Level Of Syntax Research Articles

Framework for development of CAD/CAC systems

This paper provides a framework for the development of Computer-Aided-Design/Computer-Aided-Construction (CAD/CAC) systems. A description of the proposed CAD/CAC systems is provided. The proposed system contains software tools related to (1) conceptual design, (2) structural and foundation analysis, (3) design of structural components, (4) routine geometric, mathematical, and optimization functions, (5) construction management, (6) Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP), (7) process simulation, and (8) constructability analysis. On-going research work in areas related to CAD/CAC systems are highlighted. Incorporation of Group Technology (GT) paradigm for civil engineering structures to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed systems is investigated. Issues related to algorithm development are also discussed. Possible extension of Automatically Programmed Tools (APT) language to include construction industry processes are examined. Specifically, the programming level syntax of APT can be extended by adding construction related vocabulary and features to only two out of five statement types and processor-level syntax can be extended by incorporating additional modular features.

Transfer in Bilingual Development: The Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis Revisited

This study aimed to find empirical evidence for the linguistic interdependence hypothesis, which states that in bilingual development, language and literacy skills can be transferred from one language to another. Ninety‐eight 6‐year‐old Turkish children, living in the Netherlands since infancy, were selected prior to their entrance into the first grade of primary school. A longitudinal design monitored the development of lexical, morphosyntactic, pragmatic, phonological, and literacy abilities in the children's first and second languages. To minimize test‐bias, I developed linguistic tasks, which required minimal instruction, analyzing interdependence relationships in bilingual development with LISREL techniques. The results clearly show that at the level of lexicon and syntax, language transfer was quite limited. At the level of pragmatic skills, phonological skills, and literacy skills, however, positive evidence appeared for the interdependence in bilingual development.

Making a list

The construction of everyday lists (in either speaking or writing) has received very little attention from discourse analysts. This article draws from a corpus of spoken lists to focus upon some key aspects of their discourse structure. A comparison between lists and narratives shows that different information structures are created in the two genres: a descriptive structure in lists and temporal and evaluative structures in narratives. These structures are built from both clause level syntax and textual organization. The article also proposes some ways in which lists can reveal knowledge structure and, thus, provide naturalistic data through which to consider both classical and constructivist models of categories.

Scope marking as indirectwh-dependency

In certain languages, scope-marking structures are used to express long-distancewh-dependencies along with or instead of the more familiar extraction structure. The existence of these two strategies raises an interesting question for the mapping between syntactic structure and semantic representation. Should apparent semantic equivalence be taken as a guide and syntactic parallelism posited at an abstract level of syntax? Or should the surface syntactic distinction between them be maintained and an alternative explanation sought for the similarity in meaning? In this paper I show that theoretical as well as empirical considerations argue against the first approach. I present a syntactic analysis of scope-marking structures in which the dependency betweenwh-expressions is indirect (in contrast to extraction structures which encode directwh-dependencies). I draw attention to certain differences between scope marking and extraction structures which show that they are not really equivalent. The interpretive procedure given for indirectwh-dependencies derives the considerable similarity in meaning between the two structures while maintaining the necessary distinctions.

Inheritance in word grammar

This paper describes the central role played by default inheritance in Word Grammar, a theory of language knowledge and processing. A single formalism is used to represent knowledge at the levels of morphology, syntax, and semantics. A single rule of inference is used to inherit knowledge at all of these levels. This rule is distinctive in that it requires defaults to be explicitly overridden in the case of exceptions. The explicit overriding rule is used in syntax to achieve what other theories achieve by means of transformations, metarules, or lexical rules.

Parallel evaluation of attribute grammars

Examines the generation of parallel evaluators for attribute grammars, targeted to shared-memory MIMD computers. Evaluation-time overhead due to process scheduling and synchronization is reduced by detecting coarse-grain parallelism (as opposed to the naive one-process-per-node approach). As a means to more clearly expose inherent parallelism, it is shown how to automatically transform productions of the form X to Y X into list-productions of the form X to Y/sup +/. This transformation allows for many simplifications to be applied to the semantic rules, which can expose a significant degree of inherent parallelism, and thus further increase the evaluator's performance. Effectively, this constitutes an extension of the concept of attribute grammars to the level of abstract syntax.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

A Distributive Representational Framework for English Collocations in an Electronic Dictionary

A two-step framework for representing collocations in an electronic dictionary (ED) is proposed (with English examples) as an alternative to the current EDR specification, with notable advantages of descriptivity, clarity, and processibility. First, collocations are described in a syntactic sub-tree whose nodes are expressed with syntactic functions. Each node is correlated, by node path, with a bundle of constraint features on all levels of morphology, syntax, and semantics. Then, the sub-tree is distributively represented in an ED by assigning independent word entries to constituents. The relationships among constituents are assured by assigning them the same ID's, subcategorization information, and node path.

