Features Of Nouns Research Articles

A dictionary of Owa, a language of the Solomon Islands by Greg Mellow

Reviewed by: A dictionary of Owa, a language of the Solomon Islands by Greg Mellow Robert Blust Greg Mellow. 2014. A dictionary of Owa, a language of the Solomon Islands. Pacific Linguistics 639. Boston/Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. xvi + 821 pp. ISBN 978-1-61451-398-8. €169.95, hardcover. The languages of the Southeast Solomon Islands are among the best described in any part of the Pacific. This is particularly true with regard to lexicography, as dictionaries (some of them quite substantial) exist for no fewer than seven of the languages of Malaita, Makira (San Cristobal), and their immediate satellites. In order of publication year these are Sa'a and Ulawa (Ivens 1929), Arosi (Fox 1970), 'Āre'āre (Geerts 1970), Lau (Fox 1974), Kwaio (Keesing 1975), and Toqabaqita (Lichtenberk 2008); the seventh and most recent of these contributions is the dictionary under review. According to the introductory material, Owa is spoken in the Star Harbour area of Makira, and on the smaller islands of Santa Ana1 (Owa Rafa) and Santa Catalina (Aorigi). It, thus, occupies the southeasternmost extremity of the Solomons chain (although the political entity also includes the more southeasterly Reef and Santa Cruz islands). The language is said to be part of the Kahua dialect chain, which extends well into eastern Makira, and the particular variety described is that of Santa Ana Island. The Owa dictionary contains the following sections: 1. Acknowledgments, 2. Purpose and compilation method, 3. Owa people and language, 4. Dictionary layout, 5. Abbreviations, 6. Word classes, 7. A 105-page grammar sketch (phonology, nouns, noun phrases, verbs, verb phrases, clause structure, sentences, discourse), 8. Bibliography, 9. Owa- English dictionary (473 pages), 10. English-Owa finderlist (127 pages), 11. Owa words sorted by semantic domain (115 pages). Because of the substantial nature of the grammatical prologue, I will comment both on it and on the main body of the dictionary. The description of phonology is brief (4 pages) and somewhat problematic. It should be noted that q represents a voiced bilabial implosive. There is one glaring quirk in stating that the Owa phone [t] in, for example, tao 'lie' is equivalent to the final consonant in English waltz, when its phonetic representation clearly is not [ts] (2). Likewise, one wonders why the phonemic vowels are written ܼ, ݜ, ܭ, ܧ, щ, rather than i, u, e, o, a with a phonetic explanation of their values (3)? Finally, the phonetically complex labial nasal ƾm is described as "labialized" when surely what is meant is "velarized." The account of basic grammatical features shows much greater control of the data. I can touch on only a few topics, so my coverage will be selective. A good deal of attention is devoted to pronouns, which seem to be unusually elaborate in Owa. First, the preverbal subject pronouns or proclitics ("subject markers") differ in form depending on whether they are sentence-initial or sentence-medial (for example,1/2/3 sg au/o/e vs. kau/ko/ ke~ki). Second, they also differ in subordinate clauses (nau/no/ne). Finally, the same functional elements differ in form depending on whether the clause is in realis or irrealis mood (qai/ui/ka sentence-initially, qai/kui/ki sentence-medially, nai/nu~nui/ni in subordinate clauses). Like many other Oceanic languages, Owa also distinguishes singular, dual, [End Page 508] and plural numbers, so the combination of features defining subject pronouns with regard to position in the sentence, position in main or subordinate clauses, marking for mood, and marking for person and number has produced a rather elaborate system. The most attention-drawing feature of nouns in many Oceanic languages is their relationship to possession, and this is also true of Owa, where nouns are directly possessed if inalienable, and indirectly possessed if alienable. Many Oceanic languages distinguish edible and drinkable possession from general possession through the use of possessive classifiers (these go under various names in different grammars) that carry the possessive pronoun, as with Fijian no-na, ke-na, me-na 'his/her thing (general possession)', 'his/her thing (to eat)', 'his/her thing (to drink)'. By contrast, Owa reportedly distinguishes only general and edible possession, and it does so with a partially...

