scholarly journals Chinese Sentence-Initial Indefinites: What Corpora Reveal

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Morbiato
Keyword(s):  
Linear Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Semantic Feature ◽  
Proper Noun ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Statistical Relevance ◽  
Peking University ◽  
Qualitative Analyses ◽  
Subsequent Literature

The sentence-initial position in Chinese* is generally associated with givenness and definiteness (Li and Thompson 1976, 1981 and subsequent literature). However, observations have been raised against this association, e.g., with informationally new sentence-initial referents (Paul, 2015) or even indefinite ones (Bisang, 2016; B. Lu, Zhang, & Bisang, 2015). Furthermore, literature has emerged that offers contradictory findings, including Fan (1985) and subsequent studies on so-called ‘indefinite subject sentences’ (无定主语句). However, little is known of the statistical relevance of the phenomenon of sentence-initial indefinites (SIIs), as well as its interaction with features connected to linear order (e.g., animacy). Crucially, corpus-based studies on the topic remain the minority and are usually conducted on relatively small, genre-specific corpora. This paper adopts corpus methodologies and tools to investigate the phenomenon of SIIs, with a particular focus on determining (i) the statistical relevance of SIIs of the type of ‘一CLF N’ in big-size corpora, and (ii) whether there is an interaction with the semantic feature of animacy. To this end, it proposes the results of quantitative and qualitative analyses conducted on three major big-size, generalised corpora, namely the PKU CCL corpus (Peking University, 470 million characters), the BCC corpus (Beijing Language and Culture University, 15 billion characters), and the ZHTenTen (Stanford Tagger) corpus mounted at Sketch Engine (13,5 billion characters). The analysis highlights that SIIs are not only possible, but also statistically relevant. Furthermore, it shows that the semantic trait of animacy plays an important role, as animate indefinites are significantly more likely to occur sentence-initially. Finally, it singles out and discusses a new pattern featuring a proper noun introduced by ‘一CLF’.

scholarly journals Coreference preferences for personal pronouns in German

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 53-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerlof Bouma ◽  
Holger Hopp
Keyword(s):  
Linear Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Relative Influence ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Pronoun Resolution

This paper presents psycholinguistic evidence on the factors governing the resolution of German personal pronouns. To determine the relative influence of linear order versus grammatical function of potential antecedents, two interpretation-preference tasks were designed. Their specific aim was to disentangle salience factors conflated in previous research on pronoun interpretation, such as linear or-der, first mention and topicalization. Experiment 1 tested pronoun resolution to non-sentence-initial position (scrambling) and Experiment 2 tested pronoun resolution to sentence-initial position (topicalization). The results across different verb types and across different syntactic contexts in Experiments 1 and 2 show that grammatical function, yet neither linear order, first mention nor topicalization predicts pronoun resolution in German.  

Algorithm of Disambiguation and Matching of Chinese Word Segmentation in Connected Strategies Research

2011 ◽  
Vol 219-220 ◽  
pp. 1702-1706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Xiu An ◽  
Jian Huang ◽  
Wei Yu
Keyword(s):  
Word Segmentation ◽  
University Research ◽  
Chinese Word ◽  
Chinese Word Segmentation ◽  
Language Management ◽  
Tsinghua University ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Peking University ◽  
Grammar Analysis ◽  
Research Institute

The Chinese Word Segmentation technology is belonged to the category of technology of natural language management. Academies which studying Chinese Word Segmentation are mostly Research institutions such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Chinese Academy of science, Beijing Language And Culture University, Northeastern University, Research Institute of IBM, and Research Institute of Microsoft (China), etc. Firstly, the essay analyze and compare the measurements of operation complexity and Algorithm capability of Chinese Word Segmentation in the dimension of Lucene open source’s environment, and also technologies of Chinese grammar analysis used by Chinese Academy of science. We are going to put forward the algorithm of disambiguation and matching of Chinese Word Segmentation in connected strategies based on the studying of Cloud Computing and Parallel Computing.

scholarly journals The dual status of filled pauses: Evidence from genre, proficiency and co-occurrence

2021 ◽  
pp. 002383092110108
Author(s):  
Loulou Kosmala ◽  
Ludivine Crible
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Filled Pauses ◽  
Multiple Characteristics ◽  
Dual Status ◽  
Qualitative Analyses

The present corpus study aims to contribute to the debate regarding the lexical or non-lexical status of filled pauses. Although they are commonly associated with hesitation, disfluency, and production difficulty, it has also been argued that they can serve more fluent communicative functions in discourse (e.g., turn-taking, stance-marking). Our work is grounded in a usage-based and discourse-functional approach to filled pauses, and we address this debate by examining the multiple characteristics of euh and eum in spoken French, as well as their co-occurrence with discourse markers. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, we analyze their distribution across different communication settings (prepared monologs vs. spontaneous conversations) and levels of language proficiency (native vs. non-native). Quantitative findings indicate differences in frequency, duration, position, and patterns of co-occurrence across corpora, and our qualitative analyses identify fine-grained differences, mainly two distinct patterns of distribution (initial position clustered with a discourse marker vs. medial position clustered with other hesitation markers), reflecting the different “fluent” and “disfluent” uses of filled pauses. We thus argue for a dual status of euh and eum based on formal, functional, and contextual features.

