Kinds Of Nouns Research Articles

Anaphore associative et anaphore possessive

This paper is devoted to associative anaphora and possessive anaphora with two kinds of nouns. One is meronyms, where a noun denotes a concept that is a part of another as in trunk/tree. The other is what I call “functionally localized” nouns, such as church with respect to village, where the latter denotes a concept that normally implies the existence of the concept denoted by the former : see Kleiber (2001). We first evoke the referential properties of these two kinds of anaphora. The properties of the possessive determiner are then discussed in order to explain its occasional incompatibility with meronyms or functionally localized nouns. Finally, we elucidate the consequences for the choice between associative and possessive anaphora upon textual coherence relations, in particular Claim-Evidence (Cornish, 2009a, b) and Explanation.

Number and Adjectives: the Case of French Activity and Quality Nominals*

Abstract. This article examines the role of Number with regards to adjective distribution in French, and focuses on two kinds of abstract nouns: activity nominals and quality nominals. We show, based on proposals by Knittel (2005), that two patterns of adjectival modification must be distinguished, on both semantic and syntactic grounds: (i) taxonomic modification, which corresponds to the expression of subkinds, is independent from the presence of NumP; (ii) qualifying modification, which occurs only if NumP is present in the nominal structure. Taxonomic modifiers qualify as direct modifiers in the sense of Cinque (2010), whereas qualifying modifiers behave either as direct or as indirect modifiers. Finally, we account for the particular behavior that activity and quality nominals display with regards to adjectival modification by suggesting, along the lines of Borer (2005), that the Num head un(e) is responsible for the partitioning of the noun’s referent. This partitioning, in turn, enables the presence of a qualifying adjective.

English adjectives in -like, and the interplay of collocation and morphology

This paper presents a corpus-based study of English denominal adjectives in -like. Starting with semantic aspects, including the relationship between N-like and like an N, it then reports on the productivity of -like adjectives by discussing the kinds of nouns to which -like is added, along with the distributions of individual formations in the Bank of English corpus. It next draws attention to the marked collocational patterns in which -like adjectives occur. These relate both to sets of items collocating with individual -like adjectives, and to subsets of -like adjectives collocating with individual nouns. There are implications in these bidirectional collocational patterns, it is argued, for studies of productivity and lexicalization: in particular that collocational constraints may exist at the level of morpheme, not just at the level of word or phrase.

Nouns referring to tools and natural objects differentially modulate the motor system

While increasing evidence points to a critical role for the motor system in language processing, the focus of previous work has been on the linguistic category of verbs. Here we tested whether nouns are effective in modulating the motor system and further whether different kinds of nouns – those referring to artifacts or natural items, and items that are graspable or ungraspable – would differentially modulate the system. A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) study was carried out to compare modulation of the motor system when subjects read nouns referring to objects which are Artificial or Natural and which are Graspable or Ungraspable. TMS was applied to the primary motor cortex representation of the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) muscle of the right hand at 150 ms after noun presentation. Analyses of Motor Evoked Potentials (MEPs) revealed that across the duration of the task, nouns referring to graspable artifacts (tools) were associated with significantly greater MEP areas. Analyses of the initial presentation of items revealed a main effect of graspability. The findings are in line with an embodied view of nouns, with MEP measures modulated according to whether nouns referred to natural objects or artifacts (tools), confirming tools as a special class of items in motor terms. Additionally our data support a difference for graspable versus non graspable objects, an effect which for natural objects is restricted to initial presentation of items.

EXTERNALISM, INTERNALISM, AND LOGICAL TRUTH

The aim of this paper is to show what sorts of logics are required by externalist and internalist accounts of the meanings of natural kind nouns. These logics give us a new perspective from which to evaluate the respective positions in the externalist--internalist debate about the meanings of such nouns. The two main claims of the paper are the following: first, that adequate logics for internalism and externalism about natural kind nouns are second-order logics; second, that an internalist second-order logic is a free logic—a second order logic free of existential commitments for natural kind nouns, while an externalist second-order logic is not free of existential commitments for natural kind nouns—it is existentially committed.

