing and when the spoken task was presented first. Surprisingly, the 7-year-olds produced VPA constructions more frequently than the 10-year-olds. Despite the greater importance of cohesion in writing than in speech, children's production of VPA is similar to their production of most other aspects of language in that more sophisticated constructions are used more frequently in speech than in writing. Children's written production of cohesive devices could probably be enhanced by presenting spoken tasks immediately before written tasks. The lower frequency of VPA production in the older children may reflect syntactic priming effects or a belief that they should produce sentences that are as fully specified as possible. © 2012 The British Psychological Society.

  13. 184 Compounding in Igala: Defining Criteria, Forms and Functions ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Ike Odimegwu

    West Benue-Congo language spoken in north central Nigeria. Defining ..... argues, in Ígálà, ọ́ma 'child', for instance, can stand in for the noun phrase 'ọ́ma óko' 'Oko's .... e.g. 'in Pawnee it is mainly body part words which are incorporated' (c.f. ...

  14. Toy Talk: Simple Strategies to Create Richer Grammatical Input

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hadley, Pamela A.; Walsh, Kathleen M.

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this initial feasibility study was to determine whether brief instruction in toy talk would change grammatical properties of adult language, specifically 3rd person lexical noun phrase (NP) subjects. Method: Eighteen college students participated in the study. The use of 3rd person subjects was examined before and after…

  15. Information Density and Syntactic Repetition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Temperley, David; Gildea, Daniel

    2015-01-01

    In noun phrase (NP) coordinate constructions (e.g., NP and NP), there is a strong tendency for the syntactic structure of the second conjunct to match that of the first; the second conjunct in such constructions is therefore low in syntactic information. The theory of uniform information density predicts that low-information syntactic…

  16. Média dos valores da frase em diferentes gravidades do desvio fonológico evolutivo Average values of phrase in different severities of phonological disorder

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jamile Konzen Albiero

    2012-01-01

    , through the research on the average values of phrase, in which they collected phrases from three different language modalities: describing a picture, telling a story, and answering questions. The five phrases the children first spoke were punctuated according to their complexity. Next, we accomplished the statistical analysis through the Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric test. The significant p value is considered p<0.05. RESULTS: there was no statistical significant difference among the different degrees of severity of the phonological disorder in the three evaluated language modalities, as related to the morphosyntax, semantics, total of construction, and total of length. CONCLUSION: we can conclude that the severity of the phonological disorder does not affect the children's performance regarding morphosyntax and semantic development, because there was no statistical significance among the results. Therefore, we may suggest that other studies should be carried out in order to confirm or not such results.

  17. 1,001 words and phrases you never knew you didn't know hopperdozer, hoecake, ear trumpet, dort, and other nearly forgotten terms and expressions

    CERN Document Server

    Runyan, W R

    2010-01-01

    As times change so do the things we use and what we call them. W.R. Runyan has compiled a fascinating collection of words and phrases that, once common everywhere in America, are little known today. This book is a celebration of our linguistic past that will be a treat from word lovers everywhere. Do you know any of these: Snaffle, Steelie, Gully Washer, Cabriolet, Calk, Hardpan, Carbuncle, Pie Bird, Fid, or Hame? Did you know that a "Horse Apple" is actually an orange? Or that "Rolley Holley" is a marble game? With over one hundred illustrations, this is a book that will take you on a walk back in time and give you a chance to hear from generations past-in their own voice, with their own words.

  18. Recursos gramaticais para a expressão de proposições dependentes da valência do predicado em Português, Espanhol e Alemão

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eberhard Gärtner

    2001-06-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, after sketching basic methodical differences between the description of subordinate clauses in the Luzo-Brasilian and German grammatical traditions, we present a description of completive clauses and equivalent constructions in the three languages considered, based on a model of grammar which includes sentence meaning in the description of Grammar. We consider proposition a semantic entity (sentence meaning, constituted by the semantic properties of the predicate by means of its semantic valency. Syntatic valency, then, decides on the morpho-syntatic constructions utilizable, with a certain predicate, to express the respective underlying dependent proposition. A good deal of the article is expended on the description of these means of expression, among which we count conjuntional sentences and infinitive constructions in the functions of subject, object and adverbial complement or in the function of noun complement, as well substantivized constructions, nominalizations and pronominalizations. We also discuss constructions with subject raising, in which we include conjunctional constructions, infinitive constructions, gerund constructions and gerundial infinitive constructions as well as adjective phrases, noun phrases and prepositional phrases, being all of them ways of redusing propositions with nominal predicates or predicates of location. Finally, we refer to one-sentence-constructions with raising of various arguments. The comparison with German showes the greater richnessof means of expression for dependent propositions in two Ibero-Romance languages: the comparison between the latter gives evidence of subtle differences beteween Portuguese and Spanish.

  19. The neurophysiology of language processing shapes the evolution of grammar: evidence from case marking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bickel, Balthasar; Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena; Choudhary, Kamal K; Schlesewsky, Matthias; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina

    2015-01-01

    Do principles of language processing in the brain affect the way grammar evolves over time or is language change just a matter of socio-historical contingency? While the balance of evidence has been ambiguous and controversial, we identify here a neurophysiological constraint on the processing of language that has a systematic effect on the evolution of how noun phrases are marked by case (i.e. by such contrasts as between the English base form she and the object form her). In neurophysiological experiments across diverse languages we found that during processing, participants initially interpret the first base-form noun phrase they hear (e.g. she…) as an agent (which would fit a continuation like … greeted him), even when the sentence later requires the interpretation of a patient role (as in … was greeted). We show that this processing principle is also operative in Hindi, a language where initial base-form noun phrases most commonly denote patients because many agents receive a special case marker ("ergative") and are often left out in discourse. This finding suggests that the principle is species-wide and independent of the structural affordances of specific languages. As such, the principle favors the development and maintenance of case-marking systems that equate base-form cases with agents rather than with patients. We confirm this evolutionary bias by statistical analyses of phylogenetic signals in over 600 languages worldwide, controlling for confounding effects from language contact. Our findings suggest that at least one core property of grammar systematically adapts in its evolution to the neurophysiological conditions of the brain, independently of socio-historical factors. This opens up new avenues for understanding how specific properties of grammar have developed in tight interaction with the biological evolution of our species.

  20. What's in the input? Frequent frames in child-directed speech offer distributional cues to grammatical categories in Spanish and English.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weisleder, Adriana; Waxman, Sandra R

    2010-11-01

    Recent analyses have revealed that child-directed speech contains distributional regularities that could, in principle, support young children's discovery of distinct grammatical categories (noun, verb, adjective). In particular, a distributional unit known as the frequent frame appears to be especially informative (Mintz, 2003). However, analyses have focused almost exclusively on the distributional information available in English. Because languages differ considerably in how the grammatical forms are marked within utterances, the scarcity of cross-linguistic evidence represents an unfortunate gap. We therefore advance the developmental evidence by analyzing the distributional information available in frequent frames across two languages (Spanish and English), across sentence positions (phrase medial and phrase final), and across grammatical forms (noun, verb, adjective). We selected six parent-child corpora from the CHILDES database (three English; three Spanish), and analyzed the input when children were aged 2 ; 6 or younger. In each language, frequent frames did indeed offer systematic cues to grammatical category assignment. We also identify differences in the accuracy of these frames across languages, sentences positions and grammatical classes.

  1. Morphological isolates in idioms: cranberries or real words?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nenonen, M; Niemi, J

    The present study focuses on a subtype of Finnish nouns that appear only as complements in idiomatic verb phrases. In addition to the idioms as their sole environment, these idiomatic isolates, as we call them, are typically frozen to a single case form. In two experiments, in a subjective rating task and a lexical decision task, the isolates are pitted against ordinary nouns and nouns that appear as frozen forms in idioms in addition to being ordinary, free words. The experiments show that the isolates, in spite of their defective syntactic and morphological properties, are processed like ordinary lexical items. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.

  2. Reference in English-Arabic Translation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ehrensvärd, Martin

    2008-01-01

    The use of referring expressions (proper nouns, noun phrases [NPs] and pronouns) in a target language [TL] text may differ from the source language [SL] text with regard to how explicit they are: One may have a pronoun (less explicit) where the other has a proper noun (more explicit), or one may...... of the text? The last option would make good sense. The SL text is written for an audience who knows the language and hence is expected to be more or less familiar with the culture. Therefore the author may not need to be as explicit as he or she would be if writing for an audience not so familiar...

  3. Reference in English-Arabic Translation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ehrensvärd, Martin Gustaf

    2007-01-01

    The use of referring expressions (proper nouns, noun phrases [NPs] and pronouns) in a target language [TL] text may differ from the source language [SL] text with regard to how explicit they are: One may have a pronoun (less explicit) where the other has a proper noun (more explicit), or one may...... of the text? The last option would make good sense. The SL text is written for an audience who knows the language and hence is expected to be more or less familiar with the culture. Therefore the author may not need to be as explicit as he or she would be if writing for an audience not so familiar...

  4. Spicy Adjectives and Nominal Donkeys: Capturing Semantic Deviance Using Compositionality in Distributional Spaces

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vecchi, Eva M.; Marelli, Marco; Zamparelli, Roberto; Baroni, Marco

    2017-01-01

    "Sophisticated senator" and "legislative onion." Whether or not you have ever heard of these things, we all have some intuition that one of them makes much less sense than the other. In this paper, we introduce a large dataset of human judgments about novel adjective-noun phrases. We use these data to test an approach to…

  5. Classification Technique of Interviewer-Bot Result using Naïve Bayes and Phrase Reinforcement Algorithms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Moechammad Sarosa

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Students with hectic college schedules tend not to have enough time repeating the course material. Meanwhile, after they graduated, to be accepted in a foreign company with a higher salary, they must be ready for the English-based interview. To meet these needs, they try to practice conversing with someone who is proficient in English. On the other hand, it is not easy to have someone who is not only proficient in English, but also understand about a job interview related topics. This paper presents the development of a machine which is able to provide practice on English-based interviews, specifically on job interviews. Interviewer machine (interviewer bot is expected to help students practice on speaking English in particular issue of finding suitable job. The interviewer machine design uses words from a chat bot database named ALICE to mimic human intelligence that can be applied to a search engine using AIML. Naïve Bayes algorithm is used to classify the interview results into three categories: POTENTIAL, TALENT and INTEREST students. Furthermore, based on the classification result, the summary is made at the end of the interview session by using phrase reinforcement algorithms. By using this bot, students are expected to practice their listening and speaking skills, also to be familiar with the questions often asked in job interviews so that they can prepare the proper answers. In addition, the bot' users could know their potential, talent and interest in finding a job, so they could apply to the appropriate companies. Based on the validation results of 50 respondents, the accuracy degree of interviewer chat-bot (interviewer engine response obtained 86.93%.

  6. Case inflection of construct state constructions in Dinka

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Andersen, Torben

    2016-01-01

    Dinka, a Nilo-Saharan language, is largely monosyllabic, but nevertheless it has a fairly rich morphology. Thus, most of its morphology is expressed by alternations in phonological material of the root. The inflectional categories of nouns manifested in this way include state and case in addition...... to number. The state category consists of an absolute state and two construct states. The case category includes a nominative, a genitive, an allative, and an essive/ablative. The present article shows how case inflection is manifested in complex noun phrases consisting of a noun in a construct state...... simultaneously carry state information and case information. Thus, the case inflection of construct state constructions in Dinka adds yet another layer of nonlinear morphology to nouns in this language....

  7. Noun Countability; Count Nouns and Non-count Nouns, What are the Syntactic Differences Between them?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Azhar A. Alkazwini

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Words that function as the subjects of verbs, objects of verbs or prepositions and which can have a plural form and possessive ending are known as nouns. They are described as referring to persons, places, things, states, or qualities and might also be used as an attributive modifier. In this paper, classes and subclasses of nouns shall be presented, then, noun countability branching into count and non-count nous shall be discussed. A number of present examples illustrating differences between count and non-count nouns and this includes determiner-head-co-occurrence restrictions of number, subject-verb agreement, in addition to some exceptions to this agreement rule shall be discussed. Also, the lexically inherent number in nouns and how inherently plural nouns are classified in terms of (+/- count are illustrated. This research will discuss partitive construction of count and non-count nouns, nouns as attributive modifier and, finally, conclude with the fact that there are syntactic difference between count and non-count in the English Language.

  8. Effects of semantic context on access to words of low imageability in deep-phonological dysphasia: a treatment case study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McCarthy, Laura Mary; Kalinyak-Fliszar, Michelene; Kohen, Francine; Martin, Nadine

    2017-01-01

    Deep dysphasia is a relatively rare subcategory of aphasia, characterised by word repetition impairment and a profound auditory-verbal short-term memory (STM) limitation. Repetition of words is better than nonwords (lexicality effect) and better for high-image than low-image words (imageability effect). Another related language impairment profile is phonological dysphasia, which includes all of the characteristics of deep dysphasia except for the occurrence of semantic errors in single word repetition. The overlap in symptoms of deep and phonological dysphasia has led to the hypothesis that they share the same root cause, impaired maintenance of activated representation of words, but that they differ in severity of that impairment, with deep dysphasia being more severe. We report a single-subject multiple baseline, multiple probe treatment study of a person who presented with a pattern of repetition that was consistent with the continuum of deep-phonological dysphasia: imageability and lexicality effects in repetition of single and multiple words and semantic errors in repetition of multiple-word utterances. The aim of this treatment study was to improve access to and repetition of low-imageability words by embedding them in modifier-noun phrases that enhanced their imageability. The treatment involved repetition of abstract noun pairs. We created modifier-abstract noun phrases that increased the semantic and syntactic cohesiveness of the words in the pair. For example, the phrases "long distance" and "social exclusion" were developed to improve repetition of the abstract pair "distance-exclusion". The goal of this manipulation was to increase the probability of accessing lexical and semantic representations of abstract words in repetition by enriching their semantic -syntactic context. We predicted that this increase in accessibility would be maintained when the words were repeated as pairs, but without the contextual phrase. Treatment outcomes indicated that

  9. SIABO

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Andreasen, Troels; Zambach, Sine; Lassen, Tine

    2009-01-01

    in the generative ontology. This enables an advanced form of data mining of texts identifying paraphrases and concept relations and measuring distances between key concepts in texts. Thus, the project is unique in its attempt to provide a formal underpinning of conceptual similarity or relatedness of meaning.......The scientific aim of the project presented in this paper is to provide an approach to representing, organizing, and accessing conceptual content of biomedical texts using a formal ontology. The ontology is based on UMLS resources supplemented with domain ontologies developed in the project....... The approach introduces the notion of 'generative ontologies', i.e., ontologies providing increasingly specialized concepts reflecting the phrase structure of natural language. Furthermore, we propose a novel so-called 'ontological semantics' which maps noun phrases from texts and queries into nodes...

  10. The Auditory Comprehension of Wh-Questions in Aphasia: Support for the Intervener Hypothesis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheppard, Shannon M; Walenski, Matthew; Love, Tracy; Shapiro, Lewis P

    2015-06-01

    This study examines 3 hypotheses about the processing of wh-questions in both neurologically healthy adults and adults with Broca's aphasia. We used an eye tracking while listening method with 32 unimpaired participants (Experiment 1) and 8 participants with Broca's aphasia (Experiment 2). Accuracy, response time, and online gaze data were collected. In Experiment 1, we established a baseline for how unimpaired processing and comprehension of 4 types of wh-question (subject- and object-extracted who- and which-questions) manifest. There was no unambiguous support found for any of the 3 hypotheses in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2 with the Broca's participants, however, we found significantly lower accuracy, slower response times, and increased interference in our gaze data in the object-extracted which-questions relative to the other conditions. Our results provide support for the intervener hypothesis, which states that sentence constructions that contain an intervener (a lexical noun phrase) between a displaced noun phrase and its gap site result in a significant processing disadvantage relative to other constructions. We argue that this hypothesis offers a compelling explanation for the comprehension deficits seen in some participants with Broca's aphasia.

  11. Modeling children's early grammatical knowledge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bannard, Colin; Lieven, Elena; Tomasello, Michael

    2009-01-01

    Theories of grammatical development differ in how much abstract knowledge they attribute to young children. Here, we report a series of experiments using a computational model to evaluate the explanatory power of child grammars based not on abstract rules but on concrete words and phrases and some local abstractions associated with these words and phrases. We use a Bayesian procedure to extract such item-based grammars from transcriptions of 28+ h of each of two children's speech at 2 and 3 years of age. We then use these grammars to parse all of the unique multiword utterances from transcriptions of separate recordings of these same children at each of the two ages. We found that at 2 years of age such a model had good coverage and predictive fit, with the children showing radically limited productivity. Furthermore, adding expert-annotated parts of speech to the induction procedure had little effect on coverage, with the exception of the category of noun. At age 3, the children's productivity sharply increased and the addition of a verb and a noun category markedly improved the model's performance. PMID:19805057

  12. Content and Phrasing in Titles of Original Research and Review Articles in 2015: Range of Practice in Four Clinical Journals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mary Ellen Kerans

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Reporting guidelines for clinical research designs emerged in the mid-1990s and have influenced various aspects of research articles, including titles, which have also been subject to changing uses with the growth of electronic database searching and efforts to reduce bias in literature searches. We aimed (1 to learn more about titles in clinical medicine today and (2 to develop an efficient, reliable way to study titles over time and on the fly—for quick application by authors, manuscript editors, translators and instructors. We compared content and form in titles from two general medical journals—the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM and the British Medical Journal—and two anesthesiology journals (the European Journal of Anaesthesiology and Anesthesiology; we also analyzed the inter-rater reliability of our coding. Significant content differences were found in the frequencies of mentions of methods, results (between general and subspecialty titles, and geographic setting; phrasing differences were found in the prevalence of full-sentence and compound titles (and their punctuation. NEJM titles were significantly shorter, and this journal differed consistently on several features. We conclude that authors must learn to efficiently survey titles for form and content patterns when preparing manuscripts to submit to unfamiliar journals or on resubmitting to a new journal after rejection.

  13. ANAPHORIC ENCAPSULATION AND PRESUPPOSITION: PERSUASIVE AND STEREOTYPICAL USES OF A COHESIVE STRATEGY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Filippo Pecorari

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper focuses on the presuppositional values of anaphoric encapsulation. We highlight that presupposition is a basic feature of argumentative and persuasive uses of this cohesive strategy, but may also apply to stereotypical instances, where evaluation does not coincide with persuasion. Finally, we analyse examples where a higher-order definite noun phrase does not presuppose the existence of a discourse referent.

  14. Between Languages and Cultures: Arabic into English Transliteration in English Travel Literature

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    Nusaiba Adel Almahameed

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available This essay aspires to examine the use of transliteration of some words and phrases from Arabic to English in travel literature books. This has been conducted by exploring the transliterated Arabic words and phrases, and comparing the different transliterations of the same words and phrases by different writers. It investigates the way that the travel writers employ in making plural nouns, the use of the definite article (Al (ال, and Al-tashdid (the duplication of a letter. The conclusion drawn is that travel literature writers resort to transliteration for three reasons; one of the main reasons is that sometimes there is no one-to-one correspondence; the second main reason suggests that transliteration avoids the loss of meaning; and the third one stems from the fact that transliteration helps to find transculturation between cultures. The contributions of this essay would be of concern to scholars, who are interested in Arabic into English transliteration, specifically in English travel literature. According to the researchers' knowledge, this essay can be considered a leading pioneer study in the field that deals with transliteration from Arabic into English in English travel literature.

  15. Are French -ité Suffixed Nouns Property Nouns?

    OpenAIRE

    Koehl, Aurore

    2008-01-01

    International audience; The aim of this paper is to analyse French deadjectival –ité nouns construction (AitéN), from a lexematic point of view. –ité nouns are the most frequent deadjectival nouns stored in French dictionaries. Most of the time, these nouns are analysed as denoting properties. The present analysis will show that it is not always the case. We propose here a study conducted on 499 AitéN coined on denominal adjectives. We will make use of both syntactic and semantic adjectival p...

  16. OVERGENERALIZATION IN SINGULAR/PLURAL NOUNS AND SUFFIXED NOUNS OF IELTS COURSE STUDENTS

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    Gharizi Matiini

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available This study aims to investigate the morphological overgeneralization of IELTS students. It focuses on the singular/plural nouns and suffixed nouns that are overgeneralized by those students. Three students are chosen as the participants of the study by collecting their writing exercises. Three writing texts are gathered taken from several weeks and materials. The writings are analyzed by sorting the nouns they produced and categorizing them according to the singular/plural nouns and suffixed nouns. The results reveal that the students over extended the rules of singular/plural nouns and suffixed nouns. However, recovery occurs very varied in both singular/plural nouns and suffixed nouns. They tend to be better in mentioning singular/plural nouns, yet they are being selective and careful in writing suffixed nouns. In conclusion, even though the language learners can mark their overgeneralization, it is still difficult for them to recover their errors. It is recommended here that longitudinal study that has more time to examine students recovery from overgeneralization can be conducted for the further study to give more detail evidence in students' overgeneralizations. Keywords: overgeneralization, singular/plural nouns, suffixed nouns

  17. Unpacking Noun-Noun Compounds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Smith, Viktor; Barratt, Daniel; Zlatev, Jordan

    2014-01-01

    In two complementary experiments we took an integrated approach to a set of tightly interwoven, yet rarely combined questions concerning the spontaneous interpretation of novel (unfamiliar) noun-noun compounds (NNCs) when encountered in isolation, and possible (re)interpretations of novel as well...... concerning the relations between semantics and pragmatics, as well as system and usage, and psycholinguistic issues concerning the processing of NNCs. New insights and methodological tools are also provided for supporting future best practices in the field of food naming and labelling...

  18. Predicting complex syntactic structure in real time: Processing of negative sentences in Russian.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kazanina, Nina

    2017-11-01

    In Russian negative sentences the verb's direct object may appear either in the accusative case, which is licensed by the verb (as is common cross-linguistically), or in the genitive case, which is licensed by the negation (Russian-specific "genitive-of-negation" phenomenon). Such sentences were used to investigate whether case marking is employed for anticipating syntactic structure, and whether lexical heads other than the verb can be predicted on the basis of a case-marked noun phrase. Experiment 1, a completion task, confirmed that genitive-of-negation is part of Russian speakers' active grammatical repertoire. In Experiments 2 and 3, the genitive/accusative case manipulation on the preverbal object led to shorter reading times at the negation and verb in the genitive versus accusative condition. Furthermore, Experiment 3 manipulated linear order of the direct object and the negated verb in order to distinguish whether the abovementioned facilitatory effect was predictive or integrative in nature, and concluded that the parser actively predicts a verb and (otherwise optional) negation on the basis of a preceding genitive-marked object. Similarly to a head-final language, case-marking information on preverbal noun phrases (NPs) is used by the parser to enable incremental structure building in a free-word-order language such as Russian.

  19. Terminology of the public relations field: corpus — automatic term recognition — terminology database

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nataša Logar Berginc

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available The article describes an analysis of automatic term recognition results performed for single- and multi-word terms with the LUIZ term extraction system. The target application of the results is a terminology database of Public Relations and the main resource the KoRP Public Relations Corpus. Our analysis is focused on two segments: (a single-word noun term candidates, which we compare with the frequency list of nouns from KoRP and evaluate termhood on the basis of the judgements of two domain experts, and (b multi-word term candidates with verb and noun as headword. In order to better assess the performance of the system and the soundness of our approach we also performed an analysis of recall. Our results show that the terminological relevance of extracted nouns is indeed higher than that of merely frequent nouns, and that verbal phrases only rarely count as proper terms. The most productive patterns of multi-word terms with noun as a headword have the following structure: [adjective + noun], [adjective + and + adjective + noun] and [adjective + adjective + noun]. The analysis of recall shows low inter-annotator agreement, but nevertheless very satisfactory recall levels.

  20. Un cas particulier de la relation partie-tout: les compléments adnominaux en à avec et sans article défini anaphorique

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vassil Mostrov

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper deals with the syntax and the interpretation of French noun phrases of the type N à N where a part-whole relationship is involved. We focus on the differences arising from the presence (un verre au pied doré/cassé or absence of a determiner (un verre à pied [doré] before the N denoting the part. We argue that both the adnominal complements à N (Mod and à LE N Mod function as adjectival constituents that qualify the noun denoting the whole, but the actualization of the part noun can be linguistically effective only in cases where the definite determiner, A-bound according to Guéron's (1985, 2005 hypothesis, is present. The discussion considers the consequences of our analysis.

  1. Grammatical-gender effects in noun-noun compound production: Evidence from German.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lorenz, Antje; Mädebach, Andreas; Jescheniak, Jörg D

    2018-05-01

    We examined how noun-noun compounds and their syntactic properties are lexically stored and processed in speech production. Using gender-marked determiner primes ( der masc , die fem , das neut [the]) in a picture naming task, we tested for specific effects from determiners congruent with either the modifier or the head of the compound target (e.g., Tee masc kanne fem [teapot]) to examine whether the constituents are processed independently at the syntactic level. Experiment 1 assessed effects of auditory gender-marked determiner primes in bare noun picture naming, and Experiment 2 assessed effects of visual gender-marked determiner primes in determiner-noun picture naming. Three prime conditions were implemented: (a) head-congruent determiner (e.g., die fem ), (b) modifier-congruent determiner (e.g., der masc ), and (c) incongruent determiner (e.g., das neuter ). We observed a facilitation effect of head congruency but no effect of modifier congruency. In Experiment 3, participants produced novel noun-noun compounds in response to two pictures, demanding independent processing of head and modifier at the syntactic level. Now, head and modifier congruency effects were obtained, demonstrating the general sensitivity of our task. Our data support the notion of a single-lemma representation of lexically stored compound nouns in the German production lexicon.

  2. PHRASEOLOGY IN KANIŽLIĆ'S PRAYER-BOOKS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ljiljana Kolenić

    1993-01-01

    Full Text Available This article is about phraseology in Kanižlić's prayer-books. Phrases in prayer-books have various structures. In most of them the central word is a noun. The most of them are not so usual in everyday speech. We can find them in the books, especially in Bible. Phraseology in Kanižlić's prayer-books are compared with the phraseology in Kanižlić's Sveta Rožalija.

  3. Towards a Computational Theory of Definite Anaphora Comprehension in English Discourse.

    Science.gov (United States)

    1979-06-01

    peace in the mideast. 2 This Henry Kissinger is really something! Another type uses this to replace indefinites in contexts where one wants to...express vividness as in: (1) He kissed her with this unbelieveable passion. A third type of emotional deixis is the use of this to provide additional...indefinite noun phrases. Prince cites among many examples: D24-1 I work in electronic and auto shows. 2 Companies hire me to stay in their booth and talk

  4. IL NOME IN LIS NEL SEGNATO DI ADULTI UDENTI: UNA INDAGINE PRELIMINARE SUL CORPUS LISAU

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matteo La Grassa

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available L'indagine presenta i primi risultati emersi dall'analisi di una parte del corpus LISAU (LIS di Adulti Udenti sulla produzione segnata del sintagma nominale in LIS da parte di informanti udenti che hanno appreso la LIS come L2 in età adulta. Scopo dell'indagine è cominciare a tracciare una linea di ricerca nell'ambito della linguistica acquisizionale con riferimento all'acquisizione della LIS come L2 da parte di udenti. Il corpus LISAU include il segnato di 7 informanti udenti con livello di competenza omogenea che hanno terminato un corso di terzo livello presso la sede Ente Nazionale Sordi di Prato e di 2 informanti sordi segnanti nativi considerati come gruppo di controllo. L'analisi si è incentrata sulla realizzazione dei nomi di prima e di seconda classe rilevando anche forme non citazionali, sulla realizzazione di forme plurali e sulle modalità di accordo tra nomi e aggettivi. Dalla maggior parte dei dati analizzati si rileva la piena competenza degli informanti nella realizzazione del sintagma nominale. Nouns Signed by hearing adults in LIS: a preliminary survey on the LISAU corpus The results of an analysis concerning part of the LISAU (LIS of  Hearing Adults corpus related to the production of the noun phrase in LIS by hearing informants who learned the LIS L2 in adulthood are presented. The purpose of the investigation was to outline the process with regard to the acquisition of LIS L2 by hearing adults. The LISAU corpus is composed of the sign language of 7 hearing informants with a homogeneous level of competence who completed a third-level course at the Ente Nazionale Sordi in Prato. LISAU also includes the sign language of 2 deaf native signers, considered the control group. The analysis focuses on the first and second-class nouns, including non-citation forms, plural forms and noun-adjective agreement. Most of the analyzed data reveals the informants' full competence in creating noun phrases.

  5. Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People's Emotions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weis, Patrick P.; Herbert, Cornelia

    2017-01-01

    According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person ("my," "his") or the non-referential negation term ("no") as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant) to 9 (very pleasant). Facial expressions (M. Zygomaticus, M. Corrugator), heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader's self (e.g., "my happiness," "my joy") than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., "his happiness," "his joy"), suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no real

  6. Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People's Emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weis, Patrick P; Herbert, Cornelia

    2017-01-01

    According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person ("my," "his") or the non-referential negation term ("no") as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant) to 9 (very pleasant). Facial expressions ( M. Zygomaticus , M. Corrugator ), heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader's self (e.g., "my happiness," "my joy") than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., "his happiness," "his joy"), suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no real communication partner is present

  7. Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People's Emotions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Patrick P. Weis

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person ("my," "his" or the non-referential negation term ("no" as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant to 9 (very pleasant. Facial expressions (M. Zygomaticus, M. Corrugator, heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader's self (e.g., "my happiness," "my joy" than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., "his happiness," "his joy", suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no

  8. Early sensitivity of left perisylvian cortex to relationality in nouns and verbs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Williams, Adina; Reddigari, Samir; Pylkkänen, Liina

    2017-06-01

    The ability to track the relationality of concepts, i.e., their capacity to encode a relationship between entities, is one of the core semantic abilities humans possess. In language processing, we systematically leverage this ability when computing verbal argument structure, in order to link participants to the events they participate in. Previous work has converged on a large region of left posterior perisylvian cortex as a locus for such processing, but the wide range of experimental stimuli and manipulations has yielded an unclear picture of the region's exact role(s). Importantly, there is a tendency for effects of relationality in single-word studies to localize to posterior temporo-parietal cortex, while argument structure effects in sentences appear in left superior temporal cortex. To characterize these sensitivities, we designed two MEG experiments that cross the factors relationality and eventivity. The first used minimal noun phrases and tested for an effect of semantic composition, while the second employed full sentences and a manipulation of grammatical category. The former identified a region of the left inferior parietal lobe sensitive to relationality, but not eventivity or combination, beginning at 170ms. The latter revealed a similarly-timed effect of relationality in left mid-superior temporal cortex, independent of eventivity and category. The results suggest that i) multiple sub-regions of perisylvian cortex are sensitive to the relationality carried by concepts even in the absence of arguments, ii) linguistic context modulates the locus of this sensitivity, consistent with prior studies, and iii) relationality information is accessed early - before 200ms - regardless of the concept's event status or syntactic category. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Infants can use distributional cues to form syntactic categories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gerken, LouAnn; Wilson, Rachel; Lewis, William

    2005-05-01

    Nearly all theories of language development emphasize the importance of distributional cues for segregating words and phrases into syntactic categories like noun, feminine or verb phrase. However, questions concerning whether such cues can be used to the exclusion of referential cues have been debated. Using the headturn preference procedure, American children aged 1;5 were briefly familiarized with a partial Russian gender paradigm, with a subset of the paradigm members withheld. During test, infants listened on alternate trials to previously withheld grammatical items and ungrammatical items with incorrect gender markings on previously heard stems. Across three experiments, infants discriminated new grammatical from ungrammatical items, but like adults in previous studies, were only able to do so when a subset of familiarization items was double marked for gender category. The results suggest that learners can use distributional cues to category structure, to the exclusion of referential cues, from relatively early in the language learning process.

  10. Semantic and pragmatic factors influencing deaf and hearing students' comprehension of english sentences containing numeral quantifiers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kelly, Ronald R; Berent, Gerald P

    2011-01-01

    This research contrasted deaf and hearing students' interpretive knowledge of English sentences containing numeral quantifier phrases and indefinite noun phrases. A multiple-interpretation picture task methodology was used to assess 305 participants' judgments of the compatibility of sentence meanings with depicted discourse contexts. Participants' performance was assessed on the basis of hearing level (deaf, hearing) and grade level (middle school, high school, college). The deaf students were predicted to have differential access to specific sentence interpretations in accordance with the relative derivational complexity of the targeted sentence types. Hypotheses based on the pressures of derivational economy on acquisition were largely supported. The results also revealed that the deaf participants tended to overactivate pragmatic processes that yielded principled, though non-target, sentence interpretations. Collectively, the results not only contribute to the understanding of English acquisition under conditions of restricted access to spoken language input, they also suggest that pragmatic factors may play a broad role in influencing, and compromising, deaf students' reading comprehension and written expression.

  11. A Semantics-Based Approach to Retrieving Biomedical Information

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Andreasen, Troels; Bulskov, Henrik; Zambach, Sine

    2011-01-01

    This paper describes an approach to representing, organising, and accessing conceptual content of biomedical texts using a formal ontology. The ontology is based on UMLS resources supplemented with domain ontologies developed in the project. The approach introduces the notion of 'generative ontol...... of data mining of texts identifying paraphrases and concept relations and measuring distances between key concepts in texts. Thus, the project is distinct in its attempt to provide a formal underpinning of conceptual similarity or relatedness of meaning.......This paper describes an approach to representing, organising, and accessing conceptual content of biomedical texts using a formal ontology. The ontology is based on UMLS resources supplemented with domain ontologies developed in the project. The approach introduces the notion of 'generative...... ontologies', i.e., ontologies providing increasingly specialised concepts reflecting the phrase structure of natural language. Furthermore, we propose a novel so called ontological semantics which maps noun phrases from texts and queries into nodes in the generative ontology. This enables an advanced form...

