Generative metrics and Old French octosyllabic verse

2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf Noyer
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Old French ◽  
Gradual Change ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Binary Constituent ◽  
Large Corpus

Both Old French meters and their Modern French descendants are usually thought to lack the internal binary constituent structure of, say, English or German iambic verse. In this article, however, an underlying iambic structure for the Old French octosyllable is established through quantitative analysis of a large corpus of texts written from c. 975 to 1180 (42 distinct works, including over 22,000 lines). Because no texts conform absolutely to the grammar of English iambic verse (Halle & Keyser, 1971; Kiparsky, 1977), certain measures are proposed for the degree to which a sample deviates from the iambic pattern; these values are then compared with the (chance) deviation of normal Old French prose. A significant correlation emerges between these measures and date of composition, author, and genre: early texts are almost perfectly iambic, and late 12th-century texts approach, but do not reach, chance levels. It is concluded that the grammar of meter used by Old French authors underwent a gradual change during the 12th century, a change comparable to more familiar phonological and syntactic changes.

A quantitative analysis of the effect of excision of the AER from the chick limb-bud

Development ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-660
Author(s):  
Dennis Summerbell
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Method ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Apical Ectodermal Ridge ◽  
Rate Of Change ◽  
Limb Bud ◽  
Zone Model ◽  
Gradual Change ◽  
Analysis Of Results ◽  
Positional Value

The effect of removal of the apical ectodermal ridge from the early chick limb-bud is re-examined using a new quantitative method of analysis of results. The concept of the proximo-distal sequence of laying down of parts is confirmed and evidence is presented thatthis proceeds as a continuous process, there being a gradual change in the level specified from one cell to another at a more distal level. The results are then interpreted in terms of the ‘progress zone’ model to show that they are both consistent with the model and that they provide an assay for one of its parameters, the rate of change of positional value with time at the tip.

Grammar and Lexicon in Individuals With Autism: A Quantitative Analysis of a Large Italian Corpus

2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 373-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arjuna Tuzzi
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Written Production ◽  
Statistical Procedures ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Distributional Patterns ◽  
Large Corpus

Abstract Statistical and linguistic procedures were implemented to analyze a large corpus of texts written by 37 individuals with autism and 92 facilitators (without disabilities), producing written conversations by means of PCs. Such texts were compared and contrasted to identify the specific traits of the lexis of the group of individuals with autism and assess to what extent it differed from the lexis of the facilitators. The purpose of this research was to identify specific language features using statistical procedures to analyze contingency lexical tables that reported on the frequencies of words and grammatical categories in different subcorpora and among different writers. The results support the existence of lexis and distributional patterns of grammatical categories that are characteristic of the written production of individuals with autism and that are different from those of facilitators.

La réciprocité dans les langues romanes anciennes

Revue Romane ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Nkollo
Keyword(s):  
Old French ◽  
European Languages ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Evolutionary Pathways ◽  
Old Portuguese

The paper traces evolutionary pathways of various methods of expressing reciprocity found in Old French (12th century) and Old Portuguese (13–15th century) texts. Most of grammaticalization patterns responsible for the emergence of reciprocal markers and documented in human languages are demonstrated to have been active in Old Romance, too. Medieval reciprocal exponents are first compared with their Latin ancestors to show what Romance innovations consisted in and what formal means were retained throughout. Then, an account is given of how the two languages were different from each other. Finally, two suggestions are made on how current grammaticalization theory can be modified so as to grasp more efficiently the origin of reciprocal markers found in European languages.

The Teaching of Latin as a Second Language in the 12th Century

1980 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 159-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Elementary Education ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old French ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Middle High German ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Educational Plan ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Mode Of Instruction

Summary One of the most obvious, yet little studied, facts about Europe of the High Middle ages is that Latin was in all times and all places a foreign language. It had to be learned as an overlay on some other native language like Old French, Irish, or Middle High German. How was this second language acquired? A survey of textbooks and teaching methods indicates that by the 12th-century European schoolmasters had evolved an effective, commonly-used mode of instruction utilizing the best elements of ancient, patristic, insular, and Carolingian programs. At the heart of the system was a sequence of Christian (or Christianized) progymnasmata. Both dialectic and rhetoric were elementary subjects along with grammar until the burgeoning university structure preempted dialectic and displaced rhetoric to leave grammar the basic subject for elementary education. In 12th-century schools pupils started with sounds, not rules, with writing and speaking skills taught together. This carefully devised educational plan contributed a good deal to the quality of Latin literature of the period.

