Grammatical Variation Research Articles

A semi-automatic approach to biomedical semantic role corpus construction

A semi-automatic solution to build a biomedical semantic role corpus named PASBio+ was proposed. The corpus was annotated with a predicate argument structure, the important information that revealed the main content of a sentence. Because more than 86% of the arguments in the biomedical domain significantly differed from those in the general domain, this proposed corpus was labeled on top of 317 labeled sentences from PASBio, the argument frameset specifically designed for the Biomedical domain. From these sentences, the proposed semi-automatic solution additionally generated 87 sentences which were manually annotated by our experts. More instances were further generated by using the virtual example method, a powerful and flexible data augmentation technique that has been successfully applied in a wide range of tasks. Specifically, two sequential rules (the swap rule and the replace rule) were proposed to ensure that the biomedical knowledge was always kept correct. PASBio+ was also augmented by adding grammatical variants of the original sentences which kept the corpus having a wide coverage of diverse natural writing styles. In addition, from the very beginning, the PASBio's original sentence set was also enriched by an external text source which was an additional set of sentences selected from GREC biomedical corpus. As a result, a corpus with 2,500 fully labeled sentences with a uniform frequency distribution among predicates was obtained, thereby eliminating the problem of data sparsity and helping to restrict the overfitting in machine learning. The experimental results showed that when using the augmented corpus to train a semantic role labeling model, an increase in the F score by 52.2% or 22.5% were obtained compared to those trained by using the original PASBio corpus or a general domain one, respectively.

Approaches to the study of address in pluricentric languages: methodological reflections

Abstract While research on pluricentricity has traditionally focused on phonological, lexical and grammatical variation across national varieties, pluricentric languages also provide a rich laboratory for the exploration of pragmatic variation, and potentially new insights into the complexities of both pragmatics and pluricentricity. Pluricentric pragmatics remains a developing field and determining appropriate methodologies and strategies for data collection remains open to evaluation and assessment. Methodological considerations pertaining to address research in pluricentric languages are made from a range of perspectives, which are typically interconnected and will depend on the intended research focus. In this contribution we present a critical reflection on methodological aspects of pragmatic research, based on our own experiences investigating address in several pluricentric languages (in particular German and English). After a brief overview of the pluricentric languages considered and their address systems we provide an outline of the research projects reviewed. We then discuss in detail issues regarding data types and data collection (in particular questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and various online data) and consider further methodological aspects such as the choice of research framework, context and type of address investigated, quantitative and/or qualitative approaches taken and whether the research focus is on actual use, reported use and/or perceptions. We conclude with some suggestions for further research directions.

On the variation of fragmental constructions in British English and American English post-match interviews

Abstract This article takes a cognitive, interactional perspective on pluricentricity and examines the use of fragmental constructions in a mid-sized dataset, drawing on recordings of British English and American English post-match interviews (PMIs), i.e. media interviews conducted with football players after matches in the British and North American top leagues. It examines what types of fragmental constructions are deployed in the PMIs and whether the use and distribution of such constructions vary between the British and American “communities of practice” (Lave/Wenger 1991). The study finds that the quantity and quality of fragments largely differ, with the British English data showing a higher relative frequency of fragmental constructions, more grammatical variation, and a use of fragmental constructions which do not necessarily draw on latent grammatical structures from the prior speech for meaning-making. It has been suggested by Biber et al. (1999) that clausal elliptical structures are generally less typical of American English. The present genre-specific analysis suggests an interdependence between fragmental constructions and their routinisation and frozenness, interactional constraints, as well as deviant sports and media cultures shared by these communities of practice, which can be treated as a form of “enregisterment” (Agha 2007).

