Historical productivity of VERB-NOUN compounds in English

This paper provides a comparative analysis of verb-noun compounds and their distribution in English and German. It is shown that two major generalizations are pos- sible along the endocentric/exocentric dimension: While the types of endocentric V-N compounds found in English form a subset of the relevant types found in German, exo- centric V-N compounds constitute a substantial lexical class in English but not in German. The distribution of the two major types of V-N compounds is considered against the background of competing expressions such as V-ing N compounds (in English) and synthetic compounds of the type N-V-er (in both languages under comparison). The differences in the inventories of types are related to aspects of external language history (language contact), but the role of language-internal factors is also considered, in par- ticular the greater disposition of English to allow conversion.

This study compares Verb-Noun compounds (V-NCs) with synthetic compounds (SCs) in three languages: English (e.g., killjoy vs. joy-killer), German (e.g., Wendehals, Spielverderber), and Italian, which exclusively displays the former construction (e.g., guastafeste). We adopt a theoretical framework grounded in naturalness to examine various features of these compound types. From a synchronic perspective, we analyze: (a) their agentive versus instrumental meanings, (b) their preference for endocentricity versus exocentricity, (c) their degrees of productivity and morphosemantic transparency, (d) the iconicity between morphosemantic and morphotactic heads, (e) their uniqueness versus ambiguity, and (f) the influence of typological properties on their formation in each language. From a diachronic perspective, we explore the genesis and development of these compound patterns, as well as the role of analogy in their formation, frequency, and productivity. Typological differences among the three languages reflect either a preference for one pattern or the coexistence of both, albeit with varying degrees of productivity. Through the lens of analogy, we identify compound families in all three languages, demonstrating the extension of patterns and the potential to predict new formations accordingly.

This article aims at discussing verb-noun compounds with a locative prefix in the nominal part of the compounds in Cinyanja. The singular and plural forms of the compounds have been presented to show that the complex forms are nouns. With regard to the internal structure, the compounds show that they have a phrasal structure. Since verb-noun compounds in this study resemble the structure of synthetic compounds in English, the analysis of these words followed the syntactic approach. The results show that internally, the compounds with a locative have a verb phrase internal structure, and follow the verb-argument word order. In the syntactic context, it is shown that the compounds with the phrasal internal structure function as determiner phrases because they can appear in the subject and object positions in simple sentences and relative clauses. Further, the entire compound word can be modified by adjectives, and be coordinated with simple nouns, which suggests that the compounds with a locative are indeed determiner phrases. Finally, with the application of the lexical integrity hypothesis, the results reveal that the compounds with the locative in the nominal part are genuine compounds because they adhere to the lexical integrity principle.

Classical research on word recognition describes how when adult participants are presented with pairs of words that share phonemes or belong to the same semantic category, the processing of the second word is facilitated provided the first word is related to the second. These observations have suggested that words in the mental lexicon are connected via phonological and semantic links. However, more recently, these association rules have been found to evolve in children during the early phases of language acquisition, at the time in which their language processing skills are being developed together with a fast growth of the child’s vocabulary. The present dissertation deals with the phenomena of facilitation and interference in word recognition due to phonological and semantic similarities during early childhood. It does so through three interrelated studies. In a longitudinal design, the first study investigated whether phonological and semantic priming would be better predicted either by the infants’ vocabulary size or by their age. The second study investigated the impact of joint phonological and semantic similarities on word recognition. While past studies had investigated both factors separately, Study II investigated the impact of both factors in combination. The third and last study dived into the question of how word recognition is affected by the similarities among the novel words to learn. Therefore, the mechanisms of facilitation/interference of word recognition due to phonological and semantic overlap was again investigated in young children, but under controlled learning experimental protocol; comparing the effects of word overlap on recently acquired words. Overall, the results of this dissertation show that (i) word recognition is primarily modulated by the number of words in the mental lexicon of children, (ii) phonological interference of word recognition can be alleviated by introducing a semantic similarity, and (iii) that children recognise better recently acquired words when the novel words shared either phonological or semantic similarities. Result (i) provides the first evidence of the effect of children current vocabulary on phonological interference effects. These results align with models of spoken word recognition that suggest that during speech processing, phonologically related words are activated and compete for recognition in line with the Cohort Model and the Neighbourhood Activation Model; thus, the more words a child knows more related associates are activated. In addition, result (ii) shows that adding a similarity in meaning reduces the interference in target recognition induced by the phonological similarity between words. These results resonate with the Distributed Cohort Model, which suggests that semantic aspects of words reduce the activation of phonologically related words to the target supporting the recognition of the intended word. Finally, together the results of this dissertation highlight the differential impact of words simple vs. compound overlap on familiar and recently acquired words. Specifically, it was found that while simple phonological or semantic similarities interfered with familiar word recognition, simple similarities between novel words supported novel word recognition. These results support the hypothesis of the LEX model of word learning that predicts better learning of novel words of similar form or similar meaning than of words with similar form and meaning.