The features of feminine nouns used in Korean pop songs with the subject of love and breakups during the Japanese colonial period in Korea

The features of feminine nouns used in Korean pop songs with the subject of love and breakups during the Japanese colonial period in Korea

NEGATION AS THE BASIS FOR NOMINATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS

The article investigates the use of negative-strategy in nomination of the scientific concepts. Defined most productive models of term formation, which use derivational formants with negative semantics. The nominative specific of terms formed on the basis of the negation is established. Proved their relevance to research and organization of Ukrainian terminology. The article analyzes the nominative features of noun and adjectival terms formed by using a negative prefix не-. The object of the study were also terms with couple of negative prefixes. Determined that double negation though raises difficult to understand terms, but allows you to clearly oppose certain characteristics of the object to reflect their evolution. Proved that mental-speech operation of negation often serves as the foundation for Ukrainian-nomination of scientific concepts. It resorted primarily to emphasize the lack of important functional attributes of the objects and to contrast them close but not identical objects. Found out that negation is widely used in the creation of terms on the verbal bases. Negation of dynamic features makes it possible formation of such terminology nominations that reflect important functional features of signified objects. As a result of analysis of terminology with negative prefix, it was revealed that the use of negative-strategy in term formating, on the one hand, promotes clearer juxtaposition of scientific concepts, on the other - regulates the scope of meaning. It was found out that nomination based on the negation allows transfer hypothetical but unrealized actions, processes and characteristics of objects that are not relevant to usual speech, but critical to scientific definitions. It is demonstrated that the creation of terms using negative prefixes promotes a clearer distinction between scientific concepts, organizing and streamlining of terminology vocabulary by establishing antonymous relationships between affirmative and negative terms This study opens new perspectives for studying the functional potential of other negative affixes in creating of terminology

 THE ROLE OF NOUNS IN REPRESENTING PERCEPTION CATEGORY (based on English and Tatar languages)

The article is devoted to consideration of the features of nouns involved in representing perception category. The category of perception means the method of obtaining information, implying a direct perception of the situation and the speaker’s participation in the situation. It is proved that in both languages the animacy category implies the ability to perceive the environment. In English and Tatar languages Proper nouns are involved in representing identified perceptors. In English, the observer and the observed is differentiated due to the fixed word order. In Tatar Case category helps to differentiate subjects and objects. The presence of Abstract nouns eliminates expression of prototypical perception situation, which is possible only with Common c oncrete nouns.

 THE ROLE OF NOUNS IN REPRESENTING PERCEPTION CATEGORY (based on English and Tatar languages)

The article is devoted to consideration of the features of nouns involved in representing perception category. The category of perception means the method of obtaining information, implying a direct perception of the situation and the speaker’s participation in the situation. It is proved that in both languages the animacy category implies the ability to perceive the environment. In English and Tatar languages Proper nouns are involved in representing identified perceptors. In English, the observer and the observed is differentiated due to the fixed word order. In Tatar Case category helps to differentiate subjects and objects. The presence of Abstract nouns eliminates expression of prototypical perception situation, which is possible only with Common c oncrete nouns.

A Feature of Noun Modified by Japanese Attributive Demonstratives ‘sonna’

A Feature of Noun Modified by Japanese Attributive Demonstratives ‘sonna’

Second language acquisition and linguistics: A bidirectional perspective

Abstract We argue for a bidirectional relationship between second language research and linguistic theories. It is our belief that SLA research should look to linguistics for concepts and models that provide a basis upon which to make hypotheses, conduct data analysis, and draw conclusions, and we also believe that linguistic theorists can develop and improve their understanding of linguistic concepts and models by examining the results from SLA studies. In this paper, we present arguments in favor of this approach, with examples from two different types of linguistic universals: the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy and features such as tense and number. Second language acquisition data have been used to provide evidence for the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy and provide a way to understand areas in which its predictions are not met. Similarly, second language data provide us with a view of what happens when there is a contrast between features in a speaker’s native language and the language being learned. The data thus may shed light on the universality of features, in addition to how features are represented, parsed, and processed. In both cases, we argue that second language data are valuable when examining certain linguistic questions because they illuminate areas of conflict or mismatch between two linguistic systems.

