scholarly journals Verb-Initial versus Subject-Initial Clauses in Greek: Eventuality Existentials versus Predication Clauses

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-322
Author(s):  
Yoryia Agouraki
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Order Property ◽  
Complementary Distribution ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Syntactic Derivation ◽  
Semantic Distinction

The paper aims to describe (a) the distribution, (b) the semantic interpretation and (c) the semantic and syntactic derivation of verb-initial versus subject-initial clauses in Greek. Concerning (a), it is argued that the verb-initial and the subject-initial word orders are in complementary distribution. A particular numeration can be assembled in only one way, i.e. as a verb-initial or as a subject-initial word order. The properties of the numeration that play a role in determining the word order for that numeration include the syntactic type of the predicate, the presence or not of non-arguments, the presence or not of sentential operators, and the mode of presenting information. Concerning (b), it is proposed that the semantic interpretation of verb-initial versus subject-initial clauses can be described as a clause-type distinction between eventuality existentials versus predication clauses. Concerning (c), it is proposed that this clause-type distinction has to do with how the subject and the predicate are put together semantically/syntactically. Namely, it is proposed that in eventuality existentials (the entity denoted by) the subject saturates/is selected by (the property denoted by) the predicate, while in predication clauses it is (the property denoted by) the predicate that saturates/is ‘selected’ by (the second-order property denoted by) the subject. For the proposed analysis to be right, (a) the clause-type distinction between eventuality existentials and predication clauses, (b) the complementary distribution of the two clause types and (c) the semantic/syntactic derivation for the two clause types must be part of UG. What cannot be part of UG is the syntactic manifestation of this semantic distinction across languages.

Syntax meets discourse: Locative and deictic (directional) inversion in English

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-276
Author(s):  
Ana Ojea
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Functional Category ◽  
Computational Requirement ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Locative Inversion ◽  
Syntactic Derivation

AbstractThis paper offers a formal analysis of three constructions in English: locative inversion, central deictic inversion and directional inversion. These constructions constitute thetic statements with a locative intentional base which sets a scene that (re)introduces an entity in the discourse; syntactically, they display a non-canonical word order and have a number of unusual grammatical properties which make them particularly interesting to show how syntax connects, and adapts, to discourse. I propose that they all obtain from a language particular mechanism which involves a functional category LocP that adjusts the computational requirement to have a preverbal subject to the intentional need to have the subject post-verbally. As for the differences among them, they are approached in terms of the features that head LocP and the lexical properties of the verbs that head each of the structures. Ultimately, the paper also serves to discuss the role of certain informational features (the so-called core intentional features) in the syntactic derivation.

Metaontology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uriah Kriegel
Keyword(s):  
Second Order ◽  
Order Property ◽  
First Order ◽  
First Approximation

Brentano’s theory of judgment serves as a springboard for his conception of reality, indeed for his ontology. It does so, indirectly, by inspiring a very specific metaontology. To a first approximation, ontology is concerned with what exists, metaontology with what it means to say that something exists. So understood, metaontology has been dominated by three views: (i) existence as a substantive first-order property that some things have and some do not, (ii) existence as a formal first-order property that everything has, and (iii) existence as a second-order property of existents’ distinctive properties. Brentano offers a fourth and completely different approach to existence talk, however, one which falls naturally out of his theory of judgment. The purpose of this chapter is to present and motivate Brentano’s approach.

Deadjectival Verbs of Essive Semantics in German, English and Ukrainian: A Typological Approach

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-39
Author(s):  
Andrey A. Pouzik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Difference ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Semantic Group ◽  
Inactive State ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Typological Approach ◽  
Semantically Heterogeneous ◽  
Model Subject ◽  
Interpretation Model

The peculiarities of the semantics and structure of verbs derived from adjectives in German, English, and Ukrainian have been analyzed. The verbal lexemes of the languages compared can be defined by means of a semantic interpretation model “Subject of a Situation Is a Motivating Adjective”; they constitute a semantically heterogeneous group of “essive” verbs (from Lat. esse - ‘to be'). Within the framework of the derivational category of “essive” verbs at the level of derivational semantics subcategories, semantic groups and subgroups have been distinguished. In the semantic structure of “essive” deadjectival verbs of German, English, and Ukrainian, the opposition is reproduced on the basis of an “active/inactive state of the subject of a situation when revealing a feature denoted by a motivating adjective”. On this basis, the “essive” verbs of the compared languages are divided into two derivational subcategories: “proper essive” deadjectival verbs (inactive state of the subject of a situation when revealing a feature) and “quasi-essive” verbs derived from adjectives (active state of the subject when revealing a feature). In terms of interlingual comparison, the author notes the quantitative superiority of the two subcategories of the Ukrainian “active” deadjectival verbs over the corresponding subcategories of German and English, while within each language of comparison the quantitative ratios of the selected subcategories are different: in Ukrainian the subcategory of “proper essive” deadjectival verbs is superior over the subcategory of “quasi-essive” verbs, while in German and English the “quasi-essive” deadjectival verbs are quantitatively superior over the subcategory of “proper essive” deadjectival verbs (in German the quantitative difference is insignificant (nine verbs), and in English the group of “quasi-essive” deadjectival verbs is almost twice as big as in German). Within the selected derivational subcategories of the languages compared and on the basis of the presence/absence and nature of certain additional semantic components in the semantic structure of “essive” deadjectival verbs, semantic groups have been distinguished. Two semantic groups can be clearly distinguished within “proper essive” deadjectival verbs, depending on whether the feature revealed by the subject of a situation is necessarily visually perceptible (“expositive”) or visually imperceptible (“intra-essive”). The group of “expositive” deadjectival verbs of Ukrainian is eight times as big as the corresponding semantic group in German, while in English no deadjectival verbs of “expositive” semantics have been found. In German and English, the main way to derive essive verbs from adjectives is conversion (85% and 56%, respectively). In English, conversion is supplemented with suffix models (44%). Essive suffix deadjectival verbs make up 100% of the material in Ukrainian and 15% in German.