Office automation and users need' for support

Abstract We investigated a recently introduced office automation system at Swedish Telecom. In a first study, where 275 users answered an inventory, the users indicated that they found the system useful, but that they would like better user support. Paper and on-line support were most often used at the syntax level, but were not regarded to be very satisfactory. Human advisors were found to be consulted most often, as well as being reported the most satisfactory means of support at the task and conceptual levels. In an interview study concerning the electronic mail system, the results from 35 users showed that the users were satisfied with the system, but that they knew fairly little about it, particularly at the semantic level. A third study showed that the system support personnel knew their users rather well. When asked to describe the system, system support personnel mainly described the system in computer terms, whereas many other users described it non-informatively. It is concluded that knowledgeable human advisors are needed to support the efficient use of a system by illuminating task and semantic aspects. At the same time, easy-to-use manuals are needed to support the reminding about syntactic and interaction details.

Describing morphological phenomena of modern greek using a unification grammar formalism

The unification-based formalism, suitable for encoding a wide variety of grammars for computational applications and the linguistic research, can also be applied to the area of computational morphology. The morphological processor, presented in this paper, is based on the PATR II formalism and provides the system with a context-sensitive approach as opposed to the more classical finite state automaton approach. It has been designed as a tool to describe a range of linguistic models, in which unification plays the centrol role. Our software system can be used to describe various morphological phenomena of Modern Greek (and any other highly inflected language) such as inflection, derivation, accentuation, composition, etc. Stored morphological information representing a word, is operationally divided into syntactic and semantic parts and is described in terms of attribute-value pairs. The unification-based formalism provides a unified approach to deal with the stratified levels of linguistic information, namely morphology, syntax and semantics.

4707661 Machine generation of machine-executable state-change instructions for magnetic resonance imaging

An assembler/linker process utilizes predetermined control program segments ("templates" defining a sub-sequence of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) states) together with predetermined program-change tables of MRI parameter values. At least some of the program segments are referenced by predetermined symbolic addresses and include pointer-references to corresponding ones of the table entries. The assembler/linker process machine replicates a predetermined set of such slice/specific program segments in a predetermined order while also simultaneously indexing corresponding symbolic addresses and referenced table entries in a predetermined sequence so as to maintain proper correspondence between slice-specific main programs and subroutines for each replicated program segment. In addition, certain of the replicated program segments may be defined having predetermined symbolic addresses which are not indexed thus further conserving the number of program instructions which need to be replicated and stored in the assembly/linkage process. A subset of slice-specific program segments can be further designated for replication as a unit before following program segments are utilized. A unique linker language level syntax is also provided for an ordered string of input digital data used to control the assembler/linker replication process.

Mechanisms of ergativity in South Asia

A language is said to show ergative characteristics if intransitive subject (S) is treated in the same manner as transitive object (O), and differently from transitive subject (A) (Dixon (1979: 60--61)). Relatively few languages behave ergatively at the level of syntax; those which do also exhibit ergative behavior at the level of morphology. In the majority oflanguages, ergativity exists exclusively at the level of morphology (Trask (1979: 385)). This holds, for instance, of the languages of the Indian subcontinent. The purpose of this essay is to provide a rudimentary survey of ergative South Asian languages. While there exist studies of ergativity in individual languages of the subcontinent, it remains to establish whether their ergative characteristics so pattern as to endow the phenomenon with an areal character, as suggested by Masica (1982: 9). The standard study of South Asian areal typology, Masica (1976), is concerned with morphosyntactic phenomena which characterize South Asia as a whole and not with behavior manifested only partially through the region. In South Asia, ergativity is virtually restricted to languages of the north and west (see figure 1 on p. 62), and seems to be excluded from the Dravidian and Munda families altogether. The origins of ergativity in the Indian subcontinent are presently poorly understood. Masica (1976: 12) suggests that the historical impetus may lay in the region's indirect accessibility to languages of the Caucasus. Alternatively, a

The linguistic competence of mono‐ and bi‐lingual pupils in Swedish in the Finland‐Swedish school

The article presents the results of an investigation where 86 bilingual and 86 monolingual pupils from grades 3, 6 and 9 in the Finland‐Swedish comprehensive schools are compared. The material is free written compositions in Swedish. The pupils are matched with respect to sex, age, socio‐economic background and general intellectual ability. The study is concerned with errors on the levels of orthography, morphology, syntax, morphosyntax, vocabulary and phraseology. The main emphasis is on interference. The error frequency has been correlated with some background variables. On the syntactic level, especially as regards word order, there are significant differences between the two groups, the bilinguals producing significantly more errors. This is also true of the levels of vocabulary and phraseology. Interference appears most clearly within vocabulary, but can also be noted within syntax. As regards background variables, the error frequency correlates most significantly with the pupils’ school marks. No significant correlations can be established between error frequency and the background variables of socio‐economic status and language use within the family. On the other hand, error frequency correlates significantly with the environmental factors of mass media and the language of the neighbourhood.

