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N-gram language modelling, a proven and effective method in NLP, is widely used to calculate the probability of a sentence in natural language. Language pattern is a linguistic level between word/character and sentence, which exists in pattern grammar. In this research, the approach of language model and language pattern are combined for the first time, and language patterns are studied by use of the N-gram model. Chinese function-word-centered patterns are extracted from the LCMC corpus, and aligned into pattern chains. The language model is trained from these chains to investigate the properties and distribution of Chinese function words, the interaction of content words and function words, and the interaction between patterns. The results indicate that there are approximately 10,000 function-word-centered patterns in the texts, which are distributed exponentially. This research summarizes the most common function-word-centered patterns and content-word-centered patterns, and discusses the interactions of patterns based on corpus data. The bigram language model of these patterns reflects the restrictions of function words. In addition, the research adopts an innovative method to visualize the interactions between patterns. This research fills the research gap between word/character and sentence, and reveals basic Chinese pattern categories and the interactions between patterns, which makes a significant contribution to Chinese linguistic research, and improves the efficiency of NLP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: Although discourse‐level assessments contribute to predicting real‐world performance in persons with aphasia (PWA), the use of discourse measures is uncommon in clinical settings due to resource‐heavy procedures. Moreover, assessing function word use in discourse requires the arduous procedure of defining grammatical categories for each word in language transcripts. Aims: The purpose of this exploratory study was twofold: (1) to develop core function word lists as a clinician‐friendly means of evaluating function word use in discourse; and (2) to examine the ability of the core function word measure to differentiate PWA from cognitively healthy adults and persons with fluent aphasia from non‐fluent aphasia. Methods & Procedures: The 25 most commonly used function words (core function words) were extracted from narrative language samples from 470 cognitively healthy adults, which were divided into seven age groups (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s). The percent agreement of core function words for 11 PWA (fluent aphasia = 5; non‐fluent aphasia = 6) and 11 age‐ and education‐matched controls were then calculated. Percent agreement for the core function words produced was compared between the controls and the PWA group, and between participants with fluent aphasia and non‐fluent aphasia. Outcomes & Results: The results indicated that PWA produced fewer core function words from the lists than the control group, and that core function word use was strongly correlated with aphasia severity. Persons with non‐fluent aphasia produced fewer core function words than those with fluent aphasia, although this could be a confound of aphasia classification from the use of the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB)—Revised. Conclusions & Implications: Core function word lists consisting of a limited number of items for quantifying function word use in discourse remain in a nascent stage of development. However, the findings are consistent with previous studies analysing the total production of function words in language samples produced by PWA. Therefore, core function words may potentially serve as a clinician‐friendly manner of quantifying function words produced in discourse. What this paper addsWhat is already known on the subjectFunction word analysis in discourse requires arduous processes of identifying the error production and grammatical category of function words in discourse. Previous studies have demonstrated that core lexicon measures are an efficient, simple means of quantifying discourse in PWA. However, function words have never been considered for generating an independent core lexicon list.What this paper adds to existing knowledgeAs an exploratory study, we focused primarily on developing a clinician‐friendly measure to evaluate function word production in discourse, motivated by the idea of an adaptation strategy within the core lexicon framework. Our findings demonstrated that by using a simple scoring system that the core lexicon measure provides, we differentiated the control group from the PWA group, and persons with fluent aphasia from persons with non‐fluent aphasia. Additionally, we found significant correlations between function word production and aphasia severity determined by WAB Aphasia Quotient (AQ).What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?The results add empirical evidence for the utility of core function word lists for quantifying function word usage in discourse in PWA. Counting the presence and absence of function words in discourse will allow clinicians to avoid labour‐intensive preparatory work, and to obtain useful diagnostic information in a less time‐consuming way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Slavistična Revija is the property of Slavisticno Drustvo Slovenije and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this paper is to analyse Hausa function words of Arabic origin which act as grammatical elements within sentence structure. The twenty-one items identified in Hausa dictionaries as Arabic loans have been presented with reference to their grammatical status (nouns, particles, phrases) and function (co- and subordinators, prepositions). The descriptive features