Noun Sequences Research Articles

The Recursive Set-Subset Ordering Principle orders adjectives and relative clauses in visual context

We present evidence from two picture-matching experiments that native adult speakers of American English order and interpret sequences of nouns modified by adjectives/relative clauses containing adjectives in line with the Recursive Set-Subset Ordering Principle proposed in Bleotu & Roeper (2022a, b) and Bleotu, Foucault, & Roeper (2023). This principle ensures an automatic mapping of set-subset semantics to a recursive syntax in Universal Grammar, such that set modifiers are merged closer to the noun than subset modifiers: leaves (N) that are short (SET) that are long (SUBSET) or short (SET) leaves (N) that are long (SUBSET). We here expand upon the interpretation and ordering of set-subset modification to elucidate the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic interface.

Difficulties Encountered by English Department Students in Using Noun-Noun Collocations

The current study explores noun-noun collocations in English. The main problem which the study attempts to tackle is the difficulty encountered by undergraduate, English department students in predicting noun-noun collocations in English. The hypothesis on which the study is based is the existence of hundreds of noun-noun collocations in English, be they noun and/or noun (binomial phrases), e.g. fish and chips, friend or foe; or noun + of-phrase combinations, e.g. sheet of paper, cup of tea. As regards the study approach adopted, the paper advocates Biber et al. (1999) (see sections 6 and 7). This approach is within 'lexical collocations', which is in contrast to 'grammatical collocations' in which a preposition is used with a noun, a verb or an adjective, e.g. by accident, account for, amazed at. The aim of the study is to define and explain different types and combinations of binomial phrases and noun + of-phrases. The results of the two tests administered to measure fourth year, English department students' mastery of different categories of lexical collocations (100 participants who sat a 40-item twofold tests) show that students face great obstacles in mastering collocations. Noun + noun sequences like water supplies, chess board, exam papers, speech impediment, and press release, are out of the scope of this study. .

Why and How Do New Tense Formations Arise? – On the Emergence of the Vedic So-Called Periphrastictā-Future

This article examines the emergence of the Vedic Sanskrit so-called periphrastic tā-future as it is encountered from Middle Vedic prose texts onwards. An initial synchronic account of the morphosyntactic and functional properties of the tā-future contrasting it with the comparable syá-future shows that the former is essentially finite in nature and not periphrastic, and that it instantiates future actuality denoting future actions taking place with certainty, while the latter instantiates future potentiality in denoting future actions intended or supposed to take place without certainty. The subsequent diachronic survey seeks to give a complete account of the emergence of the tā-future. It is demonstrated in detail that and how the tā-future originated in NOM.SG.M. oxytone agent nouns or sequences of such nouns and the copula in constructions denoting general truths and acquired its function as a modal replacement of the prospective subjunctive which was lost in Middle Vedic.

Interference Resolution in Nonfluent Variant Primary Progressive Aphasia: Evidence From a Picture-Word Interference Task.

Picture-word interference tasks have been used to investigate (a) the time course of lexical access in individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and (b) how these individuals resolve competition during lexical selection. To investigate the time course of Greek-speaking individuals with PPA to produce grammatical gender-marked determiner phrases by examining their picture-naming latencies in the context of distractor words. Eight individuals with nonfluent variant PPA (nfv-PPA; M age = 62.8 years) and eight cognitively intact controls (M age = 61.1 years) participated in our study. In a picture-word interference task, the study participants named depicted objects by producing determiner + noun sequences. Interference was generated by manipulating the grammatical gender of the depicted objects and distractor words. Two stimulus onset asynchronies were used: +200 ms and +400 ms. The individuals with nfv-PPA exhibited longer picture-naming latencies than the controls (P = 0.003). The controls exhibited interference from incongruent distractors at both asynchronies (P < 0.001); the individuals with PPA exhibited interference from incongruent distractors only at the +400-ms interval (P = 0.002). The gender-congruency effect was stronger for the individuals with PPA than for the controls at the +400-ms interval (P = 0.05); the opposite pattern was observed at the +200-ms interval (P = 0.024). Gender interference resolution was abnormal in the individuals with nfv-PPA. The results point to deficits in lexicosyntactic networks that compromised the time course of picture-naming production.