Epidemic and population patterns in the Chinese Empire (243b.c.e. to 1911c.e.): quantitative analysis of a unique but neglected epidemic catalogue

2009 ◽  
Vol 137 (10) ◽  
pp. 1361-1368 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. MORABIA
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
The North ◽  
The People ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Chinese Empire ◽  
North And South ◽  
Epidemic Diseases

SUMMARYA catalogue of dates and places of major outbreaks of epidemic diseases, that occurred in the Chinese Empire between 243b.c.e. and 1911c.e., combined with corresponding demographic data, provides a unique opportunity to explore how the pressure of epidemics grew in an agrarian society over 2000 years. This quantitative analysis reveals that: (1) the frequency of outbreaks increased slowly before the 12th century and rapidly thereafter, until 1872; (2) in the first millennium of our era, the people of China lived for decades free of major epidemics; in the second millennium, major outbreaks occurred every couple of years, but were localized; (3) in the more recent centuries, these outbreaks were as common, but disseminated to more places. This evolution, closely matching the demographic growth, was similar in the north and south of China, and therefore may have been similar in other regions of the world.

scholarly journals The Socio-historical Factor Behind Change in Meaning: The Case of Old French

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 26-36
Author(s):  
Rose Sene
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Old French ◽  
Change Of Direction ◽  
Feudal Society ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Factor ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Semantic Evolution

This article is about studying an essential factor in the change of direction. The analysis of the semantic evolution of words in usage makes it possible to compare the meanings of words between different periods in the history of the language. The comparison is made here prospectively, thus going back to the etymological meanings and to the first meanings found in Old French. This shows that the words adapt to the social, historical and cultural situation as well as the expressive needs of its users. Beyond the comparison which puts the etymon and the word in parallel in the context of the 12th century with a feudal society governed by chivalrous values, we notice these semantic changes imbued with the history and the lived experience of the speakers. Words have acquired new meanings from the change of context and to meet the demands of a new context. The history of French therefore teaches us that language is a system subject to change. The evolution of language brings about the evolution of the meaning of words. These changes in meaning take place for different reasons which involve the speaker and which are correlated with context and socio-historical events. Various factors are likely to motivate the passage from one direction to another. The procedures are also varied and always offer surprising results which arouse the curiosity of the researcher. Both should be considered as a whole and analyzed according to usage to judge their relevance. We have learned from this study that the French language, as well as any other language, lives and progresses to meet the need for expression of speakers.

Parliamentary impoliteness and the interpreter’s gender

Pragmatics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-484
Author(s):  
Magdalena Bartłomiejczyk
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Common Phenomenon ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Filtering Effect ◽  
Large Corpus

Abstract Impoliteness is a common phenomenon across various democratically elected parliaments. However, in multilingual legislative bodies such as the European Parliament speakers have to rely on interpreters to transfer pragmatic meaning, including face-threatening acts and impoliteness. The existing research in the field of Interpreting Studies offers much evidence of the filtering effect that interpreting may have on impoliteness, through facework strategies introduced by interpreters. The main question here is whether female interpreters tend to mitigate grave, intentional impoliteness to a greater degree than male interpreters. My analysis of a large corpus composed of English-Polish interpretations of speeches by Eurosceptic MEPs shows that mitigation of impoliteness by interpreters is a widespread phenomenon. The illocutionary force of original statements is often modified by means of diverse interpreting strategies. However, the quantitative analysis of interpreter facework does not reveal a statistically significant gender-based difference in the distribution of approaches towards impoliteness.

scholarly journals Kvistur: Vélræn stofnhlutagreining samsettra orða

Orð og tunga ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Jón Friðrik Daðason ◽  
Kristín Bjarnadóttir
Keyword(s):  
Machine Translation ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Unknown Compound ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Binary Constituent ◽  
Very High ◽  
Word Frequencies

Compounding is extremely productive in Icelandic and multi-word compounds are common. The likelihood of finding previously unseen compounds in texts is thus very high, which makes out-of-vocabulary words a problem in the use of NLP tools. Kvistur, the decompounder described in this paper, splits Icelandic compounds and shows their binary constituent structure. The probability of a constituent in an unknown (or unanalysed) compound forming a combined constituent with either of its neighbours is estimated, with the use of data on the constituent structure of over 240 thousand compounds from the Database of Modern Icelandic Inflection (Kristín Bjarna-dótt ir 2012), and word frequencies from Íslenskur orðasjóður, a corpus of approx. 550 million words. Thus, the structure of an unknown compound is derived by comparison with compounds with partially the same constituents and similar structure in the training data. The granularity of the split returned by the decompounder is important in tasks such as semantic analysis or machine translation, where a fl at (non-structured) sequence of constituents is insufficient.

The variable use of determiners in Old French and the argument DP hypothesis

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique Dufresne ◽  
Mireille Tremblay ◽  
Rose-Marie Déchaine
Keyword(s):  
Old French ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Semantic Class ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Abstract Nouns ◽  
Gradual Disappearance ◽  
Syntactic Function ◽  
Function Number

Abstract The argument DP hypothesis, adopted by many syntactic analyses, claims that nominal arguments are introduced by a determiner (D), which may be covert or overt. While overt D is obligatory in Modern French (consistent with the argument DP hypothesis), it was not obligatory in earlier stages of French. We explore the factors that contributed to this change – including semantic class, syntactic function, number, and definiteness – focusing on a shift that occurred in the D-paradigm in two Anglo-Norman texts of the 12th century. Quantitative analysis (Goldvarb) yields two major findings. First, the effect of syntactic function remains constant: subject position favours overt D, but object position inhibits it. Second, there is a change in the effect of semantic class: count nouns increasingly favour overt D, but non-count (mass and abstract) nouns increasingly inhibit it. More generally, the gradual disappearance of bare Ns in French reflects the emergence of paradigmatically conditioned D.

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