Objectives This study investigates the psychological language distance regarding types of English idioms among Korean undergraduate students to elucidate the mechanisms of language transfer, hypothesizing that the perception of semantic similarity between Korean and English idioms leads to positive transfer. Methods A total of 82 undergraduate students in a metropolitan city participated in a questionnaire study that categorized English idioms based on semantic and formal similarity between Korean and English. The validity of findings regarding language transfer is enhanced when data on psychological perception, reflecting the process of language transfer, corroborates comprehension data, indicating the outcome of language transfer. In the questionnaire, therefore, the participants' psychological perceptions of the ease and difficulty of English idioms were measured using a Likert scale, and their comprehension of English idioms was assessed using a multiple-choice format. In addition, since idioms with prior knowledge are automatically processed and language transfer does not work, participants were asked to mark the items that they had prior knowledge of to exclude them from the data analysis. Results Korean students' perceived ease with English idioms was in the order of cognate idioms > pragmatic idioms > L2-only idioms > false friends idioms, while the accuracy rates of idiom comprehension were ranked as cognate idioms > pragmatic idioms > false friends idioms > L2-only idioms. The results showed that semantically similar idioms (i.e., cognate idioms, pragmatic idioms) were perceived as easier and had higher accuracy rates compared to dissimilar idioms (i.e., L2-only idioms, false friends idioms), supporting the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis concerning transfer of meaning. However, psychological perception and accuracy rate data for dissimilar idioms produced conflicting results regarding psychological language distance. Nevertheless, pragmatic idioms with similar meanings but different forms between Korean and English were perceived as easier and had higher accuracy than false friends idioms with different meanings but similar forms. This suggests that the perception of cross-linguistic semantic similarity, rather than formal similarity, triggers positive transfer. Conclusions This study confirms the Psychotypology Hypothesis proposed by Kellerman (1983), which posits that perceived cross-linguistic similarity leads to language transfer, as supported by corroborative evidence from psychological perception and accuracy rate data. However, conflicting findings within dissimilar idioms suggest the need for follow-up studies employing various methods to measure psychological language distance, thereby validating the reality of language transfer more robustly.

The idea that subjects often use imagery to discriminate semantically similar sentences was tested in three experiments. In the first experiment, subjects heard subject-verb-object sentences in the context of either a comprehension task or an image-generation task. Their memory for the sentences was tested using a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test in which different types of distractor sentence were used. A sentence semantically similar to the target sentence was one type; a sentence with the same subject and object nouns as the target sentence, but dissimilar in meaning, was another type; and a sentence similar in meaning to one of the stimulus sentences, but not to the target sentence, was a third type. The results showed that the image-generation instructions enhanced later recognition performance, but only for semantically similar test items. A second experiment showed that this finding only holds for high-imagery sentences containing concrete noun concepts. A third experiment demonstrated that the enhanced recognition performance could not be accounted for in terms of a semantic model of test-item discrimination. Collectively, the results were interpreted as providing evidence for the notion that subjects discriminate the semantically similar test items by elaborating the sentence encoding through image processing.

