Structural and semantic ambiguity of why-questions: An overlooked case of weak islands in English

Selectional restrictions are semantic sortal constraints imposed on the participants of linguistic constructions to capture contextually-dependent constraints on interpretation. Despite their limitations, selectional restrictions have proven very useful in natural language applications, where they have been used frequently in word sense disambiguation, syntactic disambiguation, and anaphora resolution. Given their practical value, we explore two methods to incorporate selectional restrictions in the HPSG theory, assuming that the reader is familiar with HPSG. The first method employs HPSG's BACKGROUND feature and a constraint-satisfaction component pipe-lined after the parser. The second method uses subsorts of referential indices, and blocks readings that violate selectional restrictions during parsing. While theoretically less satisfactory, we have found the second method particularly useful in the development of practical systems.

With the deepening research on syntactic structural ambiguity and prosodic phonetics, the role of prosodic focus in the resolution of syntactic ambiguity has become a key topic in phonetic studies. Using The Mother of Three Children as an example, this study analyzes the relationship between prosodic focus and syntactic ambiguity through acoustic and perceptual experiments. The research aims to bridge the gap in understanding how prosodic focus functions in the differentiation of syntactic ambiguity and to explore its influence on ambiguity interpretation in real-world contexts. The experimental results indicate that variations in prosodic focus can, to some extent, facilitate the resolution of syntactic ambiguity. In the syntactic structure of The Mother of Three Children, different prosodic foci significantly affect ambiguity interpretation. This study not only enriches the theoretical understanding of syntactic ambiguity and prosodic focus but also provides empirical evidence for ambiguity resolution in language processing. By examining the interaction between prosody and syntax, this research offers new perspectives and insights for studies in phonetics, syntax, and language comprehension.

A selectional restriction specifies what combinations of words are semantically valid in a particular syntactic construction. This is one of the basic and important pieces of knowledge in natural language processing and has been used for syntactic and word sense disambiguation. In the case of acquiring the selectional restriction for many combinations of words from a corpus, it is necessary to estimate whether or not a word combination that is not observed in the corpus satisfies the selectional restriction. This paper proposes a new method for estimating the degree of satisfaction of the selectional restriction for a word combination from a tagged corpus, based on the multiple regression model. The independent variables of this model correspond to modifiers. Unlike a conventional multiple regression analysis, the independent variables are also parameters to be learned. We experiment on estimating the degree of satisfaction of the selectional restriction for Japanese word combinations 〈 noun, postpositional-particle, verb 〉. The experimental results indicate that our method estimates the degree of satisfaction of a word combination not very well observed in the corpus, and that the accuracy of syntactic disambiguation using the co-occurrencies estimated by our method is higher than using co-occurrence probabilities smoothed by previous methods.

This research paper is based on the comparative approach of English and Albanian language as far as the realization of time adjuncts is concerned. The main focus would be especially directed toward the differences and similarities between the realizations of time adjuncts in both languages according to semantic subtypes of time adjuncts since the structure with which these time adjuncts are realized in great account depends on their semantic subtypes. In some cases, there is a clear line of differences between these two languages. Both languages use different grammatical tools for these adjuncts. In some cases it is not just the syntactic structure that differs but also the semantic type is understood differently. The comparative method is the main research method used in this paper since the nature of such research requires for this material to be compared in order to highlight the differences as well as the commonalities that would eventually appear between these two languages. The descriptive method is also used to describe the language phenomenon which is the subject of this research. The description of grammatical units in this paper is based on accordance with the modern world grammarians. The survey method is another form of research that helped to classify, compare and analyze the material, thus coming to a conclusion. The differences, as well as the commonalities that came out of this paper, gives as a strong believe that the syntactic forms and structures achieved in one language through specific grammar tools can be reached by other grammar tools in the other language. Keywords: time adjunct, realization, phrase, syntagm, syntactic structure.

For practical research in natural language processing, it is indispensabh . to develop a large scale sentantic dictionary for computers. It is especially important to improve the tecbuiques ibr compiling semantic dictionaries torn natural language texts such as those in existing human dictionaries or in large corpora. 11owever } there are at least two ditIicultics in analyzing existing texts: tbe problem of syntactlc ambiguities and the problem of polysemy. Our approach to solw, these difficulties is to make use of translation exam- pies in two dis[inet languagcs that haw (luitc different sylltactic structures and word mealtings. The reason we took tbis approach is that in many cmcs both syn tactic alrd scnlantic ambiguities arc resolved by comparing analyzed results from botb lauguages. In this paper, we propose a method ibr resolving the syntac tie ambiguities of translation examples of bihngual corpora and a method for acquiring lexical knowledge, sucb a.s case frames of verbs and attribute sets of noutts.

