50 results on '"function word"'
Search Results
2. N-gram Language Model for Chinese Function-word-centered Patterns.
- Author
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Jie Song, Yixiao Liu, and Yunhua Qu
- Subjects
LANGUAGE models ,CHINESE language ,LINGUISTICS ,NATURAL languages ,EVIDENCE gaps - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2023
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3. Auxiliary Verbs of Nocte, Khappa, Ollo and Tutsa.
- Author
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Das, Bishakha
- Subjects
VERBS ,UNIVERSAL language ,NATIVE language ,VERB phrases ,COPULA functions - Published
- 2021
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4. Clitics and Clitic Clusters in Morphology
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Bonet, Eulalia
- Published
- 2019
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5. Development of a measure of function word use in narrative discourse: core lexicon analysis in aphasia.
- Author
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Kim, Hana, Kintz, Stephen, and Wright, Heather Harris
- Subjects
- *
APHASIA , *DISCOURSE analysis , *LANGUAGE & languages , *RESEARCH , *RESEARCH funding , *VOCABULARY , *SEVERITY of illness index , *ONE-way analysis of variance - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2021
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6. THE COGNITIVE FACTORS FOR USING THE ENGLISH FUNCTION WORDS ‘LIKE’ AND ‘AS’ AS MARKERS OF COMPARISON IN THE SONNETS OF W. SHAKESPEARE
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Khrisonopulo, E.Yu.
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function word ,comparative construction ,simile ,cognitive operation ,служебное слово ,сравнительная конструкция ,образное сравнение ,когнитивная операция ,Philology. Linguistics ,P1-1091 - Abstract
The paper studies the differentiated uses of the preposition ‘like’ and the conjunction ‘as’ in their function of constituents of poetic similes. As evidenced by the suggested analysis of linguistic data from the texts of W. Shakespeare’s sonnets, the function words ‘like’ and ‘as’ are distinguished as elements of a discursively rooted opposition that is based on the contrastive construal of two cognitive operations. Whereas the preposition ‘like’ indicates that a simile construes abstract and perceptually inaccessible things in terms of perceptual characteristics, the conjunction ‘as’ evokes the cognitive categorization of particular entities and phenomena as belonging to general categories of things, events and situations.
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- 2018
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7. There is room at the bottom for small linguistic stuff
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Corver, Norbert
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function word ,article ,root ,extended projection ,categorial identity hypothesis ,Language and Literature ,Philology. Linguistics ,P1-1091 ,African languages and literature ,PL8000-8844 - Abstract
This article is concerned with the possibility that syntactic structure may feature “small stuff” not just at the very top of the clause, but also lower down, in the domain that would usually be regarded as the lexical domain. The analysis is based on a range of (dialectal) Dutch and Frisian data, suggesting an initial analysis for the relevant morphosyntactic facts in terms of which a “smaller” higher category - what superficially looks like the definite and indefinite article in the relevant systems - seems to be located at the bottom of a nominal structure.
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- 2017
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8. Function Words of Arabic Origin in Hausa.
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Zając, Patryk
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ARABIC language ,FUNCTION words (Grammar) ,GRAMMATICAL categories ,HAUSA language ,LEXICON - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2019
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9. Usage and efficacy of electronic dictionaries for a language without word boundaries
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Etsuko Toyoda
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Electronic dictionary ,Japanese ,reading ,vocabulary ,function word ,multiword unit ,Language and Literature - Abstract
There is cumulative evidence suggesting that hyper-glossing facilitates lower-level processing and enhances reading comprehension. There are plentiful studies on electronic dictionaries for English. However, research on e-dictionaries for languages with no boundaries between words is still scarce. The main aim for the current study is to investigate the usage and efficacy of e-dictionaries for Japanese language learners. This article reports the results of two studies concerning e-dictionaries: a survey study investigating the use of e-dictionaries (with a particular focus on e-glossaries that change a digital text into a hypertext) by L2 learners of Japanese, and a comparative study examining existing e-glossaries to evaluate whether they provide the optimal level of support for reading Japanese e-texts. The results of the survey showed that learners have their preferred e-dictionaries (in most cases, e-word dictionaries in which the user can look up individual words), and that few learners are aware of the existence of e-glossaries. The results of further study revealed that existing e-glossaries have various functions, but lack some requisite information crucial to the target language. This study suggests that technical issues revolving around the lack of spaces between words may be a reason for the lag in usage and efficacy of e-glossaries for languages without word boundaries.
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- 2016
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10. Narrative Constructions for the Organization of Self Experience: Proof of Concept via Embodied Robotics
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Anne-Laure Mealier, Gregoire Pointeau, Solène Mirliaz, Kenji Ogawa, Mark Finlayson, and Peter F. Dominey
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narrative ,grammatical construction ,function word ,reservoir computing ,situation model ,human-robot interaction ,Psychology ,BF1-990 - Abstract
It has been proposed that starting from meaning that the child derives directly from shared experience with others, adult narrative enriches this meaning and its structure, providing causal links between unseen intentional states and actions. This would require a means for representing meaning from experience—a situation model—and a mechanism that allows information to be extracted from sentences and mapped onto the situation model that has been derived from experience, thus enriching that representation. We present a hypothesis and theory concerning how the language processing infrastructure for grammatical constructions can naturally be extended to narrative constructions to provide a mechanism for using language to enrich meaning derived from physical experience. Toward this aim, the grammatical construction models are augmented with additional structures for representing relations between events across sentences. Simulation results demonstrate proof of concept for how the narrative construction model supports multiple successive levels of meaning creation which allows the system to learn about the intentionality of mental states, and argument substitution which allows extensions to metaphorical language and analogical problem solving. Cross-linguistic validity of the system is demonstrated in Japanese. The narrative construction model is then integrated into the cognitive system of a humanoid robot that provides the memory systems and world-interaction required for representing meaning in a situation model. In this context proof of concept is demonstrated for how the system enriches meaning in the situation model that has been directly derived from experience. In terms of links to empirical data, the model predicts strong usage based effects: that is, that the narrative constructions used by children will be highly correlated with those that they experience. It also relies on the notion of narrative or discourse function words. Both of these are validated in the experimental literature.
