External Syntax Research Articles

A gradient typology of gerund clauses: revisiting the internal and external syntax of Portuguese gerund clauses

Abstract Focusing mostly on European Portuguese, this paper proposes that the internal syntax of Portuguese gerund clauses and the gradience in their degree of defectiveness may be explained by an interplay between their external syntax (locus of merge), agreement relations between embedded Tense and matrix Tense and the presence/absence of an intervening head. We first revisit the distinction between peripheral adverbial gerund clauses and central adverbial gerund clauses and show that their internal syntax correlates with their external syntax: central adverbial gerund clauses are merged in lower positions and appear to be more defective. We derive their defectiveness from the agree relation established between embedded T and matrix T. We then consider predicative gerund clauses and show that they are even more defective and restricted in their aspectual value, lacking a T head. Finally, we consider predicative gerund clauses introduced by como ‘as’ and show that, although they are merged in a low position, they are less defective than central adverbial gerund clauses. We attribute this mismatch between the internal and external syntax of this specific type of gerund clause to the presence of the Predicate head como, which intervenes between matrix T and embedded T and blocks the agreement relation.

Text-Vision Relationship Alignment for Referring Image Segmentation

Referring image segmentation aims to segment object in an image based on a referring expression. Its difficulty lies in aligning expression semantics with visual instances. The existing methods based on semantic reasoning are limited by the performance of external syntax parser and do not explicitly explore the relationships between visual instances. This article proposes an end-to-end method for referring image segmentation by aligning ’linguistic relationship’ with ’visual relationships’. This method does not rely on external syntax parser for expression parsing. In this paper, the expression is adaptively and structurally parsed into three components: ’subject’, ’object’, and ’linguistic relationship’ by the Semantic Component Parser (SCP) in a learnable manner. Instances Activation Map Module (IAM) locates multiple visual instances based on the subject and object. In addition, the Relationship Based Visual Localization Module (RBVL) firstly enables each instance of the image to learn global knowledge, then decodes the visual relationships between these visual instances, and finally aligns the visual relationships with the linguistic relationships to further accurately locate the target object. The experimental results show that the proposed method improves performance by 4– 9% compared with baseline method on multiple referring image segmentation datasets.

Revisiting Passive Participles: Category Status and Internal Structure

This article challenges the view that eventive and stative passive participles are verbs and adjectives, respectively. Instead, I argue that existing diagnostics are sensitive to the eventive/stative contrast and to independent restrictions on word order. I show that both eventive and stative participles in Serbo-Croatian have the external syntax and morphology of adjectives, and propose that passive participles in various languages are adjectives that embed varying amounts of verbal structure. Finally, I contend that agentive phrases are always available with stative participles that entail a prior event in languages that obligatorily express grammatical aspect on the verb stem.

Предикативный синтаксис: норма и девиантность спонтанной речи (на материале бурятского языка)

Nowadays, the problem of bilingualism and polylingualism requires a more thorough and accurate study, especially in cases when one of the languages has the status of a minority language, such as the Buryat language. Interdisciplinary research into this field can help to understand not only the speech production mechanism, but also the issues of language preservation. The purpose of this paper was to, on the one hand, explicate the relationship between the interlanguage codes in the aspect of Russian influence on the position of the predicate in the spoken language of Buryat-Russian and Russian-Buryat bilinguals and, on the other hand, shed some light on the relationship between internal and external syntax. The latter constitutes the novelty of the research. As the material, the author used transcripts of spoken discourse in the Buryat language produced by Buryat and Russian bilinguals at the television shows Duunei Zam and Toli-Shuud. The research methodology included three stages: 1) theoretical substantiation of the problem; 2) description of the word order in the Buryat and Russian languages; 3) syntactic discourse analysis of the material in terms of predicate functioning. The analysis showed that the Russian free word order influences the predicate’s position in the Buryat speech of Russian-Buryat bilinguals. The results confirmed the principle of the usage-based model of grammatical knowledge representation, according to which the frequency of the use of grammatical forms and structures plays an important role in solidifying grammatical knowledge. The paper contributes to the research into deviant syntax (with a change of proposition) due to a mismatch between bilinguals’ preverbal and verbal syntax.

