Clauses In Languages Research Articles

On relative clauses and prosodic phrasing in Ciwandya

The interaction between Syntax and Phonology has been one area of interesting empirical research and theoretical debate in recent years, particularly the question of the extent to which syntactic structure influences phonological phrasing. It has generally been observed that the edges of the major syntactic constituents (XPs) tend to coincide with prosodic phrase boundaries thus resulting in XPs like subject NPs, object NPs, Topic NPs, VPs etc. forming separate phonological phrases. Within Optimality Theoretic (OT) accounts, this fact has been attributed to a number of well-motivated general alignment constraints. Studies on relative clauses in Bantu and other languages have significantly contributed to this area of research inquiry where a number of parametric variations have been observed with regard to prosodic phrasing. In some languages, XPs which are heads of relatives form separate phonological phrases while in others they phrase with the relative clauses. This paper makes a contribution to this topic by discussing the phrasing of relatives in Ciwandya (a Bantu language spoken in Malawi and Tanzania). It shows that XPs which are heads of restrictive relative clauses phrase with their relative verbs, regardless of whether they are subjects, objects or other adjuncts. A variety of syntactic constructions are used to illustrate this fact. The discussion also confirms what has been generally observed in other Bantu languages concerning restrictive relatives with clefts and non-restrictive relative clauses. In both cases, the heads of the relatives phrase separately. The paper adopts an OT analysis which has been well articulated and defended in Cheng & Downing (2007, 2010, to appear) Downing & Mtenje (2010, 2011) to account for these phenomena in Ciwandya.

Die Pan-Suid-Afrikaanse Taalraad en die regulering van taalsigbaarheid in Suid-Afrika – 'n ontleding van taalregteklagtes

The Pan South African Language Board and the regulation of language visibility in South Africa—an analysis of language rights complaints. The regulation of language visibility on public signs, i.e. of the linguistic landscape, comprises an important aspect of language policy in multilingual societies. If it is argued that the language clause of the South African Constitution envisages a multilingual landscape, concrete language policy guidelines regarding such language visibility are indispensable. Due to the acute shortage of such guidelines, Pansalb's findings on complaints about language visibility could play an important role in addressing this shortcoming. The Board is mandated to provide advice, specifically on language policy. Pansalb's own language policy guidelines also lack provisions on the linguistic landscape. The Board's gazetted findings concerning language rights complaints thus constitute an important source for studying language policy. This article provides an analysis of complaints regarding language visibility on which the Board made important findings between 1997 and 2006. The analysis is conducted against the background of theoretical insights pertaining to the linguistic landscape as a field of enquiry within sociolinguistics. Deductions are based on policy principles that could contribute towards overt policy regarding the treatment of language visibility on public signs in South Africa. Opsomming Die regulering van taalsigbaarheid by openbare tekens, met ander woorde van die linguistiese landskap, vorm ‘n belangrike aspek van taalbeleid in meertalige samelewings. Indien geredeneer word dat die taalklousule van die Suid-Afrikaanse Grondwet ‘n meertalige linguistiese landskap in die vooruitsig stel, soos sommige Suid-Afrikaanse geleerdes inderdaad doen, is konkrete taalbeleidsriglyne vir die hantering van taalsigbaarheid by openbare tekens onontbeerlik. Gesien die huidige nypende tekort aan sodanige riglyne, kan die Pan-Suid-Afrikaanse Taalraad (Pansat) se bevindinge oor taalklagtes wat met taalsigbaarheid verband hou ‘n belangrike leemte vul. Pansat se wetlike mandaat maak juis voorsiening dat die instansie advies oor taalbeleidsaangeleenthede kan gee. Die instansie se eie taalbeleidsriglyne bevat ook nie bepalings oor die linguistiese landskap nie. Pansat se Staatskoerant-gepubliseerde bevindinge oor taalregteklagtes vorm dus ‘n belangrike bron van ondersoek na taalbeleid. In hierdie artikel word ‘n analise gemaak van ‘n stel taalregteklagtes waaroor die instansie tussen 1997 en 2006 belangrike bevindinge oor taalsigbaarheid gemaak het. Die analise word gemaak teen die agtergrond van teoretiese insigte in die linguistiese landskap as ondersoekterrein binne die sosiolinguistiek. Op grond van hierdie analise word dan beleidsbeginsels afgelei wat kan bydra tot die daarstel van overte beleid vir die hantering van taalsigbaarheid op openbare tekens in Suid-Afrika.

