Nominal Word Research Articles

The structure of developing semantic networks: Evidence from single and multiple nominal word associations in young monolingual and bilingual readers

ABSTRACTThe present study focuses on the effect of an important methodological choice in word association studies in children: the elicitation of single versus multiple responses. This choice has been shown to affect the numbers and types of associations adults produce, however, little is known about how it affects children’s word associations. A total of 11,725 associations to 80 nouns from 207 monolingual and bilingual minority children were classified according to a detailed coding system, and differences between the semantic characteristics of first, second, and third responses were examined. We show that in children as well, the multiple association task elicits more and qualitatively different responses, resulting in more diversified semantic networks surrounding the stimulus nouns. On the speaker level, reading comprehension scores were related differently to initial and later responses, suggesting a more complex measure of semantic knowledge emerges from the multiple word association task. No differences were found between monolingual and bilingual children’s associative preferences. We argue that the multiple association task produces more detailed data on language users’ semantic networks than the single association task, and suggest a number of ways in which this task could be employed in future research.

An enhanced Tree-LSTM architecture for sentence semantic modeling using typed dependencies

Background: Tree-based Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) network has become state-of-the-art for modeling the meaning of language texts as they can effectively exploit the grammatical syntax and thereby non-linear dependencies among words of the sentence. However, most of these models cannot recognize the difference in meaning caused by a change in semantic roles of words or phrases because they do not acknowledge the type of grammatical relations, also known as typed dependencies, in sentence structure.Methods: This paper proposes an enhanced LSTM architecture, called relation gated LSTM, which can model the relationship between two inputs of a sequence using a control input. We also introduce a Tree-LSTM model called Typed Dependency Tree-LSTM that uses the sentence dependency parse structure as well as the dependency type to embed sentence meaning into a dense vector.Results: The proposed model outperformed its type-unaware counterpart in two typical Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks – Semantic Relatedness Scoring and Sentiment Analysis. The results were comparable or competitive with other state-of-the-art models. Qualitative analysis showed that changes in the voice of sentences had little effect on the model’s predicted scores, while changes in nominal (noun) words had a more significant impact. The model recognized subtle semantic relationships in sentence pairs. The magnitudes of learned typed dependency embeddings were also in agreement with human intuitions.Conclusion: The research findings imply the significance of grammatical relations in sentence modeling. The proposed models would serve as a base for future researches in this direction.

Антонимия именного словообразования в современном английском языке

Статья посвящена изучению антонимии именного словообразования в современном английском языке. Проблема словообразования как один из важнейших путей обогащения и развития языка привлекала и продолжает обращать внимание лингвистов различных теоретических взглядов и разных стран. Одной из мало изученных областей языкознания является антонимия. В статье изучены некоторые вопросы теории словообразования, а именно, какое место занимает словообразование в системе наук о языке, чем оперирует данная наука, каковы ее основные единицы. Рассмотрена проблема сочетаемости производящих основ со словообразующими формантами. Приведен основной набор аффиксов,образующих антонимы, даны сравнительная характеристика каждого из словообразовательных средств по частям речи (существительных и прилагательных) и итоговая оценка продуктивности антонимичных морфем в английском языке. Изучена теория сопоставления суффиксов В.А. Рудницкой и прослежены действия этой теории на практике. Знание теории и способов словообразования и практическое их применение в значительной степени способствуют обогащению словарного запаса на базе знакомой лексики.

On comparative study of deverbal nominalizations denoting process and result in Lithuanian and English

