Accessibility Hierarchy Research Articles

Youth and Service Work in Fast Food Restaurants: Some Structural and Cultural Considerations

The India Employment Report (2024) highlights the problem of youth unemployment and its insufficient absorption in the non-farm sectors and recommends the skilling of youth as a remedy for tardy economic growth and employability. In view of the proposed solution, I suggest that we inquire into the nature and conditions of non-farm work in alternative sectors and the experience of this work for young people. The issue is the adequacy of training and skilling as sole measures to counter insufficient absorption. My concern regarding the recommended solution is a short shrift it gives to structural and cultural factors as facilitators or barriers to absorption, and the retention of workers. This article is an inquiry into the organization and culture of service work in fast food industry– a non-farm sector–under conditions of globalization. The experience of service workers reveals the relation between service work and attitudes towards cleaning, meaning of toilet cleaning, gendered division of labour, hierarchy of tasks, ascriptive and unequal access to jobs, and dignity of labour. The experience of service work is not the same for girls and boys; it is fraught with different sorts of tensions for them. These insights question the efficacy of training and skilling as the talismanic measures for countering the problems under consideration. They make a strong case for the consideration of cultural and structural realities of India.

The Continuity of Head Nouns: The Difference in Relativizability between Korean and Chinese

The Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy cannot explain the difference in relativizability between Chinese and Korean in authentic discourse. Korean exhibits a higher preference for relativization compared to Chinese and this article aims to account for this difference from the perspective of topic continuity. Specifically, the continuity of head nouns within relative clauses is stronger in Korean than in Chinese. By analyzing the parameters of referential distance and potential interference, this study finds that the head nouns in Korean relative clauses display a broader range on the continuum of continuity compared to those in Chinese relative clauses. Furthermore, the difference in the strength of continuity of head nouns between Chinese and Korean relative clauses is attributed to the typological distinction between the Component-Integral Languages and Component-Metonymic Languages postulated within the framework of the Event-Domain Cognitive Model.

Subject‐Object Asymmetries and the Development of Relative Clauses between Late Middle English and Early Modern English

AbstractThis paper presents the results of a corpus study on the Wycliffe Bible and the King James Bible, examining the distribution of the pronouns who(m)/which and the complementiser that in relative clauses with a personal referent. The data indicate that the decisive factor in both periods was the function of the gap (subject vs. non‐subject): wh‐pronouns are preferred in object relative clauses, while that is preferred in subject relative clauses. In addition, the paper argues that the subject/non‐subject distinction was decisive not only regarding the major wh/that distribution but also regarding the who(m)/which distinction. While in the case of the wh/that distinction, a syntactic difference (relative pronoun versus relative complementiser) underlies the attested asymmetry, the pronouns who(m) and which do not differ in their core syntactic properties. The data clearly indicate that both the wh‐strategy in general and the pronoun who(m) in particular started to spread from the lower functions of the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy, whereby the spread of who(m) was one step behind the general spread of the wh‐strategy. The findings thus suggest that asymmetries along the lines of the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy are not necessarily paired up with syntactic asymmetries.

The evolution of bare nouns in the history of French. The view from calibrated corpora

Abstract This article investigates the evolution of bare nouns, used without a determiner, through the history of the French language. The loss of bare nouns is charted through calibrated corpora of non-fictional prose texts from the same genres and region, ranging from the 12th to the 19th century. The change is first completed with nouns in subject function, significantly advances with direct objects, and progresses with obliques. The extensive quantitative documentation demonstrates that the change is impacted by the syntactic function of the noun, along the Accessibility Hierarchy. The speculation is examined that the more accessible functions encourage expression of (definite) determiners, thus explaining the pattern of change.