  12. Comparing Narrative Microstructure between Bilingual Balochi-Persian and Monolingual Persian Preschoolers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maryam Arabpour

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Background: To date, with rapid increase of bilingual children, more attention about different patterns of the bilingual children narratives is needed. The aim of this study was to compare microstructure level of narratives generated by typical developing kindergarten children who were bilingual in Persian and Balochi with monolingual Persian speakers. Method: Thirty Persian-speaking monolingual and thirteen available bilingual children (aged 48 months old participated in this study. Children's story telling was audio-recorded and analyzed using the Persian-NAP (Narrative Assessment Protocol guidelines. Results: All of the NAP indicators include of group structure, phrase structure, modifiers, noun and verbs didn't show significant difference between monolingual and bilingual children (0.06≤p≤0.5. Conclusion: We didn't find different performance in the five NAP indicators between bilingual and monolingual children. It may be suggested that the different patterns of creating phrases and sentences in two languages don't affect the grammatical use of them in second language.

  13. Continuity and the persistence of objects: when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hall, D G

    1998-10-01

    In three experiments, a total of 480 participants heard a version of the story of the ship of Theseus (Hobbes, 1672/1913), in which a novel object, labeled with a possessive noun phrase, underwent a transformation in which its parts were replaced one at a time. Participants then had to decide which of two objects carried the same possessive noun phrase as the original: the one made entirely of new parts (that could be inferred to be continuous with the original) or one reassembled from the original parts (that could not be inferred to be continuous with the original). Participants often selected the object made of new parts, despite the radical transformation. However, the tendency to do so was significantly stronger (1) if the object was described as an animal than if it was described as an artifact, (2) if the animal's transformation lacked a human cause than if it possessed one, and (3) if the selection was made by adults or 7-year-olds than if it was made by 5-year-olds. The findings suggest that knowledge about specific kinds of objects and their canonical transformations exerts an increasingly powerful effect, over the course of development, upon people's tendency to rely on continuity as a criterion for attributing persistence to objects that undergo change. Copyright 1998 Academic Press.

  14. Sistema de recomendación para un uso inclusivo del lenguaje

    OpenAIRE

    Fuentes Fort, Maria; Padró Cirera, Lluís; Padró Cirera, Montserrat; Turmo Borrás, Jordi; Carrera, Jordi

    2009-01-01

    Sistema que procesa un texto escrito en castellano detectando usos del lenguaje no inclusivos. Para cada sintagma nominal sospechoso el sistema propone una serie de alternativas. El sistema permite también la adquisición automática de ejemplos positivos a partir de documentos que hagan un uso inclusivo del lenguaje. Estos ejemplos seran usados, junto a su contexto, en la presentación de sugerencias. System to detect exclusive language in Spanish documents. For each noun phrase detected as ...

  15. Recomendador t-incluye para un uso inclusivo del lenguaje

    OpenAIRE

    Fuentes Fort, Maria; Padró, Lluís; Turmo Borras, Jorge

    2008-01-01

    Sistema que procesa un texto escrito en castellano detectando usos del lenguaje no inclusivos. Para cada sintagma nominal sospechoso el sistema propone una serie de alternativas. El sistema permite también la adquisición automática de ejemplos positivos a partir de documentos que hagan un uso inclusivo del lenguaje. Éstos ejemplos seran usados, junto a su contexto, en la presentación de sugerencias. System to detect exclusive language in spanish documents. For each noun phrase detected as ...

  16. NOUN CLASSIFICATION IN ESAHIE

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The present work deals with noun classification in Esahie (Kwa, Niger ... phonological information influences the noun (form) class system of Esahie. ... between noun classes and (grammatical) Gender is interrogated (in the light of ..... the (A) argument6 precedes the verb and the (P) argument7 follows the verb in a simple.

  17. Syntactic flexibility and planning scope: The effect of verb bias on advance planning during sentence recall

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maartje evan de Velde

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available In sentence production, grammatical advance planning scope depends on contextual factors (e.g., time pressure, linguistic factors (e.g., ease of structural processing, and cognitive factors (e.g., production speed. The present study tests the influence of the availability of multiple syntactic alternatives (i.e., syntactic flexibility on the scope of advance planning during the recall of Dutch dative phrases. We manipulated syntactic flexibility by using verbs with a strong bias or a weak bias towards one structural alternative in sentence frames accepting both verbs (e.g., strong/weak bias: De ober schotelt/serveert de klant de maaltijd [voor] 'The waiter dishes out/serves the customer the meal'. To assess lexical planning scope, we varied the frequency of the first post-verbal noun (N1, Experiment 1 or the second post-verbal noun (N2, Experiment 2. In each experiment, 36 speakers produced the verb phrases in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP paradigm. On each trial, they read a sentence presented one word at a time, performed a short distractor task, and then saw a sentence preamble (e.g., De ober… which they had to complete to form the presented sentence. Onset latencies were compared using linear mixed effects models. N1 frequency did not produce any effects. N2 frequency only affected sentence onsets in the weak verb bias condition and especially in slow speakers. These findings highlight the dependency of planning scope during sentence recall on the grammatical properties of the verb and the frequency of post-verbal nouns. Implications for utterance planning in everyday speech are discussed.

  18. A guide of scientific writing in English

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Han, Bang Geun

    1987-10-01

    This book introduces reference while writing English paper, how to use letters, punctuation, how to use articles, similar word phrases and verbs used in scientific writings, auxiliary verbs, nouns deeply related to scientific writings, expressions about experiment tools and equipment, expressions of chemicals, how to mark numbers, adjectives and pronouns relevant to numbers, how to make plural form, expressions about multiple, surface area, depth, width, time, period, temperature, humidity. It also adds expressions about sensible assessment, statistics, deviation, signs, abbreviations, and how to write letters in English.

  19. On flexible and rigid nouns

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    2008-01-01

    Studies in Language 32-3 (2008), 727-752. Special issue: Parts of Speech: Descriptive tools, theoretical constructs Jan Rijkhoff - On flexible and rigid nouns This article argues that in addition to the flexible lexical categories in Hengeveld's classification of parts-of-speech systems (Contentive......, Non-Verb, Modifier), there are also flexible word classes within the rigid lexical category Noun (Set Noun, Sort Noun, General Noun). Members of flexible word classes are characterized by their vague semantics, which in the case of nouns means that values for the semantic features Shape...... and Homogeneity are either left undetermined or they are specified in such a way that they do not quite match the properties of the kind of entity denoted by the flexible item in the external world. I will then argue that flexible word classes constitute a proper category (i.e. they are not the result of a merger...

  20. Phrases sans parole : à propos d'une histoire d'amour du XXe siècle

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Patron Sylvie

    2012-07-01

    Full Text Available Cet article porte sur les relations entre récit (plus précisément narration et fiction dans une nouvelle de Mario Benedetti, "Cinq ans de vie", extraite des Histoires de Paris. Son cadre de référence théorique est la théorie non communicationnelle ou théorie poétique de la narration de S.-Y. Kuroda et Ann Banfield. Dans la première partie, je présente brièvement la théorie pour pouvoir déterminer ensuite ses modalités d"application à la nouvelle de Benedetti (nouvelle "fantastique", selon le terme de l'auteur, "transfictionnelle" selon la terminologie contemporaine. La théorie peut se résumer dans les huit propositions suivantes: (1 Les théories communicationnelles du récit, basées sur les concepts de narrateur et de narrataire, réels ou fictionnels, ne peuvent rendre compte que d'une sous-catégorie de récits de fiction ; (2 Il existe des récits de fiction avec narrateur (sous-entendu fictionnel et des récits de fiction sans narrateur. (3 Le narrateur omniscient est, dans la plupart des cas, une explication ad hoc. (4 Il convient de distinguer clairement ce qui relève du contenu de la représentation fictionnelle et ce qui relève des moyens mobilisés au service de la construction de cette représentation ; (5 Le récit de fiction moderne à la troisième personne peut être considéré comme une collection structurée d'informations, les unes sans origine assignable dans le monde de la fiction, les autres provenant d'un ou de plusieurs sujets de conscience appartenant au monde de la fiction ; (6 La lecture d'un récit de fiction moderne à la troisième personne implique que l'on reconnaisse les intentions de l'auteur relativement au caractère objectif ou subjectif des phrases ou des contextes. La deuxième partie propose une approche du dénouement de "Cinq ans de vie" selon le protocole défini par Kuroda et Banfield. Après avoir montré que la théorie pouvait prétendre à l'adéquation descriptive

  1. Task Design Characteristics and EFL Learners' Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency during Uncontrolled Pair Interactions: A Naturalistic Perspective

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Edgar Emmanuell García-Ponce

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available According to discoursal views on language, variations in textualization strategies are always socio-contextually motivated and never happen at random. The textual forms employed in a text, along with many other discoursal and contextual factors, could certainly affect the readability of the text, making it more or less processable for the same reader. On the basis of these assumptions, the present study set out to examine how our data varied across genres and disciplines in terms of our target textual forms. These forms are as follows: the magnitude of T-unit (MOTU, the degree of embeddedness of the main verb in T-unit (DE, the physical distance between the verb and its satellite elements (PD, the magnitude of the noun phrase appearing before the verb (MOX, and the magnitude of noun phrase appearing after the verb (MOY. Our data consisted of 20 research articles randomly selected from two different disciplines of Biology and Applied Linguistics, to be analyzed in terms of the above-named textual strategies. One way ANOVA and post hoc Tukey tests were used for data analyses. The results revealed cross-generic as well as cross-disciplinary differences in the employment of the above textual forms. These findings were discussed in terms of the academic concepts and discourse on the one hand and the possible effect of the required textual forms on the readability of the text on the other hand.

  2. Variations in Textualization: A Cross-generic and Cross-disciplinary Study, Implications for Readability of the Academic Discourse

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mina Abbasi Bonabi

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available According to discoursal views on language, variations in textualization strategies are always socio-contextually motivated and never happen at random. The textual forms employed in a text, along with many other discoursal and contextual factors, could certainly affect the readability of the text, making it more or less processable for the same reader. On the basis of these assumptions, the present study set out to examine how our data varied across genres and disciplines in terms of our target textual forms. These forms are as follows: the magnitude of T-unit (MOTU, the degree of embeddedness of the main verb in T-unit (DE, the physical distance between the verb and its satellite elements (PD, the magnitude of the noun phrase appearing before the verb (MOX, and the magnitude of noun phrase appearing after the verb (MOY. Our data consisted of 20 research articles randomly selected from two different disciplines of Biology and Applied Linguistics, to be analyzed in terms of the above-named textual strategies. One way ANOVA and post hoc Tukey tests were used for data analyses. The results revealed cross-generic as well as cross-disciplinary differences in the employment of the above textual forms. These findings were discussed in terms of the academic concepts and discourse on the one hand and the possible effect of the required textual forms on the readability of the text on the other hand.

  3. Extracting product features and opinion words using pattern knowledge in customer reviews.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Htay, Su Su; Lynn, Khin Thidar

    2013-01-01

    Due to the development of e-commerce and web technology, most of online Merchant sites are able to write comments about purchasing products for customer. Customer reviews expressed opinion about products or services which are collectively referred to as customer feedback data. Opinion extraction about products from customer reviews is becoming an interesting area of research and it is motivated to develop an automatic opinion mining application for users. Therefore, efficient method and techniques are needed to extract opinions from reviews. In this paper, we proposed a novel idea to find opinion words or phrases for each feature from customer reviews in an efficient way. Our focus in this paper is to get the patterns of opinion words/phrases about the feature of product from the review text through adjective, adverb, verb, and noun. The extracted features and opinions are useful for generating a meaningful summary that can provide significant informative resource to help the user as well as merchants to track the most suitable choice of product.

  4. Extracting Product Features and Opinion Words Using Pattern Knowledge in Customer Reviews

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Su Su Htay

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Due to the development of e-commerce and web technology, most of online Merchant sites are able to write comments about purchasing products for customer. Customer reviews expressed opinion about products or services which are collectively referred to as customer feedback data. Opinion extraction about products from customer reviews is becoming an interesting area of research and it is motivated to develop an automatic opinion mining application for users. Therefore, efficient method and techniques are needed to extract opinions from reviews. In this paper, we proposed a novel idea to find opinion words or phrases for each feature from customer reviews in an efficient way. Our focus in this paper is to get the patterns of opinion words/phrases about the feature of product from the review text through adjective, adverb, verb, and noun. The extracted features and opinions are useful for generating a meaningful summary that can provide significant informative resource to help the user as well as merchants to track the most suitable choice of product.

  5. Extracting Product Features and Opinion Words Using Pattern Knowledge in Customer Reviews

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lynn, Khin Thidar

    2013-01-01

    Due to the development of e-commerce and web technology, most of online Merchant sites are able to write comments about purchasing products for customer. Customer reviews expressed opinion about products or services which are collectively referred to as customer feedback data. Opinion extraction about products from customer reviews is becoming an interesting area of research and it is motivated to develop an automatic opinion mining application for users. Therefore, efficient method and techniques are needed to extract opinions from reviews. In this paper, we proposed a novel idea to find opinion words or phrases for each feature from customer reviews in an efficient way. Our focus in this paper is to get the patterns of opinion words/phrases about the feature of product from the review text through adjective, adverb, verb, and noun. The extracted features and opinions are useful for generating a meaningful summary that can provide significant informative resource to help the user as well as merchants to track the most suitable choice of product. PMID:24459430

  6. Bush telegraph readings in writing

    CERN Document Server

    Strongman, Luke

    2015-01-01

    A ""bush telegraph"" is an antipodean slang noun phrase for a ""grapevine"" or an informal network of communication. The title of this book on English language use comes from the fact that the book is written from the southern hemisphere (where the idea of a ""bush telegraph"" is more widely-known) and because the concept of a ""bush telegraph"" describes what the book provides - a discussion of salient points in English language use and tertiary teaching across branches of interrelated interests. Each chapter of Bush Telegraph describes aspects of English writing culture. Separately and toget

  7. Limits on the role of retrieval cues in memory for actions: enactment effects in the absence of object cues in the environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Steffens, Melanie C; Buchner, Axel; Wender, Karl F; Decker, Claudia

    2007-12-01

    Verb-object phrases (open the umbrella, knock on the table) are usually remembered better if they have been enacted during study (also called subject-performed tasks) than if they have merely been learned verbally (verbal tasks). This enactment effect is particularly pronounced for phrases for which the objects (table) are present as cues in the study and test contexts. In previous studies with retrieval cues for some phrases, the enactment effect in free recall for the other phrases has been surprisingly small or even nonexistent. The present study tested whether the often replicated enactment effect in free recall can be found if none of the phrases contains context cues. In Experiment 1, we tested, and corroborated, the suppression hypothesis: The enactment effect for a given type of phrase (marker phrases) is modified by the presence or absence of cues for the other phrases in the list (experimental phrases). Experiments 2 and 3 replicated the enactment effect for phrases without cues. Experiment 2 also showed that the presence of cues either at study or at test is sufficient for obtaining a suppression effect, and Experiment 3 showed that the enactment effect may disappear altogether if retrieval cues are very salient.

  8. Morphological structure mediates the notional meaning of gender marking: Evidence from the gender-congruency effect in Hebrew speech production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deutsch, Avital; Dank, Maya

    2018-02-01

    This study investigated the gender-congruency effect of animate nouns in Hebrew. The Picture-Word Interference paradigm was used to manipulate gender congruency between target pictures and spoken distractors. Naming latency revealed an inhibitory gender-congruency effect, as naming the pictures took longer in the presence of a gender-congruent distractor than with a distractor from a different gender category. The inhibitory effect was demonstrated for feminine (morphologically marked) nouns, across two stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) (Experiments 1a and 1b), and masculine (morphologically unmarked) nouns (Experiment 2). The same pattern was observed when participants had to produce bare nouns (Experiment 1) or gender-marked noun phrases (Experiment 3). The inhibitory pattern of the effect resembles previous findings of bare nouns in a subset of Romance languages, including Italian and Spanish. These findings add to previous research which investigated the gender-congruency effect of inanimate nouns, where no effect of gender-congruent words was found. The results are discussed in relation to the null effect previously found for inanimate nouns. The comparison of the present and previous studies is motivated by a common linguistic distinction between animate and inanimate nouns in Hebrew, which ascribes grammatical gender specifications to derivational structures (for inanimate nouns) versus inflectional structures (for animate nouns). Given the difference in the notional meaning of gender specification for animate and inanimate nouns, the case of Hebrew exemplifies how language-specific characteristics, such as rich morphological structures, can be used by the linguistic system to express conceptual distinctions at the form-word level.

  9. On flexible and rigid nouns

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan

    2010-01-01

    classes. Finally this article wants to claim that the distinction between rigid and flexible noun categories (a) adds a new dimension to current classifications of parts of speech systems, (b) correlates with certain grammatical phenomena (e.g. so-called number discord), and (c) helps to explain the parts......This article argues that in addition to the major flexible lexical categories in Hengeveld's classification of parts of speech systems (Contentive, Non-Verb, Modifier), there are also flexible word classes within the rigid lexical category Noun (Set Noun, Sort Noun, General Noun). Members...... by the flexible item in the external world. I will then argue that flexible word classes constitute a proper category (i.e. they are not the result of a merger of some rigid word classes) in that members of flexible word categories display the same properties regarding category membership as members of rigid word...

  10. Média dos valores da frase em crianças com desvio fonológico evolutivo Average values of phrase in children with developmental phonological disorder

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jamile Konzen Albiero

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available OBJETIVO: Verificar a média dos valores da frase em crianças com desvio fonológico e comparar com o padrão de referência proposto na literatura. MÉTODOS: A amostra foi constituída de 16 crianças com desvio fonológico, sendo sete do gênero feminino e nove do gênero masculino, com idades entre 4 anos e 5 meses e 7 anos e 7 meses. Após a confirmação do diagnóstico de desvio fonológico evolutivo, os sujeitos foram submetidos à avaliação da linguagem por meio da pesquisa da média dos valores da frase, proposta na literatura. Nessa avaliação, por meio de três diferentes modalidades de enunciação da linguagem, foram coletadas as cinco primeiras frases faladas pelas crianças e pontuadas de acordo com a sua complexidade, sendo atribuídos pesos diferentes aos elementos sintáticos e aos elementos lexicais de cada frase. RESULTADOS: Quando comparadas com as crianças de referência, as crianças com desvio fonológico evolutivo apresentaram valores inferiores em todas as variáveis analisadas, sendo a diferença significativa. O mesmo foi observado quando o grupo foi dividido em faixas etárias, porém, nas faixas de 5 a 7 anos algumas modalidades analisadas não apresentaram diferenças significativas. CONCLUSÃO: Conforme este estudo, crianças com diagnóstico de desvio fonológico evolutivo podem apresentar prejuízos em outros subsistemas da linguagem como o semântico e o morfossintático, sendo estes mais evidentes nas faixas etárias iniciais.PURPOSE: To determine the average values of phrase in children with phonological disorder, and to compare it with benchmark values proposed in literature. METHODS: The sample consisted of 16 children with phonological disorders, seven females and nine males, with ages between 4 years and 5 months and 7 years and 7 months. After confirmation of the diagnosis of developmental phonological disorder, subjects were submitted to language assessment through the investigation of the average

  11. The Role of Sustained Attention in the Production of Conjoined Noun Phrases: An Individual Differences Study

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Jongman, S.R.; Meyer, A.S.; Roelofs, A.P.A.

    2015-01-01

    It has previously been shown that language production, performed simultaneously with a nonlinguistic task, involves sustained attention. Sustained attention concerns the ability to maintain alertness over time. Here, we aimed to replicate the previous finding by showing that individuals call upon

  12. Selective impairment of masculine gender processing: evidence from a German aphasic.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seyboth, Margret; Blanken, Gerhard; Ehmann, Daniela; Schwarz, Falke; Bormann, Tobias

    2011-12-01

    The present single case study describes the performance of the German aphasic E.M. who exhibited a severe impairment of grammatical gender processing in masculine nouns but relatively spared performance regarding feminine and neuter ones. This error pattern was assessed with tests of gender assignment to orally or visually presented words, with oral or written responses, and with tests of gender congruency decision on noun phrases. The pattern occurred across tasks and modalities, thus suggesting a gender-specific impairment at a modality-independent level of processing. It was sensitive to frequency, thus supporting the assumption that access to gender features as part of grammatical processing is frequency sensitive. Besides being the first description of a gender-specific impairment in an aphasic subject, the data therefore have implications regarding the modelling of representation and processing of grammatical gender information within the mental lexicon.

  13. Feature interpretability and the positions of 2nd person possessives in Brazilian Portuguese

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bruna Karla Pereira

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Interpretability and valuation of φ-features (Chomsky, 2001; Pesetsky and Torrego, 2007 have played a central role in the investigation of language universals. With regard to that, in standard Brazilian Portuguese (BP, as well as in other Romance languages, possessives have uninterpretable number features, which are valued via nominal agreement. However, dialects of BP, especially the one spoken in Minas Gerais, have shown that 2nd person possessives, in postnominal position, do not have number agreement with the noun. In order to account for these facts, I will argue that, in this grammar, number features on 2nd person possessives are reanalyzed as being: (i associated with the person (rather than the noun and (ii interpretable. From the first postulation, 'seu' is expected to be the possessive for 2nd person singular, and 'seus' for 2nd person plural. From the second postulation, no number concord is expected to be triggered on the possessive. In addition, based on Danon (2011 and Norris (2014, I will argue that cardinals divide BP DPs into two domains in that phrases located above NumP are marked with the plural morpheme, while phrases below it are unmarked. In this sense, because prenominal possessives precede cardinals (NumP, they must be marked with the plural morpheme for nominal agreement; whereas postnominal possessives, which follow NumP, must be unmarked. Free from the plural marking associated with nominal agreement, postnominal 2nd person possessives favor the reanalysis of the morpheme '-s' as indicating the number associated with person features.

  14. Binominální slovní spojení v Míšeňské právní knize a jejím českém překladu : Binominal Phrases in the Meissen Law Book and its Czech Translation: Issues of Historical Phraseology

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Libuše Spáčilová

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available The study deals with topical tasks of historical phraseology. Using a specific historical source (the Meissen Law Book written in the 14th century in German, the paper reports the results of an analysis of binominal phrases and of their equivalents in a Czech translation from the 15th century. The article also comments on the variability exhibited by binominals in the two languages, as well as on the formal structure of such important lexical means for legal documents. The conclusions also point to possible analyses of other types of phrasemes in both sources.

  15. La expansión del posesivo pospuesto a la luz de documentación navarra (y aragonesa del siglo XIII

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ángeles Romero Cambrón

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available En los primitivos documentos romances el posesivo sólo aparece antepuesto al sustantivo ("(el nuestro padre". La posposición ("padre nuestro" se empieza a registrar en el siglo XIII en aragonés y en dialecto navarro. Considerando principalmente la documentación de esta segunda variedad, el presente trabajo tiene como objetivo determinar el modo en que el posesivo adquirió la capacidad de aparecer pospuesto. Este cambio se vio impulsado por factores de naturaleza estructural. Uno de ellos es la existencia de la construcción posesiva con de y pronombre personal ("por raçón de mí"; otro, la concurrencia del posesivo en coordinación, bien con el sintagma preposicional ("nin subdito vuestro nin de la eglesia", bien con otro posesivo ("l'amor nuestra e vuestra". El posesivo se pospondría adoptando la posición propia del sintagma preposicional. Asimismo, habría influido en la imposición del cambio la tendencia a aligerar la posición prenominal cuando concurrían en ella más de un adyacente. In the first Romance texts, possessives only occur in prenominal position (e.g. (el nuestro padre. The earliest records of postposition (e.g. padre nuestro date back to the 13th century in Aragonese and in Navarrese dialect. This paper reports largely on documentation involving Navarrese in order to determine in what way the postpositive placement of the possessive became normal. The influence of three grammar structures has been found to trigger possessive postposition. The first structure is a possessive construction consisting of the preposition de followed by a personal pronoun (e.g. campo de nos. The second structure includes a possessive in coordination either with a prepositional phrase (nin subdito vuestro nin de la eglesia or with another possessive (l'amor nuestra e vuestra. In this case, the possessive occurs after the noun in the natural place of a prepositional phrase. Finally, possessive postposition became a

  16. ULTRA: Universal Grammar as a Universal Parser.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Medeiros, David P

    2018-01-01

    A central concern of generative grammar is the relationship between hierarchy and word order, traditionally understood as two dimensions of a single syntactic representation. A related concern is directionality in the grammar. Traditional approaches posit process-neutral grammars, embodying knowledge of language, put to use with infinite facility both for production and comprehension. This has crystallized in the view of Merge as the central property of syntax, perhaps its only novel feature. A growing number of approaches explore grammars with different directionalities, often with more direct connections to performance mechanisms. This paper describes a novel model of universal grammar as a one-directional, universal parser. Mismatch between word order and interpretation order is pervasive in comprehension; in the present model, word order is language-particular and interpretation order (i.e., hierarchy) is universal. These orders are not two dimensions of a unified abstract object (e.g., precedence and dominance in a single tree); rather, both are temporal sequences, and UG is an invariant real-time procedure (based on Knuth's stack-sorting algorithm) transforming word order into hierarchical order. This shift in perspective has several desirable consequences. It collapses linearization, displacement, and composition into a single performance process. The architecture provides a novel source of brackets (labeled unambiguously and without search), which are understood not as part-whole constituency relations, but as storage and retrieval routines in parsing. It also explains why neutral word order within single syntactic cycles avoids 213-like permutations. The model identifies cycles as extended projections of lexical heads, grounding the notion of phase. This is achieved with a universal processor, dispensing with parameters. The empirical focus is word order in noun phrases. This domain provides some of the clearest evidence for 213-avoidance as a cross

  17. Representations of abstract grammatical feature agreement in young children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Melançon, Andréane; Shi, Rushen

    2015-11-01

    A fundamental question in language acquisition research is whether young children have abstract grammatical representations. We tested this question experimentally. French-learning 30-month-olds were first taught novel word-object pairs in the context of a gender-marked determiner (e.g., un MASC ravole 'a ravole'). Test trials presented the objects side-by-side while one of them was named in new phrases containing other determiners and an adjective (e.g., le MASC joli ravole MASC 'the pretty ravole'). The gender agreement between the new determiner and the non-adjacent noun was manipulated in different test trials (e.g., le MASC __ravole MASC; *la FEM __ravole MASC). We found that online comprehension of the named target was facilitated in gender-matched trials but impeded in gender-mismatched trials. That is, children assigned the determiner genders to the novel nouns during word learning. They then processed the non-adjacent gender agreement between the two categories (Det, Noun) during test. The results demonstrate abstract featural representation and grammatical productivity in young children.

  18. The role of parallelism in the real-time processing of anaphora.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poirier, Josée; Walenski, Matthew; Shapiro, Lewis P

    2012-06-01

    Parallelism effects refer to the facilitated processing of a target structure when it follows a similar, parallel structure. In coordination, a parallelism-related conjunction triggers the expectation that a second conjunct with the same structure as the first conjunct should occur. It has been proposed that parallelism effects reflect the use of the first structure as a template that guides the processing of the second. In this study, we examined the role of parallelism in real-time anaphora resolution by charting activation patterns in coordinated constructions containing anaphora, Verb-Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) and Noun-Phrase Traces (NP-traces). Specifically, we hypothesised that an expectation of parallelism would incite the parser to assume a structure similar to the first conjunct in the second, anaphora-containing conjunct. The speculation of a similar structure would result in early postulation of covert anaphora. Experiment 1 confirms that following a parallelism-related conjunction, first-conjunct material is activated in the second conjunct. Experiment 2 reveals that an NP-trace in the second conjunct is posited immediately where licensed, which is earlier than previously reported in the literature. In light of our findings, we propose an intricate relation between structural expectations and anaphor resolution.

  19. THE COMMON AND PROPER NOUNS BETWEEN ALBANIAN AND ENGLISH

    OpenAIRE

    Shkelqim Millaku

    2017-01-01

    The noun in Albanian language classified as common and proper. The common nouns in turn divide into countable and uncountable. Collective nouns and substance nouns are subclasses of the other classes. The structure of noun formation between Albanian and English on the general aspect of morphology and syntax still didn't study in the way of comparative, contrast and generative. Those fields are our object of study. In Albanian and English we find some concepts of studies for noun for exam...

  20. Predicting Variation of Folk Songs: A Corpus Analysis Study on the Memorability of Melodies

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    Berit Janssen

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available We present a hypothesis-driven study on the variation of melody phrases in a collection of Dutch folk songs. We investigate the variation of phrases within the folk songs through a pattern matching method which detects occurrences of these phrases within folk song variants, and ask the question: do the phrases which show less variation have different properties than those which do? We hypothesize that theories on melody recall may predict variation, and as such, investigate phrase length, the position and number of repetitions of a given phrase in the melody in which it occurs, as well as expectancy and motif repetivity. We show that all of these predictors account for the observed variation to a moderate degree, and that, as hypothesized, those phrases vary less which are rather short, contain highly expected melodic material, occur relatively early in the melody, and contain small pitch intervals. A large portion of the variance is left unexplained by the current model, however, which leads us to a discussion of future approaches to study memorability of melodies.

  1. Noun complement clauses as referential modifiers

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    Carlos de Cuba

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available A number of recent analyses propose that so-called noun complement clauses should be analyzed as a type of relative clause. In this paper, I present a number of complications for any analysis that equates noun complement clauses to relative clauses, and conclude that this type of analysis is on the wrong track. I present cross-linguistic evidence showing that the syntactic behavior of noun complement clauses does not pattern with relative clauses. Patterns of complementizer choice and complementizer drop as well as patterns involving main clause phenomena and extraction differ in the two constructions, which I argue is unexpected under a relative clause analysis that involves operator movement. Instead I present an alternative analysis in which I propose that the referentiality of a noun complement clause is linked to its syntactic behavior. Following recent work, I claim that referential clauses have a syntactically truncated left-periphery, and this truncation can account for the lack of main clause phenomena in noun complement clauses. I argue that the truncation analysis is also able to accommodate complementizer data patterns more easily than relative clause analyses that appeal to operator movement.

  2. Proverb and idiom comprehension in Alzheimer disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kempler, D; Van Lancker, D; Read, S

    1988-01-01

    Twenty-nine patients diagnosed with Probable Alzheimer Disease were administered tests of word, familiar phrases (idioms and proverbs), and novel phrase comprehension. From the early stage of the disease, patients performed worse at understanding familiar phrases than single words or novel phrases. The results uphold common observations that AD patients have difficulty interpreting abstract meanings. Cognitive variables responsible for poor idiom/proverb comprehension and the clinical implications of this new protocol are discussed.

  3. Reconcile: A Coreference Resolution Research Platform

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Stoyanov, V; Cardie, C; Gilbert, N; Riloff, E; Buttler, D; Hysom, D

    2009-10-29

    Despite the availability of standard data sets and metrics, approaches to the problem of noun phrase coreference resolution are hard to compare empirically due to the different evaluation setting stemming, in part, from the lack of comprehensive coreference resolution research platforms. In this tech report we present Reconcile, a coreference resolution research platform that aims to facilitate the implementation of new approaches to coreference resolution as well as the comparison of existing approaches. We discuss Reconcile's architecture and give results of running Reconcile on six data sets using four evaluation metrics, showing that Reconcile's performance is comparable to state-of-the-art systems in coreference resolution.

  4. Layers of root nouns in Germanic

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hansen, Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard

    2017-01-01

    The root-noun declension became productive in early Germanic, containing (I) inherited root nouns, (IIa) original substrate or loan words, and transitions from other declensions in (IIb) Proto-Germanic and (III) North Germanic. As ablaut was abolished, the inherited type would display ablaut grades...

  5. PHRASEOLOGY OF THE VRBOVSKO LOCAL IDIOM

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    Mihaela Matešić

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available Semantic analysis of phrases and an analysis of linguistic convergence are conducted on the phraseological fund of the Vrbovsko local idiom. Phrases are semantically analysed with regard to monosemy, polysemy, homonymy, synonymy and antonymy. A conceptual analysis of phrases, based on the cognitive semantics approach, is conducted and the result is the grouping of phrases on the basis of the so-called concepts. Since the research was conducted on a dialectal corpus, the paper also offers an overview of the basic characteristics of the present-day state of the Vrbovsko local idiom. A dictionary of phrases of this local idiom can be found in the Appendix to this paper.

  6. Power source roadmaps using bibliometrics and database tomography

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kostoff, R.N.; Tshiteya, R.; Pfeil, K.M.; Humenik, J.A.; Karypis, G.

    2005-01-01

    Database Tomography (DT) is a textual database analysis system consisting of two major components: (1) algorithms for extracting multi-word phrase frequencies and phrase proximities (physical closeness of the multi-word technical phrases) from any type of large textual database, to augment (2) interpretative capabilities of the expert human analyst. DT was used to derive technical intelligence from a Power Sources database derived from the Science Citation Index. Phrase frequency analysis by the technical domain experts provided the pervasive technical themes of the Power Sources database, and the phrase proximity analysis provided the relationships among the pervasive technical themes. Bibliometric analysis of the Power Sources literature supplemented the DT results with author/journal/institution/country publication and citation data

  7. On the Categorial Ambivalence of un montón and Other Similar Quantifiers

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    Javier San Julián Solana

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Owing to their ability to express indefinite (superlative quantification, units like montón, porrón or barbaridad (~ bestialidad ~ burrada ~ brutalidad are often included among quantifying nouns. But along with a series of clearly nominal features, they have other features which are typical of adverbs. The aim of this paper is precisely to provide a reasonable explanation for this categorial hybridism. Applying the theoretical and methodological principles of the Functional Grammar of Spanish, we try to demonstrate that they are not "amphibious" units. On the contrary, we argue that, from a synchronic point of view, two sets of signs should be distinguished, which are functionally and lexically different but have "clonal" signifiers: a nouns –with designative meaning– montón/es, porrón/es, barbaridad/es, and b adverbial phrases un montón, un porrón, una barbaridad, which are pure quantifiers, according to their lexeme.

  8. Tracking sentence planning and production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kemper, Susan; Bontempo, Daniel; McKedy, Whitney; Schmalzried, RaLynn; Tagliaferri, Bruno; Kieweg, Doug

    2011-03-01

    To assess age differences in the costs of language planning and production. A controlled sentence production task was combined with digital pursuit rotor tracking. Participants were asked to track a moving target while formulating a sentence using specified nouns and verbs and to continue to track the moving target while producing their response. The length of the critical noun phrase (NP) as well as the type of verb provided were manipulated. The analysis indicated that sentence planning was more costly than sentence production, and sentence planning costs increased when participants had to incorporate a long NP into their sentence. The long NPs also tended to be shifted to the end of the sentence, whereas short NPs tended to be positioned after the verb. Planning or producing responses with long NPs was especially difficult for older adults, although verb type and NP shift had similar costs for young and older adults. Pursuit rotor tracking during controlled sentence production reveals the effects of aging on sentence planning and production.