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- 2017
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11. Creating Contemporaneity : Struggles with Form
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Haeri, Niloofar and Haeri, Niloofar
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- 2003
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12. THE SENSITIVITY AND PRODUCTION OF ARTICLES AND 3rd PERSON DIRECT OBJECT CLITICS: EVIDENCE FROM EYE-MOVEMENTS, ERP RECORDINGS AND ONLINE TESTS IN ITALIAN CHILDREN AND TODDLERS
- Author
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MORNATI, GIULIA, Mornati, G, and GUASTI, MARIA TERESA
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Processamento Online ,Proclitics-Enclitic ,Articoli ,M-PSI/04 - PSICOLOGIA DELLO SVILUPPO E PSICOLOGIA DELL'EDUCAZIONE ,Function word ,Proclitici-Enclitici ,Gender processing ,Processamento Genere ,Parole Funtori ,Article - Abstract
Le parole funtori e i morfemi flessivi sono parole che non hanno un significato indipendente ma sono molto frequenti e solitamente monosillabiche. Tra queste, possiamo trovare articoli, pronomi clitici, suffissi. Trasmettono informazioni grammaticali e strutturali e sono un aiuto critico nell'elaborazione del linguaggio. Sebbene ricerche precedenti abbiano dimostrato che i neonati sono sensibili alle parole funzione fin dai primi mesi di vita, gli studi sulla loro sensibilità e produzione in italiano sono scarsi. Questa tesi si propone di studiare la sensibilità e la produzione dei bambini italiani agli articoli e ai clitici complemento oggetto (3DO). Questa scelta è motivata dal fatto che questi due morfemi, soprattutto i clitici 3DO sono critici nell’identificare bambini monolingui e bilingui con disturbi del linguaggio. Nel Capitolo 3 abbiamo studiato la sensibilità precoce agli articoli e ai clitici 3DO. Registrando i movimenti oculari, abbiamo analizzato se i bambini di 12 mesi distinguevano tra articoli veri e pseudo-articoli e se i bambini di 20 mesi distinguevano tra clitici veri e pseudo-clitici. I risultati hanno mostrato che, per quanto riguarda gli articoli, i bambini distinguevano tra articoli veri e pseudo, preferendo guardare lo schermo quando sentivano un articolo vero. Inoltre, già a 12 mesi di età, i bambini italiani avevano acquisito sia gli articoli definiti che quelli indefiniti. Nessun risultato significativo è emerso con i clitici 3DO a causa, probabilmente, della metodologia utilizzata. I Capitoli 4 e 5 hanno approfondito l'uso di un morfema flessivo sugli articoli, il genere, nel processamento linguistico. Abbiamo dimostrato, attraverso un compito di Looking While Listening, che i bambini di 12 mesi potevano estrarre le informazioni di genere contenute negli articoli per predire i nomi che li seguivano (Capitolo 4). Infine, le registrazioni ERP hanno mostrato che i bambini di 24 mesi potevano rilevare una violazione di genere tra un'immagine e la frase associata già quando sentivano che l'articolo non corrispondeva all'immagine presentata: hanno mostrato una positività posteriore molto precoce (Capitolo 5). Infine, abbiamo studiato la produzione dei clitici 3DO presentando un utile test computerizzato per lo screening della produzione dei clitici 3DO sia nei bambini a sviluppo tipico (TD) che nei bambini con Disturbo Primario del Linguaggio (DPL). Il test ha avuto una buona sensibilità nell'identificare i bambini con DPL. Inoltre, questo test ha mostrato risultati interessanti nella popolazione bilingue: sebbene i bambini che acquisiscono l'italiano come seconda lingua fatichino nella produzione dei clitici 3DO, i bambini bilingui TD hanno ottenuto risultati altrettanto buoni dei coetanei monolingui al test (Capitolo 6). Infine, abbiamo approfondito lo studio della produzione dei clitici 3DO analizzando le differenze nella produzione dei proclitici e degli enclitici in bambini dai 4 ai 7 anni con e senza familiarità per disturbi del linguaggio e dell'apprendimento (LLI). I risultati hanno mostrato che gli enclitici erano più facili da produrre a tutte le età. Inoltre, i bambini con una storia familiare positiva per LLI hanno prodotto meno clitici rispetto ai bambini senza familiarità, soprattutto a 4 e 5 anni. Function words and inflectional morphemes do not have an independent meaning but are highly frequent and usually monosyllabic. Among these, we could find articles, clitic pronouns, nominal and verbal suffixes. They convey structural information and are a critical aid in language acquisition and processing. Although previous research has demonstrated that infants are sensitive to function words from their first months of life, studies on their sensitivity and production in Italian are scarce. This thesis aims to study the sensitivity and production of Italian infants and toddlers to articles and 3rd direct object (3DO) clitics. This choice is motivated by the fact that these two morphemes are critical in the detection of language problems, especially 3DO, in monolingual and bilingual children. Chapter 3 investigated the early sensitivity to articles and 3DO clitics. By recording eye movements, we analysed whether 12 months old infants distinguished between real and pseudo-articles and whether 20 months old toddlers distinguished between real and pseudo-clitics. Results showed that, concerning the articles, infants distinguished between real and pseudo articles, preferring to look at the screen when they heard a real article. Moreover, at already 12 months of age, Italian infants had acquired both definite and indefinite articles. No significant results emerged with 3DO clitics due, probably, to the methodology used. Chapters 4 and 5 deeply investigated the use of an inflection morpheme, gender, on articles in language processing. Through a Looking While Listening task, we showed that infants as young as 12 months could extract the gender information carried by articles to anticipate the upcoming noun (Chapter 4). Finally, ERP recordings showed that children as young as 24 months old could detect a gender violation between a picture and the associated sentence already when they heard that the article did not match the picture presented: they showed a very early posterior positivity (Chapter 5). Finally, we studied the production of 3DO clitics by presenting a helpful computerised test for screening the production of 3DO clitics both in the typical developing (TD) children and in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The test had a good sensitivity in identifying children with DLD. Moreover, this test showed interesting results in the bilingual population: although children who acquire Italian as a second language struggle with the acquisition of 3DO clitics, TD bilingual children performed as well as monolingual peers at the clitic test (Chapter 6). Finally, we have deepened the study of 3DO clitics’ production by analysing the differences in the production of proclitics and enclitics in children aged 4 to 7 years with and without familiarity with language and learning impairments (LLI). Results showed that enclitics were easier to produce at all ages. Moreover, children with a positive family history for LLI produced fewer clitics than children without familiarity, especially at 4 and 5 years.
- Published
- 2022
13. Discourse prosody planning in native (L1) and nonnative (L2) (L1-Bengali) English: a comparative study.
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Saha, Shambhu and Mandal, Shyamal
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PROSODIC analysis (Linguistics) ,PHONETICS ,BENGALI language ,ENGLISH language ,BASIC English - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
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14. Exploring Potential Correlation Between CEFR Grammar Profile in English and Learners’ Overall Grammar Knowledge: An Exploratory Study of 'that'
- Author
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Kasin Janjaroongpak
- Subjects
lcsh:Language and Literature ,Grammar ,syntactic representation, cefr, opaqueness, corpus linguistics, form-function mapping, translation, opacity ,lcsh:P101-410 ,Teaching method ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Syntax ,Linguistics ,lcsh:Language. Linguistic theory. Comparative grammar ,Corpus linguistics ,Function word ,lcsh:P ,General Materials Science ,Language proficiency ,Grammatical construction ,Psychology ,Meaning (linguistics) ,media_common - Abstract
This preliminary study explored the possibility of using an opaque polysemous grammatical unit as a representation for the whole grammatical knowledge of a learner. There were two groups of informants, a group with a certified language proficiency level at CEFR B1-B2 and a learner group at A1-A2 level. The informants were asked to provide a Thai translation of an English text as faithful as possible. The first group consistently and correctly answered the questions by supplying the right translation of polysemous “that” while the answers from the second group were divided in that some could correctly identify C2 function of the word, “that”, though their overall grammatical knowledge was considered to be at A1 but other A2 students failed to identify C2 function of the word in question. The result indicated that the grammatical construction in question could not be used as a key predictor for learners’ syntactic representation as the lineage relation between CEFR level of the grammatical unit corresponded with the translated texts provided to a limited extent. On pedagogical implications, insights provided suggested that instructors should spend more time explaining challenging advanced grammatical functions as they were points that learners were struggling with and one possible way to check whether they did understand syntactic meaning of a function word was by asking students to supply a translation.
