Natural Word Order Research Articles

Evolução da Linguagem e Ordem Natural de Palavras os verbos reversíveis e não reversíveis da Língua Gestual de São Tomé e Príncipe num estudo piloto

search on language evolution has recently focused on the issue of natural word order, that is, word order in the phylogenetic and cognitive sense (Pagel 2009; Gell-Mann and Ruhlen 2011). Sign language and gesture studies have inspired this discussion in the literature, with special emphasis on the seminal study by Goldin-Meadow and colleagues (2008). The results of this study revealed that participants tend to produce SVO and SOV word order, regardless of the syntax of their native language. This finding has been corroborated in later studies (Gibson et al. 2013; Hall et al. 2013; Sandler et al. 2005). Our study aims to verify if there is dominant word order, or not, in linguistic emergence of Sign Language of São Tomé and Príncipe.

Superlative syntactic amalgams in an Iberian Spanish dialect

This article addresses an as yet unnoticed Spanish superlative construction attested in the mid area of Northern Spain. This construction features two striking properties: (i) it contains a relative pronoun which, at first glance, does not seem to introduce a TP (there is no overt verb to its right), which raises the question how the relative pronoun can obtain its Case/theta role; (ii) even if it were true that the relative pronoun actually introduces a TP and heads a full subordinate clause (presumably a free relative), the latter would arise in an anomalous position which disrupts the natural word order of the main clause and where it seems to lack any obvious licensor (as an adjunct, argument or predicate). A simultaneous answer to both problems will be obtained from the proposal that the construction at issue is a “syntactic amalgam” (Lakoff 1974): (i) assuming Kluck’s (2011) approach to amalgams, the relative pronoun of the construction can unproblematically be considered to introduce a sluiced TP, so it heads a full relative clause and does have a (covert) Case/theta-role licensor; (ii) the disruptive position of the relative clause and the opacity for licensing from the main clause are now expected as they are the defining properties of the so-called “interrupting clauses” in Horn-/Andrews-amalgams. As in Kluck (2011), such properties will be assumed to result from the operation “par-merge” giving rise to paratactical configurations (de Vries 2007).

A topic-enhanced recurrent autoencoder model for sentiment analysis of short texts

This paper presents a topic-enhanced recurrent autoencoder model to improve the accuracy of sentiment classification of short texts. First, the concept of recurrent autoencoder is proposed to tackle the problems in recursive autoencoder including 'increasing in computation complexity' and 'ignoring the natural word order'. Then, the recurrent autoencoder model is enhanced with the topic and sentiment information generated by joint sentiment-topic (JST) model. Besides, in order to identify the negations and ironies in short texts, sentiment lexicon is utilised to add feature dimensions for sentence representations. Experiments are performed to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of the model. Compared with recursive autoencoder model, the classification accuracy of our model is improved by about 7.7%.

Investigating Natural Word Order via Pantomime: Research Report

Abstract. Inquiry into language evolution has recently focused on the question of the natural word order, i.e. a word order which may be primary in a cognitive and phylogenetic sense (Dryer, 2005; Pagel, 2009; Gell-Mann and Ruhlen, 2011). Some substantial insights into this topic originate in gesture and sign studies. Research by Goldin-Meadow et al. (2008) has inspired scientists to use the silent gesture paradigm, which requires participants to narrate events using their hands. The results of the study revealed that participants tended to produce SOV word order of a transitive event, regardless of the syntax of their native language. The finding was corroborated to a degree in later studies; however, some of them shed more light on the issue (Gibson et al., 2013; Hall et al., 2013; Sandler et al., 2005). The aim of our study is to test whether the SOV order is dominant when participants communicate transitive events (verbs) with whole-body pantomime.

A Graph Theoretical Preprocessing Step for Text Compression

This paper presents CSGM2, a text preprocessing technique for compression purposes. It converts the original text into a word net (graph representation) and can retain the detailed contextual information such as word proximity. Specific directed graph is proposed to model this word net where words are stored in vertices and edges represent word transitions. The word net is fully capable of holding the natural word order in the original text and hence can be used directly for encoding purposes.

Natural Language Compression on Edge-Guided text preprocessing

This paper presents Edge-Guided ( E-G), an optimized text preprocessing technique for compression purposes. It transforms the original text into a word net, which stores all relationships between adjoining words. A specific directed graph is proposed to model this transformation: words are stored in vertices, whereas edges represent word transitions. Thus, the word net has a text representation which reflects the natural word order in the text, so it can be used directly for encoding purposes. A specific coding scheme is described at the top of the word net. It regards a text as a sequence of word transitions, in such a way that each word is encoded by traversing a specific edge from the vertex which stores the preceding word. This accomplishes a 1-order text preprocessing whose output is an intermediate byte representation that can be effectively encoded with universal techniques. This technique is called E-G 1 and performs on some variants. This experience is used to revisit the concept of word net. It is used to identify significative 2-word symbols by performing a specific transformation on frequent edges. The resultant transformed word net appends these 2-word symbols to the original word vocabulary, and allows a specific hierarchical relationship between them and their component words. The transformed approach also enhances the original coding scheme to handle these new features. A new technique, called E-G 2, approximates a 2-order model on words that also support specific variants. Both techniques are studied from empirical and experimental perspectives. Some compressors are also used to analyze the preprocessing ability of E-G with respect to different compression approaches. Competitive space/time trade-offs are achieved when our approaches are used to compress medium-large size texts. The best results are achieved when E-G preprocessing is coupled with high-order compressors such as Prediction by Partial Matching ( PPM).

