Phrase Structure

The paper presents a new corpus of an ancient language—Hittite, a dead cuneiform language of Anatolian family attested on clay tablets of 18–12 cc. BC. Hittite syntax proves to be more and more interesting for the researchers, so the need of an online annotated corpus for this language is more and more compelling. There are several major problems of building an annotated corpus for a dead cuneiform language. All texts have lacunae in almost every sentence, therefore, it is rather difficult to apply standard methods of parsing and syntactic annotation. The main problem concerns marking up syntax in broken parts. Most treebanks are based on morpho- syntactic annotation performed at the level of a word form. But having half of a sentence lost, we can hardly build a tree out of broken fragments. Instead, we suggest annotation of a whole clause. The paper discusses the principles of syntactic annotation of broken parts and the basic structure of a new syntactically annotated Hittite corpus (available at http://hittitecorpus.ru), the on-going project of the Department of Anatolian and Celtic Studies at the Institute of linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences.

ABSTRACTCounter to findings in English, German and Hebrew, recent acquisition studies have shown that the passive is acquired early in several non-Indo-European languages. In an attempt to explain this phenomenon, this paper addresses certain typological phenomena which influence the early acquisition of passives in Sesotho, a southern Bantu language. After outlining the structure of the Sesotho passive and its syntactic and discourse functions, I examine Sesotho-speaking children's spontaneous use of passives, showing that the acquisition of passives in Sesotho is closely linked to the fact that Sesotho subjects must be discourse topics. I conclude that a detailed examination of how passive constructions interact with other components of a given linguistic system is critical for developing a coherent and universally applicable theory of how passives are acquired.

ABSTRACT This study investigated the effects of repetition on the learning of collocation. Taiwanese university students learning English as a foreign language simultaneously read and listened to one of four versions of a modified graded reader that included different numbers of encounters (1, 5, 10, and 15 encounters) with a set of 18 target collocations. A surprise vocabulary test that was made up of four tests measuring receptive and productive knowledge of the form of the target collocations and receptive and productive knowledge of the form and meaning of these collocations was administered after the treatments. The results showed that (a) collocations can be learned incidentally through reading while listening to a graded reader and (b) the number of encounters has a positive effect on learning. If learners encounter collocations 15 times within a graded reader, sizeable learning gains may occur.

This article represents the first attempt to formulate a hypothetical sequence for German case acquisition by Dutch-speaking learners on the basis of Processability Theory (PT). It will be argued that case forms emerge corresponding to a development from lexical over phrasal to interphrasal morphemes. This development, however, is subject to a correction factor due to the principle of direct mapping. In addition, the unmarked alignment hypothesis allows for a differentiation between similar case contexts (e.g., preverbal and postverbal nominative or accusative arguments). A cross-sectional study was performed in order to examine whether the German case system is indeed acquired according to the hypotheses derived from PT. “Fill-in-the-blanks-exercises” were analyzed from 704 Flemish second-language learners of German. The results of the study do indeed suggest a development in line with PT.

... seeing collocates at both the plus (Webb and Kagimoto 2009) and minus one and two positions (Bahns and Eldaw 1993; Farghal and Obiedat 1995; Chan ... and number of participants) of the scores for the pre-tests and post-tests are reported in Table 3. The mean scores ranged ...

The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural basis of musical phrase boundary processing during the perception of music from native and non-native cultures. German musicians performed a cultural categorization task while listening to phrased Western (native) and Chinese (non-native) musical excerpts as well as modified versions of these, where the impression of phrasing has been reduced by removing the phrase boundary marking pause (henceforth called “unphrased”). Bilateral planum temporale was found to be associated with an increased difficulty of identifying phrase boundaries in unphrased Western melodies. A network involving frontal and parietal regions showed increased activation for the phrased condition with the orbital part of left inferior frontal gyrus presumably reflecting working memory aspects of the temporal integration between phrases, and the middle frontal gyrus and intraparietal sulcus probably reflecting attention processes. Areas more active in the culturally familiar, native (Western) condition included, in addition to the left planum temporale and right ventro-medial prefrontal cortex, mainly the bilateral motor regions. These latter results are interpreted in light of sensorimotor integration. Regions with increased signal for the unfamiliar, non-native music style (Chinese) included a right lateralized network of angular gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus, possibly reflecting higher demands on attention systems, and the right posterior insula suggesting higher loads on basic auditory processing. Hum Brain Mapp, 2008. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

It is generally accepted that formulaic sequences like take the bull by the horns serve an important function in discourse and are widespread in language. It is also generally believed that these sequences are processed more efficiently because single memorized units, even though they are composed of a sequence of individual words, can be processed more quickly and easily than the same sequences of words which are generated creatively (Pawley and Syder 1983). We investigated the hypothesized processing advantage for formulaic sequences by comparing reading times for formulaic sequences versus matched nonformulaic phrases for native and nonnative speakers. It was found that the formulaic sequences were read more quickly than the nonformulaic phrases by both groups of participants. This result supports the assertion that formulaic sequences have a processing advantage over creatively generated language. Interestingly, this processing advantage was in place regardless of whether the formulaic sequences were used idiomatically or literally (e.g. take the bull by the horns = ‘attack a problem’ vs. ‘wrestle an animal’). The fact that the results also held for nonnatives indicates that it is possible for learners to enjoy the same type of processing advantage as natives.

