Parsing Research Articles

Quantitative Research on Chinese Sentences Structure Based on Pattern Grammar

With the proliferation of corpora, various syntactic analysis methodologies have been developed. However, syntactic analysis of Chinese sentences demands a theory that focuses more on word order and the interaction between content and function words, which is satisfied by pattern grammar theory. This study investigates the effectiveness of pattern grammar theory in the analysis of Chinese sentence structure and explores the linguistic characteristics of official documents by establishing a description system for structural complexity in Chinese. Statistical methods such as skewness, kurtosis, and correlation analyses were employed to evaluate the system’s performance. The findings confirm the effectiveness of pattern grammar in analyzing Chinese sentence structure by showing that it can accurately reflect the unique properties of Chinese official documents, such as the preference for fixed collocations, declarative sentences, and flat structures. Based on the above findings, this study provides a semantically compatible and innovative theoretical system for analyzing Chinese sentence structures.

A Syntactic and Discoursal Analysis of halaʔ ‘Now’ in Jordanian Arabic

This study investigates the syntactic behavior and the discoursal roles of halaʔ in Jordanian Arabic, which corresponds to the English ‘now’ and is frequently used as a discourse marker. Specifically, the syntactic distribution of this discourse marker in everyday conversations, its function in establishing coherence between discourse units, and its communicative and discoursal meanings are scrutinized. The data necessary for the study was obtained from almost a 15-hour corpus of naturally-occurring conversations recorded by the researchers through 30 interviews with 80 (40 males and 40 females) Jordanian students from Al-Balqa Applied University. The data analysis revealed that halaʔ can be used as an adverb conveying temporal meaning and as a discourse marker conveying coherence-related meanings. Semantically, it is a temporal adverb that has a semantic meaning parallel to that of its English adverbial counterpart ‘now’. However, it was found that halaʔ can also serve six pragmatic functions: Changing a topic, introducing a contrast or comparison, marking disagreement, initiating reasons, explanations or clarifications, listing, and marking shifts in participation framework (Marking a change in the speaker’s orientation and marking a change of footing). The study concludes with a suggested grammaticalization path for the development of this discourse marker from a lexical source.

ANTI-SUICIDE CAMPAIGN STUDY GORONTALO & SOUTH SUMATERA PROVINCIAL HEALTH DEPARTMENT POSTERS 2019

Suicide is the most common cause of death, becoming a humanitarian emergency case, which threatens the survival of the nation's next generation. In the anti-suicide campaign, posters are used as information media. The purpose of the study was to examine the symbolic meaning and visual elements in the design of campaign posters, 2 Health Offices (Gorontalo Province and South Sumatra). The method used was qualitative with Van Zoest's semiotic approach (syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analysis). The results showed that the posters had visual representations of emotions: darkness, loneliness, or hopelessness; the poster narratives contained motivating quotes and information on aid resources. In conclusion, the visual elements on the poster form a visual message in raising awareness to combat suicide. The impact of the research is that it can educate, reduce the stigma of suicide, and help policy makers and designers design campaign posters with appropriate messages and effective strategies

Syntactic and Rhetorical Analysis of Joe Biden’s Inaugural Speech at Washington D.C.

Inaugural speech is the first chance for a president to engage the public in new strategies for success. Every inaugural speech is an example of the aims and objectives of the future. As president of America, Joe Biden has faced many challenges, including foreign affairs, a poor economy due to COVID-19, and, most importantly, American unity. The focus of the present investigation is to lead a stylistic examination from the viewpoint of syntax and rhetoric on Joe Biden's inaugural speech in Washington,D.C., on January 21, 2021. The researchers discovered that the speech is full of rhetorical and syntactic devices. The analysis revealed that the speech emphasized on unity and solidarity to preserve and promote American Identity through the excessive use of First-person pronouns and planned use of similes, repetitions, modality and conjunction. In this way, Biden made his speech productive and readily revealed his plans and motives to his audience.

