Clause Combination Research Articles

Litigation and the Optimal Combination of Vague and Precise Clauses in Contracts

In this paper we determine the optimal combination of precise and vague clauses written in contracts when the parties face writing and enforcement costs, the second ones in the form of litigation. We show that the parties may prefer to write vague instead of precise clauses not only because they are cheaper to write but also because they are cheaper to enforce. We extend Battigalli and Maggi (2002) to model the decision of a principal who chooses clauses to describe the actions that an agent has to perform. As both players observe nature imperfectly they may call for a court to determine whether the agent performed the right action. We show that the principal tends to sue the agent more frequently when a task is described with a precise instead of a vague clause. The reason is the following: with precise clauses, the frequency of litigation increases with the value of the task that is described because a smaller discrepancy in the beliefs of the players is enough to trigger a dispute, but with vague clauses, that frequency decreases with the value of the task because the probability that the agent performs the right action increases with the value of the task. The direct implication is that vague and not precise clauses (as it is predicted by Battigalli and Maggi) are used to describe the most important tasks of a contract.

The consecutive morpheme in Bamileke-Ngomba

Payne (1997) proposed a continuum of clause combinations to categorize multiverb constructions (including serial verbs) between the two poles of one single clause and two separate clauses based on their degree of semantic integration. In this article, I argue that Bamileke-Ngomba treats multiverb constructions at either end of this continuum (as well as in the middle) as verb chains. The consecutive morpheme is used in each case to link main verbs to other verbs within and between clauses. The distinction between these chain types is maintained by degree of semantic integration, as well as additional syntactic (location of NP insertion) and phonological (insertion of pauses) criteria.

Morphosyntactic Analysis of Mro Language

In this article, I have used many examples to build up a concept about the relationship between Mro morphology and syntax, especially the different case markers to find out the relationship among them. During the research my goal was to provide a description of the constituent order; grammatical categories like tense; comparative marker -la'e (then), -leplep la'e (most); pronominal system (determiners used with first and second person but 3rd person is independent); demonstratives, adverbs, clause combination like conditional markers, reasons, time, motion; structures of question like y/n question, informal, exclamatory; case markers like noun, pronoun (relative), numeral relation to conjunction, suffix, clause/sentence level; grammatical relation (GR) as well as text analysis of Mro language. Key words: Morphosyntax, Language family, pronominal system, Case marker, grammatical relation, Mro.DOI: 10.3329/dujl.v2i3.4149 The Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics: Vol.2 No.3 February, 2009 Page: 141-160

Technique and empire in the poetry of Ee Tiang Hong

ABSTRACT: Despite his high profile in poetry anthologies and in the commentaries of specialists in South East Asian literature, the craft of Ee Tiang Hong has not been subject to close investigation. Systematic attention to the linguistic organization of his poems brings out Ee's command of resources more general to speakers of English than the localistic lexical items and idioms which are overt signals of his provenance as a sensibility, but are not synonymous with his technique as a poet. Ensemble effects in Ee's poems, based on grammatical selections from mood, transitivity, theme and clause combination (including subordination and embedding) are examined and interpreted here. Such textual ensembles are part of the poet's syntactic craft (Ee, personal communication) and invite comparison with strategies developed by other poets of English whose works tend to dominate university curricula in English literature (viz. Yeats, Frost, Stevens, Auden). Such systematic analyses and comparisons stimulate further reflection on terms, such as ‘hybridity’ and ‘code‐switching’, which have directed attention away from a poet's craft and towards his or her cultural provenance. While Malacca, Singapore and Perth cannot be treated merely as background to Ee's work, further enquiry into motivated selection across the language of Ee's poems assists us in understanding what is substantial and what is misleading about the point of view implicit in terms like ‘code‐switching’. Greater attention to ‘register’ and ‘class’ may also help in another systemic domain crucial to Ee's sensibility – namely, what counts as progress in systems of education.

The Sentence Fairy: a natural-language generation system to support children's essay writing

We built an NLP system implementing a ‘virtual writing conference’ for elementary-school children, with German as the target language. Currently, state-of-the-art computer support for writing tasks is restricted to multiple-choice questions or quizzes because automatic parsing of the often ambiguous and fragmentary texts produced by pupils presents insurmountable problems. Here, we follow a different course by deploying natural language generation technology to evaluate and improve the grammatical quality of student output. Based on an abstract representation of the story under construction, all paraphrases of simple and combined clauses are generated fully automatically. From this source, the system produces exercises enabling the pupils to improve their sentences. We apply parsing technology only in the teacher mode, where new stories are entered into the system in a simple manner. The system we describe here is a prototype including a full exercise generation mode and a rudimentary teacher mode.