Complex methods to assess complex problems: using Natural Language Processing to explore Health Related Qualitiy of Life in endometriosis

Background and Objectives: Endometriosis is a benign, although chronic painful condition that represents a major burden in women’s life, affecting all the domains of their health related quality of life (HRQL). The objective of this work is to conduct a Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews assessing HRQL of women with endometriosis, and to test a methodology based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) to assess factors associated with losses of HRQL linked with the most relevant clinical symptoms that women with endometriosis experience: pain and dyspareunia.Methods:We extracted free text from articles included in the Systematic Reviews with 'Pain' and 'dyspareunia' as keywords, and we used NLP to identify their occurrences, grammatical variants and meaningful context words. Our model used a word2vec skip-gram approach to predict context following our keywords.Results: Text data included 6,430 context words corresponding to 1,655 unique words in the 17 different systematic reviews that were included for review.Conclusions: The method we have tested using NLP has demonstrated to be valid to capture the complexity of issues that surround endometriosis and affects women´s HRQL. Among the diversity of symptoms that women with endometriosis experience, chronic pelvic pain has the highest impact on their HRQL. Pain affects their physical health, but also the social and functioning dimensions of women’s life. Painful intercourse has also a significant impact on the sexual life of women with endometriosis, and disturbing the emotional wellbeing of women. HRQL is also affected by the clinical complexities of endometriosis, the difficulties to reach to a diagnosis as well as to provide women with effective medical care. Different measurements, instruments and approaches have been proposed to measure HRQL in endometriosis, but it seems necessary the use of common instruments to facilitate comparisons across studies.

‘VV看’의 주관화와 화용론적 분석

In this paper, we discussed the subjectification process of “VV-kan” to represent an attempt and the pragmatic function of “VV-kan”. “VV-kan” is a structure that combines verb overlap VV and tentative particle “Kan(看)”, and in this composition, verb overlap VV is the central meaning and “Kan(看)” is a grammar function word that strengthens the meaning of attempt. Based on theory of subjectivity of Traugott and Langacker, we can see the tendency to develop from objective to subjective in the process of changing tentative particle from verb. Changes in the meaning of “Kan” resulted in grammatical variations, which resulted in object elimination as object components changed from concrete components to abstract components, and eventually changed to the tentative particle “Kan(看)”. While the original meaning of “Kan” rather than “from afar” causes objective interpretation, as “Kan” is subjective, it develops into an observation meaning, a test meaning, and an attempt, resulting in a more and more subjective interpretation. The use environment of ‘VV’ has the characteristics of fieldality in which speakers and listeners are present in the same time·space position. As a result, it will not only serve as a consideration to the speaker or the other party, but also serve as pragmatic function that increases the feasibility of the attempt.

On the context-sensitive grammar of the genetic code

We address the possibilities of the semiotic description of the genetic information as a dual and self-replicative system of correspondence between its biochemical substance and semiotic form of organization. Combining the principles of contextual dependence and arbitrariness of sign leads to the conclusion that the genetic code's primary elements (nucleotides) can be considered not as biochemical constants but as semiotic or, more precisely, grammatical variables. We suggest describing the genetic code as a language, consisting of 1) units of the alphabet; 2) a vocabulary that includes meaningful items and the rules of correspondence between units of different levels; 3) context-sensitive grammar - a system of rules for the formation of units based on abstract grammatical categories.

Subjuntivo en oraciones independientes

AbstractIn this paper, three cases of grammatical variation in Spanish are studied in which a subjunctive verb alternates with another verbal mood in a main clause: optative main sentences with a bare subjunctive verb (alternating with optative main sentences introduced by a conjunction or an adverb); declarative and interrogative sentences with a subjunctive verb (alternating with a conditional verb); and «retrospective imperative» sentences (where the subjunctive mood alternates with a perfect infinitive). It is proposed that, in the varieties where these main clauses with a subjunctive verb are possible, the subjunctive mood has a performative value and satisfies the illocutionary properties in Force associated with sentential modality. The performative value of subjunctive is associated with anirrealismodal base, which is provided by the lexical meaning of a modal verb or by the past perfect temporal anchoring of tense. The proposal shows that the same conditions constraint the three constructions under study and explains the coincidence between the varieties that allow the performative subjunctive (or use it more frequently).

New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change

Research on grammatical variation and change has traditionally been based on diachronic and synchronic corpus analysis, but the growing importance of experimental approaches to the study of language has led many researchers to combine corpus study with experimentation to systematically examine linguistic variability and stability [...]