Leveraging Part-of-Speech Tagging Features and a Novel Regularization Strategy for Chinese Medical Named Entity Recognition

Chinese Medical Named Entity Recognition (Chinese-MNER) aims to identify potential entities and their categories from the unstructured Chinese medical text. Existing methods for this task mainly incorporate the dictionary knowledge on the basis of traditional BiLSTM-CRF or BERT architecture. However, the construction of high-quality dictionaries is typically time consuming and labor-intensive, which may also damage the robustness of NER models. What is more, the limited amount of annotated Chinese-MNER data can easily lead to the over-fitting problem while training. With the aim of dealing with the above problems, we put forward a BERT-BiLSTM-CRF model by integrating the part-of-speech (POS) tagging features and a Regularization method (BBCPR) for Chinese-MNER. In BBCPR, we first leverage a POS fusion layer to incorporate external syntax knowledge. Next, we design a novel REgularization mothod with Adversarial training and Dropout (READ) to improve the model robustness. Specifically, READ focuses on reducing the difference between the predictions of two sub-models through minimizing the bidirectional KL divergence between the adversarial output and original output distributions for the same sample. Comprehensive evaluations on two public data sets, namely, cMedQANER and cEHRNER from the Chinese Biomedical Language Understanding Evaluation benchmark (ChineseBLUE), demonstrate the superiority of our proposal in Chinese-MNER. In addition, ablation study shows that READ can effectively improve the model performance. Our proposal does well in exploring the technical terms and identifying the word boundary.

Numeral Systems in Various Fula Lects

The paper presents the analysis of Fula numeral system. Fula is an Atlantic language, dispersed throughout a vast territory in Sub-Saharan Africa. It has over 20 differently-sized lects subdivided into three zones - Western, Central and Eastern. The research included collecting the language data on six major lects, two from each zone. Then this data was analyzed from the point of view of internal and external syntax of ordinal, cardinal, distributive and fraction numerals. The comparative analysis of Fula numeral system on inter-lect scale has never been reflected in earlier Fula studies. Apart from a unique collection of numeral data from all language zones of Fula, the paper presents comparative analysis of such data, including, but not limited to, phonetic and contact-induced variabilities. The sources of structural and lexical loans in the system are listed wherever possible, because the disperse nature of Fula lects means that the contact languages and the ensuing changes can be different for each lect. Special attention is paid to the numeral bases, which can be somatic, commercial of a combination of the two. The Fula numeral system has never been analyzed from this point of view, and the contact changes to it are of great linguistic interest. Also cardinal numerals in Fula can change their form depending on the personality parameter of head noun. This system is unique for Fula and, more specifically, to its numeral system, and is properly described for the first time. Some parts of the Fula numeral system, like distributive and fraction numerals for some lects, have been found underrepresented and poorly described, which leaves room for further research, both field one and typological.

Structure constrains in Polish and English adjectival synthetic compounds

The subject matter of this paper is the external syntax of adjectival synthetic compounds in Polish (e.g. czasochłonny, ciepłolubny, opiniotwórczy, etc.) and English (life-giving, sleep-inducing, far-reaching, etc.). The primary objective of the study is to determine whether -ny/-czy/-ły compounds in Polish and adjectival -ing compounds in English, whose heads appear to be derived from verbs, are deverbal in the sense of Distributed Morphology; that is, whether their external syntax points to the presence of complex verbal structure in their syntactic representation. It is shown that adjectival synthetic compounds in Polish and English behave in a way typical of underived adjectives, being unrestricted in the predicative position and allowing degree modification with very; as such they are not deverbal in the morphosyntactic sense with their syntactic representation lacking the functional heads vP and VoiceP found in deverbal structures. The limited productivity of adjectival synthetic compounds further contributes to their non-eventive status.

The structure of Polish numerically-quantified expressions

Cross-linguistically, numerically-quantified expressions vary in terms of their internal syntactic structure (e.g. the category of the numeral, its position in the nominal projection) as well as interaction with the external syntax (e.g. occurring in the subject positions, determining agreement and concord). Here, I investigate Polish numerically-quantified expressions of the 5+ type, such as pięć czarownic ‘five witches’, focusing on three morphosyntactic properties: the genitive case on the quantified noun, the accusative case on the numeral, and the occurrence of 3sg neuter verbal agreement. I argue that all of these properties can be captured within existing theories of case and agreement, in terms of a null head that takes the quantified noun phrase as its complement, and a numeral phrase as its specifier. Genitive on the noun is structural, accusative on the numeral is licensed by a null preposition, and default agreement is a result of the case-discriminating nature of verbal agreement. This proposal has implications for the broader theory of agreement and case assignment in Slavic languages and beyond.