- Published
- 2020
15. Die hantering van neweskikkers en onderskikkers in Afrikaanse woordeboeke
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Nerina Bosman and Anna N. Otto
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lexicography ,coordinating conjunction ,correlative coordinating conjunction ,subordinating conjunction ,monolingual dictionary ,hypotactic binding ,incorporation ,complement sentences ,grammatical guidance ,linguistic grounding ,word order ,clause integration ,function word ,Philology. Linguistics ,P1-1091 ,Languages and literature of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania ,PL1-8844 ,Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages ,PD1-7159 - Abstract
The Treatment of Coordinating and Subordinating Conjunctions in Afrikaans Dictionaries. Prompted by the discrepancy between the needs for lexicographic assistance with regard to conjunctions and the relative indifference concerning this in lexicographic research and practice, this study attempts to indicate the unsatisfactory treatment of conjunctions in Afrikaans dictionaries and to offer some constructive lexicographic solutions to the treatment of this part of speech category. A first recommendation would be that the lemmata voegwoord (conjunction), verbindingswoord (connective), neweskikker (coordinating conjunction), onderskikker (subordinating conjunction) and voegende bywoord (conjunctional adverb) provide more in-depth syntactic information with enough examples (also across sentence boundaries). There should be cross-references from the specific conjunction lemmata to these lemmata. The examples provided should indicate typical lexical and grammatical patterns and whether only hypotactic binding is possible or whether incorporation is also possible. In learners’ dictionaries the typical lexical patterns can be in bold print. Care should be taken in inclusive dictionaries, like WAT, to promote faster information retrieval and lexicographers should not equate functions with polysemous meaning distinctions, e.g. there should be two lemmata for of as it is a homonym which clearly requires separate lemmata.
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
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16. Quantifiers in Natural Language: Efficient Communication and Degrees of Semantic Universals
- Author
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Shane Steinert-Threlkeld and Open Science Framework
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efficient communication ,Computer science ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Science ,QC1-999 ,General Physics and Astronomy ,computer.software_genre ,simplicity ,Astrophysics ,050105 experimental psychology ,Article ,Meaning (philosophy of language) ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Simplicity ,Function (engineering) ,conservativity ,semantic universals ,media_common ,060201 languages & linguistics ,quantifiers ,business.industry ,Physics ,05 social sciences ,06 humanities and the arts ,monotonicity ,Problem of universals ,Constructed language ,QB460-466 ,Variation (linguistics) ,0602 languages and literature ,Function word ,Artificial intelligence ,business ,informativeness ,computer ,Natural language processing ,Natural language ,semantic typology - Abstract
While the languages of the world vary greatly, they exhibit systematic patterns, as well. Semantic universals are restrictions on the variation in meaning exhibit cross-linguistically (e.g., that, in all languages, expressions of a certain type can only denote meanings with a certain special property). This paper pursues an efficient communication analysis to explain the presence of semantic universals in a domain of function words: quantifiers. Two experiments measure how well languages do in optimally trading off between competing pressures of simplicity and informativeness. First, we show that artificial languages which more closely resemble natural languages are more optimal. Then, we introduce information-theoretic measures of degrees of semantic universals and show that these are not correlated with optimality in a random sample of artificial languages. These results suggest both that efficient communication shapes semantic typology in both content and function word domains, as well as that semantic universals may not stand in need of independent explanation.
- Published
- 2021
17. Use of bound morphemes (noun particles) in word segmentation by Japanese-learning infants.
- Author
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Haryu, Etsuko and Kajikawa, Sachiyo
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- *
LANGUAGE & languages , *LANGUAGE acquisition , *LANGUAGE disorders , *LEARNING strategies , *WRITTEN communication , *PHONOLOGICAL awareness , *CHILDREN - Abstract
Recent studies have shown that English-, French-, and German-learning infants begin to use determiners to segment adjacent nouns before their first birthday. The present research extended the investigation to a typologically different language, Japanese, focusing on infants’ use of a high-frequency particle ga, a subject-marker. In Japanese, a particle follows, rather than precedes, the noun, and is usually followed by a predicate verb; thus particles rarely occur at utterance edges. Furthermore, a particle is not a free morpheme (like a determiner) but a bound morpheme. Although particles are frequently omitted in colloquial speech, the frequency of their occurrence is comparable to that of high-frequency determiners in a previously studied language, French. The results demonstrated that Japanese-learning infants used particles for word segmentation not at 10 and 12 months but at 15 months, which is later than the age at which infants begin to use determiners in previously studied languages. The reason for this delay was discussed in light of the properties of Japanese particles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
18. Disfluency characteristics of Kannada–English bilingual adults who stutter.
- Author
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Maruthy, Santosh, Raj, Nimisha, Geetha, Meluru Puttashetty, and Priya, Chinnaiah Sindhu
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- *
STUTTERING , *COMPARATIVE grammar , *MULTILINGUALISM , *SPEECH evaluation , *ADULTS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate whether stuttering frequency differs between two languages in Kannada–English bilingual adults who stutter. The second purpose was to compare the relationship between grammatical class (content–function word dichotomy) and stuttering frequency in two languages. In addition, we also examined whether types of disfluencies vary between content and function words in two languages. Twenty-five bilingual adults who stutter that were proficient in both languages (mean age = 22.5 years, SD = 3.0) participated in the present study. Spontaneous speech samples were recorded in both Kannada and English and stuttering frequencies were calculated in both languages and for each type of grammatical category. Further, different types of disfluencies were noted for each type of grammatical category in both the languages. Results revealed significantly greater stuttering in L2 (English) compared to L1 (Kannada). In both the languages, significantly higher content words were stuttered compared to function words. When the comparison was done between two languages, significantly higher content words were stuttered in L1 compared to L2, whereas significantly higher function words were stuttered in L2 compared to L1. The types of disfluencies did not vary between content and function words and between two languages. Present results suggest that frequency and other aspects of stuttering may depend on the proficiency of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
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19. Function Words at the Interface : A Two-Tier Approach
- Author
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Tina Bögel
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Linguistics and Language ,Pronoun ,syntax–prosody interface ,Computer science ,Language and Literature ,function words ,recursive prosodic word ,n-insertion ,two-tier approach ,Match-word/ω ,Swabian ,Nominative case ,Syntax ,Language and Linguistics ,Linguistics ,Focus (linguistics) ,Function word ,ddc:400 ,Prosody ,Complementary distribution ,Word (group theory) - Abstract
The distinction between function words and content words poses a challenge to theories of the syntax–prosody interface. On the one hand, function words are “ignored” by the mapping algorithms; that is, function words are not mapped to prosodic words. On the other hand, there are numerous accounts of function words which form prosodic words and can even be analysed as heads of larger prosodic units. Furthermore, function words seem to be a driving factor for the formation of prosodic structures in that they can largely be held accountable for the non-isomorphism between syntactic and prosodic constituency. This paper discusses these challenges with a focus on a particular function word, and the first-person nominative pronoun in Swabian, a Southern German dialect. By means of two corpus studies, it is shown that the pronoun occurs in two forms, the prosodic word [i:] and the enclitic [ə]. Depending on clause position and focus structure, the forms occur in complementary distribution. Occurrences of n-insertion allow for the establishment of a recursive prosodic word structure at the level of the phonological module. The findings support a new proposal in the form of a two-tier mapping approach to the interface between syntax and prosody.
