Noun Phrases Research Articles

An Analysis of Structural Units and Modification of the Idiomatic Expressions on Speech Videos

This research analyzed idiomatic expressions in speech videos on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel. This study used descriptive linguistics to collect qualitative data and used analytical techniques. The data were taken from nine speech videos from TEDx Talks YouTube channel, after collected the idiomatic expressions, the data were categorized using two theories: Biber’s (1999) and Ernst’s (1981) theories. This study found 54 kinds of structural units of idiomatic expressions with the most dominant were prepositional phrase idioms with total 21 idioms, followed by selected verb + noun phrase idioms with total 14 idioms, next selected verb + prepositional phrase idioms with total 13 idioms, and lastly noun phrase idioms with total 6 idioms. This study also found 11 idiom modifications, and internal modifications were the most appeared with total 5 idioms, followed by external modifications with total 4 idioms, and lastly conjunction modification with total 2 idioms. The implications of this research can be used in teaching and learning for EFL/ESL.

Zero-shot visual grounding via coarse-to-fine representation learning

Visual grounding (VG) locates target objects in visual scenes by understanding given natural language queries. Current methods for VG mainly focus on grounding referring expressions or noun phrases covered in the labeled training samples. Despite their grounding prowess, these approaches struggle in grounding novel query–image pairs excluded from the training data. This shortage is usually caused by the deficiency of discriminative representation learning both in images and queries. To address these issues, we propose a one-stage coarse-to-fine framework for zero-shot VG to ground novel query-image samples. Specifically, in the coarse stage, we mine the global context information in the visual features and query embeddings by employing a multi-head self-attention block, strengthening the intra-modality relations in the visual and textual features. In the fine stage, we first learn the query-aware visual representations based on the acquired global context information via a multi-modal relation-enhanced transformer block, which explores the informative information by modeling the cross-modal interaction among visual and textual domains. We further excavate target-oriented discriminative representations from the acquired query-aware visual representations by a noun phrase-guided multi-modal interaction network, which augments the interaction between target-related phrases and the obtained query-aware visual representations to enhance the distinction of target regions, enhancing the subsequent referred target grounding and generalizing. In order to validate the proposed approach, we implement extensive experiments and ablation studies on public benchmark datasets, including RefCOCO, RefCOCO+, RefCOCOg, Flickr30K Entity, Flickr-Split-0 and Flickr-Split-1. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach substantially improves the grounding accuracy and achieves new state-of-the-art performance under single-stage training and testing.

Semantic Role-Marking in Lunyore Morphology and Syntax

Semantic roles denote different semantic relations that a noun phrase plays with respect to the action or state described by a predicate of a sentence. Semantic is another universal feature of language, if there is an event involving more than one participant, the speaker and the hearer care to know who is the agent, who is the patient or who is the experiencer and who is the stimulus. There seem to be some languages that, despite this obvious concern, do not mark semantic role in any consistent way. The key objective is to examine semantic role-marking in Lunyore morphology and syntax. Descriptive research design was adopted and the target population was the people of Emuhaya Sub county in Vihiga county. Purposive sampling technique was applied to gather head-marked phrases from churches, baraza sessions and Lunyore texts. The research instruments included conversations, written texts from Lunyore, participant and non-participant observations until saturation stage was attained. Data was analyzed through descriptive form. It was found that semantic role-marking was influenced by the morphological structure of the head-marked phrase. The study also found that there is a syntactic and semantic relationship in head-marked phrases. Theta theory was applicable in examining the semantic role marking in Lunyore head-marked phrases.

Role of prosody and word order in identifying focus: evidence from pupillometry

ABSTRACT This study investigated the role of prosody and word order in identifying the focus of sentences in Japanese. Native Japanese speakers listened to sentences with different types of word order (subject–object–verb (SOV) vs. object–subject–verb (OSV)), prosody (whether the first noun phrase is stressed or not) and preceding contexts (object- vs. subject-wh questions), while processing costs were measured using pupillometry. Although syntactically non-basic OSV was more difficult to process than basic SOV, this processing difficulty was considerably reduced when the supportive context (the subject-wh question) required S to be focused. The time–course analysis of pupillometry revealed that the Japanese speakers immediately used prosodic cues to determine the focus of sentences, but the effect of word order cues for focus was delayed until the sentence-final verb was encountered. This study advances our understanding of the temporal dynamics of focus processing and the interplay between syntactic and information structures in sentence comprehension.