A Lexical Entry for an Explanatory-Combinatorial Dictionary of English ( hope II.1 )

A LEXICAL ENTRY FOR AN EXPLANATORY-COMBINATORIAL DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH (hope ILl) JAMES STEELE This paper describes some general features of an Explanatory -Combinatorial Dictionary (or ECD) and presents one sense of the noun hope as a sample ECD entry. Unlike most dictionaries, an ECD is a theoretically-oriented lexicon not intended for casual reference by the general public: its definitions are cast in an unconventional propositional form, and its methods of describing the syntactic and phraseological properties of a headword require preliminary study. Moreover, an ECD gives no information about either the pronunciation of words or their etymology—aspects of language that are adequately treated in other types of dictionary—and supplies no historical data for their diachronic study. What an ECD does provide, however, is a highly detailed and rigorously systematic account of the semantic, syntactic, and collocational properties of particular word senses. Each entry, in fact, is intended to provide a thoroughly comprehensive description of the delicate ways in which a "lexeme" (or word sense) functions at the present time within a language system. One of the central premises of an ECD, therefore, is Ferdinand de Saussure's insight that the systematic properties of any language are essentially either paradigmatic (i.e., implying "associative" sets of alternatives for particular word senses) or syntagmatic (i.e., implying syntactic patterns for combining elements selected from the paradigmatic sets). An ECD is called "explanatory" partly because it defines a lexeme's meaning by identifying the basic semantic components involved1 and partly because it explicitly describes the "semantic functions" inherent in those elements, that is to say, the roles of all "actants"2 that belong to the meaning's structure and establish the range of its syntactic powers. It is called "combinatorial" because it spells out by means of a comprehensive formula called a "government pattern" (or GP) all the ways in which a lexeme's semantic actants can be realized at the level of surface syntax and because it identifies the collocational properties of any lexeme 1 A Lexical Entry for an ECD by describing the term's "lexical functions," that is to say, the regular dependency relationships obtaining between a headword and certain units of language other than its own actants. An ECD thus correlates semantics with syntax and provides a systematic basis for describing collocational patterns. Moreover, when ECD entries are combined with more general rules relating to semantics, communicative structure , syntax, morphology, and phonology, they form a basic component of a model of natural language as a system. ECD lexicography in this larger context becomes a fundamentally important part of modern theoretical linguistics. The particular field of linguistic study to which all ECD entries are related is the Meaning-Text Model of language, a theory developed by Alexander Zholkovsky and Igor Mel'cuk together with their colleagues in Moscow and Montreal.3 The goal of the M-T Model is to describe the linguistic correspondence that exists between any "meaning" and all "texts" that synonymously express that meaning (and vice versa) and thus to elaborate the purely linguistic rules logically requisite for the production (or understanding) of an utterance. While a "text" in this theory is simply any utterance, whether oral or written, a "meaning" is represented by a formal construction called a Semantic Representation. For any given text in any language, a Semantic Representation consists of a network of semantic elements, which can be translated into actual lexemes of the language under analysis. The Semantic Representation also represents in graphic form the communicative or pragmatic structure of a text's message (the organization of its emphasis and the division of textual elements into "topic and comment" and "given and new"). To explain the relations between a Semantic Representation and an uttered or written surface text, the M-T Model postulates five intermediate levels describing the syntactic, morphological, and phonological shapes that a "meaning" theoretically assumes in the course of becoming an articulated phonetic product or, conversely, that a "text" assumes in the course of becoming comprehended as a "meaning." Each of these levels contains all the information needed for it to be translated into either the level above or the level below, James Steele although the...

De Rol Van Het Lezen In Het Vertaalonderwijs

A good translation from Dutch into a foreign language subsumes a variety of linguistic adjustments at the level of text and syntax. The nature of these linguistic adjustments depends on the linguistic characteristics of the text type to be translated. The linguistic characteristics of a text type can vary enormously from the source language to the target language. An analysis of three German translations of one and the same Dutch text reveals that it is very difficult to describe and formalize the nature of the linguistic adjustments and that, in consequence, they can scarcely be taught in a systematic way. This calls for an eclectic and pragmatic approach to the teaching of translation with ample consideration to be given to the reading of literary texts. Only in this way, can the apprentice translator become sufficiently well acquainted with the FL to be able to make text type decisions quickly and easily.

