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With the increasing implementation of compliant mechanisms in high-precision and high-accuracy applications, the need to evaluate the positioning performance of the flexure hinges becomes evident. In this paper, the determination of the accuracy of planar flexures is addressed by analyzing and comparing the available criteria presented in literature, including a new criterion based on the pole of the displacements. For uniform flexures, an analytical formulation is developed for end-moment loads, whereas complex loading conditions, resulting in an inflection point, are analyzed and numerically evaluated. The accuracy criteria are also applied for analyzing the positioning performance of the cross-axis flexural pivot. Various relations among the different criteria are determined, and their limitations, such as the non-bijective correspondence with the deformed configurations, are discussed. The criteria are applied to the design of a high-accuracy cross-axis pivot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word Stemming is a widely used mechanism in the fields of Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, and Language Modeling. Language-independent stemmers discover classes of morphologically related words from the ambient corpus without using any language related rules. In this article, we proposed a fully unsupervised language-independent text stemming technique that clusters morphologically related words from the corpus of the language using both lexical and co-occurrence features such as lexical similarity, suffix knowledge, and co-occurrence similarity. The method applies to a wide range of inflectional languages as it identifies morphological variants formed through different linguistic processes such as affixation, compounding, conversion, etc. The proposed approach has been tested in Information Retrieval application for four languages (English, Marathi, Hungarian, and Bengali) using standard TREC, CLEF, and FIRE test collections. A significant improvement over word-based retrieval, five other corpus-based stemmers, and rule-based stemmers has been achieved in all the languages. Besides, information retrieval, the proposed approach has also been tested in text classification and inflection removal tasks. Our algorithm excelled over other baseline methods in all the test scenarios. Thus, we successfully achieved the objective of developing a multipurpose stemming algorithm that cannot only be used for information retrieval task but also for non-traditional tasks such as text classification, sentiment analysis, inflection removal, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present electrophysiological study investigated irregular versus regular verb form processing in Swedish during reading. In line with previous results from other languages, overregularized verbs, i.e. incorrect irregular stem + regular past tense suffix combinations (e.g. * stjäl + de 'steal + past tense'), elicited a left-lateralized negativity (LAN) relative to correct irregulars (stal 'stole'), suggesting rule-based decomposition of regularly inflected words. Lack of a similar effect for misapplication of the irregular stem formation pattern on regular verbs (e.g. * löft 'lifted' instead of lyfte) suggests the involvement of different processing mechanisms, possibly whole word access, for irregular items, at least to some degree. A P600 showing reprocessing was seen for all incorrect forms. The results add cross-linguistic support for morphological decomposition in the verbal inflection of a language where results from previous neurolinguistic studies of nominal inflection have only suggested the use of full-form access to words. • ERPs of both overregularized and irregularized verbs in Swedish were recorded. • LAN obtained for overregularized verbs suggests rule-based decomposition. • Irregularized verbs elicited only a P600 relative to the correct variant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on the neuro-cognition of language have provided a strong case for systematic inter-individual variability in event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked during language processing. In the present study, we aimed at extending this evidence to the processing of morphologically complex words. We focused on German plural forms and tested two types of morphological violations: overapplications of regular plural morphemes ('regularizations') and of irregular plural morphemes ('irregularizations'). The group-level results showed a biphasic LAN-P600 response for regularizations, and a P600 for irregularizations. In line with previous reports, our analyses of inter-individual variability suggested that biphasic responses consisting of a negativity followed by a positivity are unlikely to exist at the individual level. Importantly, when analyzing the scalp distribution of ERPs elicited in participants supposed to show negativity-dominant responses, we found this to vary as a function of the type of morphological form: regularizations elicited a left-hemisphere response (LAN), while irregularizations a more widespread negativity (N400). Our results are consistent with dual-route accounts of morphological processing that distinguish between rule-based processing for regular inflection and memory retrieval for irregular inflection. At a more general level, our study shows that complementing group-level results with analyses of inter-individual variability can crucially contribute to a more detailed understanding of brain signatures of language. • Overapplications of regular plural forms elicited a LAN-P600 response at group-level. • Overapplications of irregular plural forms elicited a P600 response at group-level. • Some individuals