- Published
- 2021
20. The Effect of Word Class on Speaker-dependent Information in the Standard Dutch Vowel /aː
- Author
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Willemijn Heeren
- Subjects
Male ,Acoustics and Ultrasonics ,Computer science ,Speech recognition ,Phonetics ,Function (mathematics) ,Reference Standards ,Part of speech ,Speech Acoustics ,Variation (linguistics) ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Vowel ,Function word ,Speech Perception ,Humans ,Affect (linguistics) ,Word (computer architecture) ,Language ,Netherlands - Abstract
Linguistic structure co-determines how a speech sound is produced. This study therefore investigated whether the speaker-dependent information in the vowel [aː] varies when uttered in different word classes. From two spontaneous speech corpora, [aː] tokens were sampled and annotated for word class (content, function word). This was done for 50 male adult speakers of Standard Dutch in face-to-face speech (N = 3,128 tokens), and another 50 male adult speakers in telephone speech (N = 3,136 tokens). First, the effect of word class on various acoustic variables in spontaneous speech was tested. Results showed that [aː]s were shorter and more centralized in function than content words. Next, tokens were used to assess their speaker-dependent information as a function of word class, by using acoustic-phonetic variables to (a) build speaker classification models, and (b) compute the strength-of-evidence, a technique from forensic phonetics. Speaker-classification performance was somewhat better for content than function words, whereas forensic strength-of-evidence was comparable between the word classes. This seems explained by how these methods weigh between- and within-speaker variation. Because these two sources of variation co-varied in size with word class, acoustic word-class variation is not expected to affect the sampling of tokens in forensic speaker comparisons.
- Published
- 2020
21. Function Word Adjacency Networks and Early Modern Plays
- Author
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Ros Barber
- Subjects
Cultural Studies ,History ,Literature and Literary Theory ,Misrepresentation ,Function word ,Criticism ,Adjacency list ,Representation (arts) ,Overfitting ,Psychology ,Linguistics ,Style (sociolinguistics) ,Zero (linguistics) - Abstract
The Word Adjacency Network method underpinning the New Oxford Shakespeare’s attribution of the Henry VI plays to Christopher Marlowe as co-author has not been independently tested and is only now being subjected to critiques. The response of Segarra et al. (2019) to criticism by Pervez Rizvi (2018) barely alleviates concerns. This article demonstrates that sections of the plays designated as Shakespeare’s were not detected as Shakespeare’s by the method according to the authors’ own definitions, since his “relative entropy” score was often above zero, which according to Segarra et al. (2016) means the play is no more like Shakespeare’s style than it is like the combined style of all six playwrights tested. The disproportionate representation of Shakespeare in the underlying dataset, combined with a mathematical procedure intended to remove “background noise” may explain Shakespeare’s hovering around the zero line. A claimed concordance with the results of other stylometric tests giving parts of 1 Henry VI to Marlowe is demonstrably not present. The high success rates claimed for the method in Eisen at al. (2018) are based on a flawed validation process known as overfitting, an interpretive method altered to improve success percentages, and the effects of disparate canon sizes for which the equations fail to adequately compensate. It is argued that in the light of potential flaws in the method, and the authors’ misrepresentation of their results, the conclusions of both Segarra et al.’s 2016 article and Eisen et al.’s 2018 study should be set aside.
- Published
- 2020
22. Intonational Means to Mark Verum Focus in German and French.
- Author
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Turco, Giuseppina, Dimroth, Christine, and Braun, Bettina
- Subjects
- *
COMPUTER simulation , *COMPUTER-aided design , *CONVERSATION , *DIALECTS , *EXPERIMENTAL design , *REGRESSION analysis , *RESEARCH funding , *SEMANTICS , *SPEECH evaluation , *INTER-observer reliability , *UNDERGRADUATES ,PHYSIOLOGICAL aspects of speech - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2013
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23. Lexical category influences in Persian children who stutter.
- Author
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Vahab, Maryam, Zandiyan, Azadeh, Falahi, Mohammad Hadi, and Howell, Peter
- Subjects
- *
ARABS , *CHI-squared test , *LANGUAGE & languages , *STATISTICS , *STUTTERING , *VIDEO recording , *DATA analysis , *TASK performance , *NARRATIVES , *PHONOLOGICAL awareness , *INTER-observer reliability , *DESCRIPTIVE statistics , *CHILDREN - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2013
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
24. Segmentation of vowel-initial words is facilitated by function words
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Kim, Yun Jung
- Subjects
Linguistics ,Psychology ,function word ,infants ,vowel-initial words ,word segmentation - Abstract
Within the first year of life, infants learn to segment words from fluent speech. Previous research has shown that 7.5-month-olds can segment consonant-initial words, yet the ability to segment vowel-initial words does not emerge until 13.5-16 months of age (11-months in some restricted cases). In Experiment 1, we test 8- and 11-month-olds' ability to segment vowel-initial words that immediately follow the frequently occurring function word 'the'. In two subsequent experiments we rule out the role of bottom-up cues such as phonotactics or allophonic variations in explaining these results. Our results indicate that the function word 'the' facilitates 11-month-olds' segmentation of vowel-initial words that appear sentence-medially.
- Published
- 2012
25. Function word erosion which is not a frequency effect: On exemplars and prosodic paradigm levelling
- Author
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Round, Erich R.
