Lexical Domain Research Articles

Identifying ISI‐indexed articles by their lexical usage: A text analysis approach

This research creates an architecture for investigating the existence of probable lexical divergences between articles, categorized as Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and non‐ISI, and consequently, if such a difference is discovered, to propose the best available classification method. Based on a collection of ISI‐ and non‐ISI‐indexed articles in the areas of business and computer science, three classification models are trained. A sensitivity analysis is applied to demonstrate the impact of words in different syntactical forms on the classification decision. The results demonstrate that the lexical domains of ISI and non‐ISI articles are distinguishable by machine learning techniques. Our findings indicate that the support vector machine identifies ISI‐indexed articles in both disciplines with higher precision than do the Naïve Bayesian and K‐Nearest Neighbors techniques.

Syntactic and semantic issues in sequences of the type (Adjective)-Noun-(Adjective)

This paper focuses on some properties of agreement inside the Noun Phrase, especially in what concerns adjectives and “adjectival quantifiers”, based on spoken corpora of Brazilian Portuguese and of the five African varieties of Portuguese (with special attention to the Santomean variety). We present the most salient patterns of defective agreement, focusing especially in number agreement, and contrast our findings across varieties. Results clearly differ in terms of the agreement found in the left and in the right periphery of the noun, as other studies already pointed out. The “specifiers” of the noun and pre-nominal adjectives tend to carry the plural morpheme, while the noun itself and post-nominal adjectives are defective in number marks. We put forward some possible issues for the interpretation of these data: the distinction made by speakers between the functional and the lexical domain; the relation between defective agreement on head nouns and cases of bare singular nouns which might be interpreted in these contexts as kind terms; and, finally, the fact that indefinite quantifiers may combine with these bare singulars.

“I know you are not, but if you were asking me”: On emergence of discourse markers of topic presentation from hypothetical questions

Korean has a number of grammatical devices to introduce topics into the discourse. Among such markers is a paradigm of periphrastic topic presenters that are built on rhetorical questions, bringing micro-level topics into the discourse. The major strategy involved in the development of these topic presenters is feigning interactivity, whereby the speaker rhetorically asks a hypothetical question on behalf of the addressee and then answers it. This rhetorical question strategy is an intriguing discourse manipulation to create an engaging effect in that what the speaker pursues from the addressee is not a verbal response, i.e. reply, but a cognitive response, i.e. attention. A historical investigation reveals a number of important implications in grammaticalization studies. For instance, the grammaticalization process of these innovative topic markers creates a template-like paradigm of periphrastic constructions that contain slots to be filled in from another grammatical paradigm of interrogative pronouns and adverbs. Furthermore, the historical developmental pattern of the emerging paradigm strongly suggests that the formative process is enabled by analogy. In addition, the directionality of the process is from the domain of discourse, i.e. rhetoric, contra most traditional instances that undergo the process proceeding from lexical domain to grammatical domain.

Intact Lexicon Running Slowly – Prolonged Response Latencies in Patients with Subthalamic DBS and Verbal Fluency Deficits

BackgroundVerbal Fluency is reduced in patients with Parkinson’s disease, particularly if treated with deep brain stimulation. This deficit could arise from general factors, such as reduced working speed or from dysfunctions in specific lexical domains.ObjectiveTo test whether DBS-associated Verbal Fluency deficits are accompanied by changed dynamics of word processing.Methods21 Parkinson’s disease patients with and 26 without deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus as well as 19 healthy controls participated in the study. They engaged in Verbal Fluency and (primed) Lexical Decision Tasks, testing phonemic and semantic word production and processing time. Most patients performed the experiments twice, ON and OFF stimulation or, respectively, dopaminergic drugs.ResultsPatients generally produced abnormally few words in the Verbal Fluency Task. This deficit was more severe in patients with deep brain stimulation who additionally showed prolonged response latencies in the Lexical Decision Task. Slowing was independent of semantic and phonemic word priming. No significant changes of performance accuracy were obtained. The results were independent from the treatment ON or OFF conditions.ConclusionLow word production in patients with deep brain stimulation was accompanied by prolonged latencies for lexical decisions. No indication was found that the latter slowing was due to specific lexical dysfunctions, so that it probably reflects a general reduction of cognitive working speed, also evident on the level of Verbal Fluency. The described abnormalities seem to reflect subtle sequelae of the surgical procedure for deep brain stimulation rather than of the proper neurostimulation.