showed a negativity-dominant, others a positivity-dominant response. • Negativity-dominant individuals showed a lateralized negativity with regularizations. • Analyses of inter-individual variability help to better understand ERP components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the papers in this volume make clear, categorial shift is often not categorical. Category-altering processes do not necessarily shift all morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of their input simultaneously or completely (Noonan, 1985/2007; Mackenzie, 1987; Lehmann, 1988; Givón 1990, 2001, 2011; Croft, 1991; Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 1993, 2003; Cristofaro, 2003; Malchukov, 2004, 2006; Nikolaeva, 2007; Mithun, 2016a). A number of factors can affect the output of such processes, their course of development, and their consequences for the shapes of grammars. Here each of these issues is examined in turn. First is the identification of the lexical categories involved in the shifts: the structural level at which they take place (roots, bases, stems, words) and the criteria by which they are defined (morphological, syntactic, semantic). Also pertinent here is the nature of the shift processes, in particular, conversion. Second are some recurring trajectories of development of shift processes involving their extension to larger domains of structure. Third are some effects categorial shift processes can have on other aspects of grammar. • Shifting categories may be roots, bases, stems, words, or phrases. • Criteria for categorization may be morphological and/or syntactic. • Conversion (or zero derivation) may take place at any level. • Shifts may be extended over time from lower to higher levels of structure. • Shifts may trigger other grammatical developments, i.e. new categories and paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Most Spanish sex doublets are actually triplets. • Spanish employs three sex coding modes, two lexical and one grammatical. • Syncretism is pervasive in inflectional sex coding. • Sex features may be concealed by gender and declension features. • Genericity is more compatible with plural than with singular number. Abstract Traditional views on how sex is coded in Spanish nouns are revolutionized in this article. To the initial discovery that sex coding yields not only singlets and doublets but also triplets, it is added that Spanish employs three sex coding modes whose productivity correlates with structural cost. The suppletive and the derivational modes require investing in sex-specific morphemes, which makes them costly, whereas the inflectional mode achieves maximal economy by exploiting the exponent of another grammatical category: declension. The transfer of productive sex coding to the grammar is another major innovation. Lexical Specification is appropriate to formalize the suppletive and the derivational modes, but it is defeated by the intricacies of the inflectional mode, for which a semantic process of Sexualization is introduced. It is further uncovered that syncretism is pervasive and obscures the effects of Sexualization partially or fully. Because sex originates at a deeper level than gender and declension, both of the latter categories can conceal it; hence the common misperception that inflectional sex triplets are doublets or even singlets. The analysis also reveals that plurality facilitates genericity and that inflectional markers are generated from features which, for most words, can be grammatically supplied since they are predictable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Entropy is adopted to analyze the diachronic change of English inflections. • Modern English is becoming less inflectionally diversified. • The study offers empirical evidence to linguistic theories and hypotheses. Abstract Researchers have long noticed the phenomenon of inflection decay in the evolution of English, which may be driven by the Principle of Least Effort (Millward and Hayes, 2010; Zipf, 1949). However, most studies in this line of research were based on exemplar-oriented observations while few explored the phenomenon from a quantitative perspective. In addition, it remains unclear whether the trend of inflection decay has continued in Modern English. In the present study, an index named Inflectional Entropy was developed to measure the diachronic change of the inflectional trend of Modern English in the 20th century. A trend of inflection decay in Modern English was found based on experiments on several large-scale corpora. The findings provide quantitative evidence to linguistic theories such as Principle of Least Effort, Language Niche Hypothesis (Lupyan and Dale, 2010), and Principle of Entropy Minimization (Ferrer-i-Cancho, 2018). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction Grammar is a linguistic framework which postulates that all grammar is based on a single, relatively simple entity, the construction, defined as a conventionalized mapping between a form and a meaning. Construction Morphology is a sub-theory of Construction Grammar which deals with the word-level domain. This article shows how Construction Morphology can account for the full range of inflectional types. It argues that Construction Morphology falls into the type of morphological theory which Stump (2001) has designated ‘inferential—realizational’, and which he contends is the only kind of theory that accounts for all the known facts of morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study demonstrates the existence in Wandala (Central Chadic) of two inflectional markers which, although they change the form of the word, are not word-formation means but rather sentence-formation means. While neither of the forms indicates