- Subjects
- *
EXAMPLE , *PROSODIC analysis (Linguistics) , *PARADIGM (Linguistics) , *HISTORICAL linguistics , *PHONETICS , *TERMS & phrases , *MORPHOLOGY (Grammar) , *MUTATION (Phonetics) - Abstract
Abstract: The notion of ‘erosion’, a universal diachronic process affecting the phonetic content of certain language forms, has held a place in historical linguistics for almost two centuries now. Recently it has been argued that the erosion of high frequency words can be derived as a consequence of normal language use within a theory of phonology based on exemplars. Focusing on discrete changes to function words, this paper argues that types of erosion exist which cannot be derived in this manner. Instead, erosion as well as other less celebrated, but well attested, irregular changes to function words can be accounted for by a species of paradigm levelling. Prosodic paradigm levelling (PPL) is much like its familiar morphological cousin only it plays out over paradigms whose cells contain word forms selected for by prosodic, not morphological, features. While PPL can account for data which exemplar models cannot, it is maintained nevertheless that exemplar models can offer a reasonable account of much of the data, provided that the model incorporates a discrete level of phonological representation, in addition to exemplars. Arguments presented have implications for phonological representation in general, as well as for the explanation of discrete, irregular change to function words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
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26. Chinese function words grammaticalized from content words: Evidence from ERPs
- Author
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Liu, Baolin, Jin, Zhixing, Wang, Zhongning, and Wu, Guangning
- Subjects
- *
CHINESE language , *NEUROLINGUISTICS , *FUNCTION words (Grammar) , *GRAMMATICALIZATION , *FRAMES (Linguistics) , *SEMANTICS , *SENTENCES (Grammar) , *PHONETICS , *EVOKED potentials (Electrophysiology) - Abstract
Abstract: In linguistics, Chinese function words are validated to be grammaticalized from content words. In this paper, we aim to further explore the relationship and difference between them, and verify the linguistic results using ERP methods. Sentences containing either expected or unexpected content words or function words are presented to participants in our experiment. As compared with expected Chinese content words, the unexpected ones elicit a significant N400 effect, and as compared with expected Chinese function words, the unexpected ones evoke both N400 and P600 effects. Additionally, expected content words and expected function words also elicit different ERPs. Expected content words evoke a larger P200 and one negativity while expected function words elicit two negativities. These results suggest that besides their syntactic functions, Chinese function words have their own meanings in some forms, expanding on previous researches in both phonetic languages and Chinese. It has been verified that Chinese function words are grammaticalized from content words and in general circumstances, they are easily distinguishable from content words. However, such grammaticalization is not thorough and Chinese function words still convey meanings in certain situations. These results are consistent with linguistic opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
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- View/download PDF
27. The pragmatic meanings conveyed by function words in Chinese sentences: An ERP study
- Author
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Liu, Baolin, Jin, Zhixing, Li, Wenjun, Li, Yanli, and Wang, Zhongning
- Subjects
- *
NEUROLINGUISTICS , *LINGUISTIC context , *EVOKED potentials (Electrophysiology) , *SENTENCES (Grammar) , *CHINESE language , *PRAGMATICS , *GENERAL semantics - Abstract
Abstract: In the study, we aimed to investigate the cognitive processing of the Chinese sentences utilizing the function words “CAI” or “JIU” through ERP methods, and to provide further evidence to the theory of function word in Chinese linguistics. In the experiment, we constructed four types of materials (Type 1–Type 4): simple sentences, complex sentences without numerals, complex sentences with numerals and sentences with fixed expressions. There were corresponding correct and incorrect sentences in each type. It was observed that the incorrect sentences of the first two types elicited significant N400 and P600 effects, and the complex syntactic structures in the second type made their amplitudes larger. This result suggests that “CAI” and “JIU” can constrain sentence meanings within certain boundaries, and the contrast between the preset context and actual context can be further distinguished when the preset context is described explicitly. The unexpected “CAI” or “JIU” in the sentences in Type 3 elicited a larger P3b as compared with the expected ones. This indicates that the relationship between the preset and actual contexts in quantity is constrained and such a constraint is further converted to the direct quantitative comparison between the numerals. Moreover, the widely distributed and sustaining CPS (closure positive shift) evoked by the violations of fixed expressions denotes that the fixed prosodic boundaries are broken. These results suggest that in certain conditions, the function words “CAI” and “JIU” can also convey pragmatic meanings beyond their syntactic functions. It further confirms the theory of function word in Chinese linguistics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2009
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
28. Dynamic event words: From common cognition to varied linguistic expression.
- Author
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McCune, Lorraine
- Subjects
SEMANTICS ,COGNITION ,LANGUAGE & languages ,LINGUISTICS ,LANGUAGE experience approach in education ,VERBS - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2006
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
29. Gamma-band desynchronization in language areas reflects syntactic process of words
- Author
-
Ihara, Aya, Hirata, Masayuki, Sakihara, Kotoe, Izumi, Hiromi, Takahashi, Yuko, Kono, Kaoru, Imaoka, Hiroyuki, Osaki, Yasuhiro, Kato, Amami, Yoshimine, Toshiki, and Yorifuji, Shiro
- Subjects
- *
MAGNETOENCEPHALOGRAPHY , *FUNCTION words (Grammar) - Abstract
The aim of this study was to verify the relation between gamma-band activity and process of function words. We recorded the neuromagnetic signals in six healthy volunteers during silent reading of verbs (verb task) and forming of the past tenses (past-tense task) and investigated the spatio-temporal distribution of event-related desynchronization (ERD) and synchronization using synthetic aperture magnetometry. In both tasks, ERDs were observed simultaneously at multiple language-related areas. The left junctional area of inferior frontal sulcus and precentral sulcus and the left supramarginal gyrus showed stronger and/or longer-lasting ERDs in past-tense task than in verb task. This result suggests that the gamma-activities reflect the syntactic process of words. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2003
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
30. Transition-Based Deep Input Linearization
- Author
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Ratish Puduppully, Yue Zhang, and Manish Shrivastava
- Subjects
FOS: Computer and information sciences ,060201 languages & linguistics ,Propagation of uncertainty ,Computer Science - Computation and Language ,Computer science ,Pipeline (computing) ,06 humanities and the arts ,02 engineering and technology ,Function (mathematics) ,Construct (python library) ,Task (computing) ,Linearization ,0602 languages and literature ,Function word ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,020201 artificial intelligence & image processing ,Feedback linearization ,Computation and Language (cs.CL) ,Algorithm - Abstract
Traditional methods for deep NLG adopt pipeline approaches comprising stages such as constructing syntactic input, predicting function words, linearizing the syntactic input and generating the surface forms. Though easier to visualize, pipeline approaches suffer from error propagation. In addition, information available across modules cannot be leveraged by all modules. We construct a transition-based model to jointly perform linearization, function word prediction and morphological generation, which considerably improves upon the accuracy compared to a pipelined baseline system. On a standard deep input linearization shared task, our system achieves the best results reported so far., Published in EACL 2017
- Published
- 2019
31. A Long-Term Study of Young Children's Rapport, Social Emulation, and Language Learning With a Peer-Like Robot Playmate in Preschool
- Author
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Jacqueline M. Kory-Westlund and Cynthia Breazeal
- Subjects
Vocabulary ,rapport ,media_common.quotation_subject ,lcsh:Mechanical engineering and machinery ,lcsh:QA75.5-76.95 ,Developmental psychology ,peer modeling ,children ,Artificial Intelligence ,storytelling ,social robotics ,lcsh:TJ1-1570 ,Peer learning ,media_common ,Original Research ,Robotics and AI ,Emulation ,Social robot ,ComputingMilieux_PERSONALCOMPUTING ,Language acquisition ,Computer Science Applications ,Language development ,Function word ,relationship ,lcsh:Electronic computers. Computer science ,Psychology ,language development ,mimicry ,Storytelling - Abstract
Prior research has demonstrated the importance of children's peers for their learning and development. In particular, peer interaction, especially with more advanced peers, can enhance preschool children's language growth. In this paper, we explore one factor that may modulate children's language learning with a peer-like social robot: rapport. We explore connections between preschool children's learning, rapport, and emulation of the robot's language during a storytelling intervention. We performed a long-term field study in a preschool with 17 children aged 4--6 years. Children played a storytelling game with a social robot for 8 sessions over two months. For some children, the robot matched the level of its stories to the children's language ability, acting as a slightly more advanced peer (\textit{Matched} condition); for the others, the robot did not match the story level (\textit{Unmatched} condition). We examined children's use of target vocabulary words and key phrases used by the robot, children's emulation of the robot’s stories during their own storytelling, and children's language style matching (LSM---a measure of overlap in function word use and speaking style associated with rapport and relationship) to see whether they mirrored the robot more over time. We found that not only did children emulate the robot more over time, but also, children who emulated more of the robot's phrases during storytelling scored higher on the vocabulary posttest. Children with higher LSM scores were more likely to emulate the robot's content words in their stories. Furthermore, the robot's personalization in the \textit{Matched} condition led to increases in both children's emulation and their LSM scores. Together, these results suggest first, that interacting with a more advanced peer is beneficial for children, and second, that children's emulation of the robot's language may be related to their rapport and their learning. This is the first study to empirically support that rapport may be a modulating factor in children's peer learning, and furthermore, that a social robot can serve as an effective intervention for language development by leveraging this insight.