التحليل النحوي لاسم المعرفة في سورة الغاشية

The aim of this research is to analyze and identify isim marifat, or definite nouns, in the Al-Qur'an, which focuses on al-Ghasyiyah. The results of syntactic analysis, which focuses on definite nouns, or Isim makrifat, found that not all verses in the letter contain these nouns. It is only found in 16 verses, including: in the first verse, there is one noun in the form Isim, which includes ال in the word الغاسية; in verse 6, there is one Isim Ma'rifat in the form of Isim Dhomir. This noun is also established in verses 9, 11, 12, and 13, in the form Isim dhomir ها. In verses 17, 18, 19, and 20, it is established in the form ال in the words-الابل ،السما ،الجبال ،الارض. Then, in verse 21, two Isim ma'rifat are established in the form of Isim maushul ما and Isim dhomir munfashil انت. In verse 22, there is one definite noun in the form of Isim dhomir muttashil. Namely, in verse 23, there is one Isim Ma'rifat in the form of Isim Maushul in the form of من. Also, this noun is established in verse 24 by four nouns in the form of one Isim dhomir and three Isim by ال. In verse 25, there are two Isim ma'rifat in the form of Isim dhomir muttashil mahal jer،هم نا, and in verse 26, there are two Isim ma'rifat in the form of Isim dhomir muttashil mahal jer نا ،هم. In terms of the function of the I'rob definite noun or Isim Ma'rifat in the alghosiyah letter, there are three types, namely one Rafa'/nominative noun, five Nashab/accusative nouns, and 16 nouns with the Jer/genetive function.

A Syntactic Analysis of Constituent Structure in Sentences Written by EFL Students

This research aims to determine which student uses the most dominant conjunction, what students use the most difficult conjunction and why they have difficulty using correlative and coordinating conjunctions in their sentences. The population of this research was the 4th-semester students of the English education study program at Tadulako University. The sample was selected using a simple random sampling technique, and there were 151 4th-semester students. The researcher used a quantitative description. The data of this research used a test and questionnaire. The results of the data analysis show that (1) the most dominant conjunction used by the students was coordinating conjunction, especially conjunction “and” (2) the most difficult conjunction utilized by the students was correlative conjunction, namely conjunction “both…and”, the frequency of conjunction “both…and”, (3) there are two factors influencing the students in using coordinating and correlative conjunctions which are internal factor and external factor. The internal factors are: the students rarely improve their knowledge about conjunctions; The students are not interested in the material about conjunctions; The students do not understand the function of conjunctions; The students do not understand about lexical categories. The external factors are: There is no motivation from lecturers or teachers for students to learn the conjunctions; The lecturers or the teachers do not explain clearly the material of conjunctions.

Reconfigurando Trujillo: Un estudio de la sintaxis espacial y su influencia para la articulación territorial y optimización urbana

This study analyzes the influence of spatial syntax on articulation in 36 urban sectors of Trujillo, with the objective of identifying strategies to optimize the planning and urban design of the city. Through a detailed analysis of the spatial conFiguration, we seek to understand how the relationships between different urban components affect territorial and social cohesion. Likewise, this knowledge can be applied to improve the integration and functionality of urban spaces, using geo-referenced information systems applied in the analysis of spatial syntax and its four dimensions, patterns of connectivity, accessibility and spatial segregation were identified. The findings reveal that the nine sectors with high spatial integration promote greater social interaction and accessibility, while the nine sectors with low connectivity present challenges in terms of segregation and isolation. These results underscore the importance of incorporating principles of spatial syntax into urban planning and management to foster more cohesive and equitable performance-based environments. The study concludes with specific recommendations addressed to urban planners and designers, highlighting the need for integrated approaches that consider spatial complexity for effective territorial articulation in Trujillo.

La configuración de las ciudades emergentes: Una revisión a la sintaxis espacial

This review focuses on the phenomenon of spatial syntax from the perspective of urban performance, through its theoretical evolution applied in the scenario of intermediate cities, allowing to understand the role of accessibility and the urban built environment, for the improvement in the provision of services from the instruments of planning and management of the territory. In the development of this research, various data sources such as Scopus, Scielo, Research Gate and Google Scholar were used, structuring the theoretical basis with various articles from journals indexed in Atlas.ti that, under the inductive method, allowed the triangulation and identification of co-occurrences in the different cases. The review concludes that, the analysis of spatial syntax and its components, define how performance is important for the diagnosis of urban sectors, since, it provides information for decision making from public action such as accessibility and angular choice, which constitute urban integration.