Concepts Are More than Percepts: The Case of Action Verbs

Several regions of the posterior-lateral-temporal cortex (PLTC) are reliably recruited when participants read or listen to action verbs, relative to other word and nonword types. This PLTC activation is generally interpreted as reflecting the retrieval of visual-motion features of actions. This interpretation supports the broader theory, that concepts are comprised of sensory-motor features. We investigated an alternative interpretation of the same activations: PLTC activity for action verbs reflects the retrieval of modality-independent representations of event concepts, or the grammatical types associated with them, i.e., verbs. During a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan, participants made semantic-relatedness judgments on word pairs varying in amount of visual-motion information. Replicating previous results, several PLTC regions showed higher responses to words that describe actions versus objects. However, we found that these PLTC regions did not overlap with visual-motion regions. Moreover, their response was higher for verbs than nouns, regardless of visual-motion features. For example, the response of the PLTC is equally high to action verbs (e.g., to run) and mental verbs (e.g., to think), and equally low to animal nouns (e.g., the cat) and inanimate natural kind nouns (e.g., the rock). Thus, PLTC activity for action verbs might reflect the retrieval of event concepts, or the grammatical information associated with verbs. We conclude that concepts are abstracted away from sensory-motor experience and organized according to conceptual properties.

Lexical semantic constraints on noun roots and noun borrowability

While nouns are thought to be more easily borrowed than verbs, this investigation demonstrates that there may be limitations on noun borrowing into certain languages. The case of Zuni is examined, in which conditions of contact similar to that of neighboring languages nevertheless result in a different treatment of the noun lexicon. The possibility of borrowing natural kind nouns into Zuni exists alongside a tendency against borrowing nouns of the artifact type. It is argued that the source of this tendency against artifact noun borrowing in Zuni is the grammatical complexity of the lexical semantic representation for these nouns: grammatical complexity in Zuni noun roots appears to be dispreferred. These findings belie the claim of Thomason and Kaufman (1988) that “any linguistic feature can be transferred to any other language” given an appropriate degree of contact.

English nominalizations in /-s/

The morphology of English words like dependence, linguistics, and news suggests that English has an /-s/ suffix forming certain kinds of abstract nouns not used as plurals. While dependence and dependents are homophones, the former takes singular verb agreement, as do linguistics and news, and the latter takes plural. We argue that English has a highly productive derivational suffix /-s/ that creates abstract nouns from adjectives, dependence from dependent+ /-s/, linguistics from linguistic+ /-s/, and news from new+/-s/. While this suffix originated in the Latin present participle, the sources of a modern /-s/ came into English through extensive borrowing from Latin and French as well as through loan translation and borrowing of Greek words, but then it combined with existing English /-s/ that marked plural or genitive. Orthographic, phonological, morphological, and semantic evidence suggests that this modern /-s/ arose from several distinct sources that came together as a single suffix in the early 17th century.

How necessary are the stripes of a tiger?: Diagnostic and characteristic features in an fMRI study of word meaning

This study contrasted two approaches to word meaning: the statistically determined role of high-contribution features like striped in the meaning of complex nouns like “tiger” typically used in studies of semantic memory, and the contribution of diagnostic features like parent's brother that play a critical role in the meaning of nominal kinds like “uncle.” fMRI monitored regional brain activity while participants read complex noun descriptions consisting of statistically high-contribution and low-contribution features; and nominal kind descriptions consisting of diagnostic and characteristic features. We found different patterns of activation depending on the type of noun and the type of feature contributing to the noun. Complex nouns recruited significantly greater bilateral superior temporal and left prefrontal activation compared to nominal kind nouns, while nominal kind nouns activated bilateral medial parietal and right inferior parietal regions more than complex nouns. Moreover, features making a statistically high contribution to complex noun meaning activated right inferior frontal cortex relative to low-contribution features, while diagnostic features of nominal kinds activated left dorsolateral prefrontal and right parietal regions more than characteristic features. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that at least two different neural mechanisms appear to support word meaning: one driven by a statistically determined approach to feature knowledge, and the other sensitive to the qualitatively critical role that a specific diagnostic feature plays in word meaning.