any specific semantic relation, they both enable the listener to parse the sentence into units that can undergo further analysis and allow for inferences about a large number of semantic relations within the clause and within the sentence. The types of inflectional marking described in this study are unrelated to the dichotomy of head marking and dependent marking. Although this study is based on data from a single language, it has implications for the typology of coding means and for theories of clausal structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is morphological and morphosyntactic information processed during sentence reading? Are the neural mechanisms underlying word- and phrase-level combinatorial processing overlapping or distinct? Here, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) responses were recorded simultaneously during silent reading of Finnish sentences. The experimental conditions included 1) well-formed grammatical sentences (correct condition), 2) sentences containing morphosyntactic violations (adjective–noun number agreement violations), 3) morphological violations (incorrect stem allomorph and inflectional suffix combination), and 4) combined violations, containing both morphosyntactic and morphological violations. Signal space and source modeling results showed that morphosyntactic violations elicited a left anterior negativity effect, generated particularly in the left inferior frontal area. Morphological violations elicited a widespread negativity, resembling the N400. The neural sources of this negativity were localized most prominently to the right temporal cortical networks. Furthermore, all violations elicited P600 effects with similar widespread bilateral fronto-temporal neural generators that did not differ between morphosyntactic and morphological conditions. Our findings suggest at least partially distinct subnetworks in the fronto-temporal cortices for morphological and morphosyntactic parsing during the earlier stages of processes (∼400 ms post stimulus onset) and shared neural generators for the later processing stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calculations on lexical stability show that the V-pronoun is variable but the T-pronoun is stable across language families (cf. Swadesh 1971 [2006]; Wichmann and Holman, 2009; Tadmor et al., 2010 ). In fact, the T-pronoun is in the top 10 of basic vocabulary items. Nevertheless, both English and Dutch have lost their T-pronoun. We suggest that this unexpected loss of T in English and Dutch can be explained via an exceptional combination of circumstances, namely (1) a focus on negative politeness, (2) the possibility of deflection via the loss of the T-pronoun and (3) pressure on the inflectional system due to language contact involving adult second language learners. These factors lead to two predictions: one related to the subject-non-subject ratio, and one related to text style. We test both predictions in a corpus of 13th and 16th century texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tone is widely reported as a prosodic feature of many African and Asian languages that contrasts meaning among words and sentential constructions. Hardly have any of the studies examined in detail the underlying syntactic principles which make it perform such functions. This article therefore investigates the principles which underlie the function of tone in the Igbo language, an East Benue Congo language, with particular emphasis on grammatical tone. This is done with the hope that the findings of the study can be inductively applied to other tone languages across the world. It answers such questions as: what are the principles which enable tone to perform its grammatical functions? What syntactic positions predispose tone to perform the grammatical functions? What are the grammatical realisations of tonal governance? The paper finds that tone is a constituent commander and governor. The principle of precede and constituent command (c-command) underlies tone governance. Just as in proper government, tone governs the lexical items, which it c-commands. The scope of tone and its domain of governance vary from one structure to another. The position of the governor determines its domain of governance and the kind of structure that is realised after governance. Such syntactic constructions as the negative, perfective, past tense, and serial verb constructions result from tonal government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consensus recommendations for three variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA), the non-fluent/agrammatic, logopenic and semantic variants, were published in 2011 [Gorno-Tempini et al., 2011]. These recommendations describe the most characteristic language impairments for each variant. However, studies using these criteria in larger groups of patients revealed serious limitations concerning their application. Some of these limitations are related to imprecisions in the description of language features, especially for grammatical features. The aim of this review was to examine studies of inflectional morphology in three variants of PPA and in the disease that is the most relevant for differential diagnosis, namely Alzheimer's disease. MedLine, CINAHL and PsycINFO electronic databases were searched to retrieve all relevant peer-reviewed articles published in English language journals. Despite the focus that has been placed on agrammatism by the consensus recommendations, the studies reviewed do not systematically report impairments of inflectional morphology in the non-fluent/agrammatic variant. Studies also show that some individuals with the logopenic variant present with substantial inflection impairments. Contrary to expectations, some