The Romanian wordnet in a nutshell

The project on the Romanian wordnet has been under continuous development for more than 10 years now. It has been in constant use in many projects and applications which determined, to a large extent, the content and coverage of various lexical domains. The article presents the most recent developments of the Romanian wordnet and offers quantitative data for its current version.

Effect of language task demands on the neural response during lexical access: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

This study examined the effects of linguistic task demands on the neuroanatomical localization of the neural response related to automatic semantic processing of concrete German nouns combining the associative priming paradigm with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). To clarify the functional role of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) for semantic processing with respect to semantic decision making compared to semantic processing per se, we used a linguistic task that involved either a binary decision process (i.e., semantic categorization; Experiment 1) or not (i.e., silently thinking about a word's meaning; Experiment 2). We observed associative priming effects indicated as neural suppression in bilateral superior temporal gyri (STG), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), occipito-temporal brain areas, and in medial frontal brain areas independently of the linguistic task. Inferior parietal brain areas were more active for silently thinking about a word's meaning compared to semantic categorization. A conjunction analysis of linguistic task revealed that both tasks activated the same left-lateralized occipito-temporo-frontal network including the IFG. Contrasting neural associative priming effects across linguistic task demands, we found a significant interaction in the right IFG. The present fMRI data give rise to the assumption that activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) in the semantic domain might be important for semantic processing in general and not only for semantic decision making. These findings contrast with a recent study regarding the role of the LIFG for binary decision making in the lexical domain (Wright et al. 2011).

Evolution of Verb Meanings in Children and L2 Adult Learners Through Reorganization of an Entire Semantic Domain: The Case of Chinese Carry/Hold Verbs

The meaning of a word is not acquired in isolation from other words. This article investigates how first-language (L1) and adult second-language (L2) learners of Chinese learn the meanings of verbs belonging to the same semantic domain, focusing on the semantic domain of “carrying/holding” in Chinese. Results revealed that the verb use of L2 adults is heavily influenced by their lexical knowledge of L1 and that their development of word meanings stops before they fully reach the adult native speakers' word meaning. L1 children in contrast tend to depend on perceptually visible features of actions at the initial stage of lexical acquisition and then gradually learn how their L1 categorizes the actions by verbs. We argue that L2 learners need to attain meta-knowledge about the mapping of the entire configuration of the corresponding lexical domain between L1 and L2 and discuss how reading inside and outside of the classroom could foster this process.

Language management agencies counteracting perceived threats to tradition

The article addresses the actual and perceived roles of national organisations and bodies, such as language ‘academies’ or ‘councils’, in recent history. In particular, the article seeks to shed light on the question what may prompt national governments in modernity and late modernity to establish and fund such bodies to regulate and promote languages which already are used in all spheres of society, already enjoy status as national languages, de facto if not also de jure, and already have standardized written forms with no rival varieties. In a period characterised by national sentiment and nation building, it is likely that the three pillars of language policy (management, beliefs, practices) are in harmony. As long as governments consider the processes of norm selection, form codification, elaboration of function, and acceptance by the community, to be sufficiently implemented, they have no need to establish official language management agencies. At a later stage, however, governments may react to an evolving language situation, notably perceived threats of foreign influence through globalisation and migration, as well as perceived threats as to changing linguistic practices, not least in the lexical domain, by using their legislative and institutional powers in new ways in order to consolidate the foundations of language management by, among other things, founding language ‘academies’ or ‘councils’. My claim is supported by evidence from the Northern European (‘Nordic’) countries where such ‘councils’ were established in the post World War II period. The Icelandic ‘council’, and the language ideologies of Iceland, are discussed in particular.

Verb dynamics

This paper describes conceptual dynamicity as reflected in the verbs in specialized texts. All the examples used to illustrate this phenomenon are taken from a corpus of meteorological texts, and are typical of processes and actions within the TROPICAL CYCLONE frame. In this study, we analyze verb meaning as well as argument structure. Our results show that the basic meaning of each verb profiles the meaning of the term tropical cyclone in different ways, and provides a way to access the multidimensionality of terms and the concepts they designate. We also classify the verbs most frequently activated by TROPICAL CYCLONE in lexical domains since verbs with similar meaning also have similar argument structure. This method of studying terms in conjunction with the verbs that most frequently activate them is crucial for the representation of conceptual information, and is connected with the network of semantic relations that is activated by a specialized concept.