THE COMMENTARY ON THE FIRST TIMOTHY IN THE 14TH-CENTURY TOLSTOVSKII APOSTOLUS

The article discusses the lexical and grammatical parameters of previously understudied commentary on the First Timothy, presented in the 14th-century Apostolos manuscript, containing the continuous text. In order to determine the commentary textological status in this manuscript, the author studied the linguistic material in two aspects: first, a search for similarities and differences with twenty other hand-written sources from the 12th-16th centuries was done; second, the degree of accuracy in following the Greek original was established. It proved the original position of the commentary in the Tolstovskii Apostolus: the main text of the epistle is similar to other sources, whereas, in the commentary, the lexical and grammatical variants of the Tolstoy manuscript are not supported at all. It may indicate the influence of the still unknown protograph containing the commentary. In terms of exactness of following the Greek primary source, the Tolstovskii Apostolus gives greater accuracy at the lexical level. At the grammatical level, inaccuracies can affect the transmission of Greek grammemes or syntactic constructions and can be due to the syntactic complexity of the Greek text. Also, certain errors and discrepancies not previously noted in the epistle and its commentary edition were commented on .

Variation isn't that hard: Morphosyntactic choice does not predict production difficulty.

The following paper explores the link between production difficulty and grammatical variability. Using a sub-sample of the Switchboard Corpus of American English (285 transcripts, 34 speakers), this paper shows that the presence of variable contexts does not positively correlate with two metrics of production difficulty, namely filled pauses (um and uh) and unfilled pauses (speech planning time). When 20 morphosyntactic variables are considered collectively (N= 6,268), there is no positive effect. In other words, variable contexts do not correlate with measurable production difficulties. These results challenge the view that grammatical variability is somehow sub-optimal for speakers, with additional burdensome cognitive planning.

Assessing the impact of syntactic complement type on the modifying status of complement-taking predicates: the case of imagine

The present study examines the grammaticalization potential of different syntactic complement types by means of a case study of the complement-taking predicate (CTP) imagine. Building on the assumption that CTP-clauses can be conceived of as embedded within a larger taxonomy of interrelated constructions at various levels of schematicity, it is argued that the development of grammatical variants with one complement type should also be viewed in relation to other complementation patterns realized by that predicate. Similarities and differences between complementation types were visualized by means of a hierarchical cluster analysis of 2000 instances of imagine from the Spoken BNC2014 corpus. It is shown that there is a distribution of labor between the complement types in terms of the structure and semantics of their respective CTP-clauses. Qualitative analyses furthermore confirm that only CTP-clauses with zero complementation meet all criteria for grammatical status, although interpersonal functions can also be found with other syntactic complement types. The exploitation of this interpersonal function, it is argued, may eventually also result in the grammaticalization of more formulaic units with imagine.

Children's comprehension of prosodically marked focus in Hungarian: How mandatory syntactic focus-marking affects the trajectory of acquisition.

This study investigates children's identification of prosodic focus in Hungarian, a language in which syntactic focus-marking is mandatory. Assuming that regular syntactic focus-marking diminishes the disambiguating role of prosodic marking in acquisition, we expected that in sentences in which focus is only disambiguated by prosody, adult-like comprehension of prosodic focus-marking should be delayed in comparison to the Germanic and Romance languages investigated previously using the same experimental method that we adopted. Our results, confirming this prediction, suggest that the developmental trajectory of the comprehension of prosodic focus-marking may be substantially affected by cross-linguistic grammatical variation in the marking of focus.

Preposition Stranding vs. Pied-Piping—The Role of Cognitive Complexity in Grammatical Variation

Grammatical variation has often been said to be determined by cognitive complexity. Whenever they have the choice between two variants, speakers will use that form that is associated with less processing effort on the hearer’s side. The majority of studies putting forth this or similar analyses of grammatical variation are based on corpus data. Analyzing preposition stranding vs. pied-piping in English, this paper sets out to put the processing-based hypotheses to the test. It focuses on discontinuous prepositional phrases as opposed to their continuous counterparts in an online and an offline experiment. While pied-piping, the variant with a continuous PP, facilitates reading at the wh-element in restrictive relative clauses, a stranded preposition facilitates reading at the right boundary of the relative clause. Stranding is the preferred option in the same contexts. The heterogenous results underline the need for research on grammatical variation from various perspectives.

