Formal Linguistics Research Articles

Quoting Nothing

This paper argues that the practice of employing bare pairs of quotation marks to represent the empty string in formal linguistics and computer science is well-founded in the implicit conventions governing the use of quotation marks in natural language. In the framework of the Inscriptional Theory of Quotation (ITQ), it is argued that sentences containing empty quotation (i.e., empty quotational sentences) are grammatical and meaningful. Furthermore, the notion of an empty string is employed in the analysis of reported speech to provide a unified account that identifies mixed quotation as the primary form of reported speech.

Breakthrough Contributions of Romance Languages to Formal Linguistics

Breakthrough Contributions of Romance Languages to Formal Linguistics: Introduction to the Special Issue

Gestural focus marking in Italo-Romance

Gesture has been a topic of recent interest in formal linguistics, especially with respectto its pragmatic and semantic properties (Lascarides & Stone 2009a,b; Ebert & Ebert2014; Schlenker 2018; Esipova 2019a). There is emerging consensus within this literaturethat the meaning of certain gestures is integrated into the semantic content of the utter-ances they co-occur with (as co-speech gestures). This would follow straightforwardly ifsuch gestures were in fact morphemes, meaning they have syntactic status as well (Jouit-teau 2004, 2007; Sailor & Colasanti 2020). This paper provides additional support forthis hypothesis, involving the conventionalised co-speech gesture RING-FOCUS (Kendon1995:268–274) in Lancianese, a southern Italo-Romance language. On the basis of origi-nal experimental fieldwork, I argue that RING-FOCUS is a gestural morpheme associatedwith information-structural focus: it arises in focus contexts, temporally aligned with thefocalised constituent. I argue that the RING-FOCUS morpheme is simply a focus marker(of the sort found in Gungbe, Malay, etc.), albeit one whose PF realisation happens to begestural rather than spoken.

Social evolution and commitment: Bridging the gap between formal linguistic theories and language evolution research

This article argues based on some concrete empirical evidence that what is called “(social) commitment” is grammaticalized in human language at the latest stage in the evolution of syntax. It is further argued that as a result of this grammaticalization process, our ancestors acquired a way of making their linguistic communication sufficiently trustable/reliable, by encoding the signaler’s liability to the truthfulness of what is communicated. That is, the presence of commitment as a concrete grammatical element provided our species with a way of (indirectly) solving the problem of dishonesty of linguistic signals. The proposal is made in such a way that its validity can be tested by experimental means, and hence it is hoped that the model presented in this article facilitates important collaborative works among theoretical linguists, (evolutionary) biologists, and other experimentalists. Overall, the idea laid out here aims to bridge the gap between formal linguistics and language evolution studies.

Pedagogical linguistics: Connecting formal linguistics to language teaching

Abstract: This article reports on the beginning of a new pan-European enterprise called pedagogical linguistics, which can be distinguished from related approaches on several grounds. Crucially, pedagogical linguistics centers on teaching structural properties of 'language', not just properties of specific languages. Although this crosslinguistic perspective on language is already part of language practitioners' training, student teachers are often not able to draw the connection between formal linguistic training and their teaching in a multilingual classroom. Pedagogical linguistics addresses this lack of awareness and therefore aims at raising 'linguistic' awareness (in addition to language awareness) by highlighting the relevance of formal structural concepts for language pedagogy.

Functional gestures as morphemes: Some evidence from the languages of Southern Italy

Recently, gestures have been a topic of much interest in formal linguistics, especially with respect to their semantic contribution (Ebert & Ebert 2014; Schlenker 2018a; Esipova 2019a; i.a.). A consistent observation within this literature is that the semantic content of gestures can be integrated into the meaning of spoken utterances. One way to explain the semantic contribution of gestures is to treat them as part of the grammar: namely, if gesture can participate in semantic relations, it is because they appear in syntactic representations (Jouitteau 2004; 2007; Sailor & Colasanti 2020; Colasanti 2021a; b; to appear). Following this previous literature, I present some preliminary data on the conventionalised co-speech gesture Mano a Borsa (MAB; i.e. 🤌🏽 ‘pursed hand’ in Neapolitan, a southern Italo-Romance language. Based on original fieldwork with 96 speakers in Naples, I argue that MAB is the realisation of a particular flavour of interrogative C, consistent with its preference for aligning with the beginning of the clause in wh-interrogatives, even in wh-in-situ contexts. In other words, I argue that MAB exhibits behaviour typical of a wh-question morpheme, albeit one whose PF realisation happens to be gestural rather than spoken. 