Derivation in a word-based morphology: on the origin of Old English verbs of perception, cognition and emotion

In this paper I describe the process of grammaticalization of Old English causative verbs through the analysis of some of the different strategies for the expression of causation in three different lexical domains: PHYSICAL PERCEPTION, COGNITION and EMOTION. The etymological analysis of these verbs indicates that, in the case of the three lexical domains under scrutiny, causation was lexicalized and conceptualized as forced movement or change of an external (as in the case of verbs of FEELING; e.g. OE hieran 'to hear') or internal (i.e. verbs of COGNITION and some EMOTION verbs; e.g. OE gemynan 'to remember' and OE hiertan 'to encourage') part of the body.

Arabic influences on Tigre: A preliminary evaluation

AbstractTigre, an Ethio-Semitic language spoken in Eritrea by a predominantly Muslim population, is known to have remained in intensive contact with Arabic since at least the nineteenth century. In the present article we attempt to survey the lexical and grammatical features of Tigre which are potentially attributable to Arabic influence. The genealogical proximity of Arabic and Ethio-Semitic complicates the task, as borrowed features and common retentions are not always easily distinguishable. In the lexical domain, the Arabic impact is undoubtedly conspicuous: thus, even in the core vocabulary Arabic loanwords are more prominent than in any other Ethio-Semitic language. Nevertheless, for many individual lexemes the borrowing hypothesis remains to be substantiated. Recent Arabic influence is probably responsible for a few relatively superficial features of Tigre phonetics and morphology. Several more deeply-rooted features may in principle be due to a more ancient and more intensive contact with Arabic: the specific influence of the ejectives on the vowels; the grammatical categories of singulative and diminutive; the diversity of verbal noun patterns in the basic stem; and several types of broken plural formation.

Acquiring Non-Object Terms: The Case for Time Words

We address the issue of children's understanding of abstract words with two studies on preschoolers' knowledge of the time-duration words minutes, hours, days, and years. The first study examines 4- and 5-year-olds' ability to answer questions about durations of common phenomena with duration terms. The second study examines 4- to 6-year-olds' comprehension of duration terms with a forced-choice pointing task. Both show that preschoolers' knowledge of such words is incomplete, but that it adheres to the pattern proposed in previous work with toddlers for abstract words. More specifically, children form lexical domains for such words even before they know their individual meanings, thereby allowing the children to often respond appropriately but not usually correctly to questions about abstract dimensions like time.

AT-TAQOBUL BAINA AL-LUGHOTAIN AL-‘ARABIYAH WAL INDONESIA

This is a plain contrastive descriptive study between two languages, Arabic and Indonesian, especially the contrast between their phonetics, lexical, phonological and syntax levels. The research concludes within that there is similarity and differentiation in its phonetics, lexical, phonological and syntax systems. In phonetics we found a contrast related to consonants and vocals sounds, and also in syllable sounds. In lexical domain, there is a meaning formulated in one word in Arabic language, but in Indonesian language we found it composed of two words, for example: ?????? ????? ????? ??????, rumah sakit, makan siang, makan malam and others. In the phonology, it is found out that Arabic language is an etymological language and the Indonesian language is an affix language, and Arabic language adopt systems of masculine, feminine, singular, dual (mutsanna) and plural which is different from Indonesian language. In syntax of Indonesian language, we found that the meaning is defined by the combination of the words and its position, it is based on subject combination (nominal clause), in other hand we found that the Arabic language is a syntax language (lughah mu’rabah), the meaning is defined by the syntax (al i’rab) and it adopts both of nominal clause and verbal clause. Those Arabic phenomena which are not adopted by Indonesian language should be taken into account in learning and teaching Arabic Language by the Indonesians.

Vantages on scales: a study of Russian dimensional adjectives

The central claim of this paper is that Vantage Theory is able to provide a much-needed explanatory account of the seemingly unrelated differences between lexical and morphological antonyms of dimensional adjectives in Slavic languages. In a case study, I compare two antonyms of the Russian adjective vysokij ‘high’, a morphologically unrelated term nizkij ‘low’ and a morphologically related adjective nevysokij ‘not.high’. I argue that the two terms co-exist because they provide different ways of looking at the lower subscale of vertical size. The distribution exhibited by the adjectives under study is symptomatic of the dominant-recessive pattern of coextension identified by MacLaury in the domain of colour. Two sets of data – a corpus and an elicitation test – provide converging evidence that nizkij ‘low’ names the dominant vantage on the lower subscale: it is more frequent and evenly distributed over referent categories. Nevysokij ‘not.high’ is a recessive term: it is characterised by lower frequency, a rather narrow range of application, and a distribution skewed towards human referents. The findings from this study are compared to the results of earlier research on colour terminology, which raises several methodological questions concerning the application of Vantage Theory to lexical domains other than colour.

