Morphosyntactic Specifications Research Articles

Inflectional learning as local optimization

Formal descriptions of inflectional systems face three interrelated problems: (1) the Meaning Assignment Problem: Which morphosyntactic feature specification should be assigned to a given affix? (2) the Imperfect Distribution Problem: To what degree can the paradigmatic distribution of an affix deviate from its morphosyntactic specification? and (3) the Subsegmentation Problem: Does a given string of segments consist of one or more affixes? What makes the analysis of complex inflectional systems potentially intractable is the accumulative effect of all three problems, which results in an unwieldy amount of analytic options. Existing approaches to these problems are either incompatible with standard analyses in theoretical morphology (e.g. Harris 1955; Goldsmith 2010) or address only a subset of these problems (e.g. Pertsova 2011). In this paper, we propose a unified approach to all three problems by outlining a learning algorithm that uses optimal patterns of paradigmatic distribution of potential affixes as the main criterion for computing morpheme meaning and subsegmentation of affix strings. The central idea is that learners apply local optimization in the sense of the Harmonic Serialism version of Optimality Theory (McCarthy 2010): Every optimization step identifies the affix with the optimal distribution in a paradigm, assigning a morpheme entry to it, and ‘freezes’ the substrings corresponding to the newly learned affix in the paradigm for further learning. Different constraint rankings result naturally in affix lexica optimized for specific theoretical approaches to morphology.

Multilingual digital resources with Bulgarian language

Multilingual digital resources with Bulgarian languageThe paper presents in brief Bulgarian language resources as a part of multilingual digital resources developed in the frame of some international projects, among them parallel annotated and aligned corpora, comparable corpora, morpho-syntactic specifications for corpora annotation and dictionaries encoding, lexicons, lexical databases, and electronic dictionaries.

A radically non-morphemic approach to bidirectional syncretism

This paper addresses the question of how certain kinds of overlapping syncretisms in inflectional paradigms can be accounted for that Baerman et al. (Language 80:807–824, 2005) refer to as convergent/divergent bidirectional syncretisms (based on earlier work by Stump, Inflectional morphology, 2001). Bidirectional syncretism strongly resists accounts in terms of standard rules of exponence (or similar devices) that correlate inflection markers with (often underspecified) morpho-syntactic specifications (such rules are used in many morphological theories; e.g., Anderson, A-morphous morphology, 1992; Halle and Marantz in The view from building, pp. 111–176, 1993; Aronoff, Morphology by itself, 1994; Wunderlich in Yearbook of morphology 1995, pp. 93–114, 1996; and Stump, Inflectional morphology, 2001). The reason is that it is difficult to capture overlapping distributions by natural classes. In view of this, rules of referral have been proposed to derive bidirectional syncretism (Stump, Inflectional morphology, 2001; Baerman et al. (Language 80:807–824, 2005)). In contrast, I would like to pursue the hypothesis that systematic instances of overlapping syncretism ultimately motivate a new approach to inflectional morphology—one that fully dispenses with the assumption that morphological exponents are paired with morpho-syntactic feature specifications (and that therefore qualifies as radically non-morphemic): First, rules of exponence are replaced with feature co-occurrence restrictions (FCRs; Gazdar et al., Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, 1985). For phonologically determined natural classes of exponents, FCRs state incompatibilites with morpho-syntactic feature specifications. Second, marker competition is resolved by a principle of Phonology-driven Marker Selection (PMS). PMS takes over the role of the Specificity (Blocking, Elsewhere, Panini) Principle of standard analyses. Empirically, the main focus is on Bonan declension; the analysis is subsequently extended to Gujarati conjugation and Latin o-declension, with further remarks on bidirectional syncretism in other inflectional paradigms.

MULTEXT-East: morphosyntactic resources for Central and Eastern European languages

The paper presents the MULTEXT-East language resources, a multilingual dataset for language engineering research, focused on the morphosyntactic level of linguistic description. The MULTEXT-East dataset includes the morphosyntactic specifications, morphosyntactic lexica, and a parallel corpus, the novel "1984" by George Orwell, which is sentence aligned and contains hand-validated morphosyntactic descriptions and lemmas. The resources are uniformly encoded in XML, using the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines, TEI P5, and cover 16 languages, mainly from Central and Eastern Europe: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, English, Estonian, Hungarian, Macedonian, Persian, Polish, Resian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian. This dataset, unique in terms of languages covered and the wealth of encoding, is extensively documented, and freely available for research purposes. The paper overviews the MULTEXT-East resources by type and language and gives some conclusions and directions for further work.

The morpho-semantics of number in Brazilian Portuguese bare singulars

In this paper, I provide evidence against the idea that bare singulars in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) are morphologically singular but semantically number neuter. I argue instead that they are sometimes specified for number (singular) and sometimes under-specified and that this has semantic consequences. I develop an account according to which whether or not a bare noun can enter a syntactic derivation under-specified for number depends on the functional heads to which it is syntactically related. The conclusion is that, as far as number is concerned, morpho-syntactic specification should NOT be kept apart from semantic interpretation.

