diversity of Maa (Nilotic) adverbs

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Doris Payne
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Single Class ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Nominal Phrase ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Shared Function ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
Aspect Markers ◽  
Historical Origins ◽  
Relational Nouns

Maa linguistic varieties (Maasai, Parakuyo, Chamus, Samburu, among others), of the Eastern Nilotic family (Nilo-Saharan phylum), have words which can modify a predicate or predication and have the function of what cross-linguistically are called adverbs. While these words can be considered a single class due to this shared function and distribution, there are nevertheless morphosyntactic and usage distinctions. This is partly due to disparate historical origins, but also to semantics and different typical collocations. Among other distinctions, some adverbs can function as nominal tense/aspect markers within a determined nominal phrase (DP). Though the origins of all adverbs cannot be traced, the paper documents sources in oblique prepositional phrases, relational nouns, adjectives, relative clauses, and perhaps infinitive verbs, involving a wide range of lexical roots, such as ‘little’, ‘paint, mark’, ‘be abundant (with grass), be generous’, and others. Some synchronic adverbs do not have evident sources in other word classes, including the ­most frequently used word for ‘previously, before’, and the modal adverb ‘probably not, unlikely’ which is also an attenuative adverb. Maa adjectives and nouns largely overlap in their morphosyntax, but the ability to be modified by certain adverbs distinguishes them.

scholarly journals A Little Something Goes a Long Way: Little in the Old Bailey Corpus

2021 ◽  
pp. 007542422098206
Author(s):  
Claudia Claridge ◽  
Ewa Jonsson ◽  
Merja Kytö
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
Functional Profile ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Related Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Old Bailey ◽  
Version 2.0 ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Late Modern

Even though intensifiers have received a good deal of attention over the past few decades, downtoners, comprising diminishers and minimizers, have remained by and large a neglected category (but cf. Brinton, this issue). Among downtoners, the adverb little or a little stands out as the most frequent item. It is multifunctional and serves as a diminishing and minimizing intensifier and also in non-degree uses as a quantifier, frequentative, and durative. Therefore, the present paper is devoted to the structural and functional profile of ( a) little in Late Modern English speech-related data. The data source is the socio-pragmatically annotated Old Bailey Corpus (OBC, version 2.0), which allows, among other things, the investigation of the usage of the item among different speaker groups. Our research charts the semantic and formal uses of adverbial little. Downtoner uses outnumber non-degree uses in the data, and diminishing uses are more common than minimizing uses. The formal realization is predominantly a little, with very rare determinerless or modified instances, such as very little. Little modifies a wide range of “targets,” but most frequently adjectives and prepositional phrases, focusing on human states and circumstantial detail. With regard to variation and change, adverbial little declines in use over the 200 years and is used more commonly by speakers from the lower social ranks and by the lay, non-professional participants in the courtroom.

Syntactic Complexity in Spanish Narratives

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera F. Gutierrez-Clellen ◽  
Richard Hofstetter
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Developmental Differences ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
School Age ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Structural Constituent ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Nominal Clauses

Syntactic complexity in the movie retellings of 77 school-age Spanish-speaking children was examined using a structural constituent analysis. The results demonstrated developmental differences in the length of T-units, index of subordination, use of relative clauses, and prepositional phrases. There were also differences in the length of T-units, use of nominal clauses, and adverbial phrases across Spanish language groups. The analysis underscores the significance of subordination as a cohesive device and as an indicator of narrative proficiency.

scholarly journals Sample acidification effects on carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios of macrofauna from a Zostera noltii bed

2013 ◽  
Vol 64 (8) ◽  
pp. 741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Vafeiadou ◽  
Helena Adão ◽  
Marleen De Troch ◽  
Tom Moens
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotope ◽  
Single Species ◽  
Zostera Noltii ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Intertidal Sediments ◽  
Nitrogen Stable Isotope ◽  
Single Class ◽  
Carbon And Nitrogen ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Isotope Studies

Acidification treatment has been used in most stable isotope studies to eliminate inorganic non-dietary carbon, allowing δ13C measurement of organic carbon needed for trophic studies. Because only limited information about the acidification effects on isotopic ratios exists in the literature, we provide an assessment of such effects for a wide range of benthic macroinvertebrates from estuarine intertidal sediments with sparse Zostera noltii Hornem. vegetation. Our results revealed only few significant δ13C shifts for macrobenthos; however, δ13C decrease after acidification was substantial for several species. We conclude that acidification is not necessary for removing calcium carbonate in a majority of macrobenthos, but we also suggest preliminary testing before deciding it can be omitted. The magnitude of the δ15N shifts was substantial for some species and variability in δ15N values of replicate acidified samples exceeded that of non-acidified samples. Therefore, sample acidification should be avoided for δ15N determination. Moreover, acidification effects vary considerably among species belonging to a single class, rendering generalisations from single-species information potentially spurious.

scholarly journals Die Zukunft der Derivation oder: Derivation 2.0

2016 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nanna Fuhrhop ◽  
Martina Werner
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Morphological Development ◽  
Language Typology ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Morphological Productivity ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
Traditional Approaches