Japanese (review)

Reviewed by: Japanese by Shoichi Iwasaki Tadao Miyamoto Japanese. By Shoichi Iwasaki. (London Oriental and African language library 5.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002. Pp. xviii, 360. ISBN 1588112365. $114 (Hb). Japanese is one of the most well-investigated languages in the world, as reflected in a vast and growing literature. As exemplified by Samuel E. Martin’s classic book, A reference grammar of Japanese (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975) and Masayoshi Shibatani’s seminal work, Languages of Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), scholars already have access to a fair amount of material on the grammar of Japanese in its entirety, raising the question of whether another such work is necessary. Iwasaki’s response to this question is a resounding ‘yes’. Despite its format, this book might be considered a concise encyclopedia of the Japanese language. I’s presentation of the grammar is for the most part theory-neutral, making the book highly comprehensible and suitable for a wide audience. The book will be of particular interest to (1) linguists with expertise in limited aspects of Japanese grammar who seek a larger perspective on the language; (2) language instructors who need prompt answers to students’ questions on fine grammatical points; and (3) students with a thirst for understanding every important grammatical feature of the language. The book’s fourteen chapters cover a wide range of issues related to Japanese phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics. Ch. 1, ‘Overview’ (1–10), addresses the controversial question of the genetic affiliation of Japanese, presenting contrasting forms of the Altaic and Austronesian hypotheses. Ch. 2, ‘Writing system’ (11–16), briefly discusses the importation of Chinese characters or kanji and the subsequent development of two sets of kana syllabaries, highlighting the functional differences in the mixed use of these scripts in modern texts. In addition to a brief discussion of Japanese phonemes, Ch. 3, ‘Sounds’ (17–28), provides an overview of such well-investigated phonological issues as high vowel devoicing and rendaku (sequential voicing). Japanese prosody is then conventionally presented in terms of H(igh) and L(ow) pitch patterns, using the Tokyo dialect as an illustration. The following two chapters explore the morphological characteristics of Japanese. In Ch. 4, ‘Words’ (29–56), I first discusses the sources of the Japanese lexicon, which is composed of native, Sino-Japanese, and Western loan vocabularies. He then goes on to provide a semi-exhaustive classification of the lexicon, including some rather language-specific word classes (e.g. sound-symbolic words and numeral classifiers). Ch. 5, ‘Morphology’ (57–81), is divided into two sections: inflectional morphological patterns (i.e. verb, adjective, and copula) and word-formation processes involving noun equivalents (e.g. compounding and reduplication). The next five chapters discuss Japanese syntax from a primarily typological perspective. Ch. 6, ‘Argument structures’ (83–104), discusses stative and eventive predicates. I provides a thorough categorization of the argument structures of these predicates based on argument type and case assignment. In Ch. 7, ‘Tense and aspect’ (105–24), I examines tense relative to three different grammatical properties: generic or nongeneric sentences, dynamic or stative predicates, and main or subordinate clauses. While I’s classification of aspect relies on the rather conventional categories of perfective, progressive, resultative, and inchoative, his description is thorough and thought-provoking. Ch. 8, ‘Grammatical constructions’ (125–73), provides a syntactico-typological account of the well-investigated potential, passive, causative, benefactive, and reciprocal constructions. The most important topic in Ch. 9, ‘Noun phrase structures’ (175–93), [End Page 779] is the relative clause, which is characterized by the use of a gapping strategy that displays no overt marking of the case relation between head and predicate. Ch. 10, ‘Embedding’ (195–216), discusses embedding processes such as quotation and complementation. Both subject and object complements are discussed in terms of the types of verbs with which they are associated. The next three chapters discuss the pragmatics of discourse, the first two from a structural perspective and the last in relation to social interaction. Ch. 11, ‘Information structure and the sentence form’ (217–46), concerns issues such as topicalization, focus structure, and types of topic-comment sentences. Ch. 12, ‘Discourse and grammar’ (247–74), focuses on clause combination and referent...

Clause combining in Chechen

Chechen exhibits three major strategies for the combination of clauses: coordination, chaining, and subordination. The major formal characteristics of these three traditional categories of clause linking are discussed with reference to their basic syntax and semantics as well as to more particular syntactic characteristics, including constituent order and behaviour with respect to negation and wh-questions. In addition, these clause combining strategies of Chechen are classified with respect to Foley and Van Valin’s (1984) typology of clause linkage. A particularly useful result of this classification is that it permits a straightforward characterization of the use of the preverbal conjunctive enclitic ’a as a marker of cosubordination.

Text Organization by Bilingual Writers

This article compares essays written in Spanish and English by bilingual writers whose prior formal academic writing instruction has been only in English. The authors describe both writers' discourse-organizational and clause-combining strategies, showing that one writer's organizational structure reflects explicit planning, whereas the other employs a more emergent organizational structure for her essays. In each case, these choices are the same for Spanish and English. Analyzing these writers' clause-combining strategies demonstrates that organizational structure at the discourse level is reflected in the types of clause combinations chosen by the writers at the sentence level, with one writer using more simple sentences and embedded clauses and the other using more hypotactic and paratactic clause combinations. The article demonstrates how clauses constitute and reflect the structure of texts and suggests that development of a repertoire of styles and discourse strategies depends on control of a variety of syntactic options.