Two experiments examined whether young and older adults differ in comprehending sentences that contain temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Experiment 1 examined age-related differences using the Auditory Moving Window (AMW) task, in which sentences were presented in a segment-by-segment self-paced fashion. Experiment 2 examined age-related differences using a sentence recall task, in which sentences were presented in their entirety. Sentences were constructed to have cooperating prosody (i.e., where prosody is consistent with the syntactic boundaries), baseline prosody (i.e., where prosody is ambiguous in the syntactically ambiguous region), and conflicting prosody (i.e., where cross-splicing relocates the prosodic phrase break at a misleading point in syntactic structure). The results showed that both young and older adults make comparable use of prosodic information to interpret temporary syntactic ambiguities, although younger adults may make use of this information more quickly than older adults. In addition, older adults appeared to be less able than young adults to revise initial syntactic misinterpretations caused by conflicting prosodic information. These results are interpreted with respect to age-related impairments in the allocation of working memory resources and inefficient inhibitory function during spoken language processing.

Syntactic and Semantic Ambiguity Processing in Neural MT from English to French, Spanish and Italian
 Despite recent advances in artificial intelligence, human translators outperform MT for at least three types of tasks: identifying referents in anaphora (especially of the interphrastic kind), resolving semantic ambiguity (which is mainly due to polysemy or homonymy), and resolving syntactic ambiguity (especially with poorly inflected source languages such as English). Using the results obtained by two freely available online machine translation programs, Google Translate and DeepL, we examine how these two types of ambiguity are processed in translation from English into French, Spanish and Italian. Our results show that the two programs perform well overall in resolving the simplest cases of syntactic ambiguity, with difficulties arising more frequently for noun phrases featuring atypical syntactic divisions and rarely used collocations. MT output for ambiguous structures involving verb roots followed by the –ING morpheme (flying planes, growing pains) is studied, as well as syntactic structures in which two or more nouns are preceded by one or more adjectives. MT handles relatively well the longest of those structures (ADJ ADJ N N N N), probably because their subsets are part of the bilingual or target language monolingual corpora that underlie MT systems. Structures involving head modification and coordination (ADJ N AND N) are also known to pose problems for MT and human translators alike. But since many of the most frequent N AND N structures involve cohyponyms (men and women, brothers and sisters), antonyms (rights and duties, costs and benefits) or near- synonyms (aid and advice), their translation as a whole unit generally triggers the choice of correct syntact dependencies in translation. Structures in which the adjective only modifies the first noun (fresh air and exercise, social sciences and humanities) are much less frequent and are also probably translated as a whole unit. Structures involving premodification, coordination and post-modification may give rise to four distinct types of structures depending on whether long-range dependencies apply (detailed [knowledge and understanding] of the IT industry, [ethnic group] and [place of birth], invaluable [context and [source of information], [close friend] and confidant] of Mr Jones. Structures in which both long-range dependencies apply (integrated prevention and control of pollution) are the ones which most frequently cause errors for MT. Semantic ambiguity cases have been processed with increasing success by MT, especially when collocates vary widely for the main two meanings of homonyms (a well-known example is the word pen). Processing polysemy (for instance the medical use of conditions in pre-existing conditions) is a bit more of a challenge for MT. Other cases involving concentration of several polysemic terms in the same sentence (Changing the placement of beams relative to the staff involves changing the direction of the stems in the beam) also create difficulties for MT when the polysemic terms are used without any of their usual collocates (here in the specialised field of musical edition). Homonymy cases involving grammatical category changes (N-to-V or V-to-N conversion) seem to continue to pose the most difficulties to neural MT, despite increasing consideration of intra- and extraphrastic context. Potentially ambiguous word sequences (treatment increase in as the daily dose and duration of treatment increase), which were processed incorrectly before neuronal MT, are now correctly translated. But word sequences in which one word belongs to a part of speech which is not the most commonly used one (e.g. the noun remains in what remains can be considered) may cause occasional errors. Several examples that involve the verb founder are studied, and they frequently trigger translation of the noun in all three Romance languages (or translations of the verbs find or found due to incorrect segmentation).