“Gap” matters: reflections on the notion of “gap” of relative clauses

Abstract This study aims to re-examine the essential notion of “gap” in the studies of relative clauses. Following Creissels’ (Creissels, Denis. 2006. Syntaxe générale: une introduction typologique. Paris: Hermès; Creissels, Denis. 2019. Remarks on the typology of noun-modifying clause constructions. Paper presented at the Conference of Complex Sentences, Central China Normal University, 26–29 July) discussion, we argue that there are at least three types of gaps in terms of their respective compositions, namely the gap corresponding to a zero-marked constituent, the gap corresponding to a case-marked constituent, and the gap corresponding to an adposition-marked constituent. This classification, which is not based on the grammatical relation of the relativized constituent in the relative clause but focuses on the composition of the gap, can better explain the existence of the so-called “enlarged gap”, a special type of gap that has been almost completely ignored so far. Moreover, this marking-based approach can shed new light on Keenan and Comrie’s (Keenan, Edward & Bernard Comrie. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8(1). 63–99) Accessibility Hierarchy. In particular, we argue that some interplay of the syntactic position and the morphological marking of a syntactic object determines whether the constituent can be relativized.

A revisit of three hypotheses about second language development of English relative clauses

Abstract Cantonese-English learners in Hong Kong confront with substantial difficulty in development of English relative clauses. This study aims at verifying predictions of hypotheses about second language learners’ development of English relative clauses with data of written Hong Kong English. wh relatives and that relatives in the Hong Kong component of the International Corpus of English were identified. Frequencies of occurrence of distinct types of relative clauses in the Hong Kong component were compared to evaluate whether predictions of Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy, Kuno’s (1974) Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis, and Hamilton’s (1994) Subject-Object Hierarchy Hypothesis are supported by the corpus data respectively. Results indicate that the Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis is supported by data of written Hong Kong English whilst the other two hypotheses are partially supported only. Hypotheses supported by corpus data of written Hong Kong English are suggested to inform English language education in Hong Kong by illuminating the instructional order of different types of English relative clauses.

The Typological Factors Influencing the Selection of Relative Strategies

This paper explores relative strategies of 62 languages and reinterprets the typological factors that influence the selection of relative strategies. On the whole, relative strategies in 62 languages strictly conform with Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH) and Filler-Gap Domain (FGD). Relative strategies are related to word order and language family/region. Influenced by the Primary Predicate Prominence Principle, SVO languages in Indo-European region prefer to use pronoun strategy for relativizing subject and direct object, while non-Indo-European SVO languages prefer to use gap strategy influenced by FGD. Under the influence of the Primary Predicate Prominence Principle and FGD, the gap strategy is preferred for SOV languages. In addition, relative strategies of Portuguese, Spanish, and Arabic depend on the speaker’s intention.

Relativization of Noun Phrase in Ho language

This paper examines the syntax of nominal modification in the Ho language, with a specific exploration of relativization. Relative constructions across languages, and even within a particular language, manifest different strategies, such as participial relative clauses, internally headed relative clauses, and externally headed relative clauses. The analysis presented here focuses on participial and correlative clauses, aiming to derive a common logical form for equivalent sentences. Furthermore, the study aims to illustrate the diverse positions that can be modified by both participial and correlative clauses in accordance with the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy. As posited by Keenan and Comrie (1977), this hierarchy hierarchically relativizes different noun phrase positions as a universal sequence: subject > direct object > indirect object > oblique object > object of genitive > object of comparison. Therefore, this paper seeks to assess the validity of this hierarchy in both participial and correlative clause constructions in the Ho language.

Racialised mobilities in China

The scholarship on how race and mobilities intersect and interact has emerged mainly from the Western context, such as the UK and the US. Minimal to no research has examined this relation within Global South settings. As an emergent destination country for international migration, China offers an interesting case to research the mechanisms through which foreign migrants’ mobilities are racialised and hierarchised by the local population. This article thus examines how race and racism affect foreign students’ negotiation and interpretation of daily rules of movement and social norms of mobility, and how the racialisation of mobilities, in return, reshaped their foreignness in China. Based on ethnographic data from in-depth interviews with 21 foreign students in an elite Chinese university and participant observation, this article shows how the hierarchy of access to everyday mobilities is established through the logic of racial ideology, scapegoating and institutional design. Mobilities are also intertwined with the intersections of race, gender and skin tone, alongside the construction of misperceived racial identities from the locals, which goes on to produce further immobilisation among foreign students.