Ellipses of the participle, the subject noun phrase in participle constructions and their explication based on the English-language economic discourse

Ellipses of the participle, the subject noun phrase in participle constructions and their explication based on the English-language economic discourse

Investigating Dayue : An LFG-OT approach to its subcategorization and structure

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the subcategorization and structure of dayue , taking a Lexical Functional Grammar–Optimality Theory (LFG-OT) approach to account for the different uses of this word. It argues that dayue can be identified in the category of either an adverb or a preposition, depending on the function it takes and the structure it has. As an adverb, dayue modifies the clausal element or the quantifier phrase directly following it. As a preposition, dayue takes a noun phrase (NP) or an adpositional phrase as the complement, occurring in the adjunctive position. There may be ambiguities due to the subcategorization of, and the argument structure associated with, dayue , which result in the same linguistic form being generated as optimal outputs for different input meanings. However, each can be argued to correspond to a different c-structure. An LFG-OT approach is adopted in this paper to account for the structure of dayue . LFG proposes different levels of representation, and OT is involved in the theoretical model by evaluating linguistic forms according to the interaction and ranking of different kinds of linguistic constraints. Faithfulness constraints ensure faithful mappings among the lexical, functional, and syntactic levels of representation. Markedness constraints require linguistic structures to be well formed. Economy constraints pursue a concise, efficient way of expression. Alignment constraints map arguments with constituent structures. 摘要: 本文探讨了"大约"的子类别和结构，采用词汇功能语法–优选理论 (LFG-OT)方法来解释该词的不同用法。文章认为，"大约"可以归为副词或介词类别，取决于其作用于句式中之功能和结构。作为副词，"大约"直接修饰其后的从句成分或量化短语。作为介词，"大约"接受名词短语或介词短语作为补语，在附加位置出现。由于"大约"的子类别和相关的论元结构可能产生歧义，导致不同输入含义生成同样语言形式为最佳输出，而每个歧义对应不同的成分结构。本文采用词汇功能语法–优选理论方法来解释"大约"的结构。词汇功能语法使用不同语言层次表现语法，而优选理论根据不同种类的制约条件之间的相互作用和排名来评估语言形式。忠实性制约条件确保词汇、功能和句法层次之间的忠实映像。标记制约条件要求语言结构良好。经济制约条件追求简洁高效的表达方式。对齐制约条件将论元映像到成分结构中。

Exploring Constituent Structure through Elliptical Sentences in the Witches Novel by Roald Dahl

The phenomenon of elliptical sentence in the communication is an effective way to avoid the redundance, highlight the important information, and make a concise and clear context. The process of deleting the sentence constituent is observed through the theory that proposed by Kiss and Alexiadou (2015). This research investigates the elliptical phenomenon found in a novel entitled The Witches written by Roald Dahl that originally published in 1983 with 208 total pages. The total data that found in this research is 130 data out of all types consist of 12 data (9%) of VP-ellipsis, 9 data (7%) of sluicing, 35 data (27%) of NP-ellipsis, 34 data (26%) of fragment answer, 8 data (6%) of stripping, 2 data (2%) of gapping, 5 data (4%) of pseudogapping, 10 data (8%) of modal complement ellipsis, and 15 data (11%) of null complement anaphora. The highest occurrence in this study is NP-ellipsis with 27% out of 130 total data. Because there are a lot of sentences that specifically omitted in the noun phrase constituent.

Mijloace de redare a filiației în spațiul romanic medieval. Polisemia prepoziției de

The preposition de ( lat. de) is being used in early medieval Latin documents in order to compile the complementary denomination, marking mainly the provenance of the denominate (for the first centuries of the documentary use, at least). De prepositional structures occur always after the personal name (i.e. first name) with the same functionality in the medieval documents from the whole Roman space. But the vernacular way of name composition, involving the use of the preposition de with the parentage meaning (inherited in the Western Romance languages, but not in the Eastern Romance ones) are also being registered in the Romance documents (from the XIIth century in the aragonese official documents, and from the XIVth century in the Occitan ones). These prepositional phrases always involve an anthroponym (as selected Noun Phrase), indicating thus the parentage relation, instead of the provenance indication, as seen before, in the official acts drafted in the chancellery Latin. When these two different ways of composition of the complementary denomination are being used in the official acts in the same historical stage, one can expect the complete elimination of the preposition: few members of the same occitan family bear the same name, but linked differently: Ramun de la Pena, Miquel de Pena, but Bernat Pena. On the other hand, Romanian inherited the preposition de but only with the provenance use (e.g. Stan de Câne, in which Câne is the name of the personal estate); for the parentage meaning, the Old Romanian specialized some genitival proclitic markers (al, lui), used mainly in the popular anthroponymy that one can encounter in the Latin Medieval documents: Ioan al popae; Dumitru al Myrkey, Zawa fychor allu Mayne.