Lexicon and Context in Feminization in Russian

Many nouns in Russian identify people in terms of membership in groups, defined by activity, role, beliefs, attributes, or origins. Many of these nouns are derived with native Russian suffixes (учи-тель, добровол-ец, сторон-ник, гардероб-щик, прыг-ун); the occasional noun is unsuffixed (врач). Some nouns identifying group membership are borrowings, with or without an etymological suffix in the source language (диктор, корректор, педагог, президент). Most of these masculine nouns of the first declension can form corresponding feminine derivatives of the second declension by adding a suffix, either a modified or expanded form of the masculine suffix, for example -ник/-ница (сторон-ник/сторон-ница), -щик/-щица (гардероб-щик/ гардероб-щица), -ун/-унья (бегун/бегунья) or an additional suffix, -иха (врач/врач-иха), -ша (редактор/редактор-ша), -ка (солист/солист-ка). As is well-known, there is an asymmetry in the usage of these first-declension nouns and their second-declension correlates. The second-declension nouns can refer only to women, but the first-declension nouns can be used in reference to women as well as to men. As a consequence, a man can only be named with a masculine noun, but a woman can in principle be identified by either kind of noun: as врач or врачиха ,a sруководитель or руководительница ,a sписатель or писательница ,a sсторонник or сторонница. It is then natural to ask how, in referring to a woman, speakers make the choice between the correlative masculine and feminine nouns. The modest literature treating these correlative noun pairs has emphasized the social status of women in various occupations and the stylistic properties of the feminine noun. R. Rothstein (1973), observing that “the relative liberation of women in 1917 produced a need for new terminology to refer to women occupying certain jobs or professions”, analyzed the changes in language that came in the wake of this social upheaval by appealing to the markedness of gender: nouns of the masculine gender, unmarked with respect to the feminine, can be used broadly to refer to women. 1 Krysin (Крысин 1974, 277‐296) differentiated lexical items according to the stylistic value of the feminine derivative and constructed two tests that were submitted to approximately three thousand speakers for self-reporting. In one test, speakers were given a list

Defining Abstract Nouns from Citations: From Shame to Ruin, from Affinity to Sorrow

Defining Abstract Nouns from Citations: From Shame to Ruin, from Affinity to Sorrow D: Joseph P. Pickett Houghton Mifflin Company kefining from citations is never an easy task, but in my expedience it can be at its most difficult when the word in question is an abstract noun. The difficulty arises largely from the vagueness of meaning that is inherent in most abstractions, even those diat would seem less abstract or are more direcdy a part of ordinary experience (such as feelings) than otiiers (such as conditions or qualities). Where citations for abstract adjectives can usually be sorted in rough semantic categories on the basis ofthe kinds ofnouns tiiey modify, abstract nouns normally do not have such ready linguistic tip-offs for the definer, and they have to be sorted from the start by assessing the larger context of the quotation. As educated adults, definers usually have some preconceived notion of what a word means, and even preconceived notions about its sense divisions. With abstract nouns, these notions are usually based on conceptual arrangements, linguistic environments, and lexical oppositions drawn from a lifetime of language use and observation. For example , most adults who think of an abstraction like shame see it in contrast to words like honor on the one hand, and guilt on die other. Shame is public disgrace, as opposed to the public approval of honor, and shame is also a bad feeling associated with being caught and disgraced by a community for doing something wrong, rather than private self-reproach or guilt for not living up to a standard or expectation ofbehavior whether anyone else finds out about it or not. Dictionaries:Journal ofthe Dictionary Society ofNorth America 27 (2006) , 143-148 144Joseph Pickett But the citations for a word like this can easily defy such neat conceptual schemes and leave the definer, especially when inexperienced, at a loss for how to proceed. A well known problem in defining is that many citations do not provide sufficient information for the definer to make a comfortable decision about the semantic subfield that a given quotation belongs in. This is true for concrete nouns as well as abstract ones, but citations for abstractions can be especially impoverished in the information they provide about meaning. A definer can construct a plausible semantic scheme for aword, but find that most of the citations at hand are unusable for it because they could just as easily be interpreted as belonging under any of several possible definitions. The abundance of unusable or rejected citations then calls into question the validity of the editor's inchoate semantic distinctions, and the definer can be left wondering if there are any legitimate distinctions worth making in the first place, or if some other semantic scheme should be attempted from scratch. This challenge is not so great for commercial lexicographers as it is for people working on historical dictionaries, who are charged with presenting evidence for the development of a word's meanings over a period of time. To do so responsibly, the editor must include in an entry any number of semantically dubious quotations if only because their date of composition or recording is required or desirable as part of the project's effort to show periodic attestation. Thus, when texts for a given period of time are sparse (as in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in the Middle English period) , and the editor is lucky enough to have a citation from one of them, the editor has no choice but to include it and somehow account for it in the entry, even if he or she cannot be exactly certain of the word's meaning. Other criteria for requiring a given quotation's inclusion in an entry are evidence of dialectal usage (as when a text is known to be written in a particular dialect and has spellings assumed to be indicative of dialectal pronunciation) and evidence of a syntactic construction or collocation that the editor feels should be made available to readers. Working with citations like this can conjure a linguistic landscape that is a mushy, foggy bottomland without discernible semantic landmarks . The editor does well simply to plant semantic signposts at those...