of the Arabic forms and their Hausa counterparts have been taken from reference grammars and verified contextually in regard to their functioning in sentences extracted from texts published on the BBC web-site. As a result, the function words of Arabic origin in Hausa were divided into groups according to their grammatic or pragmatic/stylistic functions. The analysis shows that the Hausa function words are result of contextual adaptation of the Arabic words to the Hausa grammar rather than simply lexical borrowings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conducts a comparative study between L1 and L2 (L1 Bengali) English discourse level speech planning to investigate differences between L1 and L2 English speaker groups in the organization of discourse-level speech planning. For this purpose, English speech of 10 L1 English and 40 L1 Bengali speakers of the same discourse are analyzed in terms of using prosodic and acoustic cues by applying hierarchical discourse prosody framework. From this analysis, between-group differences in discourse level speech planning are found through the speech rate, locations of discourse boundary breaks as well as size and scope of speech planning and chunking units. Result of analysis shows that the speech rate of L1 English speakers is higher than that of L2 English speakers, L2 English speakers contain more break boundary than that of the L1 English speakers at every discourse level in the organization, which exhibit the fact that L2 English speakers use more intermediate chunking units and larger scale planning units than that of L1 English speakers. Between-group differences are also found through the analysis of phrase component at prosodic phrase level and accent component at the prosodic word level. These findings can be attributed to L2 English speakers' improper phrasing, improper word level prominence and the ambiguous difference between content words and function words. The study concludes that the deficiencies in English strategy for L1 Bengali speakers' discourse-level speech planning compared to L1 English speakers are due to the influence of L1 (Bengali) prosody at the L2 discourse level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German and French differ in a number of aspects. Regarding the prosody-pragmatics interface, German is said to have a direct focus-to-accent mapping, which is largely absent in French – owing to strong structural constraints. We used a semi-spontaneous dialogue setting to investigate the intonational marking of Verum Focus, a focus on the polarity of an utterance in the two languages (e.g. the child IS tearing the banknote as an opposite claim to the child is not tearing the banknote). When Verum Focus applies to auxiliaries, pragmatic aspects (i.e. highlighting the contrast) directly compete with structural constraints (e.g. avoiding an accent on phonologically weak elements such as monosyllabic function words). Intonational analyses showed that auxiliaries were predominantly accented in German, as expected. Interestingly, we found a high number of (as yet undocumented) focal accents on phrase-initial auxiliaries in French Verum Focus contexts. When French accent patterns were equally distributed across information structural contexts, relative prominence (in terms of peak height) between initial and final accents was shifted towards initial accents in Verum Focus compared to non-Verum Focus contexts. Our data hence suggest that French also may mark Verum Focus by focal accents but that this tendency is partly overridden by strong structural constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the effect that words from different lexical categories have on disfluency in 12 Persian children, ten boys and two girls, who stutter. They were aged 7 years 5 months to 10 years 6 months. Words from the participants' narrative and reading samples (sub-tests of the Reading and Dyslexia Test validated for Persian school-aged children) were categorized as content, function, or content-function, and stuttering-like disfluencies were coded in each speech sample. Content and content-function words were significantly more likely to show stuttering-like disfluencies than function words. The distribution of symptom types over content and content-function words was similar, and differed from the distribution seen in function words. The symptom type analysis also supported the view that whole-word repetitions should not be grouped with other stuttering-like disfluencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Interpretation of single dynamic event words through the lens of motion-event semantics yields a picture of continuity across development. A claim of continuity from children's pre-linguistic cognition through the single-word period to first sentences might seem to imply a reliance on early `concepts'. In contrast, the cognitive structure of the sensorimotor period is characterized here as non-conceptual, with children dependent on language to mold this consistent early cognition toward concepts. Single dynamic event words comprise the same basic domains across languages, but vary in their analysis of those domains in response to characteristics of the ambient language. Dynamic event word meanings based on pre-linguistic cognition further provide the foundation for meanings observed in the verbs of early sentences. These same early verbs are those most likely to be grammaticalized across the world's languages, yielding an interesting correspondence between meanings derived from sensorimotor cognition and those contributing to grammatical expression (Ninio, 1999a). Given their central status in early language expression, dynamic event words should be recognized as comprising a critical category of single-word meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]