On the relationship between subject pronouns and clausal arguments

In Extraposition structures in many languages, a pronoun occupies the argument position to which a post-verbal clause lexically belongs. The pronoun has variously been analyzed as an expletive or as a referential pronoun and the clause as being in argument or in adjunct position. This paper examines a variety of Extraposition predicates in French in order to shed new light on the nature of the pronoun, the status of the clause, and how the two relate to each other. French uses two pronouns in Extraposition, expletiveil and referentialcela. The possibilities for extraction of Wh-phrases out of the post-verbal clauses occurring with each pronoun show that withil, the clause is in argument position, while withcela, it is in adjunct position. Furthermore, when the clause is lexically an internal argument, both pronoun + clause combinations are allowed, while onlycela + adjunct clause is possible if the clause is lexically an external argument. These generalizations provide evidence in favor of base-generating all post-verbal clauses occurring with Extraposition predicate and a conservative approach to lexical insertion and the notion of ‘chain’.

Episodically enhanced comprehension fluency.

Abstract Fluent reading comprehension was explored in a series of experiments involving sentences presented in normal and inverted typography. Sentences read in a test phase had been read earlier in exactly the same form, or in versions that were created by (a) altering the word order within sentences to create randomly ordered word strings or (b) exchanging causally related clauses to form new meaningful sentences. Variation from exact repetition of word order or clause combination increased the time taken to read the test sentences and these effects were evident over retention intervals ranging from one day to four months. Varying word order across repeated presentations of a sentence was also shown to reduce reporting accuracy in a rapid serial reading task. These results support an episodic view of the basis for rereading fluency in which comprehension processes responsible for constructing and integrating propositions are automatically recruited and reapplied when a sentence is reread.Resume La facilite de comprehension de textes a fait l'objet d'une serie d'experiences dans lesquelles les sujets devaient lire des phrases dont la typographie etait tanto@t normale, tanto@t inversee. Les phrases presentees a l'etape d'essai avaient ete lues auparavant soit sous une forme identique, soit sous une nouvelle forme ou a) l'ordre des mots dans les phrases etait modifie de maniere a creer des suites de mots agences au hasard ou b) les propositions causales etaient combinees autrement pour creer de nouvelles phrases sensees. Lorsque l'ordre des mots ou l'agencement des propositions etait modifie par rapport a celui qui etait repete fidelement, le temps de lecture des phrases presentees a l'essai etait plus long, et cet effet se manifestait de faeon evidente apres les intervalles de retention allant d'un jour a quatre mois. La presentation repetee d'une me@me phrase dans laquelle l'ordre des mots etait modifie avait egalement pour effet de reduire l'exactitude des reponses donnees pendant une ta@che de lecture rapide en serie. Les resultats obtenus temoignent des bases episodiques de la facilite de relecture ou les processus de comprehension responsables de la construction et de l'integration des propositions sont automatiquement selectionnes et reactives lors de la relecture d'une phrase.Literacy skills have been cultivated and prized in part for their artistic merits, but their primary function remains that of communicating meaningful messages. Much of the value of written and spoken messages lies in the lasting impact they have on the receiver. A central issue regarding the communicative function of language, therefore, is how the persistent influence of a message is maintained in memory across time and how it is called forward to guide behavior when appropriate. One very fruitful approach to this issue has been the exploration of text structure and its influence on the ability to remember intentionally the content of a text (e.g., Moravcsik & Kintsch, 1993; Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985). A second approach, pursued further in this article, has emphasized the idea that memory for a comprehension episode is captured procedurally and is revealed through the fluent reapplication of these procedures when a previously comprehended message (or critical components of it) is encountered at a later time (e.g., Kolers & Roediger, 1984).The view that memory for text comprehension episodes is captured in a set of processing operations was advanced by Kolers (1975) as a contrast to the prevailing emphasis on memory for the meaning of text. The procedural nature of memory was demonstrated by showing that the analysis of the surface features of a sentence was an integral part of memory for the sentence. The time taken to reread typographically transformed (e.g., upside down) sentences varied depending on whether sentences were read initially in that form. Sentences read in normal typography on the first occasion (or heard, rather than read) were not read as fluently when re - presented for reading in transformed typography. …

Hesitations and sentence planning

Abstract The study investigated hesitations in the spontaneous speech and story continuations of university students. Hesitations occurred less often before “embedded” clause types than before “combined” clause types in both tasks. This finding suggests that embedded clauses are more likely to be planned ahead during the preceding clause than are combined clauses, which may be planned relatively independently of the prior clause. Also, for each functional clause type, boundaries before non-finite (deep structure) clauses contained hesitations just as often as did full finite (surface structure) clauses. It was concluded that deep structure clauses within surface structure clauses function as speech planning units, just as surface clauses themselves do. An additional experiment examined the pattern of silent pausing when sentences were read aloud. Whereas many silent pauses occurred before finite combined clauses, very few occurred before embedded clauses and non-finite combined clauses. Thus, it is primar...

Structural characteristics of clause-containing sentences and imitation by children and adults

Children of ages 4, 6, and 8 years and college students attempted to imitate sentences containing combinations of nested and self-embedded relative clauses. Asymmetries in performance predicted from extensions of previous research were obtained at all ages. The hypothesis that these differences might be attributable to two structural characteristics of clause-containing sentences was supported by correlational analyses.