Cross-Linguistic Evidence for Semantic Countability

Countability and plurality (or singularity) are basically marked in syntax or morphology, and languages adopt different strategies in the mass-count distinction and number marking: plural marking, unmarked number marking, singularization, and different uses of classifiers. Diverse patterns of grammatical strategies are observed with cross-linguistic data in this study. Based on this, it is concluded that although countability is not solely determined by the semantic properties of nouns, it is much more affected by semantics than it appears. Moreover, semantic features of nouns are useful to account for apparent idiosyncratic behaviors of nouns and sentences.

Peculiarities of Grammatical Properties in Nominal Word Combinations

The article examines some peculiarities if grammatical properties of nominal word combinations based on the study of German-speaking Swiss press. The accumulated experience of linguists is analyzed and certain factors influencing the choice of syntactic relations in nominal word combinations with quantitative meaning are researched. It has been established that the choice of syntactic relations in such word combinations is determined by functional style, semantics and grammatical features of nouns - first or second components in a word combination. The aforementioned factors influencing the choice of syntactic relations in quantitative nominal word combinations are studied on the material of Germanspeaking Swiss press. The research revealed a number of peculiarities. First of all, German-speaking Swiss press uses such syntactic relation as genitive subordination quite often, not only on "special occasion" and unlike its use in Germany does not produce a magniloquent, pompous impression. Secondly, it has been established that the choice of syntactic relations in word combinations of the above-mentioned type of word combinations greatly depends on the semantic meaning of the noun - the first component of the word combination - and does not always coincide with the grammatical properties in nominal combinations in Germany. Thirdly, a clear dependence of syntactic relations choice is observed. Moreover, the article highlights the importance of grammatical features of the second component. These are such features as gender, number, case accompanied by noun declension. All the afore-mentioned features help to define the type of syntactic relations, which nominal quantitative word combinations may be connected by. The results of the comparisons of grammatical properties of quantitative nominal word combinations in German and Swiss press are demonstrated in a table below.

Real-time comprehension of gender and number in four- to seven-year-old children: a study of the relationship between Italian clitic pronouns and visual picture referents.

The gender and number of a direct object clitic pronoun are based on the gender and number of the noun to which it refers. Grammatical gender is an intrinsic property of the lexical item that is independent from the natural sex of referents, whereas number is a non-intrinsic feature of nouns based on the conceptual level of quantity. The aim of this paper is to investigate children's ability in matching Italian direct object clitic pronouns to an inanimate visual referent on the basis of number or gender information. The dependent variables are accuracy and response time. A total of sixty-nine children aged from 4;6 to 7;5 participated. The results show that children are more accurate and faster in selecting the referent when they use number information compared to the condition in which this matching operation is led by gender.

Conceptually-driven analogy in the grammaticalization of Spanish binominal quantifiers

In the long-running and framework-independent discussion among historical linguists on the dominant mechanism in grammaticalization, viz. “reanalysis” or “analogy”, recent case studies (De Smet 2009, 2012, forthcoming; Fischer 2007, 2008, 2012) have proposed in favor of analogy that syntagmatic associations often precede and to some extent trigger structural reanalysis. This article supports analogical thinking in both the grammaticalization (diachrony) and functional organization (synchrony) of binominal quantifiers in Spanish (e.g., un montón de gente ‘a lot of people’). The corpus-based analysis starts off from the “hybrid” status of quantifying nouns (e.g., montón ‘heap, lot’), as they continue to exploit typical noun features in functional uses. The variation in the co-selection patterns is shown to arise from the complex interaction between (conceptual) persistence, analogy and discourse integration. In addition to providing additional evidence for the prevalence and driving force of syntagmatic associations over paradigmatic pressure, the paper characterizes conceptually driven analogy as a two-way discourse phenomenon and zooms in on the reasons for some grammaticalization processes to remain (at least temporarily) “on hold.”