La Stylistique comparée et la traduction: de l'ordre des mots à une linguistique de la parole

In 1958 Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet published Stylistique comparée du français et de l'anglais in order to make translation into a rigorous academic discipline. It is still widely used in training translators between French and English. Although it is possible to find some elements of a contrastive stylistics in the Renaissance discussions of word order and translation in France, they are hidden beneath the disputes between those who imitated the Latin and Greek classics and those who argued that French had reached maturity and was the most perfect of languages. In the middle of the eighteenth century the rhetorician, Charles Batteux, declared war upon the orthodox rhetoricians who taught that the natural word order was subject, verb, object. He argued that the grammatical structure of the sentence and any natural order of the words were determined by the communication priorities of the speaker. He saw the sentence, whether in French or Latin, as a progression between its beginning (début) and its goal (but), which could be any part of speech at all. In the early nineteenth century Henri Weil put forward a similar theory, but he saw the progression between the début (or notion initiale) and the but as an objective movement proper to grammar coupled with a subjective movement proper to word order. At the beginning of the twentieth century the School of Geneva, which mentions neither Batteux nor Weil, reshaped contrastive stylistics by contrasting French with German rather than Latin. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye showed that in signifying reality, French preferred an abstract representation and German concrete. They were aware that their treatment of representation involved both langue and parole. In so doing they brought the word into consideration as a stylistic entity. In discussing the sentence they replaced début and but by the more flexible terms, thème (thing said) and propos (thing said about it), which reinforced the sense that the sentence was a process of creating meaning. The most important innovation after that was Alfred Malblanc's distinction between le plan du réel preferred by German, and le plan de l'entendement preferred by French (concrete and abstract levels of representation). Later discussions of this distinction gave rise to the terms 'transposition' and 'modulation' (grammatical and semantic change) and their essential role in translation. Vinay and Darbelnet drew on the work by Malblanc and subsequent writers on translation on both sides of the Atlantic, in order show that there are systems proper to parole, to make a stylistique comparée into an autonomous discipline, and to put translator training on a sound footing.

An experimental evaluation of prefix and postfix notation in command language syntax

Commands in a command language usually consist of a verb plus object(s). A designer must decide the word order in which elements will appear in the command string. Many existing command languages use the format, verb-object, often referred to as prefix notation. However, another feasible syntax is object-verb, referred to as postfix notation. The objective of this study was to determine whether one of these notations facilitates user performance. Two command languages for a text editor were designed. One is based on the natural word order of English, verb-object. The other is based on the reverse word order, object-verb. Sixty subjects, all native speakers of English, were blocked into three groups: novices, experienced subjects who normally used a line editor, and experienced subjects who normally used a screen editor. Subjects were randomly assigned to use one of the command languages. They learned to use the command language by self instruction, then were given 20 min to perform a manuscript editing task. The task was deliberately made too long for any subject to finish. Measures of performance used were: percentage of task completed, percentage of erroneous commands, and editing efficiency. A two-way ANOVA was performed on each of the three dependent variables. There were no significant differences in performance between subjects who used the prefix command language and those who used the postfix command language, contrary to intuitive expectations. The novices differed significantly from the experienced subjects on percentage of task completed and percentage of erroneous commands, as expected. However, there was no significant difference between the novices and experienced subjects on the measure of editing efficiency. Variables which were correlated with percentage of task completed strongly enough to be useful as covariates were typing speed (all subjects) and contact hours with text editors (experienced subjects).

The Development of Word Order Patterns in Old English

The major focus of this book involves the testing of theories of word order change with data on change in Old English. The data are drawn from such sources as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and from the work of other scholars in Old English and historical linguistics. The book provides support for the ideas of earlier linguists such as Sapir, and will represent a major study for those working in Old English and historical linguistics. Contents: Introduction; Natural Word Order Types and Natural Word Order Change; Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic Word Order Patterns; Order of Major Elements in Main Clauses in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Word Order Patterns in Conjunct, Relative and Subordinate Clauses; Further Studies in Old English Word Order; Conclusions.^R

Noun-modifier order in a semantic verification task

In a semantic verification task, presenting the noun before its modifier yielded faster reaction times than did the opposite order of presentation. This finding held for two languages and for both concrete (food terms) and abstract (country names) terms and is thus not attributable to natural word order or to type of stimulus. The results can be explained in terms of spreading activation (Collins & Loftus, 1975). A post hoc analysis revealed that concrete nouns are verified faster when paired with concrete rather than abstract modifiers, but that abstract nouns are verified faster when paired with abstract rather than concrete modifiers. An additional group of subjects, asked to produce attributes to nouns, produced more concrete than abstract modifiers to contrete nouns, but more abstract than concrete modifiers to abstract nouns. This result was taken as suggestive of possible differences in internal structure of concrete and abstract categories.