- Published
- 2019
32. The effect of convolving word length, word frequency, function word predictability and first pass reading time in the analysis of a fixation-related fMRI dataset
- Author
-
Steven G. Luke and Benjamin T. Carter
- Subjects
0303 health sciences ,Multidisciplinary ,Deep linguistic processing ,Computer science ,Speech recognition ,fMRI ,Fixation (psychology) ,Predictability ,lcsh:Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics ,Syntax ,03 medical and health sciences ,Word lists by frequency ,0302 clinical medicine ,Reading ,Function word ,Eye tracking ,lcsh:R858-859.7 ,Eye-tracking ,lcsh:Science (General) ,Word length ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,030304 developmental biology ,Neuroscience ,lcsh:Q1-390 - Abstract
The data presented in this document was created to explore the effect of including or excluding word length, word frequency, the lexical predictability of function words and first pass reading time (or the duration of the first fixation on a word) as either baseline regressors or duration modulators on the final analysis for a fixation-related fMRI investigation of linguistic processing. The effect of these regressors was a central question raised during the review of Linguistic networks associated with lexical, semantic and syntactic predictability in reading: A fixation-related fMRI study [1]. Three datasets were created and compared to the original dataset to determine their effect. The first examines the effect of adding word length and word frequency as baseline regressors. The second examines the effect of removing first pass reading time as a duration modulator. The third examines the inclusion of function word predictability into the baseline hemodynamic response function. Statistical maps were created for each dataset and compared to the primary dataset (published in [1]) across the linguistic conditions of the initial dataset (lexical predictability, semantic predictability or syntax predictability). Keywords: fMRI, Eye-tracking, Predictability, Reading
- Published
- 2019
33. Probing What Different NLP Tasks Teach Machines about Function Word Comprehension
- Author
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Patrick Xia, Benjamin Van Durme, Najoung Kim, Ellie Pavlick, Tal Linzen, Alexis Ross, Samuel R. Bowman, Ian Tenney, Adam Poliak, Alex Wang, Roma Patel, and Thomas H. McCoy
- Subjects
FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Computer Science - Computation and Language ,Computer science ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,computer.software_genre ,Comprehension ,Negation ,Natural language inference ,Function word ,Artificial intelligence ,Language model ,Set (psychology) ,Function (engineering) ,business ,computer ,Computation and Language (cs.CL) ,Sentence ,Natural language processing ,media_common - Abstract
We introduce a set of nine challenge tasks that test for the understanding of function words. These tasks are created by structurally mutating sentences from existing datasets to target the comprehension of specific types of function words (e.g., prepositions, wh-words). Using these probing tasks, we explore the effects of various pretraining objectives for sentence encoders (e.g., language modeling, CCG supertagging and natural language inference (NLI)) on the learned representations. Our results show that pretraining on language modeling performs the best on average across our probing tasks, supporting its widespread use for pretraining state-of-the-art NLP models, and CCG supertagging and NLI pretraining perform comparably. Overall, no pretraining objective dominates across the board, and our function word probing tasks highlight several intuitive differences between pretraining objectives, e.g., that NLI helps the comprehension of negation., Accepted to *SEM 2019 (revised submission). Corresponding authors: Najoung Kim (n.kim@jhu.edu), Ellie Pavlick (ellie_pavlick@brown.edu)
- Published
- 2019
34. 日本語能力試験1級‘〈機能語〉の類’を中心とした日本語の表現文型に見る高コンテクスト性
- Author
-
MATSUBARA, Sachiko
- Subjects
Japanese-Language Proficiency Test ,function word ,high-context - Abstract
This paper examines function words and their relatives (FWs) in the grammatical samples of Level 1 of the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test. Based on their characteristics, many of the FWs are divided into two groups: FWs made by omission, and FWs that have special parts. The latter group is further subdivided into two categories: one in which the special parts are made from basic verbs or function nouns, or words derived from them, and the other, in which special parts are derived from classic Japanese or Chinese. In the first group, FWs made by omission, the omitted parts are those which carry meaning. The FWs in the second group have no special meaning, and just join two parts of a sentence. However, receivers understand not only the explicit meaning, but also the implicit nuances due to ""preprogrammed information that is in the receiver and in the setting"" and the shared cultural context of the communication mentioned by Hall (1976). These FWs exhibit 'high-context' characteristics, and are an example of the 'high-context' nature of the Japanese culture which was presented by Hall (1976).
- Published
- 2015
35. Morphology: Morphemes in Chinese
- Author
-
Packard, Jerome L., Wang, William S-Y., book editor, and Sun, Chaofen, book editor
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
36. Narrative Constructions for the Organization of Self Experience: Proof of Concept via Embodied Robotics
- Author
-
Mealier, Anne-Laure, Pointeau, Gregoire, Mirliaz, Solène, Ogawa, Kenji, Finlayson, Mark, and Dominey, Peter F.
- Subjects
narrative ,human-robot interaction ,grammatical construction ,narrative enrichment ,Psychology ,function word ,situation model ,reservoir computing - Abstract
It has been proposed that starting from meaning that the child derives directly from shared experience with others, adult narrative enriches this meaning and its structure, providing causal links between unseen intentional states and actions. This would require a means for representing meaning from experience—a situation model—and a mechanism that allows information to be extracted from sentences and mapped onto the situation model that has been derived from experience, thus enriching that representation. We present a hypothesis and theory concerning how the language processing infrastructure for grammatical constructions can naturally be extended to narrative constructions to provide a mechanism for using language to enrich meaning derived from physical experience. Toward this aim, the grammatical construction models are augmented with additional structures for representing relations between events across sentences. Simulation results demonstrate proof of concept for how the narrative construction model supports multiple successive levels of meaning creation which allows the system to learn about the intentionality of mental states, and argument substitution which allows extensions to metaphorical language and analogical problem solving. Cross-linguistic validity of the system is demonstrated in Japanese. The narrative construction model is then integrated into the cognitive system of a humanoid robot that provides the memory systems and world-interaction required for representing meaning in a situation model. In this context proof of concept is demonstrated for how the system enriches meaning in the situation model that has been directly derived from experience. In terms of links to empirical data, the model predicts strong usage based effects: that is, that the narrative constructions used by children will be highly correlated with those that they experience. It also relies on the notion of narrative or discourse function words. Both of these are validated in the experimental literature.