This paper demonstrates that the patterns of Japanese/English code-switching found in Canadian Niseis' (second generation Japanese) in-group speech are conditioned by the varieties of bilingual speech characterized in terms of base language. In the variety where Japanese is the base. English nouns are used (borrowing). In the variety where English is the base. Japanese phrases and sentences occur sporadically. In the variety where neither Japanese nor English predominates, switching of various syntactic items occurs (intrasentential code-switching). Thus, a common word order is not necessary for intrasentential code-switching to take place: borrowing is not the alternative to intrasentential code-switching when two languages with different word order are in contact as Poplack et al. (1989) and Sankoff et al. (1990) claim.

Benedetto Varchi (Florence, 1503-1565), in his lectures (in Accademia Fiorentina) in the years 1543-1564, dedicated mostly to "Divine Comedy" by Dante, provided basis for development of scientific literature in Italian language. Humanist (man of letters), highly educated (in the universities in Padua and Bologna), created expositions of logic studies in Italian language, translating and giving scientific comments on Aristotle’s ideas. From those studies only some manuscripts concerning systematisation and methodology of lectures in scientific knowledge (“exposition” and “explanation”) were published in the nineteenth century. Varchi designed his lectures on basis of “proper way of cognition and knowledge” – synthetic, analytic and defining – indispensable to conduct reasoning and to define research subject. So, he created prose appropriate to exact and natural science, as well as to lectures for diverse audience. Those texts reflect the methodology used in sequence of reasons, in syntax and in terminology which revealed meanings of phenomena. The analysis of syntax, the text construction and the terminology used, carried out in this article, discover and highlight a quality of lectures by Varchi. Lectures that can be an example of new prose which fully developed in scientific texts of the seventeenth century - mostly because of rich and precise scientific language (coming from Greek and Latin), but also enriched by neologisms, as well as by new stylistic based on short sentences, rarely compound, and by creation of sentences based on nouns.
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Benedetto Varchi, nelle sue lezioni tenute all’Accademia Fiorentina (1543-1564) e in gran parte dedicate al commento della "Commedia" e della poesia di Francesco Petrarca, pone le basi di un lavoro volto a costruire il modello di scrittura scientifica in volgare. Grazie a una solida preparazione filosofica, acquisita nei centri universitari di Padova e Bologna, Varchi imposta in volgare l’esposizione dei principi della logica, attraverso la traduzione e soprattutto il commento dell'opera di Aristotele. Di questo suo impegno rimangono alcuni significativi opuscoli, in parte editi nell’Ottocento, una sorta di precettistica della « sposizione e dichiarazione », in cui il letterato fiorentino traccia il metodo per l'acquisizione e l'ordinamento del sapere. E così Varchi costruisce le sue letture accademiche sui procedimenti, « modi particolari d’apparare e di sapere » — « compostivo », « risolutivo » e « diffinitivo » — indispensabili per la dimostrazione di singoli postulati e per l’esatta « determinazione » della materia trattata, mettendo in campo una prosa scientifica adatta all’esposizione orale dinanzi ad un pubblico variegato, in cui l’organizzazione testuale e le strutture sintattiche debbano aderire allo svolgersi del ragionamento e la terminologia renda il significato dei concetti. Dall'analisi della sintassi, della testualità e del lessico emerge il valore delle lezioni varchiane come l'esempio di una nuova prosa argomentativa, che si affermerà a pieno nella scrittura scientifica secentesca: sia per l'uso del lessico ricco di tecnicismi, adattati dal greco e dal latino ma anche formati ex novo tramite la sostantivizzazione e la rideterminazione semantica (« il ricevente », « l’ambiente », « l’astratto », « il concreto », « il difuori »), sia per lo stile spezzettato, l'attenuazione della tensione ipotattica e l'affermarsi delle strutture imperniate sul nome a scapito della centralità del verbo.

A questionnaire used in student evaluations of interdisciplinary courses during six semesters contained two Likert items stated in a direct negative mode which were embedded in a questionnaire (14–18 items) in which the remaining items were phrased in a direct positive mode. In the seventh semester and thereafter, the two negative items were restated as direct positive stems. Item‐analysis demonstrated that in the direct negative mode, the two items had low item‐to‐total correlations and that the internal consistency reliability of the sum score could be improved by eliminating the two negatively phrased items. Also, the two negatively worded items defined a separate factor. After they were reworded into a direct positive mode, these two items showed markedly improved item‐to‐total correlations. Moreover, the unique factor disappeared, which suggests that it was a methodological artefact probably attributable to respondent carelessness. Including a few negative items in an otherwise positively stated questionnaire leads to ambiguity of results rather than controlling for response sets. We therefore recommend against the practice.