  9. Left fronto-temporal dynamics during agreement processing: evidence for feature-specific computations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Molinaro, Nicola; Barber, Horacio A; Pérez, Alejandro; Parkkonen, Lauri; Carreiras, Manuel

    2013-09-01

    Grammatical agreement is a widespread language phenomenon that indicates formal syntactic relations between words; however, it also conveys basic lexical (e.g. grammatical gender) or semantic (e.g. numerosity) information about a discourse referent. In this study, we focus on the reading of Spanish noun phrases, violating either number or gender determiner-noun agreement compared to grammatical controls. Magnetoencephalographic activity time-locked to the onset of the noun in both types of violation revealed a left-lateralized brain network involving anterior temporal regions (~220 ms) and, later in time, ventro-lateral prefrontal regions (>300 ms). These activations coexist with dependency-specific effects: in an initial step (~170 ms), occipito-temporal regions are employed for fine-grained analysis of the number marking (in Spanish, presence or absence of the suffix '-s'), while anterior temporal regions show increased activation for gender mismatches compared to grammatical controls. The semantic relevance of number agreement dependencies was mainly reflected by left superior temporal increased activity around 340 ms. These findings offer a detailed perspective on the multi-level analyses involved in the initial computation of agreement dependencies, and theoretically support a derivational approach to agreement computation. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. Structural Analysis of Lexical Bundles in EFL English Majors' Theses of an Ordinary Normal University in China

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    Xixiang LOU

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available A quantitative analysis has been made of 330 Chinese EFL learners' theses the distribution of the three- to eight-word lexical bundles in them and a comparison has been made of the percentages of the four-word lexical bundles of different structural categories in Chinese EFL learners' theses and the native English speakers' spoken or written academic language. It is found that the three-to eight-word lexical bundles in Chinese EFL learners' theses are on the decrease with the increase of the number of their component words. Chinese students' English language data share with native English speakers' spoken academic language data the 'personal pronoun + lexical verb phrase (+complement clause' lexical bundles and the '(auxiliary + active verb (+' bundles, and  also share with native English speakers' academic spoken language data the 'adverbial clause fragment' bundles, the 'noun phrase with other post-modifier fragment' bundles, the 'anticipatory it + VP/adjective P (+ complement clause' bundles, the 'passive verb + PP fragment' bundles and the 'copula be + NP/adjective P' bundles. A further analysis shows that the EFL learners' English language in their theses is of more characteristics of written language and fewer characteristics of spoken language.

  11. Form and Function of the Yorùbá HTS (High Tone Syllable Revisited: Evidence From Ìgbò Second Language Learners of Yorùbá

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    Boluwaji Oshodi

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available The HTS (High Tone Syllable, a v-shaped element that occurs between the subject noun phrase and the verb phrase in declarative sentences, remains unarguably a most controversial element in the grammar of Yorùbá language, as scholars have expressed contradictory opinions on its precise form and function. This study examines the HTS from the standpoint of second language acquisition with data collected through oral production from three Igbo native speakers (one child and two adults who were Yorùbá L2 learners. It was discovered that the element has the unvarying form o with a high tone (ó  and it usually and persistently occurs before verbs, and also appears to indicate tense and aspect in their interlanguage. The study concludes that, though the actual syntactic function of the HTS still remains controversial, evidence from Igbo L2 Yorùbá learners supports the fact that the element functions more like a tense and aspectual marker which indicates past/present actions in the language, as suggested by Awóbùlúyì (1992.   Original received: 2015/02/27 Review sent to author: 2015/07/03 Accepted: 2015/07/08

  12. Saying What You're Looking For: Linguistics Meets Video Search.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barrett, Daniel Paul; Barbu, Andrei; Siddharth, N; Siskind, Jeffrey Mark

    2016-10-01

    We present an approach to searching large video corpora for clips which depict a natural-language query in the form of a sentence. Compositional semantics is used to encode subtle meaning differences lost in other approaches, such as the difference between two sentences which have identical words but entirely different meaning: The person rode the horse versus The horse rode the person. Given a sentential query and a natural-language parser, we produce a score indicating how well a video clip depicts that sentence for each clip in a corpus and return a ranked list of clips. Two fundamental problems are addressed simultaneously: detecting and tracking objects, and recognizing whether those tracks depict the query. Because both tracking and object detection are unreliable, our approach uses the sentential query to focus the tracker on the relevant participants and ensures that the resulting tracks are described by the sentential query. While most earlier work was limited to single-word queries which correspond to either verbs or nouns, we search for complex queries which contain multiple phrases, such as prepositional phrases, and modifiers, such as adverbs. We demonstrate this approach by searching for 2,627 naturally elicited sentential queries in 10 Hollywood movies.

  13. Translation of Japanese Noun Compounds at Super-Function Based MT System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Xin; Ren, Fuji; Kuroiwa, Shingo

    Noun compounds are frequently encountered construction in nature language processing (NLP), consisting of a sequence of two or more nouns which functions syntactically as one noun. The translation of noun compounds has become a major issue in Machine Translation (MT) due to their frequency of occurrence and high productivity. In our previous studies on Super-Function Based Machine Translation (SFBMT), we have found that noun compounds are very frequently used and difficult to be translated correctly, the overgeneration of noun compounds can be dangerous as it may introduce ambiguity in the translation. In this paper, we discuss the challenges in handling Japanese noun compounds in an SFBMT system, we present a shallow method for translating noun compounds by using a word level translation dictionary and target language monolingual corpus.

  14. Doing the Best You Can: A Study of Values in a Group of Nun Educators

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hogard, Elaine

    2004-01-01

    A group of experienced and well-qualified nun educators were interviewed regarding their experiences and values. A recurrent phrase occurring in the interviews was "Doing the best you can". This phrase served to both justify and anticipate statements. A questionnaire was constructed to encourage elaboration of the phrase and to detect…

  15. Ethnic and Nationality Stereotypes in Everyday Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kite, Mary E.; Whitley, Bernard E., Jr.

    2012-01-01

    The authors describe a demonstration of stereotype use in everyday language that focuses on common phrases reflecting stereotypic beliefs about ethnic groups or nationalities. The exercise encourages students' discussion of stereotype use. Students read 13 common phrases from the English language and stated whether they had used each phrase and…

  16. FILLING GAPS ONLINE - USE OF LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC INFORMATION IN SENTENCE PROCESSING

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    STOWE, LA; TANENHAUS, MK; CARLSON, GN

    1991-01-01

    Two experiments investigated how people assign an interpretation to question phrases. In order to determine the meaning of the WH-phrase (e.g., who, what), a "gap" must be located and the role associated with the gap assigned to the WH-phrase. Two experiments tested the Lexical Expectation model of

  17. Teaching English Phrases through SMS

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cig, Enes Kurtay; Guvercin, Selim; Bayimbetov, Berdak; Dos, Bulent

    2015-01-01

    Achieving the maximum efficiency in teaching a second language (L2) has always been an important issue for educators. Current globalization processes, development of international business relations, political integrations among the various countries throughout the world, and the abilities of latest information and communications technologies…

  18. The Zulu Ditransitive Verb Phrase

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adams, Nikki

    2010-01-01

    In this dissertation, several related aspects of arguments to ditransitive verbs are explored. The aim is to discover in what ways certain asymmetries in what is frequently referred to as a "symmetric object" language are interconnected while still allowing the other symmetric object behavior. These asymmetries are: (1) The requirement that the…

  19. Investigating differences between proper and common nouns using novel word learning

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    Anastasiya Romanova

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Empirical studies have shown higher rates of tip-of-the-tongue states for proper nouns, in comparison to common nouns, in non-brain-damaged speakers (e.g., Valentine & Moore, 1995, and higher retrieval failure rates for proper nouns relative to common nouns in people with aphasia (e.g., Semenza, 2009. Some authors suggest the source of these differences lies in logical properties (e.g., Semenza, 2009. That is, common nouns refer to a category of beings or objects that share certain semantic properties, while proper nouns designate specific individual beings or objects with unique features. Other authors attribute the distinction in processing to a number of statistical properties that differ across common and proper nouns (Kay, Hanley, & Miles, 2001. The aims of the present study were: 1 to dissociate the effects of logical and statistical properties by using novel words with equal statistical properties; 2 to determine whether people with aphasia show disproportionate impairments in learning proper nouns relative to common nouns, compared to aged-matched subjects. Methods We tested young (n=16 and elderly (n=14 adult non-brain-damaged participants and people with aphasia (n=2. Items-to-be-learnt were given as representatives of an unknown species (n=10 in the common noun condition, or as individual creatures (n=10 in the proper noun condition. The experiment consisted of 5 sessions. Each session included a learning phase and a test phase with naming and word-picture verification tasks. Results and Discussion Preliminary analysis showed learning of both common and proper nouns for both younger (F(4=140.68, p<.01 and elderly (F(4=34.87, p<.01 non-brain-damaged participants, with learning being significantly better for the younger group (F(4=6.5, p<.01. Contrary to expectations, performance on proper nouns was better than that for common nouns for both young and elderly subjects (F(1=6.47, p=.02 and F(1=9.75, p<.01, respectively, possibly due to

  20. The Measurement of Relevance Amount of Documents That By Using of Google cross-language retrieval About Agriculture Subject Area are Retrieved

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    Fatemeh Jamshidi Ghahfarokhi

    2014-02-01

    Full Text Available In this study, the relevance amount of documents has been investigated by using google cross-language retrieval tools about a agriculture subject area in cross-language retrieval form, are retrieved. For this purpose, by using Persian journals articles that have had English abstracts, Persian phrases and subject terms with their English equivalent were extracted. In three class us, thirty number of phrases and subject terms of agriculture area were extracted: First class, subject phrases that only in agriculture are used; Secondary, agriculture subject terms that in other fields are used too; Third class, agriculture subject terms that out of this field are considered as public term. Then by these phrases and terms, documents were searched, and relevance amount of search results are investigated. Results of study showed that google cross-language retrieval tools for two classes of phrases and terms, in cross-language retrieval of relevance document about agriculture subject area, aren`t succeed: one class, agriculture subject terms that in other fields are used too. other class, agriculture subject terms that out of agriculture field are considered as public term. Google cross-language retrieval tools about subject phrase and terms that only in agriculture field are used, are performance rather desirable than other two class of phrase and terms

  1. Learning to categorize verbs and nouns : studies on Dutch

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Erkelens, M.A.

    2009-01-01

    Verbs and nouns are elementary notions in linguistics, so the question how children learn to categorize verbs and nouns in their first language is an intriguing one. Children not only have to learn to identify verbs and nouns as belonging to different categories based on perception, they also have

  2. EEG can track the time course of successful reference resolution in small visual worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christian eBrodbeck

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available Previous research has shown that language comprehenders resolve reference quickly and incrementally, but not much is known about the neural processes and representations that are involved. Studies of visual short-term memory suggest that access to the representation of an item from a previously seen display is associated with a negative evoked potential at posterior electrodes contralateral to the spatial location of that item in the display. In this paper we demonstrate that resolving the reference of a noun phrase in a recently seen visual display is associated with an event-related potential that is analogous to this effect. Our design was adapted from the visual world paradigm: in each trial, participants saw a display containing 3 simple objects, followed by a question about the objects, such as Was the pink fish next to a boat?, presented word by word. Questions differed in whether the color adjective allowed the reader to identify the referent of the noun phrase or not (i.e., whether one or more objects of the named color were present. Consistent with our hypothesis, we observed that reference resolution by the adjective was associated with a negative evoked potential at posterior electrodes contralateral to spatial location of the referent, starting approximately 333 ms after the onset of the adjective. The fact that the laterality of the effect depended upon the location of the referent within the display suggests that reference resolution in visual domains involves, at some level, a modality-specific representation. In addition, the effect gives us an estimate of the time course of processing from perception of the written word to the point at which its meaning is brought into correspondence with the referential domain.

  3. Anaphora in question-answer sessions in university ELF contexts.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thomas Wulstan Christiansen

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Abstract - Identity chains (Hasan 1984 ˗ strings of co-referential noun phrases ˗ constitute a lesser researched area in the field of ELF, as has the more general area of cohesion (but see Hüttner 2009, Christiansen 2011. Following on the work on anaphora of such scholars as Reinhart (1983 and Cornish (1999, and on cohesion (e.g. Halliday and Hasan 1976, Halliday 2004, Christiansen (2009a/b, 2011 focuses on the link between text cohesion and discourse coherence. The interactive perspective of discourse (seen as the process of which text is the product: see Widdowson 1984: 100 is especially relevant to an ELF context of spontaneous spoken interaction. As Guido (2008 evidences, different inter-cultural concerns constitute a crucial dimension to the complex multi-code interaction. Consequently, the diverse ways in which speakers from different L1 backgrounds employ anaphors and construct identity chains are key elements in the co-construction of a dialogic text. In this case study, six extracts of transcripts taken from the VOICE corpus (2011 of conference question and answer sessions set in multicultural contexts are analysed qualitatively. The different ways that participants construct identity chains (e.g. whether they use full forms of various kinds or anaphoric pro-forms are classified. The analysis focuses on both how individual anaphors are resolved and how relations between anaphors and antecedent triggers are encoded, and how identity chains are constructed and organized individually. The objective is to identify which kinds of noun phrase (various subtypes of full and pro-forms are used by diverse groups of EFL speakers both in relation to their own contributions and to those of other speakers (with a threefold distinction made between the same turn of the same speaker, a different turn of the same speaker, and a different turn by a different speaker.

  4. Problem of the Classification of Quantitative Noun in the German Language

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    Elvira L. Shubina

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available This work is dedicated to the semantic classification of quantitative noun on the basis of a structural study (Nquant + (Adj +N (ein Glas frisches Wasser, since this model reveals the greatest variety of grammatical formulation. These word combinations can form by the genitive government eine Tasse starken Kaffees by the grammatical agreement ein Eimer kaltes Wasser, or by the adjunction mit einem Korb reife Apfel. The suggested classification of the noun performing the function of the first components is based on the form of the noun acting as the first component. Types of the first components fall into three groups: 1. The nouns, which specify quantitative characteristics of objects and substances. Two subgroups are also distingshed: word combinations with a noun in a singular form Nquant1a as the second component and word combinations with a noun in a plural form as the second component Nquant1b; 2. The nouns defining a group of living beings and objects Nquant2; 3. The nouns which formation is grounded on quantitative nouns Nquant3. Normative recommendations on the choice of subordinate connection type should be connected at least at the present stage of existence of German literary language, exactly with the semantics of the nouns which are the first components in these word combinations. The article illustrates that all types of constructions (organizes whether on the basis of government, agreement and or adjunction are connected with the completely specific semantic characteristics of the name, i.e., these nouns belong to one of three groups of noun - first components.

  5. Noun-Verb Ambiguity in Chronic Undifferentiated Schizophrenia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goldfarb, Robert; Bekker, Natalie

    2009-01-01

    This study investigated noun-verb retrieval patterns of 30 adults with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia and 67 typical adults, to determine if schizophrenia affected nouns (associated with temporal lobe function) differently from verbs (associated with frontal lobe function). Stimuli were homophonic homographic homonyms, balanced according…

  6. What do the JAMA editors say when they discuss manuscripts that they are considering for publication? Developing a schema for classifying the content of editorial discussion

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rennie Drummond

    2007-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background In an effort to identify previously unrecognized aspects of editorial decision-making, we explored the words and phrases that one group of editors used during their meetings. Methods We performed an observational study of discussions at manuscript meetings at JAMA, a major US general medical journal. One of us (KD attended 12 editorial meetings in 2003 as a visitor and took notes recording phrases from discussion surrounding 102 manuscripts. In addition, editors attending the meetings completed a form for each manuscript considered, listing the reasons they were inclined to proceed to the next step in publication and reasons they were not (DR attended 4/12 meetings. We entered the spoken and written phrases into NVivo 2.0. We then developed a schema for classifying the editors' phrases, using an iterative approach. Results Our classification schema has three main themes: science, journalism, and writing. We considered 2,463 phrases, of which 87 related mainly to the manuscript topic and were not classified (total 2,376 classified. Phrases related to science predominated (1,274 or 54%. The editors, most of whom were physicians, also placed major weight on goals important to JAMA's mission (journalism goals such as importance to medicine, strategic emphasis for the journal, interest to the readership, and results (729 or 31% of phrases. About 16% (n = 373 of the phrases used related to writing issues, such as clarity and responses to the referees' comments. Conclusion Classification of editorial discourse provides insight into editorial decision making and concepts that need exploration in future studies.

  7. What do the JAMA editors say when they discuss manuscripts that they are considering for publication? Developing a schema for classifying the content of editorial discussion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dickersin, Kay; Ssemanda, Elizabeth; Mansell, Catherine; Rennie, Drummond

    2007-09-25

    In an effort to identify previously unrecognized aspects of editorial decision-making, we explored the words and phrases that one group of editors used during their meetings. We performed an observational study of discussions at manuscript meetings at JAMA, a major US general medical journal. One of us (KD) attended 12 editorial meetings in 2003 as a visitor and took notes recording phrases from discussion surrounding 102 manuscripts. In addition, editors attending the meetings completed a form for each manuscript considered, listing the reasons they were inclined to proceed to the next step in publication and reasons they were not (DR attended 4/12 meetings). We entered the spoken and written phrases into NVivo 2.0. We then developed a schema for classifying the editors' phrases, using an iterative approach. Our classification schema has three main themes: science, journalism, and writing. We considered 2,463 phrases, of which 87 related mainly to the manuscript topic and were not classified (total 2,376 classified). Phrases related to science predominated (1,274 or 54%). The editors, most of whom were physicians, also placed major weight on goals important to JAMA's mission (journalism goals) such as importance to medicine, strategic emphasis for the journal, interest to the readership, and results (729 or 31% of phrases). About 16% (n = 373) of the phrases used related to writing issues, such as clarity and responses to the referees' comments. Classification of editorial discourse provides insight into editorial decision making and concepts that need exploration in future studies.

  8. What do the JAMA editors say when they discuss manuscripts that they are considering for publication? Developing a schema for classifying the content of editorial discussion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dickersin, Kay; Ssemanda, Elizabeth; Mansell, Catherine; Rennie, Drummond

    2007-01-01

    Background In an effort to identify previously unrecognized aspects of editorial decision-making, we explored the words and phrases that one group of editors used during their meetings. Methods We performed an observational study of discussions at manuscript meetings at JAMA, a major US general medical journal. One of us (KD) attended 12 editorial meetings in 2003 as a visitor and took notes recording phrases from discussion surrounding 102 manuscripts. In addition, editors attending the meetings completed a form for each manuscript considered, listing the reasons they were inclined to proceed to the next step in publication and reasons they were not (DR attended 4/12 meetings). We entered the spoken and written phrases into NVivo 2.0. We then developed a schema for classifying the editors' phrases, using an iterative approach. Results Our classification schema has three main themes: science, journalism, and writing. We considered 2,463 phrases, of which 87 related mainly to the manuscript topic and were not classified (total 2,376 classified). Phrases related to science predominated (1,274 or 54%). The editors, most of whom were physicians, also placed major weight on goals important to JAMA's mission (journalism goals) such as importance to medicine, strategic emphasis for the journal, interest to the readership, and results (729 or 31% of phrases). About 16% (n = 373) of the phrases used related to writing issues, such as clarity and responses to the referees' comments. Conclusion Classification of editorial discourse provides insight into editorial decision making and concepts that need exploration in future studies. PMID:17894854

  9. Structural design principles of complex bird songs: a network-based approach.

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    Kazutoshi Sasahara

    Full Text Available Bird songs are acoustic communication signals primarily used in male-male aggression and in male-female attraction. These are often monotonous patterns composed of a few phrases, yet some birds have extremely complex songs with a large phrase repertoire, organized in non-random fashion with discernible patterns. Since structure is typically associated with function, the structures of complex bird songs provide important clues to the evolution of animal communication systems. Here we propose an efficient network-based approach to explore structural design principles of complex bird songs, in which the song networks--transition relationships among different phrases and the related structural measures--are employed. We demonstrate how this approach works with an example using California Thrasher songs, which are sequences of highly varied phrases delivered in succession over several minutes. These songs display two distinct features: a large phrase repertoire with a 'small-world' architecture, in which subsets of phrases are highly grouped and linked with a short average path length; and a balanced transition diversity amongst phrases, in which deterministic and non-deterministic transition patterns are moderately mixed. We explore the robustness of this approach with variations in sample size and the amount of noise. Our approach enables a more quantitative study of global and local structural properties of complex bird songs than has been possible to date.

  10. An Analysis of Noun Definition in Cantonese

    Science.gov (United States)

    To, Carol Kit Sum; Stokes, Stephanie; Man, Yonnie; T'Sou, Benjamin

    2013-01-01

    This study investigated the noun definitions given by Cantonese speakers at different ages. Definitional responses on six concrete nouns from 1075 children aged 4;10 to 12;01 and 15 adults were analyzed with reference to the semantic content and the syntactic form. Results showed that conventional definitions produced by Cantonese adult speakers…

  11. Old Romanian pluralized mass and abstract nouns

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    Gabriela Pană Dindelegan

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available The analysis of a rich old Romanian corpus shows that the 'pluralization' of mass and abstract nouns is extremely frequent in old Romanian. The semantic effects of pluralization are similar for mass and abstract nouns, consisting in the creation of denotative and/or connotative semantic variants. Of the plural endings, –uri is specialized for the pluralization of mass nouns in Daco-Romanian. The evolution of the ending –uri illustrates the specific process by which a grammatical (plural morpheme is converted into a lexical morpheme (the so-called 'lexical plurals'. 'Lexical plurals' have isolated occurrences in other Romance languages, but they have not reached the spread and regularity they display in Romanian.

  12. The Treatment of Borrowed Nouns in Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele and Isichazamazwi SezoMculo

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    Eventhough Ndlovu

    2011-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract: This article focuses on the lemmatisation of vowel-commencing borrowed nouns and the allo-cation of borrowed nouns to noun class prefixes in Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele, the first monolingual general-purpose Ndebele dictionary, and Isichazamazwi SezoMculo, the first specialised Ndebele dictionary of musical terms. It adopts a comparative approach, also highlighting the controversies surrounding the status of the initial vowel of the prefix or the pre-prefix in Ndebele and other Nguni languages. It further looks at the challenges and limitations of lemmatising the noun using either the initial vowel of the prefix or the initial letter of the noun stem. It is found that there are some inconsistencies in the lemmatisation of vowel-com-mencing borrowed nouns and the allocation of borrowed nouns to noun class prefixes in the two dictionar-ies. These inconsistencies impact negatively on the standardisation and treatment of borrowed nouns.

  13. Noun morphophonemics and noun class restructuring: The case of ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The article seeks to address the plural forms of class 11/10 nouns in Meru dialects. These are Bantu dialects spoken in the eastern province of Kenya. The dialects build the plural forms in this class in various ways. Sometimes the entire word is treated as a root and in other cases the word is considered to have two parts: a ...

  14. Possessive pour in the French Lexicon of the Ivory Coast and Language Contact

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    Akissi Boutin, Béatrice

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available Any variationist study of Ivory Coast French needs to take into account sociolinguistic considerations and systemic features of other contact languages. For instance, there is a specific usage of pour against which the interference hypothesis can easily be tested:FI: Le kaki que je porte présentement, c'est pour un bachelier qui me l'a laissé avant de partir en fac, cadeau. (Lafage 2003: 676. Avant de te moquer du linge de ta voisine, regarde si pour toi est propre..In Ivory Coast French, pour (N/Pro can display a variety of functions: it can be part of associative predications, it can stand for genitive phrases in an anaphoric construction, make reference to an object in relation with another and participate in various idiomatic expressions.This paper has a twofold objective. First, I argue that pour (N/Pro constructions has to be analysed as an empty headed "associative" noun phrase. Second, I will show the relevance of extra- AND intersystemic factors in accounting for language variation. Incidentally, the use of pour (N/Pro constructions seems to be conditioned by the availability of similar constructions in other Ivory Coast languages on the one hand, such as baoule (o liε or dioula (à tá, and, cultural needs on the other.

  15. The Simplex Clause in Boruca

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    Damaris Castro García

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available Se describe la cláusula simple en boruca, una lengua chibcha de la zona sur de Costa Rica. Se acude a otras descripciones generales sobre la lengua como fuentes complementarias. Se analiza el orden y la organización de los principales constituyentes de la oración a nivel de frase y oración (frase verbal y nominal. Con particular atención se examinan el papel del orden en la oración, así como la codificación de las relaciones sintácticas principales (sujeto y objeto. El análisis se completa con el estudio de las relaciones gramaticales y los procesos sintácticos, así como con un texto donde se muestran los aspectos presentados en el análisis. A description is provided of the simplex clause in Boruca, a Chibchan language once spoken in the south of Costa Rica. Other general descriptions of the language are used as complementary sources. This study deals with the various word-order patterns at the clause level and phrase level (noun and verb phrases. Special attention is given to the role of word order in the codification of the major syntactic relations (subject and object, in particular. An analysis of grammatical relations, syntactic processes and a sample text complete the paper.

  16. Emotional response to musical repetition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Livingstone, Steven R; Palmer, Caroline; Schubert, Emery

    2012-06-01

    Two experiments examined the effects of repetition on listeners' emotional response to music. Listeners heard recordings of orchestral music that contained a large section repeated twice. The music had a symmetric phrase structure (same-length phrases) in Experiment 1 and an asymmetric phrase structure (different-length phrases) in Experiment 2, hypothesized to alter the predictability of sensitivity to musical repetition. Continuous measures of arousal and valence were compared across music that contained identical repetition, variation (related), or contrasting (unrelated) structure. Listeners' emotional arousal ratings differed most for contrasting music, moderately for variations, and least for repeating musical segments. A computational model for the detection of repeated musical segments was applied to the listeners' emotional responses. The model detected the locations of phrase boundaries from the emotional responses better than from performed tempo or physical intensity in both experiments. These findings indicate the importance of repetition in listeners' emotional response to music and in the perceptual segmentation of musical structure.

  17. The role of prominence in determining the scope of boundary-related lengthening in Greek.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Katsika, Argyro

    2016-03-01

    This study aims at examining and accounting for the scope of the temporal effect of phrase boundaries. Previous research has indicated that there is an interaction between boundary-related lengthening and prominence such that the former extends towards the nearby prominent syllable. However, it is unclear whether this interaction is due to lexical stress and/or phrasal prominence (marked by pitch accent) and how far towards the prominent syllable the effect extends. Here, we use an electromagnetic articulography (EMA) study of Greek to examine the scope of boundary-related lengthening as a function of lexical stress and pitch accent separately. Boundaries are elicited by the means of a variety of syntactic constructions.. The results show an effect of lexical stress. Phrase-final lengthening affects the articulatory gestures of the phrase-final syllable that are immediately adjacent to the boundary in words with final stress, but is initiated earlier within phrase-final words with non-final stress. Similarly, the articulatory configurations during inter-phrasal pauses reach their point of achievement later in words with final stress than in words with non-final stress. These effects of stress hold regardless of whether the phrase-final word is accented or de-accented. Phrase-initial lengthening, on the other hand, is consistently detected on the phrase-initial constriction, independently of where the stress is within the preceding, phrase-final, word. These results indicate that the lexical aspect of prominence plays a role in determining the scope of boundary-related lengthening in Greek. Based on these results, a gestural account of prosodic boundaries in Greek is proposed in which lexical and phrasal prosody interact in a systematic and coordinated fashion. The cross-linguistic dimensions of this account and its implications for prosodic structure are discussed.

  18. Noun and verb processing in aphasia: Behavioural profiles and neural correlates

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    Reem S.W. Alyahya

    Full Text Available The behavioural and neural processes underpinning different word classes, particularly nouns and verbs, have been a long-standing area of interest in psycholinguistic, neuropsychology and aphasiology research. This topic has theoretical implications concerning the organisation of the language system, as well as clinical consequences related to the management of patients with language deficits. Research findings, however, have diverged widely, which might, in part, reflect methodological differences, particularly related to controlling the psycholinguistic variations between nouns and verbs. The first aim of this study, therefore, was to develop a set of neuropsychological tests that assessed single-word production and comprehension with a matched set of nouns and verbs. Secondly, the behavioural profiles and neural correlates of noun and verb processing were explored, based on these novel tests, in a relatively large cohort of 48 patients with chronic post-stroke aphasia. A data-driven approach, principal component analysis (PCA, was also used to determine how noun and verb production and comprehension were related to the patients' underlying fundamental language domains. The results revealed no performance differences between noun and verb production and comprehension once matched on multiple psycholinguistic features including, most critically, imageability. Interestingly, the noun-verb differences found in previous studies were replicated in this study once un-matched materials were used. Lesion-symptom mapping revealed overlapping neural correlates of noun and verb processing along left temporal and parietal regions. These findings support the view that the neural representation of noun and verb processing at single-word level are jointly-supported by distributed cortical regions. The PCA generated five fundamental language and cognitive components of aphasia: phonological production, phonological recognition, semantics, fluency, and

  19. The Semantics of Heart: Translation Problems

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    Hortensia Pârlog

    2005-06-01

    Full Text Available Words hardly ever occur on their own, because they can hardly mean anything on their own, when asked about the meaning of an isolated word, in order to figure it out, what one does is try to place it in a context or use it in a collocation. The verbal contexts in which words appear influence or at least clarify their semantic value, it is because of contextual factors that a word may have more than one meaning. Therefore, the analysis above word level is extremely important. An analysis of translational decisions may also prove to be a valuable source of information in establishing the semantics of a lexical item. The above statements are illustrated by discussing the semantics of heart. The word occurs in a great number of structures in both English and Romanian, of which eight will be analysed: heart + verb, verb + heart, heart + of phrase, adjective + heart, heart + head noun, head noun +of heart, adjective + preposition + heart, heart in sayings or fixed expressions.

  20. Verb-Noun Collocation Proficiency and Academic Years

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fatemeh Ebrahimi-Bazzaz

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Generally vocabulary and collocations in particular have significant roles in language proficiency. A collocation includes two words that are frequently joined concurrently in the memory of native speakers. There have been many linguistic studies trying to define, to describe, and to categorise English collocations. It contains grammatical collocations and lexical collocations which include nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverb. In the context of a foreign language environment such as Iran, collocational proficiency can be useful because it helps the students improve their language proficiency. This paper investigates the possible relationship between verb-noun collocation proficiency among students from one academic year to the next. To reach this goal, a test of verb-noun collocations was administered to Iranian learners. The participants in the study were 212 Iranian students in an Iranian university. They were selected from the second term of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years. The students' age ranged from 18 to 35.The results of ANOVA showed there was variability in the verb-noun collocations proficiency within each academic year and between the four academic years. The results of a post hoc multiple comparison tests demonstrated that the means are significantly different between the first year and the third and fourth years, and between the third and the fourth academic year; however, students require at least two years to show significant development in verb-noun collocation proficiency. These findings provided a vital implication that lexical collocations are learnt and developed through four academic years of university, but requires at least two years showing significant development in the language proficiency.

  1. The role of the left anterior temporal lobe in semantic composition vs. semantic memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Westerlund, Masha; Pylkkänen, Liina

    2014-05-01

    The left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) is robustly implicated in semantic processing by a growing body of literature. However, these results have emerged from two distinct bodies of work, addressing two different processing levels. On the one hand, the LATL has been characterized as a 'semantic hub׳ that binds features of concepts across a distributed network, based on results from semantic dementia and hemodynamic findings on the categorization of specific compared to basic exemplars. On the other, the LATL has been implicated in combinatorial operations in language, as shown by increased activity in this region associated with the processing of sentences and of basic phrases. The present work aimed to reconcile these two literatures by independently manipulating combination and concept specificity within a minimal MEG paradigm. Participants viewed simple nouns that denoted either low specificity (fish) or high specificity categories (trout) presented in either combinatorial (spotted fish/trout) or non-combinatorial contexts (xhsl fish/trout). By combining these paradigms from the two literatures, we directly compared the engagement of the LATL in semantic memory vs. semantic composition. Our results indicate that although noun specificity subtly modulates the LATL activity elicited by single nouns, it most robustly affects the size of the composition effect when these nouns are adjectivally modified, with low specificity nouns eliciting a much larger effect. We conclude that these findings are compatible with an account in which the specificity and composition effects arise from a shared mechanism of meaning specification. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Syntactic Complexity and Frequency in the Neurocognitive Language System.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Yun-Hsuan; Marslen-Wilson, William D; Bozic, Mirjana

    2017-09-01

    Prominent neurobiological models of language follow the widely accepted assumption that language comprehension requires two principal mechanisms: a lexicon storing the sound-to-meaning mapping of words, primarily involving bilateral temporal regions, and a combinatorial processor for syntactically structured items, such as phrases and sentences, localized in a left-lateralized network linking left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and posterior temporal areas. However, recent research showing that the processing of simple phrasal sequences may engage only bilateral temporal areas, together with the claims of distributional approaches to grammar, raise the question of whether frequent phrases are stored alongside individual words in temporal areas. In this fMRI study, we varied the frequency of words and of short and long phrases in English. If frequent phrases are indeed stored, then only less frequent items should generate selective left frontotemporal activation, because memory traces for such items would be weaker or not available in temporal cortex. Complementary univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that, overall, simple words (verbs) and long phrases engaged LIFG and temporal areas, whereas short phrases engaged bilateral temporal areas, suggesting that syntactic complexity is a key factor for LIFG activation. Although we found a robust frequency effect for words in temporal areas, no frequency effects were found for the two phrasal conditions. These findings support the conclusion that long and short phrases are analyzed, respectively, in the left frontal network and in a bilateral temporal network but are not retrieved from memory in the same way as simple words during spoken language comprehension.