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
37. Ambiguous function words do not prevent 18-month-olds from building accurate syntactic category expectations: An ERP study
- Author
-
Anne-Caroline Fiévet, Marieke van Heugten, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, Alex de Carvalho, Perrine Brusini, Anne Christophe, François Goffinet, Neuroimagerie cognitive - Psychologie cognitive expérimentale (UNICOG-U992), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Université Paris-Saclay, Laboratoire de sciences cognitives et psycholinguistique (LSCP), Département d'Etudes Cognitives - ENS Paris (DEC), École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Recherche Epidémiologique en Santé Périnatale et Santé des Femmes et des Enfants (UMR_S 953), Université Paris-Sud - Paris 11 (UP11)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 (UPD5)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Neuroimagerie cognitive (UNICOG-U992), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université Paris-Saclay-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Université Paris-Sud - Paris 11 (UP11), École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS Paris)-École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS Paris)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 (UPD5)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Université Paris-Sud - Paris 11 (UP11), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université Paris Saclay (COmUE)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS Paris), and Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS Paris)
- Subjects
Inverted sentence ,Male ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,Object (grammar) ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Verb ,Language Development ,Vocabulary ,050105 experimental psychology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Behavioral Neuroscience ,[SCCO]Cognitive science ,0302 clinical medicine ,Noun ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Evoked Potentials ,ComputingMilieux_MISCELLANEOUS ,P600 ,Analysis of Variance ,Brain Mapping ,05 social sciences ,Infant ,Electroencephalography ,Part of speech ,Linguistics ,Semantics ,Acoustic Stimulation ,Function word ,[SCCO.PSYC]Cognitive science/Psychology ,Female ,Psychology ,Comprehension ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Sentence - Abstract
To comprehend language, listeners need to encode the relationship between words within sentences. This entails categorizing words into their appropriate word classes. Function words, consistently preceding words from specific categories (e.g., the ballNOUN, I speakVERB), provide invaluable information for this task, and children's sensitivity to such adjacent relationships develops early on in life. However, neighboring words are not the sole source of information regarding an item's word class. Here we examine whether young children also take into account preceding sentence context online during syntactic categorization. To address this question, we use the ambiguous French function word la which, depending on sentence context, can either be used as determiner (the, preceding nouns) or as object clitic (it, preceding verbs). French-learning 18-month-olds' evoked potentials (ERPs) were recorded while they listened to sentences featuring this ambiguous function word followed by either a noun or a verb (thus yielding a locally felicitous co-occurrence of la + noun or la + verb). Crucially, preceding sentence context rendered the sentence either grammatical or ungrammatical. Ungrammatical sentences elicited a late positivity (resembling a P600) that was not observed for grammatical sentences. Toddlers' analysis of the unfolding sentence was thus not limited to local co-occurrences, but rather took into account non-adjacent sentence context. These findings suggest that by 18 months of age, online word categorization is already surprisingly robust. This could be greatly beneficial for the acquisition of novel words.
- Published
- 2017
38. Derivation and Function Words
- Author
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Stump, Gregory, Lieber, Rochelle, book editor, and Štekauer, Pavol, book editor
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
39. 歌の書き取り
- Author
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NODA, Tetsuyu and NODA, Tetsuyu(Tokyo Gakugei University)
- Subjects
listen ,function word ,linking - Published
- 2009
40. Function words in authorship attribution : from black magic to theory?
- Author
-
Mike Kestemont
- Subjects
Explication ,Character (mathematics) ,Compromise ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Function word ,Stylometry ,Position paper ,Linguistics ,Psychology ,Function (engineering) ,Term (time) ,media_common ,Epistemology - Abstract
This position paper focuses on the use of function words in computational authorship attribution. Although recently there have been multiple successful applications of authorship attribution, the field is not particularly good at the explication of methods and theoretical issues, which might eventually compromise the acceptance of new research results in the traditional humanities community. I wish to partially help remedy this lack of explication and theory, by contributing a theoretical discussion on the use of function words in stylometry. I will concisely survey the attractiveness of function words in stylometry and relate them to the use of character n-grams. At the end of this paper, I will propose to replace the term ‘function word’ by the term ‘functor’ in stylometry, due to multiple theoretical considerations.
- Published
- 2014
41. The role of function words in and out grammatical analyses
- Author
-
Zhou, Lulin and Garraffa, Maria
- Subjects
number estimation ,scrambled sentence ,grammatical sentence ,function word ,ungrammatical sentence - Abstract
A large number of auditory studies explored the role of function words in syntactic processing, but few researched function words in written input. The present study probed the role of function words in word skipping, sentence compacting, chunking preference and the detection mechanism of grammatical incongruence by means of number estimation across 4 syntactic conditions (grammatical sentences, scrambled sentences, sentences with agreement errors and sentences with structural errors), 3 sentence lengths (6 or 7 words, 8 or 9 words, 10 or 11 words) and 3 ratios of function words and content words. We find that appropriate usage of function words highly facilitates syntactic analysis though function words are always skipped in proficient reading. Adjacent function words and content words in grammatical sentences are more likely to be processed as chunks, and this effect of chunking make sentences significantly more compact than scrambled sentences. In addition, the detection mechanism of grammatical incongruence is attributed to resolving the conflicts with prediction.
- Published
- 2012
42. Uncovering the effect of imitation on tonal patterns of French Accentual Phrases
- Author
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Amandine Michelas, Noël Nguyen, Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and ANR-08-BLAN-0276,SPIM,Imitation in speech: from sensori-motor integration to the dynamics of conversational interaction(2008)
- Subjects
convergence ,French ,Computer science ,Speech recognition ,020206 networking & telecommunications ,02 engineering and technology ,Content word ,Stimulus (physiology) ,imitation ,intonation ,030507 speech-language pathology & audiology ,03 medical and health sciences ,initial high tone ,Function word ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,accentual phrase ,[SHS.LANGUE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Linguistics ,0305 other medical science ,tonal pattern - Abstract
International audience; French accentual phrases (APs) are characterized by the presence of a typical final fo rise (LH*) and an optional/additional initial fo rise (LHi). This study tested whether between-speaker speech imitation influenced the realization of APs tonal patterns. The experiment was based on APs containing a function word plus a bisyllabic content word, whose tonal patterns differed in the potential placement of an optional/initial high tone (Hi). In two shadowing tasks (without/with explicit instructions to imitate the speaker's way of pronouncing the stimuli), participants produced more initial high tones when they heard a stimulus including both initial and final high tones relative to stimuli which only a final high tone was present. Thus, imitation influences the realization of APs tonal patterns in French.
- Published
- 2011
43. Word Durations in Non-Native English
- Author
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Midam Kim, Laurent Bonnasse-Gahot, Melissa M. Baese-Berk, Rachel Baker, Kristin J. Van Engen, and Ann R. Bradlow
- Subjects
Speech and Hearing ,Linguistics and Language ,Native english ,Duration (music) ,Computer science ,Function word ,Stress (linguistics) ,American English ,Language and Linguistics ,Word (computer architecture) ,Linguistics ,Article - Abstract
In this study, we compare the effects of English lexical features on word duration for native and non-native English speakers and for non-native speakers with different L1s and a range of L2 experience. We also examine whether non-native word durations lead to judgments of a stronger foreign accent. We measured word durations in English paragraphs read by 12 American English (AE), 20 Korean, and 20 Chinese speakers. We also had AE listeners rate the ‘accentedness’ of these non-native speakers. AE speech had shorter durations, greater within-speaker word duration variance, greater reduction of function words, and less between-speaker variance than non-native speech. However, both AE and non-native speakers showed sensitivity to lexical predictability by reducing second mentions and high-frequency words. Non-native speakers with more native-like word durations, greater within-speaker word duration variance, and greater function word reduction were perceived as less accented. Overall, these findings identify word duration as an important and complex feature of foreign-accented English.