Generating Concise Rules for Human Motion Retrieval

This paper proposes a method for retrieving human motion data with concise retrieval rules based on the spatio-temporal features of motion appearance. Our method first converts motion clip into a form of clausal language that represents geometrical relations between body parts and their temporal relationship. A retrieval rule is then learned from the set of manually classified examples using inductive logic programming (ILP). ILP automatically discovers the essential rule in the same clausal form with a user-defined hypothesis-testing procedure. All motions are indexed using this clausal language, and the desired clips are retrieved by subsequence matching using the rule. Such rule-based retrieval offers reasonable performance and the rule can be intuitively edited in the same language form. Consequently, our method enables efficient and flexible search from a large dataset with simple query language.

Formalizing Reasoning for Compromise toward Dialectical Conflict Resolution

Argumentation in artificial intelligence, often called computational dialectics, is rooted in Aristotle's idea of evaluating argumentation in a dialogue model. In contrast, Chinese traditional philosophy regards dialectics as a style of reasoning that focuses on contradictions and how to resolve them, transcend them or find the truth in both. A compromise is considered one way to resolve conflicts dialectically. In this paper, we formalize reasoning intended to derive a compromise. Both the reasoning and the compromise are defined on abstract lattices procedurally and declaratively, respectively. We prove that the reasoning is sound and complete with respect to the compromise. Then we define the concrete and sound algorithm for the reasoning on the lattice characterized by definite clausal language and generalized subsumption. Under some conditions, the reasoning offers a unified way to reason rationally whether a set of the premises is consistent or not. Such reasoning is outside the scope of logics that have the principle of explosion. Further, the compromise has a unique logical setting compared with other types of reasoning such as deduction, induction, and abduction. We incorporate the reasoning into arguments, and illustrate that the use of arguments with compromise contributes to realizing a compromise-based conflict resolution in argumentation.

A Study on the Control of Clauses in Foreign Languages

A Study on the Control of Clauses in Foreign Languages

Gevalle van positiewe taalbeplanning soos gerapporteer in die gedrukte media

Cases of the disregard of languages, whether perceived or actual, have received wide coverage in the print media. Conversely, however, cases of positive language planning in respect of the languages of minority speakers also occur. The Unit for Language Management at the University of the Free State receives funding from PanSALB in order to monitor the situation regarding language rights, as reported on in the print media. In this article, cases of positive language planning, as reported on in the print media for the period 1 January to 31 December 2003, are discussed. Positive language planning includes, inter alia, the creation of circumstances that are conducive to the maintenance, development and extended use of, and the promotion of respect for, all the official languages, as well as the Khoi and San languages, South African Sign Language, and the other languages generally used by linguistic communities. A distinction is made between positive language planning by official and private institutions. Official institutions are statutorily compelled to comply with the language clauses of the Constitution, while private institutions are not bound by these stipulations. The relatively small proportion of cases of positive language planning, in comparison to the numerous cases of language neglect, provides a clear confirmation of the dominance of English. If the promotion of multilingualism was generally and enthusiastically treated as part of a general policy, it would not have been necessary to discuss individual cases of language planning.

Finnish negation, the EPP feature and the valuation theory of morphosyntax

The Extended Projection Principle (EPP) has remained a controversial topic in generative grammar. This article proposes to derive the EPP from a generalized theory of nominal case and verbal agreement. According to the proposal presented in this article, morphosyntactic features such as case and verbal phi-features are valued uniformly by the closest asymmetrically c-commanding element, whereas the PF interface is constrained so as to prevent verbs from being valued nominal case and nominals by verbal phi-features. This constraint together with a new theory of valuation explains the appearance of the EPP. The theory is applied to the investigation of negative clauses in Finnish and other languages, Finnish (elliptical) non-finite negative clauses, expletive constructions, multiple wh-movement in a variety of languages, multiple agreement both in the finite and nominal domains, and asymmetries between finite and non-finite clauses.