The Embedding Puzzle: Constraints on Evidentials in Complement Clauses

The Embedding Puzzle: Constraints on Evidentials in Complement Clauses

The syntax of comparison constructions in diachronic and dialectal perspective

The paper discusses the internal and external syntax of comparison constructions in the light of diachronic as well as dialectal German data. As far as the syntactic position of comparison particles is concerned, the data present evidence against the widespread analysis as prepositions or complementizers and in favour of a syntactic position above the standard-of-comparison CP. This is demonstrated in detail for the German comparison particles als and wie. Concerning the syntactic status of the standard of comparison, diachronic and dialectal data support the so-called direct analysis, according to which the standard of comparison may consist of the comparison particle and a mere DP, PP etc. without assuming an elided full clause in all cases. With respect to their link to the remainder of the clause comparisons show characteristics both of subordinate clauses, notably relative clauses, as well as of coordination. The diachronic and dialectal data underline this Janus-headed nature of comparison constructions which is tentatively attributed to a historically underlying correlative construction and syntactic reanalysis as an embedded clause on this basis.

Adverbial clauses and adverbial concord

This paper speculates that the merge site of an adverbial clause, i.e. its external syntax, is determined by its derivational history, i.e. its internal syntax. Starting from the distinction between central adverbial clauses and peripheral adverbial clauses, it is first shown that the degree of integration of an adverbial clause correlates with its internal syntax, i.e. the availability of left peripheral functional material. The correlation can be informally stated as follows “the more structure is manifested in the adverbial clause, the higher it is merged”. This paper develops a derivational account for this correlation. The proposal adopts the movement derivation of adverbial clauses, according to which, like relative clauses, adverbial clauses are derived by movement of a specialized IP-related operator (aspectual, temporal, modal, etc) to the left periphery. The paper explores observations drawn from the traditional literature on Japanese grammar (Minami 1974; Noda 1989; 2002) to the effect that the amount of TP-internal functional structure in an adverbial clause also correlates with the presence of specialized functional particles in the matrix clause with which the clause merges. Specifically, we explore Japanese data discussed in Endo (2011; 2012). It is proposed that the merger of an adverbial clause with the associated main clause is determined by the label of the adverbial clause, itself the result of the movement derivation.

Periphrastic Nominalization in Khanty

This paper focus on periphrastic nominalization — a construction which has nominal external syntax and which is used to express complement clauses. In this paper we examine the morphological and syntactic properties of this construction and compare those properties with those of typical nominalizations. In particular, a classification of nominalization into processes and results is used as the basis for comparison. As it is a crucial point regarding the contrast between a word and a construction, we also discuss whether the periphrastic nominalization shows signs of grammaticalization.

Pseudo-Incorporation in Blackfoot

Blackfoot (Algonquian: Alberta) permits both morphologically transitive and intransitive verbs to take objects, but with different syntactic properties. This paper develops an analysis of the objects of morphologically intransitive verbs as pseudo-incorporated, in the sense introduced by Diane Massam. Diagnostic tests for the syntax and semantics of pseudo-incorporation are applied to objects of morphologically intransitive verbs. Regarding their external syntax, it is shown that pseudo-incorporated objects must be immediately post-verbal and form a VP constituent with the verb. As for their semantic properties, they are shown to be narrow-scoping, non-specific, indefinite, and cumulative in reference. With respect to their internal syntax, it is demonstrated that they can be modified by attributive adjectives and/or inflectional plural marking, but crucially they cannot host demonstrative determiners. By documenting pseudo-incorporated objects in Blackfoot, this paper contributes to the cross-linguistic evidence that incorporation can target phrasal constituents.

External syntax and the Cumulative Effect in subject sub-extraction: An experimental evaluation

AbstractIn this paper, we test the Cumulative Effect proposed by (Haegeman et al. 2014. Deconstructing the subject condition in terms of cumulative constraint violation.

Ellipsis in appositives

This paper investigates the internal and external syntax of non-restrictive nominal appositives (NAPs), such as John Smith in I met an old friend, John Smith, at the pub. It is shown that the internal constitution of NAPs bears directly on the analysis of the irrelation to the surrounding host sentence, in that a rich internal syntax obviates the need for any direct syntactic ­connection between host and NAP. It is shown that NAPs are structurally independent sentence fragments that can be freely employed either sequentially (as ‘afterthoughts’) or as interpolated, ­supplemental speech acts, autonomous from the host in prosody, interpretation, and syntax. The ­analysis ­renders superfluous powerful extensions of core syntax/semantics proposed in previous work to capture the syntactic properties of NAPs and other parentheticals, concluding instead that NAPs warrant no enrichment of UG.

Against the root analysis of subject contact relatives in English

Based mainly on a number of interpretive considerations, Henry (1995) and den Dikken (2005) elaborate an analysis of English SCR which mirrors their discourse function. However, while the proposed topic-comment representation may well reflect the information structural properties of SCR, its predictions for the internal and external syntax of SCR are incorrect. In contrast, the predictions would be correct for Germanic V2R, undermining the basis for den Dikken's (2005) assimilation of the two patterns. On the basis of the discussion above I thus conclude that a topic-comment representation for English SCR, though attractive on interpretive grounds, cannot be maintained. The various empirical data discussed in this paper show that a relativization analysis along the lines of that in Doherty (1993, 1994, 2000), reviewed in the light of our current understanding of the articulation of the left periphery (see also Sistrunk, 2012), is to be preferred.

