scholarly journals On the nature of adjectives: evidence from Dinka

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirella L. Blum
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Context ◽  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
Intransitive Verbs ◽  
Property Concepts ◽  
Semantic Properties

This paper presents a description of the adjective class in Dinka, and an exploration of its typological relevance to the existence of adjectives cross-linguistically. In Dinka, a subset of intransitive verbs can be defined by several morphophonological characteristics. The overwhelming majority of these are property concepts, despite the fact that the defining characteristics are unrelated to semantic properties. This suggests that property concepts provide a useful semantic context in the investigation of adjectives, even in languages where the adjective class is clearly a sub-class of another lexical category. While the analysis is based primarily on the Bor South dialect, it has been corroborated using evidence from other dialects. Therefore, it is likely that this characterization holds across the language.

scholarly journals Selected Aspects of the Semantics and Syntax of De-verbal Nominalizations in English, Polish and Irish

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 157-182
Author(s):  
Maria Bloch-Trojnar ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Nouns ◽  
Intensive Research ◽  
Formal Derivation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Functional Complexity ◽  
Intransitive Verbs ◽  
Semantic Properties

Bearing in mind the formal and functional complexity of the category of verbal nouns in Irish (henceforth VNs), it is not surprising that it continues to be the subject of intensive research. Much has been written on the syntax of VNs proper, i.e. verbal nouns employed in participle and infinitive constructions, and linguists are so absorbed in the debate about whether to regard them as nouns or verbs (e.g. McCloskey (1983) and Duffield (1995) are representatives of the two opposing views), that the area of de-verbal nominalizations has been neglected. This paper is meant as a modest attempt to amend this situation and present some aspects of their syntax, semantics and formal derivation. In the course of our discussion we will raise the following issues. First, we will concentrate on their argument taking properties. We will try to find out whether the binary distinction process vs. result nominals (which is considered in all studies of nominalizations) can be found in nominals derived from transitive and intransitive verbs alike. Most studies of nominalizations (Rozwadowska (1997) being a notable exception) disregard or openly exclude intransitives from the scope of their interest. Secondly, we will also consider two alternative views on the process of nominalization i.e. whether to treat result nominals as products of semantic drift (as does e.g. Malicka-Kleparska (1988)) or as products of a separate derivational process producing countable nominalizations (cf. a similar analysis proposed for English in Bloch-Trojnar (2007)). The syntactic and semantic properties of nominalizations in Irish will be compared to their Polish and English opposite numbers. Finally, we will also consider their morphophonological exponents and argue that the model of LMBM developed by Beard (1995), which separates the formal and syntactico-semantic facets of derivation, is best equipped to account for the data in question.

A Study of the Middle Construction in English with Special Reference to Learner’s Dictionaries

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-421
Author(s):  
Xiaoli Zhu ◽  
Guohua Chen
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Intransitive Verbs ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Significant Attention

Abstract Although the middle construction has attracted significant attention from syntacticians, its identity still remains controversial and it is not treated as a separate grammatical category in any English learner’s dictionary. This article, based on the data collected from three English learner’s dictionaries, investigates the middle construction in terms of its syntactic and semantic properties and the constraints on its use. It shows that the three learner’s dictionaries treat the middle construction in inconsistent and problematic manners. The middle use of a verb is not distinguished from either transitive verbs with an implicit object or intransitive verbs, which may hinder English learners’ acquisition of the construction. The article proposes that middle verbs should be treated as a separate subcategory of verbs on a par with transitive and intransitive verbs so that learners will become more aware of them and learn to use them correctly.

Effects of Semantic Context on Memory for Nouns and Verbs

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie L. Earles ◽  
Alan W. Kersten
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Context

Effects of Semantic Context on Memory for Verbs and Nouns

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan W. Kersten ◽  
Julie L. Earles
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Context

Semantic Properties Questionnaire

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley B. Klein ◽  
Leda Cosmides ◽  
Kristi A. Costabile ◽  
Lisa Mei
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Properties

Nerdalicious scientainment: A network analysis of English libfixes

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muriel Norde ◽  
Sarah Sippach
Keyword(s):  
Network Analysis ◽  
Network Model ◽  
Phonological Similarity ◽  
High Type ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Semantic Properties

Libfixes are parts of words that share properties with both blends, compounds and affixes. They are deliberate formations, often with a jocular character, e.g. nerdalicious ‘delicious for nerds’, or scientainment ‘scientific entertainment’. These are not one-off formations – some libfixes have become very productive, as evidenced by high type frequency in a single corpus. Libfix constructions are particularly interesting for a network analysis for three reasons: they do not always have discrete morpheme boundaries, they feature a wide variety of bases (including phrases, as in give-me-a-break-o-meter), and they may be the source of back formations such as infotain. In this paper, we present a corpus-based analysis of eight English libfixes (cracy, fection, flation, gasm, licious, (o-)meter, tainment, and tastic), detailing their formal and semantic properties, as well as their differences and similarities. We argue that libfixes are most fruitfully analysed in a Bybeean network model, in which nodes are connected on the basis of phonological similarity, which allows for both fully compositional and non-compositional constructions to be linked without an exhaustive analysis into morphemes.

Too WEIRD, Too Fast: Preprints about COVID-19 in the Psychological Sciences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arathy Puthillam
Keyword(s):  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Psychological Studies

That American and European participants are overrepresented in psychological studies has been previously established. In addition, researchers also often tend to be similarly homogenous. This continues to be alarming, especially given that this research is being used to inform policies across the world. In the face of a global pandemic where behavioral scientists propose solutions, we ask who is conducting research and on what samples. Forty papers on COVID-19 published in PsyArxiV were analyzed; the nationalities of the authors and the samples they recruited were assessed. Findings suggest that an overwhelming majority of the samples recruited were from the US and the authors were based in US and German institutions. Next, men constituted a large proportion of primary and sole authors. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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