  3. Shell Nouns as Cohesive Devices in Published and ESL Student Writing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aktas, Rahime Nur; Cortes, Viviana

    2008-01-01

    This paper analyzes the use of a special type of unspecific noun, called "shell nouns" [Hunston, S., & Francis, G. (1999). "Pattern grammar". Amsterdam: Benjamins; Schmid, H. (2000). "English abstract nouns as conceptual shells: From corpus to cognition". Berlin: Walter de Gruyter], which are frequently used as cohesive devices, in the written…

  4. Categorical Structure among Shared Features in Networks of Early-Learned Nouns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hills, Thomas T.; Maouene, Mounir; Maouene, Josita; Sheya, Adam; Smith, Linda

    2009-01-01

    The shared features that characterize the noun categories that young children learn first are a formative basis of the human category system. To investigate the potential categorical information contained in the features of early-learned nouns, we examine the graph-theoretic properties of noun-feature networks. The networks are built from the…

  5. Broohm: Noun Classification in Esahie | Broohm | Ghana Journal of ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Tano, Kwa, Niger-Congo). It contends that, though the noun class system of Esahie per se is morpho-syntactically vestigial, hence differing from other African languages (e.g. most Bantu languages) where noun classes can be assimilated with ...

  6. Exploring Noun Bias in Filipino-English Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lucas, Rochelle Irene G.; Bernardo, Allan B. I.

    2008-01-01

    Researchers have suggested that there is a noun bias in children's early vocabularies brought about by features of adults' child-directed utterances, which may vary across languages (E. V. Bates et al., 1994; D. Gentner, 1982). In the present study, the authors explored noun bias in 60 Filipino-English bilingual children whose 2 languages differed…

  7. Matthew's Messianic Shepherd-king: In search of "the lost sheep of the house of Israel"

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joel Willitts

    2007-05-01

    Full Text Available The article intends to grasp the meaning of the phrase "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" in the Matthean logia of 10:5b-6 (and 15:24. It shows that in recent Matthean research the phrase has become an abstract salvation-historical category disconnected from narrative and historical particularity. However, generally seen, scholars have neglected a thorough treatment of the phrase within both Matthew's own presentation of the story of Jesus and a firstcentury Jewish schatological context. In this article the context of the phrase is investigated at several levels. It argues that it should be read against the backdrop of the political-national framework of the Messianic Shepherd-King expectation with its attending expectations for territorial restoration.

  8. Verb-Noun Collocations in Written Discourse of Iranian EFL Learners

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fatemeh Ebrahimi-Bazzaz

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available When native speakers of English write, they employ both grammatical rules and collocations. Collocations are words that are present in the memory of native speakers as ready-made prefabricated chunks. Non-native speakers who wish to acquire native-like fluency should give appropriate attention to collocations in writing in order not to produce sentences that native speakers may consider odd. The present study tries to explore the use of verb-noun collocations in written discourse of English as foreign language (EFL among Iranian EFL learners from one academic year to the next in Iran. To measure the use of verb-noun collocations in written discourse, there was a 60-minute task of writing story  based on a series of six pictures whereby for each picture, three verb-noun collocations were measured, and nouns were provided to limit the choice of collocations. The results of the statistical analysis of ANOVA for the research question indicated that there was a significant difference in the use of lexical verb-noun collocations in written discourse both between and within the four academic years. The results of a post hoc multiple comparison tests confirmed that the means are significantly different between the first year and the third and fourth years, between the second and the fourth, and between the third and the fourth academic year which indicate substantial development in verb-noun collocation proficiency.  The vital implication is that the learners could use verb-noun collocations in productive skill of writing.

  9. Zelfstandigheidspolitiek. De achtergrond van een cruciale term in het buitenlands beleid van Nederland 1900-1940

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    J. den Hertog

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available The Policy of Independence. The Background of a Crucial Phrase in Dutch Foreign Policy 1900-1940The phrase 'policy of independence' was coined by the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Van Karnebeek after the First World War. It has aroused a lot of discussion ever since. The phrase is often portrayed as sign of a change from a passive policy of neutrality to a much more active foreign policy. In this article the use of the phrase and the question of continuity or discontinuity are raised. This is done first of all on the basis of some crucial episodes from the First World War and subsequently the Dutch policy towards the German emperor and crown prince, Belgium and the League of Nations. This contribution argues that throughout those years the Dutch government pursued a policy characterized by activity and adopted an attitude that adhered to international law. Even before 1914 this approach was referred to as 'independent'. Thereafter, Van Karnebeek coined the phrase 'policy of independence' to give expression to this prevailing attitude.

  10. A Forecast of Competencies Required for Management of Multiple Site Healthcare Services: A Delphi Study of Managers in a Veterans Health Administration Integrated System

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Welch, Andrew

    2001-01-01

    .... These managers responded, to two separate rounds of questionnaires using the Delphi method. The first round resulted in 45 respondents who supplied a total of 216 competency phrases and 528 SKA phrases...

  11. Technical structure of the global nanoscience and nanotechnology literature

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kostoff, Ronald N., E-mail: kostofr@onr.navy.mil; Koytcheff, Raymond G. [Office of Naval Research (United States); Lau, Clifford G. Y. [Institute for Defense Analyses (United States)

    2007-10-15

    Text mining was used to extract technical intelligence from the open source global nanotechnology and nanoscience research literature. An extensive nanotechnology/nanoscience-focused query was applied to the Science Citation Index/Social Science Citation Index (SCI/SSCI) databases. The nanotechnology/nanoscience research literature technical structure (taxonomy) was obtained using computational linguistics/document clustering and factor analysis. The infrastructure (prolific authors, key journals/institutions/countries, most cited authors/journals/documents) for each of the clusters generated by the document clustering algorithm was obtained using bibliometrics. Another novel addition was the use of phrase auto-correlation maps to show technical thrust areas based on phrase co-occurrence in Abstracts, and the use of phrase-phrase cross-correlation maps to show technical thrust areas based on phrase relations due to the sharing of common co-occurring phrases. The {approx}400 most cited nanotechnology papers since 1991 were grouped, and their characteristics generated. Whereas the main analysis provided technical thrusts of all nanotechnology papers retrieved, analysis of the most cited papers allowed their characteristics to be displayed. Finally, most cited papers from selected time periods were extracted, along with all publications from those time periods, and the institutions and countries were compared based on their representation in the most cited documents list relative to their representation in the most publications list.

  12. Technical structure of the global nanoscience and nanotechnology literature

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kostoff, Ronald N.; Koytcheff, Raymond G.; Lau, Clifford G. Y.

    2007-01-01

    Text mining was used to extract technical intelligence from the open source global nanotechnology and nanoscience research literature. An extensive nanotechnology/nanoscience-focused query was applied to the Science Citation Index/Social Science Citation Index (SCI/SSCI) databases. The nanotechnology/nanoscience research literature technical structure (taxonomy) was obtained using computational linguistics/document clustering and factor analysis. The infrastructure (prolific authors, key journals/institutions/countries, most cited authors/journals/documents) for each of the clusters generated by the document clustering algorithm was obtained using bibliometrics. Another novel addition was the use of phrase auto-correlation maps to show technical thrust areas based on phrase co-occurrence in Abstracts, and the use of phrase-phrase cross-correlation maps to show technical thrust areas based on phrase relations due to the sharing of common co-occurring phrases. The ∼400 most cited nanotechnology papers since 1991 were grouped, and their characteristics generated. Whereas the main analysis provided technical thrusts of all nanotechnology papers retrieved, analysis of the most cited papers allowed their characteristics to be displayed. Finally, most cited papers from selected time periods were extracted, along with all publications from those time periods, and the institutions and countries were compared based on their representation in the most cited documents list relative to their representation in the most publications list

  13. Ecosystem services: Just another catch phrase?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Emily Weidner

    2011-01-01

    The "ecosystem services" concept has emerged as a popular area of discussion among policy makers and conservation advocates. Ecosystem services are the benefits people derive from nature and include the provision of water, food, wood, and fiber; regulation of climate, flood, drought, and disease; maintenance of biodiversity; and recreational, aesthetic,...

  14. Tourette Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... vocal tics including coprolalia (uttering swear words) or echolalia (repeating the words or phrases of others). Many ... vocal tics including coprolalia (uttering swear words) or echolalia (repeating the words or phrases of others). Many ...

  15. Rule-based Approach on Extraction of Malay Compound Nouns in Standard Malay Document

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abu Bakar, Zamri; Kamal Ismail, Normaly; Rawi, Mohd Izani Mohamed

    2017-08-01

    Malay compound noun is defined as a form of words that exists when two or more words are combined into a single syntax and it gives a specific meaning. Compound noun acts as one unit and it is spelled separately unless an established compound noun is written closely from two words. The basic characteristics of compound noun can be seen in the Malay sentences which are the frequency of that word in the text itself. Thus, this extraction of compound nouns is significant for the following research which is text summarization, grammar checker, sentiments analysis, machine translation and word categorization. There are many research efforts that have been proposed in extracting Malay compound noun using linguistic approaches. Most of the existing methods were done on the extraction of bi-gram noun+noun compound. However, the result still produces some problems as to give a better result. This paper explores a linguistic method for extracting compound Noun from stand Malay corpus. A standard dataset are used to provide a common platform for evaluating research on the recognition of compound Nouns in Malay sentences. Therefore, an improvement for the effectiveness of the compound noun extraction is needed because the result can be compromised. Thus, this study proposed a modification of linguistic approach in order to enhance the extraction of compound nouns processing. Several pre-processing steps are involved including normalization, tokenization and tagging. The first step that uses the linguistic approach in this study is Part-of-Speech (POS) tagging. Finally, we describe several rules-based and modify the rules to get the most relevant relation between the first word and the second word in order to assist us in solving of the problems. The effectiveness of the relations used in our study can be measured using recall, precision and F1-score techniques. The comparison of the baseline values is very essential because it can provide whether there has been an improvement

  16. A Common Mechanism in Verb and Noun Naming Deficits in Alzheimer's Patients

    Science.gov (United States)

    Almor, Amit; Aronoff, Justin M.; MacDonald, Maryellen C.; Gonnerman, Laura M.; Kempler, Daniel; Hintiryan, Houri; Hayes, UnJa L.; Arunachalam, Sudha; Andersen, Elaine S.

    2009-01-01

    We tested the ability of Alzheimer's patients and elderly controls to name living and non-living nouns, and manner and instrument verbs. Patients' error patterns and relative performance with different categories showed evidence of graceful degradation for both nouns and verbs, with particular domain-specific impairments for living nouns and…

  17. Composing lexical versus functional adjectives: Evidence for uniformity in the left temporal lobe.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Linmin; Pylkkänen, Liina

    2018-04-24

    Featural information (e.g., color or shape) allows interlocutors to focus their attention on the specific items under discussion from the vast set of possibilities in the environment. Intriguingly, when they are used to modify and restrict nouns, adjectives can either carry featural information themselves (e.g., green car) or retrieve featural information from the context (e.g., somebody points at a car and claims that she has the same car or a different car). Do the processing of same/different car and green car share neural correlates? For the composition of nouns with feature-carrying adjectives, prior work revealed early compositional effects (roughly 200 ms after noun onset) in the left anterior temporal lobe. However, although we know that such effects do not extend to cases of numeral quantification, which add no conceptual features to the noun (e.g., two boats), we do not know whether they extend to functional adjectives that themselves introduce no features, but instead reference features in the context. To address this question, we measured magnetoencephalography (MEG) during the processing of five types of noun phrases (NPs): same NPs (e.g., same star), different NPs (e.g., different star), color NPs (e.g., green star), comparative NPs (e.g., larger star), and another NPs (e.g., another star). Our main finding was that between 185 to 240 ms after noun onset, same and different NPs patterned with the color NPs in their elicited left temporal lobe activity, and same NPs even trended toward higher amplitudes than the color NPs. This shows that the mechanism driving combinatory effects in the left temporal cortex does not require the input words to directly name conceptual features, as long as the words reference featural information in the context, and that overlapping neural correlates underlie the composition of featural information from both linguistic and nonlinguistic sources.

  18. Morpho-semantic properties of Serbian nouns: Animacy and gender pairs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Radanović Jelena

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available In this study we investigated whether and how the cognitive system uses morphological markedness of animacy and gender pairs. In the Serbian language masculine nouns are marked for animacy (i.e., genitive-accusative syncretism, while for feminine nouns the animacy distinction is purely semantic. Thus, in Experiment 1 we used this natural, linguistic differentiation to test whether morphological markedness of animacy influences lexical processing. In the same experiment, we tested whether the cognitive system is sensitive to the fact that some animate nouns have a sibling in the other gender (e.g., dečak /"boy"/ - devojčica /"girl"/, while others do not have it (e.g., vojnik /"soldier"/ or žirafa /"giraffe"/. We labeled this indicator sibling presence. The analysis did not confirm the effect of animacy, neither between nor within genders. However, animate nouns with a sibling were processed faster than those without a sibling. Since the majority of sibling nouns are morphologically related (like konobar /"waiter"/ - konobarica /"waitress"/, while the rest are not (e.g., petao /"rooster"/ - kokoška /"hen"/, in Experiment 2 we tested whether morphological relatedness contributed to the effect of sibling presence. Results showed that this is not the case: morphologically related and unrelated masculine-feminine pairs of nouns (siblings were processed equally fast. Furthermore, an interaction between the target's frequency and the frequency of its sibling was observed: nouns with a more frequent sibling benefited more from their own frequency than those with a less frequent sibling. We argue that sibling support is realized through semantic, not morphological relations. Taken together, our findings suggest that morphological markedness is not used in lexical processing, which is in line with an amorphous approach to lexical processing.

  19. Emotional noun processing: an ERP study with rapid serial visual presentation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yi, Shengnan; He, Weiqi; Zhan, Lei; Qi, Zhengyang; Zhu, Chuanlin; Luo, Wenbo; Li, Hong

    2015-01-01

    Reading is an important part of our daily life, and rapid responses to emotional words have received a great deal of research interest. Our study employed rapid serial visual presentation to detect the time course of emotional noun processing using event-related potentials. We performed a dual-task experiment, where subjects were required to judge whether a given number was odd or even, and the category into which each emotional noun fit. In terms of P1, we found that there was no negativity bias for emotional nouns. However, emotional nouns elicited larger amplitudes in the N170 component in the left hemisphere than did neutral nouns. This finding indicated that in later processing stages, emotional words can be discriminated from neutral words. Furthermore, positive, negative, and neutral words were different from each other in the late positive complex, indicating that in the third stage, even different emotions can be discerned. Thus, our results indicate that in a three-stage model the latter two stages are more stable and universal.

  20. Emotional noun processing: an ERP study with rapid serial visual presentation.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shengnan Yi

    Full Text Available Reading is an important part of our daily life, and rapid responses to emotional words have received a great deal of research interest. Our study employed rapid serial visual presentation to detect the time course of emotional noun processing using event-related potentials. We performed a dual-task experiment, where subjects were required to judge whether a given number was odd or even, and the category into which each emotional noun fit. In terms of P1, we found that there was no negativity bias for emotional nouns. However, emotional nouns elicited larger amplitudes in the N170 component in the left hemisphere than did neutral nouns. This finding indicated that in later processing stages, emotional words can be discriminated from neutral words. Furthermore, positive, negative, and neutral words were different from each other in the late positive complex, indicating that in the third stage, even different emotions can be discerned. Thus, our results indicate that in a three-stage model the latter two stages are more stable and universal.

  1. On the structure and variation of 'hace' as a temporal expression

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    have finished the thesis make.fut one ... specifier of this degree phrase, equivalent to the measure phrase in ... the standard representation of the dialogue between Aktionsart – at the vP level – and ...... Ms., Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

  2. Von Wortverbindungen, die sie Kollokationen nennen

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bergenholtz, Henning

    2008-01-01

    in at least three kinds of dictionaries: Text production dictionaries, translation dictionaries and learning dictionaries. The lexicographic selection and presentation of such phrases or phrase combinations gets no help by the linguistic collocational research. What we need is a lexicographical oriented...

  3. An application of the role-value distinction in mental space theory to the analysis of definite and indefinite noun phrases

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dam-Jensen, Helle

    2006-01-01

    Fauconnier (1994) foreslår en beskrivelse af fortolkningen af bestemte og ubestemte nominalsyntagmer. Formålet med denne artikel er at forklare hvordan Fauconnier's rolle-/værdidistinktion kan integreres i denne beskrivelse således at den på en ensartet og generel måde kan forklare fortolkningen ...

  4. Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hall, Matthew L; Ferreira, Victor S; Mayberry, Rachel I

    2015-01-01

    Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL). Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2) signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect). Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming) operates similarly in sign and speech.

  5. Mechanism of case processing in the brain: an fMRI study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Satoru Yokoyama

    Full Text Available In sentence comprehension research, the case system, which is one of the subsystems of the language processing system, has been assumed to play a crucial role in signifying relationships in sentences between noun phrases (NPs and other elements, such as verbs, prepositions, nouns, and tense. However, so far, less attention has been paid to the question of how cases are processed in our brain. To this end, the current study used fMRI and scanned the brain activity of 15 native English speakers during an English-case processing task. The results showed that, while the processing of all cases activates the left inferior frontal gyrus and posterior part of the middle temporal gyrus, genitive case processing activates these two regions more than nominative and accusative case processing. Since the effect of the difference in behavioral performance among these three cases is excluded from brain activation data, the observed different brain activations would be due to the different processing patterns among the cases, indicating that cases are processed differently in our brains. The different brain activations between genitive case processing and nominative/accusative case processing may be due to the difference in structural complexity between them.

  6. Nouns referring to tools and natural objects differentially modulate the motor system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gough, Patricia M; Riggio, Lucia; Chersi, Fabian; Sato, Marc; Fogassi, Leonardo; Buccino, Giovanni

    2012-01-01

    While increasing evidence points to a critical role for the motor system in language processing, the focus of previous work has been on the linguistic category of verbs. Here we tested whether nouns are effective in modulating the motor system and further whether different kinds of nouns - those referring to artifacts or natural items, and items that are graspable or ungraspable - would differentially modulate the system. A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) study was carried out to compare modulation of the motor system when subjects read nouns referring to objects which are Artificial or Natural and which are Graspable or Ungraspable. TMS was applied to the primary motor cortex representation of the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) muscle of the right hand at 150 ms after noun presentation. Analyses of Motor Evoked Potentials (MEPs) revealed that across the duration of the task, nouns referring to graspable artifacts (tools) were associated with significantly greater MEP areas. Analyses of the initial presentation of items revealed a main effect of graspability. The findings are in line with an embodied view of nouns, with MEP measures modulated according to whether nouns referred to natural objects or artifacts (tools), confirming tools as a special class of items in motor terms. Additionally our data support a difference for graspable versus non graspable objects, an effect which for natural objects is restricted to initial presentation of items. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. A Battle of Words: "Dignity" and "Peace" in the Writings of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Burnier, Daniel

    2017-04-01

    This article analyzes the writings of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross through the discursive lens of the phrase "dying with dignity." For her, the phrase meant allowing someone to die comfortably his/her own death. This phrase has to be understood in relationship with the final "stage of acceptance" of her model. Describing this key part of her well-known scientific output, she often used, in the early 1970s, the phrase "dying in peace and dignity." An evaluation of the evidence suggests that because the concept of dignity was co-opted by the pro-euthanasia movement during this decade, the language of dignity was little by little abandoned by her. In later years, only "peace" survived from her favorite expression. Although this concept of peace remains present to the end in all Kübler-Ross writings, the pro-euthanasia movement has also started to speak the language of peace.

  8. Designing a noun guesser for part of speech tagging in Northern ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    AFRICAN JOURNALS ONLINE (AJOL) · Journals · Advanced Search · USING ... used to recognize nouns that are not contained in the noun lexicon of the system. ... Our implementation is a symbolic, voting-based process: together, all tests ...

  9. Nouns and verbs in the vocabulary acquisition of Italian children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    D'Odorico, Laura; Fasolo, Mirco

    2007-11-01

    The vocabulary development of 24 Italian children aged between 1;4 and 1;6 at the beginning of the study was longitudinally monitored on a monthly basis using the Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory drawn up by their mothers. This study analyzes data from children for whom two sampling stages were available; the first corresponding to a vocabulary size as close as possible to 200 words (mean 217, range 167-281), the second to a vocabulary size ranging from 400 to 650 words (mean 518, range 416-648). The children's vocabulary composition was analyzed by calculating, for each sampling stage, the percentage of common nouns, verbs and closed-class words. The increase in percentage points of the various lexical items between the first and second sampling stages was also analyzed. Data confirmed the predominance of nouns over verbs and closed-class words at both sampling stages, while verbs and closed-class words showed a higher percentage increase than nouns. The results provide evidence that children who reached the first sampling point at an earlier age had a higher percentage of nouns than children who reached the same stage at an older age. However, in the passage from the first to the second sampling point no relationship emerged between a style of acquisition based on the acquisition of nouns and an increase in the rate of vocabulary growth.

  10. Phrasal alignment in Functional Discourse Grammar

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Rijn, M.

    2011-01-01

    Although the term is alignment is typically associated with morphosyntactic expression of arguments of the Clause, alignment is also relevant to units of the Phrase. In Functional Discourse Grammar a basic distinction is made between two kinds of dependency relations obtaining both within Phrases

  11. Language for Winning Hearts and Minds: Verb Aspect in U.S. Presidential Campaign Speeches for Engaging Emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Havas, David A; Chapp, Christopher B

    2016-01-01

    How does language influence the emotions and actions of large audiences? Functionally, emotions help address environmental uncertainty by constraining the body to support adaptive responses and social coordination. We propose emotions provide a similar function in language processing by constraining the mental simulation of language content to facilitate comprehension, and to foster alignment of mental states in message recipients. Consequently, we predicted that emotion-inducing language should be found in speeches specifically designed to create audience alignment - stump speeches of United States presidential candidates. We focused on phrases in the past imperfective verb aspect ("a bad economy was burdening us") that leave a mental simulation of the language content open-ended, and thus unconstrained, relative to past perfective sentences ("we were burdened by a bad economy"). As predicted, imperfective phrases appeared more frequently in stump versus comparison speeches, relative to perfective phrases. In a subsequent experiment, participants rated phrases from presidential speeches as more emotionally intense when written in the imperfective aspect compared to the same phrases written in the perfective aspect, particularly for sentences perceived as negative in valence. These findings are consistent with the notion that emotions have a role in constraining the comprehension of language, a role that may be used in communication with large audiences.

  12. Prosodic Marking of Narrow Focus in Seoul Korean

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hae-Sung Jeon

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper explores prosodic marking of narrow (corrective focus in Seoul Korean. Korean lacks lexical stress and it has a phonologized association between the Accentual Phrase (AP initial segment and intonation. In the experiment, 4 speakers read sentences including a two-item list which were designed to elicit either an L or H AP-initial tone. The durational variations, the pitch events at prosodic boundaries, and 'F''0 'span in 32 sentences read neutrally and 64 sentences read with one of the items under focus were analyzed. The results show that the focused constituent consistently initiates a new prosodic phrase. In comparison to the neutrally spoken or defocused counterpart, the focused constituent was more likely to be realized as an Intonational Phrase (IP in some contexts. Bitonal IP boundary tones were more likely to occur under focus than monotonal tones. In addition, in focused constituents, durational expansion particularly at the phrase-edges, expansion in 'F''0 'span, and raising of the phrase-initial pitch were observed. On the other hand, defocused constituents were not phonetically reduced compared to the neutral counterparts. The results imply that the phonetic cues spreading over the focused constituent complement the exaggerated prosodic boundaries.

  13. 28 CFR 35.104 - Definitions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... illness, and specific learning disabilities. (ii) The phrase physical or mental impairment includes, but... respect to an individual, a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the... such an impairment. (1)(i) The phrase physical or mental impairment means— (A) Any physiological...

  14. Slavic Phraseology: A View Through Corpora

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zakharov Victor

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available The study of word collocability is one of the main tasks of linguistics. The combinatory ability of language units, collocability, is one of the linguistic syntagmatic laws. This phenomenon is the main object of the phraseology and lexicography. The article deals with set phrases of different types in Russian, Czech and Slovak from the point of view of their quantitative evaluation. Corpus linguistics understand set phrases as statistically determined unities. This approach is the basic point of different automatic ways to extract idioms and collocations. The paper describes experiments which show how text corpora and corpus methods and tools can be used to expand the entries in existing dictionaries and how set phrases could be evaluated quantitatively. It is shown and maintained that corpus linguistics methods and tools allow to create dictionaries of new type which have to include a larger amount of set phrases and collocations than before.

  15. WORDGRAPH: Keyword-in-Context Visualization for NETSPEAK's Wildcard Search.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Riehmann, Patrick; Gruendl, Henning; Potthast, Martin; Trenkmann, Martin; Stein, Benno; Froehlich, Benno

    2012-09-01

    The WORDGRAPH helps writers in visually choosing phrases while writing a text. It checks for the commonness of phrases and allows for the retrieval of alternatives by means of wildcard queries. To support such queries, we implement a scalable retrieval engine, which returns high-quality results within milliseconds using a probabilistic retrieval strategy. The results are displayed as WORDGRAPH visualization or as a textual list. The graphical interface provides an effective means for interactive exploration of search results using filter techniques, query expansion, and navigation. Our observations indicate that, of three investigated retrieval tasks, the textual interface is sufficient for the phrase verification task, wherein both interfaces support context-sensitive word choice, and the WORDGRAPH best supports the exploration of a phrase's context or the underlying corpus. Our user study confirms these observations and shows that WORDGRAPH is generally the preferred interface over the textual result list for queries containing multiple wildcards.

  16. Boosting Memory by tDCS to Frontal or Parietal Brain Regions? A Study of the Enactment Effect Shows No Effects for Immediate and Delayed Recognition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Beat Meier

    2018-06-01

    Full Text Available Boosting memory with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS seems to be an elegant way to optimize learning. Here we tested whether tDCS to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or to the left posterior parietal cortex would boost recognition memory in general and/or particularly for action phrases enacted at study. During study, 48 young adults either read or enacted simple action phrases. Memory for the action phrases was assessed after a retention interval of 45 min and again after 7-days to investigate the long-term consequences of brain stimulation. The results showed a robust enactment effect in both test sessions. Moreover, the decrease in performance was more pronounced for reading than for enacting the phrases at study. However, tDCS did not reveal any effect on subsequent recognition memory performance. We conclude that memory benefits of tDCS are not easily replicated. In contrast, enactment at study reliably boosts subsequent memory.

  17. THE EXPRESSIONS OF EXCLAMATION: A CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS IN AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH AND BAHASA INDONESIA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adrefiza Adrefiza

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available This study investigated and compared exclamatory expressions performed by native speakers of Australian English and Bahasa Indonesia. Three different contexts and situations were selected as the prompts for the respondents to express their exclamations: (a surprise; (b enthusiasm; and (c annoyance. Based on data from 36 respondents of both languages, the findings revealed that both Australian English and Bahasa Indonesia were likely to utilize different types of exclamatory words, phrases or expressions of surprise, enthusiastic and annoyance. Te expressions seemed to be systematic in their constructions and the selection of words or phrases remained personal and indicated the speakers‟ feeling, attitude, and emotion. In expressing surprise and enthusiasm, in particular, the selection of words or phrases by both language communities tended to use positive and socially acceptable exclamatory expressions. However, when they turned to express annoyance, most of the words, phrases, or expressions used were often taboo and socially unacceptable.

  18. Recently learned foreign abstract and concrete nouns are represented in distinct cortical networks similar to the native language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mayer, Katja M; Macedonia, Manuela; von Kriegstein, Katharina

    2017-09-01

    In the native language, abstract and concrete nouns are represented in distinct areas of the cerebral cortex. Currently, it is unknown whether this is also the case for abstract and concrete nouns of a foreign language. Here, we taught adult native speakers of German 45 abstract and 45 concrete nouns of a foreign language. After learning the nouns for 5 days, participants performed a vocabulary translation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Translating abstract nouns in contrast to concrete nouns elicited responses in regions that are also responsive to abstract nouns in the native language: the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left middle and superior temporal gyri. Concrete nouns elicited larger responses in the angular gyri bilaterally and the left parahippocampal gyrus than abstract nouns. The cluster in the left angular gyrus showed psychophysiological interaction (PPI) with the left lingual gyrus. The left parahippocampal gyrus showed PPI with the posterior cingulate cortex. Similar regions have been previously found for concrete nouns in the native language. The results reveal similarities in the cortical representation of foreign language nouns with the representation of native language nouns that already occur after 5 days of vocabulary learning. Furthermore, we showed that verbal and enriched learning methods were equally suitable to teach foreign abstract and concrete nouns. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4398-4412, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  19. Noun and verb differences in picture naming: past studies and new evidence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mätzig, Simone; Druks, Judit; Masterson, Jackie; Vigliocco, Gabriella

    2009-06-01

    We re-examine the double dissociation view of noun-verb differences by critically reviewing past lesion studies reporting selective noun or verb deficits in picture naming, and reporting the results of a new picture naming study carried out with aphasic patients and comparison participants. Since there are theoretical arguments and empirical evidence that verb processing is more demanding than noun processing, in the review we distinguished between cases that presented with large and small differences between nouns and verbs. We argued that the latter cases may be accounted for in terms of greater difficulty in processing verbs than nouns. For the cases reporting large differences between nouns and verbs we assessed consistency in lesion localization and consistency in diagnostic classification. More variability both in terms of diagnostic category and lesion sites was found among the verb impaired than the noun impaired patients. In the experimental study, nine aphasic patients and nine age matched neurologically unimpaired individuals carried out a picture naming study that used a large set of materials matched for age of acquisition and in addition to accuracy measures, latencies were also recorded. Despite the patients' variable language deficits, diagnostic category and the matched materials, all patients performed faster and more accurately in naming the object than the action pictures. The comparison participants performed similarly. We also carried out a qualitative analysis of the errors patients made and showed that different types of errors were made in response to object and action pictures. We concluded that action naming places more and different demands on the language processor than object naming. The conclusions of the literature review and the results of the experimental study are discussed in relation to claims previous studies have made on the basis of the double dissociation found between nouns and verbs. We argue that these claims are only

  20. Effective language in study guides at a distance learning institution ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Kate H

    nonverbal messages, electronic communication and communication strategies. .... omitting a word/phrase when this word/phrase can be left implicit without detracting from the ..... Tourism is of particular importance to the country. All the .... For instance, you can transmit foot-and-mouth disease by driving a car from an area.

  1. High-frequency collocations of nouns in research articles across eight disciplines

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthew Peacock

    2012-04-01

    Full Text Available This paper describes a corpus-based analysis of the distribution of the high-frequency collocates of abstract nouns in 320 research articles across eight disciplines: Chemistry, Computer Science, Materials Science, Neuroscience, Economics, Language and Linguistics, Management, and Psychology. Disciplinary variation was also examined – very little previous research seems to have investigated this. The corpus was analysed using WordSmith Tools. The 16 highest-frequency nouns across all eight disciplines were identified, followed by the highest-frequency collocates for each noun. Five disciplines showed over 50% variance from the overall results. Conclusions are that the differing patterns revealed are disciplinary norms and represent standard terminology within the disciplines arising from the topics discussed, research methods, and content of discussions. It is also concluded that the collocations are an important part of the meanings and functions of the nouns, and that this evidence of sharp discipline differences underlines the importance of discipline-specific collocation research.

  2. On the interaction of Linguistic Typology and Functional Grammar

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, J.

    2002-01-01

    of adjectives as a distinct word class. Conversely it will be shown that facts from many different languages have played an important role in the development of a layered model of the noun phrase in Functional Grammar and how currently these facts are used to test hypotheses concerning parallels between NPs...... empirical research in a wide variety of languages as practiced in the context of linguistic typology and one particular theory, Simon Dik's theory of Functional Grammar. In my view, the relationship between Functional Grammar and linguistic typology is an excellent example of the fruitful combination...... of theory driven data collection and data driven hypothesis formation. Furthermore, typological facts do not only serve to confirm the theory of Functional Grammar, but they also serve as a heuristics for an extension of the theory.Research conducted within the wider theoretical framework of Dik...

  3. ERROR ANALYSIS IN THE TRAVEL WRITING MADE BY THE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vika Agustina

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available This study was conducted to identify the kinds of errors in surface strategy taxonomy and to know the dominant type of errors made by the fifth semester students of English Department of one State University in Malang-Indonesia in producing their travel writing. The type of research of this study is document analysis since it analyses written materials, in this case travel writing texts. The analysis finds that the grammatical errors made by the students based on surface strategy taxonomy theory consist of four types. They are (1 omission, (2 addition, (3 misformation and (4 misordering. The most frequent errors occuring in misformation are in the use of tense form. Secondly, the errors are in omission of noun/verb inflection. The next error, there are many clauses that contain unnecessary phrase added there.

  4. Mood, definiteness and specificity: a linguistic and a philosophical account of their similarities and differences

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rijkhoff, Jan; Seibt, Johanna

    2006-01-01

    In this article we give a linguistic and a philosophical account of the relationship between some grammatical categories of the clause (realis) and the noun phrase (definiteness, specificity) that relate to the occurrence of an entity (thing, event) in the world of discourse. Our treatment differs...... in three important ways from previous work in this area. Firstly, we offer an explanation for both the symmetrical and the anti-symmetrical relations that appear to hold between (ir)realis mood and (in)definiteness. Secondly, we argue that any attempt to explain these relationships must make crucial...... reference to the grammatical category of specificity. Last but not least, we consider whether the identified linguistic symmetries and anti-symmetries are ontologically relevant and show that they are apparently best accounted for within an ontological theory that allows for dynamic and indeterminately...

  5. A three-dimensional approach to the gender/sex of nouns in Biblical Hebrew

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    J. H. Kroeze

    1994-05-01

    Full Text Available The phenomenon of the gender/sex of nouns is normally handled two-dimensionally. Two levels are distinguished: (grammatical gender and sex. Gender refers to the morphological and syntactic features of the noun, sex to the extralingual reality. This use of the term gender rests on the assumption that the morphological and syntactic features o f a noun are normally consistent. This assumption is tested and the results show that a three-dimensional approach would he better. In the relevant literature, there are indications of such a three-dimensional differentiation, where gender is used to indicate only the syntactic features of a noun. In this article it is proposed that morphological gender, syntactic gender and semantic gender (sex should be distinguished consistently. A list of 23 different combinations were found among nouns occurring most frequently. These combinations are illustrated with examples. Morphological, syntactic and semantic statistics are also given which illustrate the unique characteristics of the three levels.