A Computational Approach for Analyzing Inter-Sentential Anaphoric Pronouns in Vietnamese Paragraphs

This paper presents a strategy and a computational model for solving inter-sentential anaphoric pronouns in Vietnamese paragraphs composing simple sentences. The strategy is proposed based on grammatical features of nouns and the focus phenomenon when using pronouns in Vietnamese. In this research, we consider only nouns and pronouns which are human objects in the paragraph, and each anaphoric pronoun will appear one time in one sentence and can appear in adjacent sentences. The computational model is implemented in Prolog and based on applying and improving the models of Ma rk Johnson and Ewan Klein, had been improved by Covington and Schmitz, with theoretical background of Discourse Representation Theory.Analysis of test results shows that this approach which based on linguistic theories helps for well solving inter-sentential anaphoric pronouns in Vietnamese paragraphs.

Object and action naming in Russian- and German-speaking monolingual and bilingual children

The present study investigates the influence of word category on naming performance in two populations: bilingual and monolingual children. The question is whether and, if so, to what extent monolingual and bilingual children differ with respect to noun and verb naming and whether a noun bias exists in the lexical abilities of bilingual children. Picture naming of objects and actions by Russian–German bilingual children (aged 4–7 years) was compared to age-matched monolingual children. The results clearly demonstrate a naming deficit of bilingual children in comparison to monolingual children that increases with age. Noun learning is more fragile in bilingual contexts than is verb learning. In bilingual language acquisition, nouns do not predominate over verbs as much as is seen in monolingual German and Russian children. The results are discussed with respect to semantic-conceptual aspects and language-specific features of nouns and verbs, and the impact of input on the acquisition of these word categories.

The Semantics of the Dutch Gender System

In this paper, it is argued that, although Dutch gender assignment is not systematically organized along semantic lines in the lexicon, the gender system has a semantic basis. This semantic basis involves a distinction between masculine/common gender associated with a high degree of individuation on the one hand, and neuter gender associated with a low degree of individuation, on the other hand. This is in line with Audring (2006, 2009), who found that Dutch pronouns often show semantic agreement along these lines. It is shown that the same semantic distinction between the genders can also be found in the nominal domain. It surfaces particularly in cases where lexically stored gender does not play a role. The semantic distinction arguably goes back to Proto-Indo-European. It is argued that, since nominal gender has become an invariable, lexically stored feature of nouns, the semantic basis of nominal gender assignment has become disrupted. This causes a con-flict between lexical and semantic gender agreement in pronouns. It is suggested that the surfacing of semantic agreement in this conflict is connected with a reduced marking of lexical gender on adnominal elements.

Tracking neural coding of perceptual and semantic features of concrete nouns

We present a methodological approach employing magnetoencephalography (MEG) and machine learning techniques to investigate the flow of perceptual and semantic information decodable from neural activity in the half second during which the brain comprehends the meaning of a concrete noun. Important information about the cortical location of neural activity related to the representation of nouns in the human brain has been revealed by past studies using fMRI. However, the temporal sequence of processing from sensory input to concept comprehension remains unclear, in part because of the poor time resolution provided by fMRI. In this study, subjects answered 20 questions (e.g. is it alive?) about the properties of 60 different nouns prompted by simultaneous presentation of a pictured item and its written name. Our results show that the neural activity observed with MEG encodes a variety of perceptual and semantic features of stimuli at different times relative to stimulus onset, and in different cortical locations. By decoding these features, our MEG-based classifier was able to reliably distinguish between two different concrete nouns that it had never seen before. The results demonstrate that there are clear differences between the time course of the magnitude of MEG activity and that of decodable semantic information. Perceptual features were decoded from MEG activity earlier in time than semantic features, and features related to animacy, size, and manipulability were decoded consistently across subjects. We also observed that regions commonly associated with semantic processing in the fMRI literature may not show high decoding results in MEG. We believe that this type of approach and the accompanying machine learning methods can form the basis for further modeling of the flow of neural information during language processing and a variety of other cognitive processes.