LA TRADUZIONE COME CATALIZZATORE DI CHIAREZZA NEI TESTI NORMATIVI A PARTIRE DA UN’ANALISI COMPARATIVA DELLA SINTASSI IN VARIETÀ DI ITALIANO LEGISLATIVO

Translation is often considered as an ally of plain legal language. This corpus-based study sets out to provide empirical support for this hypothesis by comparing different varieties of legislative Italian used in a monolingual context (Italy) and in two multilingual settings (Switzerland and the European Union). The investigation relies primarily on a quantitative analysis of syntax informed by natural language processing (NLP) methods. The results suggest that translated legislation features shorter sentences, fewer nominalizations, an underuse of the passive voice, fewer non-finite clauses, less deep syntactic trees, shorter dependency links, and a preference for the SVO order with an explicit subject. Among the two multilingual contexts, Swiss legislation shows a slightly higher level of accessibility compared to EU directives. A complementary analysis using readability metrics confirms these trends. Nevertheless, in addition to the translation process in multilingual contexts, other latent external variables may have a (hardly quantifiable) impact on the level of accessibility, such as institutional language policies, legal traditions, drafting guidelines, and training programs for translators and language experts.

A few-shot word-structure embedded model for bridge inspection reports learning

Intelligent bridge maintenance requires the comprehensive utilization of inspection records, as they contain valuable insights into structures’ long-term service conditions. To efficiently focus and utilize this data from extensive reports, reliable extraction methods are highly sought after. However, the heavy reliance on large amounts of manually annotated data limits the applicability and practicability of existing information extraction methods from bridge inspection reports, especially given the non-uniformity in report formats and expressions. To address this issue, this study proposed a few-shot information extraction model for bridge inspection reports understanding, comprising Word and Structure Integration Embeddings, Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM), and Condition Random Field (CRF). The model’s strength lies in its easy-to-implement word-structure embedding approach, which combines domain-specific word representations and sentence structure information. Specifically, the bridge inspection-domain pre-trained language model was further pre-trained and fine-tuned to obtain word embeddings, containing prior knowledge of the domain and tasks. Moreover, a novel encoding method was designed to generate sentence structure embeddings from dependency syntactic analysis results, providing textual representation information. Finally, the integrated word-structure embeddings, created by aligning dimensions for concatenation, were fed into the BiLSTM-CRF architecture to capture contextual dependencies and constrain extraction results. Empirical evaluations conducted on four few-shot datasets with 10, 30, 50, and 100 samples demonstrate that the proposed model achieved high accuracy and F1 score, outperforming prior methods, general domain models, and large language models. Specifically, in a dataset containing 50 sentences, our model achieved an accuracy of up to 0.9357 and an F1 score of 0.8683, representing an average increase of 38.4% higher than these methods. Ablation experiments revealed the contributions of each model component. These results suggest that the proposed model can accurately extract key information from bridge inspection reports even with limited training data scenarios, thereby facilitating applications such as structural condition evaluation and maintenance decision-making.

Linguistic inputs must be syntactically parsable to fully engage the language network.

Human language comprehension is remarkably robust to ill-formed inputs (e.g., word transpositions). This robustness has led some to argue that syntactic parsing is largely an illusion, and that incremental comprehension is more heuristic, shallow, and semantics-based than is often assumed. However, the available data are also consistent with the possibility that humans always perform rule-like symbolic parsing and simply deploy error correction mechanisms to reconstruct ill-formed inputs when needed. We put these hypotheses to a new stringent test by examining brain responses to a) stimuli that should pose a challenge for syntactic reconstruction but allow for complex meanings to be built within local contexts through associative/shallow processing (sentences presented in a backward word order), and b) grammatically well-formed but semantically implausible sentences that should impede semantics-based heuristic processing. Using a novel behavioral syntactic reconstruction paradigm, we demonstrate that backward-presented sentences indeed impede the recovery of grammatical structure during incremental comprehension. Critically, these backward-presented stimuli elicit a relatively low response in the language areas, as measured with fMRI. In contrast, semantically implausible but grammatically well-formed sentences elicit a response in the language areas similar in magnitude to naturalistic (plausible) sentences. In other words, the ability to build syntactic structures during incremental language processing is both necessary and sufficient to fully engage the language network. Taken together, these results provide strongest to date support for a generalized reliance of human language comprehension on syntactic parsing.