  6. THE STRUCTURE OF POEM IN TALE KERINCI FOLKLORE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    - Nazurty

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Tale is the folklore in the form of poem that is sung. This study aims to gain in-depth understanding of the structure of Tale poem in the release of the Kerinci pilgrims. This qualitative study employed content analysis as the method with a structural approach. This study discussed the structure of the Tale poem. The results of the study are Tale poem consists of sampiran phrase, the rhyme/ sound phrase, and content. It composed by ten lines to twenty lines. It has ab ab rhyme according to the sound phrase flanking each line. The sound expression serves as rhyme and rhythm former.

  7. Information dynamics of boundary perception

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kragness, Haley; Hansen, Niels Christian; Vuust, Peter

    It has long been noted that expert musicians lengthen notes at phrase boundaries in expressive performance. Recently, we have extended research on this phenomenon by showing that undergraduates with no formal musical training and children as young as 3 years lengthen phrase boundaries during self...... uncertain than low-entropy contexts. Because phrase boundaries tend to afford high-entropy continuations, thus generating uncertain expectations in the listener, one possibility is that boundary perception is directly related to entropy. In other words, it may be hypothesized that entropy underlies...... on predictive uncertainty to the timing domain, as well as potentially answer key questions relating to boundary perception in musical listening....

  8. Glossary of terms used in the disposal of high-level wastes: Salt Repository Project

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1987-02-01

    This glossary provides definitions of words and phrases specific to, or used in a special way in, documents of the US Department of Energy's Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program. In many cases, two or more definitions of a word or phrase are given. Sources are provided for all definitions. 33 refs

  9. Model Protocol Additional to the Agreement(s) between State(s) and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the Application of Safeguards. Corrigenda

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1998-01-01

    in the fourth line, insert the word 'at' before the word 'locations'. Delete the phrase 'in accordance with paragraph (a) above' and replace with the phrase 'by another State concerning the export of such equipment and material to ...'. In the third line, insert the words 'of a' before the word 'location'

  10. Spatial distance effects on incremental semantic interpretation of abstract sentences: evidence from eye tracking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guerra, Ernesto; Knoeferle, Pia

    2014-12-01

    A large body of evidence has shown that visual context information can rapidly modulate language comprehension for concrete sentences and when it is mediated by a referential or a lexical-semantic link. What has not yet been examined is whether visual context can also modulate comprehension of abstract sentences incrementally when it is neither referenced by, nor lexically associated with, the sentence. Three eye-tracking reading experiments examined the effects of spatial distance between words (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2 and 3) on participants' reading times for sentences that convey similarity or difference between two abstract nouns (e.g., 'Peace and war are certainly different...'). Before reading the sentence, participants inspected a visual context with two playing cards that moved either far apart or close together. In Experiment 1, the cards turned and showed the first two nouns of the sentence (e.g., 'peace', 'war'). In Experiments 2 and 3, they turned but remained blank. Participants' reading times at the adjective (Experiment 1: first-pass reading time; Experiment 2: total times) and at the second noun phrase (Experiment 3: first-pass times) were faster for sentences that expressed similarity when the preceding words/objects were close together (vs. far apart) and for sentences that expressed dissimilarity when the preceding words/objects were far apart (vs. close together). Thus, spatial distance between words or entirely unrelated objects can rapidly and incrementally modulate the semantic interpretation of abstract sentences. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  11. ON-SITE SOLID PHRASE EXTRACTION AND LABORATORY ...

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fragrance materials, such as synthetic musks in aqueous samples, are normally analyzed by GC/MS in the selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode to provide maximum sensitivity after liquid-liquid extraction of I -L samples. A I -L sample, however, usually provides too little analyte for full-scan data acquisition. An on-site extraction method for extracting synthetic musks from 60 L of wastewater effluent has been developed. Such a large sample volume permits high-quality, full-scan mass spectra to be obtained for various synthetic musk compounds. Quantification of these compounds was conveniently achieved from the full-scan data directly, without preparing SIM descriptors for each compound to acquire SIM data. The research focused on in the subtasks is the development and application of state-of the-art technologies to meet the needs of the public, Office of Water, and ORD in the area of Water Quality. Located In the subtasks are the various research projects being performed in support of this Task and more in-depth coverage of each project. Briefly, each project's objective is stated below.Subtask 1: To integrate state-of-the-art technologies (polar organic chemical integrative samplers, advanced solid-phase extraction methodologies with liquid chromatography/electrospray/mass spectrometry) and apply them to studying the sources and fate of a select list of PPCPs. Application and improvement of analytical methodologies that can detect non-volatile, polar, water-sol

  12. Phrasing history : Selecting sources in digital repositories

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Huistra, Hieke; Mellink, Bram

    2016-01-01

    In recent years, mass digitization has opened up voluminous text corpora to human interpretation. Full-text search lets historians now find new sources that can change their understanding of thoroughly studied historical episodes. At the same time, it forces scholars to access historical sources in

  13. Phrasing history: Selecting sources in digital repositories

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Huistra, H.; Mellink, B.

    2016-01-01

    In recent years, mass digitization has opened up voluminous text corpora to human interpretation. Full-text search lets historians now find new sources that can change their understanding of thoroughly studied historical episodes. At the same time, it forces scholars to access historical sources in

  14. The X-Bar Theory of Phrase Structure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kornai, Andras; Pullman, Geoffrey K.

    1990-01-01

    This paper demonstrates that a formalization of the content of X-bar theory reveals very little substance in its claims. Six conditions that encapsulate X-bar theory are discussed: lexicality, succession, uniformity, maximality, centrality, and optionality. (50 references) (JL)

  15. Building Phrase Structure from Items and Contexts

    Science.gov (United States)

    McKinney-Bock, Katherine S.

    2013-01-01

    This dissertation aims to revisit foundational issues in syntactic theory regarding cyclicity and displacement. I take narrow syntax to operate over domains ("phases") more local than in current Minimalism. To do this, I define a notion of "phase overlap" which involves the sharing of grammatical features across two independent…

  16. GRAMMATICAL CONSTRAINTS ON VERB PHRASES IN TWI ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    akos

    Many linguists have advanced theories on the structural aspect of inter-sentential code switching ...... tree', bu adeε 'respect' and tu 'dig', as in tu fɔm 'dig hole', tu ano'uncork' and tu fie 'move house'. ... Accra: Black Mask Ltd. Dolphyne, A.F. ...

  17. English Code Switching in Indonesian Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Setiawan, Dedy

    2016-01-01

    There is a growing phenomenon, worldwide, of inserting English words, phrases or expressions, into the local language: this is part of the acceptance of English as current world language. Indonesia is experiencing the use of this mixture of language when using either their own Indonesian or local language; English words, phrases and expressions…

  18. Phase structure rewrite systems in information retrieval

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klingbiel, P. H.

    1985-01-01

    Operational level automatic indexing requires an efficient means of normalizing natural language phrases. Subject switching requires an efficient means of translating one set of authorized terms to another. A phrase structure rewrite system called a Lexical Dictionary is explained that performs these functions. Background, operational use, other applications and ongoing research are explained.

  19. Say it in French

    CERN Document Server

    Dover

    1950-01-01

    Contains over 1,000 useful sentences and phrases for travel or everyday living abroad: food, shopping, medical aid, courtesy, hotels, travel, and other situations. Gives the English phrase, the foreign equivalent, and a transliteration that can be read right off. Also includes many supplementary lists, signs, and aids. All words are indexed.

  20. Laughter among Deaf Signers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Provine, Robert R.; Emmorey, Karen

    2006-01-01

    The placement of laughter in the speech of hearing individuals is not random but "punctuates" speech, occurring during pauses and at phrase boundaries where punctuation would be placed in a transcript of a conversation. For speakers, language is dominant in the competition for the vocal tract since laughter seldom interrupts spoken phrases. For…

  1. Dissociable intrinsic functional networks support noun-object and verb-action processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Huichao; Lin, Qixiang; Han, Zaizhu; Li, Hongyu; Song, Luping; Chen, Lingjuan; He, Yong; Bi, Yanchao

    2017-12-01

    The processing mechanism of verbs-actions and nouns-objects is a central topic of language research, with robust evidence for behavioral dissociation. The neural basis for these two major word and/or conceptual classes, however, remains controversial. Two experiments were conducted to study this question from the network perspective. Experiment 1 found that nodes of the same class, obtained through task-evoked brain imaging meta-analyses, were more strongly connected with each other than nodes of different classes during resting-state, forming segregated network modules. Experiment 2 examined the behavioral relevance of these intrinsic networks using data from 88 brain-damaged patients, finding that across patients the relative strength of functional connectivity of the two networks significantly correlated with the noun-object vs. verb-action relative behavioral performances. In summary, we found that verbs-actions and nouns-objects are supported by separable intrinsic functional networks and that the integrity of such networks accounts for the relative noun-object- and verb-action-selective deficits. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Segmentation of dance movement: Effects of expertise, visual familiarity, motor experience and music

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bettina E. Bläsing

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available According to event segmentation theory, action perception depends on sensory cues and prior knowledge, and the segmentation of observed actions is crucial for understanding and memorizing these actions. While most activities in everyday life are characterized by external goals and interaction with objects or persons, this does not necessarily apply to dance-like actions. We investigated to what extent visual familiarity of the observed movement and accompanying music influence the segmentation of a dance phrase in dancers of different skill level and non-dancers. In Experiment 1, dancers and non-dancers repeatedly watched a video clip showing a dancer performing a choreographed dance phrase and indicated segment boundaries by key press. Dancers generally defined less segment boundaries than non-dancers, specifically in the first trials in which visual familiarity with the phrase was low. Music increased the number of segment boundaries in the non-dancers and decreased it in the dancers. The results suggest that dance expertise reduces the number of perceived segment boundaries in an observed dance phrase, and that the ways visual familiarity and music affect movement segmentation are modulated by dance expertise. In a second experiment, motor experience was added as factor, based on empirical evidence suggesting that action perception is modified by visual and motor expertise in different ways. In Experiment 2, the same task as in Experiment 1 was performed by dance amateurs, and was repeated by the same participants after they had learned to dance the presented dance phrase. Less segment boundaries were defined in the middle trials after participants had learned to dance the phrase, and music reduced the number of segment boundaries before learning. The results suggest that specific motor experience of the observed movement influences its perception and anticipation and makes segmentation broader, but not to the same degree as dance expertise

  3. 15 CFR 995.12 - Certification designation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... marketing materials. An Applicant that has been certified by NOAA as a CEVAD may use the phrase "Certified NOAA ENC Value Added Distributor" on products and marketing materials. Use of these phrases must include labeling to identify the product's contents and suitable use. (See § 995.24(a)(4), (5) and (6) and...

  4. Semantic analyzability in children's understanding of idioms.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gibbs, R W

    1991-06-01

    This study investigated the role of semantic analyzability in children's understanding of idioms. Kindergartners and first, third, and fourth graders listened to idiomatic expressions either alone or at the end of short story contexts. Their task was to explain verbally the intended meanings of these phrases and then to choose their correct idiomatic interpretations. The idioms presented to the children differed in their degree of analyzability. Some idioms were highly analyzable or decomposable, with the meanings of their parts contributing independently to their overall figurative meanings. Other idioms were nondecomposable because it was difficult to see any relation between a phrase's individual components and the idiom's figurative meaning. The results showed that younger children (kindergartners and first graders) understood decomposable idioms better than they did nondecomposable phrases. Older children (third and fourth graders) understood both kinds of idioms equally well in supporting contexts, but were better at interpreting decomposable idioms than they were at understanding nondecomposable idioms without contextual information. These findings demonstrate that young children better understand idiomatic phrases whose individual parts independently contribute to their overall figurative meanings.

  5. A case of amusia caused by the infarction of anterior portion of bilateral temporal lobes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Satoh, Masayuki; Takeda, Katsuhiko; Murakami, Yasuo; Onouchi, Kenji; Inoue, Kiyoharu; Kuzuhara, Shigeki

    2005-02-01

    It remains an unsettled question which brain regions participate in music perception. During singing a familiar song, the retrieval from long-term memory is necessary, but the mechanism of that retrieval is still unclear. We carried out a detailed examination of musical ability in a patient with amusia and control subjects and identified the lesion sites of our patient using MRI. Compared with controls, the patient manifested the following impairments in music perception: (i) the recognition and discrimination of familiar melodies; (ii) the discrimination of unfamiliar phrases; (iii) the discrimination of isolated chords. During singing familiar nursery songs, the patient showed the replacement of one phrase of the melody. In MRI, the patient had old infarction in the anterior portion of the temporal lobes bilaterally. In conclusion, the anterior temporal lobes participate in the perception and expression of music. During singing, the song is retrieved from long-term memory by a unit of one phrase. The dysfunction of that retrieval caused the replacement of the succeeding phrases of the original with the wrong tune, and we named this phenomenon paramelodia.

  6. Long-range order in canary song.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Markowitz, Jeffrey E; Ivie, Elizabeth; Kligler, Laura; Gardner, Timothy J

    2013-01-01

    Bird songs range in form from the simple notes of a Chipping Sparrow to the rich performance of the nightingale. Non-adjacent correlations can be found in the syntax of some birdsongs, indicating that the choice of what to sing next is determined not only by the current syllable, but also by previous syllables sung. Here we examine the song of the domesticated canary, a complex singer whose song consists of syllables, grouped into phrases that are arranged in flexible sequences. Phrases are defined by a fundamental time-scale that is independent of the underlying syllable duration. We show that the ordering of phrases is governed by long-range rules: the choice of what phrase to sing next in a given context depends on the history of the song, and for some syllables, highly specific rules produce correlations in song over timescales of up to ten seconds. The neural basis of these long-range correlations may provide insight into how complex behaviors are assembled from more elementary, stereotyped modules.

  7. Enhancing a taxonomy for health information technology: an exploratory study of user input towards folksonomy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dixon, Brian E; McGowan, Julie J

    2010-01-01

    The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has created a public website to disseminate critical information regarding its health information technology initiative. The website is maintained by AHRQ's Natiomal Resource Center (NRC) for Health Information Technology. In the latest continuous quality improvement project, the NRC used the site's search logs to extract user-generated search phrases. The phrases were then compared to the site's controlled vocabulary with respect to language, grammar, and search precision. Results of the comparison demonstrate that search log data can be a cost-effective way to improve controlled vocabularies as well as information retrieval. User-entered search phrases were found to also share many similarities with folksonomy tags.

  8. Looking at Radif and its Functions in Khaghani's Poem

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Masood Roohani

    2013-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract According to researchers, radifs can be one of the main components of the ancient Persian poetry made by Iranian talent and muse. Radif as one of the pillars of the side music, has played a major role in classical Persian poetry, and Persian poets have  shown great  attention to composing  radif-consisting  poems, since ancient times. In the early Persian poetry, radif is used slightly but the more the Persian poetry completed, the more application of radif have seen, and gradually, poets intended to use simple types instead of those complicated. One of the poets who have shown special attention to using radif and its application forms are of high-frequency in his poems, is khaghani. In this essay, we have tried to analyze  Khaghani's poem statically. For this purpose, we have provided accurate statistics of the radif-consisting poems and those are not radif-consisting. We  studied various types of radifs in all khaghani's Divan as well. Then it is proved that the frequency of his radif-consisting poems is higher than the other with no radif. Statistical analysis shows that 815 of 1212 khaghani`s poems consist  radifs.This number  equals 20/68% of his all poems. Study of radif in different form showes that poem with radif appreciably are more predominant than poems without radif. 81/77% of Ghazels, 39/64% of  odes, 88/54% of  quatrains/rubais, 22/64%  of fragments  and 66/79% of his small odes have radif. The types of radif in Khaghani's poem includes: verb, noun (noun phrase, letters, adverbs, pronouns, adjectives and phrases, or sentences (such as overnight. But the verb type (70% is mostly used in his poetry. In this article  we discussed the functions of radif in khaghani' poems and concluded that the main functions of  radif in his poetry are as follows: 1- Creating unity between poet and audience When the reader can guess the word (or phrase in a particular situation, he will find himself as a contributor in

  9. On the Approximation Ratio of Lempel-Ziv Parsing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gagie, Travis; Navarro, Gonzalo; Prezza, Nicola

    2018-01-01

    in the text. Since computing b is NP-complete, a popular gold standard is z, the number of phrases in the Lempel-Ziv parse of the text, where phrases can be copied only from the left. While z can be computed in linear time, almost nothing has been known for decades about its approximation ratio with respect...

  10. What Business Students Should Know about Attorney-Client Privilege

    Science.gov (United States)

    Draba, Robert; Marshall, Brent

    2012-01-01

    The case law on attorney-client privilege is extensive and can be somewhat complex. Over seven hundred articles in Westlaw, for example, have the phrase "attorney-client privilege" in the title; in the last three years alone, there have been over 3700 federal cases in which the phrase "attorney-client privilege" appears at least once. However,…

  11. 78 FR 76529 - Members of a Family for Purpose of Filing CBP Family Declaration

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-12-18

    .... Finally, the NPRM proposed to remove the phrase ``regardless of age'' where it currently appears in the... phrase is used in 19 CFR 148.34(b) and 148.103(b), which relate to the family grouping of exemptions for... duty exemption of $800 for articles acquired abroad (and not the family grouping of duty aggregation of...

  12. Matthew's Messianic Shepherd-king: In search of "the lost sheep of ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The article intends to grasp the meaning of the phrase "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" in the Matthean logia of 10:5b-6 (and 15:24). It shows that in recent Matthean research the phrase has become an abstract salvation-historical category disconnected from narrative and historical particularity. However, generally ...

  13. A Different Vision in eLearning: Metaphors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tuncay, Nazime; Stanescu, Ioana Andreea; Tuncay, Mustafa

    2011-01-01

    Metaphors are figures of speech in which a word or phrase that denotes a certain object or idea is applied to another word or phrase to imply some similarity between them. Due to their ability to make speaking and writing more lively and interesting, metaphors have always been popular among students. While metaphors provide significant enhancement…

  14. Analysis of the Word-Initial Segment with Reference to Lemmatising Zulu Nasal Nouns

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M.H. Mpungose

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available

    The process of lemmatising nasal nouns in the Zulu lexicon is problematic. The traditional method is to lemmatise a Zulu lexical noun by etymological noun-stem. This practice creates difficulties in harmonising lexical nouns with their syntactic application. Most authors and dictionary-makers are inconsistent in identifying the word-initial segment which determines the letter of the alphabet under which the lexical noun should be included. Consequently, dictionary users do not find Zulu dictionaries user-friendly. This article therefore proposes the principle of "a noun without initial vowel" as a method for lemmatising Zulu nasal nouns. It concludes that it is not necessary to delve into the derivational history of a lexical noun, but rather to focus on the product of the operation of morphophonological rules. The article also suggests the need to identify the distinctiveness of the segments of a syllable and to acknowledge that identical forms of a segment do occur at different segmental positions (initial, medial and final. Finally it is argued that the Zulu nasal noun class prefix is constructed according to an open syllable pattern defined by a general CV-formula based on a VCV noun prefix open syllable pattern.

    Keywords: adjoined letter; compound; composite; consonant; element; etymological; evolutionary; homorganic; initial; intravowel; lemma; lemmatise; lexical; morphophonological; nasal; noun class prefix; segment; syllable; vowel

    Die proses van lemmatisering van nasale naamwoorde in die Zoeloeleksikon is problematies. Die tradisionele metode is om leksikale selfstandige naamwoorde in Zoeloe volgens die etimologiese naamwoordstam te lemmatiseer. Hierdie gebruik veroorsaak moeilikhede by die harmonisering van leksikale selfstandige naamwoorde met hul sintaktiese toepassing. Die meeste outeurs en leksikograwe is inkonsekwent in die identifisering van die woordinisiële segment wat die letter van die alfabet bepaal
  15. Processing rhythmic pattern during Chinese sentence reading: An eye movement study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yingyi eLuo

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Prosodic constraints play a fundamental role during both spoken sentence comprehension and silent reading. In Chinese, the rhythmic pattern of the verb-object (V-O combination has been found to rapidly affect the semantic access/integration process during sentence reading (Luo and Zhou, 2010. Rhythmic pattern refers to the combination of words with different syllabic lengths, with certain combinations disallowed (e.g., [2+1]; numbers standing for the number of syllables of the verb and the noun respectively and certain combinations preferred (e.g., [1+1] or [2+2]. This constraint extends to the situation in which the combination is used to modify other words. A V-O phrase could modify a noun by simply preceding it, forming a V-O-N compound; when the verb is disyllabic, however, the word order has to be O-V-N and the object is preferred to be disyllabic. In this study, we investigated how the reader processes the rhythmic pattern and word order information by recording the reader's eye-movements. We created four types of sentences by crossing rhythmic pattern and word order in compounding. The compound, embedding a disyllabic verb, could be in the correct O-V-N or the incorrect V-O-N order; the object could be disyllabic or monosyllabic. We found that the reader spent more time and made more regressions on and after the compounds when either type of anomaly was detected during the first pass reading. However, during re-reading (after all the words in the sentence have been viewed, less regressive eye movements were found for the anomalous rhythmic pattern, relative to the correct pattern; moreover, only the abnormal rhythmic pattern, not the violated word order, influenced the regressive eye movements. These results suggest that while the processing of rhythmic pattern and word order information occurs rapidly during the initial reading of the sentence, the process of recovering from the rhythmic pattern anomaly may ease the reanalysis

  16. Processing Rhythmic Pattern during Chinese Sentence Reading: An Eye Movement Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luo, Yingyi; Duan, Yunyan; Zhou, Xiaolin

    2015-01-01

    Prosodic constraints play a fundamental role during both spoken sentence comprehension and silent reading. In Chinese, the rhythmic pattern of the verb-object (V-O) combination has been found to rapidly affect the semantic access/integration process during sentence reading (Luo and Zhou, 2010). Rhythmic pattern refers to the combination of words with different syllabic lengths, with certain combinations disallowed (e.g., [2 + 1]; numbers standing for the number of syllables of the verb and the noun respectively) and certain combinations preferred (e.g., [1 + 1] or [2 + 2]). This constraint extends to the situation in which the combination is used to modify other words. A V-O phrase could modify a noun by simply preceding it, forming a V-O-N compound; when the verb is disyllabic, however, the word order has to be O-V-N and the object is preferred to be disyllabic. In this study, we investigated how the reader processes the rhythmic pattern and word order information by recording the reader's eye-movements. We created four types of sentences by crossing rhythmic pattern and word order in compounding. The compound, embedding a disyllabic verb, could be in the correct O-V-N or the incorrect V-O-N order; the object could be disyllabic or monosyllabic. We found that the reader spent more time and made more regressions on and after the compounds when either type of anomaly was detected during the first pass reading. However, during re-reading (after all the words in the sentence have been viewed), less regressive eye movements were found for the anomalous rhythmic pattern, relative to the correct pattern; moreover, only the abnormal rhythmic pattern, not the violated word order, influenced the regressive eye movements. These results suggest that while the processing of rhythmic pattern and word order information occurs rapidly during the initial reading of the sentence, the process of recovering from the rhythmic pattern anomaly may ease the reanalysis processing at the

  17. Viewing photos and reading nouns of natural graspable objects similarly modulate motor responses

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Barbara FM Marino

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available It is well known that the observation of graspable objects recruits the same motor representations involved in their actual manipulation. Recent evidence suggests that the presentation of nouns referring to graspable objects may exert similar effects. So far, however, it is not clear to what extent the modulation of the motor system during object observation overlaps with that related to noun processing. To address this issue, 2 behavioral experiments were carried out using a go-no go paradigm. Healthy participants were presented with photos and nouns of graspable and non-graspable natural objects. Also scrambled images and pseudowords obtained from the original stimuli were used. At a go-signal onset (150 ms after stimulus presentation participants had to press a key when the stimulus referred to a real object, using their right (Experiment 1 or left (Experiment 2 hand, and refrain from responding when a scrambled image or a pseudoword was presented. Slower responses were found for both photos and nouns of graspable objects as compared to non-graspable objects, independent of the responding hand. These findings suggest that processing seen graspable objects and written nouns referring to graspable objects similarly modulates the motor system.

  18. Dynamic interactions between musical, cardiovascular, and cerebral rhythms in humans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bernardi, Luciano; Porta, Cesare; Casucci, Gaia; Balsamo, Rossella; Bernardi, Nicolò F; Fogari, Roberto; Sleight, Peter

    2009-06-30

    Reactions to music are considered subjective, but previous studies suggested that cardiorespiratory variables increase with faster tempo independent of individual preference. We tested whether compositions characterized by variable emphasis could produce parallel instantaneous cardiovascular/respiratory responses and whether these changes mirrored music profiles. Twenty-four young healthy subjects, 12 musicians (choristers) and 12 nonmusician control subjects, listened (in random order) to music with vocal (Puccini's "Turandot") or orchestral (Beethoven's 9th Symphony adagio) progressive crescendos, more uniform emphasis (Bach cantata), 10-second period (ie, similar to Mayer waves) rhythmic phrases (Giuseppe Verdi's arias "Va pensiero" and "Libiam nei lieti calici"), or silence while heart rate, respiration, blood pressures, middle cerebral artery flow velocity, and skin vasomotion were recorded.Common responses were recognized by averaging instantaneous cardiorespiratory responses regressed against changes in music profiles and by coherence analysis during rhythmic phrases. Vocal and orchestral crescendos produced significant (P=0.05 or better) correlations between cardiovascular or respiratory signals and music profile, particularly skin vasoconstriction and blood pressures, proportional to crescendo, in contrast to uniform emphasis, which induced skin vasodilation and reduction in blood pressures. Correlations were significant both in individual and group-averaged signals. Phrases at 10-second periods by Verdi entrained the cardiovascular autonomic variables. No qualitative differences in recorded measurements were seen between musicians and nonmusicians. Music emphasis and rhythmic phrases are tracked consistently by physiological variables. Autonomic responses are synchronized with music, which might therefore convey emotions through autonomic arousal during crescendos or rhythmic phrases.

  19. Flexibility of Expressive Timing in Repeated Musical Performances

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alexander Pantelis Demos

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Performances by soloists in the Western classical tradition are normally highly prepared, yet must sound fresh and spontaneous. How do musicians manage this? We tested the hypothesis that they achieve the necessary spontaneity by varying the musical gestures that express their interpretation of a piece. We examined the tempo arches produced by final slowing at the ends of phrases in performances of J.S. Bach's No. 6 (Prelude for solo cello (12 performances and the Italian Concerto (Presto for solo piano (8 performances. The performances were given by two experienced concert soloists during a short time period (3½ months for the Prelude, 2 weeks for the Presto after completing their preparations for public performance. We measured the tempo of each bar or half-bar, and the stability of tempo across performances (difference of the tempo of each bar/half bar from each of the other performances. There were phrase arches for both tempo and stability with slower, less stable tempi at beginnings and ends of phrases and faster, more stable tempi mid-phrase. The effects of practice were complex. Tempo decreased overall with practice, while stability increased in some bars and decreased in others. One effect of practice may be to imbue well-learned, automatic motor sequences with freshness and spontaneity through cognitive control at phrase boundaries where slower tempi and decreased stability provide opportunities for slower cognitive processes to modulate rapid automatic motor sequences.

  20. Flexibility of Expressive Timing in Repeated Musical Performances.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demos, Alexander P; Lisboa, Tânia; Chaffin, Roger

    2016-01-01

    Performances by soloists in the Western classical tradition are normally highly prepared, yet must sound fresh and spontaneous. How do musicians manage this? We tested the hypothesis that they achieve the necessary spontaneity by varying the musical gestures that express their interpretation of a piece. We examined the tempo arches produced by final slowing at the ends of phrases in performances of J. S. Bach's No. 6 (Prelude) for solo cello (12 performances) and the Italian Concerto (Presto) for solo piano (eight performances). The performances were given by two experienced concert soloists during a short time period (3½ months for the Prelude, 2 weeks for the Presto) after completing their preparations for public performance. We measured the tempo of each bar or half-bar, and the stability of tempo across performances (difference of the tempo of each bar/half bar from each of the other performances). There were phrase arches for both tempo and stability with slower, less stable tempi at beginnings and ends of phrases and faster, more stable tempi mid-phrase. The effects of practice were complex. Tempo decreased overall with practice, while stability increased in some bars and decreased in others. One effect of practice may be to imbue well-learned, automatic motor sequences with freshness and spontaneity through cognitive control at phrase boundaries where slower tempi and decreased stability provide opportunities for slower cognitive processes to modulate rapid automatic motor sequences.

  1. The role of speech prosody and text reading prosody in children's reading comprehension.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Veenendaal, Nathalie J; Groen, Margriet A; Verhoeven, Ludo

    2014-12-01

    Text reading prosody has been associated with reading comprehension. However, text reading prosody is a reading-dependent measure that relies heavily on decoding skills. Investigation of the contribution of speech prosody - which is independent from reading skills - in addition to text reading prosody, to reading comprehension could provide more insight into the general role of prosody in reading comprehension. The current study investigates how much variance in reading comprehension scores is explained by speech prosody and text reading prosody, after controlling for decoding, vocabulary, and syntactic awareness. A battery of reading and language assessments was performed by 106 Dutch fourth-grade primary school children. Speech prosody was assessed using a storytelling task and text reading prosody by oral text reading performance. Decoding skills, vocabulary, syntactic awareness, and reading comprehension were assessed using standardized tests. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that text reading prosody explained 6% of variance and that speech prosody explained 8% of variance in reading comprehension scores, after controlling for decoding, vocabulary, and syntactic awareness. Phrasing was the significant factor in both speech and text reading. When added in consecutive order, phrasing in speech added 5% variance to phrasing in reading. In contrast, phrasing in reading added only 3% variance to phrasing in speech. The variance that speech prosody explained in reading comprehension scores should not be neglected. Speech prosody seems to facilitate the construction of meaning in written language. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

  2. CONCEPTS AND CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES USED IN CHILDREN'S SHORT STORIES - ÇOCUKLAR İÇİN HAZIRLANAN ÖYKÜ KİTAPLARINDAKİ KAVRAMLAR VE KAVRAM ALANLARI

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    N. Tayyibe EKEN

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available Words and concepts are inseperable components of language education. Examining words and concepts gives information about language development and education. Lexical development in mother tongue occurs by means of spoken and written texts children are exposed to. Types of these texts can be diversified. This study is aimed to categorize concepts in children's stories and to reach principle findings about lexical hierarchy and education. It's mainly based on indirect observation, content analysis, category analysis and frequency analysis so as to determine conceptual and sub-conceptual categories in children's stories. Data of the study consist of 20 stories for 5;0+ year-old-children. Lexical data were analysed/categorised according to Clark (2003. Major findings of the study: There are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, set phrases, exclamations, echo-words and specific names in the stories. Specific names, idioms and proverbs are out of the limitations. In this way, there are 4606 words in database, 1629 of which are nouns, the most used category. There are totally 1306 verbs. So the category of verbs is the second most used category. Studies determining the concepts and vocabulary in written texts for children is important in terms of children's literature and corpus studies. It's expected to contribute to literature.

  3. Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthew L Hall

    Full Text Available Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL. Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2 signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect. Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming operates similarly in sign and speech.

  4. Concreteness and relational effects on recall of adjective-noun pairs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Paivio, A; Khan, M; Begg, I

    2000-09-01

    Extending previous research on the problem, we studied the effects of concreteness and relatedness of adjective-noun pairs on free recall, cued recall, and memory integration. Two experiments varied the attributes in paired associates lists or sentences. Consistent with predictions from dual coding theory and prior results with noun-noun pairs, both experiments showed that the effects of concreteness were strong and independent of relatedness in free recall and cued recall. The generally positive effects of relatedness were absent in the case of free recall of sentences. The two attributes also had independent (additive) effects on integrative memory as measured by conditionalized free recall of pairs. Integration as measured by the increment from free to cued recall occurred consistently only when pairs were high in both concreteness and relatedness. Explanations focused on dual coding and relational-distinctiveness processing theories as well as task variables that affect integration measures.

  5. The Dangling model in the construction of compound sentences with regard to verb tenses

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mahmoud Mehravaran

    2016-02-01

    the mistakes of some of the grammars. This research project has for the first time introduced constructive models of compound sentences in a comprehensive research taking in to account the tense of the verbs. The primary question in this research project is which kind of sentences can be considered as compound and what is the constructive of such a sentence? When defining a compound sentences, grammarians either shave the same beliefs or differ in their ideas. But all grammarians agree to the fact that a compound sentences has more than one verb. Different definitions are due to different criteria adapted in constructing a compound sentences. To construct a noun, and adjective, a verb and a sentence we should take similar and precise criteria to our consideration. In the grammatical units of noun, adjectives, and verbs construction means connecting two or more parts that can convey one similar meaning and its parts are dependent upon one another.  In the construction of compound sentences there must be the same criteria so that its applications can be truly recognized and identified just like the previously mentioned grammatical units. The first step to arrive at a criterion in defining and identifying compound sentences, is to separate this discussion from connective sentences that are relate to each other with connectives are called connective sentences. But sentences which are constructed with dependent making connectives and their parts are dependent upon one another are called compound sentences. Therefore the signs of compound sentences with regard to constructions and the meaning of criterion are as follows: 1 They have more than one verb. 2 The consistence of two or more dependent phrases. 3 Phrases construct a complete sentences all together and convey one similar message. 4 One of the phrases is the main clause and the other one is the subordinate one. 5 The phrases or subordinate clauses can be related to one of the major parts and they can take a

  6. Onondaga Noun Incorporation: Some Notes on the Interdependence of Syntax and Semantics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Woodbury, Hanni

    1975-01-01

    In Onondaga and all northern Iroquoian languages, nouns can be incorporated into verbs. The function of this is semantic as well as syntactic. It is semantic in that the sense of an incorporated noun will be narrower than its unincorporated counterpart regardless of modifiers. Incorporation changes the transformational structure of the sentence.…

  7. Conceptual similarity effects on working memory in sentence contexts: testing a theory of anaphora.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cowles, H Wind; Garnham, Alan; Simner, Julia

    2010-06-01

    The degree of semantic similarity between an anaphoric noun phrase (e.g., the bird) and its antecedent (e.g., a robin) is known to affect the anaphor resolution process, but the mechanisms that underlie this effect are not known. One proposal (Almor, 1999) is that semantic similarity triggers interference effects in working memory and makes two crucial assumptions: First, semantic similarity impairs working memory just as phonological similarity does (e.g., Baddeley, 1992), and, second, this impairment interferes with processes of sentence comprehension. We tested these assumptions in two experiments that compared recall accuracy between phonologically similar, semantically similar, and control words in sentence contexts. Our results do not provide support for Almor's claims: Phonological overlap decreased recall accuracy in sentence contexts, but semantic similarity did not. These results shed doubt on the idea that semantic interference in working memory is an underlying mechanism in anaphor resolution.