Pelatihan Penggunaan Pronomina Pada Anak-Anak dalam Menulis Cerita Pendek di Gampong Jeumpa

The definition of a pronoun is a pronoun that replaces a noun or noun phrase. Examples are me, his, this. Based on the text quote, the first sentence reads: Every parent will love their child. Then, in the next sentence the word parents is no longer mentioned and is changed to use the pronoun itself, namely me. Writing I is used as a parental pronoun. Pronouns are also called pronouns. This means all words that are used to replace nouns or words that are used as objects. training on the use of pronouns for children in Gampong Jeumpa in writing short stories so that the pronouns used are not monotonous. The method used in this community service is by using lectures, questions and answers, and group work under direct guidance. This community service activity proved successful after they received the material and were guided and guided directly by lecturers and students so that in the end they were able to use various pronouns in writing short stories so that they were not monotonous in telling stories. Overall, this community service activity ran smoothly, where there were other supporting factors such as activities that were carried out in accordance with the objectives and on target.

A META ANALYSIS OF NOMINAL PHRASES WITH DRAMA AS HEAD NOUN AND MODIFIER

This study conducts a meta-analysis of nominal phrases with "drama" as the head noun and modifier, aiming to clarify the terminology within the field of drama education and address discrepancies in term usage across various linguistic contexts. Utilizing a quantitative approach, the research analyzes the frequency and usage patterns of drama-related terms in the British National Corpus (BNC) and Google Scholar. Significant disparities were found, indicating broader usage and diverse applications in Google Scholar compared to the BNC. The study highlights the need for standardized terminology to enhance communication and comparability in academic research. By defining key terms such as "drama activity," "drama play," and "educational drama," the analysis contributes to reducing ambiguities and fostering a more coherent dialogue within drama studies, thereby facilitating more effective educational practices and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Rate of speech affects the comprehension of pronouns in children with developmental language disorder.

This study examined whether children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have knowledge of binding principles (i.e., linking pronouns to their structurally licensed antecedent) during real-time sentence processing (cross-modal priming, real-time) and overt comprehension (sentence-picture matching, interpretative) and whether rate of speech impacted access to that knowledge. Fourteen children with DLD participated in two experiments, with sentences presented auditorily at either a regular or slow speech rate. Sentences were matched except to contain a pronoun, reflexive, or noun phrase (control) in the same syntactic position. Experiment (1) used a cross-modal picture priming paradigm to test real-time pronoun-antecedent linking abilities at both rates of speech. Children were instructed to make a binary decision during the uninterrupted auditory presentation of a sentence to a visually presented image (of the antecedent) at the offset of a pronoun, a reflexive, or a control noun. Response times between conditions (e.g., pronoun vs. control noun) were compared to determine whether participants showed evidence of facilitative priming (faster response times in the pronoun than control noun condition) at either speech rate. Experiment (2) used an auditory sentence-picture-matching task to test final comprehension of similar sentences containing a pronoun or reflexive. Accuracy was compared across both speech rates. For Experiment (1), children with DLD did not show evidence of real-time pronoun-antecedent priming at the regular speech rate. However, when sentences were slowed, they showed facilitative priming for the pronoun condition. For experiment (2), children with DLD performed at-chance when interpreting sentences with pronouns regardless of speech rate. While children with DLD have been shown to have difficulty processing sentences containing anaphors (such as pronouns), results suggest that this is not due to loss of intrinsic knowledge of binding principles. By slowing the rate of speech input, we showed that children with DLD do have access to that knowledge and can make the correct link during real-time processing between a pronoun and its structurally licensed antecedent (Experiment 1) but need more time to do so. However, the effect of slowed speech input does not extend to final comprehension (Experiment 2).

Retrieval augmented generation using engineering design knowledge

Aiming to support Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) in the design process, we present a method to identify explicit, engineering design facts – {head entity:: relationship:: tail entity} from patented artefact descriptions. Given a sentence with a pair of entities (selected from noun phrases) marked in a unique manner, our method extracts their relationship that is explicitly communicated in the sentence. For this task, we create a dataset of 375,084 examples and fine-tune language models for relation identification (token classification task) and relation elicitation (sequence-to-sequence task). The token classification approach achieves up to 99.7% accuracy. Upon applying the method to a domain of 4,870 fan system patents, we populate a knowledge base of over 2.93 million facts. Using this knowledge base, we demonstrate how Large Language Models (LLMs) are guided by explicit facts to synthesise knowledge and generate technical and cohesive responses when sought out for knowledge retrieval tasks in the design process.

Conceptual structure and the growth of scientific knowledge.