Assigning arguments of verbs to different semantic classes ('semantic typing'), or alternatively, checking the 'selectional restrictions' of predicates, is a fundamental component of many natural language processing tasks. However, a common experience has been that general purpose semantic classes, such as those encoded in resources like WordNet, or handcrafted subject-specific ontologies, are seldom quite right when it comes to analysing texts from a particular domain. In this paper we describe a method of automatically deriving fine-grained, domain-specific semantic classes of arguments while simultaneously clustering verbs into semantically meaningful groups: the first step in verb sense induction. We show that in a small pilot study on new examples from the same domain we are able to achieve almost perfect recall and reasonably high precision in the semantic typing of verb arguments in these texts.

Reviewed by: Dramatized Discourse: The Mandarin Chinese ba-Construction Picus Sizhi Ding (bio) Zhuo Jing-Schmidt . Dramatized Discourse: The Mandarin Chinese ba-Construction. Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics 56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005. xxii, 337 pp. Hardcover $176.00, ISBN 9-02-721565-0. Based on her doctoral dissertation, Jing-Schmidt has contributed the first monograph on the ba-construction to the linguistics literature in English. The book has filled a chasm in the discourse aspect of the Mandarin ba-construction, and presents a great step forward to understanding this unusual construction. Readers interested in the ba-construction or Mandarin grammar in general will enjoy the findings about one of the most studied constructions of Mandarin from this book. Chapter 1 (pp. 1-11) presents a general introduction to the orientation of the book. Emphasizing communication as the goal of language, this study has adopted a data-driven approach, using ba sentences found in textual discourse rather than decontextualized introspective sentences. To avoid the deceptive practice of viewing a syntactic structure in isolation from discourse (p. 9), examples of the ba-construction are rendered in chunk in order to have a clear discourse context. The chunk is given in Chinese characters, accompanied with free translation into English. The focus part is underscored in the bilingual chunk, and the ba-construction is then repeated with a three-lined presentation, including Chinese characters, pinyin (without tone markers), and morpheme-to-morpheme glosses. Chapter 2 (pp. 13-15) provides a sketch of the sources of data. The database for synchronic study includes three pieces of Lao She's works from the 1940s and 1950s: the first sixteen chapters of a novel, corpus S (which is the primary source of data); two modern plays, corpus W and corpus C; and a nonliterary work, corpus M, from the first eight chapters of a university textbook. The database for diachronic study consists largely of corpus Y from the Yuan dynasty, corpus J from the Ming dynasty, and corpus H from the Qing dynasty. Much of the chapter gives justification for using written literary works as data for linguistic analysis. Chapter 3 (pp. 17-66) describes the syntactic structure of the ba-construction in terms of compositional properties. Two entirely different syntactic relationships are noted (section 3.1): (i) ba-Obj-VP and (ii) ba-Subj-VP. The former has six variants, and the latter has two. These are: ba-Obj-V-Complement, ba-Obj-V-Aspect_ marker, ba-Obj-Adverb-V, ba-Obj-V-Or(-V2) [Or=recipient Object], ba-Obj-V-Op [Op=partitive Object], and ba-Obj-V-Ot [Ot=transformation Object]; Ø-ba-Subj-VP [Ø=null sentential subject] and T-ba-Subj-VP [T=sentential topic]. The chapter then discusses concurrence of the ba-construction with mood (indicative, imperative, interrogative, and subjunctive in section 3.2) and modality (3.3), the use of the construction in three kinds of sentences: negative (3.4), passive [End Page 228] (3.5), and causative (3.6). Other issues covered are using the ba-construction as subordinate (3.7) and word order of Mandarin (3.8). Chapter 4 (pp. 67-112) presents a critical review of some previous studies on the ba-construction. Examining L. Wang's examples (1947) in his treatment of ba sentences as the disposal construction, Jing-Schmidt criticizes Wang's generalizations for being short of explanatory power and his examples for lacking communicative reality. In discussion of Li and Thompson's analysis within the disposal framework, Jing-Schmidt shows that grammaticality of ba sentences can be achieved with additional modification on the VP, which, however, contributes no disposal effect (cf. example [4] below). Jing-Schmidt points out that Chao (1968) failed to define the notion of "pretransitive verbal construction" properly in his study of the ba-construction and overlooked the attitudinal aspect of the construction. Detailed review of the concept of transitivity is undertaken as regards "cardinal transitivity," "prototypical transitivity," and "prototypical action and major biactant construction." The causativity approach to the ba-construction is briefly addressed. Jing-Schmidt considers the common problem shared in these studies to be the treatment of the ba-construction at the propositional level with the singular focus...