Case Marking Strategies in Subordinate Clauses in Pilbara Languages—Some Diachronic Speculations*

This paper considers possible diachronic explanations for the range of case marking patterns found in subordinate clauses in languages of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. There are two parameters to consider in comparing patterns across the area. First, complements and adjuncts of verbs in dependent clauses may have patterns of case marking different from those of independent finite clauses. Second, nominal suffixes functioning as complementizing case may occur either just on the verb of the dependent clause or on all subconstituents of the dependent clause. Two possible paths of development for subordinate clauses are described. Some dependent clauses arise out of nominalizations through the instantiation of a nominalized verb's argument structure and in languages with a high degree of multiple case marking it follows naturally that in such clauses complementizing case would be distributed to all subconstituents. Other dependent clause types arise through changes in which main clause adjuncts of different kinds are reanalyzed as arguments of a nominalized verb. The recognition of these different sources explains a range of complex patterns of case marking choice in subordinate clauses and provides an account of the distribution of complementizing case in different construction types and in different languages.

Relativization strategies in temporal adjunct clauses

This article takes a close look at the internal structure of temporal adverbial clauses in a number of unrelated languages, with a goal of uncovering the syntactic variation in these. The focus of discussion will be on temporal clauses that take the form offree relatives. It will be shown that there are minimally two different free relative strategies that can be found in temporal adverbial clauses: anordinary free relativestrategy with a gap in the position of a temporal modifier inside the relative clause and anIP-relativizationstrategy that involves relativization of the whole IP of the temporal clause. It will be shown that the latter strategy is awh-relativization strategy as well and it shows similarity to clausal relativization (sentences of the typeTom arrived, after which Susan left). The language in which the IP-relativization strategy will be isolated and fully analyzed is Hungarian. In this languagebefore/after-clauses (among some other temporal clauses) clearly exhibit a relative clause structure that is different from ordinary relatives. The evidence found in Hungarian will prove useful for the analysis of some temporal clauses in other languages as well. It will be shown that IP-relativization most probably underliesafter-clauses in German and Serbian, too. Further, a brief comparison of Hungarian temporal clauses to temporal clauses in other postpositional languages (Hindi and Basque) will suggest that the IP-relativization strategy inbefore/after-clauses can be thought of as a syntactic alternative tonominalization.

WORLD LEADERS ESTABLISH PLAN OF ACTION FOR U.S. LANGUAGE POLICY

More than 35 leaders representing academic, business, government, and humanitarian organizations convened in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on January 10 and 11, 2005, for the National Language Policy Summit: An American Plan for Action to set priorities and establish a plan of action for U.S. language policy for the upcoming decade. Our students are dangerously uninformed about the said former North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt Jr., setting the context for the summit. example, in a recent study of college-bound students in high school, only 25% could name the ocean between the United States and Asia. Hunt cited recent events-the 9/11 terrorist attack, the weakening of the dollar, and the tsunami disaster in December 2004-that remind Americans of our global interconnectedness and our need to communicate with people around the world. must commit our educational system to teaching languages and to international education broadly, Hunt noted. Our students must learn about the world. We can't go it alone. Hunt emphatized that international education and language learning are essential for peace and international relations, defense and national security, and human relationships and people. Furthermore, he noted, This focus on languages is also about jobs and it's about the economy. For the future, if we have a well-educated workforce that knows the languages, that is fluent, that understands the people, understands the countries, can get out and sell across the world, get customers for us and make jobs here, I think that can be one of the most powerful advantages of a state, of a community, and of America. The summit's keynote soeaker was Dr. Bernard Spolsky, Professor Emeritus at Bar-Ilan University in Jerusalem, scholar at the University of Maryland's Center fo Advanced Study of Languages and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal, Language Policy. He explained that much of the world has had to develop language policy because people speak various languages and dialects at home. most of the world today, there's the pressure of learning English, Spolsky said. In the United States, there is neither a language clause in our Constitution nor a language law. Spolsky identified two major forces that affect language management in the United States. First, there is a well-established tradition of civil rights through which people in our society are entitled to use their own language and have access to government in their own language until they develop control of English. second, U.S. defense and intelligence agencies have recognized the security need for language learning. But that leaves a gap, Spolsky said. He' emphasized that there is a clear need for a fully articulated, well-coordinated language policy in the United States. Spolsky urged the audience to begin by developing modest expectations, focusing on a few important changes and building on them. Working in small groups, the summit participants identified priorities for action to promote language learning in the United States over the coming decade, including the following: * raising the American public's awareness of the need and value of learning languages and understanding cultures; * establishing at the federal level a National Language Advisor; * surveying businesses to identify their language and cultural needs; * partnering with CEOs of corporations to advocate for the importance of language and culture; * creating a fully articulated Chinese language program for students in grades kindergarten through college and subsequently expanding this model to other languages; * developing effective assessment strategies for measuring students' language learning; * implementing a civilian language corps; and * advocating for expanded language legislation. For all the priorities, participants listed deadlines and identified individuals who will accomplish the tasks. …