Although the Lithuanian and English languages are bound within the family of IndoEuropean languages, the typological differences between the two languages lie in the system of inflectional and derivational morphology. The paper analyses the concept of nominalization and discusses the deverbal process and result nominalizations in Lithuanian and English. For the comparative qualitative and quantitative analysis, 965 equivalents of deverbal nouns have been selected from the “Parallel Corpus”. Out of them, 802 examples belong to the category of deverbal process nouns, whilst the category of deverbal result nouns includes 163 examples. From the point of view of morphology, in both languages nominalization is a word-formation process by which a noun is derived from a verb, adjective or another noun, or even other parts of speech, usually through suffixation and by adding the ending in the Lithuanian language. Two types of nominalization can be found across languages: lexical and syntactic. Lexical nominalization refers to the formation of deverbal nouns or nominal words derived from the verb or a nominal word, and syntactic nominalization refers to turning a clause into a noun phrase. In summary, the investigation of the derivational affixes of deverbal nouns in Lithuanian and their equivalents in English has revealed the following differences: in Lithuanian, the deverbal nominalizations – deverbal process nouns and deverbal result nouns – can be formed with 132 suffixes and 5 endings, whilst in English – with 10 suffixes and by employing the derivational strategy of conversion. Also, the analysis of the empirical material revealed that the suffix -imas/-ymas in Lithuanian prevails in forming deverbal process nouns (they make 73 per cent of all deverbal process nouns), while the suffix -inys is the most prolific in forming deverbal result nouns (they make 38 per cent of all deverbal result nouns). The English equivalents usually have the suffix -ion/-tion/-sion/-ation, quite many derivatives have the suffix -ing. It should be noted that deverbal nominalizations in the Lithuanian language often correlate with abstract and concrete nouns (non-derivatives) in the English language: 23 per cent of all derivatives in Lithuanian have more than one equivalent (derivative or non-derivative) in English.

Реализация принципа экономии при образовании психологических терминов в английском и русском языках

The paper addresses the ways of applying economy principle to the sublanguage of psychology. The authors identify the most productive term formation methods, which show the tendency of both languages to compression of nominal words and phrases. In the system of psychological terms of the English language, the most productive ways of linguistic compression are affixation and compounding. The English terminological system is rich, functional and economical because of its unlimited potential for compounding and affixation. The Russian terminological system is more likely to enrich the vocabulary through phonetic borrowings, semantic derivation and calque. It is argued that the borrowings acquired by the Russian terminological system account for the multitude of synonymous terms. On the other hand, phonetic borrowings and semantic calque have enriched the vocabulary without effort and redundancy. It is concluded that economy principle plays a fundamental role in the creation of new words and their adaptation to the English and Russian terminological systems.

Slavic-root verbs in CP: loanwords and problematic cases

Although being a comparatively small-volume source, the Catechism of Merkelis Petkevičius (CP) discloses the complexity of analysing Lithuanian loan verbs and Slavic-root hybrids. Conducting research on loanwords from the Slavic languages, the main focus is usually laid on nominal words. The key rule applied while analysing the verbs of Slavic origin is based on the compliance between the distinguished suffixes in the analysed words and the suffixes characteristic of the Slavic languages. However, Slavic-root loanwords are also found, the suffixes of which do not have any equivalents in the Slavic languages. Traditionally such verbs are assigned to hybrids but they may be of two types. The Slavic-root verbs were selected from CP, which contributed to revealing the problems encountered while analysing them. The majority of Slavic-root verbs in the CP are attributed to regular loanwords, which are also reflected in the adjacent text in Polish. Several words fall under the category of problematic Slavic-root verbs. The suggested division of hybrids into derivational and adaptational ones is determined by several principles. The hybrid, when a Slavic-root verb does not have precise suffix equivalents and due to the objective reasons cannot be seen as a loanword (there is no word in the Lithuanian language, which can serve as a derivational base word), is regarded to be an adaptational one, i.e., its morphological component that formally complies with the suffix, underwent changes in the process of integration but modifications in the meaning are rarely identified in such cases (liecavoti, -avoja, -vojo CP 217,23). Derivational hybrids are the verbs, which have a word of common root in the recipient language and the derivational link can be envisaged between them (prarakauti, -auja, -avo CP 160,17, pasnykauti, -auja, -avo CP 88,25). Such hybrids are more frequently based on the meanings of base word and this may lead to some differences in the meanings of respective root verbs in the Slavic languages.