“It just sounds proper common”: Exploring the social meanings expressed by nonstandard grammar

It has been suggested that morphosyntax has more constrained social meanings than phonological variation, despite the scarcity of empirical research evidencing this claim. By using frequency correlations to isolate stylized moments of grammatical variation, this paper provides evidence of the rich social meanings constructed by nonstandard11We use the term ‘nonstandard’ to refer to linguistic variants that are not codified in the standardised variety of a language. This reflects usual practice in variationist sociolinguistics. We recognize the hegemony of standard language ideologies and the potential for the term ‘nonstandard’ to further marginalize highly regular and frequent modes of language. However, alternative terms such as ‘regional dialect forms’ do not capture the fact that grammatical items are employed across regional and social styles of speech. Also, as our paper demonstrates, variants identified as ‘nonstandard’ are routinely stigmatized, whereas forms described as ‘regional’ are not always sanctioned in the same way or to the same degree; compare, for instance, the use of negative concord (I didn’t do nothing to mean ‘I didn’t do anything’) with the use of a variant like multiple modals (I might could do it to mean ‘I might be able to do it’). Our use of ‘nonstandard’ is intended to identify variants which undergo prescription precisely because of comparison with standardised alternatives. However, note that we refer to individual nonstandard variants as elements of a person’s diverse repertoire (Snell 2013), without presuming that a specific instance of a nonstandard form equates to speaking in a ‘nonstandard dialect’. grammar. In particular, we show that, whilst definite article reduction (DAR), nonstandard were, and negative concord work together in one British working class young person's speech to produce an intimate, collaborative style, these variants are used strategically to index subtly different states and alignments. We also show that other grammatical variants – use of nonstandard irregular preterit forms and demonstrative them – are not used strategically to convey interactional positioning. The different function of these variants demonstrates the diversity of morphosyntax, raising questions about the relationship between grammar and social meaning, ideology, pragmatics and linguistic processing. We argue that addressing these questions not only benefits our understanding of social meaning across different levels of linguistic architecture, it also provides us with better evidence to advocate for alternative (and more suitable) models of linguistic variability in educational discourse.

Kennings and variability

Abstract A casual examination of the skaldic corpus suggests that a very large proportion of kennings are unique, that is, the nouns that form a kenning are very unlikely to appear elsewhere as a kenning, even when grammatical variation is taken into account. This enormous productivity is due to the principle of variability and substitution in kennings. The phenomenon is discussed in Fidjestøl’s 1974 structural analysis of the kenning system and presented there as a reversal of the principle of linguistic economy. This paper investigates this phenomenon by quantitatively analysing the kenning corpus as recorded in the skaldic database, in order to identify matching kennings within the corpus. The results are broken down according to the complexity of the kennings in question and are then examined in relation to the structural framework of the kenning system. It is shown, firstly, that a relatively small number of kennings are repeated (10–12 % of kennings are repeated), but that there is a fairly high amount of repetition among simple kennings (at least 25 % of simple kennings are found elsewhere in the corpus), suggesting that the kenning system has quantitative similarities with other linguistic systems, albeit with a much higher level of variability.

Directives in the construction site: Grammatical design and work phases in second language interactions with crane operators

The paper investigates directives addressed to tower crane operators by a construction worker. By examining grammatical variation in connection with load relocation tasks, the study shows how the design and the sequential positioning of directive turns vary systematically according to a particular phase of the work task and the overall structural organization of the activity. The worker's selection of lexico-syntactic forms and embodied actions displays an orientation to the different stages of the work task being carried out. The sequential, compositional and morpho-syntactic differences in the formation of directives serve to manage and display task progressivity. The worker speaks L2 Norwegian with several unidiomatic features, but nonetheless displays a systematic differentiation between the forms in orienting to the sequential and phase-structural characteristics of the actions being performed.