How does scientific knowledge grow? This question has occupied a central place in the philosophy of science, stimulating heated debates but yielding no clear consensus. Many explanations can be understood in terms of whether and how they view the expansion of knowledge as proceeding through the accretion of scientific concepts into larger conceptual structures. Here we examine these views empirically by analysing 2,605,224 papers spanning five decades from both the social sciences (Web of Science) and the physical sciences (American Physical Society). Using natural language processing techniques, we create semantic networks of concepts, wherein noun phrases become linked when used in the same paper abstract. We then detect the core/periphery structures of these networks, wherein core concepts are densely connected sets of highly central nodes and periphery concepts are sparsely connected nodes that are highly connected to the core. For both the social and physical sciences, we observe increasingly rigid conceptual cores accompanied by the proliferation of periphery concepts. Subsequently, we examine the relationship between conceptual structure and the growth of scientific knowledge, finding that scientific works are more innovative in fields with cores that have higher conceptual churn and with larger cores. Furthermore, scientific consensus is associated with reduced conceptual churn and fewer conceptual cores. Overall, our findings suggest that while the organization of scientific concepts is important for the growth of knowledge, the mechanisms vary across time.

The dynamics of changes in linguistic complexity and writing scores in timed argumentative writing among beginning-level EFL learners

Abstract This study investigates longitudinal changes in linguistic complexity and holistic scores in EFL timed argumentative writing among beginning-level learners using Complex Dynamic Systems Theory. It also explores relationships among linguistic complexity over time and with writing scores. Over nine months, 42 Japanese EFL learners completed six timed essays. Linguistic complexity was assessed through lexical, phraseological, and syntactic features. Findings indicate linear growth in writing scores, lexical sophistication, and noun phrase (NP) complexity, alongside stable phrasal complexity and non-linear subordination. Interrelated growth patterns included connections between lexical sophistication and phrasal complexity, and phraseological complexity and subordination. Competitive dynamics were observed between lexical diversity and NP complexity, and phraseological complexity and phrasal sophistication. Linear associations emerged between writing scores and lexical sophistication or syntactic complexity, while a non-linear relationship occurred with phraseological sophistication. This study illuminates the intricate dynamics of linguistic complexity and L2 writing scores among beginning-level learners in argumentative writing.

“A thought group is a group, not a thought!” results of a teaching intervention on complex noun phrases in Canadian EAP programs

Complex noun phrases (CNPs) are a major vehicle of academic written discourse. However, despite posing significant challenges to English language learners (ELLs), they are rarely taught in post-secondary English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs. This article reports on a quasi-experimental study on the usefulness of explicit teaching of the structure and use of CNPs in Canadian post-secondary EAP programs for the purposes of reading comprehension. Specially designed modules on CNP structure and use were integrated into advanced reading and writing EAP courses taught to 96 first-year college and university ELLs over the course of a semester. 102 ELLs in different sections of the same courses had regular instruction without the CNP modules. Pre- and post-test scores were analyzed using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM), and the teaching intervention was found to have a significant effect on the post-test scores in the experimental group. The relative success of the intervention is analyzed in relation to the literature on form-focused teaching interventions in reading courses. The article concludes by discussing opportunities for further integration of CNP instruction in EAP curricula.

Demonstratives in heritage Greek, Russian, and Turkish in Germany and the United States

Aims and Objectives: This study investigates the use of definite noun phrases involving demonstratives in adolescent and adult monolingually raised and heritage speakers of Greek, Russian, and Turkish with the following research questions: (1) Do heritage speakers of Greek, Russian, and Turkish align with monolingually raised speakers regarding the production of demonstratives? and (2) Do mode and register affect the use of demonstratives? Methodology: We conducted a corpus study on production data of heritage speakers of Greek, Russian, and Turkish residing in the United States and Germany and the respective monolingually raised speakers in Greece, Russia, and Turkey. The majority languages of the heritage speakers were German or English, respectively. Data were elicited in two distinct registers (formal vs informal) and in two distinct modes (spoken vs written). Participants were asked to narrate what happened in a short video showing a fictional minor car accident. Analysis: Oral and written narrations were annotated and analyzed using generalized linear mixed-effects regression modeling on the use of demonstratives by heritage and monolingually raised speakers accounting for individual variation, country of elicitation, mode, and register. Findings: The results show that heritage and monolingually raised speakers of Greek, Russian, and Turkish converge in their use of demonstratives. Also, mode and/or register significantly affect the production of definite noun phrases with demonstratives across all speaker groups. Originality: This is the first cross-linguistically comparable large-scale corpus study with ecologically valid production data of definite noun phrases with demonstratives in bilinguals. Significance: The study contributes to understanding the use of demonstratives in heritage and monolingual Greek, Russian, and Turkish. It provides insights into the use of demonstratives in languages with different determiner systems and the impact of mode and/or register, which seems to be pronounced roughly similarly across these languages.