Verb-noun compounds are typically considered to be one of the most important innovations in the domain of Romance word-formation (cf. Bauer 2011, among many others). This morphological innovation can also be seen as part of a general tendency in Romance languages to prefer head-initial structures across different levels of the language system (cf., e.g., Ledgeway 2012: 225). However, the question of the productivity of VN compounds arises immediately as there is evidence that the pattern has become extremely productive only recently. This paper investigates the question of the productivity of the VN compounds starting out with a distinction between availability of a word-formation pattern and its profitability (cf., e.g., Bauer 2001). This article shows that the structural presence—availability—of VN compounding seems to be diachronically constant, but that the quantitative exploitation of the pattern—its profitability—turns out to be a recent phenomenon. Following recent research on compounding in Spanish (Moyna 2011) and French (Rosenberg 2007, 2008, 2011), this paper takes one concrete example of the Italian VN compounds and proceeds to show its diachronic evolution from the 16th to the 19th century on the basis of data drawn from diachronic corpora as well as from major historical dictionaries. It demonstrates that the “dramatic increase” alluded to by Bauer (2011: 543) is not to be taken as a sign of a new structural innovation, but rather as a fortuitous exploitation of a well-settled word-formation pattern.

Event Abstract Back to Event Spinach and frogs may be more related than you think: how priming can affect recall of weakly related word lists Jee-hee Vivian Pyeun1* and Mitchell G. Longstaff1 1 Department of Psychological Science, School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Australia Aim: Semantic similarity can have a profound influence on verbal working memory. This refers to the phenomenon in which lists of words with similar meaning (e.g. from the same category) are better recalled than dissimilar words. Research suggests that conscious awareness of the category may play an important role in this effect. This experiment aimed to determine whether weakly related words can be primed using a related category label to induce a stronger semantic similarity effect and in turn increase recall in immediate serial recall tasks. Method: 38 participants engaged in a recall task that consisted of 15 lists of weakly-related words with a related label, 15 lists of weakly-related words with an unrelated label and 15 lists of unrelated words with an unrelated label. The 45 lists were presented in one block in a pseudo-random order. Each list was presented one word at a time on a computer screen. Following each list, participants wrote down the words they recalled in the order they were presented. After all lists were completed, participants rated each list on how strongly related (cohesive) they were, first without a label, then with a label. Results: Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a significant effect for word condition. While there was a trend for priming to increase recall, there was only a significant difference between related and unrelated word lists. Cohesiveness ratings indicated that including a related label enhanced cohesiveness, while an unrelated label decreased cohesiveness. Conclusion: Semantically similar lists had a significant advantage over lists that were semantically dissimilar, but including a label did not significantly enhance recall. This may be because participants noticed a link between words even without being primed. Future research should investigate whether weakly-related words can be enhanced through other means. Keywords: semantic similarity, priming, working memory, associative strength, serial recall Conference: 15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference , Coffs Harbour, Australia, 4 Oct - 5 Oct, 2018. Presentation Type: Research Topic: Abstract for 15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference Citation: Pyeun J and Longstaff MG (2019). Spinach and frogs may be more related than you think: how priming can affect recall of weakly related word lists. Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: 15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference . doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2018.74.00028 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 18 Sep 2018; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019. * Correspondence: Miss. Jee-hee Vivian Pyeun, Department of Psychological Science, School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour, Australia, v.pyeun.10@student.scu.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Jee-hee Vivian Pyeun Mitchell G Longstaff Google Jee-hee Vivian Pyeun Mitchell G Longstaff Google Scholar Jee-hee Vivian Pyeun Mitchell G Longstaff PubMed Jee-hee Vivian Pyeun Mitchell G Longstaff Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