The role of age and gender in grammatical variation in world Englishes

AbstractYoung speakers and women have been identified as leaders of language change in the English language. However, sociolinguistic studies addressing grammatical variation according to the age and gender of speakers are infrequent in world Englishes mainly due to the dearth of corpora with explicit detailed metadata. In this paper we explore the effect of these two factors on language innovation and creativity as represented in the International Corpus of English (ICE). For that purpose, we have selected two high‐frequency grammatical phenomena: (i) the expression of perfect meaning, which exhibits variability between different forms; and (ii) relative clauses, with variation in the use of relativizers. A preliminary analysis of the variable age shows that young speakers behave differently as regards both the expression of perfect meaning and the choice of relativizers. With this study we hope to contribute to this still small but growing body of sociolinguistic research on grammatical variation in world Englishes.

Varying Means of Grammatical Parallelism in the Church Slavonic Translations of Psalms of the 11th–16th Centuries

As a metrically organized poetic text, the Psalter is built on the principle of substantive and formal parallelism of verses and stanzas in the Hebrew text as well as in Greek and Church Slavonic translations. In the article, based on the material of Slavic translations of different times (from the Sinai Psalter of the 11 th century to the Psalter of 1552 by Maximus the Greek), cases of assimilation / dissimilation of grammatical forms in parallel text structures are considered. The variability which arises in the process of dissimilation has neither genetic (South Slavonic vs East Slavonic, archaic vs new, standard vs non-standard forms), nor functional (literary vs non-literary forms), but rhetorical nature of stylistic variation, conditioned by the structure of the text. The analysis revealed that in early Slavonic psalter redactions the choice and the number of variable grammatical forms are limited; the texts of the 16 th century, namely the Psalms of 1552 translated by Maximus the Greek, are particularly characterized by stylistic grammatical variability, concerning the most different forms (from the substantive Gen. and Dat. cases to the aorist and perfect in the 3 rd person). The examined cases of the dissimilated grammatical forms in parallel contexts of the Psalter are supported by some original Maximus the Greek's works, so that these forms should be considered as stylistic variants of the literary Church Slavonic language.

Can Frequency Account for the Grammatical Choices of Children and Adults in Nominal Modification Contexts? Evidence from Elicited Production and Child-Directed Speech

There is consensus that languages possess several grammatical variants satisfying the same conversational function. Nevertheless, it is a matter of debate which principles guide the adult speaker’s choice and the child’s acquisition order of these variants. Various proposals have suggested that frequency shapes adult language use and language acquisition. Taking the domain of nominal modification as its testing ground, this paper explores in two studies the role that frequency of structures plays for adults’ and children’s structural choices in German. In Study 1, 133 three- to six-year-old children and 21 adults were tested with an elicited production task prompting participants to identify an agent or a patient referent among a set of alternatives. Study 2 analyzed a corpus of child-directed speech to examine the frequency of passive relative clauses, which children, similar to adults, produced very often in Study 1. Importantly, passive relatives were found to be infrequent in the child input. These two results show that the high production rate of rare structures, such as passive relatives, is difficult to account for with frequency. We claim that the relation between frequency in natural speech and use of a given variant in a specific context is indirect: speakers may opt for the less grammatically complex computation rather than for the variant most frequently used in spontaneous speech.

Where Are the Goalposts? Generational Change in the Use of Grammatical Gender in Irish

The Irish language is an indigenous minority language undergoing accelerated convergence with English against a backdrop of declining intergenerational transmission, universal bilingualism, and exposure to large numbers of L2 speakers. Recent studies indicate that the interaction of complex morphosyntax and variable levels of consistent input result in some aspects of Irish grammar having a long trajectory of acquisition or not being fully acquired. Indeed, for the small group of children who are L1 speakers of Irish, identifying which “end point” of this trajectory is appropriate against which to assess these children’s acquisition of Irish is difficult. In this study, data were collected from 135 proficient adult speakers and 306 children (aged 6–13 years) living in Irish-speaking (Gaeltacht) communities, using specially designed measures of grammatical gender. The results show that both quality and quantity of input appear to impact on acquisition of this aspect of Irish morphosyntax: even the children acquiring Irish in homes where Irish is the dominant language showed poor performance on tests of grammatical gender marking, and the adult performance on these tests indicate that children in Irish-speaking communities are likely to be exposed to input showing significant grammatical variability in Irish gender marking. The implications of these results will be discussed in terms of language convergence, and the need for intensive support for mother-tongue speakers of Irish.