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Blanchette ◽  
Chris Collins
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Double Negation ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
West Texas ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scope Freezing

AbstractThis article presents a novel analysis ofNegative Auxiliary Inversion(NAI) constructions such asdidn't many people eat, in which a negated auxiliary appears in pre-subject position. NAI, found in varieties including Appalachian, African American, and West Texas English, has a word order identical to a yes/no question, but is pronounced and interpreted as a declarative. We propose that NAI subjects are negative DPs, and that the negation raises from the subject DP to adjoin to Fin (a functional head in the left periphery). Three properties of NAI motivate this analysis: (i) scope freezing effects, (ii) the various possible and impossible NAI subject types, and (iii) the incompatibility of NAI constructions with true Double-Negation interpretations. Implications for theories of Negative Concord, Negative Polarity Items, and the representation of negation are discussed.

Objects in the German prefield

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-39
Author(s):  
Markus Bader
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Demonstrative Pronoun ◽  
New Findings ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Speakers ◽  
Referential Form ◽  
Free Word

From the perspective of language production, this chapter discusses the question of whether to move the subject or the object to the clause-initial position in a German Verb Second clause. A review of experimental investigations of language production shows that speakers of German tend to order arguments in such a way that the most accessible argument comes first, with accessibility defined in terms like animacy (‘animate before inanimate’) and discourse status (e.g. ‘given before new’). Speakers of German thus obey the same ordering principles that have been found to be at work in English and other languages. Despite the relative free word order of German, speakers rarely produce sentences with object-before-subject word order in experimental investigations. Instead, they behave like speakers of English and mostly use passivization in order to bring the underlying object argument in front of the underlying subject argument when the object is more accessible than the subject. Corpus data, however, show that object-initial clauses are not so infrequent after all. The second part of the chapter, therefore, discusses new findings concerning the discourse conditions that favour the production of object-initial clauses. These findings indicate, among other things, that the clausal position of an object is affected not only by its referent’s discourse status but also by its referential form. Objects occur in clause-initial position most frequently when referring to a given referent in the form of a demonstrative pronoun or NP.

Optimal Sequential Detection of Stimuli from Multiunit Recordings Taken in Densely Populated Brain Regions

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 895-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nir Nossenson ◽  
Hagit Messer
Keyword(s):  
Order Statistics ◽  
Single Neuron ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Detection Scheme ◽  
Second Order Statistics ◽  
Optimal Detector ◽  
Electrode Voltage ◽  
The Subject ◽  
High Pass

We address the problem of detecting the presence of a recurring stimulus by monitoring the voltage on a multiunit electrode located in a brain region densely populated by stimulus reactive neurons. Published experimental results suggest that under these conditions, when a stimulus is present, the measurements are gaussian with typical second-order statistics. In this letter we systematically derive a generic, optimal detector for the presence of a stimulus in these conditions and describe its implementation. The optimality of the proposed detector is in the sense that it maximizes the life span (or time to injury) of the subject. In addition, we construct a model for the acquired multiunit signal drawing on basic assumptions regarding the nature of a single neuron, which explains the second-order statistics of the raw electrode voltage measurements that are high-pass-filtered above 300 Hz. The operation of the optimal detector and that of a simpler suboptimal detection scheme is demonstrated by simulations and on real electrophysiological data.

scholarly journals Universals of word order reflect optimization of grammars for efficient communication

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (5) ◽  
pp. 2347-2353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hahn ◽  
Dan Jurafsky ◽  
Richard Futrell
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Network Models ◽  
Neural Network Models ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Large Scale Data ◽  
Efficient Communication ◽  
Universal Properties ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scale Data

The universal properties of human languages have been the subject of intense study across the language sciences. We report computational and corpus evidence for the hypothesis that a prominent subset of these universal properties—those related to word order—result from a process of optimization for efficient communication among humans, trading off the need to reduce complexity with the need to reduce ambiguity. We formalize these two pressures with information-theoretic and neural-network models of complexity and ambiguity and simulate grammars with optimized word-order parameters on large-scale data from 51 languages. Evolution of grammars toward efficiency results in word-order patterns that predict a large subset of the major word-order correlations across languages.