The study focuses on the analyses of syntactic structure of some predicates and state predicatives denoting positive emotion: veselya (to make someone happy, in a good moon), veselya se (to frolic, to party), vessel sam (to be happy), veselo (mi) e (to be in a good mood), veselba e (it is fun). Our aim is to provide a syntactic model representing argument structure of predicates and predicatives from this thematic group. The syntactic realization of arguments, semantic role hierarchy, and specifics concerning the referentiality of the nominal phrases in argument position are examined. The analyses show differences both in the semantic structure of predicates and predicatives and in the syntactic realization of their arguments. In contrast to other emotional predicates, veselya and veselya se have only nominal phrases as complements. While the analyzed verbs represent causative and dynamic predicates, respectively, the predicatives vessel, vesselo denote emotional states. Nominal phrases, as well as complement clauses can be used in complement positions. In this respect, the syntactic realization of predicatives is similar to the one of other emotional state predicatives, such as radosten sam (to be happy), radostno (mi) e (it is rejoicing).

This paper describes the uses of the adverbial particle tsàà, often translated as ‘already’, in Sàꞌán Sàvǐ ñà ñuù Xnúvíkó (Mixtepec Mixtec). The semantics of this expression overlap with those in previous descriptions of ‘already’ expressions and pattern similarly to so-called iamitives. Uses include marking change of state or that a state still holds in stative predicates, telic readings with dynamic predicates in their perfective forms, atelic readings with other aspects, and focus-marking-like uses in discourse. In addition, the paper introduces the negative form ntsǎîn ‘not yet’ and the syntactic structure neg + V = kà ‘not anymore, no longer’; as well as two very common constructions: (tá/tiémpù) tsàà na’á ‘before, long ago’ and tsàà yachi ‘almost’.

Philosophers and linguists have claimed that verb meanings are divided into semantic types or superordinate categories that differ in internal conceptual structure. In particular, eventive verbs, which have internal causal structure are distinguished from stative verbs, which have no internal causal structure. In this paper, we explore the processing consequences of assuming that the lexical representations of verb meanings differ in the complexity of their internal representations. We conducted two experiments, a lexical decision task and a self-paced reading study, that investigated how verb types of different complexity are processed. We predicted that the conceptually more complex eventive verbs would take longer to process than stative verbs. In both experiments, this prediction was confirmed. This lends support to theories of verb concepts that propose classifications based on internal representations and shows that there are discrete and abstract conceptual categories in the domain of events.

Electrophysiology of prosodic and lexical-semantic processing during sentence comprehension in aphasia

The syntactic structure of a sentence is usually a strong predictor of its meaning: Each argument noun phrase (i.e., Subject and Object) should map onto exactly one thematic role (i.e., Agent and Patient, respectively). Some constructions, however, are exceptions to this pattern. This paper investigates how the syntactic structure of an utterance contributes to its construal, using ditransitive English light verb constructions, such as “Nils gave a hug to his brother,” as an example of such mismatches: Hugging is a two-role event, but the ditransitive syntactic structure suggests a three-role event. Data from an eye-tracking experiment and behavioral categorization data reveal that listeners learn to categorize sentences according to the number of thematic roles they convey, independent of their syntax. Light verb constructions, however, seem to form a category of their own, in which the syntactic structure leads listeners down an initial incorrect assignment of thematic roles, from which they only partly recover. These results suggest an automatic influence of syntactic argument structure on semantic interpretation and event construal, even in highly frequent constructions.

This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehension, with a specific focus on the relative contributions of syntactic and prosodic information to the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. We argue that prosodic structure provides an initial memory representation for spoken sentences, and that information from this prosodic representation is available to inform syntactic parsing decisions. This view makes three predictions for the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity: 1. When prosodic and syntactic boundaries coincide, syntactic processing should be facilitated. 2. When prosodic boundaries are placed at misleading points in syntactic structure, syntactic processing should show interference effects. 3. The processing difficulties that have been reliably demonstrated in reading experiments for syntactically complex sentences should disappear when those sentences are presented with a felicitous prosodic structure in listening experiments. These predictions were confirmed by series of experiments measuring end-of-sentence comprehension time and cross-modal naming time for sentences with temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Sentences with coinciding or conflicting prosodic and syntactic boundaries were compared to a prosodic baseline condition.