The present study constitutes an exploratory analysis of the use of the Catalan constructions anar (‘to go’) + adjective and estar (‘to be’) + adjective in writing during the 19th and 20th centuries. In modern Catalan, anar and estar can be used before an adjective as copulas, with an identical or similar meaning (e.g., en Joan va begut, en Joan esta begut ‘John is drunk’). Both constructions show evidence of being highly grammaticalized and are apparently found in free variation rather than complementary distribution. However, a closer approach seems to reveal certain underlying linguistic factors that might be informing such contrast, specifically within the semantic-pragmatic sphere. This is here explored using the narrow theory of grammaticalization (Hopper & Traugott 2003), a multistage process by which lexical (i.e., contextual) items eventually become functional (i.e., grammatical) over time. A corpus-based search was conducted using the electronic version of the Corpus Textual Informatitzat de la Llengua Catalana (CTILC), which comprises literary and non-literary texts published between 1833 and 1988. Anar + adjective and estar + adjective tokens were obtained from a sample of texts, then sorted into four different groups corresponding to century halves. The search results from the corpus were randomly sorted in terms of genre and date and, from these, the top 250 tokens on the list of results for each construction were selected and subsequently analyzed. Whereas few instances of both constructions are found overall in the first half of the 19th century, estar already prevails over anar when followed by an adjective. During the first half of the 20th century, however, this trend starts to be reversed. This suggests the possibility that anar and estar might have traditionally been found in free variation in a number of contexts, with 19th century texts showing a clear preference for estar.

Children’s generalization of novel names in comparison settings: The role of semantic distance during learning and at test

Abstrac t If the Arabic language is written and spoken, you will find the application of morphological rules in the words of forgiveness and their derivatives in the Qur’an. In terms of form in the adverbial grammar it is divided into two parts: the first in terms of time of occurrence of the function, and the second in terms of derivation or sentence changes that have similar meanings taken from other similar examples. In terms of verb: past tense, present tense, verb imperative, in terms of the derivation it includes: infinitive, participle noun, object noun, time and place noun, and so on . After conducting a search on the 'words of forgiveness' and its 'derivatives' in the Qur’an, it was found that there are 211 words, 54 letters and 198 verses. As for the types and meanings of 'words of forgiveness' and 'derivatives thereof' in the Qur’an, they differ according to the form of the sentence in it. From this research there are six forms: Past tense, Present tense, Imperative verb, Infinitive, and participle noun. In the past tense there are 4 expressions, in the present tense 13 pronunciations, the verb imperative 8 pronunciations, the participle noun there are 3 pronunciations, the source there are 3 expressions and the form of exaggeration 4 words. Whereas the meanings contained in the word forgiveness and its derivatives in the Qur’an there are five types: first in terms of the abstract triple meaning the meaning of the jacket and tolerance, the second in terms of the act of forgiveness with 3 additional letters that has the meaning of forgiveness or the triple, and the third has the meaning of exaggeration, which is a substance that is forgiven a lot, and the fourth It is the name of God Almighty or the names of the Most Beautiful, and the fifth has the meaning of the command or the command . Among the various forms of 'the words forgiveness' and 'longing for forgiveness' in the Qur’an have meanings that have the meanings of forgiveness, which are 'forgiveness', 'forgiveness', 'forgiveness' and 'disbelief'. Type to know the type of shape and meaning of words. So the sentence context also determines knowing the meaning in the sentence