An Accessibility hierarchy pattern for Resumptive pronouns in spoken French

On the basis of the results of a corpus study on Colloquial French, which show that the distribution of resumptive pronouns globally matches the Accessibility Hierarchy (Keenan, Comrie 1977), we argue that resumptive pronouns in French relative clauses are not intrusive and that resumptive and gapped relatives involve different syntactic derivations belonging to different registers. We explain the lack of the highest subject restriction in Colloquial French, in contrast with (other) languages displaying regular resumptive relatives, by the special nature of French subject clitics as agreement markers (Culbertson 2010). This conclusion and the distribution of subject clitics we found in the corpus reinforces the analysis of the relative complementizerquias a grammaticalized form ofque+obligatory resumptionil(Rooryck 2000; Rizzi, Shlonsky 2007).

An Accessibility hierarchy pattern for Resumptive pronouns in spoken French

On the basis of the results of a corpus study on Colloquial French, which show that the distribution of resumptive pronouns globally matches the Accessibility Hierarchy (Keenan, Comrie 1977), we argue that resumptive pronouns in French relative clauses are not intrusive and that resumptive and gapped relatives involve different syntactic derivations belonging to different registers. We explain the lack of the highest subject restriction in Colloquial French, in contrast with (other) languages displaying regular resumptive relatives, by the special nature of French subject clitics as agreement markers (Culbertson 2010). This conclusion and the distribution of subject clitics we found in the corpus reinforces the analysis of the relative complementizer qui as a grammaticalized form of que+obligatory resumption il (Rooryck 2000; Rizzi, Shlonsky 2007).

Analysis of the Problems in the Use of English Restrictive Relative Clauses by Second Language Learners of Hazara Division

This research study investigates the difficulties faced by second language learners of Hazara division while comprehending English restrictive relative clauses and compares the comprehension sequences with the predictions of Subject-object hierarchy hypothesis and Noun phrase accessibility hierarchy. The study also examines the most challenging relative pronouns for second language learners of Hazara division. Data from one hundred and fifty undergraduate level students across various universities of Hazara division was analyzed. This study concludes that subject relative clauses are the easiest to comprehend, while genitive relative clauses are the most difficult, making the resultant hierarchy align with noun phrase accessibility hierarchy. On the other hand, deviation from Subject- object hierarchy can be observed, as subject-subject relative clauses are the easiest and subject-object relative clauses are the most difficult to comprehend. Additionally, the study identifies relative pronoun "whom" as the most challenging, and "when" as the easiest to comprehend.

Relative clauses in written Hong Kong English: a corpus-based study of untimed student essays

ABSTRACT Cantonese English learners in Hong Kong appear to confront substantial difficulty in their development of English relative clauses, yet knowledge on learners’ development of such a language structure is limited. The present corpus-based study aims at verifying predictions of hypotheses about second language learners’ development of English relative clauses with data from written Hong Kong English and identifying quantitative and qualitative attributes of relative clauses in Hong Kong English in comparison with their counterparts in British English in a bid to inform second language grammar instruction. Language data for the study were collected from the Hong Kong and Great Britain components of the International Corpus of English. 'wh' relatives and 'that' relatives in the data were identified from untimed student essays in the corpus through concordance search. The Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis appears to be supported by data from written Hong Kong English whilst the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy and the Subject–Object Hierarchy Hypothesis are only partially supported. Relative clauses appear much more frequently in written British English than in written Hong Kong English, and some attributes of non-standard relative clauses are identified.

Accessibility hierarchy and acquisition of English relative clauses by Urdu EFL learners

Accessibility hierarchy and acquisition of English relative clauses by Urdu EFL learners

A study on acquisition of relative clauses by Korean learners based on the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy(NPAH)

A study on acquisition of relative clauses by Korean learners based on the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy(NPAH)

“Kids or demons?”: Personal referring expressions applied to juvenile offenders in English and Chinese crime news

This study reports on a contrastive study of media representations of juvenile delinquency. Based on 87 news reports, we draw on Ariel (1991) and Xu (2000)'s accessibility hierarchy to compare the forms and functions of personal referring expressions applied to juvenile offenders in English and Chinese crime news. In addition, we extend our analysis by incorporating the discussions of the evaluative meaning of nominal descriptions under the social actor representation framework of Van Leeuwen (2008). It is found that both English and Chinese data exhibit a preference for nominal description foregrounding offenders' age in the first mentions. However, in the subsequent mentions, the key differences identified are that English news has more frequent use of definite descriptions, distal demonstratives, pronouns and functional terms, whereas Chinese news has a greater incidence of surnames, proximal demonstratives, zeros and identification terms. The discussion attempts to provide possible explanations for our findings from three aspects: linguistic features, socio-cultural conventions and social justice systems in different countries. Building upon these discussions, this study may shed empirical light on the issue of referring to juvenile offenders in mass media between two disparate languages, raising media's awareness of the mediatized language of crime.