Aspectos da formação dos substantivos postverbais do português

With this work, we intend to demonstrate that conversion is the most adequate mechanism to the description of the formation of Portuguese postverbal nouns. Due to the formal resemblance between these deverbal nouns and the nouns which are the base of nonaffixed verbs, we will analyse some morphophonological, syntactical-thematic and semantic criteria that, when applied jointly, permit the distinction between both kind of nouns

Productivity in context: a case study of a Dutch suffix

The Dutch suffix -heid, like -ness in English, forms abstract nouns from adjectives. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that -heid gives rise to two kinds of abstract nouns: on the one hand, nouns referring to concepts, and on the other hand, nouns referring to states of affairs. An examination of a corpus of newspaper Dutch reveals that the referential function of -heid is typical for the lowest-frequency words, most of which are neologisms. Conversely, its conceptual function is found predominantly among the highest-frequency words. Detailed investigations of the use of these two sorts of words in context showed that the high-frequency words tend to be less well anchored in their context than the low-frequency words, and that they pattern more as independent units. Our data argue against the view that productive word formation goes hand in hand with the absence of any storage of full forms in the mental lexicon. Instead, we claim that high-frequency formations with the productive suffix -heid are available in the mental lexicon, whereas low-frequency words and neologisms are produced and understood by rule

Evidence for a distinct kind of noun

According to traditional accounts of the count/mass distinction, singular count nouns require a determiner. These accounts do not explain why certain count nouns (e.g., “camp” and “church”) do not obey that rule. In this paper it is argued that these kinds of nouns are distinct from count nouns and, in fact, are lexical noun phrases. Thus, they are labelled “NP-type nouns”. The spontaneous speech of four children and their parents was examined for the use of determiners with NP-type nouns and count nouns. It was shown that the parents made a clear distinction between the two kinds of nouns. That is, they omitted determiners with the NP-type nouns, but not with the count nouns. Each of the children made the same distinction by 4 years of age, and in two cases much earlier. Additionally, the children's use of adjectives was examined and it was found that they modified NP-type nouns as if they were noun phrases. It was concluded that NP-type nouns are represented as noun phrases and that children acquire the category as, or before, they acquire the count/mass distinction. The implications for theories of the count/mass distinction were discussed and additional questions concerning learn-ability and historical change were raised.

Identity, necessity and a prioricity:The fallacy of equivocation

The aim of this paper is to discuss Kripkc’s reasons for declaring the existence of both necessary a posteriori as well as contingent a priori statements, thus breaking the traditional extensional coincidence of the two pairs of concepts:necessary‐contingent and a priori‐a posteriori. As I shall argue, there is no reason, from Kripke’s work at least, to reject the usual picture of the topic The appeal ot his arguments rests on the ambiguity with which his expressions are used and on the introduction o new senses for old notions. This does not mean, however, that all Knpke’s and Putnam’s intuitions on singular terms and natural kind nouns are wrong. Once Kripke’s ideas are properly uudeistood, they are much moreharmless then they are presented to be and they do not pose a threat to traditional relations relations between modal and epistemological categories

Figurative features and the construction of visual images.