- Published
- 2011
44. Significance of knowledge sources for a text-to-speech system for Indian languages
- Author
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Yegnanarayana, B, Rajendran, S, Ramachandran, V R, and Madhukumar, A S
- Published
- 1994
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
45. An intonational cue to word segmentation in phonemically identical sequences
- Author
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Fanny Meunier, Elsa Spinelli, Pauline Welby, Nicolas Grimault, Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (LPNC), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry]), Neurosciences Sensorielles Comportement Cognition, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire sur le langage, le cerveau et la cognition (L2C2), École normale supérieure - Lyon (ENS Lyon)-Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), European Project: 209234,EC:FP7:ERC,ERC-2007-StG,SPIN(2008), Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry])-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), École normale supérieure de Lyon (ENS de Lyon)-Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), Dynamique Du Langage (DDL), Université Lumière - Lyon 2 (UL2)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Aix Marseille Université (AMU), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), and Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon
- Subjects
Linguistics and Language ,Sound Spectrography ,Speech perception ,lexical access ,Speech recognition ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Vocabulary ,050105 experimental psychology ,Language and Linguistics ,intonation ,030507 speech-language pathology & audiology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Phonetics ,Vowel ,Reaction Time ,word segmentation ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,fundamental frequency ,ComputingMilieux_MISCELLANEOUS ,[SHS.STAT]Humanities and Social Sciences/Methods and statistics ,Two-alternative forced choice ,[SCCO.NEUR]Cognitive science/Neuroscience ,05 social sciences ,Text segmentation ,Intonation (linguistics) ,Content word ,[SCCO.LING]Cognitive science/Linguistics ,Sensory Systems ,Linguistics ,[PHYS.MECA.ACOU]Physics [physics]/Mechanics [physics]/Acoustics [physics.class-ph] ,Function word ,[SCCO.PSYC]Cognitive science/Psychology ,Speech Perception ,Cues ,0305 other medical science ,Psychology - Abstract
International audience; We investigated the use of language-specific intonational cues to word segmentation in French. Participants listened to phonemically identical sequences such as /selafi/, C'est la fiche/l'affiche "It's the sheet/poster." We modified the f0 of the first vowel /a/ of the natural consonant-initial production la fiche, so that it was equal to that of the natural vowel-initial production l'affiche (resynth-consonant-equal condition), higher (resynth-consonant-higher condition), or lower (resynth-consonant-lower condition). In a two-alternative forced choice task (Experiment 1), increasing the f0 in the /a/ of la fiche increased the percentage of vowel-initial (affiche) responses. In Experiment 2, participants made visual lexical decisions to vowel-initial targets (affiche) following both the natural consonant-initial production (la fiche) and the resynth-consonant-equal version. Facilitation was found only for the resynth-consonant-equal condition, suggesting that raising the f0 allowed online activation of vowel-initial targets. The recognition system seems to exploit intonational information to guide segmentation toward the beginning of content words.
- Published
- 2010
46. The algebra of lexical semantics
- Author
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András Kornai, Ebert, C, Jaeger, G, and Michaelis, J
- Subjects
Mathematical logic ,Lexical semantics ,Computer science ,business.industry ,Formalism (philosophy) ,Computer Science::Computation and Language (Computational Linguistics and Natural Language and Speech Processing) ,QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science / számítástechnika, számítógéptudomány ,computer.software_genre ,Part of speech ,Lexicon ,Syntax ,First-order logic ,Algebra ,Function word ,Formal language ,Automata theory ,Artificial intelligence ,business ,computer ,Generative lexicon ,Natural language processing ,Generative grammar - Abstract
The current generative theory of the lexicon relies primarily on tools from formal language theory and mathematical logic. Here we describe how a different formal apparatus, taken from algebra and automata theory, resolves many of the known problems with the generative lexicon. We develop a finite state theory of word meaning based on machines in the sense of Eilenberg [11], a formalism capable of describing discrepancies between syntactic type (lexical category) and semantic type (number of arguments). This mechanism is compared both to the standard linguistic approaches and to the formalisms developed in AI/KR.
- Published
- 2010
47. Weak function word shift
- Author
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Ralf Vogel
- Subjects
Structure (mathematical logic) ,Linguistics and Language ,Generalization ,Computer science ,Semantik ,Prosodie ,Modal verb ,Germanic languages ,Function (mathematics) ,Phonologie ,Optimality theory ,Language and Linguistics ,language.human_language ,Linguistics ,German ,Kontrastive Linguistik ,Function word ,language ,Syntax ,ddc:400 ,Optimalitätstheorie - Abstract
The fact that object shift only affects weak pronouns in mainland Scandinavian is seen as an instance of a more general observation that can be made in all Germanic languages: weak function words tend to avoid the edges of larger prosodic domains. This generalization has been formulated within optimality theory in terms of alignment constraints on prosodic structure by Selkirk (1996) in explaining the distribution of prosodically strong and weak forms of English function words, especially modal verbs, prepositions, and pronouns. But a purely phonological account fails to integrate the syntactic licensing conditions for object shift in an appropriate way. The standard semantico-syntactic accounts of object shift, however, fail to explain why it is only weak pronouns that undergo object shift. This paper uses an optimality theoretic model of the syntax-phonology interface which determines linear order by the interaction of syntactic and prosodic factors. The account can successfully be applied to further related phenomena in English and German.
- Published
- 2004
48. Semantic errors and free word associations: some remarks on lexical search activity in stabilized aphasia
- Author
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W. L. Creten, Jean-Jacques Martin, P Van Vugt, Philippe Paquier, and P Bal
- Subjects
business.industry ,Computer science ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Word Association ,computer.software_genre ,Lexicon ,Consistency (database systems) ,Reading (process) ,Aphasia ,Function word ,medicine ,Artificial intelligence ,Logic error ,medicine.symptom ,business ,computer ,Natural language processing ,Word (computer architecture) ,media_common - Abstract
Different hypotheses have been made in order to explain the occurrence of semantic errors made by deep dyslexic patients. We present a series of three experiments of lexical production in a single case-study: firstly consistency measurements in single word reading, secondly frequency counts of semantic errors occurring during visual picture-naming and single word reading, and thirdly quantitative and qualitative analyses of free word association responses. Although in our Dutch-speaking patient a stabilized aphasia is documented, test results demonstrate an intra-patient profile variability in the deep dyslexic reading performance. Furthermore, we propose to explain the occurrence of semantic errors by a defective lexical search activity in a networklike lexicon and by a grammar-mediated compensatory strategy.
- Published
- 1995
49. Computational extraction of lexico-grammatical information for generation of Swedish intonation
- Author
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Merle Horne and Marcus Filipsson
- Subjects
General Language Studies and Linguistics ,Parsing ,Computer science ,business.industry ,Speech recognition ,Intonation (linguistics) ,Content word ,computer.software_genre ,Referent ,Part of speech ,Identifier ,Function word ,Lexico ,Artificial intelligence ,business ,computer ,Natural language processing ,computer.programming_language - Abstract
By using a minimal amount of syntactic information in combination with information on lexical word class and morphological and lexico-semantic coreferential (identity of sense) relations, it is possible to generate an appropriate prosodic structure for Swedish texts. The structure of the algorithms involved in the prosodic preprocessing are presented. These include a referent tracker, a word-class tagger, a complex-word identifier, a clause boundary identifier, and a prosodic constituent parser.
- Published
- 1994
50. Morphological Reading Errors in a German Case of Deep Dyslexia
- Author
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Ria De Bleser and Josef Bayer
- Subjects
Examination procedure ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Content word ,medicine.disease ,Functional disorder ,Linguistics ,language.human_language ,German ,Reading (process) ,Function word ,Deep dyslexia ,medicine ,language ,ddc:400 ,Psychology ,media_common - Abstract
The case presented in this chapter is used to compare agrammatisms in speech and reading. The criteria for the diagnosis of deep dyslexia are also explored and the examination procedure for establishing the location of the functional disorder is described. The main interest of the case, however, lies in the analysis of the morphological reading errors and in the determination of their linguistic and psycholinguistic status. These areas are covered in depth.
- Published
- 1990
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