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Full-fledged grammatical article systems as attested in Germanic and Romance languages are rather uncommon from a typological perspective. The frequency with which articles occur in these languages, together with the difficulty encountered in detecting them and the lack of a water-tight account of article use, make article errors one of the most frequent errors in language produced by L2 learners whose L1 does not feature an article system of similar complexity, all the while appearing unproblematic for L1 users. We present a conceptually and methodologically interdisciplinary approach to the grammatical category of articles in English and combine a usage-based, cognitive linguistic account of the function and use of articles that respects its discourse-based nature with a computational exploration of the challenges the system poses from the perspective of learning. Running a statistical classifier on a large sample of spoken and written discourse chunks extracted from the BNC and annotated for the five main determinants of article use reveals that Hearer Knowledge is the driver of a hierarchical system. Once Hearer Knowledge is acknowledged as the motivating principle of the category, article use becomes eminently predictable and restrictions are in line with the forms from which the articles have developed historically, with the and a acting as category defaults and zero acting as default override. Simulations with a computational model anchored in the psychology of learning shed light on whether and how human cognition would handle the proposed relations detected in the data. We find that different articles have different learnability profiles that, again, are in line with their historical development: while the can be learned from one strong indicator, the relationships for the zero article are less exclusive. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the article category appears as a referent tracking system that grammaticalizes the principles of “audience design”: it forces a speaker to track and mark reference from the vantage point of the memory of the hearer, thereby reducing the processing effort required from the hearer. This particular mindset inverses the typologically dominant situation in which this information is not explicitly marked by the speaker but implicitly retrieved from context by the hearer.

We explore how general principles of learning apply to and combine with usage‐based approaches to language learning and teaching, with a focus on the effects of order of exposure to new information in second language (L2) instruction. Although the effects of input spacing and timing on memory and learning have been previously explored (see Rogers, 2020; Shintani, 2017, for an overview), the effects of order of exposure to the input remain understudied. In this study, we tested whether order of exposure to information in the L2 plays a role in L2 learning and whether an optimal order where the most reliable cues are introduced first ensures that foreign language learners are better equipped to form representations that allow flexible, yet accurate generalisations. We analysed data collected through a training study that teaches the English article system to first language (L1) speakers whose language does not have markers of definiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen embrittlement (HE) of 1.4614 and 1.4543 maraging stainless steels is characterized with fine structural TEM-ASTAR, hydrogen electrochemical permeation, thermodesorption and tensile testing (with slow strain rate during H cathodic charging) experiments. Both solutions annealed and 550 °C aged states are studied. When aged, 1.4614 grade contains nanometric hexagonal Ni3Ti precipitates whereas 1.4543 grade contains three families of nanometric precipitates, namely, hexagonal Ni3Ti, non fcc-rich Cu and G-phase rich in Si, Ti and Ni with cube-cube relations with martensite. From the permeation and thermodesorption results, it appears that austenite and nanometric precipitates seem to constitute deep traps for hydrogen in both grades. From tensile tests with in situ H charging, 1.4614 and 1.4543 maraging grades show a high susceptibility to HE with relative reduction of area (RRA) strictly superior to 80% for both metallurgical states. The presence of retained austenite does not seem to bring any HE resistance because of its transformation into martensite during deformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cognitive linguistics, grammatical structure is known to be representative of meaning. This is also true of English articles. In this paper, we argue that the choice of article, when the grammar allows it, is dependent on the wider discourse context and most importantly on how the speaker construes this context. Using survey data from 181 native speakers of English, we show that the choice of article depends on the activation of semantic frames and how speakers may choose to highlight different elements of a frame to construe the situation differently. We rely on Entropy to measure the restrictiveness of a context and to identify particular contexts in which choice is allowed or inhibited. We find that some contextual features such as the specificity of the referent are more restrictive while Hearer Knowledge is more open to construal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cr2O3 is not only a promising functional material, but also an essential barrier to protect chromia-forming alloys against high temperature corrosion. The Cr2O3 protecting layer grows slowly via defect-mediated diffusion. Several types of point defects could be responsible for the diffusion process depending on the oxidation environment, resulting in different semiconductor characters of chromia. According to the literature, the defect chemistry of Cr2O3 in the antiferromagnetic (AFM) state has been well studied using density functional theory (DFT) calculations but not in the paramagnetic (PM) state, which is the fundamental state of Cr2O3 above 318 K. PM Cr2O3 is simulated in this study using special quasi-random structures (SQS). The formation energies of intrinsic point defects in AFM and PM Cr2O3 are calculated to study the defect chemistry and the semiconductor properties in different oxidation environments (temperature and oxygen partial pressure PO2) using a thermodynamic model. It is found that O vacancies and insulating-type Cr2O3, in which commensurate electrons and holes are dominant before atomic defects are more favorable at high temperatures and at low PO2, while Cr vacancies and p-type Cr2O3 are more favorable at low temperatures and at high PO2, according to the calculations both in AFM and PM Cr2O3. However, the limits of dominant zones for defects and for semiconductor characters shift to higher temperatures or lower PO2 in PM state calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: alternations; argument structure constructions; construction grammar; distributional semantics; vector space models EN alternations argument structure constructions construction grammar distributional semantics vector space models 35 64 30 02/14/22 20220201 NES 220201 1 Introduction In a paper exploring the competing motivations behind the organisation of argument structure constructions, John Du Bois concludes that "Grammars code best what speakers do most" ([3]: 363); that is, language follows speakers' experiences and perception of the world. The argument presented in [6] reconciles the verb-centred and the construction-centred approaches, as it is quite plausible that speakers are aware both of a verb's possible distribution across various argument structure constructions and of generalisations at (a) more abstract level(s). In another vein, [20] focuses on verb senses rather than simply verb lemmas in her analysis of periphrastic causative constructions and finds that different verb senses are attracted to different constructions. According to [21], argument structure constructions contribute meaning to the verb they occur with, and verbs profile a certain aspect of the basic event denoted by the construction. These clusters sometimes signal different verb senses (cf. I break i and I tear i ) or show that even when the verb meaning remains constant across most uses of the verb, certain kinds of themes are restricted to one construction (cf. I crease, crinkle i and I wrinkle i ). [Extracted from the article]