Description Of Constructions Research Articles

'n Kognitiewe gebruiksgebaseerde beskrywingsmodel vir die Afrikaanse grammatika

In this article, aspects of a cognitive usage-based descriptive framework for Afrikaans grammar are spelled out in detail, with the aim of setting the agenda for the description of Afrikaans morphological (and other) constructions. Constructs and terms from cognitive grammar that are necessary for the description of such constructions are explicated and illustrated, using examples from Afrikaans morphology. With regard to composition, it is shown that the question 'How is a certain construction formed?' must be answered, with specific reference to correspondence, profile determinacy, conceptual and phonological autonomy and dependence, and constituency. It is argued that the essential question that must be answered pertaining to categorisation is the question: 'What does the categorisation network of the construction look like?'. For this purpose, the categorisation network of a certain construction must be postulated. Subsequently, it is illustrated that the question 'Can a construction schema or sub-schemas be extracted from the categorisation network?' should be answered, referring to the generality and productivity of the construction schema. Lastly, it is shown that the question 'How entrenched is the construction schema?' should be answered, using two criteria: centrality and linguistic importance. This article is concluded with a working strategy, which can be seen as a programmatic, 'step-by-step' model for the description of grammatical constructions.

The syntax and semantics of causative affixes in central Kenya Bantu

Typologists have established that there are two main types of causative constructions: the lexical and the non-lexical (Cooper, 1976; Shibatani, 1973, 1976; Givon, 1976). The two constructions are said to differ both syntactically and semantically. One of the main syntactic differences between the two is that lexical causatives are said to be mono-clausal while non-lexical causatives are bi-clausal, even in languages where both are morphologically marked in the verb (Marantz, 1984; Shibatani, 1976). Mwangi (2001) argues that though the mono-clausal/bi-clausal distinction may be relevant in the description of causative constructions in some languages, it does not seem to have a direct bearing on Gikuyu. This paper focuses on the description of the syntactic and semantic features determining the distribution of the two causative affixes in four Central Kenya Bantu languages and discusses the relevance of this distribution to the distinction made between lexical and non-lexical causatives.

Verb i passiv fulgt av perfektum parcitisipp: Bruk og historie By Jan Engh (review)

41? LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 2 (1998) Ch. 5, 'Dialect and standard in speakers' perceptions ' (101-17), discusses informants' reactions to recorded speech. Tape recordings of four different speakers were played, and the informants were then asked which of the four speakers spoke like people in Neckarau. The recordings contained a variety of prominent features of Mannheim/Neckarau dialect, including apocope of final schwa, unrounding of [y] to [i], and spirantization of medial and final [g] following back vowels, among others. In addition, some of the informants' comments about the recorded dialect samples are given here. The sixth chapter, 'Linguistic usage in the interview situation' (1 18-61). deals with the informants' linguistic usage. The first part addresses the informants ' 'alleged' usage, i e. what the informants think that they say. The second section analyzes their actual usage. The final section discusses the notion of slang (Umgangssprache). The final chapter, 'Conclusion' (162-65) briefly summarizes some of the main points of D's study. There are also several appendices, including brief biographies of the informants, comments on 'typical' Neckarau dialect, a copy of the questionnaire given to informants, and transcripts of the test speakers' and informants' speech samples [Marc Pierce, University ofMichigan.] Verb i passiv fulgt av perfektum parcitisipp : Bruk og historic By Jan Engh. Oslo: Novus Forlag, 1994. Pp. 374. NCr 285.00. This book investigates the history and usage of the past participle when preceded by a passive verb in Norwegian. It builds on Engh's paper of 1 977, a preliminary sketch of the structure of this passive construction , which E calls the AO construction. The book is divided into three main parts and appendices (309-74) which cover lists ofmaterial, possible verbs in Old and Middle Norwegian, and other matters. Part lisa description of the different AO constructions in Modern Norwegian. E analyzes these constructions in traditional syntax and sets up an informal semantic classification of the AO construction and its two verbs (the past participle and the passive verb). AO constructions are basically of two sorts (1) sentences with a free predicate such as (1-1) Planen fors0kes iverksat (The plan tries to be realized', i.e. we try to carry out the plan), which refer to a future state of affairs, and (2) sentences with a stable predicate such as (1-4) Leilighet selges m0blert ("The apartment sells furnished', i.e. Furnished apartment for sale) and (1-5) Mannskapet fryktes omkommet (The crew is feared lost'), which depict present states of affairs. Within the two mam groups, the AO construction can possess other syntactic and semantic structures, e.g. sentence (1-4) has a past participle which is derived from a transitive verb whereas ( 1 -5) has a participle derived from an intransitive verb. Furthermore, E defines a range of constructions which seem identical to the AO construction but which are unacceptable AO sentences, e.g. Leilighet selges m0blert i forrige uge (The apartment sells furnished last week'), where the time adverbial disqualifies the sentence. The second part centers on the comparison of semantic and morphosyntactic features in the AO construction of older Danish-Norwegian, Old and Middle Norwegian, and Modern Norwegian. E concludes that the AO construction is not a new construction in Norwegian; it appears as part of the infinitive system of Old Norse and Old Norwegian. In Part III E considers the origin of the AO in Latin and German. He also considers whether the AO could have been based on Norwegian or Scandinavian. In addition, he discusses the development of the AO construction from Old and Middle Norwegian to today and the connection to similar constructions m other languages. The AO construction does not originate from Latin, but probably from the AO construction in Old and Middle English (e.g. Hit wasfounyn ywritte in oon stone) and from an older Nordic predicative construction. Verbs without the required syntactic features, but with other semantic features, might have replaced the predicative, leading to an AO construction. The book offers a thorough and comprehensive treatment of a neglected aspect of Norwegian It will be of primary interest to those seeking philological evidence for the change in the use of the past participle preceded...