... 30. Cf. W. Skyvington 1976, pour une introduction suggestive ainsi que G Denhière 1975, RC Schank 1974 et TA Van Dijk 1976 d. un platane dans les couloirs du métro » n'est plus contradictoire ou aberrant; nous semble-t-il, dans : 55 - « Oscar sortit du métro. ...

In order to leave more time for EFL teachers to work on higher-level re- writing tasks, we decided to develop a computer grammar checker. The first stage of development was devoted to error analysis of 125 writing samples collected from our students. We found 1659 errors and classified them into 14 main types and 93 subtypes. The analysis served as

Hungarian is a language with morphological case marking and relatively free word order. These typological characteristics make it a good ground for testing the crosslinguistic validity of theories on processing sentences with relative clauses. Our study focused on effects of structural factors and processing capacity. We tested 43 typically developing children in two age groups (ages of 4.11–7.2 and 8.2–11.4 years) in an act-out task. Differences in comprehension difficulty between different word order patterns and different head function relations were observed independently of each other. The structural properties causing difficulties in comprehension were interruption of main clauses, greater distance between the verb and its arguments, accusative case of relative pronouns, and SO head-function relations. Importantly, analyses of associations between working memory and sentence comprehension revealed that structural factors made processing difficult by burdening components of working memory. These results support the processing accounts of sentence comprehension in a language typologically different from English.

In this work we will analyze some recent proposals about how the result of the application of a generative algorithm is recognized as a unit for the purposes of further computations, and how each correlates, either explicitly or implicitly, with a model of the mind. We will propose, in line with previous works, that a mixed approach to mental computations (including both Markovian and non-linear dependencies) can prove useful at both theoretical and empirical levels when stated explicitly. We will argue that phrase markers include both kinds of dependencies between terminals and non-terminals: labeling requirements in a theory (which, in turn, interact with other conditions on phrase structure, binarity being the most notable) give away the conception a certain theory has about the (uniform or not) functioning of the mind.

Verb-doubling, where a copy of the main verb occurs both before and after the direct object, is a structure commonly used in Chinese in sentences containing a frequency or duration phrase. In Cantonese, verb-doubling is highly optional and therefore problematic for existing syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic accounts of its distribution in Mandarin. The current study investigates the role of grammatical weight and syntactic priming in the choice of verb-doubling in Cantonese. Following (Hawkins in Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004) theory of efficiency and complexity in grammars, we hypothesized that speakers would choose verb-doubling over the canonical structure more often when the object NP was heavy, in order to minimize processing domains. In addition, we expected an effect of syntactic priming whereby the choice of structure is influenced by a previously encountered structure. The results of two elicited production experiments revealed no weight-based preference for verb-doubling, and only minor effects of grammatical weight, but clear effects of syntactic priming: (1) for both canonical primes and verb-doubling primes, speakers tended to repeat previously heard structures; (2) the priming effect was just as strong in the heavy NP condition, where speakers made more errors recalling the semantic content of the sentence, suggesting that semantic information is represented separately from syntactic information; (3) the priming effect was stronger for
informationally accurate responses, suggesting that recently activated structures are easier to produce than other structures under conditions of increased cognitive load. We conclude that the choice between verb-doubling and canonical structure in Cantonese is easily influenced by the structure of recently encountered sentences, with weight effects, if any, being more difficult to detect.

This article investigates the construction of the grammatical frame in codeswitching in terms of the roles played by the two languages in contact, referred to here as the Matrix Language(ML) and Embedded Language(EL). In “classic” codeswitching, the ML sets the grammatical frame; in addition, however, we claim that the ML frame may be synchronically variable and may converge toward the EL with increased duration of bilingualism. This process has been called an ML turnover, and these data show the roots of this development. We present data from German-English codeswitching on grammatical gender assignment and article use in noun phrases. These features have been chosen for analysis because they are aspects of the noun phrase in which English and German exhibit structural differences, and it is important to study how bilinguals deal with the lack of congruence in codeswitching structures. For grammatical gender assignment, the ML(in this case, German) determines the codeswitching stru...

This study investigates the manner in which syntax, prosody, and con-text interact when second-and fourth-semester college-level English-French learners process relative clause (RC) attachment to either the first noun phrase (NP1) or the second noun phrase (NP2) in ...

An important component of fluent linguistic production is control of the multi-word expressions referred to as clusters, chunks or bundles. These are extended collocations which appear more frequently than expected by chance, helping to shape meanings in specific contexts and contributing to our sense of coherence in a text. Bundles have begun to attract considerable attention in corpus studies in EAP, although the extent to which they differ by discipline remains an open question. This paper explores the forms, structures and functions of 4-word bun-dles in a 3.5 million word corpus of research articles, doctoral dissertations and Master’s theses in four disciplines to learn something of disciplinary variations in their frequencies and preferred uses. The analysis shows that bundles are not on-ly central to the creation of academic discourse, but that they offer an important means of differentiating written texts by discipline.