Hydro-landscape vocabulary of the Udmurt language

Introduction. Landscape vocabulary refers to the basic vocabulary of any natural language. It nominates both natural geographical and anthropogenic objects that have arisen as a result of human activity. In accordance with the substantial signs (water, land) as part of the landscape vocabulary, it is possible to distinguish two macrosystems, namely hydro-landscape vocabulary and the vocabulary of the land. Each of these components has its own internal structure, which differ from each other both by composition and quantitative indicators. Materials and Methods. The subject of linguistic analysis in the article is the hydro-landscape vocabulary of the Udmurt language (239 items), which does not refer to the category of proper nouns. These are nominal words that can find in the dictionaries of general vocabulary. The paper employed comparative, historical, synchronously comparative, descriptive and statistical research methods. Results and Discussion. Based on the subject-conceptual content of nominative units, two categories of hydronyms are distinguished and considered in the work. One of them is system-forming or dominant; it represents the designations of the main types of water bodies in a given territory. The second group is concentrated around the dominant units and acts in relation to them as intrasystem formations. The basis of hydro-landscape vocabulary of the Udmurt language are of primordial origin. Ancient layer of nominative units, consisting of proto-Uralic, proto-Finno-Ugrian, proto-Finno-Permian and proto-Permian words, has genetic correspondence in the Permian, and in the majority of modern Finno-Ugric languages. Later units appeared in the period of independent existence of the language, after its divergence with the closely related Komi-Zyryan and Komi-Permian languages. The beginning of the formation of a foreign-language component refers to the common-Permian epoch, most of the non-original names are late borrowings that penetrated from the Russian and Turkic languages. Other types of borrowings (Baltic-Finnish, Ob-Ugrian, Samoyed) are not available here. Conclusion. The formation and development of the hydro-landscape vocabulary of the Udmurt language took place for many millennia on the basis of internal resources. Ancient Iranian, Turkic and Russian languages served as external sources of its replenishment.

Perception of Word-level Prominence in Free Word Order Language Discourse.

This study examines the contribution of constituent order, prosody, and information structure to the perception of word-level prominence in Russian, a free word order language. Prominence perception is investigated through the analysis of prominence ratings of nominal words in two published narrative texts. Word-level perceived prominence ratings were obtained from linguistically naïve native speakers of Russian in two tasks: a silent prominence rating task of the read text passages, and an auditory prominence rating task of the same texts as read aloud by a native Russian speaker. Analyses of the prominence ratings reveal a greater likelihood of perceived prominence for words introducing discourse-new referents, as well as words occurring in a non-canonical sentence position, and featuring acoustic-prosodic enhancement. The results show that prosody and word order vary probabilistically in relation to information structure in read-aloud narrative, suggesting a complex interaction of prosody, word order, and information structure underlying the perception of prominence.

The Role of Nominal Word Pattern in Arabic Reading Acquisition: Insights from Cross-modal Priming

ABSTRACT The morphological structure of the word has a central function in the organization of the mental lexicon and word recognition. Polymorphemic words in Arabic are composed of two non-concatenated morphemes: root and word-pattern. This study is the first to address the issue of nominal-pattern priming among young developing Arabic speakers. I examined cross-modal priming using words derived from the same nominal-pattern as the target (/ruku:b/-/duxu:l/riding-entrance) relative to prime words that included a different word-pattern than the target, while preserving phonological similarity (/duxa:n/-/duxu:l/“smoke”-“entrance”) in two groups: second- and fifth-graders. The findings showed facilitation of lexical decisions about target words, in terms of accuracy but not reaction times in both grades. These findings may stem from the morpho-orthographic nature of the Arabic written word and the information conveyed by the nominal word-pattern.