Traditionally, contemporary German is considered to be rich in affixes which is displayed by a wide range of e. g. nominal suffixes (such as -ung, -heit, -nis, -tum, -sal). However, productivity tests, especially with non-native lexemes, challenge this view since many formal restrictions between affixes and different word classes can be formally identified – synchronically and diachronically – and which cannot be explained by traditional approaches. This paper questions the general morphological productivity of derivation coinciding with a decrease of nominal, adjectival and verbal affixation and, in parallel, pointing to morphological alternatives. In this view, a process of an increasing “syntactification” (as it will be called) is taking place resulting in a morphological preference for conversion. Diachronically, the morphological development from compounding to derivation is well-described. The question as to why and how conversion emerges, especially in an inflectional language, and how it is linked to former or coexisting morphological types, here derivation, has never been asked – though important observations from language typology have been made. Against this background, the process of syntactification fills this research lacuna, also in a morpho-theoretical way, since it can be interpreted as an ongoing language change consisting of a change in linguistic encoding.

scholarly journals An investigation of accuracy and response time regarding processing mechanism of English relative clauses in EFL contexts

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-140
Author(s):  
Navid Nasrollahi Shahri ◽  
Masoud Motamedynia ◽  
Mohammad Ghazanfari
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Reading Experiment ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Processing Mechanism ◽  
English Relative Clauses

Sentence comprehension in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts is influenced by many factors. One of the most important ones is the processing mechanism of relative clauses which can be analyzed in different frameworks by researchers. So far, a wide range of research has been conducted on the processing mechanism of relative clauses in a number of languages. The results have shown a tendency toward two major categories which have been proven to be of significance, namely subject preference and object preference. Studies conducted on native speakers of English, for instance, have demonstrated subject preference by the participants. Consequently, in this study, the researchers conducted a self-paced reading experiment employing Linger software, and the data were analyzed by using the SPSS Statistics version 25. It aims to investigate the processing mechanism of English relative clauses by Iranian EFL learners. The participants were nine males and 21 females of advanced English learners majoring in the English literature, all being native speakers of Farsi. The results indicate that that the correctness percentage of subject relative clauses, and also subject modifying ones, are significantly higher than that of object ones. The results also indicated that subject relatives were processed swifter than object relatives. Finally, the researchers discussed the reasons behind such a tendency among the participants of the experiment in terms of a number of theories and principles. The findings of this study are expected to be employed in language syllabus designing as well as in grading or sequencing of materials by educators and teaching material developers.

scholarly journals The pronoun sto and its semantic and syntactic derivatives in the vernacular of the Sirinic county

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-33
Author(s):  
Bojana Veljovic-Popovic ◽  
Radivoje Mladenovic
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Subject

This paper analyzes the pronoun sto and its semantic and syntactic derivatives in the Prizren - South Morava dialect in the Sirinic county (Sirinicka Zupa), in the northern part of the Sar Mountains. The paper focuses primarily on the syntactic use of sto, while its semantic derivatives are outlined mainly in terms of references to the previous research on the subject. The dialect corpus shows that this lexeme has a wide range of syntactic realizations - it can be used as a relativizer in defining and non-defining relative clauses, as a conjunction in the clauses of reason and declarative clauses, and it can also be used as a pronoun and adverb. Moreover, the research includes the cases in which sto was found to be a part of multi-word conjunctions in hypotactic or paratactic structures. This paper primarily aims to determine and examine the syntactic positions in which sto is realized and the environment in which it is used. In the majority of the observed cases, there were also other corresponding syntactic devices, so that the focus was also placed on determining the frequency of the lexeme sto in these positions in relation to its synonymous syntactic counterparts. The fact that the form sto is widely used in the Sirinic vernacular as a conjunction in relative clauses points to its provenance in a wider Serbian-Macedonian area as well as to its not being included in the standard Serbian language, in lieu of which the form koji is predominantly used. In the vernacular of Sirinic county, the lexeme sto is used as a conjunction in declarative object clauses, and it is also the principal conjunction in the clauses of reason.

Noun-Modifying Clause Construction in Japanese

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshiko Matsumoto
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Structural Information ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Complement Clauses