Semantics of the northern khanty salient article: definiteness, salience, and obviation

Uralic possessive agreement markers often function as determiners. This paper presents a case study of the Northern Khanty (Kazym dialect) 2sg Possessive that developed into a “salient article”. The Salient Article is definite as it requires informational uniqueness and familiarity, but its distribution is narrower than the distribution of previously described definite determiner types. It is most commonly used with topical Subjects and in noun phrases with demonstratives, but its use is not obligatory across the board in these cases and is not limited to them. Furthermore, the Salient Article is subject to a constraint that is similar to the proximate uniqueness constraint of languages with obviation systems like the Algonquian: there may be at most one noun phrase with a Salient Article per clause (with the exception of noun phrases with demonstratives). I consider and reject two possible syntactic accounts of such distribution and instead propose a tentative semantic analysis that derives all the observed facts: the Salient Article marks the most salient discourse referent in the given context. (I understand salience as a graded property that a referent has to the extent that the referent is being attended to by the addressee following Roberts and Barlew). This study thus supplies another argument for the hypothesis that salience is an important dimension to determiner semantics cross-linguistically.

Multi-level feature interaction for open knowledge base canonicalization

Open Information Extraction (OpenIE) aims to construct expansive open knowledge bases (OKBs) by extracting triples (noun phrase, relation phrase, noun phrase) from unstructured text. One critical problem in OKBs is the lack of canonicalization for noun phrases and relation phrases, leading to the storage of redundant and ambiguous facts. Consequently, open knowledge base canonicalization, which clusters synonymous phrases into the same group, has emerged as an active research area. Existing approaches either leverage fact triples or source context in isolation, or at best, interact them at the clustering level. However, these approaches lack explicit interaction or only loosely couple the two types of knowledge, resulting in the potential loss of valuable intermediate information. In this paper, we propose MuFIC, a novel unsupervised framework that interacts the fact triples and source context at the feature level to address these limitations. In order to capture and integrate fine-grained fact and context knowledge, we design three levels of feature interaction: low-level context-guided feature interaction, mid-level fact-guided feature interaction, and high-level gated fusion feature interaction. Furthermore, we introduce an additional objective function via contrastive learning to improve the quality of extracted features and reduce knowledge-specific noise. Finally, we design a bidirectional feedback mechanism to better guide the learning process of joint features by harnessing side information prototype learning, and to dynamically optimize side information based on the clustering results formed by joint features. Extensive experiments on three public benchmark datasets demonstrate the superiority of our proposed framework.

Between Genitive and Accusative Uses. On the Impact of Negation on Nominal Phrases Introduced by jako in Contemporary Polish

The paper discusses research results based on data excerpted from the National Corpus of Polish. The analysis concerns the impact of negation on the grammar case used in nominal phrases introduced by jako. The purpose of our study was to establish the proportion of genitive and accusative uses in these contexts. We have also analysed the possible impact of the grammatical status of jako on the grammar case. We established that, in contemporary Polish, most nominal phrases introduced by jako contain genitive forms. Accusative forms, although rarer, may not be considered marginal, as they tend to appear in up to 34% of the contexts. We have also shown that there is a correlation between the grammatical status of jako and the way negation impacts these phrases. In structures where jako is considered part of the verb (e.g. Sportowiec nie traktuje trzeciego miejsca jako porażkę), accusative structures tend to appear more often than in those containing jako interpreted as independent lexical units (e.g. Nie znaliśmy tej dziewczyny jako studentki).

An Error Analysis Of Article System: A Case Of ESP Students

Analyzing errors is very important for ESP students because they can relate to their work, it also provides ESP students with corrections Errors in learning behavior. This research aimed to investigate the errors, the most prominent type, and the causes of errors in using English articles in academic writing. The Researcher examined the academic writing by the ESP students. The researchers use an analytical parameter developed based on Biber et al. (1999) to analyze article errors. The causes of errors were obtained through a questionnaire developed based on the categories proposed by Brown (2007). After analyzing the data, the Researcher found 30 errors in Addition, Omission, and substitution categories. The most prominent type of Error is omission error, with a frequency of 293 occurrences or 76%. The main type of omission error is an omission of the definite article "the" before nouns or noun phrases. In contrast, the major cause of errors is mother tongue influence, with an average mean of 4.17 in the questionnaire responses. This study's findings indicate the need for teaching strategies and materials to prevent common article usage errors.