A Theme-Rheme Analysis of Exclamatives and Clause Typology in English and Arabic

This paper is an attempt to offer a theme-rheme typology of English and Arabic clauses with exclamatives in focus. This is done by investigating the theme-rheme organization of all clause types in English and Arabic and showing that a three-feature system can help provide two different typologies of clauses in both languages. It is shown that a (theme-initial, rheme-initial) feature system is not enough a system and that a third feature i.e. (transition-initial) is needed for such a task. It is also shown that in English, the features (trans-final, theme-final) are needed to distinguish between two theme-initial types of clauses. It is also shown that in Arabic the same two features, i.e. (trans-final, theme-final), are needed to make a distinction between two different types of clauses. The analysis reflects the differences and similarities between clause types (if any) between the two languages in question..

The Relationship between the relative clauses of Akkadian and Old Akkadian

Guy Deutscher in his article Akkadian Relative Clauses in Cross-Linguistic Perspective, ZA 92 (2002), 86—105 argues that Akkadian relative marker sa stems from old Akkadian system su, sa, si, dispensing with su and si, while keeping and expanding sa for general use. The following lines are a reaction to that article. The weakness of his thesis stems from basic premises it relies upon, and from a superficial conception of fondamental concepts in syntax of attribute in Semitic languages in general and particularly in their relative clauses. These concepts are expressed first of ail by his definition of relative clause: A relative modifies a noun by specifying a state of affairs in which that noun participâtes (p. 87, Par. I, line lf.). This definition is valid to any kind of nominal attribute such as an adjective or a construent,1 but about distinct characteristic of relative it says nothing. These concepts can be discerned also in another assertion: relative particle simply marks beginning of relative clause (p. 88, 4 lines from bottom),2 and In Akkadian system sa only serves to indicate beginning of relative clause (p. 90, Par. II, line 6). As for author's misconceptions in field of Semitic languages, main ones are premise that relative clauses in different languages have necessarily same origin and that the original relative clauses in Akkadian and in other Semitic languages must have

Sentential Negation and Verb Movement in Bantu Languages

This paper explores a well-known asymmetry between negation marking main clauses and subordinate clauses in Bantu languages (Gilldemann 1999:551, Meeussen 1967:114). It is noted that pre-initial negation marking is usually restricted to main clauses, while post-initial marking is rarely restricted. Various studies have explored the diachronic origins of the various strategies. This paper focuses on how the strategies are constrained by clause structure. It is argued that negation projects a NegP as an element of Infl. Asymmetrical negation marking is due to two NegPs, one selecting TP, and the other selected by TP.

Connectionist symbolic rule encoding using a generalized phase-locking mechanism

This paper describes a connectionist inference architecture which performs standard symbolic inference on a subclass of first-order predicate calculus. This work first involves constructing efficient connectionist mechanisms to represent basic symbol components, dynamic bindings and basic symbolic inference procedures, and devising a set of algorithms which automatically translates input descriptions to localist neural networks. These connectionist mechanisms are built by taking an existing phase-locking mechanism and extending it further to obtain desirable features to represent and manipulate basic symbol structures. The existing phase-locking mechanism represents dynamic bindings very efficiently using temporal synchronous activity between neuron elements but has fundamental limitations in supporting standard symbolic inference. The extension addresses these limitations. The extended system encodes a significant subset of a Horn clause language in a connectionist style.

