Leaving No Stone Unturned: Flexible Retrieval of Idiomatic Expressions from a Large Text Corpus

Idioms are multi-word expressions whose meaning cannot always be deduced from the literal meaning of constituent words. A key feature of idioms that is central to this paper is their peculiar mixture of fixedness and variability, which poses challenges for their retrieval from large corpora using traditional search approaches. These challenges hinder insights into idiom usage, affecting users who are conducting linguistic research as well as those involved in language education. To facilitate access to idiom examples taken from real-world contexts, we introduce an information retrieval system designed specifically for idioms. Given a search query that represents an idiom, typically in its canonical form, the system expands it automatically to account for the most common types of idiom variation including inflection, open slots, adjectival or adverbial modification and passivisation. As a by-product of query expansion, other types of idiom variation captured include derivation, compounding, negation, distribution across multiple clauses as well as other unforeseen types of variation. The system was implemented on top of Elasticsearch, an open-source, distributed, scalable, real-time search engine. Flexible retrieval of idioms is supported by a combination of linguistic pre-processing of the search queries, their translation into a set of query clauses written in a query language called Query DSL, and analysis, an indexing process that involves tokenisation and normalisation. Our system outperformed the phrase search in terms of recall and outperformed the keyword search in terms of precision. Out of the three, our approach was found to provide the best balance between precision and recall. By providing a fast and easy way of finding idioms in large corpora, our approach can facilitate further developments in fields such as linguistics, language education and natural language processing.

Discourse expectations: explaining the implicit causality biases of verbs

This article presents a linguistic account explaining particular mechanisms underlying the generation of expectations at the discourse level. We further develop a linguistic theory – the Empty Slot Theory – explaining the phenomenon of implicit verb causality. According to our proposal, implicit causality (IC) verbs introduce lexically determined slots for causal content of specific types. If the required information is not derivable from the current or preceding context, IC verbs generate the expectation that these slots will be filled in the upcoming discourse. The cognitive mechanism underlying the bias is grounded in the general processing strategy of avoiding accommodation. Empirical evidence for the proposed theory is provided in three continuation experiments in German with comprehensive semantic annotation of the continuations provided by the participants. The reported experiments consistently show that IC bias can be manipulated in systematic ways. Experiment 1 demonstrates important ontological constraints on causal content crucial for our theory. Experiments 2 and 3 show how IC biases can be manipulated in predictable ways by filling the hypothesized slots in the prompt. Experiment 2 illustrates that stimulus-experiencer (experiencer-object) verbs in contrast to causative agent-patient verbs can be manipulated with respect to coherence and coreference by employing adverbial modification. Filling the lexically determined slot of psychological verbs resulted in predictable changes in coherence relations and types of explanations, resulting in the predicted effects on coreference. Experiment 3 extends the empirical investigations to so-called “agent-evocator” verbs. Again, filling the semantic slot as part of the prompt resulted in predictable shifts in coherence relations and explanation types with transparent effects on coreference. The reported experiments shed further light on the close correspondence between coherence and coreference as a hallmark of natural language discourse.

Beyond modal idioms and modal harmony: a corpus-based analysis of gradient idiomaticity in mod + adv collocations

How do we know that would rather and may well are more idiomatic than would well or will really? Can this intuition be measured systematically in usage data? Traditionally, modal idioms such had/’d better, would/’d rather or might (as) well are seen as distinct from more compositional collocations, which may be modally harmonic (could possibly, will probably) or not (could also, might even). Yet the collocation of modal auxiliaries + adverbs (mod + adv) is more complex than suggested by a binary classification into idioms and non-idioms. This article uses data from COCA and the method of collostructional analysis to show that the difference between qualitatively distinct types of mod + adv is a matter of degree. Modal idiomaticity should be seen as gradient along a continuum from strong association (would rather) to strong dissociation (would well). The results support assumptions that statistical information about the collocational behavior of modal auxiliaries is a cue for the scope of adverbial modification and is thus an important aspect of speakers’ knowledge of modal meaning. The study contributes to recent approaches to modality from a ‘combinatorial’ perspective, which recognizes the importance of the lexical environment in core areas of grammar.

A Morphosyntactic Analysis of Patient-Subject Constructions in Chinese

The exact nature and derivation of patient-subject constructions (PSC) in Chinese are still at dispute in literature. Based on the restriction of manner adverbial modification and the nonexistence of the manner reading of zenme ‘how’ observed in Chinese PSC, a morphosyntactic analysis has been provided. We argue that the seeming action verb V in PSC is not a real main verb, but a verbal root to be introduced into the derivation after syntax via external morphological merger. The real main verb of PSC in syntax is a covert light verb ∅BEC, which selects a nominal phrase (NP) as its specifier (Spec) and a resultative phrase (RP) as its complement. BECP is further selected by an aspect (Asp) head le. To satisfy the extended projection principle (EPP), the NP at [Spec, BECP] moves to the [Spec, TP] in syntax. After syntax, the resultative (R) head-moves to ∅BEC at the phonological form (PF) to satisfy the phonological requirement of ∅BEC, forming R-∅BEC; then, a bare verbal root merges with R-∅BEC at PF to denote the manner of the change of state. Due to the phonological requirement of le, V-R-∅BEC head-moves to le, producing the right order of PSC. The two elided forms of PSC can be derived similarly. This research suggests that covert light verbs and morphology may play an interactive role in the derivation of some “typical” constructions in Chinese.

Adverbial Modification (May 27, 1970)

Lecture V takes up the semantics of adverbial modifiers. Davidson begins with some methodological remarks, offering reasons for optimism about the prospects for giving a truth-theoretic semantics for a full natural language. He then argues that we have reason independent of the semantics of adverbial modifiers to think that an adequate semantics for English will need to quantify over events. Once the possibility of covert quantification over events is granted, Davidson goes on to show how adverbial modification can be given a natural treatment in an event-semantic framework. He concludes with some remarks on the notion of logical form.

Modification

This chapter explores issues in the syntax and semantics of modification. The main focus is on adjectival modification, since the syntax and semantics of adjectives is fairly complex and illustrates many key issues. Section 13.1 provides an overview of the syntax of adjectival modification, Section 13.2 discusses three semantic classes of adjectives and how their meanings are represented, and Section 13.3 discusses adjectival modification at the syntax-semantics interface within the glue approach introduced in Chapter 8. Section 13.4 addresses problems in defining the semantic contribution of modifiers, which have a straightforward solution within our framework. The chapter concludes with a brief examination of the syntax and semantics of adverbial modification: Section 13.5 discusses the syntax and semantics of manner adverbs and sentential adverbs.

Nominals and Event Structure

This chapter discusses three semantic approaches to event nominalizations: The Davidsonian, the Kimian, and the truthmaker-based approach. It argues that a combination of the three approaches is required for the semantics of the full range of event and state nominalizations as well as the related phenomenon of adverbial modification. The chapter also presents data regarding a distinction between two sorts of nominalizations of psychological and illocutionary verbs that challenge the received view of the identity of the events described by verbs and by (non-gerundive) deverbal nominalizations. These data bear on a distinction between ‘actions’ and ‘products’ introduced by the Polish philosopher Twardowski.