  8. Construction of 56 Instructional TV Programmes for English Language Learners in Turkey

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koumi, Jack

    2013-01-01

    During 30 months in 2010-2013, 56 instructional TV programmes for an English Language Learning course were scripted in the UK and produced in Turkey. Each TV programme has three drama clips, each one followed by a review of key phrases, then by a section inviting viewers to practice speaking those phrases. The rationale for this structure and for…

  9. Nouns in apposition : Portuguese data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Graça Rio-Torto

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The nature of N1N2 constructions, or nouns in apposition, is controversial: depending on the theoretical framework, they can be considered as compounds or as syntactic constructions. Indeed, nouns in apposition function as a hybrid category, in a double way: (i the same lexical structure in apposition is viewed either as a coordinative construction, as a subordinative or as an attributive construction. (ii N2 functions as a modifier or as an attributive item of N1; in Portuguese, when plural is syntactically mandatory, N1 (the head is systematically pluralized; N2 either rejects inflection or behaves as a predicator, allowing inflectional marks. We claim that Romance NN behave as a specific type of compounds. This assumption is grounded on their behaviour by contrast with phrasal properties. Portuguese compounds are characterized by a narrow relationship between internal structure, headness and inflectional patterns. In Portuguese, by default, the head of compound is inflected. NN related by an attributive semantic link are nowadays particularly unstable and problematic regarding inflection. Inflectional variation — widely attested — helps in determining the status of NN in apposition: as two inflectional patterns are available, we must verify if they correspond to two different constructions or to one structure with two readings. The analysis addressed is supported by empirical data of contemporary Portuguese language extracted from Brazilian and European databases, and requires the theoretical articulation of a double predicative class of N2 (holistic and partitive with inflectional fluctuation of attributive N2 in the second situation: performing a continuum, double inflection is close to holistic predication and single inflection (of N1 is close to partitive predication; systematic double inflection is close to coordination and inflectional oscillation is close to attribution. The predicative power of nouns in apposition supports their

  10. Sub-Audible Speech Recognition Based upon Electromyographic Signals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jorgensen, Charles C. (Inventor); Lee, Diana D. (Inventor); Agabon, Shane T. (Inventor)

    2012-01-01

    Method and system for processing and identifying a sub-audible signal formed by a source of sub-audible sounds. Sequences of samples of sub-audible sound patterns ("SASPs") for known words/phrases in a selected database are received for overlapping time intervals, and Signal Processing Transforms ("SPTs") are formed for each sample, as part of a matrix of entry values. The matrix is decomposed into contiguous, non-overlapping two-dimensional cells of entries, and neural net analysis is applied to estimate reference sets of weight coefficients that provide sums with optimal matches to reference sets of values. The reference sets of weight coefficients are used to determine a correspondence between a new (unknown) word/phrase and a word/phrase in the database.

  11. What is a compound? The main criteria for compoundhood

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Altakhaineh Abdel Rahman Mitib

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available This study aims to identify the main cross-linguistic criteria for compoundhood discussed in the relevant literature, with a special focus on English, ranking them from the most reliable to the least. These criteria - orthographic, phonological, syntactic and semantic in nature - have been proposed to make a distinction between compounds and phrases. The analysis reveals that the most reliable cross-linguistic criteria to distinguish between phrases and compounds are adjacency and referentiality. With regard to the former criterion, no intervening elements can be inserted between the head and the non-head of compounds, whilst such insertion is allowed in phrases. With regard to the latter criterion, the non-head of a phrase is always referential, whereas the non-head of a compound is normally non-referential. Other criteria have been found to be partially applicable, e.g. free pluralisation of the non-head, compositionality, stress, possibilities for modification and coordination, ellipsis, orthography and the replacement of the second element by a pro-form. The study also proposes a definition for compounds that may be the most widely applicable. Finally, the study concludes with ranking the main criteria for compoundhood discussed in the study.

  12. Infants use known verbs to learn novel nouns: evidence from 15- and 19-month-olds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ferguson, Brock; Graf, Eileen; Waxman, Sandra R

    2014-04-01

    Fluent speakers' representations of verbs include semantic knowledge about the nouns that can serve as their arguments. These "selectional restrictions" of a verb can in principle be recruited to learn the meaning of a novel noun. For example, the sentence He ate the carambola licenses the inference that carambola refers to something edible. We ask whether 15- and 19-month-old infants can recruit their nascent verb lexicon to identify the referents of novel nouns that appear as the verbs' subjects. We compared infants' interpretation of a novel noun (e.g., the dax) in two conditions: one in which dax is presented as the subject of animate-selecting construction (e.g., The dax is crying), and the other in which dax is the subject of an animacy-neutral construction (e.g., The dax is right here). Results indicate that by 19months, infants use their representations of known verbs to inform the meaning of a novel noun that appears as its argument. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  13. Indexes to Nuclear Regulatory Commission issuances, July--December 1992

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1993-06-01

    Digests and indexes for issuances of the Commission (CLI), the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (LBP), the Administrative Law Judges (ALJ), the Directors' Decisions (DD), and the Denials of Petitions for Rulemaking (DPRM) are presented in this document. These digests and indexes are intended to serve as a guide to the issuances. These information elements are displayed in one or more of five separate formats arranged as follows: Case Name Index; Digests and Legal Citations Index, Subject Index, and Facility Index. Subject words and/or phrases arranged alphabetically, indicate the issues and subjects covered in the issuances. The subject headings are followed by phrases that give specific information about the subject, as discussed in the issuances being indexed. These phrases are followed by the issuance number and the full text reference

  14. Simultaneous Processing of Noun Cue and to-be-Produced Verb in Verb Generation Task: Electromagnetic Evidence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anna V. Butorina

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available A long-standing but implicit assumption is that words strongly associated with a presented cue are automatically activated in the memory through rapid spread of activation within brain semantic networks. The current study was aimed to provide direct evidence of such rapid access to words' semantic representations and to investigate its neural sources using magnetoencephalography (MEG and distributed source localization technique. Thirty-three neurotypical subjects underwent the MEG recording during verb generation task, which was to produce verbs related to the presented noun cues. Brain responses evoked by the noun cues were examined while manipulating the strength of association between the noun and the potential verb responses. The strong vs. weak noun-verb association led to a greater noun-related neural response at 250–400 ms after cue onset, and faster verb production. The cortical sources of the differential response were localized in left temporal pole, previously implicated in semantic access, and left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC, thought to subserve controlled semantic retrieval. The strength of the left VLPFC's response to the nouns with strong verb associates was positively correlated to the speed of verbs production. Our findings empirically validate the theoretical expectation that in case of a strongly connected noun-verb pair, successful access to target verb representation may occur already at the stage of lexico-semantic analysis of the presented noun. Moreover, the MEG results suggest that contrary to the previous conclusion derived from fMRI studies left VLPFC supports selection of the target verb representations, even if they were retrieved from semantic memory rapidly and effortlessly. The discordance between MEG and fMRI findings in verb generation task may stem from different modes of neural activation captured by phase-locked activity in MEG and slow changes of blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD signal

  15. Distributional structure in language: contributions to noun-verb difficulty differences in infant word recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Willits, Jon A; Seidenberg, Mark S; Saffran, Jenny R

    2014-09-01

    What makes some words easy for infants to recognize, and other words difficult? We addressed this issue in the context of prior results suggesting that infants have difficulty recognizing verbs relative to nouns. In this work, we highlight the role played by the distributional contexts in which nouns and verbs occur. Distributional statistics predict that English nouns should generally be easier to recognize than verbs in fluent speech. However, there are situations in which distributional statistics provide similar support for verbs. The statistics for verbs that occur with the English morpheme -ing, for example, should facilitate verb recognition. In two experiments with 7.5- and 9.5-month-old infants, we tested the importance of distributional statistics for word recognition by varying the frequency of the contextual frames in which verbs occur. The results support the conclusion that distributional statistics are utilized by infant language learners and contribute to noun-verb differences in word recognition. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  16. EEG source reconstruction evidence for the noun-verb neural dissociation along semantic dimensions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Bin; Dang, Jianwu; Zhang, Gaoyan

    2017-09-17

    One of the long-standing issues in neurolinguistic research is about the neural basis of word representation, concerning whether grammatical classification or semantic difference causes the neural dissociation of brain activity patterns when processing different word categories, especially nouns and verbs. To disentangle this puzzle, four orthogonalized word categories in Chinese: unambiguous nouns (UN), unambiguous verbs (UV), ambiguous words with noun-biased semantics (AN), and ambiguous words with verb-biased semantics (AV) were adopted in an auditory task for recording electroencephalographic (EEG) signals from 128 electrodes on the scalps of twenty-two subjects. With the advanced current density reconstruction (CDR) algorithm and the constraint of standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography, the spatiotemporal brain dynamics of word processing were explored with the results that in multiple time periods including P1 (60-90ms), N1 (100-140ms), P200 (150-250ms) and N400 (350-450ms), noun-verb dissociation over the parietal-occipital and frontal-central cortices appeared not only between the UN-UV grammatical classes but also between the grammatically identical but semantically different AN-AV pairs. The apparent semantic dissociation within one grammatical class strongly suggests that the semantic difference rather than grammatical classification could be interpreted as the origin of the noun-verb neural dissociation. Our results also revealed that semantic dissociation occurs from an early stage and repeats in multiple phases, thus supporting a functionally hierarchical word processing mechanism. Copyright © 2017 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Lexical development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nicolas, Ramona Kunene; Ahmed, Saaliha

    2016-07-28

    This study seeks to investigate the development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu-speaking children between the ages of 25 and 36 months. It compares lexical comprehension and production in isiZulu, using an Italian developed and validated vocabulary assessment tool: The Picture Naming Game (PiNG) developed by Bello, Giannantoni, Pettenati, Stefanini and Caselli (2012). The PiNG tool includes four subtests, one each for subnoun comprehension (NC), noun production (NP), predicate comprehension (PC), and predicate production (PP). Children are shown these lexical items and then asked to show comprehension and produce certain lexical items. After adaptation into the South African context, the adapted version of PiNG was used to directly assess the lexical development of isiZulu with the three main objectives to (1) test the efficiency of the adaptation of a vocabulary tool to measure isiZulu comprehension and production development, (2) test previous findings done in many cross-linguistic comparisons that have found that both comprehension and production performance increase with age for a lesser-studied language, and (3) present our findings around the comprehension and production of the linguistic categories of nouns and predicates. An analysis of the results reported in this study show an age effect throughout the entire sample. Across all the age groups, the comprehension of the noun and predicate subtests was better performed than the production of noun and predicate subtests. With regard to lexical items, the responses of children showed an influence of various factors, including the late acquisition of items, possible problems with stimuli presented to them, and the possible input received by the children from their home environment.

  18. Lexical development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ramona Kunene Nicolas

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available This study seeks to investigate the development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu-speaking children between the ages of 25 and 36 months. It compares lexical comprehension and production in isiZulu, using an Italian developed and validated vocabulary assessment tool: The Picture Naming Game (PiNG developed by Bello, Giannantoni, Pettenati, Stefanini and Caselli (2012. The PiNG tool includes four subtests, one each for subnoun comprehension (NC, noun production (NP, predicate comprehension (PC, and predicate production (PP. Children are shown these lexical items and then asked to show comprehension and produce certain lexical items. After adaptation into the South African context, the adapted version of PiNG was used to directly assess the lexical development of isiZulu with the three main objectives to (1 test the efficiency of the adaptation of a vocabulary tool to measure isiZulu comprehension and production development, (2 test previous findings done in many cross-linguistic comparisons that have found that both comprehension and production performance increase with age for a lesser-studied language, and (3 present our findings around the comprehension and production of the linguistic categories of nouns and predicates. An analysis of the results reported in this study show an age effect throughout the entire sample. Across all the age groups, the comprehension of the noun and predicate subtests was better performed than the production of noun and predicate subtests. With regard to lexical items, the responses of children showed an influence of various factors, including the late acquisition of items, possible problems with stimuli presented to them, and the possible input received by the children from their home environment.

  19. Predicting prosodic structure by morphosyntactic category: A case study of Blackfoot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joseph W. Windsor

    2017-02-01

    Full Text Available This study examines phonetic correlates to three prosodic categories in Blackfoot: the syllable (σ, the prosodic word (ω, and the phonological phrase (φ. I provide evidence that the Blackfoot σ is recognizable by an obligatory process of vowel coalescence and the φ is recognizable by an obligatory process of right edge aspiration. The ω can be distinguished from these other two prosodic constituents by an optional phonetic process which mimics intersyllabic vowel coalescence, but does not apply obligatorily. The prosodic categories investigated in this study are then correlated to three morphosyntactic categories: morphological agreement suffixes, lexical morphemes (adjectives and nouns, and demonstratives. This correlation is used to argue that morphological and syntactic processes function differently at the interface with phonology (cf. Russell 1999, ultimately raising questions with "word-internal syntax" analyses of Blackfoot suffixation which are derived through cyclic head movement (Bliss 2013; Wiltschko 2014 using the Mirror Principle (Baker 1985. This article is part of theSpecial Collection: Prosody and costituent structure

  20. The LATL as locus of composition: MEG evidence from English and Arabic.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Westerlund, Masha; Kastner, Itamar; Al Kaabi, Meera; Pylkkänen, Liina

    2015-02-01

    Neurolinguistic investigations into the processing of structured sentences as well as simple adjective-noun phrases point to the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) as a leading candidate for basic linguistic composition. Here, we characterized the combinatory profile of the LATL over a variety of syntactic and semantic environments, and across two languages, English and Arabic. The contribution of the LATL was investigated across two types of composition: the optional modification of a predicate (modification) and the satisfaction of a predicate's argument position (argument saturation). Target words were presented during MEG recordings, either in combinatory contexts (e.g. "eats meat") or in non-combinatory contexts (preceded by an unpronounceable consonant string, e.g. "xqkr meat"). Across both languages, the LATL showed increased responses to words in combinatory contexts, an effect that was robust to composition type and word order. Together with related findings, these results solidify the role of the LATL in basic semantic composition. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. English exposed common mistakes made by Chinese speakers

    CERN Document Server

    Hart, Steve

    2017-01-01

    Having analysed the most common English errors made in over 600 academic papers written by Chinese undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers, Steve Hart has written an essential, practical guide specifically for the native Chinese speaker on how to write good academic English. English Exposed: Common Mistakes Made by Chinese Speakers is divided into three main sections. The first section examines errors made with verbs, nouns, prepositions, and other grammatical classes of words. The second section focuses on problems of word choice. In addition to helping the reader find the right word, it provides instruction for selecting the right style too. The third section covers a variety of other areas essential for the academic writer, such as using punctuation, adding appropriate references, referring to tables and figures, and selecting among various English date and time phrases. Using English Exposed will allow a writer to produce material where content and ideas-not language mistakes-speak the loudest.

  2. Similarity-Based Interference and the Acquisition of Adjunct Control

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juliana Gerard

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Previous research on the acquisition of adjunct control has observed non-adultlike behavior for sentences like "John bumped Mary after tripping on the sidewalk." While adults only allow a subject control interpretation for these sentences (that John tripped on the sidewalk, preschool-aged children have been reported to allow a much wider range of interpretations. A number of different tasks have been used with the aim of identifying a grammatical source of children's errors. In this paper, we consider the role of extragrammatical factors. In two comprehension experiments, we demonstrate that error rates go up when the similarity increases between an antecedent and a linearly intervening noun phrase, first with similarity in gender, and next with similarity in number marking. This suggests that difficulties with adjunct control are to be explained (at least in part by the sentence processing mechanisms that underlie similarity-based interference in adults.

  3. Cutting edge advanced : student's book : with phrase-builder

    CERN Document Server

    Cunningham, Sarah; Comyns Carr, Jane

    2003-01-01

    A focus on high-frequency useful vocabulary helps students say what they want to say. Regular, well-structured speaking tasks encourage students to express themselves more extensively and fluently. 'Do You Remember' sections in every unit and extra. Consolidation modules provide regular review and consolidation Student Books include Mini-Dictionary to help learners study independently.

  4. Contribution of Visualized Phrases on Word Using Skill

    Science.gov (United States)

    Batur, Zekerya

    2013-01-01

    In this study it was researched whether visualized proverbs, idioms and epigrams have effect of primary school 3rd, 5th and 7th grade students' speaking skills. The study was executed in spring semester of the academic year of 2010-2011, with 30 students studying at primary school in 3rd, 5th and 7th grade. The students who participated in the…

  5. "Soft Skills": A Phrase in Search of Meaning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matteson, Miriam L.; Anderson, Lorien; Boyden, Cynthia

    2016-01-01

    Soft skills are a collection of people management skills, important to many professions and job positions, including academic librarianship. Yet the concept of soft skills lacks definition, scope, instrumentation, and systematic education and training. This literature review explores the definition of "soft skills"; contrasts skills with…

  6. Identifying missing dictionary entries with frequency-conserving context models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Williams, Jake Ryland; Clark, Eric M.; Bagrow, James P.; Danforth, Christopher M.; Dodds, Peter Sheridan

    2015-10-01

    In an effort to better understand meaning from natural language texts, we explore methods aimed at organizing lexical objects into contexts. A number of these methods for organization fall into a family defined by word ordering. Unlike demographic or spatial partitions of data, these collocation models are of special importance for their universal applicability. While we are interested here in text and have framed our treatment appropriately, our work is potentially applicable to other areas of research (e.g., speech, genomics, and mobility patterns) where one has ordered categorical data (e.g., sounds, genes, and locations). Our approach focuses on the phrase (whether word or larger) as the primary meaning-bearing lexical unit and object of study. To do so, we employ our previously developed framework for generating word-conserving phrase-frequency data. Upon training our model with the Wiktionary, an extensive, online, collaborative, and open-source dictionary that contains over 100 000 phrasal definitions, we develop highly effective filters for the identification of meaningful, missing phrase entries. With our predictions we then engage the editorial community of the Wiktionary and propose short lists of potential missing entries for definition, developing a breakthrough, lexical extraction technique and expanding our knowledge of the defined English lexicon of phrases.

  7. Communicating diagnostic uncertainty in surgical pathology reports: disparities between sender and receiver.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lindley, Sarah W; Gillies, Elizabeth M; Hassell, Lewis A

    2014-10-01

    Surgical pathologists use a variety of phrases to communicate varying degrees of diagnostic certainty which have the potential to be interpreted differently than intended. This study sought to: (1) assess the setting, varieties and frequency of use of phrases of diagnostic uncertainty in the diagnostic line of surgical pathology reports, (2) evaluate use of uncertainty expressions by experience and gender, (3) determine how these phrases are interpreted by clinicians and pathologists, and (4) assess solutions to this communication problem. We evaluated 1500 surgical pathology reports to determine frequency of use of uncertainty terms, identified those most commonly used, and looked for variations in usage rates on the basis of case type, experience and gender. We surveyed 76 physicians at tumor boards who were asked to assign a percentage of certainty to diagnoses containing expressions of uncertainty. We found expressions of uncertainty in 35% of diagnostic reports, with no statistically significant difference in usage based on age or gender. We found wide variation in the percentage of certainty clinicians assigned to the phrases studied. We conclude that non-standardized language used in the communication of diagnostic uncertainty is a significant source of miscommunication, both amongst pathologists and between pathologists and clinicians. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier GmbH.. All rights reserved.

  8. Clinical validation of a non-heteronormative version of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lindner, Philip; Martell, Christopher; Bergström, Jan; Andersson, Gerhard; Carlbring, Per

    2013-12-19

    Despite welcomed changes in societal attitudes and practices towards sexual minorities, instances of heteronormativity can still be found within healthcare and research. The Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) is a valid and reliable self-rating scale of social anxiety, which includes one item (number 14) with an explicit heteronormative assumption about the respondent's sexual orientation. This heteronormative phrasing may confuse, insult or alienate sexual minority respondents. A clinically validated version of the SIAS featuring a non-heteronormative phrasing of item 14 is thus needed. 129 participants with diagnosed social anxiety disorder, enrolled in an Internet-based intervention trial, were randomly assigned to responding to the SIAS featuring either the original or a novel non-heteronormative phrasing of item 14, and then answered the other item version. Within-subject, correlation between item versions was calculated and the two scores were statistically compared. The two items' correlations with the other SIAS items and other psychiatric rating scales were also statistically compared. Item versions were highly correlated and scores did not differ statistically. The two items' correlations with other measures did not differ statistically either. The SIAS can be revised with a non-heteronormative formulation of item 14 with psychometric equivalence on item and scale level. Implications for other psychiatric instruments with heteronormative phrasings are discussed.

  9. Technology Survey Assistance Tool Focusing on Their Advantages

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nishiyama, Risa; Takeuchi, Hironori; Watanabe, Hideo; Nasukawa, Tetsuya

    It is important for R&D managers, consultants, and other people seeking broad knowledge in technology fields to survey technical literature such as research papers, white papers, and technology news articles. One of the important kinds of information for those people regards the effectiveness of new technologies in their own businesses. General search engines are good at selecting documents revealing the details of a specific technology or a technology field, but it is hard to obtain useful information about how a technology will apply to individual business cases from such search results. There is a need for a technology survey assistance tool that helps users find technologies with suitable capabilities. In this paper, two technical tasks were tackled to develop the prototype of this assistance tool: Extraction of advantage phrases and scoring for the advantage phrases to find novel applications in the target technology field. We describe a new method to identify advantage phrases in technical documents and our scoring function that gives higher scores to novel applications of the technology. The results of evaluations showed our phrase identification method with only a few phrasal patterns performs almost as well as human annotators, and the proposed scoring conforms better to the decisions made by professionals than random sort.

  10. ChemicalTagger: A tool for semantic text-mining in chemistry.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hawizy, Lezan; Jessop, David M; Adams, Nico; Murray-Rust, Peter

    2011-05-16

    The primary method for scientific communication is in the form of published scientific articles and theses which use natural language combined with domain-specific terminology. As such, they contain free owing unstructured text. Given the usefulness of data extraction from unstructured literature, we aim to show how this can be achieved for the discipline of chemistry. The highly formulaic style of writing most chemists adopt make their contributions well suited to high-throughput Natural Language Processing (NLP) approaches. We have developed the ChemicalTagger parser as a medium-depth, phrase-based semantic NLP tool for the language of chemical experiments. Tagging is based on a modular architecture and uses a combination of OSCAR, domain-specific regex and English taggers to identify parts-of-speech. The ANTLR grammar is used to structure this into tree-based phrases. Using a metric that allows for overlapping annotations, we achieved machine-annotator agreements of 88.9% for phrase recognition and 91.9% for phrase-type identification (Action names). It is possible parse to chemical experimental text using rule-based techniques in conjunction with a formal grammar parser. ChemicalTagger has been deployed for over 10,000 patents and has identified solvents from their linguistic context with >99.5% precision.

  11. ChemicalTagger: A tool for semantic text-mining in chemistry

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hawizy Lezan

    2011-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The primary method for scientific communication is in the form of published scientific articles and theses which use natural language combined with domain-specific terminology. As such, they contain free owing unstructured text. Given the usefulness of data extraction from unstructured literature, we aim to show how this can be achieved for the discipline of chemistry. The highly formulaic style of writing most chemists adopt make their contributions well suited to high-throughput Natural Language Processing (NLP approaches. Results We have developed the ChemicalTagger parser as a medium-depth, phrase-based semantic NLP tool for the language of chemical experiments. Tagging is based on a modular architecture and uses a combination of OSCAR, domain-specific regex and English taggers to identify parts-of-speech. The ANTLR grammar is used to structure this into tree-based phrases. Using a metric that allows for overlapping annotations, we achieved machine-annotator agreements of 88.9% for phrase recognition and 91.9% for phrase-type identification (Action names. Conclusions It is possible parse to chemical experimental text using rule-based techniques in conjunction with a formal grammar parser. ChemicalTagger has been deployed for over 10,000 patents and has identified solvents from their linguistic context with >99.5% precision.

  12. Going the distance: Memory and control processes in active dependency construction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wagers, Matthew W; Phillips, Colin

    2014-01-01

    Filler-gap dependencies make strong demands on working memory in language comprehension because they cannot always be immediately resolved. In a series of three reading-time studies, we test the idea that these demands can be decomposed into active maintenance processes and retrieval events. Results indicate that the fact that a displaced phrase exists and the identity of its basic syntactic category both immediately impact comprehension at potential gap sites. In contrast, specific lexical details of the displaced phrase show an immediate effect only for short dependencies and a much later effect for longer dependencies. We argue that coarse-grained information about the filler is actively maintained and is used to make phrase structure parsing decisions, whereas finer grained information is more quickly released from active maintenance and consequently has to be retrieved at the gap site.

  13. Ilustratīvā materiāla atveide „Mūsdienu latviešu valodas vārdnīcā"

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ieva Zuicena

    2012-04-01

    Full Text Available THE QUESTION OF ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES IN EXPLANATORY DICTIONARIES AND THE DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY LATVIAN LANGUAGESummaryThere are two kinds of illustrative examples that are used in explanatory dictionaries: quotations and combination of words (phrases. Quotations are usually included in large dictionaries of many volumes, but phrases are popular in ordinary explanatory dictionar­ies.In explanatory dictionaries illustrative examples have several functions: 1 to confirm that a corresponding word really exists in language; 2 to demonstrate how the word is used in a context; 3 to supply with additional information.In the Dictionary of Contemporary Latvian Language illustrative examples are mainly given in the form of phrases, although sometimes quotations are also used, because there are several word groups that need a larger context (e.g., words with a figurative meaning, stylistically marked words or meanings, interjections.

  14. Acquisition of noun derivation in Estonian and Russian L1

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Reili Argus

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Acquisition of derivation is not a well-studied area in first language research and a comparative approach to the acquisition of derivation in different languages doesn't exist. There is no information on how a child acquires derivation in a language with a rich and regular system of derivational patterns, or in a language where derivation is productive, but the system of derivational patterns is opaque. According to general ideas of complexity in a language, the child should start to use simplex stems first and, only after that, complex ones, that is, complexity should increase in the course of acquisition. Our paper is intended to address these issues, based on longitudinal child data from typologically different languages, Estonian and Russian. The results revealed significant differences in the acquisition of noun derivation in the two languages under observation. The system of noun derivation is acquired at a faster pace in Russian, while Estonian children have far fewer noun derivatives in their speech and they use different derivation suffixes with less regularity. Even so, the so-called building block model may be applied for both languages only partially.

  15. Merger of noun classes 3 and 1: A case study with bilingual isiXhosa ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Class reduction (the loss of a noun class) in Southern Bantu languages is an acknowledged but under-researched phenomenon. A recent study of isiXhosa concords suggests an incipient merger of noun classes 11 and 5, but no research to date has examined other possible concord mergers or concord flux in the ...

  16. English-Chinese oil field dictionary. [English-Chinese

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Gow, S [comp.

    1979-01-01

    In this edition the original English-Chinese Oil Field Dictionary was modified line by line and major additions and deletions were made. A total of 37,000 terms and phrases were collected. The following disciplines were included: petroleum geology, earth physics and detection, well prospecting and measuring, development of oil fields, oil recovery, oil storage and transport, etc. In addition, a limited number of common scientific terms, phrases and terminologies were also included.

  17. Proverbe prototypique

    OpenAIRE

    Gréa, Philippe

    2017-01-01

    International audience; Proverbs transpose from a domain to another. Generic phrases do not. By looking for minimal contrasts between proverbs and generic phrases, we show that the former have two distinctive gestaltist/semantic features: a strong relational architecture and an articulation without rests. These two features are based on a broader principle related to semantic coherence. From this perspective, transposability from one domain to another is typical of schematic structure with a ...

  18. Multi-function radar emitter identification based on stochastic syntax-directed translation schema

    OpenAIRE

    Liu, Haijun; Yu, Hongqi; Sun, Zhaolin; Diao, Jietao

    2014-01-01

    To cope with the problem of emitter identification caused by the radar words' uncertainty of measured multi-function radar emitters, this paper proposes a new identification method based on stochastic syntax-directed translation schema (SSDTS). This method, which is deduced from the syntactic modeling of multi-function radars, considers the probabilities of radar phrases appearance in different radar modes as well as the probabilities of radar word errors occurrence in different radar phrases...

  19. The New Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian Idioms and Proverbs

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    Bárdosi Vilmos

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available After briefly surveying the research carried out in Hungary on the origin of sayings, proverbs and adages, this paper introduces and exemplifies the way the new Hungarian phraseological etymological dictionary has been compiled. It subsequently presents excerpts from the dictionary that will expound on the origin of 1800 set phrases and statistically analyses the linguistic, cultural-historical, historical, literary, ethnographic and intercultural background of the Hungarian set phrases included in the dictionary.

  20. Lemmatisation of Vowel Commencing Borrowed Nouns and the ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Riette Ruthven

    its noun class prefixes, the presence of the initial vowel or pre-prefix, or the augment, as ..... Grammatical information has to be as accurate as the defini- ... achieve a semantic ordering of entries gives the impression that language con- sists of ...

  1. Switching Between Noun and Verb Agreement Rules Comes at a Cost: Cross-Sectional and Interventional Studies in a Developmental Sample

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Van Reybroeck Marie

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available This study clarifies the impact of switching context between noun and verb number agreement rules in written language production. In Experiment 1, children from grade 3 to 6 were asked to fill in sentences with nouns and verbs in either a switching condition (noun followed by verb or a repeating condition (noun followed by noun. The results showed that third- and fourth-grade children produced more erroneous agreements in the switching condition than in the repeating condition, showing that switching between rules comes at a cost, whereas fifth- and sixth-grade participants' performance was not affected by the switching context. Based on these findings, Experiment 2 aimed to assess whether a switching treatment offers a greater opportunity to improve the acquisition of grammatical agreement production, as compared to a simple treatment. Teachers from grade 3 gave either a switching treatment (mixed noun and verb exercises or a simple treatment (noun exercises followed by verb exercises. The results show that children learned better from the switching treatment than from the simple treatment. These findings highlight the cost of switching between noun and verb agreement rules during the acquisition of grammatical number agreement and also how grammatical spelling acquisition can be improved at school.

  2. Nouns, verbs, objects, actions, and abstractions: local fMRI activity indexes semantics, not lexical categories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moseley, Rachel L; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

    2014-05-01

    Noun/verb dissociations in the literature defy interpretation due to the confound between lexical category and semantic meaning; nouns and verbs typically describe concrete objects and actions. Abstract words, pertaining to neither, are a critical test case: dissociations along lexical-grammatical lines would support models purporting lexical category as the principle governing brain organisation, whilst semantic models predict dissociation between concrete words but not abstract items. During fMRI scanning, participants read orthogonalised word categories of nouns and verbs, with or without concrete, sensorimotor meaning. Analysis of inferior frontal/insula, precentral and central areas revealed an interaction between lexical class and semantic factors with clear category differences between concrete nouns and verbs but not abstract ones. Though the brain stores the combinatorial and lexical-grammatical properties of words, our data show that topographical differences in brain activation, especially in the motor system and inferior frontal cortex, are driven by semantics and not by lexical class. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  3. The Dangling model in the construction of compound sentences with regard to verb tenses

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mahmoud Mehravaran

    2016-01-01

    the mistakes of some of the grammars. This research project has for the first time introduced constructive models of compound sentences in a comprehensive research taking in to account the tense of the verbs. The primary question in this research project is which kind of sentences can be considered as compound and what is the constructive of such a sentence? When defining a compound sentences, grammarians either shave the same beliefs or differ in their ideas. But all grammarians agree to the fact that a compound sentences has more than one verb. Different definitions are due to different criteria adapted in constructing a compound sentences. To construct a noun, and adjective, a verb and a sentence we should take similar and precise criteria to our consideration. In the grammatical units of noun, adjectives, and verbs construction means connecting two or more parts that can convey one similar meaning and its parts are dependent upon one another.  In the construction of compound sentences there must be the same criteria so that its applications can be truly recognized and identified just like the previously mentioned grammatical units. The first step to arrive at a criterion in defining and identifying compound sentences, is to separate this discussion from connective sentences that are relate to each other with connectives are called connective sentences. But sentences which are constructed with dependent making connectives and their parts are dependent upon one another are called compound sentences. Therefore the signs of compound sentences with regard to constructions and the meaning of criterion are as follows: 1 They have more than one verb. 2 The consistence of two or more dependent phrases. 3 Phrases construct a complete sentences all together and convey one similar message. 4 One of the phrases is the main clause and the other one is the subordinate one. 5 The phrases or subordinate clauses can be related to one of the major parts and they can take a

  4. Compensating for Language Deficits in Amnesia II: H.M.'s Spared versus Impaired Encoding Categories

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chris Hadley

    2013-03-01

    Full Text Available Although amnesic H.M. typically could not recall where or when he met someone, he could recall their topics of conversation after long interference-filled delays, suggesting impaired encoding for some categories of novel events but not others. Similarly, H.M. successfully encoded into internal representations (sentence plans some novel linguistic structures but not others in the present language production studies. For example, on the Test of Language Competence (TLC, H.M. produced uncorrected errors when encoding a wide range of novel linguistic structures, e.g., violating reliably more gender constraints than memory-normal controls when encoding referent-noun, pronoun-antecedent, and referent-pronoun anaphora, as when he erroneously and without correction used the gender-inappropriate pronoun "her" to refer to a man. In contrast, H.M. never violated corresponding referent-gender constraints for proper names, suggesting that his mechanisms for encoding proper name gender-agreement were intact. However, H.M. produced no more dysfluencies, off-topic comments, false starts, neologisms, or word and phonological sequencing errors than controls on the TLC. Present results suggest that: (a frontal mechanisms for retrieving and sequencing word, phrase, and phonological categories are intact in H.M., unlike in category-specific aphasia; (b encoding mechanisms in the hippocampal region are category-specific rather than item-specific, applying to, e.g., proper names rather than words; (c H.M.'s category-specific mechanisms for encoding referents into words, phrases, and propositions are impaired, with the exception of referent gender, person, and number for encoding proper names; and (d H.M. overuses his intact proper name encoding mechanisms to compensate for his impaired mechanisms for encoding other functionally equivalent linguistic information.

