Incremental Composition in Distributional Semantics

Despite the incremental nature of Dynamic Syntax (DS), the semantic grounding of it remains that of predicate logic, itself grounded in set theory, so is poorly suited to expressing the rampantly context-relative nature of word meaning, and related phenomena such as incremental judgements of similarity needed for the modelling of disambiguation. Here, we show how DS can be assigned a compositional distributional semantics which enables such judgements and makes it possible to incrementally disambiguate language constructs using vector space semantics. Building on a proposal in our previous work, we implement and evaluate our model on real data, showing that it outperforms a commonly used additive baseline. In conclusion, we argue that these results set the ground for an account of the non-determinism of lexical content, in which the nature of word meaning is its dependence on surrounding context for its construal.

Feedback Relevance Spaces: Interactional Constraints on Processing Contexts in Dynamic Syntax

Feedback such as backchannels and clarification requests often occurs subsententially, demonstrating the incremental nature of grounding in dialogue. However, although such feedback can occur at any point within an utterance, it typically does not do so, tending to occur at Feedback Relevance Spaces (FRSs). We present a corpus study of acknowledgements and clarification requests in British English, and describe how our low-level, semantic processing model in Dynamic Syntax accounts for this feedback. The model trivially accounts for the 85% of cases where feedback occurs at FRSs, but we also describe how it can be integrated or interpreted at non-FRSs using the predictive, incremental and interactive nature of the formalism. This model shows how feedback serves to continually realign processing contexts and thus manage the characteristic divergence and convergence that is key to moving dialogue forward.

Dynamic Syntax

Dynamic Syntax (DS: Kempson et al. 2001; Cann et al. 2005) is an action-based grammar formalism which models the process of natural language understanding as monotonic tree growth. This paper presents an introduction to the notions of incrementality and underspecification and update, drawing on the assumptions made by DS. It lays out the tools of the theoretical framework that are necessary to understand the accounts developed in the other contributions to the Special Issue. It also represents an up-to-date account of the framework, combining the developments that have previously remained distributed in a diverse body of literature.

Differential Object Marking in Kazakh: The Dynamic Syntax Approach

This paper presents a novel, Dynamic Syntax-based approach to the phenomenon of differential object marking in Kazakh, which can be extended at least to other Turkic languages displaying this phenomenon. It is demonstrated that the difference in the pragmatics associated with marked and unmarked direct objects, as well as the syntactic restrictions on the positioning of unmarked direct objects, can be elegantly and succinctly explicated through the application of the notions of fixed and unfixed nodes, without the need for proposing special syntactic positions or additional pragmatics for the accusative case.

The procedural syntax of fake modification constructions in Chinese

The clitic morpheme de in Mandarin Chinese has various uses. Typically, it is cliticized to a phrase whether the phrase is nominal or adjectival; it can also occur between two noun phrases when there is no relation of semantic modification. The constructions that involve the latter use of de, known as fake modification constructions, have been theoretically characterized many a time. In the existing characterizations, the morpheme is treated either as a mysteriously inserted lexical item, a modification marker, or a genitive morpheme. The existing accounts suffer from a variety of theoretical and empirical problems. Evidence is presented that in some other constructions and in fake modification constructions, de, while having no lexical semantic content of its own, occupies a position that is otherwise occupied by a two-place predicate. Based on this observation, a partially unitary theoretical account of fake modification constructions is formulated from a parsing perspective in the framework of Dynamic Syntax. In this account, four de-morphemes in fake modification constructions are recognized with different syntactic distributions; however, they all contribute a semantically underspecified predicate that is updated by syntactically constrained or context-based inference.

Sentences with uncoordinated attributes: their perception and understanding

This paper aims at describing a fragment of the “dynamic syntax” of the Russian language, namely the function of the adverb and the case form with a preposition in the structure of the utterance. They often function as uncoordinated attributes resulting from the word form pass-ing from the sphere of direct verb submission to the noun phrase. Constructions of the type “okno naprotiv” (window opposite something) are differently evaluated by linguists and pro-voke discussion. However, in terms of cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics, it is more important that utterances appear with a syntactic homonymy – the possibility of a double (al-ternative) syntactic division. The general semantic interpretation of the utterance depends on the listener’s choice of one of the options. For example, the phrase “On ne nashel brauninga v rukave” (He did not find the browning in the sleeve) can be interpreted by establishing the connections “ne nashel – v rukave” (did not find – in the sleeve) or “brauninga – v rukave” (browning – in the sleeve). The author provides the actual examples from Russian fiction and journalism. The prerequisites affecting the perception and understanding of such patterns are investigated. It is shown that the choice of one of the variants of analysis is influenced by: a) common sense, that is, the cognitive and verbal experience of the listener, b) linguistic fac-tors, including the rules of combinatorics, word order, etc. A connection is established be-tween the internal structural transformations taking place in the speaker’s and the listener’s consciousness and general trends in the development of Russian syntax. Among these, consideration is given to the tendency to weaken syntactic relations, the activation of constructions based on lexical-semantic associations, centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in syntax, etc.

Finnish word order: Does comprehension matter?

Finnish word order is relatively free, making room for all mathematically possible word orders in many constructions. Because there is no evidence in this language for radical nonconfigurationality, explanations must be sought from syntax. It is argued in this article that morphosyntax and word order represent syntactic structure at the PF-interface. Rich morphosyntax frees word order, poor morphosyntax freezes it. The hypothesis is formalized within the context of a parsing-oriented theory of the human language faculty (UG) combining left-to-right minimalism with the dynamic syntax approach. The analysis was implemented as an algorithm and successfully tested with a corpus of 119,800 unique Finnish word orders.

Left-to-Right Asymmetry and Early Association in Korean

This paper shows Korean speakers’ strong preference for incremental structure building based on the following core phenomena: (1) left–right asymmetry; (2) pre-verbal structure building and a strong preference for early association. This paper argues that these phenomena reflect the procedural aspects of linguistic competence, which are difficult to explain within non-procedural grammar formalisms. Based on these observations, I argue for the necessity of a grammar formalism that adopts left-to-right incrementality as a core property of the syntactic architecture. In particular, I aim to show the role of (1) constructive particles; (2) prosody; and (3) structural routines in incremental Korean structure building. Though the nature of this discussion is theory-neutral, in order to formalise this idea I will adopt Dynamic Syntax [DS: Kempson et al. (Dynamic syntax: the flow of language understanding, Blackwell, Oxford, 2001); Cann et al. (The dynamics of language. Elsevier, Oxford, 2005)] in this paper.