Performance of Adult Aphasics on a Sentence Evaluation and Revision Task

1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-560
Author(s):  
Lynn S. Bliss ◽  
Arthur M. Guilford ◽  
Ronald S. Tikofsky
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Performance Deficits ◽  
Revision Error ◽  
Grammatical Structures ◽  
A Performance

Adult aphasics completed a sentence evaluation and revision task to test some aspects of their linguistic competence. Grammatical and ungrammatical sentences served as the stimuli. Ungrammatical sentences were characterized by violations of syntactic or semantic structure, or both. Aphasics evaluated correctly the grammatically of most stimulus sentences. Incorrect evaluations were associated with sentences characterized by violations of syntactic structure. Aphasics' revisions of sentences that they judged to be ungrammatical were in the direction of appropriate grammatical structures. Omission of morphological endings was the most frequent sentence revision error. Aphasics' errors on both tasks could be accounted for by performance deficits such as inattentiveness to syntactic detail, auditory perceptual impairments, and inefficient lexical retrieval. These findings lend support to the argument that aphasia is best characterized as a performance rather than competence disruption.

An extension of the comparative sociolinguistics approach for sociosyntax

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Comeau
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Temporal Reference ◽  
Generative Theory ◽  
Single Constraint ◽  
Variationist Sociolinguistics ◽  
Acadian French ◽  
Grammatical Structures ◽  
Future Temporal Reference

This paper integrates aspects of both generative theory and variationist sociolinguistics. To compare the structure of two varieties of French (Acadian French and Laurentian French), I adapt the comparative sociolinguistics approach to compare the syntactic structure of these varieties. Specifically, I focus on the effects of a single linguistic constraint across multiple sociolinguistic variables. I argue that such a comparison provides insights into the underlying grammatical structures of the varieties under comparison, differences that may have remained hidden otherwise. To illustrate the approach, I focus on a single constraint, sentential polarity, and I analyze its effects on two sociolinguistic variables, yes/no questions and future temporal reference. Results show that the polarity constraint is operative in Laurentian French for both variables, but inoperative in Acadian French. To account for this difference, I argue that Laurentian French negative structures involve a negative head above the tense phrase while Acadian French does not.

scholarly journals Conceptual Sentiment Analysis Model

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 2358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kranti Vithal Ghag ◽  
Ketan Shah
Keyword(s):  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Relative Frequency ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Average Frequency ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Inverse Document Frequency ◽  
Document Frequency ◽  
Improve Accuracy

<span>Bag-of-words approach is popularly used for Sentiment analysis. It maps the terms in the reviews to term-document vectors and thus disrupts the syntactic structure of sentences in the reviews. Association among the terms or the semantic structure of sentences is also not preserved. This research work focuses on classifying the sentiments by considering the syntactic and semantic structure of the sentences in the review. To improve accuracy, sentiment classifiers based on relative frequency, average frequency and term frequency inverse document frequency were proposed. To handle terms with apostrophe, preprocessing techniques were extended. To focus on opinionated contents, subjectivity extraction was performed at phrase level. Experiments were performed on Pang &amp; Lees, Kaggle’s and UCI’s dataset. Classifiers were also evaluated on the UCI’s Product and Restaurant dataset. Sentiment Classification accuracy improved from 67.9% for a comparable term weighing technique, DeltaTFIDF, up to 77.2% for proposed classifiers. Inception of the proposed concept based approach, subjectivity extraction and extensions to preprocessing techniques, improved the accuracy to 93.9%.</span>

scholarly journals Syntactic and Semantic Modulation of Neural Activity during Auditory Sentence Comprehension

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 665-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Humphries ◽  
Jeffrey R. Binder ◽  
David A. Medler ◽  
Einat Liebenthal
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Imaging Study ◽  
Angular Gyrus ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Word Lists