Within the framework of a featural approach to conceptual representations, “figurative features” were defined as cognitive entities reflecting the sensory properties of objects in the human mind. In conceptual hierarchies such as taxonomies, “primary concepts” were defined as the most abstract concepts which could still be characterized by their richness in figurative features. The present experiment demonstrated that when subjects were required to form visual images in response to nouns, imagery latencies were shorter to nouns designating primary concepts than to nouns designating either more abstract or more specific concepts. Furthermore, when subjects were subsequently presented with a pictured object and were asked to categorize it as illustrating or not the previously designated concept, it took less time to decide that the object corresponded to a primary concept than to either more abstract or more specific concepts. Subjects classified as high imagers had shorter imagery latencies than low imagers to all kinds of nouns, but decision times in the picture-categorization task did not significantly differ in both groups. These data are discussed in reference to current models of mental imagery.

助詞の習得過程

The purpose of this study was to find the clue clarifying the acquistion process of the JOSHI (particles). This was done by analyzing the difficulty in the JOSHI GA and O acquired by comparing the kind of sentences using JOSHI.The subjects were 80 normal children with a vocabulary age between 4:0 and 7:11.In order to test the subjects' ability to use JOSHI, 33 incomplete sentences without JOSHI were presented to them using a taperecorder and picture cards. Then, they were asked to repeat while completing the sentence after listening to each incomplete sentence.The results of this experiment might be summarized as follows:1. The children with a vocabulary age between 7:0 and 7:11could use “GA” and “O” almost perfectly.2. The ability to use “GA” was acquired earlier than the ability to use “O”.3. The child not knowing the accurate meaning of “GA” and “O” had a trend to use “GA”.4. The dificulty to use “GA” depended ona) whether the sentence described the situation that could be described by other similar sentences or not.b) what the kind of noun used as the subject in the sentence.c) whether the intransitive verb requiring the use of “GA” had a corresponding transitive verb or not.5. The difficulty to use “O” depending on whether the sentence would be a reversal or nonreversal sentence.

Two Modes of Counting in Japanese

This paper seeks to formulate a principle that explains the working of the Japanese number system with respect to Japanese nouns and that defines the kinds of nouns and contexts that condition the forms of number expressions. It is the author's theory that in applying numbers to nouns, the Japanese make a formal distinction between things they conceive as being independent and self-contained and things they conceive as being dependent and attributive. A form containing a classifier implies that the object of quantification is felt to be independent; a form that omits the classifier implies that the object is felt to be attributive to something else. The author enlarges upon these theories and discusses exceptions which can be attributed to language styles or particular derivations. He establishes the categories of count noun, numeral suffix, numeral adjunct, and numerical compound to formalize his discussion. Concluding remarks concern Chinese. (VM) t

The Presentation of German Noun Inflection

IN THEIR TREATMENT of noun inflection our textbooks for the study of German are burdened with over-systematization. In these books the inflectional structure of the noun is divided into the 'strong declension' (which is in turn subdivided into three classes-really declensions), the 'weak declension,' and the 'mixed declension.' For each of these five declensions, paradigms are cited that represent the two or three genders concerned and which, where conditions permit, illustrate the presence or absence of vowel mutation, and also certain other variations of type, with four cases for the singular and four for the plural. Usually there is also given some information as to what kinds of nouns belong in each category-information which, except as it concerns the 'first class strong,' is mostly unsatisfying, and which in any event is more readily assimilable if presented gradually or if acquired through the process of analogy. Often five, or the greater part of five, lessons are devoted to the presentation of the declensions.' The encounter with these convinces the learner, at the very outset, that German has indeed a complicated system of inflection. When the student has learned all the paradigms, together with the accompanying details, he feels that he knows the noun, and unfortunately for him the teacher is too often of the same opinion. And yet, when this system has been mastered, the learning of the noun, even for the most elementary purposes, has been only begun. For the acquired knowledge has but trivial value if the student does not know to which declension this, that, and the other noun belongs. The correct placement of the great majority of nouns-numerous as they are-must be learned for one word at a time. From this there is no escape. The student needs to know the principal parts of all the nouns encountered, or at least those of the more important ones, which are to form his active vocabulary. But this is not at all a hopeless task. For, after all, only a relatively small number of nouns has to be learned during the first