scholarly journals Discourse-Pragmatic and Processing-Related Motivators of the ordering of Reason Clauses in an Academic Corpus

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-339
Author(s):  
Abbas A. Rezaee ◽  
Majid Nemati ◽  
Seyyed Ehsan Golparvar

The present research is aimed at examining the relative importance of the competing motivators of the sequencing of reason clauses in a corpus of research articles of applied linguistics. All the finite reason clauses accompanied by their main clauses in this corpus were collected. Random forest of conditional inference trees is the statistical modelling in this study. The findings showed that sentence-final reason clauses outnumber sentenceinitial ones. Moreover, subordinator choice and bridging, which are discourse-pragmatic constraints on clause positioning, emerged as the two more powerful predictors of the ordering of reason clauses in this corpus. Furthermore, the complexity of the clause turned out to be a stronger processing related predictor than the length of the clause.

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-135
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Dekalo

AbstractThe present paper deals with item- and feature-based changes of the modal semi-schematic construction with verstehen in written German during the 20th century. To understand this development, the century is divided into four equal periods. Applying a simple collexeme analysis for each time span, the study ascertains which lexical verbs appear as typical items in a schematic slot constituting its collostructional profile. Comparing the distributional behavior manually in a pairwise fashion, the analysis reveals that solely three verbs, namely machen, umgehen and meistern, stay constantly highly attracted within the top collexemes of the verstehen-construction during the 20th century. Using a dependency-based semantic space model, the study demonstrates that the collostructional profile of the fourth period differs considerably from the previous time span. Utilizing random forest of conditional inference trees, changes in terms of usage features of the modal construction are pinpointed. As a result, its grammaticality degree has not increased demonstrating solely minor changes in temporal functionality as well as in realization of subject forms.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-581
Author(s):  
JOAN BYBEE ◽  
RICARDO NAPOLEÃO DE SOUZA

abstractUsing ten English adjectives, this study tests the hypothesis that the vowels in adjectives in predicative constructions are longer than those in attributive constructions in spoken conversation. The analyses considered a number of factors: occurrence before a pause, lexical adjective, vowel identity, probability given surrounding words, and others. Two sets of statistical techniques were used: a Mixed-effects model and the Random Forest Analysis based on Conditional Inference Trees (CIT). Both analyses showed strong effects of predicative vs. attributive constructions and individual lexical adjectives on vowel duration in the predicted direction, as well as effects of many of the phonological variables tested. The results showed that the longer duration in the predicative construction is not due to lengthening before a pause, though it is related to whether the adjective is internal or final in the predicative construction. Nor is the effect attributable solely to the probability of the occurrence of the adjective; rather construction type has to be taken into account. The two statistical techniques complement each other, with the Mixed-effects model showing very general trends over all the data, and the Random Forest / CIT analysis showing factors that affect only subsets of the data.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL WIECHMANN ◽  
ELMA KERZ

English permits adverbial subordinate clauses to be placed either before or after their associated main clause. Previous research has shown that the positioning is conditioned by various factors from the domains of semantics, discourse pragmatics and language processing. With the exception of Diessel (2008), these factors have never been investigated in concert, which makes it difficult to understand their relative importance. Diessel's study, however, discusses only temporal constructions and identifies iconicity of sequence as the strongest predictor of clause position. Since this explanation is, in principle, unavailable for other types of subordinate clauses, the generalizability of Diessel's findings is somewhat limited. The present study offers a multifactorial analysis of 2,000 concessive constructions from the written part of the BNC and assesses the variable importance of six factors for the ordering choice, showing that semantic and discourse-pragmatic factors are much stronger predictors of clause position than processing-based, weight-related ones. On a methodological note, the study proposes that random forests using conditional inference trees constitute the preferred tool for the general type of problem investigated here.


