9 results on '"Inflection"'
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2. System-congruity and violable constraints in German weak declension.
- Author
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Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew
- Subjects
GERMAN language ,INFLECTION (Grammar) ,NOUN phrases (Grammar) ,OPTIMALITY theory (Linguistics) ,LINGUISTICS - Abstract
Among the patterns of declension exhibited by German nouns and adjectives, there are some that are traditionally labelled ‘weak’. It is argued here that the behaviour of ‘weak’ noun and adjective forms can be best understood if their inflectional suffixes are regarded not as expressing morphosyntactic properties such as gender and case but rather as the outcome of conflicting ranked constraints governing what an optimal noun or adjective should look like in different contexts. For example, an attributive adjective should carry a suffix; a nominative singular form should carry no suffix; and the default inflectional affix is -en. These language-particular constraints reflect some of the ‘system-defining structural properties’ attributed to German by the late Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
- Full Text
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3. Role of the form of an angular velocity inflection in the stability of the gas-dust component of plane galaxies.
- Author
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Antonov, V. A. and Baranov, A. S.
- Subjects
- *
GALAXIES , *GRAVITATIONAL fields , *ASTRONOMY , *FIELD theory (Physics) , *METAPHYSICAL cosmology - Abstract
The stability of a rotating gas-dust gravitating disk in the zone of a possible inflection in the angular velocity is examined theoretically. The stability limits are found for a rather wide range of curves in a special model of a dusty, pressure-free medium with the general gravitational field of the galaxy taken into account. Applications to real galaxies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
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4. The syntax of non-inflectional plural marking.
- Author
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Wiltschko, Martina
- Subjects
NUMBER (Grammar) ,SALISH language ,MODERN languages -- Inflection - Abstract
Plural marking is not universally inflectional. This paper examines the formal properties of non-inflectional plural marking on the basis of a detailed case study of Halkomelem Salish. The plural marker in this language displays neither inflectional nor derivational properties. I argue that its distributional properties derive from its syntax: it is a modifier adjoined to category-neutral $\sqrt{}$ roots. The analysis implies that plural marking is not universally merged as a syntactic (functional) head and that it does not universally merge with nouns. This leads to the postulation of a new typology of plural marking which goes beyond the distinction between inflectional and non-inflectional plural marking. Several diagnostics to distinguish among distinct types of plural markers are established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
- Full Text
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5. Nominal inflection classes in verbal paradigms
- Author
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Matthew Baerman, Irina Monich, and Tatiana Reid
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Covert ,Noun ,Inflection ,language ,Context (language use) ,Old Irish ,Locative case ,Verbal noun ,Sign language ,Psychology ,Language and Linguistics ,Linguistics ,language.human_language - Abstract
It is not uncommon for inflected nominal forms to be incorporated into verbal paradigms, as in Imonda progressive construction tōbtō soh-ia ale-f ‘he is looking for fish (lit. fish search-loc stay-prs)’, where the verbal noun ‘search’ is in the locative case. Equally, nominal inflection classes are not uncommon. But the two rarely cooccur. We present two case studies (the only examples we are aware of) as a contribution to the typology of inflection class systems: the Western Nilotic language Nuer, and Old Irish. In these languages nominal inflection class distinctions in case marking have become part of the verbal paradigm through the incorporation of constructions involving deverbal nouns. This provides a unique context for observing the properties of inflection classes. In Nuer, case inflection of the verbal noun can be deduced through a cascading series of implicatures, laying bare processes which are entirely covert in the ordinary noun system. With Old Irish, its transition to the modern period was accompanied by a split in the behaviour of verbal nouns, whose inflection class system was simplified when used verbally, but left intact in other contexts, showing that incorporation into the verbal paradigm had real effects on the system.
- Published
- 2019
6. Morphological awareness and early and advanced word recognition and spelling in Dutch
- Author
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Judith Rispens, Catherine McBride-Chang, Pieter Reitsma, and Language Acquisition, Psycholinguistics and Language Pathology
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Vocabulary ,Linguistics and Language ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Verb ,Linguistics ,Spelling ,Education ,Speech and Hearing ,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology ,Phonological awareness ,Noun ,Word recognition ,Inflection ,Learning to read ,Psychology ,media_common - Abstract
This study investigated the relations of three aspects of morphological awareness to word recognition and spelling skills of Dutch speaking children. Tasks of inflectional and derivational morphology and lexical compounding, as well as measures of phonological awareness, vocabulary and mathematics were administered to 104 first graders (mean age 6 years, 11 months) and 112 sixth graders (mean age 12 years, 1 month). For the first grade children, awareness of noun morphology uniquely contributed to word reading, and none of the morphological tasks were uniquely associated with spelling. In grade 6, derivational morphology contributed both to reading and spelling achievement, whereas awareness of verb inflection uniquely explained spelling only. Lexical compounding did not uniquely contribute to literacy skills in either grade. These findings suggest that awareness of both inflectional and derivational morphology may be independently useful for learning to read and spell Dutch.