The structural patterns of Lithuanian affixes

The aim of this research is to identify the main structural patterns of affixes of Lithuanian inflective words, their productivity and frequency. We present a survey of the structural diversity and productivity of these morphemes rendered in The Dictionary of Modern Lithuanian and in The Grammar of Modern Lithuanian. The frequency data was collected from The Database of the Morphemics of the Lithuanian Language. The morpheme analysis has revealed the following tendencies: 1) while prefixes are always monosyllabic, suffixes and flexions can vary from non-syllabic to trisyllabic, 2) within these morphemes, consonant clusters are not frequent. Prefixes in Lithuanian can have C0-2VC0-2 structure. The most productive and frequent pattern is C1V. Suffixes have structures C1-2, C0-2V(W)C0-3 and C0-1VC1-2VC0-2. The most productive are VC1 of nominal words and C1, VC0-1 verbal suffixes. In usage, VC1 suffixes of nominal words and V, C1 as well as VC1 verb patterns dominate. Flexions can have the following structures: C1, VC0-2, VC1VC0-1 or VC1VC1VC0-1. The most productive patterns are simple VC0-1, which also dominate the usage. The analysis has revealed the influence of a root on the structure of other morphemes. The most typical root structure C1-2VC1-2 entails a C1V structure prefix on the one side, while on the other - a suffix or a flexion with VC0-1 structure. The result of such combination is quite a consistent a consonant + a vowel + a consonant (+ a consonant) + a vowel + a consonant (+ a consonant) + a vowel (+ a consonant) chain: C1V + C1-2VC1-2 + VC0-1.

СИНТАКСИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ВЕРХНЕКОЛЫМСКОГО ГОВОРА ЭВЕНСКОГО ЯЗЫКА

The article discusses the syntactic features in the Verkhnekolymsky dialect of the Even language, which has not been coherently described so far. The analysis of the material collected during the field expedition to the Verkhnekolymsky region of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in 2014 enabled to state that the word order in Verkhnekolymsky dialect is similar to the standard variety of the language. In accordance with its rules, combining words and phrases with coordination is performed using the corresponding coordinating particles and conjunctions and is expressed by enumerating intonation. In the subjects’ speech, mainly coordination in case and number was found. As far as the absence of this coordination is rare in Verkhnekolymsky dialect, it cannot belong to the Western dialect group whose relevant feature is the absence of this coordination. In subordination, nominal words and participles are subordinated in case to the independent word they are linked to with appropriate subordinators. Thus, at the level of syntactic patterns, Verkhnekolymsky dialect can be preliminary affiliated to the Middle dialect group.

Об имплицитном варианте аффикса третьего лица категории принадлежности имен существительных в чувашском языке

The article deals with the spelling of nominal word combinations in the Chuvash language, the components of which are connected by an implicit version of the affix of the third person. The work points to the contradiction in the orthography of similar word combinations: кĕреке пуçĕ "toast-master", вăйă пуçĕ "head of the game", кĕтÿ пуçĕ "leader of the pack" (separately) – пирĕн çулпуç "our leader", гений çулпуç "brilliant leader" (in one word). The modern spelling dictionaries do not include a number of word combinations, which are identical in structure with the syntagmas represented in dictionaries in the joined-up writing. The author proves that a separate spelling corresponds to the orthography of all nominal syntagmas.

Nominal Word Formations in Toba Batak Language: A Study of Generative Morphology

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Долгий гласный [а] в именных словоформах тёлёсского говора улаганского диалекта теленгитского языка (в сопоставительном аспекте)

Долгий гласный [а] в именных словоформах тёлёсского говора улаганского диалекта теленгитского языка (в сопоставительном аспекте)

О категориях словообразования в сирхинском диалекте даргинского языка

 The aim of the research is studying the word-building categories in the Sirkh dialect of the Dargin language, and its importance for determining the Dargin structural-typological model.Methods: retrospective analysis, evaluation and qualitative study of nominal word formations, comparative historical method, the study of the conceptual structure of phrases, structural and semantic analysis of nominal word combinations, empirical research.Conclusions. The Sirkh dialect nouns have their own characteristics and denote the concepts of specific objects, abstract concepts that are thought of independently. On the basis of the analyzed material one can develop the Dargin pupils’ philological skills and abilities, interested in having a command of their native language