Dynamic dependency grammar

1. INTRODUCTION Dynamics is the formal study of systems involving states and transitions between states. A natural application of dynamics is to the study of language processing, where words or morphemes can be thought of as actions which perform transitions between states of the language processor. The paper concentrates on sentence as opposed to text processing, and shows how dynamics can lead to novel parsing algorithms and to new possibilities for the formal description of syntactic constructions, in particular, for the description of non-constituent coordination. The use of dynamics in algorithm development will be illustrated by presenting a particular parsing algorithm which was developed for a 'core' lexicalised grammar, Lexicalised Dependency Grammar (Milward 1992) which resembles both simplified HPSG (Pollard and Sag 1993) and dependency grammar as formalised by Gaifman (see Hays 1964). The algorithm is fully incremental, providing a semantic representation word by word. It also exhibits reduced non-determinism relative to other almost-incremental algorithms 1 by using types instead of partial parse trees. These can be packed further using graph structuring (cf. Tomita 1985). Although dynamics specifies the states of a process and the possible mappings between states, it does not specify the control strategy (how the state space is traversed). Suitable languages for dynamics are thus both formal and declarative, and can be used to express linguistic generalisations. The final part of the paper regards the dynamics provided for the core lexicalised grammar as a grammar in its own right, Dynamic

Contribution à l'analyse macro-syntaxique : les constructions « siamoises » de type « plus V1 plus V2 »

This thesis is devoted to the analysis of the correlational system based on the repetition of the item "plus" (the more) et the beginning of two verbal constructions. These constructions are called "twin organisations" of the type" plus vi plus v2". The analysis is based on a corpus of 1708 examples from written and oral french. A diachronic description of these syntactic constructions forms the basis of this study. It enables the author to discuss the validity of previous classifications and to pinpoint their defects. The semantic principle underlying the classification adopted by traditional grammar is not in a position to account for the discoursal strings called "twin constructions" which correlate two verbal constructions on a par, without any hierarchy between them, in a unitary and recursive macro-syntactic device. The position of the correlational indices "plus" repeated at the beginning of each verbal segment constrains the verbal construction and fosters a high degree of cohesion that requires analysis at the macrosyntactic level. In addition a semantic approach takes the author beyond the received analysis in terms of proportionality ; an inventory of semantic effects produced by the choice and organization of the lexical items ocurring in the construction is provided.

Categories, Constituents and Constituent Order in Pitjantjatjara: An Ab-Original Language of Australia

A description of the syntax of the Australian Aboriginal language Pitjantjatjara. This book looks at the relevant categories and constituents in the language and examines the question of whether the constituents exhibit a syntactically basic order. The data shows that word in a range of constructions is constrained and Heather Bowe argues that these facts would be consistent with an analysis of word being syntactically significant in Pitjantjatjara. The constraints on word are of particular interest in that they contrast significantly with word features reported for the neighbouring language Warlpiri, widely considered to be a canonical free word order language. The topics of syntactic constituency and word are relevant to current research on linguistic theory and the possible existence of non-configurational languages as addressed by Chomsky, as well as to the typological study of languages as addressed by Joseph Greenberg. The detailed descriptions of complex sentence constructions, including switch-references, will interest linguistics working within the generative tradition as well those working within a typological framework. Heather Bowe has lived in the Pitjantjatjara area in central Australia and her study is based on the extensive field data, including narrative texts, collected during this period.

Transparent insulation of building facades—Steps from research to commercial applications

Transparent insulation materials (TIM) represent a class of new materials for application in solar thermal conversion systems. A U-value below 1 W/(m 2 K) and an energy transmittance greater than 70% characterize TI materials. With these physical properties TI materials outperform all conventional glazing systems and further increase the efficiency of thermal conversion of solar radiation. In winter, low elevation solar irradiance on vertical surfaces can be used effectively. Experiments, simulation calculations and results from demonstration projects have shown the space heating potential of transparently insulated walls. A properly built passive TI element on a sun-facing massive building facade can save heating energy by up to 200 kWh/(m 2 yr) each annual heating period. The paper describes the transparent insulation of building facades from the basic idea to the satisfying results of demonstration projects. Fundamental considerations for TIM and wall parameters, a list of projects, exact descriptions of TI wall constructions, the reduction of space heating demand and future developments from part of this paper. It is a summary of the work done in this specific field in the past 10 years giving examples of the dynamic developments in solar energy from the basic ideas to commercial systems. A Self-Sufficient Solar House, which is almost totally heated with transparently insulated walls, is an outstanding culmination of TI research and TI application.

