scholarly journals Semantic/pragmatic factors affecting the salience of transfer verb arguments

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
Meghan Salomon ◽  
Gregory Ward

Rohde et al. (2006) showed that, for transfer verbs, the salience of the recipient argument is a function of the particular coherence relation posited by participants. Using a priming paradigm with transfer verbs and occupation-denoting NPs in isolated sentences, we find that participants are sensitive to the lexical properties of the transfer verb itself as measured by the relative salience of the associated transfer verb arguments. Alternatively, using a sentence completion paradigm—a more strategic task in which participants are guided by discourse-level features—we find participants are sensitive instead to the coherence relations of the relevant event, replicating Rohde et al. (2006). Our findings support the notion that coherence relations drive the interpretation of multi-sentence discourses while sentences considered in isolation are guided by particular features of the linguistic context. 

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludivine Crible ◽  
Sílvia Gabarró-López

Abstract This paper provides the first contrastive analysis of a coherence relation (viz. addition) and its connectives across a sign language (French Belgian Sign Language) and a spoken language (French), both used in the same geographical area. The analysis examines the frequency and types of connectives that can express an additive relation, in order to contrast its “markedness” in the two languages, that is, whether addition is marked by dedicated connectives or by ambiguous, polyfunctional ones. Furthermore, we investigate the functions of the most frequent additive connective in each language (namely et and the sign SAME), starting from the observation that most connectives are highly polyfunctional. This analysis intends to show which functions are compatible with the meaning of addition in spoken and signed discourse. Despite a common core of shared discourse functions, the equivalence between et and SAME is only partial and relates to a difference in their semantics.


1995 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 83-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanny den Ouden

Sanders, Spooren and Noordman (1992) provide a classification of coherence relations that is based on four primitives. These primitives are claimed to have a psychological status, in that hearers and speakers use their knowledge of these primitives to infer the right coherence relation between two clauses. The order in which children acquire coherence relations provides a test base for the classification: the classification predicts that negative causal relations are the most complex and that children therefore acquire these relations later than any of the others. This hypothesis was investigated in an experiment with 8- and 11-year-old children. In one task the children had to infer the right relation, in another task the children had to produce the right relation. Negative causal relations were compared with negative additive and positive causal relations. The items were constructed with nonsense words to eliminate the factor of world knowledge. In several respects the negative causal relation turned out to be the most complex.


2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 424-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawei Jin

Abstract This paper proposes that adjunct island effects (Ross, 1967; Cattell, 1976) receive a discourse-semantic explanation. The exact formulation of this explanation builds upon previous work (e.g. Kehler, 2002) on island effects of conjuncts (Ross, 1967), which explains asymmetrical extraction from coordinate structures in English (that is, violations of the coordinate structure constraint) in terms of certain coherence relations (Hobbs, 1979). I show that asymmetric extraction from adjuncts in Chinese (that is, violations of the adjunct island constraint) is also sensitive to coherence relations. I argue that such similarities exist because coherence relations may be expressed by either a coordinative or a subordinative structure, and the variation in the syntactic realizations of coherence relations can be characterized through an independently motivated interclausal relations hierarchy that governs the mapping between semantics and syntactic linkage (van Valin, 2005).


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess Sullivan ◽  
Juliana Boucher ◽  
Reina Kiefer ◽  
Katherine Williams ◽  
David Barner

Word learning depends critically on the use of linguistic context to constrain the likely meanings of words. However, the mechanisms by which children infer word meaning from linguistic context are still poorly understood. In the present study, we asked whether adults (n = 58) and 2- to 6-year-old children (n = 180) use discourse coherence relations (i.e., the meaningful relationships between elements within a discourse) to constrain their interpretation of novel words. Specifically, we showed participants videos of novel animals exchanging objects. These videos were accompanied by a linguistic description of the events in which we manipulated a single word within a sentence (and vs. because) in order to alter the causal and temporal relations between the events in the discourse (e.g., “One animal handed the baby to the other animal [and/because] the baby started crying in the talfa’s arms”). We then asked participants which animal (the giver or the receiver) was the referent of the novel word. Across two experiments, we found evidence that young children used the causal and temporal relations in each discourse to constrain their interpretations of novel words.


1997 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Blakemore

According to a number of researchers in linguistics and artificial intelligence, the key to the meanings of expressions such as in other words, that is, and for example/for instance lies in the particular coherence relations they express in discourse. It is argued that these relations are sub-types of the relation of Elaboration and hence are ideational or semantic relations which express some experience of the world about us and within our imagination. In this paper I argue that the notion of Elaboration does not provide an adequate theoretical basis for the analysis of these expressions. I show, first, that their analysis in terms of ideational relations cannot capture the way in which utterances that contain them are understood, and, second, that the phenomena which are said to fall under the relation of Elaboration do not in fact constitute a single class. I show that Sperber and Wilson's (1986) relevance theoretic pragmatics provides a better explanatory framework for the analysis of these expressions, arguing that while their notion of interpretive resemblance plays a central role in the analysis of some utterances, there are other cases which must be analysed in terms of inferential relations between propositions. In all cases, the question of how the utterance is to be understood does not depend on the classification of the coherence relation it exhibits but on how it achieves relevance.


Author(s):  
F. A. Heckman ◽  
E. Redman ◽  
J.E. Connolly

In our initial publication on this subject1) we reported results demonstrating that contrast is the most important factor in producing the high image quality required for reliable image analysis. We also listed the factors which enhance contrast in order of the experimentally determined magnitude of their effect. The two most powerful factors affecting image contrast attainable with sheet film are beam intensity and KV. At that time we had only qualitative evidence for the ranking of enhancing factors. Later we carried out the densitometric measurements which led to the results outlined below.Meaningful evaluations of the cause-effect relationships among the considerable number of variables in preparing EM negatives depend on doing things in a systematic way, varying only one parameter at a time. Unless otherwise noted, we adhered to the following procedure evolved during our comprehensive study:Philips EM-300; 30μ objective aperature; magnification 7000- 12000X, exposure time 1 second, anti-contamination device operating.


Author(s):  
Christine M. Dannels ◽  
Christopher Viney

Processing polymers from the liquid crystalline state offers several advantages compared to processing from conventional fluids. These include: better axial strength and stiffness in fibers, better planar orientation in films, lower viscosity during processing, low solidification shrinkage of injection moldings (thermotropic processing), and low thermal expansion coefficients. However, the compressive strength of the solid is disappointing. Previous efforts to improve this property have focussed on synthesizing stiffer molecules. The effect of microstructural scale has been overlooked, even though its relevance to the mechanical and physical properties of more traditional materials is well established. By analogy with the behavior of metals and ceramics, one would expect a fine microstructure (i..e. a high density of orientational defects) to be desirable.Also, because much microstructural detail in liquid crystalline polymers occurs on a scale close to the wavelength of light, light is scattered on passing through these materials.


1990 ◽  
Vol 54 (11) ◽  
pp. 638-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
PC Damiano ◽  
ER Brown ◽  
JD Johnson ◽  
JP Scheetz

1976 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 207-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance P. DesRoches

A statistical review provides analysis of four years of speech therapy services of a suburban school system which can be used for comparison with other school system programs. Included are data on the percentages of the school population enrolled in therapy, the categories of disabilities and the number of children in each category, the sex and grade-level distribution of those in therapy, and shifts in case-load selection. Factors affecting changes in case-load profiles are identified and discussed.


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