The Baseline/Elaboration Model for the Constructional Meaning of Chinese “V1OV2de” Construction

Chinese “V1OV2de” construction has its special syntactic features. The traditional grammar of formal linguistics finds it difficult to analyse this atypical and marginal construction, but the theory of baseline/elaboration in Cognitive Grammar can provide a solution for it. The paper studies the constructional meaning of “V1OV2de” construction based on the theory of baseline/elaboration model. It draws a conclusion that “V1OV2de” construction has two constructional meanings: “cause-effect relationship” and “non-cause-effect relationship”. In addition, it also discusses the reasons why the verb appears for the second time in “V1OV2de” construction. The constructional meanings of “V1OV2de” construction are generated because of the two same verbs.

A Study on the Formal Syntax-Semantics Interface of the Particle for Numerical Approximation <i>Lai</i>

As the subsystem of human natural language, numeral is not only an important window to pry into the mindset and culture of a nation, meanwhile, due to its specialty in morphological, syntax and semantics, it has always been drawing the high attention of linguists. As the organic part of numeral system, particles for numerical approximation are frequently used in Mandarin Chinese, and their usage is rather complicated. There have been fruitful achievements about the research on such linguistic phenomenon, but controversies have also never ceased. Under the theoretical framework of formal linguistics, this paper mainly explores the syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation of the particle for numeral approximation<i> lai </i>in modern Mandarin Chinese. It is demonstrated that syntactically, whether suffixed behind numerals, numeral-classifier, or just classifier, <i>lai, </i>as a bound morpheme, always functions upon the whole phrase ahead, but it just semantically associates with its immediately adjacent digit word or classifier. Semantically, this paper ascertains the value of <i>lai</i> as λxλy[(x-10^y×20%)~(x+10^y×20%)] when it follows a numeral, which is evidenced by various kinds of numerals and adequate explanation, and in the meantime, it verifies that the aforementioned semantic model is also in accordance with the case when <i>lai</i> suffixes a numeral-classifier or classifier by analogy. Through the syntactic-semantic interface analysis on the particle for numeral approximation<i> lai, </i>this research is likely to deepen people’s understanding about the whole numeral system, thereby facilitating the study on the ontology of human natural language, and at the meantime, it may play a positive role in the enhancement of Chinese-foreign language teaching and artificial intelligence.

Delta-Band Neural Responses to Individual Words Are Modulated by Sentence Processing.

To understand language, we need to recognize words and combine them into phrases and sentences. During this process, responses to the words themselves are changed. In a step toward understanding how the brain builds sentence structure, the present study concerns the neural readout of this adaptation. We ask whether low-frequency neural readouts associated with words change as a function of being in a sentence. To this end, we analyzed an MEG dataset by Schoffelen et al. (2019) of 102 human participants (51 women) listening to sentences and word lists, the latter lacking any syntactic structure and combinatorial meaning. Using temporal response functions and a cumulative model-fitting approach, we disentangled delta- and theta-band responses to lexical information (word frequency), from responses to sensory and distributional variables. The results suggest that delta-band responses to words are affected by sentence context in time and space, over and above entropy and surprisal. In both conditions, the word frequency response spanned left temporal and posterior frontal areas; however, the response appeared later in word lists than in sentences. In addition, sentence context determined whether inferior frontal areas were responsive to lexical information. In the theta band, the amplitude was larger in the word list condition ∼100 milliseconds in right frontal areas. We conclude that low-frequency responses to words are changed by sentential context. The results of this study show how the neural representation of words is affected by structural context and as such provide insight into how the brain instantiates compositionality in language.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Human language is unprecedented in its combinatorial capacity: we are capable of producing and understanding sentences we have never heard before. Although the mechanisms underlying this capacity have been described in formal linguistics and cognitive science, how they are implemented in the brain remains to a large extent unknown. A large body of earlier work from the cognitive neuroscientific literature implies a role for delta-band neural activity in the representation of linguistic structure and meaning. In this work, we combine these insights and techniques with findings from psycholinguistics to show that meaning is more than the sum of its parts; the delta-band MEG signal differentially reflects lexical information inside and outside sentence structures.