  5. Deriving a probabilistic syntacto-semantic grammar for biomedicine based on domain-specific terminologies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fan, Jung-Wei; Friedman, Carol

    2011-10-01

    Biomedical natural language processing (BioNLP) is a useful technique that unlocks valuable information stored in textual data for practice and/or research. Syntactic parsing is a critical component of BioNLP applications that rely on correctly determining the sentence and phrase structure of free text. In addition to dealing with the vast amount of domain-specific terms, a robust biomedical parser needs to model the semantic grammar to obtain viable syntactic structures. With either a rule-based or corpus-based approach, the grammar engineering process requires substantial time and knowledge from experts, and does not always yield a semantically transferable grammar. To reduce the human effort and to promote semantic transferability, we propose an automated method for deriving a probabilistic grammar based on a training corpus consisting of concept strings and semantic classes from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), a comprehensive terminology resource widely used by the community. The grammar is designed to specify noun phrases only due to the nominal nature of the majority of biomedical terminological concepts. Evaluated on manually parsed clinical notes, the derived grammar achieved a recall of 0.644, precision of 0.737, and average cross-bracketing of 0.61, which demonstrated better performance than a control grammar with the semantic information removed. Error analysis revealed shortcomings that could be addressed to improve performance. The results indicated the feasibility of an approach which automatically incorporates terminology semantics in the building of an operational grammar. Although the current performance of the unsupervised solution does not adequately replace manual engineering, we believe once the performance issues are addressed, it could serve as an aide in a semi-supervised solution. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Structural Analysis of Lexical Bundles in University Lectures of Politics and Chemistry

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hadi Kashiha

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Referred to as extended collocations, lexical bundles are considered as a main factor in building fluency in academic discourse; helping to shape meaning and coherence in a text or speech. For decades, lexical bundles have attracted considerable amount of attention in corpus-based research in English for Academic Purposes (EAP. While, the focus of the most of the studies on lexical bundles was to explore the use of these multi-word expressions in academic written registers such as research articles, academic spoken registers such as university lectures have not received that amount of attention from the scholars. In this vein, there is still an open question of how they are structurally different across disciplines. With these concerns in mind, this study aimed to explore how lexical bundles are used structurally in a 50291 words corpus of 8 university lectures across two disciplines: chemistry and politics. To this aim, the most frequent four-word bundles in the corpus were classified according to their grammatical types to see the possible disciplinary variations in their frequency of use as well as the structure involved in their use. Results of the analysis revealed that noun phrase and prepositional phrase fragments were the most common structures in the lectures of the two disciplines, accounting for more than half of the bundles in politics. University lecturers appear to apply a variety of structures in the use of lexical bundles often peculiar to the discipline in order to convey their disciplinary messages.  This would lead to the need to emphasize the instruction of the most common structures in that discipline in a way for the lectures to be as comprehensive as possible for the intended audiences.

  7. Time-Contrastive Learning Based DNN Bottleneck Features for Text-Dependent Speaker Verification

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sarkar, Achintya Kumar; Tan, Zheng-Hua

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, we present a time-contrastive learning (TCL) based bottleneck (BN) feature extraction method for speech signals with an application to text-dependent (TD) speaker verification (SV). It is well-known that speech signals exhibit quasi-stationary behavior in and only in a short interval......, and the TCL method aims to exploit this temporal structure. More specifically, it trains deep neural networks (DNNs) to discriminate temporal events obtained by uniformly segmenting speech signals, in contrast to existing DNN based BN feature extraction methods that train DNNs using labeled data...... to discriminate speakers or pass-phrases or phones or a combination of them. In the context of speaker verification, speech data of fixed pass-phrases are used for TCL-BN training, while the pass-phrases used for TCL-BN training are excluded from being used for SV, so that the learned features can be considered...

  8. The historical origins of the vegetative state: Received wisdom and the utility of the text.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adams, Zoe M; Fins, Joseph J

    2017-01-01

    The persistent vegetative state (PVS) is one of the most iconic and misunderstood phrases in clinical neuroscience. Coined as a diagnostic category by Scottish neurosurgeon Bryan Jennett and American neurologist Fred Plum in 1972, the phrase "vegetative" first appeared in Aristotle's treatise On the Soul (circa mid-fourth century BCE). Aristotle influenced neuroscientists of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Xavier Bichat and Walter Timme, and informed their conceptions of the vegetative nervous system. Plum credits Bichat and Timme in his use of the phrase, thus putting the ancient and modern in dialogue. In addition to exploring Aristotle's definition of the "vegetative" in the original Greek, we put Aristotle in conversation with his contemporaries-Plato and the Hippocratics-to better apprehend theories of mind and consciousness in antiquity. Utilizing the discipline of reception studies in classics scholarship, we demonstrate the importance of etymology and historical origin when considering modern medical nosology.

  9. Living Technology

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    2010-01-01

    This book is aimed at anyone who is interested in learning more about living technology, whether coming from business, the government, policy centers, academia, or anywhere else. Its purpose is to help people to learn what living technology is, what it might develop into, and how it might impact...... our lives. The phrase 'living technology' was coined to refer to technology that is alive as well as technology that is useful because it shares the fundamental properties of living systems. In particular, the invention of this phrase was called for to describe the trend of our technology becoming...... increasingly life-like or literally alive. Still, the phrase has different interpretations depending on how one views what life is. This book presents nineteen perspectives on living technology. Taken together, the interviews convey the collective wisdom on living technology's power and promise, as well as its...

  10. Danish children's acquisition of noun plurals: the role of methodology

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kjærbæk, Laila; Basbøll, Hans

    In an earlier study we investigated the development of noun plurals in Danish children aged 0-10 years using a multi method research approach comparing five different data types: 1) lexical data; 2) reported data; 3) naturalistic spontaneous child language input and output; 4) semi-naturalistic/s......In an earlier study we investigated the development of noun plurals in Danish children aged 0-10 years using a multi method research approach comparing five different data types: 1) lexical data; 2) reported data; 3) naturalistic spontaneous child language input and output; 4) semi...... the experimental data and we therefore predict a lower percentage of incorrectly produced PL forms in the semi-naturalistic/semi-experimental than in the experimental data. 3) In the experimental data the children are to produce the PL form of nouns given by the investigator. We expect children to produce a large...... amount of sg. instead of PL forms, either as a repetition of the sg. form given by the investigator or as a PL error form irreguralizing the "Ø" PL marker (pure zero, e.g. sg. mus 'mouse' – PL mus 'mice'). 4) The experimental data is based on a fixed number of specific pre-selected items and we therefore...

  11. A competição entre «nós» e «a gente» nas funções de complemento e adjunto: desvendando outras portas de entrada para o pronome inovador

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juliana Barbosa Segadas Vianna

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available Resumo: A substituição de nós por a gente na posição de sujeito pode ser considerada um processo de mudança em curso no português do Brasil como atestam as descrições feitas nas diversas regiões do país. Neste estudo, propomos estender a análise para as demais funções sintáticas, observando as formas variantes de primeira pessoa do plural como complemento de verbo e de nome. Levamos em conta, no primeiro caso, as funções de: (i acusativo; (ii dativo; (iii oblíquo complemento de verbo; e (iv oblíquo adjunto de verbo. No segundo caso, o estudo da variação das formas de nós e a gente no interior do sintagma nominal procura dar conta das seguintes funções: (i complemento de nome, e (ii adjunto de nome. Seguindo a orientação da sociolinguística de base laboviana, a análise quantitativa parte de entrevistas feitas na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Os resultados encontrados mostram que formas do paradigma de a gente são mais frequentes no sintagma verbal, ao passo que, no interior do sintagma nominal, o uso das formas do paradigma de nós ainda se mantém produtivo.Palavras-chave: Variação linguística; pronomes pessoais; acusativo; dativo; oblíquo.Abstract: The replacement of nós by a gente ("we" in the position of the subject can be considered an ongoing process of change in Brazilian Portuguese. This phenomenon occurs in various regions of the country. We propose to analyze other syntactic functions. Our goal is to observe the variants as verb and noun complement. In the first case, we analyze namely: (i accusative, (ii dative, (iii oblique complement, and (iv oblique adjunct. In the second case, we study (i name complement; (ii name adjunct. Following the orientation of Labovian sociolinguistics, the quantitative analysis was based on interviews conducted in Rio de Janeiro City. The results show that the new pronoun a gente is more frequent in clausal phrase, while the old pronoun nós still remains productive in

  12. Grammatical encoding in bilingual language production: A focus on code switching

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    MEHDI ePURMOHAMMAD

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available I report three experiments that examined whether words from one language of bilinguals can use the syntactic features form the other language and how such syntactic co-activation might influence syntactic processing. In other words, I examined whether there are any cases in which a lexical item inhibits its inherent syntactic feature and uses the syntactic feature(s that belongs to the other language, instead. In the non-switch condition in experiment 1 and 2, Persian-English bilinguals described pictures using an adjective-noun string from the same language requested. In the switch condition, they used the nouns and adjectives from the other language. In Experiment 3, in the switch condition participants used only the adjectives of noun phrases from the other language. The results showed that bilinguals may inhibit the activation of a word's syntactic feature and use the syntactic property from the other language instead (e.g., pirāhane (N black. As the combinatorial node (the node that specify different kinds of syntactic structures in which a word can be used of a used adjective retains activation at least temporarily, bilinguals are more likely to use the same combinatorial node even for an adjective from the other language. Using the syntactic features from the other language increased in the switch conditions. Moreover, more inappropriate responses observed when switching from bilinguals' L2 to L1. The results also revealed that different experimental contexts may lead to different patterns of the control mechanism. The results will be interpreted in terms of Hartsuiker and Pickering's (2008 model of syntactic representation

  13. Looking at Radif and its Functions in Khaghani’s Poem

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohammad Enayati

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract According to researchers, radifs can be one of the main components of the ancient Persian poetry made by Iranian talent and muse. Radif as one of the pillars of the side music, has played a major role in classical Persian poetry, and Persian poets have  shown great  attention to composing  radif-consisting  poems, since ancient times. In the early Persian poetry, radif is used slightly but the more the Persian poetry completed, the more application of radif have seen, and gradually, poets intended to use simple types instead of those complicated. One of the poets who have shown special attention to using radif and its application forms are of high-frequency in his poems, is khaghani. In this essay, we have tried to analyze  Khaghani's poem statically. For this purpose, we have provided accurate statistics of the radif-consisting poems and those are not radif-consisting. We  studied various types of radifs in all khaghani's Divan as well. Then it is proved that the frequency of his radif-consisting poems is higher than the other with no radif. Statistical analysis shows that 815 of 1212 khaghani`s poems consist  radifs.This number  equals 20/68% of his all poems. Study of radif in different form showes that poem with radif appreciably are more predominant than poems without radif. 81/77% of Ghazels, 39/64% of  odes, 88/54% of  quatrains/rubais, 22/64%  of fragments  and 66/79% of his small odes have radif. The types of radif in Khaghani's poem includes: verb, noun (noun phrase, letters, adverbs, pronouns, adjectives and phrases, or sentences (such as overnight. But the verb type (70% is mostly used in his poetry. In this article  we discussed the functions of radif in khaghani' poems and concluded that the main functions of  radif in his poetry are as follows: 1- Creating unity between poet and audience When the reader can guess the word (or phrase in a particular situation, he will

  14. The Nature of the Contract in Reasoning of Civilian Jurists

    OpenAIRE

    Dajczak, Wojciech

    2012-01-01

    Roman legal texts were from the end of the 11th century until the rise of national civil codes one of important foundations of the Civil Law Tradition. They introduced into the discourse of jurists of continental Europe inter alia the notion natura contractus. This Latin phrase has formal equivalents in modern civil codes, in particular in art. 1135 CC, § 307 BGB and art. 3531 PolKC. This formal similarity raises the question of whether the concepts represented by these phrases...

  15. Enjoy Yourself by Listening in——To Get One's Goat

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    于国凤

    1987-01-01

    Like every language American English is full of strange expressions, phrases that come from day to day life of the people and develop in their own way. Where did these expressions come from, and how did they get into the language? Our expression today is 'to get one's goat' and other phrases that come from the goat. The goat is an ancient creature that has done muck for man, providing milk, meat, cheese, and other good and useful things.

  16. Processing graspable object images and their nouns is impaired in Parkinson's disease patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buccino, Giovanni; Dalla Volta, Riccardo; Arabia, Gennarina; Morelli, Maurizio; Chiriaco, Carmelina; Lupo, Angela; Silipo, Franco; Quattrone, Aldo

    2018-03-01

    According to embodiment, the recruitment of the motor system is necessary to process language material expressing a motor content. Coherently, an impairment of the motor system should affect the capacity to process language items with a motor content. The aim of the present study was to assess the capacity to process graspable objects and their nouns in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and healthy controls. Participants saw photos and nouns depicting graspable and non-graspable objects. Scrambled images and pseudo-words served as control stimuli. At 150 msec after stimulus presentation, they had to respond when the stimulus referred to a real object, and refrain from responding when it was meaningless (go-no go paradigm). In the control group, participants gave slower motor responses for stimuli (both photos and nouns) related to graspable objects as compared to non-graspable ones. This in keeping with data obtained in a previous study with young healthy participants. In the PD group, motor responses were similar for both graspable and non-graspable items. Moreover, error number was significantly greater than in controls. These findings support the notion that when the motor circuits are lesioned, like in PD, patients do not show the typical modulation of motor responses and have troubles in processing graspable objects and their nouns. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  17. Developing cultural competence and social responsibility in preclinical dental students.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rubin, Richard W

    2004-04-01

    Dental student development of cultural competence and social responsibility is recognized by educators as an important element in the overall shaping of minds and attitudes of modem dental practitioners. Yet training modalities to achieve these competencies are not clearly defined, and outcome measurements are elusive. This article shows an effective method to meet these desired outcomes. Sixty-one freshmen (class of 2005) participated in forty hours of nondental community service, and reflective journals were completed by the end of second year. Competency outcomes were measured by selecting key words and phrases found in the individual journals. Key phrases were related to compassion, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. Also, phrases had to be accompanied by written indications of direct program causation. The combination of active-learning (based upon service learning models) in public health settings outside of the dental realm, accompanied by reflective journaling, enhanced cultural understanding and community spirit in the majority of students.

  18. Gay guys using gay language: friendship, shared values and the intent-context-effect matrix.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McCormack, Mark; Wignall, Liam; Morris, Max

    2016-12-01

    This article draws on in-depth interviews with 35 openly gay male undergraduates from four universities in England to develop an understanding of the changing nature of language related to homosexuality. In addition to finding a diminution in the prevalence of homophobic language, we demonstrate that participants maintain complex and nuanced understandings of phrases that do not use homophobic pejoratives, such as 'that's so gay'. The majority of participants rejected the notion that these phrases are inherently homophobic, instead arguing that the intent with which they are said and the context in which they are used are vital in understanding their meaning and effect. We conceptualize an intent-context-effect matrix to understand the interdependency of these variables. Highlighting the situated nature of this matrix, we also demonstrate the importance of the existence of shared norms between those saying and hearing the phrase when interpreting such language. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2016.

  19. Bias in the exchange of arguments: the case of scientists' evaluation of lay viewpoints on GM food.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cuppen, Eefje; Hisschemøller, Matthijs; Midden, Cees

    2009-09-01

    Most perspectives on public participation share the notion that dialogues should be open, allowing participants to articulate and evaluate different views and knowledge claims. We hypothesize that participants' evaluation of claims may be biased because participants have a preference for a particular type or source of a claim. This would hamper an open dialogue. We tested the effect of three variables on scientists' evaluation of claims of the general public about GM food: the claim's favorability towards GM food, the phrasing, and the source of the claim. Results are based on a survey-experiment among 73 biotechnology-scientists. Biased processing occurred when scientists evaluated claims. Claims that were corresponding with the attitude of the scientists and that were phrased in a cognitive way were evaluated more positively than claims that were contrasting the attitude of the scientists and that were phrased in an affective way. Contrary to our expectation, scientists evaluated claims of the public more positively than claims of experts.

  20. Differential Impairment of Noun and Verb Consequent to LH Lesions in Persian Aphasic Patients

    OpenAIRE

    Dr. Reza Nilipour; Rabeeh Ariaei; Dr. Hassan Ashayeri

    2003-01-01

    The major focus of this research is on the differential disruption of language abilities subsequent to brain damages as they relate to site and size of lesion, especially left hemisphere lesions which disrupt the production and processing of "Nouns" vs. "Verbs" as two functionally different lexical categories. Several clinical as well as experimental studies reported on different language have shown that nouns and verbs can be independently disrupted due to brain damage. A prevalent impairmen...

  1. Design, implementation, and evaluation of a computerized system to communicate with patients with limited native language proficiency in the perioperative period.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taicher, Brad M; Alam, Rammy I; Berman, Joshua; Epstein, Richard H

    2011-01-01

    Effective communication with patients having limited proficiency in the native language of anesthesia care providers during the perioperative period is often challenging. We describe how we developed, implemented, and evaluated a computerized system to convey frequently used prerecorded phrases related to perioperative anesthesia care in the languages we most often encounter in such patients. Phrases were chosen through a consensus process among anesthesia department members. These included routine sayings used to inform patients about what they should anticipate, what interventions we are performing, and how they can participate. Common questions requiring a "yes" or "no" answer were also identified. We recorded these phrases using native speakers who were both knowledgeable medically and familiar with the culture of the patients to provide accurate translations. We developed a software application that categorically grouped the phrases and allowed care providers to select a phrase and play the associated sound file to the patient and deployed the program on our touchscreen-enabled anesthesia information management system workstations. A convenience sample of obstetrical patients speaking a Chinese dialect with whom the language program was used were asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire, translated into Chinese, about their experience. Ninety-five percent lower confidence limits (LCLs) were calculated for response proportions. We approached 25 parturients with varying levels of English comprehension, and all agreed to use the language program. Each used it throughout her interaction with the anesthesia care providers during labor and delivery, and all patients completed the survey. Acceptance of the process was high, with all patients indicating that they would like to use it again were they to return for another procedure requiring anesthesia. Eighty-eight percent (LCL = 73%) indicated that having instructions in their native language made them feel more

  2. Understanding the role of culture in pain: Māori practitioner perspectives of pain descriptors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Magnusson, Jane E; Fennell, Joyce A

    2011-01-21

    There is growing interest in the role of cultural diversity within healthcare settings yet minority ethnic groups are underrepresented in the healthcare literature, including the literature on pain. To better assess and treat pain in different cultures the perspectives and experiences of that culture must be taken into consideration and therefore the present study was undertaken to better understand Māori perspectives of pain. Māori healthcare providers and kaumātua (tribal leaders/elders) completed questionnaires relating to the experience of pain and were asked to provide feedback regarding the suitability of words and phrases typically used to describe symptoms of pain and pain-related disability. Participants were also asked to provide words, or phrases (in te reo Māori or English) representing characteristics of pain which had not been provided but would be useful in the assessment of pain in a Māori population. All of the pain descriptors, and 92% of the phrases regarding the experience of pain, provided were endorsed by the majority of participants demonstrating that, as in many cultures, Māori perceive pain as a multidimensional experience impacting them on physiological, psychological, and social dimensions and that the terms and phrases of measures commonly used to assess pain appropriately capture their pain experiences. The implications of these findings are that established measures can be used when assessing pain in Māori. However, it is beneficial to confirm that the descriptors used in those measures accurately capture the experiences being measured.

  3. National open university of Nigeria (noun) students' perception of ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This paper studied the perception and challenges of students of open and distance learning (ODL) mode. ODL is a welcome development in Nigeria educational system. Participants in this study were 500 NOUN students that were randomly selected from Abuja study center. A well structured and validated questionnaire ...

  4. Singing can facilitate foreign language learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ludke, Karen M; Ferreira, Fernanda; Overy, Katie

    2014-01-01

    This study presents the first experimental evidence that singing can facilitate short-term paired-associate phrase learning in an unfamiliar language (Hungarian). Sixty adult participants were randomly assigned to one of three "listen-and-repeat" learning conditions: speaking, rhythmic speaking, or singing. Participants in the singing condition showed superior overall performance on a collection of Hungarian language tests after a 15-min learning period, as compared with participants in the speaking and rhythmic speaking conditions. This superior performance was statistically significant (p sing" learning method can facilitate verbatim memory for spoken foreign language phrases.

  5. Elicitation of attributes for the evaluation of audio-on audio-interference

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Francombe, Jon; Mason, R.; Dewhirst, M.

    2014-01-01

    procedure was used to reduce these phrases into a comprehensive set of attributes. Groups of experienced and inexperienced listeners determined nine and eight attributes, respectively. These attribute sets were combined by the listeners to produce a final set of 12 attributes: masking, calming, distraction......An experiment to determine the perceptual attributes of the experience of listening to a target audio program in the presence of an audio interferer was performed. The first stage was a free elicitation task in which a total of 572 phrases were produced. In the second stage, a consensus vocabulary...

  6. L'unité intonative dans les textes oralisés // Intonation unit in read speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lea Tylečková

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Prosodic phrasing, i.e. division of speech into intonation units, represents a phenomenon which is central to language comprehension. Incorrect prosodic boundary markings may lead to serious misunderstandings and ambiguous interpretations of utterances. The present paper investigates prosodic competencies of Czech students of French in the domain of prosodic phrasing in French read speech. Two texts of different length are examined through a perceptual method to observe how Czech speakers of French (B1–B2 level of CEFR divide read speech into prosodic units compared to French native speakers.

  7. Coptic Christian Practices

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Galal, Lise Paulsen

    2012-01-01

    Phrases such as 'the only difference is one of faith' construct Copts and Muslims in Egypt as, although different, mainly the same as each other. Similar constructions of sameness are also dominant in historical and current Egyptian narratives on national unity. However, as a result of the privil......Phrases such as 'the only difference is one of faith' construct Copts and Muslims in Egypt as, although different, mainly the same as each other. Similar constructions of sameness are also dominant in historical and current Egyptian narratives on national unity. However, as a result...

  8. Homeland Security Collaboration: Catch Phrase or Preeminent Organizational Construct?

    Science.gov (United States)

    2009-09-01

    me and helped me sustain my drive. In particular, I would like to thank Chief Phil Ruscetti, Deputy Fire Commissioner Gene Ryan, and Lieutenant Bill...that are selfish , the community well-being became a driving force to collaborate. Beginning in 1965 with the Texas Regional Planning Act,197...military, and the fire service. Deputy Commissioner Gene Ryan of the Chicago Fire Department was searching for a management tool to bring these

  9. An enhanced model for automatically extracting topic phrase from ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The key benefit foreseen from this automatic document classification is not only related to search engines, but also to many other fields like, document organization, text filtering and semantic index managing. Key words: Keyphrase extraction, machine learning, search engine snippet, document classification, topic tracking ...

  10. Automatic Phrase Continuation from Guitar and Bass guitar Melodies

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Cherla, Srikanth; Purwins, Hendrik; Marchini, Marco

    2013-01-01

    A framework is proposed for generating interesting, and musically similar variations of a givenmonophonicmelody. The focus is on rock/pop guitar and bass-guitarmelodies with the aim of eventual extensions to other instruments and musical styles. It is demonstrated here how learning musical style...... evaluated through a questionnaire by a group of experts, and received an overall positive response....

  11. Symbolic Segmentation: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Melodic Phrases

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rodríguez López, M.E.; Volk, Anja

    2014-01-01

    Gestalt-based segmentation models constitute the current state of the art in automatic segmentation of melodies. These models commonly assume that segment boundary perception is mainly triggered by local discontinuities, i.e. by abrupt changes in pitch and/or duration between neighbouring notes.

  12. Finding biomedical categories in Medline®

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yeganova Lana

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background There are several humanly defined ontologies relevant to Medline. However, Medline is a fast growing collection of biomedical documents which creates difficulties in updating and expanding these humanly defined ontologies. Automatically identifying meaningful categories of entities in a large text corpus is useful for information extraction, construction of machine learning features, and development of semantic representations. In this paper we describe and compare two methods for automatically learning meaningful biomedical categories in Medline. The first approach is a simple statistical method that uses part-of-speech and frequency information to extract a list of frequent nouns from Medline. The second method implements an alignment-based technique to learn frequent generic patterns that indicate a hyponymy/hypernymy relationship between a pair of noun phrases. We then apply these patterns to Medline to collect frequent hypernyms as potential biomedical categories. Results We study and compare these two alternative sets of terms to identify semantic categories in Medline. We find that both approaches produce reasonable terms as potential categories. We also find that there is a significant agreement between the two sets of terms. The overlap between the two methods improves our confidence regarding categories predicted by these independent methods. Conclusions This study is an initial attempt to extract categories that are discussed in Medline. Rather than imposing external ontologies on Medline, our methods allow categories to emerge from the text.

  13. Exploring Atypical Verb+Noun Combinations in Learner Technical Writing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luzon Marco, Maria Jose

    2011-01-01

    Professional and academic discourse is characterised by a specific phraseology, which usually poses problems for students. This paper investigates atypical verb+noun collocations in a corpus of English technical writing of Spanish students. I focus on the type of verbs that most frequently occurred in these awkward or questionable combinations and…

  14. New is not always costly: Evidence from online processing of topic and contrast in Japanese

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luming eWang

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available Two visual ERP experiments were conducted to investigate topic and contrast assigned by various cues such as discourse context, sentential position and marker during referential processing in Japanese. Experiment 1 showed that there was no N400-difference for new vs. given noun phrases (NPs when the new NP was expected (contrastively focused based on its preceding context and sentential position. Experiment 2 further revealed that the N400 for new NPs can be modulated by the NP's contrastive meaning (exhausitivity induced from the marker. Both experiments also showed that new NPs engendered an increased Late Positivity. The reduced N400 for new vs. given supports an expectation-based linking mechanism. In addition, costs that were consistently observed for new vs. given entities emerged in a subsequent process, in which the new NP's occurrence requires updating and correcting of the discourse representation built so far, which is indexed by an enhanced Late Positivity. We argue that the overall data pattern should be best explained within a multi-stream model of discourse processing.

  15. Self-organising Logic of Structures as a Basis for a Dependency-based Dynamic Semantics Model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maciej Piasecki

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Self-organising Logic of Structures as a Basis for a Dependency-based Dynamic Semantics Model We present Self-organising Logic of Structures (SLS, a semantic representation language of high expressive power, which was designed for a fully compositional representation of discourse anaphora following the Dynamic Semantics paradigm. The application of SLS to the description of possible meanings of Polish multiple quantifier sentences is discussed. Special attention is paid to the phenomena of: cardinality dependency/independency of Noun Phrase quantifiers and variety of quantification. Semantic representation based on several formal operators is proposed. They can be combined in many different ways, if one takes a purely theoretical perspective. However, in the paper we show that this huge number is practically reduced in the language use and is governed by several constraints motivated by the analysis of Polish language data. The Hypothesis of Local Range of Cardinality Dependency is formulated as an alternative to representations based on quantifier rising technique. SLS provides a multi-layered language description of inter-linked representation of sever antification, reference, presupposition and anaphora.

  16. New is not always costly: evidence from online processing of topic and contrast in Japanese

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Luming; Schumacher, Petra B.

    2013-01-01

    Two visual ERP experiments were conducted to investigate topic and contrast assigned by various cues such as discourse context, sentential position, and marker during referential processing in Japanese. Experiment 1 showed that there was no N400-difference for new vs. given noun phrases (NPs) when the new NP was expected (contrastively focused) based on its preceding context and sentential position. Experiment 2 further revealed that the N400 for new NPs can be modulated by the NP's contrastive meaning (exhaustivity) induced from the marker. Both experiments also showed that new NPs engendered an increased Late Positivity. The reduced N400 for new vs. given supports an expectation-based linking mechanism. In addition, costs that were consistently observed for new vs. given entities emerged in a subsequent process, in which the new NP's occurrence requires updating and correcting of the discourse representation built so far, which is indexed by an enhanced Late Positivity. We argue that the overall data pattern should be best explained within a multi-stream model of discourse processing. PMID:23825466

  17. [The role of animacy in European Portuguese relative clause attachment: evidence from production and comprehension tasks].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Soares, Ana Paula; Fraga, Isabel; Comesaña, Montserrat; Piñeiro, Ana

    2010-11-01

    This work presents an analysis of the role of animacy in attachment preferences of relative clauses to complex noun phrases in European Portuguese (EP). The study of how the human parser solves this kind of syntactic ambiguities has been focus of extensive research. However, what is known about EP is both limited and puzzling. Additionally, as recent studies have stressed the importance of extra-syntactic variables in this process, two experiments were carried out to assess EP attachment preferences considering four animacy conditions: Study 1 used a sentence-completion-task, and Study 2 a self-paced reading task. Both studies indicate a significant preference for high attachment in EP. Furthermore, they showed that this preference was modulated by the animacy of the host NP: if the first host was inanimate and the second one was animate, the parser's preference changed to low attachment preference. These findings shed light on previous results regarding EP and strengthen the idea that, even in early stages of processing, the parser seems to be sensitive to extra-syntactic information.

  18. THE ARGUMENTATIVE EXPRESSIVENESS OF THE ADJECTIVE IN THE ADVERTISING TEXT

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Suzete SILVA

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The language is very dynamic, consequently, there are great hallenges for the framing of words into classes. That happens because the understanding generated by a particular word is linked to the context, and also anchored in syntactic and semantic roles that are able to play in the environment of linguistic usage. In this article, we will focus on the use of this adjective class that grammatically does not have syntactic autonomy and assigns grades to the class of the noun, binds to it intrinsically, forming, as an attribute or predicate, one indivisible phrase. However, the inter-subjective game of adjective is mostly composed by the constitutive process of the communicative act. It expresses different feelings and its use causes numerous effects in the actors who interpret them according to their linguistic and discursive skills. Thus, exposing the corpus statements selected from text advertising, we consider valuable the presentation of this article, in which we display according to argumentative theories, a study about the adjective based on Neves (2000 and Castilho (2010.

  19. Constituent order and semantic parallelism in online comprehension: eye-tracking evidence from German.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Knoeferle, Pia; Crocker, Matthew W

    2009-12-01

    Reading times for the second conjunct of and-coordinated clauses are faster when the second conjunct parallels the first conjunct in its syntactic or semantic (animacy) structure than when its structure differs (Frazier, Munn, & Clifton, 2000; Frazier, Taft, Roeper, & Clifton, 1984). What remains unclear, however, is the time course of parallelism effects, their scope, and the kinds of linguistic information to which they are sensitive. Findings from the first two eye-tracking experiments revealed incremental constituent order parallelism across the board-both during structural disambiguation (Experiment 1) and in sentences with unambiguously case-marked constituent order (Experiment 2), as well as for both marked and unmarked constituent orders (Experiments 1 and 2). Findings from Experiment 3 revealed effects of both constituent order and subtle semantic (noun phrase similarity) parallelism. Together our findings provide evidence for an across-the-board account of parallelism for processing and-coordinated clauses, in which both constituent order and semantic aspects of representations contribute towards incremental parallelism effects. We discuss our findings in the context of existing findings on parallelism and priming, as well as mechanisms of sentence processing.

  20. Why Are Verbs so Hard to Remember? Effects of Semantic Context on Memory for Verbs and Nouns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Earles, Julie L.; Kersten, Alan W.

    2017-01-01

    Three experiments test the theory that verb meanings are more malleable than noun meanings in different semantic contexts, making a previously seen verb difficult to remember when it appears in a new semantic context. Experiment 1 revealed that changing the direct object noun in a transitive sentence reduced recognition of a previously seen verb,…

  1. Effects of communication strategy training on EFL students' performance in small-group discussions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stuart Benson

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available In recent years, a number of studies have been conducted with regard to communication strategy training and performance on communicative tasks (Lam, 2009; Nakatani, 2010; Naughton, 2006. This study aims to add to the literature by examining how two strategies, clarifying/confirming and extending a conversation, and two methods of teaching the strategies, affected the interactional sequences and overall group discussion performance of EFL students at a university in Japan. Pre and posttreatment small-group discussions were recorded for assessment, and a stimulated recall interview was administered to determine the participants' perceptions of their learning and language use. Posttest results reveal that the experimental groups that were taught predetermined phrases aimed at clarifying/confirming and extending a conversation employed such phrases more frequently than the control group. However, this employment of phrases did not lead to higher gains in group discussion skills as the control group enjoyed the largest gains from pre to posttest. The researchers consider the findings in light of previous research, and conclude with recommendations for future research on the topic with special regard to research design.

  2. Error-Related Activity and Correlates of Grammatical Plasticity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davidson, Doug J.; Indefrey, Peter

    2011-01-01

    Cognitive control involves not only the ability to manage competing task demands, but also the ability to adapt task performance during learning. This study investigated how violation-, response-, and feedback-related electrophysiological (EEG) activity changes over time during language learning. Twenty-two Dutch learners of German classified short prepositional phrases presented serially as text. The phrases were initially presented without feedback during a pre-test phase, and then with feedback in a training phase on two separate days spaced 1 week apart. The stimuli included grammatically correct phrases, as well as grammatical violations of gender and declension. Without feedback, participants' classification was near chance and did not improve over trials. During training with feedback, behavioral classification improved and violation responses appeared to both types of violation in the form of a P600. Feedback-related negative and positive components were also present from the first day of training. The results show changes in the electrophysiological responses in concert with improving behavioral discrimination, suggesting that the activity is related to grammar learning. PMID:21960979

  3. The Reflection of Javanese Life Manner on the Dongkrek Art and Ritual Performance in Madiun Society

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sharfina Nur Amalina

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available This article focuses in the analysis of Javanese life manner within Dongkrek art and ritual performance in Mejayan, Madiun, Indonesia. The purpose of research is to reflect a life manner of Javanese society within a Dongkrek show. The qualitative-descriptive was used as research approach. Data were collected by interview, literature review, and other relevant resources. The results of research show a five points of Javanese manner of life in Dongkrek, represent in the phrase Ambrasta Dur Hangkara, Memayu Hayuning Bawana, Sura Dira Jayaning Lebur Dening Pangastuti, Sadulur Papat Kalima Pancer, and Manunggaling Kawula Gusti. Those phrases contain many moral values that generally can be accepted by society. The phrase represents a human relationship, the manner of life, ways of life, world-view, willingness, and the transcendental relationship between humans and God. It means the purpose of the Javanese manner of life is to reach the perfection of life. The perfection of life is resting on the faith towards to the God through the maturity of spirituality.