In previous functional neuroimaging studies, left anterior temporal and temporal-parietal areas responded more strongly to sentences than to randomly ordered lists of words. The smaller response for word lists could be explained by either (1) less activation of syntactic processes due to the absence of syntactic structure in the random word lists or (2) less activation of semantic processes resulting from failure to combine the content words into a global meaning. To test these two explanations, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which word order and combinatorial word meaning were independently manipulated during auditory comprehension. Subjects heard six different stimuli: normal sentences, semantically incongruent sentences in which content words were randomly replaced with other content words, pseudoword sentences, and versions of these three sentence types in which word order was randomized to remove syntactic structure. Effects of syntactic structure (greater activation to sentences than to word lists) were observed in the left anterior superior temporal sulcus and left angular gyrus. Semantic effects (greater activation to semantically congruent stimuli than either incongruent or pseudoword stimuli) were seen in widespread, bilateral temporal lobe areas and the angular gyrus. Of the two regions that responded to syntactic structure, the angular gyrus showed a greater response to semantic structure, suggesting that reduced activation for word lists in this area is related to a disruption in semantic processing. The anterior temporal lobe, on the other hand, was relatively insensitive to manipulations of semantic structure, suggesting that syntactic information plays a greater role in driving activation in this area.

scholarly journals DISAPPEARING PARTICIPANTS IN THE KHMER SENTENCE: SEMANTIC INCORPORATION, EXCORPORATION, ZERO ANAPHORA

2020 ◽  
pp. 281-293
Author(s):  
T. G. Pogibenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Explicit Representation ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Zero Anaphora ◽  
Language Data ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Structure Language

The paper deals with representation of obligatory participants of a situation described by the verb which do not get a syntactic role in the syntactic structure of a Khmer sentence, i. e. incorporation in the verb semantic structure, excorporation into a lexical complex, deictic zero, zero anaphors. Special attention is paid to the role of lexical complex, which is a unique resource of the Khmer language, and its use for implicit and explicit representation of the participants of the situation described. An issue of a particular interest is participants’ representation as a component of a lexical complex, rather than a component of the sentence syntactic structure. Language data of Modern Khmer, Middle Khmer, and Old Khmer is used to show that this mode of representation has been used throughout the whole period of the evolution of Khmer beginning with the Old Khmer inscriptions. An attempt is made to reveal the functional character of the phenomenon discussed. It is maintained that this strategy is used for semantic derivation, for a more detailed conceptualization of the situation described, as well as for word polysemy elimination in the text. Examples are cited where lexical complexes with incorporated participants are used to make up for the inherent semantic emptiness of predicates of evaluation. In case of participants incorporated in deictic verbs, the deictic zero in Khmer may refer to participants other than “observer”. Specific features of zero anaphora in Khmer are also mentioned.

scholarly journals Effects of metric hierarchy and rhyme predictability on word duration in The Cat in the Hat

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mara Breen
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Model Fit ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Interval Duration ◽  
Frequency Word ◽  
Children's Book ◽  
Work Factors ◽  
Word Duration ◽  
Improved Model

Word durations convey many types of linguistic information, including intrinsic lexical features like length and frequency and contextual features like syntactic and semantic structure. The current study was designed to investigate whether hierarchical metric structure and rhyme predictability account for durational variation over and above other features in productions of a rhyming, metrically-regular children's book: The Cat in the Hat (Dr. Seuss, 1957). One-syllable word durations and inter-onset intervals were modeled as functions of segment number, lexical frequency, word class, syntactic structure, repetition, and font emphasis. Consistent with prior work, factors predicting longer word durations and inter-onset intervals included more phonemes, lower frequency, first mention, alignment with a syntactic boundary, and capitalization. A model parameter corresponding to metric grid height improved model fit of word durations and inter-onset intervals. Specifically, speakers realized five levels of metric hierarchy with inter-onset intervals such that interval duration increased linearly with increased height in the metric hierarchy. Conversely, speakers realized only three levels of metric hierarchy with word duration, demonstrating that they shortened the highly predictable rhyme resolutions. These results further understanding of the factors that affect spoken word duration, and demonstrate the myriad cues that children receive about linguistic structure from nursery rhymes.

Priming semantic structure in Brazilian Portuguese

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayden Ziegler ◽  
Rodrigo Morato ◽  
Jesse Snedeker
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Locative Alternation ◽  
Change Of State

Structural priming, the tendency for speakers to reuse previously encountered sentence structures, provides some of the strongest evidence for the existence of abstract structural representations in language. In the present research, we investigate the priming of semantic structure in Brazilian Portuguese using the locative alternation: A menina lustrou a mesa com o verniz “The girl rubbed the table with the polish” vs. A menina lustrou o verniz na mesa “The girl rubbed the polish on the table.” On the surface, both locative variants have the same syntactic structure: NP-V-NP-PP. However, location-theme locatives (“rub table with polish” describe a caused-change-of-state event, while theme-location locatives (“rub polish on table”) describe a caused-change-of-location event. We find robust priming on the basis of these semantic differences. This work extends our knowledge by demonstrating that semantic structural priming is not isolated to languages like English (e.g., satellite-framed with strict word order and limited inflection) but is present in a language with very different typological characteristics (e.g., verb-framed and richly inflected with subject dropping).