形式语言学研究现状和发展趋势——第九届形式语言学国际研讨会会议综述

形式语言学研究现状和发展趋势——第九届形式语言学国际研讨会会议综述

Analyzing simple past tense through a functional and a formal perspective

This paper is aimed at comparing and presenting two grammar books about simple past tense teaching. One of them is Susan Kesner Bland Intermediate Grammar: From Form to Meaning and Use. And John e Alison Kooistra the power drill, reproducible 70 lessons. In order to do so, we trace the question “what’s the difference between teaching simple past tense in two different approaches?” We intend to bring up the functional and formal approach. Therefore, we inspire this work based on qualitative research in a descriptive method. For achieving our thesis, we cut out simple past tense throughout this paper. Hence, we intend to spot this work based on it. Thus, we concluded that, two grammar books that spread two different approaches: functional and formal. In deep, we found that the formal one is bound to rules, while the functional one is related to contextualized situations. Furthermore, the functional one is adjusted to contemporaneity in the classroom context. While the formal approach overview only on a universal grammar. Formal linguistics is embodied most notably by the work of Noam Chomsky and the paradigm of Generative Grammar. Afterward, we intend to reflect which approach should be better for a classroom and student’s learning.

The syntax of the diminutive morpheme-aajin Egyptian Arabic, Syrian Arabic, and Jordanian Arabic

AbstractThis article investigates the morphosyntactic behavior of the diminutive morpheme-aajin three Arabic dialects (Egyptian Arabic, Syrian Arabic, and Jordanian Arabic). It argues that this morpheme is categorially a head that projects Size Phrase (cf. De Belder, Marijke. 2008. Size matters: Towards a syntactic decomposition of countability. In Natasha Abner &amp; Jason Bishop (eds.),Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 116–122. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project). In so doing, this analysis obviously challenges (Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 2018.Constructing feminine to mean: Gender, number, numeral, and quantifier extensions in Arabic. Lanham: Lexington Books) recent proposal that (non-)concatenative diminutives in Arabic are modifiers that are adjoined to categorized words when they indicate smallness in size. Additionally, this article provides an account of the observation that the diminutive morpheme-aajcan only appear with the feminine ending and a certain group of nouns, including collective aggregates (e.g., fruits and vegetables) and granular aggregates (e.g., grains, nuts, and seeds). We show that words suffixed with the diminutive morpheme-aajcan only give rise to an individuation reading (not a partition or non-count reading). This is syntactically interpreted as indicating that Size Phrase (headed by-aaj) is always dominated in Arabic grammar by Division Phrase (cf. Borer, Hagit. 2005.In name only. Oxford: Oxford University Press), whose presence derives an individuation reading.

The Stone Guest. The Soviet Rediscovery of Formal Linguistics Towards the Early Chomsky

After Stalin’s death, Soviet linguistics seemingly steered in a new direction, enthusiastically adopting mathematical methods within the upsurge of interest in machine translation. This fostered the acceptance of formal models disjointed from the rigid dictates of dialectical materialism and paved the way for the rediscovery of the scientific legacy of (post-)structuralist Euroamerican schools. In the eyes of the protagonists of this epistemological change, linguistics seemed to be freed from the traditional methodological constraints imposed by philology and literature. This short-lived yet intense period, however, is characterized by the polyphonic coexistence of several ideas and personalities, whose research activity can be properly understood and evaluated only from a broader historical perspective, encompassing both earlier and later stages, thus substantially curtailing the explanatory power of historical and thematic periodization. The study aims at examining the salient characteristics of the scientific environment surrounding the early critical reception of Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in the Soviet Union. By tackling specific terminological and epistemological issues, it is argued that the evolution of Soviet linguistics was not defined by abrupt saltational processes, but rather by a constant pendular oscillation which – depending on cultural, political, and historical circumstances – would grant temporary priority to some scientific approaches and orientations at the expense of others.