Accounting for individual differences when comparing the effectiveness of remedial language teaching methods

ABSTRACTTwo language intervention methods were compared on their effectiveness at improving syntactic structures as measured by gain scores on the Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) procedure. Forty-one expressive language delayed children were assigned to either an Interactive approach (n= 25) or a Programmed approach (n= 16), following a series of 13 pre-training diagnostic tests. An analysis of group mean DSS gain scores did not indicate a significant difference between the two teaching methods. However, when individual differences on the pre-training tests were incorporated into further group comparisons, disordinal Aptitude × Treatment interactions occurred for measures of intelligence, initial syntax level, and visual-motor integration. The Interactive approach optimized syntax improvement for children with relatively high pre-training scores on each of the three measures, whereas the Programmed approach resulted in superior syntax performance for low-scoring children.

Two processor continuous speech recognition system

A research‐oriented continuous speech recognition system based on separating the grammar level from the word level processing in order to exploit a two processor architecture has been developed by the Continuous Speech Recognition Group at Dialog Systems, Inc. A high speed array processor performs acoustic pattern matching and word level dynamic programming, while a general purpose mini‐computer performs sentence level dynamic programming, overhead, and I/0 functions. Software components that allow graph generation, sentence level syntax generation, model training, and model evaluation will also be discussed in the framework of this parallel processor system.

Preschool language disorders and subsequent language and academic difficulties

Sixty-three language-disordered children first evaluated in their preschool years were followed four to five years after initial diagnosis. At follow-up approximately 40% of these children continued to present speech and language problems and approximately 40% presented other learning problems. Preschool levels of language comprehension, formulation, semantics, syntax, phonology, and speech production were found to be moderately correlated to subsequent class placement in the elementary grades. Duration of preschool therapy was not related to either the severity of preschool language disorder or to any subsequent speech, language, or academic abilities. Duration of school therapy was related to severity of phonologic deficit as rated during the preschool years and to all follow-up ratings for speech, language, and academic abilities.

The HWIM speech understanding system—Overview and performance

HWIM (for Hear What I Mean), the speech understanding system developed at BBN as part of the recent five-year ARPA Speech Understanding Research Project, is designed to “understand” naturally spoken utterances relevant to a task domain of travel budget management. Its vocabulary is over 1000 words, and its grammar permits a habitable subset of natural English. HWIM contains sources of knowledge at the levels of acoustic-phonetics, phonology, vocabulary, syntax, semantics, factual knowledge, and discourse. This paper describes the system as a whole and presents its performance results at the end of the ARPA project. [This research was supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and was monitored by ONR under Contract No. N00014-75-C-0053.]

A General Consistency Check Procedure for Machine-Readable Data

Several levels of data "cleaning" and editing are discussed, and a standard terminology for data-consistency checking and editing is developed. Consistency checking can occur at the level of data structure, syntax, or semantics. A consistency check either may be unconditional, depending only on the value of a single variable; or it may depend on the joint values of the members of a set of variables. The result of a consistency check may be expressed as the value of a vector whose elements indicate the consistency status of each variable in the set. The vector of return codes from a check can be managed and displayed by adding them to the set of variables, and by using them as input to a report generator or to an editing procedure.

Bilingualism and Syntactic Change in Konkani

The syntax of the relative clause in the Saraswat Brahmin dialect of Konkani, an Indo-Aryan language, has been virtually Dravidianized because of the impact of the Dravidian Kannada language, operating through bilingual speakers. Konkani has two versions of the relative clause-a native Indo-Aryan type, and a borrowed Kannada type; the latter is gaining predominance at the cost of the former, which has come under various kinds of constraints. The mechanism of this syntactic change is examined here. The peculiar features of the Konkani-Kannada bilingual situation are described, and an attempt is made to provide an explanatory account of the syntactic change in Konkani. This paper examines the effects of bilingualism on the syntax of the relative clause in a certain dialect of Konkani, an Indo-Aryan (IA) language, whose speakers have also been fluent speakers of the Dravidian language Kannada for the last 400 years or more. The syntax of the relative clause in this particular dialect of Konkani is interesting in many respects: it provides a very clear instance of structural borrowing at the level of syntax under the impact of bilingualism; the borrowing itself, while it affects the relative clause in the language so profoundly as to virtually 'Dravidianize' it, is yet in some sense 'motiveless'; finally, an uncommonly clear view is provided on certain aspects of the change mechanism itself. 1. Like all languages of the Indian subcontinent, Konkani has many dialects distinguishable along geographical, social, and communal axes.1 But some of these dialects have not come under the impact of Kannada, e.g. those spoken in the erstwhile Portuguese colony Goa, as well as those spoken in the Konkan districts of the present State of Maharashtra. In this paper, however, I am concerned with a dialect which has come under Kannada influence, viz. the Konkani of Saraswat