scholarly journals Long and short adjunct fronting in HPSG

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takafumi Maekawa
Keyword(s):  
Linear Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Proper Treatment ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
Rigid Link

The purpose of this paper is to consider the proper treatment of short- and long-fronted adjuncts within HPSG. In the earlier HPSG analyses, a rigid link between linear order and constituent structure determines the linear position of such adjuncts in the sentence-initial position. This paper will argue that there is a body of data which suggests that adjunct fronting does not work as these approaches predict. I will then show that linearisation-based HPSG can provide a fairly straightforward account of the facts.

scholarly journals Attitudes of English speakers towards thanking in Spanish

Pragmatics ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos de Pablos-Ortega
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Qualitative Analyses

The aim of this paper is to ascertain the attitudes English native speakers have towards the Spanish language and culture, specifically, in relation to the speech act of thanking and in connection with Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness ([1978] 1987). Two sources of data were used: First, a corpus of 64 course books which included 250 situations representing the speech act of thanking and, second, a questionnaire for the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language. The situations including the speech act of thanking were analysed and then categorized according to various criteria. The criteria were created by taking into consideration Coulmas’ (1981) proposal for the classification of thanking as well as the components of this specific speech act. The most frequent situations found in the course books were then used to devise the second source of data. The aim of this was to determine the attitudes of 300 participants, divided equally between the nationalities used in the investigation, Spanish, British and American. The questionnaire included 12 scenarios in which the thanking formula was omitted. Participants were prompted to answer questions based on their perceptions and to include other responses whenever they considered them to be appropriate. The main findings provided evidence of different facework values across the three groups of informants for some of the specific scenarios. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses of data showed that some of the responses were connected to the thanking formulae, but others to speech acts such as request formulae.

scholarly journals Phrase Structure Patterning and Licensing for English and Serbian Speaker-Oriented Adverb Subclasses

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-109
Author(s):  
Gordana Dimković-Telebaković
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Semantic Feature ◽  
Illocutionary Force

AbstractThis paper attempts to set phrase structure rules for English and Serbian speaker-oriented adverb subclasses. Adverbs are looked at here as specifiers licensed by the semantic feature [ILLOCUTIONARY FORCE]. The results suggest that illocutionary, evaluative and evidential adverbs normally merge within the complementizer layer and the inflectional layer, and that English epistemic adverbs are in most cases preferably integrated into the inflectional layer, whereas Serbian epistemic adverbs tend to occur in the sentence-initial position.

Phonomotor Versus Semantic Feature Analysis Treatment for Anomia in 58 Persons With Aphasia: A Randomized Controlled Trial

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (12) ◽  
pp. 4464-4482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane L. Kendall ◽  
Megan Oelke Moldestad ◽  
Wesley Allen ◽  
Janaki Torrence ◽  
Stephen E. Nadeau
Keyword(s):  
Randomized Controlled Trial ◽  
Response Latency ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Semantic Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Feature ◽  
Feature Analysis ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Confrontation Naming ◽  
Semantic Feature Analysis

Purpose The ultimate goal of anomia treatment should be to achieve gains in exemplars trained in the therapy session, as well as generalization to untrained exemplars and contexts. The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of phonomotor treatment, a treatment focusing on enhancement of phonological sequence knowledge, against semantic feature analysis (SFA), a lexical-semantic therapy that focuses on enhancement of semantic knowledge and is well known and commonly used to treat anomia in aphasia. Method In a between-groups randomized controlled trial, 58 persons with aphasia characterized by anomia and phonological dysfunction were randomized to receive 56–60 hr of intensively delivered treatment over 6 weeks with testing pretreatment, posttreatment, and 3 months posttreatment termination. Results There was no significant between-groups difference on the primary outcome measure (untrained nouns phonologically and semantically unrelated to each treatment) at 3 months posttreatment. Significant within-group immediately posttreatment acquisition effects for confrontation naming and response latency were observed for both groups. Treatment-specific generalization effects for confrontation naming were observed for both groups immediately and 3 months posttreatment; a significant decrease in response latency was observed at both time points for the SFA group only. Finally, significant within-group differences on the Comprehensive Aphasia Test–Disability Questionnaire ( Swinburn, Porter, & Howard, 2004 ) were observed both immediately and 3 months posttreatment for the SFA group, and significant within-group differences on the Functional Outcome Questionnaire ( Glueckauf et al., 2003 ) were found for both treatment groups 3 months posttreatment. Discussion Our results are consistent with those of prior studies that have shown that SFA treatment and phonomotor treatment generalize to untrained words that share features (semantic or phonological sequence, respectively) with the training set. However, they show that there is no significant generalization to untrained words that do not share semantic features or phonological sequence features.

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