  4. Phrasal Paraphrase Based Question Reformulation for Archived Question Retrieval.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yu Zhang

    Full Text Available Lexical gap in cQA search, resulted by the variability of languages, has been recognized as an important and widespread phenomenon. To address the problem, this paper presents a question reformulation scheme to enhance the question retrieval model by fully exploring the intelligence of paraphrase in phrase-level. It compensates for the existing paraphrasing research in a suitable granularity, which either falls into fine-grained lexical-level or coarse-grained sentence-level. Given a question in natural language, our scheme first detects the involved key-phrases by jointly integrating the corpus-dependent knowledge and question-aware cues. Next, it automatically extracts the paraphrases for each identified key-phrase utilizing multiple online translation engines, and then selects the most relevant reformulations from a large group of question rewrites, which is formed by full permutation and combination of the generated paraphrases. Extensive evaluations on a real world data set demonstrate that our model is able to characterize the complex questions and achieves promising performance as compared to the state-of-the-art methods.

  5. The Contrastive Study of Igbo and English Denominal Nouns ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The teaching of nominalization has not been all smooth for an Igbo second language learner of English language. That is why this study is set to contrast English and Igbo Denominal nouns. The objective is to find out the similarities and differences between the nominalization process in Igbo and that of the English ...

  6. Nouns cut slices: Effects of linguistic forms on intergroup bias

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Graf, Sylvie; Bilewicz, M.; Finell, E.; Geschke, D.

    2013-01-01

    Roč. 32, č. 1 (2013), s. 46-61 ISSN 0261-927X R&D Projects: GA ČR GA13-25656S Institutional support: RVO:68081740 Keywords : nouns * adjectives * intergroup bias * intergroup attitudes Subject RIV: AN - Psychology Impact factor: 0.872, year: 2013

  7. Les enjeux interprétatifs de la prédication averbale dans un corpus narratif : énoncés nominaux et représentation fictionnelle de processus énonciatifs et cognitifs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Annie Kuyumcuyan

    2010-09-01

    Full Text Available Les unités prédicatives averbales autonomes sont étudiées dans un corpus relativement homogène : les récits des enquêtes du commissaire Maigret, que G. Simenon a rédigées de 1930 à 1972. Sont d'emblée écartées les structures, également averbales, mais qui relèvent manifestement de l'« ajout » – ou hyperbate en rhétorique : celles qui constituent visiblement, entre autres par une marque de rection ou de subordination (préposition / conjonction, une « suite » syntaxique de la phrase graphique précédente. Ne sont donc traitées que les unités d'apparence autonome, souvent construites autour du nom, et dont on cherche à clarifier le statut : phrases averbales ou appositions « retardées », et par conséquent ajout à la phrase précédente, quoique sans marquage spécifique ? La première partie de l'article envisage les phrases averbales proprement dites dans le récit, en contexte descriptif puis narratif, pour montrer comment elles contribuent à créer des « effets de subjectivité » dans le récit, en termes de point de vue et de discours représenté. Dans la seconde partie, consacrée quant à elle à l'apposition, on cherche à clarifier les critères qui pourraient distinguer cette dernière de la phrase nominale précédemment traitée. Cette tentative met en lumière le rôle déterminant du contexte par rapport aux considérations formelles, ce qui amène à privilégier la notion d'un continuum allant de la phrase nominale à l'apposition, de la prédication averbale « première » à la structure dite de « prédication seconde ».Autonomous verbless syntactic units are studied in a relatively homogeneous corpus, constituted by the short stories of Maigret's investigations that G. Simenon wrote from 1930 till 1972. Leaving hyperbate-like adjuncts aside, we deal only with units of autonomous appearance, often constructed as nominal phrases, and we try to clarify their

  8. Symbolic Play and Novel Noun Learning in Deaf and Hearing Children: Longitudinal Effects of Access to Sound on Early Precursors of Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quittner, Alexandra L.; Cejas, Ivette; Wang, Nae-Yuh; Niparko, John K.; Barker, David H.

    2016-01-01

    In the largest, longitudinal study of young, deaf children before and three years after cochlear implantation, we compared symbolic play and novel noun learning to age-matched hearing peers. Participants were 180 children from six cochlear implant centers and 96 hearing children. Symbolic play was measured during five minutes of videotaped, structured solitary play. Play was coded as "symbolic" if the child used substitution (e.g., a wooden block as a bed). Novel noun learning was measured in 10 trials using a novel object and a distractor. Cochlear implant vs. normal hearing children were delayed in their use of symbolic play, however, those implanted before vs. after age two performed significantly better. Children with cochlear implants were also delayed in novel noun learning (median delay 1.54 years), with minimal evidence of catch-up growth. Quality of parent-child interactions was positively related to performance on the novel noun learning, but not symbolic play task. Early implantation was beneficial for both achievement of symbolic play and novel noun learning. Further, maternal sensitivity and linguistic stimulation by parents positively affected noun learning skills, although children with cochlear implants still lagged in comparison to hearing peers. PMID:27228032

  9. Symbolic Play and Novel Noun Learning in Deaf and Hearing Children: Longitudinal Effects of Access to Sound on Early Precursors of Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quittner, Alexandra L; Cejas, Ivette; Wang, Nae-Yuh; Niparko, John K; Barker, David H

    2016-01-01

    In the largest, longitudinal study of young, deaf children before and three years after cochlear implantation, we compared symbolic play and novel noun learning to age-matched hearing peers. Participants were 180 children from six cochlear implant centers and 96 hearing children. Symbolic play was measured during five minutes of videotaped, structured solitary play. Play was coded as "symbolic" if the child used substitution (e.g., a wooden block as a bed). Novel noun learning was measured in 10 trials using a novel object and a distractor. Cochlear implant vs. normal hearing children were delayed in their use of symbolic play, however, those implanted before vs. after age two performed significantly better. Children with cochlear implants were also delayed in novel noun learning (median delay 1.54 years), with minimal evidence of catch-up growth. Quality of parent-child interactions was positively related to performance on the novel noun learning, but not symbolic play task. Early implantation was beneficial for both achievement of symbolic play and novel noun learning. Further, maternal sensitivity and linguistic stimulation by parents positively affected noun learning skills, although children with cochlear implants still lagged in comparison to hearing peers.

  10. Gender subordination in the vulnerability of women to domestic violence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Macedo Piosiadlo, Laura Christina; Godoy Serpa da Fonseca, Rosa Maria

    2016-06-01

    To create and validate an instrument that identifies women's vulnerability to domestic violence through gender subordination indicators in the family. An instrument consisting on 61 phrases was created, that indicates gender subordination in the family. After the assessment from ten judges, 34 phrases were validated. The approved version was administered to 321 health service users of São José dos Pinhais (Estado de Paraná, Brasil), along with the validated Portuguese version of the Abuse Assessment Screen (AAS) (for purposes of separating the sample group - the ''YES'' group was composed of women who have suffered violence and the ''NO'' group consisted of women who had not suffered violence). Data were transferred into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 22, and quantitatively analyzed using exploratory and factor analysis, and tests for internal consistency. After analysis (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) statistics, Monte Carlo Principal Components Analysis (PCA, and diagram segmentation), two factors were identified: F1 - consisting of phrases related to home maintenance and family structure; F2 - phrases intrinsic to the couple's relationship. For the statements that reinforce gender subordination, the mean of the factors were higher for the group that answered YES to one of the violence identifying issues. The created instrument was able to identify women who were vulnerable to domestic violence using gender subordination indicators. This could be an important tool for nurses and other professionals in multidisciplinary teams, in order to organize and plan actions to prevent violence against women.

  11. Gender subordination in the vulnerability of women to domestic violence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Laura Christina Macedo Piosiadlo

    Full Text Available Objective.To create and validate an instrument that identifies women's vulnerability to domestic violence through gender subordination indicators in the family. Methods. An instrument consisting on 61 phrases was created, that indicates gender subordination in the family. After the assessment from ten judges, 34 phrases were validated. The approved version was administered to 321 health service users of São José dos Pinhais (Estado de Paraná, Brasil, along with the validated Portuguese version of the Abuse Assessment Screen (AAS (for purposes of separating the sample group - the ''YES'' group was composed of women who have suffered violence and the ''NO'' group consisted of women who had not suffered violence. Data were transferred into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS software, version 22, and quantitatively analyzed using exploratory and factor analysis, and tests for internal consistency. Results. After analysis (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO statistics, Monte Carlo Principal Components Analysis (PCA, and diagram segmentation, two factors were identified: F1 - consisting of phrases related to home maintenance and family structure; F2 - phrases intrinsic to the couple's relationship. For the statements that reinforce gender subordination, the mean of the factors were higher for the group that answered YES to one of the violence identifying issues. Conclusions. The created instrument was able to identify women who were vulnerable to domestic violence using gender subordination indicators. This could be an important tool for nurses and other professionals in multidisciplinary teams, in order to organize and plan actions to prevent violence against women.

  12. Acoustic foundations of the speech-to-song illusion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tierney, Adam; Patel, Aniruddh D; Breen, Mara

    2018-06-01

    In the "speech-to-song illusion," certain spoken phrases are heard as highly song-like when isolated from context and repeated. This phenomenon occurs to a greater degree for some stimuli than for others, suggesting that particular cues prompt listeners to perceive a spoken phrase as song. Here we investigated the nature of these cues across four experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate how song-like spoken phrases were after each of eight repetitions. Initial ratings were correlated with the consistency of an underlying beat and within-syllable pitch slope, while rating change was linked to beat consistency, within-syllable pitch slope, and melodic structure. In Experiment 2, the within-syllable pitch slope of the stimuli was manipulated, and this manipulation changed the extent to which participants heard certain stimuli as more musical than others. In Experiment 3, the extent to which the pitch sequences of a phrase fit a computational model of melodic structure was altered, but this manipulation did not have a significant effect on musicality ratings. In Experiment 4, the consistency of intersyllable timing was manipulated, but this manipulation did not have an effect on the change in perceived musicality after repetition. Our methods provide a new way of studying the causal role of specific acoustic features in the speech-to-song illusion via subtle acoustic manipulations of speech, and show that listeners can rapidly (and implicitly) assess the degree to which nonmusical stimuli contain musical structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  13. Usage-Based Account of the Acquisition of Liaison: Evidence from Sensitivity to the Singular/Plural Orientation of Nouns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dugua, Celine; Spinelli, Elsa; Chevrot, Jean-Pierre; Fayol, Michel

    2009-01-01

    This study investigates whether children's production and recognition of obligatory liaison sequences in French depend on the singular/plural orientation of nouns. Certain nouns occur more frequently in the plural (e.g., "arbre" "tree"), whereas others are found more often in the singular (e.g., "arc-en-ciel" "rainbow"). In the input, children…

  14. ABSTRACT NOUNS IN THE SPEECH OF THE EMGLISHMEN (BASED ON FICTION WORKS AND BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS

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    Natalia Veniaminovna Khokhlova

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available The research aimed at studying the use of abstract nouns in the Englishmen's speech from the standpoint of sociolinguistics. The article introduces a new, sociolinguistic, approach to research of abstract nouns; it is also the first time they are studied in a language corpus. The first stage of the research was based on fiction literary works: abstract nouns were extracted of analysis from the statements of the characters belonging to the opposite social classes. Later, these data was compared with the results of the original corpus research based on the British national corpus: sentences with nouns were selected out of the conversational subcorpus of BNC and were further sorted into abstract, concrete and words denoting people. Then, their frequency and vocabulary was studied with regards to speakers' age, gender and social standing. The results revealed that abstract words are used more often that concrete ones regardless of the speaker's social characteristics, however, the size and content of vocabulary is different (it is generally more substantial in the speech of women and representatives of higher social classes. The results of this research can be used in elaborating a course of the English language or in teaching general linguistics, sociolinguistics and country studies.

  15. The Influence of Zoo- And Phytocomponents in the Phraseology of the Pyrenean Variety of Spanish on Shaping Mexican Phraseological Units

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    Луиза Нахидовна Гишкаева

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The article is devoted to the analysis of one of the most fascinating and entertaining spheres of phraseology - the sphere of set phrases with "natural" components: faunistic and floristic. The analysis of the phraseological units containing zoo- and phytocomponents, is directed on comprehensive investigation of properties of set phrases, identification of essence and specificity of a national and cultural view of the Spanish and Mexican people's world. In this research it is used complex comparative studying of phraseological units with the point of linguoculturological positions that corresponds to the modern, actual and perspective directions of communicative linguistics.

  16. Contract law--it's only as good as the people.

    Science.gov (United States)

    George, James

    2004-02-01

    There is a frequently spoken phrase in law known as "Res Ipsa Loquitur." This Latin phrase translates in English to mean, "The thing speaks for itself." It is hoped the title of this article speaks for itself. The simple truth is that a contract is only as good as the people and institutions it binds. This does not mean that contracts should not exist or that important details of a contractual relationship should not be in writing. In essence, contracts are society's best attempt to memorialize the details of a business relationship between people and entities.

  17. La traducción español-francés de locuciones preposicionales en el lenguaje comercial. Estudio comparativo basado en corpus

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    Daniel Gallego Hernández

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available Researchers in business translation have neglected the study of the translation of general language despite it might pose problems at least for translator trainees. The aim of this article is to discuss the translation of this kind of vocabulary in business language, especially the translation of prepositional phrases from Spanish into French. First, we study the concept of prepositional phrases and identify and classify these groups of words that appear in our parallel business corpus. Then we study how they have been translated from Spanish into French. The results may be used, among others, in translation training.

  18. The generaltion gap in nursing

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    J.G.P. van Niekerk

    1984-09-01

    Full Text Available Generation gap is one of those catch phrases that we so often use, and misuse, to excuse ourselves or to cover up for our shortcomings. It is like the shortage of nurses behind which we hide from all our nursing problems. Although it is such a commonly used phrase, do we really know what it means? When you consult the Oxford Dictionary, you will find that it defines generation gap as: differences of opinion between those of different generations. It will surprise most people that the generation gap becomes a problem only when there are differences of opinion.

  19. VP Ellipsis without Indices

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hardt, Daniel; Asher, Nicholas; Hunter, Julie

    2013-01-01

    This paper compares two views on the status of indices in syntactic and logical representations. On a structural view, indices are syntactic formants on a par with node labels and phrase bracketings, and are thus a part of the logical forms that are derived from syntactic representations. On the ......This paper compares two views on the status of indices in syntactic and logical representations. On a structural view, indices are syntactic formants on a par with node labels and phrase bracketings, and are thus a part of the logical forms that are derived from syntactic representations...

  20. Stereotype or grammar? The representation of gender when two-year-old and three-year-old French-speaking toddlers listen to role nouns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lévy, Arik; Gygax, Pascal; Gabriel, Ute; Zesiger, Pascal

    2016-11-01

    Using a preferential looking paradigm, the current study examined the role that grammatical gender plays when preschool French-speaking toddlers process role nouns in the masculine form (e.g., chanteurs masculine 'singers'). While being auditorily prompted with "Look at the 'a role noun'!", two- and three-year-olds were presented with two pictures of two characters ('boy-boy' versus 'girl-boy') with attributes of the given role noun (e.g., singers with microphone and music notes). All role nouns were presented in the masculine plural form, which, despite its use to refer to mixed-gender groups, can be interpreted as referring to men. We expected toddlers to be biased by stereotypes, yet when non-stereotypical role nouns were presented, toddlers were not influenced by grammatical gender, but by their own sex (even more so for three-year-old toddlers). The absence of sensitivity to grammatical cues for either age group is discussed in terms of the developmental awareness of grammatical gender.

  1. Prosodic Disambiguation of Noun/Verb Homophones in Child-Directed Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Conwell, Erin

    2017-01-01

    One strategy that children might use to sort words into grammatical categories such as noun and verb is distributional bootstrapping, in which local co-occurrence information is used to distinguish between categories. Words that can be used in more than one grammatical category could be problematic for this approach. Using naturalistic corpus…

  2. Collocations of High Frequency Noun Keywords in Prescribed Science Textbooks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Menon, Sujatha; Mukundan, Jayakaran

    2012-01-01

    This paper analyses the discourse of science through the study of collocational patterns of high frequency noun keywords in science textbooks used by upper secondary students in Malaysia. Research has shown that one of the areas of difficulty in science discourse concerns lexis, especially that of collocations. This paper describes a corpus-based…

  3. Abstract of interjection and vocative position in Persian grammar and semantics

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    Hosain Aghahosaini

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Vocative is a role that noun accepts it and usually used in Persian language with interjection letters i.e. "Ey", "Ya" and "Alef" that is attached to the end of the noun. By combining the definitions that have been mentioned for vocative in grammar books, it can be concluded that vocative is a noun that is addressed whether it is a real address or figurative. The verbal symbol of vocative is "Ey" and its synonyms in sentence that sometimes these symbols are deleted from sentence and the change of word's song is replaced it. Vocative and more precisely the core of vocative may be deleted from the sentence. Vocative deletion in sentence is among problems that grammarians have paid less attention to it in vocative subject. In a general overview, vocative can be divided into two mentioned and deleted sectors.When vocative is mentioned in sentence it can be explicit or ironic name but deleted vocative includes following types: 1. Some cases that participle or interpretable phrase to participle is used after the interjection letter (Ey that sometimes in this case the conjunction letter "Ke" is used after the interjection letter, for example: Ey ke dar koshtan-e ma hich modara nakoni Soud-o sarmaye besouzi-o mohaba nakoni(Hafez, 1990: 340 And sometimes it has been used without "Ke", for example:                           Ey az banafshe sakhte bar gol mesalha Dar aftab karde ze anbar kolalha (Sanaei, 2001: 801 2. Some cases that speaker pronouns of "I" and "We" are used after the interjection letter "Ey" and the phrase after the letter "Ey" can be totally considered as an adjective for the deleted core of vocative, for example:     Narges kereshme mibarad az had boroun khoram Ey man faday-e shive-ye chashme siyah-e to (Hafez, 1990: 284 In Persian texts, some evidences are also found that the letter "Ey" is not used for addressing in them.In the structure of these types, no vocative has been mentioned in the sentence

  4. Abstract of interjection and vocative position in Persian grammar and semantics

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    Hosain Aghahosaini

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Vocative is a role that noun accepts it and usually used in Persian language with interjection letters i.e. "Ey", "Ya" and "Alef" that is attached to the end of the noun. By combining the definitions that have been mentioned for vocative in grammar books, it can be concluded that vocative is a noun that is addressed whether it is a real address or figurative. The verbal symbol of vocative is "Ey" and its synonyms in sentence that sometimes these symbols are deleted from sentence and the change of word's song is replaced it. Vocative and more precisely the core of vocative may be deleted from the sentence. Vocative deletion in sentence is among problems that grammarians have paid less attention to it in vocative subject. In a general overview, vocative can be divided into two mentioned and deleted sectors.When vocative is mentioned in sentence it can be explicit or ironic name but deleted vocative includes following types: 1. Some cases that participle or interpretable phrase to participle is used after the interjection letter (Ey that sometimes in this case the conjunction letter "Ke" is used after the interjection letter, for example: Ey ke dar koshtan-e ma hich modara nakoni Soud-o sarmaye besouzi-o mohaba nakoni(Hafez, 1990: 340 And sometimes it has been used without "Ke", for example:                           Ey az banafshe sakhte bar gol mesalha Dar aftab karde ze anbar kolalha (Sanaei, 2001: 801 2. Some cases that speaker pronouns of "I" and "We" are used after the interjection letter "Ey" and the phrase after the letter "Ey" can be totally considered as an adjective for the deleted core of vocative, for example:     Narges kereshme mibarad az had boroun khoram Ey man faday-e shive-ye chashme siyah-e to (Hafez, 1990: 284 In Persian texts, some evidences are also found that the letter "Ey" is not used for addressing in them.In the structure of

  5. Differential Impairment of Noun and Verb Consequent to LH Lesions in Persian Aphasic Patients

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    Dr. Reza Nilipour

    2003-08-01

    Full Text Available The major focus of this research is on the differential disruption of language abilities subsequent to brain damages as they relate to site and size of lesion, especially left hemisphere lesions which disrupt the production and processing of "Nouns" vs. "Verbs" as two functionally different lexical categories. Several clinical as well as experimental studies reported on different language have shown that nouns and verbs can be independently disrupted due to brain damage. A prevalent impairment in naming actions (Producing verbs is reported in non-fluent aphasic patients, with lesions involving left frontal lobe, whereas a selective in naming objects (Producing nouns has been observed in amnesic patients, with lesions involving the temporal lobe and the temporal lobe and the posterior association aresas. This research is a theoretical and fundamental based on descriptive and analytical method. The aphasic data in this research were obtained by assessing each patient's aphasic symptoms using a standard Persian aphasia test (Paradis, Nilipoure, Paribakht, 1989 as well as post-test analysis of each patient' connected descriptive speech. The subjects were selected form among aphasics who referred to speech therapy centers in Tehran during a pe5iod of one year since autumn 1999. The subjects selected in the study were a homogenous group with left hemisphere lesions due to CVA. They were educated adult right handed. Speakers of Persian without any risk factor such as nicotine, alcohol or any addiction and diabetes with no gross depression or anxiety problems or face and oral paralysis and hemiaopsia. The subjects in this study comprised to adults ranging between 33 and 76 years of age. The results indicated that there are significant correlation between: 1 The production of nouns and left hemisphere lesion. 2 The production of verbs and left hemisphere lesion. 3 Brain lesion and language deficits. 4 The site of lesion and language abilities

  6. Adaptation of Proper Nouns in Czech-American Periodicals at the End of the 19th Century

    OpenAIRE

    Burdová, Kateřina

    2016-01-01

    The bachelor's thesis focuses on the process of adaptation of proper nouns in chosen periodicals of the end of the 19th century that were published in the USA by Czech immigrants. Based on the analysis of periodicals collected from the Library of the Naprstek Museum of Prague there originated a list of proper nouns that has been studied from various points of view, namely the phonetics and phonology, morphology including the word-class competition (Cedar Rapidský - Cedar Rapids), translatedan...

  7. Fraz. zbić z pantałyku 'stropić kogo, pozbawić pewności siebie'

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    Grażyna Rytter

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available The phrase zbić z pantałyku 'to perplex, shatter somebody's confidence' The article concerns the East-­Slavic linguistic influence on Polish in the second half of the nineteenh century as exemplified by the meaning of the phrase zbić z pantałyku. Today's meaning of the phrase  is associated with another phraseologism zbić z tropu 'to throw [lit. knock] off trace,' which originates from the hunting jargon. *Pantałyk as a separate word is not (and never has been used in general Polish, and the comprehensibility of the whole phrase is the result of the sum of its components. East Slavic counterparts of the phrase are attested from the mid­nineteenth century. In the Polish of the period, zbić z pantałyku had a colloquial status, and its usefulness in the sphere of everyday communication was a manifestation of economy of imaginary rather than conceptual means of expression. Especially in the conditions of widespread bilingualism, the new phrase could easily be recognized against the background of contemporary usage of near­synonymous colloquial phrases derived from the verb zbić 'to beat' but also 'to knock off.' The greater frequency of zbić z pantałyku  in the Polish of south­eastern borderlands resulted from a combination of factors, mainly the blurred boundaries between literary and dialectal (folk phraseology.   Fraz. zbić z pantałyku 'stropić kogo, pozbawić pewności siebie' Artykuł dotyczy wpływów ruskojęzycznych w polszczyźnie drugiej połowy XIX wieku. Dziś znaczenie frazeologizmu zbić z pantałyku to odpowiednik wybić z szyku, zbić z tropu, 'zmieszać, stropić', realnie 'pomieszać krok', 'stracić ślad (na polowaniu'. *Pantałyk jako wyraz samodzielny nie jest (i nigdy nie był używany w polszczyźnie ogólnej, natomiast znaczenie całego frazeologizmu wynika z sumy jego składników. Odpowiedniki wschodniosłowiańskie poświadczone są od połowy XIX stulecia. W �

  8. Of black sheep and white crows: Extending the bilingual dual coding theory to memory for idioms

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    Lena K. Pritchett

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Are idioms stored in memory in ways that preserve their surface form or language or are they represented amodally? We examined this question using an incidental cued recall paradigm in which two word idiomatic expressions were presented to adult bilinguals proficient in Russian and English. Stimuli included phrases with idiomatic equivalents in both languages (e.g. "empty words/пycтыe cлoвa" or in one language only (English—e.g. "empty suit/пycтoй кocтюм" or Russian—e.g. "empty sound/пycтoй звyк", or in neither language (e.g. "empty rain/пycтoй дoждь". If idioms are stored in a language-specific format, then phrases with idiomatic equivalents in both languages would have dual representation, and should therefore be more easily recalled than phrases with idiomatic meaning in only one language. This result was obtained. As such, the findings support the dual-coding theory of memory and are also compatible with models of the bilingual lexicon that include language tags or nodes.

  9. How Do Children Ascribe Gender to Nouns? A Study of Spanish-Speaking Children with and without Specific Language Impairment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anderson, Raquel T.; Lockowitz, Alison

    2009-01-01

    The purpose of this investigation was to identify how Spanish-speaking preschool children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) use the various cues available for ascribing a noun's inherent gender in the language. Via an invented word task, four types of cues were isolated and presented to each child: (1) two types of noun-internal…

  10. Production of graphic symbol sentences by individuals with aphasia: efficacy of a computer-based augmentative and alternative communication intervention.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koul, Rajinder; Corwin, Melinda; Hayes, Summer

    2005-01-01

    The study employed a single-subject multiple baseline design to examine the ability of 9 individuals with severe Broca's aphasia or global aphasia to produce graphic symbol sentences of varying syntactical complexity using a software program that turns a computer into a speech output communication device. The sentences ranged in complexity from simple two-word phrases to those with morphological inflections, transformations, and relative clauses. Overall, results indicated that individuals with aphasia are able to access, manipulate, and combine graphic symbols to produce phrases and sentences of varying degrees of syntactical complexity. The findings are discussed in terms of the clinical and public policy implications.

  11. The Gender of "Energy": Language, Social Theory, and Cultural Change in Women's Lands in the United States.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luis, Keridwen N

    2015-01-01

    Within women's intentional communities, women use the phrase women's energy to describe certain social interactions, a sense of community, and ideas about how gender is done or performed. For example, energy can express both difference in communication style between men and women and male dominance in social situations. During my fieldwork in these communities, I explored how this phrase suggests a reference to a precultural female body, but it is also sometimes used to explicitly reject biological reasons for gender difference. The term is easily understandable to a wide range of women from varying class backgrounds and encompasses both the unconscious side of social interactions and a possibility for future change.

  12. The online social self: an open vocabulary approach to personality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kern, Margaret L; Eichstaedt, Johannes C; Schwartz, H Andrew; Dziurzynski, Lukasz; Ungar, Lyle H; Stillwell, David J; Kosinski, Michal; Ramones, Stephanie M; Seligman, Martin E P

    2014-04-01

    We present a new open language analysis approach that identifies and visually summarizes the dominant naturally occurring words and phrases that most distinguished each Big Five personality trait. Using millions of posts from 69,792 Facebook users, we examined the correlation of personality traits with online word usage. Our analysis method consists of feature extraction, correlational analysis, and visualization. The distinguishing words and phrases were face valid and provide insight into processes that underlie the Big Five traits. Open-ended data driven exploration of large datasets combined with established psychological theory and measures offers new tools to further understand the human psyche. © The Author(s) 2013.

  13. Phrase-Final Syllable Lengthening and Intonation in Early Child Speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Snow, David

    1994-01-01

    To test opposing theories about the relationship between intonation and syllable timing, these boundary features were compared in a longitudinal study of 9 children's speech development between the mean ages of 16 and 25 months. Results suggest that young children acquire the skills that control intonation earlier than they do skills of final…

  14. The structure of an Afrikaans collocation and phrase dictionary | Otto ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    As one of the target groups is unsophisticated learners with a limited grammatical background, the ideal would be to enter lexical collocations both at their bases and at the collocators. To save space however, more information such as examples could then be provided at the bases only. Grammatical collocations should be ...

  15. Categorical and order information in free recall of action phrases

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    johannes Engellkamp

    2001-01-01

    Full Text Available Partiendo del modelo de recuerdo libre "generación-reconocimiento", abordamos dos puntos. En primer lugar discutiremos si el efecto de "actuación", es decir, el recuerdo superior de acciones que uno mismo ha realizado (AUR sobre las acciones realizadas por otros (ARO o sobre las tareas verbales (TV se debe al fortalecimiento de la información relacional y/o de item en las condiciones de AUR. En segundo lugar, proponemos que es necesario distinguir entre, al menos, dos tipos de información relacional: categórica y episódica (de orden. Mostraremos a que la información categórica se utiliza por igual en AUR, ARO y TV, b que la información episódica relacional es más eficaz en la condición ARO pura que en la AUR. c que esta ventaja se pierde cuando las dos condiciones de codificación se mezclan y d que la información episódica relacional se puede utilizar de forma efectiva con listas cortas , pero no con listas largas. Esta variabilidad de la información episódica relacional determina que la condición AUR produzca mejor recuerdo que la ARO.

  16. The Structure of an Afrikaans Collocation and Phrase Dictionary·

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    tongue speakers (primary target group) as well as advanced learners (secondary target group) is dis- cussed. The position which such a dictionary occupies among other dictionary types is pointed out. A motivation is also given for the inclusion ...

  17. The roles of word-form frequency and phonological neighbourhood density in the acquisition of Lithuanian noun morphology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Savičiūtė, Eglė; Ambridge, Ben; Pine, Julian M

    2018-05-01

    Four- and five-year-old children took part in an elicited familiar and novel Lithuanian noun production task to test predictions of input-based accounts of the acquisition of inflectional morphology. Two major findings emerged. First, as predicted by input-based accounts, correct production rates were correlated with the input frequency of the target form, and with the phonological neighbourhood density of the noun. Second, the error patterns were not compatible with the systematic substitution of target forms by either (a) the most frequent form of that noun or (b) a single morphosyntactic default form, as might be predicted by naive versions of a constructivist and generativist account, respectively. Rather, most errors reflected near-miss substitutions of singular for plural, masculine for feminine, or nominative/accusative for a less frequent case. Together, these findings provide support for an input-based approach to morphological acquisition, but are not adequately explained by any single account in its current form.

  18. On English Locative Subjects

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    Gabriela Brůhová

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available The paper analyses English sentences with thematic locative subjects. These subjects were detected as translation counterparts of Czech sentenceinitial locative adverbials realized by prepositional phrases with the prepositions do (into, na (on, v/ve (in, z/ze (from complemented by a noun. In the corresponding English structure, the initial scene-setting adverbial is reflected in the thematic subject, which results in the locative semantics of the subject. The sentences are analysed from syntactic, semantic and FSP aspects. From the syntactic point of view, we found five syntactic patterns of the English sentences with a locative subject (SV, SVA, SVO, SVpassA and SVCs that correspond to Czech sentences with initial locative adverbials. On the FSP level the paper studies the potential of the sentences to implement the Presentation or Quality Scale. Since it is the "semantic content of the verb that actuates the presentation semantics of the sentence" (Duškova, 2015a: 260, major attention is paid to the syntactic-semantic structure of the verb. The analysis of the semantics of the English sentences results in the identification of two semantic classes of verbs which co-occur with the English locative subject.

  19. Strategy Of Translating Gadget Brochure

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    Deny Kusuma

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available The title of this writing is strategy of translating gadget brochure. There were two problems discussed in this thesis, namely (1 terms found in the gadget manual book and its equivalence in Indonesia, (2 strategies applied in translating gadget brochure. Based on the analysis result, it was found that the terms and its equivalent words found in the gadget brochure were classified based on: 1 simple words or compound words and terminology forming phrase. 2 words category found are: noun and verb. The recommended pattern to determine the equivalent word was pure borrowing strategy, not adaptation borrowing strategy. The adaptation borrowing in this context was related to the spellings, the pronunciation or sound adaptation in the TL rather than adaptation for the cultural substitutes that conceptually mismatches with the standardized terminology in the SL. In addition, the result of the analysis that there were seven strategies found in gadget brochure, they were translation by more general word (Superordinate, translation by a more neutral/expressive word, translation by cultural substitution, translation by using loan word or loan word plus explanation, translation by paraphrase using related word, translation by omission and translation by illustration.

  20. Effect of subject types on the production of auxiliary is in young English-speaking children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guo, Ling-Yu; Owen, Amanda J; Tomblin, J Bruce

    2010-12-01

    In this study, the authors tested the unique checking constraint (UCC) hypothesis and the usage-based approach concerning why young children variably use tense and agreement morphemes in obligatory contexts by examining the effect of subject types on the production of auxiliary is. Twenty typically developing 3-year-olds were included in this study. The children's production of auxiliary is was elicited in sentences with pronominal subjects, high-frequency lexical noun phrase (NP) subjects (e.g., the dog), and low-frequency lexical NP subjects (e.g., the deer). As a group, children did not use auxiliary is more accurately with pronominal subjects than with lexical NP subjects. Furthermore, individual data revealed that although some children used auxiliary is more accurately with pronominal subjects than with lexical NP subjects, the majority of children did not show this trend. The symmetry observed between lexical and pronominal subjects supports the predictions of the UCC hypothesis, although additional mechanisms may be needed to account for the asymmetry between subject types in some individual children. Discrepant results between the present study and previous studies were attributed to differences in task formats and children's developmental levels.

Write a Tag Pattern to Match Noun Phrases Containing Plural Head Nouns

Source: https://worldwidescience.org/topicpages/p/phrases+noun+phrases.html

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