ELHISA: An architecture for the integration of heterogeneous lexical information

AbstractThe design and construction of lexical resources is a critical issue in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Real-world NLP systems need large-scale lexica, which provide rich information about words and word senses at all levels: morphologic, syntactic, lexical semantics, etc., but the construction of lexical resources is a difficult and costly task. The last decade has been highly influenced by the notion of reusability, that is, the use of the information of existing lexical resources in constructing new ones. It is unrealistic, however, to expect that the great variety of available lexical information resources could be converted into a single and standard representation schema in the near future. The purpose of this article is to present the ELHISA system, a software architecture for the integration of heterogeneous lexical information. We address, from the point of view of the information integration area, the problem of querying very different existing lexical information sources using a unique and common query language. The integration in ELHISA is performed in a logical way, so that the lexical resources do not suffer any modification when integrating them into the system. ELHISA is primarily defined as a consultation system for accessing structured lexical information, and therefore it does not have the capability to modify or update the underlying information. For this purpose, a General Conceptual Model (GCM) for describing diverse lexical data has been conceived. The GCM establishes a fixed vocabulary describing objects in the lexical information domain, their attributes, and the relationships among them. To integrate the lexical resources into the federation, a Source Conceptual Model (SCM) is built on the top of each one, which represents the lexical objects concurring in each particular source. To answer the user queries, ELHISA must access the integrated resources, and, hence, it must translate the query expressed in GCM terms into queries formulated in terms of the SCM of each source. The relation between the GCM and the SCMs is explicitly described by means of mapping rules called Content Description Rules. Data integration at the extensional level is achieved by means of the data cleansing process, needed if we want to compare the data arriving from different sources. In this process, the object identification step is carried out. Based on this architecture, a prototype named ELHISA has been built, and five resources covering a broad scope have been integrated into it so far for testing purposes. The fact that such heterogeneous resources have been integrated with ease into the system shows, in the opinion of the authors, the suitability of the approach taken.

Lexical templates within a functional cognitive theory of meaning

Within the context of the Lexical Constructional Model, which provides a comprehensive account of the relationship between syntax and all facets on meaning construction, this paper is concerned with one of the major representational modules of the model, viz. a lexical template. It is claimed that a lexical template consists of a semantic specification plus a logical structure. The logical structure formalism is constructed on the basis of Aktionsart distinctions proposed in Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin & Lapolla, 1997; Van Valin, 2005). Aktionsart regularities are captured by the external variables of the template, specified in Roman characters, and by a set of high-level elements of structure that function as semantic primitives. Lexical templates also contain internal variables, marked with Arabic numerals, and formally expressed in terms of a catalogue of lexical functions. These variables capture world-knowledge elements that relate in a way specific to the predicate defined by the lexical template. In order to test the viability of lexical templates, a detailed analysis of a set of verbs within the lexical domain of cognition is included.

The use of verbs in research articles

The aim of the study described in this article is to examine the lexical characteristics of medical research articles in English. The article describes the results obtained from the analysis of a corpus of medical texts in which the use of verbs is studied in the different sections of the medical research article. After selecting a corpus of 30 texts and tagging them with a POS Tagger, concordances of verbs were obtained. The verbs were then classified according to their meaning in lexical domains. Results show that the lexical domains are distributed differently in each section of the article, reinforcing the rhetorical functions of each section. A proposal is also made for using these results in a more practical manner, for example to enrich an electronic manual, with information that could assist professionals and translators with the writing and translation of medical research articles.

Survival language learning syllabuses revisited: a customized functional-notional approach

Research on survival English syllabuses has been scarce in the last decades. There is nothing worse than the solitude of a teacher facing a course with such characteristics as continuous hesitations about the materials, activities and the learners' needs arise every now and then. Our contribution stems from Nation and Crabbe's article A Survival Language Learning Syllabus for Foreign Travel published in System in 1991, where a topic-based syllabus is proposed. The two-year experimental use of Nation and Crabbe's model, though successful, unveiled some shortcomings having to do with the inventory of situations and the lexical domain included therein. In the light of the limited period of instruction and the short-term benefits that these courses usually hold, a functional/ notional model has been designed for the purpose inasmuch as students seem to gain a