The noun-modifying clause construction (NMCC) in Japanese is a complex noun phrase in which a prenominal clause is dependent on the head noun. Naturally occurring instances of the construction demonstrate that a single structure, schematized as [[… predicate (finite/adnominal)] Noun], represents a wide range of semantic relations between the head noun and the dependent clause, encompassing some that would be expressed by structurally distinct constructions such as relative clauses, noun complement clauses, and other types of complex noun phrases in other languages, such as English. In that way, the Japanese NMCC demonstrates a clear case of the general noun-modifying construction (GNMCC), that is, an NMCC that has structural uniformity across interpretations that extend beyond the range of relative clauses. One of the notable properties of the Japanese NMCC is that the modifying clause may consist only of the predicate, reflecting the fact that referential density is moderate in Japanese—arguments of a predicate are not required to be overtly expressed either in the main clause or in the modifying clause. Another property of the Japanese NMCC is that there is no explicit marking in the construction that indicates the grammatical or semantic relation between the head noun and the modifying clause. The two major constituents are simply juxtaposed to each other. Successful construal of the intended interpretations of instances of such a construction, in the absence of explicit markings, likely relies on an aggregate of structural, semantic, and pragmatic factors, including the semantic content of the linguistic elements, verb valence information, and the interpreter’s real-world knowledge, in addition to the basic structural information. Researchers with different theoretical approaches have studied Japanese NMCCs or subsets thereof. Syntactic approaches, inspired by generative grammar, have focused mostly on relative clauses and aimed to identify universally recognized syntactic principles. Studies that take the descriptive approach have focused on detailed descriptions and the classification of a wide spectrum of naturally occurring instances of the construction in Japanese. The third and most recent group of studies has emphasized the importance of semantics and pragmatics in accounting for a wide variety of naturally occurring instances. The examination of Japanese NMCCs provides information about the nature of clausal noun modification and affords insights into languages beyond Japanese, as similar phenomena have reportedly been observed crosslinguistically to varying degrees.

Deep Neural Networks for Hierarchical Taxonomic Fossil Classification of Carbonate Skeletal Grains

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidhant Idgunji ◽  
Madison Ho ◽  
Jonathan L. Payne ◽  
Daniel Lehrmann ◽  
Michele Morsilli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Deep Learning ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Training Dataset ◽  
Single Class ◽  
Deep Learning Algorithm ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Animal Phyla

<p>The growing digitization of fossil images has vastly improved and broadened the potential application of big data and machine learning, particularly computer vision, in paleontology. Recent studies show that machine learning is capable of approaching human abilities of classifying images, and with the increase in computational power and visual data, it stands to reason that it can match human ability but at much greater efficiency in the near future. Here we demonstrate this potential of using deep learning to identify skeletal grains at different levels of the Linnaean taxonomic hierarchy. Our approach was two-pronged. First, we built a database of skeletal grain images spanning a wide range of animal phyla and classes and used this database to train the model. We used a Python-based method to automate image recognition and extraction from published sources. Second, we developed a deep learning algorithm that can attach multiple labels to a single image. Conventionally, deep learning is used to predict a single class from an image; here, we adopted a Branch Convolutional Neural Network (B-CNN) technique to classify multiple taxonomic levels for a single skeletal grain image. Using this method, we achieved over 90% accuracy for both the coarse, phylum-level recognition and the fine, class-level recognition across diverse skeletal grains (6 phyla and 15 classes). Furthermore, we found that image augmentation improves the overall accuracy. This tool has potential applications in geology ranging from biostratigraphy to paleo-bathymetry, paleoecology, and microfacies analysis. Further improvement of the algorithm and expansion of the training dataset will continue to narrow the efficiency gap between human expertise and machine learning.</p>

scholarly journals Confidence Sets for Statistical Classification (II): Exact Confidence Sets

Stats ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-446
Author(s):  
Wei Liu ◽  
Frank Bretz ◽  
Anthony J. Hayter
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Statistical Classification ◽  
Confidence Set ◽  
Confidence Sets ◽  
Single Class ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Future Object ◽  
Critical Constant ◽  
Better Than

Classification has applications in a wide range of fields including medicine, engineering, computer science and social sciences among others. Liu et al. (2019) proposed a confidence-set-based classifier that classifies a future object into a single class only when there is enough evidence to warrant this, and into several classes otherwise. By allowing classification of an object into possibly more than one class, this classifier guarantees a pre-specified proportion of correct classification among all future objects. However, the classifier uses a conservative critical constant. In this paper, we show how to determine the exact critical constant in applications where prior knowledge about the proportions of the future objects from each class is available. As the exact critical constant is smaller than the conservative critical constant given by Liu et al. (2019), the classifier using the exact critical constant is better than the classifier by Liu et al. (2019) as expected. An example is provided to illustrate the method.

scholarly journals Confidence Sets for Statistical Classification

Stats ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Liu ◽  
Frank Bretz ◽  
Natchalee Srimaneekarn ◽  
Jianan Peng ◽  
Anthony J. Hayter
Keyword(s):  
Confidence Set ◽  
Unknown Parameters ◽  
Confidence Sets ◽  
Single Class ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Desirable Feature ◽  
Point Estimator ◽  
Point Estimators ◽  
Future Object

Classification has applications in a wide range of fields including medicine, engineering, computer science and social sciences among others. In statistical terms, classification is inference about the unknown parameters, i.e., the true classes of future objects. Hence, various standard statistical approaches can be used, such as point estimators, confidence sets and decision theoretic approaches. For example, a classifier that classifies a future object as belonging to only one of several known classes is a point estimator. The purpose of this paper is to propose a confidence-set-based classifier that classifies a future object into a single class only when there is enough evidence to warrant this, and into several classes otherwise. By allowing classification of an object into possibly more than one class, this classifier guarantees a pre-specified proportion of correct classification among all future objects. An example is provided to illustrate the method, and a simulation study is included to highlight the desirable feature of the method.

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