WE…WITH ANNA: THE INCLUSORY PLURAL PRONOMINAL CONSTRUCTION IN FINNISH AND FENNO‐SWEDISH*

AbstractThis article provides a syntactic analysis of the inclusory plural pronominal construction in Fenno‐Swedish and Finnish. In this construction, a plural pronoun has a singular reading: vi …med Anna (literally “we …with Anna”) means ‘Anna and I’. In addition to the plural pronoun, the construction includes a comitative PP. Similar constructions can be found in several other languages, especially in the eastern parts of Europe which suggests it is an areal feature. The structural diversity of the construction in Fenno‐Swedish and Finnish seems to require an analysis that differs from previous analyses of other languages. Instead of a derivation involving movements, the study suggests that the analysis must employ an unvalued feature. In some well‐formed examples, the necessary movements would be far too complex for an appealing explanation. Additionally, the Fenno‐Swedish construction seems to allow an insight into a degree of development where the construction has not necessarily been fully grammaticalised.

The syntactic position of the “people” in the political discourse of left and right populism (NLP-based syntactic analysis experience)

This paper attempts to measure populism in English-language speeches of politicians using computational linguistics methods. The relevance of this study is related not only to the rise of populism in the world and the importance of understanding the mechanisms of political discourse, but also to the lack of linguistic research in the context of corpus studies. Most of the methods proposed to date require significant resources or suffer from structural limitations, especially when they rely heavily on the human annotation process to analyze extensive corpus data. The material for the study was public speeches and interviews of right-wing populist politician and 45th President of the United States Donald Trump and political rhetoric of left-wing populist politician Senator Bernie Sanders. The corpus analysis was based on transcripts downloaded from The American Presidency Project and Miller Center websites. The syntactic position of key lexical units is determined using a comprehensive method based on dependency grammar combined with natural language processing (NLP) and van Leeuwen’s linguistic theory. The application of natural language processing methods confirms the assumption that the frequency of politicians’ reference to the people is not the only relevant indicator for measuring people-centrism in (populist) political discourse, as usually proposed in the political science literature. The results of the study indicate that there is no predominant role of the people in the discourse of Trump and Sanders. In most cases, the people appear in a complementary or adjunct position, indicating their secondary importance in their rhetoric. Given that populism implies proximity to the people and is positioned as “vox populi” – “the voice of the people”, it can be assumed that for both Trump and Sanders, addressing the people is only a way to achieve their political goals.

On the aspectual values of gradable predicates in Mandarin Chinese†

AbstractThis study presents a syntactic analysis of the different aspectual readings of a gradable predicate in Mandarin Chinese. It is argued that such predicates contain an uninterpretable/underspecified [α dynamic] feature that needs a value. To receive a value, the feature must be in a c‐command relation with a functional element. For example, a functional element like the degree adverb hen ‘very,’ which is in the head of the Degree Phrase, can assign the feature with a negative value, and the predicate has a stative reading. In contrast, a null atelic morpheme in the head of the Inner Aspect Phrase can give a plus value to the predicate and it has an atelic and dynamic reading. The present study also discusses the telic reading of the same kind of predicates functioning either as the main predicate or a secondary one. It is argued that a covert telic morpheme is responsible for the telic reading. The proposed analysis shows that a syntactic account is as plausible as a lexical one, providing a comprehensive understanding of the aspectual readings of gradable predicates in Mandarin Chinese.

Ga-RBP: A Rule-based Parser for the Syntactic Analysis of the Ga Language of Ghana

This research presents a Parts of Speech (POS) corpus and a static rule-based technique, which we refer to as Ga Rule-based Parser (Ga-RBP), for the syntactic analysis and the parsing of sentences for the Ga language of Ghana. The technique is developed to parse sentences by utilising the POS tagged corpus; the corpus was developed by manually tagging the Ga words with their corresponding POS tags following a standard Ga-English dictionary and custom Tagset for the language. The syntax rules were computationally defined using production rules, which establish how a word should follow the other in the right sequence to form a correct grammatical statement based on their POS. The model generally analyses the sentence structure of the language to assert its syntactic state for correctness or otherwise.

Entropy-based syntactic tree analysis for text classification: a novel approach to distinguishing between original and translated Chinese texts

Abstract This research focuses on classifying translated and non-translated Chinese texts by analyzing syntactic rule features, using an integrated approach of machine learning and entropy analysis. The methodology employs information entropy to gauge the complexity of syntactic rules in both text types. The methodology is based on the concept of information entropy, which serves as a quantitative measure for the complexity inherent in syntactic rules as manifested from tree-based annotations. The goal of the study is to explore whether translated Chinese texts demonstrate syntactic characteristics that are significantly different from those of non-translated texts, thereby permitting a reliable classification between the two. To do this, the research calculates information entropy values for syntactic rules in two comparable corpora, one of translated and the other of non-translated Chinese texts. Then, various machine learning models are applied to these entropy metrics to identify any significant differences between the two groups. The results show significant differences in the syntactic structures. Translated texts have a higher degree of entropy, indicating more complex syntactic constructs compared to non-translated texts. These findings contribute to our understanding of the effect of translation on language syntax, with implications for text classification and translation studies.