The at-issue status of ideophones in German: An experimental approach

Formal linguistics generally assumes that form-meaning relations in spoken language are arbitrary and not iconic. Ideophones, such as the English splish-splash have been considered exceptions to this rule of arbitrariness. Recently, however, researchers have begun to examine iconicity in spoken language more closely. Following work which established the default not- at-issue status of iconic co-speech gestures, here we discuss the crosslinguistic evidence for the (not-)at-issueness of ideophones and the factors that may have an influence upon this. We also present what we believe to be the first experimental work on the at-issue status of ideophones, conducted with German speakers. Although German may not be a prototypical ideophonic language, we argue that German ideophones follow crosslinguistic patterns in terms of at-issueness and provide initial evidence for the not-at-issue status of sentence- medial adverbial ideophones in German. This evidence comes from sentence-context matching tasks, where the mismatch effect was significantly larger for sentences containing standard adverbials than those containing sentence-medial adverbial ideophones. We presume that speaker judgements concerning how well target sentences match discourse contexts should be more impaired by mismatches induced by material relevant to the Question Under Discussion (QUD), i.e. at-issue material, than those induced by material irrelevant to the QUD, i.e. not-at- issue material. We thus argue that speakers’ ratings indicate that sentence-medial adverbial ideophones in German are not at-issue. This paper suggests a starting point for investigating the pragmatic status of ideophones crosslinguistically and also allows for comparison to previous research on other iconic enrichments, in particular gestures. This then has implications for our understanding of the at-issue status of iconic enrichments and how these enrichments interact with each other.

Philosophical and methodological bases of cut and sentence interpretation in formal linguistics

Philosophical and methodological bases of cut and sentence interpretation in formal linguistics. Now it remains to answer the question of which of these units - logical units or linguistic units - is more scientifically older. Science has already answered this question - linguistics (broader philology) was separated from the structure of philosophy only in the XVIII century, that is, linguistic definitions were copied from philosophy - from logic. This can be proved by another incident. This section of our work can be concluded with the following general conclusion: In Uzbek formal linguistics, the interpretation of the position of the cut in the sentence structure was given not based on the internal (native, ontological) features of the Uzbek language, but based on the understanding of the cut in Russian formal linguistics. In formal linguistics itself, the interpretation of the cut is based on the understanding of the logical predicate.

Researching language at street level: In memory of Vivian Cook and review of The Language of the English Street Sign

Vivian Cook passed away on 10 December 2021, aged 81 years. Our last conversation was in October and he was very much looking forward to the proof of his latest book The Language of the English Street Sign. We had talked about the book over quite a long time and he showed me various versions of different chapters. As a multicompetent linguist and language educator, Vivian worked on many aspects of language and linguistics. His book, Chomsky’s Universal Grammar, introduced it to generations of aspiring linguists and remains one of the most accessible texts on the topic. He was keen to make connections between formal linguistics and applied linguistics through studies of language teaching and learning, as this 1985 article ‘Chomsky’s Universal Grammar and second language learning’ in this journal demonstrated. He was a father figure in second language acquisition, having established the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA) in 1989 and written many of the classics in the field. From the very beginning of his career, Vivian had a passion for language as used in everyday life. His earlier English language teaching texts included Realistic English in the 1970s and the ‘English for Life’ series in the 1980s. His books, Accommodating Broccoli in the Cemetary and It’s All in a Word (All in a Word for the US edition), made him a global media personality. From the 1990s, Vivian developed a keen interest in writing systems research, which was an extension to his earlier work on spelling. He complained both privately and publicly that modern linguists and philologists, especially those working with European languages, paid little attention to writing systems. He himself wrote a book The English Writing System, edited volumes on second language writing systems and launched a journal, Writing Systems Research, with Bene Bassetti.