Development of Communication Skills through Auditory Training Software in Special Education

2018 ◽  
pp. 2431-2441
Author(s):  
Eduardo C. Contreras ◽  
Isis I. Contreras
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Auditory Training ◽  
School Students ◽  
Educational Support ◽  
Semantic Fields ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Structure Education

There have been issues identified regarding the education of children with hearing disorders. Those do not allow the development of communicative-linguistic competence and language, in addition to an efficient oral or written communication. This causes deficits in vocabulary, delay in morph syntactic structure. Education Technologies such as auditory training software have become an educational support for teachers and students. Software was developed to improve communication skills divided into modules with ascending degrees of difficulty they are presented in various environments and semantic fields. After about 4 months of effective use in an eight month period, applied to 45 preschool and elementary school students aged between 4 and 12 years, considering that 11 children present auditory handicap and the rest intellectual handicap, the results obtained were the following: The learning is globally 30% of the vocabulary contained in the application, 30 of 90 words. Word articulation is improved 50%, in attention span the period of attention increased from 3 to about 9 minutes.

Development of Communication Skills Through Auditory Training Software in Special Education

2019 ◽  
pp. 263-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo C. Contreras ◽  
Isis I. Contreras
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Auditory Training ◽  
School Students ◽  
Educational Support ◽  
Semantic Fields ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Structure Education

There have been issues identified regarding the education of children with hearing disorders. Those do not allow the development of communicative-linguistic competence and language, in addition to an efficient oral or written communication. This causes deficits in vocabulary, delay in morph syntactic structure. Education technologies such as auditory training software have become an educational support for teachers and students. The software was developed to improve communication skills and divided into modules with ascending degrees of difficulty. They are presented in various environments and semantic fields. After about 4 months of effective use in an 8-month period, applied to 45 preschool and elementary school students aged between 4 and 12 years, considering that 11 children present auditory handicap and the rest intellectual handicap, the results obtained were the following: the learning is globally 30% of the vocabulary contained in the application, 30 of 90 words. Word articulation is improved 50%; in attention span, the period of attention increased from 3 to about 9 minutes.

Meaning and semantic composition

2019 ◽  
pp. 276-321
Author(s):  
Mary Dalrymple ◽  
John J. Lowe ◽  
Louise Mycock
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Linear Logic ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Semantic Composition ◽  
Tense And Aspect

This chapter explores the theory of the relation between syntax and meaning, examining how the meaning of an utterance is determined on the basis of its syntactic structure. The existence of a separate level of semantic structure or s-structure, related to the f-structure by a correspondence function is assumed. Some previous LFG approaches to semantics and the syntax-semantics interface are briefly reviewed before an introduction to the glue approach to semantic composition (Section 8.5). This approach, which is adopted in the rest of the book, provides a firm theoretical foundation for the discussions and analyses that are presented. The properties of thefragment of linear logic that are used in this book are introduced in Section 8.7. A detailed account of the semantics of quantification within the glue approach is provided in Section 8.8. The representation of semantic features is discussed in Section 8.9, and how to represent tense and aspect inSection 8.10.

Preliminary Research on Perceiving Patterns of Underwater Acoustic Transients

1980 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 292-296
Author(s):  
James A. Ballas ◽  
James H. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Underwater Acoustic ◽  
The Third ◽  
Pure Tones ◽  
Preliminary Research ◽  
Random Patterns ◽  
Acoustic Transients

The present studies were conducted to determine whether an implicit structure or grammar has an effect on a listener's ability to classify transient patterns. Three experiments were conducted. In each there were two groups, one which learned a set of structured patterns and one which learned a set of random patterns. In the first study, the structure was syntactic and pure tones were used to construct the patterns. In the second study, the structure was also only syntactic but a semantic structure was implied by using meaningful sounds. In the third study, both syntactic and semantic structure were used and the stimuli were water related acoustic transients. The results indicated that the listeners used the structure to identify the patterns even though they were unaware of its exact nature. The strongest facilitation was produced by both syntactic and semantic structure. Syntactic structure generally facilitated the listener's task but not as much when a semantic structure was implied but not present. In this case, the listeners' attempts to find a semantic structure interfered with their utilization of the syntactic structure.

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