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7. Irregular past tense forms in English: how data from children with specific language impairment contribute to models of morphology
- Author
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Chloë Marshall and Heather K. J. van der Lely
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Grammar ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,Phonology ,Sign language ,Specific language impairment ,Lexicon ,medicine.disease ,Syntax ,050105 experimental psychology ,Language and Linguistics ,Past tense ,Linguistics ,030507 speech-language pathology & audiology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Inflection ,medicine ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,0305 other medical science ,Psychology ,media_common - Abstract
Two cognitive models of inflectional morphology are widely debated in the literature-the Words and Rules model, whereby irregular forms are stored in the lexicon but regular forms are created by rule, and Single Mechanism models, whereby both regulars and irregulars form an associative network, with no rules. A newer model, the Computational Grammatical Complexity (CGC) model, recognises the contribution of hierarchical complexity in three components of the grammar, syntax, morphology and phonology, to the construction of morphologically complex forms. This model has previously been tested for regular past tense inflection in English, and in this study we test its predictions for the English irregular past tense, in four groups of children: a group with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI; aged 9;8-17;8), and three groups of typically developing children (aged 5;4-8;5). Children with G-SLI provide an important test case for the CGC model because they have deficits in syntax, morphology and phonology. As predicted, children with G-SLI produced fewer tense-marked irregulars than expected for their age, and fewer over-regularisations than their language-matched controls. The effect of verb-end phonology on over-regularisation and null-marking errors was the same for all groups: both G-SLI and typically developing children were more likely to over-regularise verbs ending in a vowel, and more likely to null-mark verbs ending in an alveolar consonant. We interpret these results as providing further support for the CGC model. © 2011 The Author(s).
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8. Suffix combinations in Bulgarian: parsability and hierarchy-based ordering
- Author
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Stela Manova
- Subjects
Diminutive ,Root (linguistics) ,Affix ,Inflection ,language ,Bulgarian ,Suffix ,Productivity (linguistics) ,Language and Linguistics ,language.human_language ,Linguistics ,Word (computer architecture) ,Mathematics - Abstract
This article extends the empirical scope of the most recent approach to affix ordering, the Parsability Hypothesis (Hay 2001, 2002, 2003) or Complexity-Based Ordering (CBO) (Plag 2002; Hay and Plag 2004; Plag and Baayen 2009), to the inflecting-fusional morphological type, as represented by the South Slavic language Bulgarian. In order to account properly for the structure of the Bulgarian word, I distinguish between suffixes that are in the derivational word slot and suffixes that are in the inflectional word slot and show that inflectional suffix combinations are more easily parsable than derivational suffix combinations. Derivational suffixes participate in mirror-image combinations of AB–BA type and can be also attached recursively. The order of 12 out of the 22 derivational suffixes under scrutiny in this article is thus incompatible with CBO. With respect to recursiveness and productivity, the Bulgarian word exhibits three domains of suffixation (in order of increasing productivity): (1) a non-diminutive derivational domain, where a suffix may attach recursively on non-adjacent cycles; (2) a diminutive domain, where a suffix may attach recursively on adjacent cycles; and (3) an inflectional domain, where a suffix never attaches recursively. Overall, the results of this study conform to the last revision of the Parsability Hypothesis (Baayen et al. 2009); and if we see the derivational suffix slot and the inflectional suffix slot of the Bulgarian word as parallel to the non-native stratum and the Germanic stratum respectively in English word-formation, we can conclude that suffixes that are closer to the root tend to exhibit idiosyncrasies and appear less parsable in both languages.
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9. Great expectations: Specific lexical anticipation influences the processing of spoken language
- Author
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Marte Otten, Jos J. A. Van Berkum, Mante S. Nieuwland, and Brein en Cognitie (Psychologie, FMG)
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Adult ,Male ,Adolescent ,computer.software_genre ,lcsh:RC321-571 ,Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience ,Mental Processes ,Event-related potential ,Noun ,Inflection ,Reaction Time ,Contextual information ,Humans ,Active listening ,lcsh:Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry ,Evoked Potentials ,Cerebral Cortex ,Brain Mapping ,Language Tests ,business.industry ,Verbal Behavior ,General Neuroscience ,lcsh:QP351-495 ,Electroencephalography ,Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted ,Semantics ,lcsh:Neurophysiology and neuropsychology ,Female ,Artificial intelligence ,Psychology ,business ,Adjective ,computer ,Sentence ,Natural language processing ,Cognitive psychology ,Spoken language ,Research Article - Abstract
Background Recently several studies have shown that people use contextual information to make predictions about the rest of the sentence or story as the text unfolds. Using event related potentials (ERPs) we tested whether these on-line predictions are based on a message-level representation of the discourse or on simple automatic activation by individual words. Subjects heard short stories that were highly constraining for one specific noun, or stories that were not specifically predictive but contained the same prime words as the predictive stories. To test whether listeners make specific predictions critical nouns were preceded by an adjective that was inflected according to, or in contrast with, the gender of the expected noun. Results When the message of the preceding discourse was predictive, adjectives with an unexpected gender inflection evoked a negative deflection over right-frontal electrodes between 300 and 600 ms. This effect was not present in the prime control context, indicating that the prediction mismatch does not hinge on word-based priming but is based on the actual message of the discourse. Conclusion When listening to a constraining discourse people rapidly make very specific predictions about the remainder of the story, as the story unfolds. These predictions are not simply based on word-based automatic activation, but take into account the actual message of the discourse.
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