The dynamics of syntactic and lexical complexity measures in academic writing

This study explores the L2 production of university students enrolled in an English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) course, by means of the analysis of the complexity of their academic writing performance. It focuses on syntactic and lexical complexity and their relationship with L2 writing quality and L2 proficiency. The participants were 182 L2 college-level students at difference levels of proficiency in English. The essays were evaluated by means of both global ratings of writing quality and quantitative measures of syntactic and lexical analysis. Results showed that the length of sentences and noun phrases, as well as subordination are all related to writing quality. In addition, the length of noun phrases along with lexical richness and diversity can differentiate proficiency levels. This study shows a greater use of complex phrasal constructions in the writing of more competent third-level students. Finally, our study that at advanced competence levels syntactic and lexical complexity are not synchronous, as syntactic complexity remains stable while lexical complexity continues increasing.

Non-agreeing degree constructions

Abstract This paper deals with a construction, which we dub Non-Agreeing Degree (NAD) constructions, with the distinguishing property that the agreement pattern between subjects and degree predicates is optionally disrupted, even in languages (like Spanish) where verbs commonly agree with their subjects. We show that the agreeing versus non-agreeing alternation comes with important semantic differences for the interpretation of the degree construction. We provide a first systematic description of this type of constructions and postulate a formal syntactic and semantic analysis. We argue that NAD constructions are characterized by degree predicates that introduce a non-conventional nominal scale and by subjects that are interpreted as equally non-conventional units of measurement. We postulate an intensionalization process on the subject of NAD constructions, which we capture via a general nominalization function that allows a default as well as an ordinary agreement pattern between subject and copula.

Does Higher Grade Indicate More Complex Language Usage? Exploring Syntactic Complexity Development Among High School EFL Learners

Purpose This article aims to investigate the longitudinal Syntactic Complexity (SC) development of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners and the variations by grade level. Design/Approach/Methods This study conducts a longitudinal analysis of SC development among 199 high school EFL learners in eastern China. The corpus contains 920 argumentative essays on scientifically and socially contentious topics. We employ the Second Language Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (L2SCA) to examine syntactic features in these essays through 11 computerized indices measuring different dimensions of SC (i.e., coordination, subordination, phrasal complexity). Multi-level regression analyses are used to depict SC development and cross-level interactions are investigated to examine variations by grade. Findings Results suggest that all SC indices except T-units per sentence exhibit varying growing trends. The results align with Biber's hypothetical stages of syntactic development, indicating learners’ progression toward greater subordination and phrasal complexity. Negative cross-grade interactions suggest that lower-grade students show heightened improvements in phrasal sophistication over time. Originality/Value The study portrays the developmental patterns of SC within and across grade levels, highlighting both group trends and individual variability in language development. It conceptualizes SC as a multidimensional construct and informs more precise measurement of SC features in writing assessment and instruction.

The Passive Voice in Urdu: A Syntactic Investigation and Transformational Analysis

This paper explores passive structures in the Urdu language. It aims to understand their syntactic configuration and how to convert active sentences into passive ones. Limited research exists on Urdu's passivization compared to English. The research questions focus on the structure of passive sentences in Urdu and the necessary modifications for passivization. A qualitative research methodology is used, analyzing written texts and daily conversations of native Urdu speakers. The literature review compares Urdu's passive structures with English, including the standard "be" passive and less common "get passive" and "have passive." Findings show that Urdu passives use the auxiliary “Gaya” and the agent can be explicitly mentioned using "from-PP" rather than "by-PP." The paper also covers passivization in imperative sentences, using “ja:” and “cha:hi:e” morphemes. Moreover, voice neutrality is examined, showing that passive and active sentences in Urdu often convey the same event with similar agent-patient relationships. The study’s conclusive remarks on passive construction in Urdu have the potential to ignite future research in this domain. The paper contributes to the knowledge of passive constructions in Urdu which can significantly impact translation accuracy and interpretation between Urdu and English. This research also adds to the big picture of how languages work.