Nominale Wortbildungen und Fügungen mit super. Ein korpusbasierter Vergleich

This article presents a corpus-based investigation of the factors that co-vary in contemporary written German with the use of nominal word formations and syntagms construed with super, such as Superteam and super Team. The alternating constructions Super-N and super + N are studied on the basis of a statistical analysis with regard to six variables which capture semantic, etymological, text-linguistic and morphosyntactic features of both constructions. The data consist of 1000 occurrences (500 for each construction) drawn from the Deutsches Referenzkorpus (DeReKo). The results indicate that the two alternative constructions are significantly associated with four variables: semantic class, determination, attributive modification and the nature of reference (concrete vs. abstract). Conversely, neither the length of the text nor the etymology of the base word are significant factors in the alternation in statistical terms.

One-sound morphemic elements in the base of the derivational suffixes in Orkhon Inscriptions

Abstract In this paper, the origin of Turkic derivational suffixes is discussed. It was noted that there are various approaches to this case, one of them being the theory of grammaticalization which suggests that Turkic derivational suffixes come from content words, while the other being based on the one-sound morphemic elements that are common to some derivational suffixes. The main one-sound formants in the language of Orkhon Inscriptions that we investigate are the elements -l, -g, and -m. The element -l occurs both in denominal and deverbal words, whereas the formants -g and -m are registered mostly in deverbal nominal words.

Slavic nominal word-formation: Proto-Indo-European origins and historical development by Ranko Matasović

Reviewed by: Slavic nominal word-formation: Proto-Indo-European origins and historical development by Ranko Matasović Marek Majer* Ranko Matasović. Slavic nominal word-formation: Proto-Indo-European origins and historical development. [Empirie und Theorie der Sprachwissenschaft, 3]. Heidelberg: Winter, 2014. 221 pp. ISBN 9783825363352. 1. Introduction The publication of a treatment of Slavic nominal word formation by Ranko Matasović (RM) is an important and welcome event for Slavicists and Indo-Europeanists alike. Among numerous other works spanning Slavic, Indo-European, and non-Indo-European linguistics, RM has authored the Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika (Matasović 2008), still the only historical grammar of a Slavic language significantly engaging the Proto-Indo-European background and compatible with the current state of knowledge about the latter (the importance of the connection with Indo-European linguistics is also emphasized in the extended title of the work under review). The current synthesis of historical Sl word formation—as we learn from the opening paragraphs (15)—grew out of RM's work on the new, coauthored etymological dictionary of Croatian, the first volume of which has since appeared (ERHJ 1). The book has already been the subject of three quite extensive reviews: by M. Mihaljević (2014), Ž. Ž. Varbot (2015), and Th. Olander and B. Nielsen Whitehead (2015).1 In order not to duplicate the effort of the aforementioned competent reviewers, every so often I shall refer the interested reader to their conclusions, particularly as regards those areas which they have dealt with at some length;2 in the present review, I concentrate on those aspects of the work regarding which more discussion is in order. [End Page 147] 2. Context and Relation to Earlier Works In the initial passages of the book (15–17), RM states how he intends to position his new synthesis vis-à-vis the existing treatments of nominal word formation in Sl (Vondrák 1906,3 Sławski ZSP, Vaillant 1974, etc.), arguing that in spite of such considerable coverage of the field, a new study is still desirable. RM's judgment on this issue is fully reasonable. Besides being dated to some extent (and universally very conservative at the IE end), the above-mentioned classic works are often less than ideal for scholars interested in PSl for comparative IE purposes rather than in the study of the Sl languages themselves. Vondrák 1924 and especially Vaillant 1974 are extremely rich in data drawn from the modern Sl languages which are less relevant from the PSl (or especially the IE) viewpoint; it is at times challenging to extract the securely old material from these sources. Sławski ZSP makes a stronger effort to isolate genuinely PSl derivational morphology, clearly separating it from processes occurring in later Sl languages (sometimes closely paralleling each other). However, the work is written in Polish and split among several volumes of SP. This and its lack of a table of contents and an index makes it rather unwieldy and relatively unknown among Indo-Europeanists. Besides, Sławski's treatment of word formation was to be illustrated by material amassed in the ambitious lexicographical work it was to accompany; but only a small part of the latter was ever completed, so that many of the PSl reconstructions found in Sławski ZSP are left with little illustrational evidence. In the light of all this, RM's aim was to produce a book that would be more concise and focus on the indisputably PSl material, taking advantage of the data gathered in dictionaries such as ÈSSJa, SP, and Derksen EDSIL, while at the same time being up to date with regard to the present knowledge about PIE. All in all, the author has succeeded in creating such a work, and it will no doubt be perceived as a major contribution to the field. 3. Structure, Notation, and Presentation The book is organized in a fashion typical of a basic diachronic treatment of derivational morphology of an IE language. Following an introduction (15– 20), the chapter on suffixation comprises the bulk of the work (21–169), divided into sections grouping suffixes into various classes based on their segmental shape (on the principles of subdivision, see below). It should be noted that reduplication is...