Developmental Stages in Advanced SLA

AbstractSecond Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers have yet to map the developmental stages language learners go through as they approach the target language. In studies of English as a Second Language (ESL) writing, the term 'advanced learner' has been applied indiscriminately to learners ranging from freshman ESL composition to graduate students. There is a need to examine the advanced stages of SLA in order to refine SLA theories and pedagogical approaches. A corpus of texts written by non-native English-speaking doctoral students in applied linguistics from several linguistic backgrounds was analyzed to determine the texts’ lexical, morphological and syntactic fluency, accuracy and complexity. A sub-corpus of papers by native-English-speaking peers was used for comparison. The texts were strictly-timed and loosely-timed exams written 2 to 3 years apart. Surveys and interviews were also conducted. Based on findings, the study defines data-based criteria that distinguish four quantitatively and qualitatively distinct developmental stages: the advanced, highly advanced, near-native, and native-like stages. Advanced learners make more frequent and varied errors which can be explained by transfer from the first language. Native-like writers make few errors that can be explained by overgeneralization of conventions from informal English and working memory limitations (similar to native speakers’ errors). The study suggests that SLA is a process of transfer followed by relearning of morpho-syntactic specifications (Herschensohn, 2000), with syntax being used with the greatest accuracy (Bardovi-Harlig & Bofman, 1989) and lexicon with the least. The relationships between accuracy and other social and cognitive factors are considered, and pedagogical recommendations are made.

Developmental Stages in Advanced SLA

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers have yet to map the developmental stages language learners go through as they approach the target language. In studies of English as a Second Language (ESL) writing, the term 'advanced learner' has been applied indiscriminately to learners ranging from freshman ESL composition to graduate students. There is a need to examine the advanced stages of SLA in order to refine SLA theories and pedagogical approaches. A corpus of texts written by non-native English-speaking doctoral students in applied linguistics from several linguistic backgrounds was analyzed to determine the texts’ lexical, morphological and syntactic fluency, accuracy and complexity. A sub-corpus of papers by native-English-speaking peers was used for comparison. The texts were strictly-timed and loosely-timed exams written 2 to 3 years apart. Surveys and interviews were also conducted. Based on findings, the study defines data-based criteria that distinguish four quantitatively and qualitatively distinct developmental stages: the advanced, highly advanced, near-native, and native-like stages. Advanced learners make more frequent and varied errors which can be explained by transfer from the first language. Native-like writers make few errors that can be explained by overgeneralization of conventions from informal English and working memory limitations (similar to native speakers’ errors). The study suggests that SLA is a process of transfer followed by relearning of morpho-syntactic specifications (Herschensohn, 2000), with syntax being used with the greatest accuracy (Bardovi-Harlig & Bofman, 1989) and lexicon with the least. The relationships between accuracy and other social and cognitive factors are considered, and pedagogical recommendations are made.

Inflectional frames in language production

The authors report six implicit priming experiments that examined the production of inflected forms. Participants produced words out of small sets in response to prompts. The words differed in form or shared word-initial segments, which allowed for preparation. In constant inflectional sets, the words had the same number of inflectional suffixes, whereas in variable sets the number of suffixes differed. In the experiments, preparation effects were obtained, which were larger in the constant than in the variable sets. Control experiments showed that this difference in effect was not due to syntactic class or phonological form per se. The results are interpreted in terms of a slot-and-filler model of word production, in which inflectional frames, on the one hand, and stems and affixes, on the other hand, are independently spelled out on the basis of an abstract morpho-syntactic specification of the word, which is followed by morpheme-to-frame association.

Where plural refuses to agree: feature unification and morphological economy

The paper offers an account of languages such as Hungarian which donot allow for number concord, that is, for several noun-phrase internal realisationsof plural. It is looked at the combinations of noun and adjective, numeraland noun, and subject and verb. I first show that an underspecification analysisfails to capture the data. I argue that nevertheless, the lack of number agreementin this language type is only apparent and that it is still possible to stickto the concept of feature unification for these constructions. The solutionI propose is coached in the framework of Optimality Theory and crucially relieson an economy constraint which I call PEPL and which outranks two other constraints:MAP, which requires a correspondence of semantic aggregate individuation andthe morphological feature [+pl]; and REALISE (μ), which requires that affixmaterial that fits into the morphosyntactic context should be realised. Aconsequence of the analysis is that non-default mapping of aggregate semanticsto the morphosyntactic specification [+pl] is a typological option in orderto respect formal agreement. The variation between “Type Hungarian”languages and “Type English” languages (i.e., languages that exhibitplural concord) is thus accounted for in terms of a different ranking of theconstraints that require morphological economy (PEPL) and explicitness (MAP,REALISE (μ), respectively.

Agreement as a Discourse Phenomenon

Agreement is widely considered to be the prime example of a relation based on linguistic form in which the morphosyntactic specification of one category, such as a subject noun phrase, is redundantly expressed on a separate category such as a verb. In this paper, I discuss the problems inherent in such morphosyntactic accounts of agreement and argue that the consideration of a range of attested agreement patterns leads naturally to an account in which agreement relations are seen as links between discourse information structures. Taking a discourse perspective avoids the descriptive problems associated with current syntactic approaches to agreement and leads to a revealing reconsideration of the nature of agreement relations