自閉児の初期2語発話の構文的構造

The construction of early two-word utterances in Japanese autistic children was investigated. The subjects who participated in the collection of speech samples were two autistic children at the age of 4 years and 1 month old (female, PIQ64) and 6 years old (male, IQ 60). A speech sample was taperecorded during therapy, and transcriptions were made afterwards. Th e number of utterances of each subject amounted to more than 1,000 in analysis.The numbers of two-word utterances and multiword (three or more words) utterances which were analyzed were 75 and 102 for each subject. In the analysis, only the different forms of these utterances were examined.1) Early two-word utterance s were described according to eleven types such as 'connective', 'topic-comment', 'action sentence: agent, object, state of event', 'modifier of entity: possession', 'combined predicate'. In the descriptions of syntactic construction in pr evious studies, samples were not sufficiently analyzed. It is noteworthy that the type `topic-comment', not included in other studies, was necessary. This type is not syntactic but contextual. Moreover, the category of 'action sentence: agent', including experiencer and subject of attribution, is much broader in its meaning than the category agent in case grammar.2) The characteristics of two-word utterances of autistic children were summ a rized as global delay compared with mental development or other aspects of language development. However, when examined closely, a) there were tendencies for 'action sentence; state of event' and 'modifier of entity' not to be differentiated yet, and b) there were many examples of 'incomplete action sentence'.Discussion was made as to the description of syntactic constructions, the methodological problems in description, and the characteristics of autistic children and the suggestions for a clinical setting.

Towards a functional description of cleft constructions

Towards a functional description of cleft constructions

Oriented geometric Objects in Computer Graphics and Numerical Control

AbstractConventional natural ‐ language as well as computer ‐ oriented descriptions of geometric constructions by means of geometric relationships (parallelism, tangency, etc.) and attributes (INSIDE, NEAR, MIDDLE, X‐LARGE, Y‐SMALL, etc.) do not offer a clear and efficient method for selecting a specific object out of a number of possible alternatives. This paper describes a systematic solution to the problem based upon the notions of orientation of geometric objects, of smooth transitions from one object to another (referred to as coherent tangency), and upon locality. Using the notions of object orientation and coherent tangency, some tangent constructions in a plane are developed. The method is shown to employ a minimum set of attributes ‐ at most one, characterizing the intrinsic parameters of geometric objects.

Numerals and the homogeneity of description and explanation

A dispute over the generative grammar of numerals raises wider issues: (1) Detailed analytical work is as essential to progress in linguistics as broader programmatic proposals. Numerals differ in some respects from the rest of language. Facts concerning such differences are inaccessible to broad programmatic studies because of their concentration on unifying principles and their imposition of a homogeneous character, at a given level, on descriptions of different constructions. (2) On another dimension, the concentration on unifying principles (manifested in normal generative grammar by the quest for a single description capturing all ‘significant generalizations’) is often taken to presuppose homogeneity of explanation for all synchronic linguistic facts. But various aspects of a single description may have different types of explanation (e.g. psychological, historical). Recent generative descriptive work on numerals happens to reveal this problem acutely.

The Analysis of Grammatical Constituents

1. The principle of descriptive analysis of constructions on the basis of immediate constituents has been recognized by most descriptive linguists, and most of them have employed immediate constituents in analytical procedures, though in some instances not directly so. Linguists have also recognized that there are certain significant features about such constituent elements of constructions. Bloomfield formally treated some of these features and called them taxemes.' But not all the significant features of constructions were presented by Bloomfield, and not all the interrelationships of these features have been adequately handled. For example, Bloomfield's four taxemes are not of coordinate value in the description and classification of constituent units. There has been a further need of showing the parallelism of treatment for all constituent units, whether on a morphological or on a syntactic level. This matter was introduced by Pike,2 but was not developed systematically. It is true that the analytical description of constructions on the basis of immediate constituents frequently involves an overlapping of so-called morphological and syntactic levels, and that for some languages the morphology-syntax dichotomy may not be useful. Nevertheless, this does not justify rejecting a descriptive analysis which recognizes the sets of immediate constituents and attempts to describe constructions in terms of the significant features found in these units. A description of distributional characteristics following Harris' treatment3 is excellent but not adequate. In arriving at his functional units, Harris recognizes the principle of immediate constituents, at least in part; but the technique of analysis is based upon a principle of substitutability, which is only one of the principles which should be employed in determining sets of immediate constituents.