Temporal restrictions on personal pronouns: The composition of Blackfoot proclitics

Based on a detailed investigation of the syntax and semantics of two series of person proclitics in Blackfoot (Algonquian: Alberta), we argue that in addition to traditional ɸ-features, personal pronouns may also contain a temporal component that conditions their distribution and interpretation. Specifically, we propose that one series of Blackfoot proclitics consists of morphosyntactically simplex pro-ɸPs that only encode person features, while the other series are morphosyntactically complex pro-DPs composed of a ɸP plus a D head. The semantic contribution of the D head is temporal: it restricts the denotation of the proclitic to a contextually relevant stage of an individual. We argue that this restriction conditions the distribution of the long forms; they appear in contexts which only involve a temporally restricted stage of the individual. We discuss three such contexts: inalienable possession, the perfect, and epistemic modality. The short form proclitics, which lack this temporal restriction, appear in contexts that do not refer to specific stage. Regarding their external syntax, we argue that the short form proclitics are introduced directly by a lexical head (N or V), whereas the long forms are introduced higher in the functional structure, by Poss and INFL.

Z tygodnia na tydzień, z powieści na powieść, z meczu na mecz jako przykłady nieswobodnych grup syntaktycznych

The article has verified a hypothesis suggesting that the sequences mentioned in the title and similar to them are constrained syntactic groups, i.e., they do not form a regular combination of simple signs. The verification has been conducted on the basis of a three-stage procedure taking into account the semantic features and inner qualities of the studied expressions, namely, their composition as well as the structural and linear links between segments. It has been indicated that the components of the studied sequences jointly express meaning which can be considered as a form of perlocution: ‘something changes within fragments of time undergoing observation whose measure is determined by a variable component’. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the two components of a sequence that can be exchanged can be realized not only by standard measures of time (second, minute, hour, week), but also by nouns referring to events (match, meeting, term). Also, there is a presentation of the basic limitations in the realization of a variable component and a mutual linear arrangement of variable and constant components. A characteristic of the expressions of the type from week to week, from novel to novel, from match to match is supplemented by the remarks concerning their external syntax.

Supplemental relative clauses: Internal and external syntax

The internal syntactic structures of restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses are largely identical. This paper argues that despite a uniform internal structure, the external distributions – specifically, linearization with respect to the head – of non-restrictive relative clauses are subject to several conditions. In particular, sentential non-restrictive relative clauses with which and what can appear to the left of their heads in limited (and distinct) syntactic contexts. These lexical and syntactic constraints are represented within the framework of Sign-based Construction Grammar. In light of these observations, the paper revisits claims about the internal structure of parenthetical as-clauses. Prior claims that as cannot be a relativizer are shown to be unfounded, and new data are presented in favor of treating them as relative clauses with the external distribution of sentential adverbials. This is possible given the ability to state separately specifications of construction-internal syntactic structure and construction-external linear-order constraints.

A Bi-Directional Refinement Algorithm for the Calculus of (Co)Inductive Constructions

The paper describes the refinement algorithm for the Calculus of (Co)Inductive Constructions (CIC) implemented in the interactive theorem prover Matita. The refinement algorithm is in charge of giving a meaning to the terms, types and proof terms directly written by the user or generated by using tactics, decision procedures or general automation. The terms are written in an "external syntax" meant to be user friendly that allows omission of information, untyped binders and a certain liberal use of user defined sub-typing. The refiner modifies the terms to obtain related well typed terms in the internal syntax understood by the kernel of the ITP. In particular, it acts as a type inference algorithm when all the binders are untyped. The proposed algorithm is bi-directional: given a term in external syntax and a type expected for the term, it propagates as much typing information as possible towards the leaves of the term. Traditional mono-directional algorithms, instead, proceed in a bottom-up way by inferring the type of a sub-term and comparing (unifying) it with the type expected by its context only at the end. We propose some novel bi-directional rules for CIC that are particularly effective. Among the benefits of bi-directionality we have better error message reporting and better inference of dependent types. Moreover, thanks to bi-directionality, the coercion system for sub-typing is more effective and type inference generates simpler unification problems that are more likely to be solved by the inherently incomplete higher order unification algorithms implemented. Finally we introduce in the external syntax the notion of vector of placeholders that enables to omit at once an arbitrary number of arguments. Vectors of placeholders allow a trivial implementation of implicit arguments and greatly simplify the implementation of primitive and simple tactics.