La dénotation spatiale des noms d’événements

This paper deals with the spatial features of event-denoting nouns [EvNs], which are often overlooked in the linguistic literature on space. EvNs can refer to spatial entities, as they can be used as trajectors in localization sentences (Il y a une cérémonie dans l’église ‘There is a ceremony in the church’). Still, EvNs differ in several ways from nouns denoting prototypical spatial entities. They do not combine with complements denoting spatial extension (*une cérémonie de deux hectares ‘a four acres’ ceremony’), and they are associated with specific nouns and verbs of location (le lieu / *la place de la cérémonie ‘the location / the place of the ceremony’, Une cérémonie a lieu / *se trouve dans l’église ‘A ceremony takes place / is in the church’). It is assumed that the peculiarity of the spatial denotation of EvNs is due to their direct relation to time. The dependence between the spatial and temporal properties of EvNs shows when these nouns are used as landmarks (Pierre se rend à la cérémonie ‘Peter goes to the ceremony’). First, spatial eventive landmarks bear a temporal specification. Second, the temporal features of events determine their ability to be used as spatial landmarks.

Do Differences in Grammatical Form between Languages Explain Differences in Ontology between Different Philosophical Traditions?: A Critique of the Mass-Noun Hypothesis

It is an assumed view in Chinese philosophy that the grammatical differences between English or Indo-European languages and classical Chinese explain some of the differences between the Western and Chinese philosophical discourses. Although some philosophers have expressed doubts about the general link between classical Chinese philosophy and syntactic form of classical Chinese, I discuss a specific hypothesis, i.e., the mass-noun hypothesis, in this essay. The mass-noun hypothesis assumes that a linguistic distinction such as between the singular terms and the predicates is sufficient to justify or necessarily leads to a specific ontological distinction such as the distinction between the particular and the universal. I argue that one cannot read off semantic properties simply from syntactic ones and hence the syntactic differences do not automatically translate into the semantic differences between languages, that the syntactic features of Chinese nouns do not have explanatory significance in explaining why the particular-universal problem does not arise in the classical period of Chinese philosophy, and that the part-whole ontology allegedly informed by the mass-noun-like semantics does not provide a natural or intuitive picture of the language-world relation.

Descriptive issues of derivation and inflection in Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho) with particular reference to ‘number’

The binary division of morphological processes into derivation and inflection was originally devised with regard to the classical languages. This division is often challenged by data from individual languages, especially those from a non-classical origin. In the Bantu languages, for instance, the noun class system provides an interesting example of an overlap between derivation and inflection. To illustrate this, the focus in this article will fall particularly on ‘number’, traditionally classified as an inflectional feature of nouns. Due to the unique formation of nouns in the Bantu languages (where both singular and plural forms are marked for number) and their classification into noun classes (grammatical class genders), the prefixes employed to mark number not only exhibit inflectional characteristics, but also productive derivational characteristics. This contribution aims to approach the marking of nouns for number within the context of two approaches to word formation in the Bantu languages, namely the so-called ‘root-based approach’ versus the ‘word-based approach’. Although examples will be provided from Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho), one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, it is believed that the observations will also be valid for other Bantu languages.

Mood and modality in finite noun complement clauses

The present paper presents a corpus-based contrastive analysis of modality in English and French finite noun complement clauses. On the one hand, we claim on the basis of cross-linguistic and semantic evidence that modality is a common intrinsic feature of nouns that license that/que complement clauses, and, as a consequence, that head nouns are modal stance markers. On the other hand, this paper shows that indicative-subjunctive alternation in that/que noun complement clauses is determined by the modality type of the governing noun. Contrastive analysis of French and English provides evidence to substantiate these claims.

Determiner selection in romance languages: Evidence from French.

Determiner selection requires the retrieval of the noun's syntactic features (e.g., gender) and sometimes of its phonological features. Miozzo and Caramazza (1999) argued that the selection of determiners in Germanic languages is more straightforward than in Romance languages because it is not dependent on the phonological properties of the following word. In the present study, we used the picture-word interference paradigm to investigate the dependency of the determiner on the noun's features in French. In 3 experiments, we found a gender congruency effect at +200 stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), indicating that participants were slower to produce the name of a picture (determiner + noun) when the picture-word pair was incongruent in gender than when it was congruent. We failed to replicate this effect at 0 SOA, in line with previous studies (Alario & Caramazza, 2002). Our results suggest that the features involved in determiner selection are not language specific but rather are specific to the determiner system.