Author(s):  
Kristian A. Rusten

Chapter 3 deals with the question of whether Anglian dialects of Old English, in contrast to the West Saxon literary standard, had a partial pro-drop property. The chapter investigates this ‘dialect-split hypothesis’ by means of descriptive statistics and inferential statistical modelling. It is also noted that what has been interpreted as diatopic variation could also be representative of other types of variation, and consequently the variables of translation status, period, and genre are also investigated, in addition to dialect. The primary analytical techniques used in this chapter are generalized fixed-effects logistic regression modelling and random forests of conditional inference trees. The chapter concludes that the dialect-split hypothesis must be considered falsified.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Källestål ◽  
E. Blandón Zelaya ◽  
R. Peña ◽  
W. Peréz ◽  
M. Contreras ◽  
...  

Abstract Background In order to further identify the needed interventions for continued poverty reduction in our study area Cuatro Santos, northern Nicaragua, we aimed to elucidate what predicts poverty, measured by the Unsatisfied Basic Need index. This analysis was done by using decision tree methodology applied to the Cuatro Santos health and demographic surveillance databases. Methods Using variables derived from the health and demographic surveillance update 2014, transferring individual data to the household level we used the decision tree framework Conditional Inference trees to predict the outcome “poverty” defined as two to four unsatisfied basic needs using the Unsatisfied Basic Need Index. We further validated the trees by applying Conditional random forest analyses in order to assess and rank the importance of predictors about their ability to explain the variation of the outcome “poverty.” The majority of the Cuatro Santos households provided information and the included variables measured housing conditions, assets, and demographic experiences since the last update (5 yrs), earlier participation in interventions and food security during the last 4 weeks. Results Poverty was rare in households that have some assets and someone in the household that has a higher education than primary school. For these households participating in the intervention that installed piped water with water meter was most important, but also when excluding this variable, the resulting tree showed the same results. When assets were not taken into consideration, the importance of education was pronounced as a predictor for welfare. The results were further strengthened by the validation using Conditional random forest modeling showing the same variables being important as predicting the outcome in the CI tree analysis. As assets can be a result, rather than a predictor of more affluence our results in summary point specifically to the importance of education and participation in the water installation intervention as predictors for more affluence. Conclusion Predictors of poverty are useful for directing interventions and in the Cuatro Santos area education seems most important to prioritize. Hopefully, the lessons learned can continue to develop the Cuatro Santos communities as well as development in similar poor rural settings around the world.


Author(s):  
Mohsen Khedri

AbstractResearch articles have often materialized through the use of impersonal objective strategies viz. abstract rhetors, passive constructions, and nominalizations. However, intrusive or subjective strategies, such as self-mentions, appear to integrate impersonal structures. As a rhetorical strategy to explicitly portray authorial selves, self-mentions help writers to project themselves into the discourse by marketing themselves and demarcating their original contribution to the field. Here, an interdisciplinary approach was adopted to examine explicit authorial presence in a comparable corpus of 40 research articles in applied linguistics, psychology, environmental engineering, and chemistry by taking into consideration: (i) the frequency of using exclusive first person plural pronouns (


Author(s):  
Jidong J. Yang ◽  
Bashan Zuo

Wireless magnetometers have been considered as a practical alternative to inductive loops and suitable for large intersections, where span wire is generally used for traffic signal support. In this paper, wireless magnetometers are evaluated for stop bar vehicle detection at signalized intersections. High-resolution detector data were collected in the field subjected to various weather and environmental conditions. Conditional inference trees were used to correlate detection errors with weather and environmental factors that potentially affect the performance of wireless magnetometers. The study results indicated that the wireless magnetometers are fairly robust to various environmental conditions, such as wind, lighting, and visibility. Frequent passing of heavy vehicles, common at large intersections, can cause communication interruption between in-pavement sensors and the access point. This likely increases false and stuck-on call errors, which could be aggravated by adverse weather (e.g., rain, fog, or snow). This communication interruption issue can be mitigated by proper installation of additional repeaters. Provided the interruption issues are site-specific, professional judgment and field test are required for proper system setup, which is critical to delivering accurate and reliable detection for the wireless magnetometer system.


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