Utjecaj semantičkih i sintaktičkih faktora na razumijevanje rečenica kod broca-afazičara

Yugoslav agrammatic aphasics and normal control subjects were tested for comprehension of agent-object relations in a series of simple Serbo-Croatian sentences consisting of two nouns and a transactive action verb. The availability of nominative and accusative case inflections and a semantic contrast was systematically varied across sentences. Sentences were also varied with respect to the two sequences NVN and VNN. An analysis of subjects’ agent-object assignments yielded the following results: While Broca’s aphasics showed some sensitivity to case inflections, their ability to process such cues was greatly impaired relative to normal subjects, for whom morphological cues were almost completely deterministic. Broca’s aphasics were impaired to a lesser degree in their ability to employ a strategy of »choose the first noun as agent« when case inflections and semantic contrasts were not available. While Broca’s aphasics showed no impairment in their ability to exploit semantic contrasts for agent-object assignment, there was no absolute compensatory increase in the degree to which they relied on semantic cues. Differences in word sequence had no effect on agent-object assignment in Broca’s aphasics. Finally, Broca’s aphasics frequently responded unsystematically when cues to agent-object relations occurred in isolation or in competition with one another, but when there was a convergence of cues, their performance approached that of normal subjects. This result was interpreted in terms of the accessing hypothesis.

Object Assignment in S.C. Dik’s Functional Grammar: Marginal Accessibility in English

The approach to Subject and Object assignment in Dik<s Functional Grammaris one of the most controversial aspects of the theory. Dik (1997) formulates auniversal hierarchy of semantic functions determining accessibility to theSubject and Object functions. The icut-off pointj for Object assignment inEnglish is established after the Beneficiary. However, it is my contention thatObject assignment is not restricted to Goal, Recipient and Beneficiary terms.As I will try to illustrate in this paper, there are other more marginal possibilitiesthat suggest that the productivity of Object assigment is a matter of degree (cf.Brdar and Brdar Szabó 1993).

Redistribution Mechanisms for Assignment of Heterogeneous Objects

There are p heterogeneous objects to be assigned to n competing agents (n > p) each with unit demand. It is required to design a Groves mechanism for this assignment problem satisfying weak budget balance, individual rationality, and minimizing the budget imbalance. This calls for designing an appropriate rebate function. When the objects are identical, this problem has been solved which we refer as WCO mechanism. We measure the performance of such mechanisms by the redistribution index. We first prove an impossibility theorem which rules out linear rebate functions with non-zero redistribution index in heterogeneous object assignment. Motivated by this theorem, we explore two approaches to get around this impossibility. In the first approach, we show that linear rebate functions with non-zero redistribution index are possible when the valuations for the objects have a certain type of relationship and we design a mechanism with linear rebate function that is worst case optimal. In the second approach, we show that rebate functions with non-zero efficiency are possible if linearity is relaxed. We extend the rebate functions of the WCO mechanism to heterogeneous objects assignment and conjecture them to be worst case optimal.