Psycholinguistics Analysis of Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders Patients’ Writing and Oral Speech (on the Example of the Autobiographical Texts)

Introduction. There are speech disorders as one of the psychopathology diagnostics criteria in ICD and DSM. However, the linguistic component is not enough studied, so the study topic is actual. The use of text analysis allows to apply psycholinguistics approach to the objectification of thinking disorders. The objective of the study was aimed to detect psycholinguistics features of oral and written speech in patients with schizophrenia.Methods and materials. Participants were 29 schizophrenia patients, 20 patients with personality disorder and 25 healthy participants. Methods: expert assessment, anamnestic assessment, experimental-psychological (tests of thinking, collect memories), linguistic analysis, statistical analysis.Results. Oral speech of patients with schizophrenia is complex and volume, the writing speech is «factual», lexically varied and low communicative. In oral and writing speech of patients with schizophrenia, there are three text types correlated with thinking disorders. Texts of patients with schizophrenia are less volume, simpler in structure, describe more facts than thoughts and feelings, unlike patients with personality disorder and healthy participants.Conclusion. Texts of patients with schizophrenia, personality disorder and healthy participants are different in formal linguistics characteristics. Such characteristics of the speech of patients suffering from schizophrenia as a lot of impersonal sentences describing object attribute, complexly organized speech, emphasis on describing emotions and oneself using the pronoun «I» allow to suppose that the patient has thinking disorders: thinking distortion by formal and latent ways of object attributions, thinking purposefulness disorder, thinking «versatility».

Linguistique informatique et linguistique diachronique : une alliance nécessaire

In this paper, we will try to show how formal linguistics applied to the study of diachrony can be a fundamental asset for research (and consequently also for teaching at a university level) in the field of French language and literature. We will treat successively the analysis of the support verbs (§2), the realization verbs (§3), the intensity collocations (§4) and the pragmatically restricted clichés (§5). In each section, we will present and discuss numerous examples in medieval French accompanied by their published translations into contemporary French.

Glue Semantics

Glue Semantics (Glue) is a general framework for semantic composition and the syntax–semantics interface. The framework grew out of an interdisciplinary collaboration at the intersection of formal linguistics, formal logic, and computer science. Glue assumes a separate level of syntax; this can be any syntactic framework in which syntactic structures have heads. Glue uses a fragment of linear logic for semantic composition. General linear logic terms in Glue meaning constructors are instantiated relative to a syntactic parse. The separation of the logic of composition from structural syntax distinguishes Glue from other theories of semantic composition and the syntax–semantics interface. It allows Glue to capture semantic ambiguity, such as quantifier scope ambiguity, without necessarily positing an ambiguity in the syntactic structure. Glue is introduced here in relation to four of its key properties, which are used as organizing themes: resource-sensitive composition, flexible composition, autonomy of syntax, and syntax/semantics non-isomorphism.

Poverty of the Stimulus Without Tears

ABSTRACT Poverty of the stimulus has been at the heart of ferocious and tear-filled debates at the nexus of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy for decades. This review is intended as a guide for readers without a formal linguistics or philosophy background, focusing on what poverty of the stimulus is and how it’s been interpreted, which is traditionally where the tears have come in. I discuss poverty of the stimulus from the perspective of language development, highlighting how poverty of the stimulus relates to expectations about learning and the data available to learn from. I describe common interpretations of what poverty of the stimulus means when it occurs, and approaches for determining when poverty of the stimulus is in fact occurring. I close with illustrative examples of poverty of the stimulus in the domains of syntax, lexical semantics, and phonology, and discuss the value of identifying instances of poverty of the stimulus when it comes to understanding language development.