Regard sur quelques facteurs de sélection des subordonnants relatifs du français par des apprenants norvégiens

Abstract Acquisition of relative is subject to the Accessibility Hierarchy developed by Keenan and Comrie (1977), and should not be subject to mother tongue transfer effects, even if these are documented. The tension between transfer and hierarchy is therefore explored on the basis of the acquisition of French relatives by Norwegian learners. These are interesting because Norwegian has a different relative system from French, and Norwegian speakers are generally multilingual, multiplying the sources of transfer. The guided and free productions of beginner and intermediate Norwegian learners make it possible to establish not only the error rate, but also the position of the erroneous relative on the accessibility hierarchy. However, the relatives used incorrectly are not necessarily more accessible in the hierarchy than the relative which should be used. There are nonetheless potential interfering effects from the animacy value of the antecedent.

Maternal neglect alters reward-anticipatory behavior, social status stability, and reward circuit activation in adult male rats.

Adverse early life experiences affect neuronal growth and maturation of reward circuits that modify behavior under reward predicting conditions. Previous studies demonstrate that rats undergoing denial of expected reward in the form of maternal contact (DER-animal model of maternal neglect) during early post-natal life developed anhedonia, aggressive play-fight behaviors and aberrant prefrontal cortex structure and neurochemistry. Although many studies revealed social deficiency following early-life stress most reports focus on individual animal tasks. Thus, attention needs to be given on the social effects during group tasks in animals afflicted by early life adversity. To investigate the potential impact of the DER experience on the manifestation of behavioral responses induced by natural rewards, we evaluated: 1) naïve adult male sexual preference and performance, and 2) anticipatory behavior during a group 2-phase food anticipation learning task composed of a context-dependent and a cue-dependent learning period. DER rats efficiently spent time in the vicinity of and initiated sexual intercourse with receptive females suggesting an intact sexual reward motivation and consummation. Interestingly, during the context-dependent phase of food anticipation training DER rats displayed a modified exploratory activity and lower overall reward-context association. Moreover, during the cue-dependent phase DER rats displayed a mild deficit in context-reward association while increased cue-dependent locomotion. Additionally, DER rats displayed unstable food access priority following food presentation. These abnormal behaviours were accompanied by overactivation of the ventral prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens, as assessed by pCREB levels. Collectively, these data show that the neonatal DER experience resulted in adulthood in altered activation of the reward circuitry, interfered with the normal formation of context-reward associations, and disrupted normal reward access hierarchy formation. These findings provide additional evidence to the deleterious effects of early life adversity on reward system, social hierarchy formation, and brain function.

An Efficient Segmented Random Access Scan Architecture with Test Compression

Integrated circuit (IC) chip designs relying on Random Access Scan (RAS) architecture for post-production structural tests typically provide lower test power dissipation, test data volume, and test application time compared to the classical serial scan-based Design for Test (DFT) methodology. However, previous RAS schemes incur high signal routing and test area overheads relative to the serial scan way. Unlike serial scan schemes, previous RAS schemes have not been effectively combined with test compression to further reduce test application time and test data volume. Authors have already formally documented a locally addressed (segmented) and compressed Segmented RAS (SRAS) architecture with low area overhead and test application time. This paper describes the SRAS architecture in more detail and provides comparative experimental results. Area overhead is reduced using test access hierarchy (segmented), while adding compression to RAS lowers the test application time. Also presented is another enhancement to incorporate a scan channel multiplex block at hierarchy segments which helps drastically decrease the area and routing overhead of the original architecture to practically implementable levels on commercial circuits. The extra Segment Data Multiplexor (SDM) blocks reduce the area overhead of other components by the multiplexing factor, and the reduction in overall area is significant based on experimental data. Test data compression and auto addressing of segments are achieved by transmitting a seed address to select segments with auto-increment or auto-decrement capability followed by either single cell selection or entire leaf cell segment selection. To further reduce the area overhead and test power, this architecture is enhanced to contain multiple channels at a cost of increased overall test application time with no increase in test data volume. Results of applying the enhancements to a large circuit with one level of intermediate segments with each of them having 256 leaf segments are presented in the paper with and without multichannel multiplexing for comparison.