Accentuation of Nominal Words in the Vilnius Speech: de Saussure and Fortunatov’s synchronic law

The article presents the research on how Vilnians follow the main synchronic accentuation law of the Lithuanian language – de Saussure and Fortunatov’s (SF) synchronic law. The research aims at evaluation of whether the stress of nominal words is often not placed on attracting endings; whether accentuation tendencies of Vilnians are predetermined by external (social) factors – age, gender, education; what impact on the accentuation of townsmen is made by dialects. The empirical research material includes 30 direct interviews recorded from 18–75 year-old Vilnians (total number includes 26 hours of records). Sociolinguistic variables were coded via the language element analysis programme CLAN, statistical significance of the results was analysed through SPSS (ANOVA and t-tests). SF law was chosen as the axis of the research, which effect (accentuation of attractive endings) is to be linked with standard language accentuation system. Weakened SF law effect (the stress falls on stems preceding attractive endings) is to be linked with levelling of accents specific for eastern highlanders subdialects and accentuation system changes related with it: accentuation of column model, hypercorrection accentuation and accentuation variability. It was established that in view of accentuation the Vilnius speech is not homogenous. The divide separating most likely two individual phonological systems is between the older (over 50 years old) and two younger generations (18-29 years old and 30-49 years old). In the vertical of language variety, situated between dialect and standard language, older Vilnians language, formed and influenced mostly by eastern highlander’s subdialect, is closer to dialect, whilst middle and younger generation Vilnian’s speech is closer to standard language. In older generation of Vilnians speech 59 % of nominal words with attractive endings are accentuated in stems, whilst in two younger generations (Vilnians urbanolect) – vice versa: 58-63% attractive endings are accentuated by SF law. The research showed statistically significant influence of the age, gender, social status of the informants and activity developed by them on accentuation tendencies. More rare application of SF law is to be linked with the category of male gender, low social status and traditional activity (of industrial enterprises). More frequent application of SF law is to be linked with female gender, high social status and modern activity (of knowledge enterprises, service areas).

Pragmatyka w klasyfikacji słowotwórczej rzeczownika

Pragmatics in word-formative classification of nouns
 The article presents a classification of Polish nominal word formations with a particular regard to derivatives with a categorial pragmatic (expressive) element. It discusses some of the existing proposals of classification, and suggests the author’s own. The highest floor of the classification contains: I. nominations (mutations) and II. renominations; the latter being divided into 1. transpositions, 2a. type modifications (feminitives, diminutives, names of young beings, etc.), and 2b. pragmatic modifications: emotional-evaluative, and stylistic derivatives. Also distinguished are III. mixed derivatives: 1. nominational-modificative, and 2. compound renominations. The general classification of derivatives counts transpositions and modifications as a single word-formative type that stands in opposition to mutations. Moreover, the paper makes more precise the understanding of the poetic function of word-formative affixes and word-formation in general. This function can be viewed as a variety of the pragmatic function, and more literally, as the function that tightly binds the derivative with the poetic language and with the “reality” it creates.