Internal relative clauses in Tungusic languages in a synchronic and a diachronic perspective

Article Internal relative clauses in Tungusic languages in a synchronic and a diachronic perspective was published on December 1, 1996 in the journal STUF - Language Typology and Universals (volume 49, issue 4).

Pac-learning non-recursive prolog clauses

Recently there has been an increasing amount of research on learning concepts expressed in subsets of Prolog; the term inductive logic programming (ILP) has been used to describe this growing body of research. This paper seeks to expand the theoretical foundations of ILP by investigating the pac-learnability of logic programs. We focus on programs consisting of a single function-free non-recursive clause, and focus on generalizations of a language known to be pac-learnable: namely, the language of determinate function-free clauses of constant depth. We demonstrate that a number of syntactic generalizations of this language are hard to learn, but that the language can be generalized to clauses of constant locality while still allowing pac-learnability. More specifically, we first show that determinate clauses of log depth are not pac-learnable, regardless of the language used to represent hypotheses. We then investigate the effect of allowing indeterminacy in a clause, and show that clauses with k indeterminate variables are as hard to learn as DNF. We next show that a more restricted language of clauses with bounded indeterminacy is learnable using k-CNF to represent hypotheses, and that restricting the “locality” of a clause to a constant allows pac-learnability even if an arbitrary amount of indeterminacy is allowed. This last result is also shown to be a strict generalization of the previous result for determinate function-free clauses of constant depth. Finally, we present some extensions of these results to logic programs with multiple clauses.

On the transitivity of ‘say’ constructions in Bunuba1

Abstract Drawing on Hopper and Thompson's model of transitivity, Munro argues that ‘say’ verbs are of intermediate transitivity. Evidence from Bunuba generally supports this claim, but Bunuba ‘say’ clauses themselves vary in transitivity: some have ergative‐marked subjects and some absolutive. The difference is correlated with the extent to which the reported locution is being represented as a discrete speech event. Also relevant is the presence or absence on the verb of oblique cross‐reference to an addressee, which may independently condition ergative marking on the subject even in the absence of a reported locution. What most complicates the question of transitivity for these Bunuba constructions is that there are two competing candidates for object status (locution and addressee): their overall transitivity is not simply intermediate, but potentially ambiguous. Similar considerations may explain the anomalous behaviour of ‘say’ clauses in other languages.

Praat or speak but don't thetha: On language rights in South Africa

Abstract This paper looks at the question of language rights in a changing South Africa. It has been divided into two sections. The first section looks broadly at the issue of human rights in general and language rights in particular. The second section looks specifically at South Africa by providing an overview of the language situation inside the country, a situation which privileges particular tongues, before looking at the language clauses in the African National Congress (ANC) draft Bill of Rights and suggested amendments submitted by Robin Trew and Zubeida Desai to the Constitutional Committee of the ANC. In motivating these amendments we argue that language rights need to be separated from cultural rights if we are to take account of the crucial role language plays in enabling or disabling people to participate fully in political, social and economic affairs of the country.

The problem of finding a mapping between clause representation and natural-deduction representation

This article is the fourteenth of a series of articles discussing various open research problems in automated reasoning. Here we focus on the relationship between two approaches to the automation of reasoning: the paradigm based on the clause language and that based on natural deduction. The problem proposed for research asks one to find a mapping between the two approaches such that reasoning programs based on either approach perform identically on a specific assignment. For evaluating a proposed solution to this research problem, we include suggestions concerning possible test problems.

The programming language GCLA — A definitional approach to logic programming

We present a logic programming language, GCLA (Generalized horn Clause LAnguage), that is based on a generalization of Prolog. This generalization is unusual in that it takes a quite different view of the meaning of a logic program--a definitional view rather than the traditional logical view. GCLA has a number of noteworthy properties, for instance hypothetical and non-monotonic reasoning. This makes implementation of reasoning in knowledge-based systems more direct in GCLA than in Prolog. GCLA is also general enough to incorporate functional programming as a special case. GCLA and its syntax and semantics are described. The use of various language constructs are illustrated with several examples.