Ezekiel's Visionary Temple in Babylonian Context by Tova Ganzel

Reviewed by: Ezekiel's Visionary Temple in Babylonian Context by Tova Ganzel Hei-Yin Yip tova ganzel, Ezekiel's Visionary Temple in Babylonian Context (BZAW 539; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021). Pp. viii + 183. $99.99. This well-researched and engagingly written monograph, which builds on an essay of Ganzel and Shalom E. Holtz, "Ezekiel's Temple in Babylonian Context" (VT 64 [2014] 211–66) focuses on the contextualization of the Book of Ezekiel's Temple Vision in the Babylonian milieu. Most scholars aver that Ezekiel's activity took place mainly in Babylonia; the book may have originated in Babylonia. In view of the majority opinion, G. argues that the final form of Ezekiel 40–48, which consists of many divergences from the details of pentateuchal law, should be examined in light of the exiles' surroundings in order to assess Ezekiel's peculiarity. A major contribution this book makes to scholarship is to identify systematically the unique features of the temple's design that lack biblical parallels, and to discuss possible connections between these features, namely, the gates, walls, and courtyards, and the corresponding features of the Babylonian temples. The study also pays due attention to the Neo-Babylonian Akītu festival and its influence on the Temple Vision. In chap. 2, G. first explores the extent of the Judean exiles' involvement in, and their knowledge of, the temples in the world around them. Through a review of scholarship on cuneiform documents, G. concludes that the community of exiles was very involved in its surroundings. To her, information collected from archives of temple administration, ritual texts, descriptions of the temples in topographical texts, and archaeological data lays "the groundwork for a comparison between the Temple Vision and the Babylonian temples" (p. 23). In chap. 3, G. examines the languages with which the Judean exiles in Babylonia were familiar and shows that the extent of the Aramaic and Akkadian influence is evident in Ezekiel 40–48 in three different spheres: "first, unique lexemes used to express the temple's plan; second, the names used to describe the temple; and third, the name given to the city [in which the temple will be located]" (p. 36). Based on the linguistic influences within Ezekiel's Temple Vision, the ensuing three chapters (chap. 4–6) further examine the influence of the Neo-Babylonian milieu on the temple's design, the hierarchy of access within the temples, and the temple rituals described in Ezekiel 40–48. [End Page 333] In chap. 4, G. argues that the design of Ezekiel's temple departs in significant ways from that of Solomon's temple and that of the archaeological remains unearthed in Israel; however, Ezekiel's temple and the Babylonian temples share a similar arrangement of space. For instance, "the situation of Ezekiel's temple within a warren of chambers and courtyards resembles, in general, the layout of Neo-Babylonian temples" (p. 70). According to G., the kitchens described, which have no parallel description in Solomon's temple, also reflect the Neo-Babylonian temples with which the exiles would have been familiar. G. concludes that much of the design of Ezekiel's temple is to prevent defilement and to preserve the temple's purity. The protection of the temple's purity is further supplemented by a restructured temple hierarchy, including the priests, the Levites, and the nāśîʾ. G. argues in chap. 5 that "Ezekiel's priests, like the priests serving in Neo-Babylonian temples, are split into groups, with the Zadokite priests clearly higher in rank" (p.105), while the non-Zadokites and Levites are compared to the lower-ranking Babylonian purveyors. Ezekiel's nāśîʾ integrates the roles of the two Babylonian temple officials who had many administrative obligations but no role in the cult. The division of labor allows for a smaller number of personnel in the sacred space. The final chapter (chap. 6) is concerned with the first-month rituals in Ezekiel's envisioned temple. The descriptions of Ezekiel's rituals and of the Akītu festival in Babylon are similar. "These similarities include similar dates, partial participation by the people, who mainly observe but do not actively participate in the ritual, and the functions of the...