Acoustic correlates to idiomatic interpretations in brain-damaged populations

McGill University, Montre´al, CanadaAccepted 8 July 2005Available online 22 August 2005IntroductionAlthough much is known about idiom processing in normal in-dividuals (e.g., Titone & Connine, 1999), some controversial findingshave emerged for brain-damaged patients (e.g., Papagno, Tabossi,Colombo, & Zampetti, 2004), and very few studies have examined therole of prosody in spoken idiom production. In normal subjects, VanLancker, Canter, and Terbeek (1981) have shown that literal produc-tions of potentially idiomatic phrases are longer in duration, exhibitlonger pauses between words, and demonstrate more rapid changes inF0 within words and phrases relative to the same phrases producedwith an idiomatic reading. However, idioms differ with respect to di-mensions like familiarity and compositionality (not heretofore con-trolled) that may influence production, and may be manifest differentlyin productions by brain-damaged populations.With respect to the ability of left- (LHD) and right-hemispherebrain-damaged (RHD) patients to signal idiomatic relative to literalinterpretations through prosodic cues, current theories concerning theneural bases of prosody yield somewhat different predictions (seeBaum & Pell, 1999 for review). According to one perspective, thelinguistic relevance of prosodic cues is critical and intimately linkedwith the prosodic domain or size of prosodic unit, with smaller-sizedunits processed by LH mechanisms and larger units mediated by RHmechanisms (Gandour, et al., 2003). Although idioms are phrase-length units, some studies have suggested that they are initially ac-cessed and stored as lexical units (Titone, Libben, & Romero, 2004;but cf. Papagno et al., 2004). Under this view, it could be hypothesizedthat LHD patients may have difficulty producing the prosodic con-trasts that disambiguate literal from figurative interpretations of idi-oms (assuming a lexical prosodic domain). Further support for thisprediction is based on the suggestion that much of the idiomatic/literalprosodic distinction is carried by temporal cues, with which LHDpatients are known to have difficulty. In contrast, because idioms andtheir literal counterparts are, in fact, phrasal units, one might predictthat RHD patients may be unable to successfully produce the requiredcontrast. To assess these possibilities, following Van Lancker andcolleagues (1981), a set of literally plausible idiomatic expressions (e.g.,‘he kicked the bucket’, but not ‘he was on cloud nine’) were embedded inbiasing contexts that disambiguated the intended meaning as literal oridiomatic. Speakers were instructed to explicitly contrast the targetsentences as clearly as possible to convey the intended interpretation.MethodsSubjectsParticipants included LHD patients, RHD patients, age-matchednon-brain-damaged individuals, and young normal speakers.StimuliThirty-two idioms, following the ‘‘(s)he verbed the noun’’ form,were included as stimuli; these idioms were subgrouped with respectto the semantic decomposability of the verb and the noun (Libben,Borovay, & Titone, 2005) and controlled for dimensions such asfamiliarity and predictability of the idiom-final word. The noun wasrated as highly related to the idiomatic meaning for 8 idioms (Nhigh), the verb was rated as highly related for eight idioms (V high),both the noun and the verb were rated as highly related for eightidioms (NV high), and neither the noun nor the verb was rated asrelated for the final eight idioms (NV low). All idioms were embed-ded in an idiomatic and a literal biasing context and presented tospeakers in a manner such that the interpretive contrast was high-lighted. Subjects were required to read the context sentence silentlyand then produce the idiomatic or literal target sentence for re-cording on digital media.Acoustic analysesMeasures of total utterance duration, number, and length of pausesbetween words within the phrase, and durations of individual wordswithin the phrase were computed, as was mean F0 across the phrase,and the pattern of F0 rises and falls within the phrase.Brain and Language 95 (2005) 223–224www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l

Cumulating Retrieval Inhibition in Semantic and Lexical Domains.

In 3 experiments the authors examined changes in successive exemplar generation percentages within categories defined semantically (e.g., fruit-P, fruit-A, fruit-M) and by 1st letter (e.g., insect-C, sport-C, car-C), with a mixed control condition (e.g., fruit-P, insect-C, disease-M). Retrieval success declined across 12 successive items in both semantic and letter categories, with no change for the mixed condition. This retrieval inhibition is unrelated to taxonomic frequency of exemplars within either letter or semantic categorical structures. Furthermore, semantic retrieval inhibition appears to be long lasting, suggested by the decline in retrieval percentage across successive 12-item blocks in both the mixed and letter conditions. The authors suggest that different mechanisms underlie the inhibition found in the semantic (suppression) and letter (interference) conditions.