studies reveal the presence of morphological difficulties in the semantic variant. These difficulties concern mostly the production of irregular, low-frequency verbs while regular verbs are spared. Similar difficulties are also reported in studies of people with Alzheimer's disease. Overall, the results show the need to more clearly define the criteria related to grammar and morphology and to better characterise impairment severity. Future research on primary progressive aphasia and other degenerative diseases with language impairments will help refine our expectations regarding language features that characterise each profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concentrations of Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in soil samples from Tibetan Plateau were determined. The average concentration of total 2,3,7,8-PCDD/Fs was (2.30 ± 1.02) pg/g, and World Health Organization Toxicity Equivalency (WHO-TEQ) average concentration was (0.013 ± 0.010) pg WHO-TEQ/g. The average concentration of ∑ PCBs (7 indicator PCB and 12 dioxin like-PCB congeners) was (16.2 ± 9.25) pg/g, and WHO-TEQ average concentration was 0.043 ± 0.049 pg WHO-TEQ/g. Comparing to previous studies in similar environmental conditions, PCDD/Fs and PCBs in this study showed a relatively lower concentration. The altitude dependences of PCDD/Fs and PCBs were also studied. Total organic carbon (TOC) normalized concentrations presented a quadratic relation with the altitudes, and an inflection could be found on the parabola of the total concentrations and some congeners of high concentration. The concentrations decreased with altitudes below about 4500 m above sea level (a.s.l.), while they increased with altitudes above it. These phenomena indicate that cold condensation of PCDD/Fs and PCBs would happen above 4500 m a.s.l, on the Tibetan Plateau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study uses event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the temporal sequencing of structural (grammatical) and lexical (semantic) properties of complex words during language comprehension. Morphologically complex words do not only consist of stems and affixes (e.g., ‘feel’+‘-s’), but affixes also contain grammatical structure, viz. feature bundles specifying their morpho-syntactic functions (e.g., -s= [3rd person, singular, present tense]). We examined inflected adjectives of German, which consist of an unaltered stem plus a portmanteau affix encoding case, number and gender. The same group of 24 adult native speakers was tested in two cross-modal ERP priming experiments separately studying effects of lexical–semantic relatedness and related affixes. The results of these experiments revealed clearly distinct brain potentials. Prime-target overlap with respect to morpho-syntactic features was associated with a reduced positivity, whereas lexical-level priming led to a reduced negativity. The former was most pronounced between 200 and 300ms and the latter in a later time window, between 300 and 400ms. We interpret the reduced early positivity as reflecting ease of grammatical processing effort in case of primed (relative to unprimed) morpho-syntactic features and the reduced negativity as signaling facilitation in lexical retrieval for primed (compared to unprimed) words. Our ERP results indicate that grammatical information becomes available earlier than semantic information providing support for structure-first models of language processing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] We propose a model of description of inflectional morphology of Arabic nouns. [•] A taxonomy of ‘broken’ plurals based on the notions of pattern and root. [•] The model is tested on 3200 lexical entries representing fully diacriticized lemmas. [•] Entries are inflected by using finite-state transducers. [•] The language resources can be easily updated by Arabic-speaking linguists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We review and discuss some issues to do with the relation between morphology and syntax which have played a prominent part in generative linguistic research in the past three decades. Focusing on verbal inflection, we first discuss the relation between inflection and verb placement, with special attention given to verb-initial languages. We then discuss the relation between pro-drop and agreement, where we articulate a partly new understanding of Huang''s (1989) generalization that pro-drop is characteristic of languages with rich agreement and languages with no agreement, but not languages that are in-between. We then present and discuss the Mirror Principle, one of the most significant findings in recent linguistic research. We pay special attention to the Mirror Principle as it applies in head-final languages, in the context of a model adopting Kayne''s (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom. The idea is to show how fairly complex aspects of clausal syntax, including word order and the possibility of phonetically silent arguments of a predicate, may be correlated with readily observable and, in themselves, rather simple properties of verbal inflection, and to show how, given a restrictive theory of Universal Grammar, this follows from the fact that inflections are syntactic categories, albeit realized as parts of words. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A critical issue for understanding language processing in the brain is whether linguistic rule application is subserved by a distinct neural substrate. One of the evidence supporting this hypothesis stems from studies employing electroencephalographic measurements during the processing of rule misapplication. This evidence is inconclusive because it might reflect processes caused by the violation such as error handling rather than application of rules per se. Here we provide first evidence that correct regular formations, i.e., German past participles, are associated with left anterior negative-going activity (LAN) providing encephalographic evidence for rule application in the brain during the processing of correct words. Moreover, a LAN response is present regardless of the participles’ frequency, suggesting that independently from the mode of lexical access (i.e., decomposition or full-form activation), the cerebral structures associated with rule-based mechanisms are activated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study investigates the child (L1) acquisition of properties at the interfaces of morpho-syntax, syntax-semantics and syntax-pragmatics, by focusing on inflected infinitives in European Portuguese (EP). Three child groups were tested, 6–7-year-olds, 9–10-year-olds and 11–12-year-olds, as well as an adult control group. The data demonstrate that children as young as 6 have knowledge of the morpho-syntactic properties of inflected infinitives, although they seem at first glance to show partially insufficient knowledge of their syntax–semantic interface properties (i.e. non-obligatory control properties), differently from children aged 9 and older, who show clearer evidence of knowledge of both types of properties. However, in general, both morpho-syntactic and syntax–semantics interface properties are also accessible to 6–7-year-old children, although these children give preference to a range of interpretations partially different from the adults; in certain cases, they may not appeal to certain pragmatic inferences that permit additional interpretations to adults and older children. Crucially, our data demonstrate that EP children master the two types of properties of inflected infinitives years before Brazilian Portuguese children do (), reasons for and implications of which we discuss in detail. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The goal of this paper is to study possible differences between the processing of inflectional vs. derivational morphology in Spanish word recognition using electrophysiological measures. A lexical decision task to target words preceded by morphological-related (or unrelated) primes was used. The orthographic and phonological overlap and the grammatical class for the two experimental conditions were exactly the same. Examples of the related conditions were, for inflection, NIÑO-NIÑA (“girl”-“boy”), and for derivation, RAMO-RAMA (“bunch”-“branch”). These conditions were compared with unrelated pairs without orthographic, phonological or semantic relationships. An attenuation of the N-400 component was found for both related conditions from 300ms until 450ms (until 500ms for inflections only). In addition, different locations were suggested by the source analysis. These findings are consistent with accounts that argue for differences between the processing of inflections and derivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Results indicating that high stem tones realizing word accents activate a certain class of suffixes in online processing of Central Swedish are presented. This supports the view that high Swedish word accent tones are induced onto word stems by particular suffixes rather than being associated with words in the mental lexicon. Using event-related potentials, effects of mismatch between word accents and inflectional suffixes were compared with mismatches between stem and suffix in terms of declension class. Declensionally incorrect suffixes yielded an increase in the N400, indicating problems in lexical retrieval, as well as a P600 effect, showing reanalysis. Both declensionally correct and incorrect high tone-inducing (Accent 2) suffixes combined with a mismatching low tone (Accent 1) on the stems produced P600 effects, but did not increase the N400. Suffixes usually co-occurring with Accent 1 did not yield any effects in words realized with the nonmatching Accent 2, suggesting that Accent 1 is a default accent, lacking association with any particular suffix. High tones on Accent 2 words also produced an early anterior positivity, interpreted as a P200 effect reflecting preattentive processing of the tone. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Patients with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia commonly present with impaired language. Here we investigate language in schizophrenia with a focus on inflectional morphology, using an intensively studied and relatively well-understood linguistic paradigm. Patients with schizophrenia (n =43) and age-matched healthy control subjects (n =42) were asked to produce past tenses of regular (slip), irregular (swim), and novel (plag) English verbs. Patients were impaired at regulars and novels (slipped, plagged), with relative sparing of irregulars (swam), controlling for numerous subject- and item-specific factors (e.g., IQ, phonological complexity). Additionally, patients’ thought-disorder scores significantly predicted their performance at regular and novel (but not irregular) past-tense production. The results support grammatical deficits in schizophrenia, with a relative sparing of lexical memory, and suggest that thought disorder may be linked with grammatical impairments in the disorder. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide an account of na-clauses in Modern Greek, by focusing on the properties of the ‘mood’ particle na and its relation to the subject it embeds. It is argued that na has the effect of subsuming the lexical realization of the subject, mediating (along with verbal agreement) its interpretation. In control contexts, clause-union takes place, leading to the identification of the embedded (unrealized) subject with one of the matrix arguments. In non-control contexts, where no clause-union is at stake, free reference is the available option. It is also argued that the same approach can extend to to-complements in English. Any differences between the two grammars are further related to the presence vs. absence of verbal agreement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The standard task used to study inflectional processing of verbs involves presentation of the stem form from which the participant is asked to generate the past tense. This task reveals a processing disadvantage for irregular relative to regular English verbs, more pronounced for lower-frequency items. Dual- and single-mechanism theories of inflectional morphology are both able to account for this pattern; but the models diverge in their predictions concerning the magnitude of the regularity effect expected when the task involves past-tense generation from meaning. In this study, we asked normal speakers to generate the past tense from either form (verb stem) or meaning (action picture). The robust regularity effect observed in the standard form condition was no longer reliable when participants were required to generate the past tense from meaning. This outcome would appear problematic for dual-mechanism theories to the extent that they assume the process of inflection requires stem retrieval. By contrast, it supports single-mechanism models that consider stem retrieval to be task-dependent. We present a single-mechanism model of verb inflection incorporating distributed phonological and semantic representations that reproduces this task-dependent pattern. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The aim of the study was to investigate how the input modality affects the processing of a morphologically complex word. The processing of Finnish inflected vs. monomorphemic words and pseudowords was examined during a lexical decision task, using behavioral responses and event-related potentials. The stimuli were presented in two modalities, visually and auditorily, to two groups of participants. Half of the words and pseudowords carried a case-inflection. At the behavioral level, the inflected words elicited a processing cost with longer decision latencies and higher error rates. At the neural level, pseudowords elicited an N400 effect, which was more pronounced in the visual modality. Inflected words elicited an N400 effect in both modalities, which, however, differed in topography and latency. The N400 effect for inflected words most probably reflects access and possible integration of the stem and suffix. The results suggest that the inflectional processing cost stems from the later, lexical-semantic stage of processing in both modalities. The ERP responses to inflected pseudowords did not differ from the ERP responses to monomorphemic pseudowords in either modality, suggesting that combinatorial case-inflection processing requires a real word stem in order to proceed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Event-related potentials (ERP) were used to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of inflectional and derivational morphology. The participants were presented with visual sentences containing critical words in which either inflectional, derivational or both rules (combined violation) of Finnish were violated. Inflectional anomalies violated a number agreement of a noun with a previous auxiliary word. Derivational violations included a word-internal selectional restriction violation, i.e., a root and suffix category violation. Combined violations contained both a number and a category violation. The phonemic length of the critical words was controlled. Inflectional violations elicited a bilateral negative effect in the 450–550 ms time window, which was interpreted as an anterior negativity (AN) effect. Inflectional violations also elicited a late positivity (P600) effect. Derivational violations elicited an N400-like negativity effect, followed by the P600 effect. The P600 effects in the derivational and inflectional violation conditions summated linearly in the combined violation condition. The results are discussed with respect to the hypothesis that inflectional and derivational processes are independent and elicited in parallel in the online language comprehension. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, we argue against the emergentist position that functional morphology can be acquired by induction from properties of the target-language surface phonetic string. Two experiments are presented, which examine oral production data from Mandarin speakers at intermediate levels of proficiency in English. The first experiment is on the acquisition of English past tense morphology, the second on the acquisition of English articles. In both cases, learners are quite successful at supplying the appropriate morphology. A detailed examination of the phonetics of learners’ outputs shows that many of their productions cannot be derived from the surface strings available in the ambient input. In particular, the L2 learners produce tense and articles in ways which are not found in either the L1 or the L2, namely, with fortis release on tense inflection and stress on articles. We maintain that options made available by Universal Grammar, together with transfer of prosodic representations from the L1, best account for such behaviour. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Lexical compounds in English are constrained in that the non-head noun can be an irregular but not a regular plural (e.g. mice eater vs. *rats eater), a contrast that has been argued to derive from a morphological constraint on modifiers inside compounds. In addition, bare nouns are preferred over plural forms inside compounds (e.g. mouse eater vs. mice eater), a contrast that has been ascribed to the semantics of compounds. Measuring eye-movements during reading, this study examined how morphological and semantic information become available over time during the processing of a compound. We found that the morphological constraint affected both early and late eye-movement measures, whereas the semantic constraint for singular non-heads only affected late measures of processing. These results indicate that morphological information becomes available earlier than semantic information during the processing of compounds. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The flow of the Oldroyd-B fluid past a circular cylinder in a channel is simulated by a parallelized finite volume method (FVM) using fine unstructured meshes. Convergent solutions are obtained up to a high Deborah number of with a high aspect ratio mesh, while it can only be obtained for with a more or less equi-lateral mesh. The governing equations are re-written using the discrete elastic viscous split stress formulation together with an independent interpolation of the vorticity (DEVSS-. The numerical procedure is based on the semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equations revised (SIMPLER) algorithm, using a collocated FVM discretization. To enhance the numerical accuracy, mixed meshes (structured and unstructured) are used and adapted to the geometry and the flow physics. The results show that an instability featuring stress oscillations on the top of the cylinder is produced at a critical De number . This critical value is in agreement with the experiments in the literature. The oscillation generated in the shear layer on the cylinder surface at high De number is convected downstream into the wake behind the cylinder. This feature of flow oscillation agrees well with experiments reported in the literature. The mechanism of these phenomena can be explained reasonably by a boundary layer analysis. The key finding is that the instability is due to an inflectional velocity profile, near the cylinder, generated by normal stress on the cylinder surface at high De number, which can only be captured with fine meshes. According to a newly proposed theory (so called energy gradient theory), inflectional velocity profile leads to flow instability and consequently allows the convection of the oscillatory flow within the shear layer downstream of the wake and results in the flow pulsation in the spanwise direction. Therefore, the origin of the instability for the flow around a cylinder is in the shear layer on the cylinder and not in the wake itself. In addition, it seems that the increasing rate of numerical perturbation is related to the mesh aspect ratio. Computing using thin-long meshes could get convergence even if the flow is oscillatory, while the computing is prohibited by the inflectional instability when equi-lateral triangular meshes are used. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In Modern Greek nominals, the accent is sometimes faithful to the properties of stems, and sometimes to those of affixes. Several facts challenge solutions based on stipulating the ranking of faithfulness constraints in OT, however. These include the fact that accentual dominance of affixes correlates with their semantic markedness (marked Case; marked number); the fact that neighboring cells within a paradigm tend to be accentually uniform; and the fact that control of accent shifts from affix to stem when stems are followed by Class Markers. These facts are argued to motivate an approach in which faithfulness effects and their relative magnitudes are not primitive notions, but are rather derived in certain specific ways that take account of both the internal structure of representations and their overall distance in space. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Across most languages, verbs produced by agrammatic aphasic individuals are frequently marked by syntactically and semantically inappropriate inflectional affixes, such as Last night, I walking home. As per language production models, verb inflection errors in English agrammatism could arise from three potential sources: encoding the verbs’ morphology based on temporal information at the conceptual level, accessing syntactic well-formedness constraints of verbal morphology, and encoding morphophonological form. We investigate these aspects of encoding verb inflections in agrammatic aphasia. Using three sentence completion experiments, it was demonstrated that production of verb inflections was impaired whenever temporal reference was involved; while morphological complexity and syntactic constraints were less likely to be the source of verb inflection errors in agrammatism. These findings are discussed in relation to current language production models. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Chinese inflection differs from that of European languages in that it is fully parsable in the orthography, which raises the possibility that Chinese inflected forms may not show the surface frequency effects found in other languages. Five lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine this issue. They showed that surface frequency did indeed affect reaction times, independent of base frequency and acceptability of the inflected forms, but only if the design of the materials encouraged readers to process base–affix combinations. This suggests that surface frequency effects emerge at a late stage when components are combined into complex words, not during initial contact with the lexicon. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this study we introduce an information-theoretical formulation of the emergence of type- and token-based effects in morphological processing. We describe a probabilistic measure of the informational complexity of a word, its information residual, which encompasses the combined influences of the amount of information contained by the target word and the amount of information carried by its nested morphological paradigms. By means of re-analyses of previously published data on Dutch words we show that the information residual outperforms the combination of traditional token- and type-based counts in predicting response latencies in visual lexical decision, and at the same time provides a parsimonious account of inflectional, derivational, and compounding processes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Dissociations of nouns and verbs following brain damage have been interpreted as evidence for distinct neural substrates underlying different aspects of the language system. Some neuroimaging studies have supported this claim by finding neural differentiation for nouns and verbs [Brain 122 (1999) 2337] while others have argued against neural specialisation [Brain 119 (1996) 159; Brain 124 (2001) 1619]. We suggest that one reason why these inconsistencies may have arisen is because the morphological structure of nouns and verbs has been ignored. In an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we test the hypothesis that the neural processing of nouns and verbs differs when they are inflected. We contrasted the processing of regularly inflected nouns (dogs) with regularly inflected verbs (hitting), and found that the LIFG was more strongly activated in processing regularly inflected verbs compared to regularly inflected nouns. Moreover, regions of LIFG that were more active in the fMRI study for inflected verbs partially overlapped with the lesions in patients who have particular problems with verb morphology. Taken together with previous studies, these results suggest that noun and verb stems do not differ in terms of their representation, but when verbs are morphologically complex they differentially engage those neural systems which are involved in processes of morpho-phonology and syntax. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Despite extensive behavioral research on complex word recognition, the neural mechanisms involved in the production of inflections in agglutinative languages, such as Finnish, are still poorly understood. Finnish inflected nouns typically involve morphophonological alternations of the stem (i.e. consonant gradation; CG), which is less common in other languages. Behavioral research on recognition of inflected nouns containing consonant gradation has shown that the number of stem allomorphs results in faster recognition times. To our knowledge, no functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have explicitly investigated consonant gradation in word production. In this study, participants performed covert and overt production tasks during event-related fMRI. Our stimuli comprised real word stems of high and medium frequency as well as pseudoword stems. The stems either included consonant gradation or were non-gradating. Our findings showed that the production of inflected forms containing high frequency stems or CG stems (irrespective of frequency and lexicality) yield enhanced activation of the left inferior frontal and middle frontal gyri (LIFG and MFG, respectively). This suggests that CG stems, that is, stems with more than one allomorph, facilitate lexical lookup, and that the activation of multiple stem allomorphs is reflected in increased recruitment of frontal brain regions. • We examined the effect of stem allomorphy on Finnish inflected word production. • Stem allomorphy increases error rates when producing gradated inflected forms. • Gradated stems cause stronger LIFG/MFG activation compared to non-gradated. • Higher LIFG/MFG activation was present for real stems compared to pseudo-stems. • This robust frontal activation may underpin lexical allomorph access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing definitions for inflection point on 3D curves lack the direct relation to local shape-characteristics of the 3D curve that the corresponding definition for planar curves has. This paper presents a new generalization of the definition of planar-curve inflection to the case of a 3D curve that is directly related to the local convexity of the 3D curve and to that of orthogonal projections of this 3D curve on planes of interest. Various properties of this new "3D-curve inflection" concept, employing standard Differential-Geometric properties of the 3D curve, are proved, establishing its usefulness for 3D-curve interrogation within current CAD/CAGD curve/surface-design systems. • Definition of inflection point for 3D curves. • Necessary and sufficient conditions for characterizing a point of a 3D curve as inflection point. • Relation of 3D inflections to inflection points in projection curves. • Algorithm to detect inflection points in G1-continuous 3D spline-curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Generalized cubic curves" were introduced in Costantini and Manni (2006) as a special case of the more general results in Goodman and Mazure (2001) and Costantini, Lyche and Manni (2005). In this work, the shape of these curves is analyzed in R n , n = 1 , 2 , 3 , proving that well-known theorems, which hold for cubic polynomials, hold also for this class of curves. • Generalized cubic curves representation with totally positive bases. • Construction and properties of generalized cubic curves. • Shape analysis of spatial and planar generalized cubic curves and generalized cubic functions. • Generalized cubic curves via Pruess spline representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]