Coherence of subsumption, minimum typing and type-checking in F ≤

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre-Louis Curien ◽  
Giorgio Ghelli
Keyword(s):  
Normal Form ◽  
Type System ◽  
Lambda Calculus ◽  
Complete Information ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Type Checking ◽  
Rewriting System ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Rewriting Rules

A subtyping relation ≤ between types is often accompanied by a typing rule, called subsumption: if a term a has type T and T≤U, then a has type U. In presence of subsumption, a well-typed term does not codify its proof of well typing. Since a semantic interpretation is most naturally defined by induction on the structure of typing proofs, a problem of coherence arises: different typing proofs of the same term must have related meanings. We propose a proof-theoretical, rewriting approach to this problem. We focus on F≤, a second-order lambda calculus with bounded quantification, which is rich enough to make the problem interesting. We define a normalizing rewriting system on proofs, which transforms different proofs of the same typing judgement into a unique normal proof, with the further property that all the normal proofs assigning different types to a given term in a given environment differ only by a final application of the subsumption rule. This rewriting system is not defined on the proofs themselves but on the terms of an auxiliary type system, in which the terms carry complete information about their typing proof. This technique gives us three different results:— Any semantic interpretation is coherent if and only if our rewriting rules are satisfied as equations.— We obtain a proof of the existence of a minimum type for each term in a given environment.— From an analysis of the shape of normal form proofs, we obtain a deterministic typechecking algorithm, which is sound and complete by construction.

On the Interconnection of a Range and the Second-Order Cluster

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Графский ◽  
O. Grafskiy
Keyword(s):  
Computer Graphics ◽  
Computational Geometry ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Multimedia Systems ◽  
First Order ◽  
Dual Form ◽  
Eastern State ◽  
The Subject ◽  
General Abstract ◽  
Far Eastern

In accordance with “Specialized sections of affine, projective and computational geometry” syllabus for Master’s degree program in “Multimedia systems and computer graphics” developed at the Far Eastern State Transport University, the subject “Projective theory of the second-order curves” is considered [4; 14; 18]. Both at the sources mentioned and the textbook [11] projective method of the second-order curves formation as a range of the second order and its dual form – a second-order cluster (with regard to well-known theorems and relations, including Pascal and Brianchon theorems) is discernible. However, the graphical interpretations represented at the sources mentioned have general abstract character: to form the secondorder range two projective clusters of the first-order with the corresponding right lines are defined, and to design the second-order range – two projective series with the corresponding points. Techniques of high value can be observed when constructing outlines with the second-order curves; in this case, depending on engineering discriminant values, these curves can be constructed both using Pascal lines and qualities of the engineering discriminant itself, that is paying attention to the fact that tangents to the second-order curves makes the second-order cluster. Naturally, intent arises not to set the corresponding points on projective ranges, but to get them by elaboration, disclosing upon that regularities when constructing different second-order curves (the first aspect of research). The second aspect is in the consider - ation of the particular cases which would have definite secondorder clusters. In this case the task would be to model the secondorder range as a dual form of cluster. Thus it would be possible to get the interconnection of the definite cluster and the second-order cluster.

III.—Notes on Fossil Sponges

1872 ◽  
Vol 9 (98) ◽  
pp. 343-352
Author(s):  
Harvey B. Holl
Keyword(s):  
Second Order ◽  
New Genera ◽  
The Subject

III. Pictet converted D’Orbigny's families into tribes, and introduced some additional genera created by Giebel King, etc.; and, except in the description of new genera and species by Reuss, Roemer, Salter, Eichwald and others, the subject remained very much where D’Orbigny left it until M. de Fromentelle proposed a new arrangement, based upon what he terms the “organs which serve for the nutrition of the sponge,”—viz., the tubule, oscules, pores, etc. Like D’Orbigny, he divides the sponges into two orders: 1st, the Spongitaria, which comprises only recent genera; and, 2nd, the Spongitaria, which contains all the fossil genera, with the exception of the doubtful group, the Clionidæ. The second order is further divided into three sub-orders: 1, those sponges which have one or more tubules (the Spongitaria tubulosa); 2, those that have oscules, but no tubule (Spongitaria osculata); and 3, those that have neither tubule nor oscules (Spongitaria porosa). Each of these suborders is further divided thus: the tubular sponges into those in which the tubule is solitary, and those in which it is grouped, and also into those with oscules and those without oscules. The oscular sponges are similarly subdivided, according to form, disposition of the oscules, and presence or absence of an epitheca. Lastly, the porous sponges are divided into those that are more or less regularly cup-shaped, and those that assume some other form.

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