The paper considers a historical aspect of zoonymic studies which has not been sufficiently developed. The history of Russian horse names (hipponyms) is explored using zoonymic data from the inventories of the Vologda monasteries in the 16th — early 18th centuries, the materials from Listings of horses (Moscow, 1665), and archival documents of the Soviet farms of Sevmaslotrest from 1930s. The author identifies the lexical structure of Early Modern Russian hipponymy, delves into the meaning of names and appellatives they derive from, analyses the structure of horses’ names, and describes the name formation techniques. The studied sources bring the picture of the general development of lexical patterns in the Russian hipponymy. As it turns out, the vocabulary of Early Modern Russian hyponymy is almost identical with the Old Russian anthroponomy, which attests to their genetic unity. At the same time, the use of Christian names is noted, with these becoming more popular in the given period. The article also deals with structural types of Early Modern Russian hipponyms: zoonyms having a substantive form (nicknames formed from onomastic, agential, zoological, and object nouns; zoonymic compounds; suffixal compounds); adjective-based zoonyms; mixed names. In monastic scripts of the 16th — early 18th centuries, the vast majority of units used as hipponyms are “prefabricated” traditional names, the cases of creating original animal names are rare. In the latter case, zoonyms are usually formed using suffixal patterns peculiar for agentive and anthroponomic vocabulary. The word-building patterns include the onymisation of appellatives (sometimes by metaphoric transfer), substantivisation (nominalization) of adjectives, transonymisation of personal and place names. Due to the semantic, structural, and word-formation proximities between Early Modern Russian zoonymy and Old Russian anthroponomy, zoonymic vocabulary of the 16th–18th centuries provides a reliable source on Old Russian onomasticon, as well as explains the “anthroponymic” nature of modern Russian zoonymy and the active use of personal names for animals at present. This practice turns out to have deep historical roots.

The semantic similarity computing among sentences is important in many fields of NLP. This paper proposes a sentence similarity theory based on Chinese Dependency Graph (CDG) from Chinese FrameNet (CFN). Firstly, the CFN project is introduced, and then the CDG model is established. To compute the semantic similarity between two sentences, this paper proposes a series of similarity models. The target word similarity, dependency graph similarity and external component similarity are computed separately between two sentences, then the similarity between two sentences is defined as the convex combination of the three similarities. Compared with other theories, the sentence similarity theory not only computes the semantic frame similarity but also the word similarities between two sentences. Compared with other methods, the algorithm based on CFN and CDG makes the precision of sentence similarity obtain distinct improvement.

Close enough isn't good enough in word learning: Successful cross-situational word mappings are semantically independent of previous mappings.

Background: Accurate ECG interpretation is critical for triaging, diagnosis, and managing patients with cardiovascular conditions. Current computerized methods have limited accuracy and are often proprietary algorithms based on raw signal data. We sought to evaluate ECG-GPT, a novel vision-text transformer model capable of generating free-text diagnosis statements from images of ECGs. Methods: ECG-GPT was developed with 3 million ECGs at Yale and validated in 2 large and geographically distinct populations: (1) 1.4 million ECG images with diagnosis statements from Mount Sinai Health System (MSHS), NY, and (2) 45,389 ECG images with 6 diagnostic labels from UK Biobank (UKB). We employed 2 metrics: (A) a rule-based approach to evaluate diagnostic accuracy for 19 rhythm and conduction disorders on MSHS ECGs and 6 key conditions on UKB ECGs, and (B) semantic similarity (similar meaning) using a fine-tuned DistilBERT model. Using semantic similarity methods, we assessed the quality of generated text across the full range of ECG diagnoses by computing similarity both for all model-generated and reference statements and for subsets specific to ECGs flagged for each of the 19 extracted conditions. To establish baseline similarities, we also computed semantic similarities between random combinations of model-generated and reference statements within each of these sets. Results: The model performed well across multiple key labels, spanning rhythm and conduction disorders, including an AUROC of 0.92 for atrial fibrillation, 0.95 for left bundle branch block, and 0.90 for atrioventricular block (Table A). More importantly, in addition to the labels, ECG-GPT identified the full context of the diagnosis statements with allied conditions. It had a median pairwise cosine similarity of 0.86 (IQR 0.78-0.94), significantly greater than the median baseline similarity of 0.73 (IQR 0.66-0.79, p<0.001) (Table B). This separation between median pairwise and baseline similarity remained consistent across all 19 condition-specific subsets. Results were comparable in the UKB dataset, with AUROCs of 0.95, 0.92, and 0.95 for AF, ST, and SB, and AUROCs of 0.99, 0.99, and 0.95 for LBBB, RBBB, and AVb (Table C). Conclusion: Our model represents a scalable and accessible strategy for generating accurate, expert-level reports from photos of ECGs, validated across large, multinational datasets using both individual diagnostic labels and the comprehensiveness of the diagnostic statement.