Language-specific prosodic acquisition: A comparison of phrase boundary perception by French- and German-learning infants

This study compares the development of prosodic processing in French- and German-learning infants. The emergence of language-specific perception of phrase boundaries was directly tested using the same stimuli across these two languages. French-learning (Experiment 1, 2) and German-learning 6- and 8-month-olds (Experiment 3) listened to the same French noun sequences with or without major prosodic boundaries ([Loulou et Manou][et Nina]; [Loulou et Manou et Nina], respectively). The boundaries were either naturally cued (Experiment 1), or cued exclusively by pitch and duration (Experiment 2, 3). French-learning 6- and 8-month-olds both perceived the natural boundary, but neither perceived the boundary when only two cues were present. In contrast, German-learning infants develop from not perceiving the two-cue boundary at 6 months to perceiving it at 8 months, just like German-learning 8-month-olds listening to German (Wellmann, Holzgrefe, Truckenbrodt, Wartenburger, & Höhle, 2012). In a control experiment (Experiment 4), we found little difference between German and French adult listeners, suggesting that later, French listeners catch up with German listeners. Taken together, these cross-linguistic differences in the perception of identical stimuli provide direct evidence for language-specific development of prosodic boundary perception.

Grammatical Word Production Across Metrical Contexts in School-Aged Children's and Adults' Speech.

The purpose of this study is to test whether age-related differences in grammatical word production are due to differences in how children and adults chunk speech for output or to immature articulatory timing control in children. Two groups of 12 children, 5 and 8 years old, and 1 group of 12 adults produced sentences with phrase-medial determiners. Preceding verbs were varied to create different metrical contexts for chunking the determiner with an adjacent content word. Following noun onsets were varied to assess the coherence of determiner-noun sequences. Determiner vowel duration, amplitude, and formant frequencies were measured. Children produced significantly longer and louder determiners than adults regardless of metrical context. The effect of noun onset on F1 was stronger in children's speech than in adults' speech; the effect of noun onset on F2 was stronger in adults' speech than in children's. Effects of metrical context on anticipatory formant patterns were more evident in children's speech than in adults' speech. The results suggest that both immature articulatory timing control and age-related differences in how chunks are accessed or planned influence grammatical word production in school-aged children's speech. Future work will focus on the development of long-distance coarticulation to reveal the evolution of speech plan structure over time.

A Contrastive Analysis of Noun Sequences in Japanese and Korean:"Entity" and "Event" in Headlines

A Contrastive Analysis of Noun Sequences in Japanese and Korean:"Entity" and "Event" in Headlines

Gender Errors in French Interlanguage

Many studies on gender assignment in French have focused on the effect of the final morpheme of the noun on the identification of the gender of the noun and the subsequent agreement with any determiners. The present study considers the effect of a noun’s initial vowel on gender accuracy in conversations with 36 Dutch-speaking French foreign language learners. The analysis of 1540 indefinite article + noun sequences revealed that gender accuracy was significantly lower when the noun started with a vowel. This effect was significant for French L3 learners but weaker among more advanced French L2 learners. It thus seems that an initial vowel, and the resulting gender syncretism, delays the correct identification of a noun’s gender among French L2 learners.

Infants' Acquisition of Grammatical Gender Dependencies

To successfully understand spoken language, listeners need to determine how words within sentences relate to one another. Although the ability to compute relationships between word categories is known to develop early in life, little research has been conducted on infants' early sensitivity to subcategorical dependencies, such as those evoked by grammatical gender (where the article form is dictated by the noun's gender). This study therefore examines whether French‐learning 18‐month‐olds track such relationships. Using the Visual Fixation Procedure, infants were presented with article–noun sequences in which the gender‐marked article either matched (e.g., laFEM poussetteFEM “the stroller”) or mismatched (e.g., leMASC poussetteFEM) the gender of the noun. A clear preference for correct over incorrect co‐occurrences was observed, suggesting that by 18 months of age, children's storage and access of words is sufficiently sophisticated to include the means to track subcategorical dependencies. This early sensitivity to gender information may be greatly beneficial for constraining lexical access during online language processing.

Segmenting liaison-initial words: The role of predictive dependencies

Listeners use several cues to segment speech into words. However, it is unclear how these cues work together. This study examines the relative weight of distributional and (natural) acoustic–phonetic cues in French listeners' recognition of temporarily ambiguous vowel-initial words in liaison contexts (e.g., parfai t [t]abri “perfect shelter”) and corresponding consonant-initial words (e.g., parfait tableau “perfect painting”). Participants completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment in which they heard adjective–noun sequences where the pivotal consonant was /t/ (more frequent as word-initial consonant and thus expected advantage for consonant-initial words), /z/ (more frequent as liaison consonant and thus expected advantage for liaison-initial words), or /n/ (roughly as frequent as word-initial and liaison consonants and thus no expected advantage). The results for /t/ and /z/ were as expected, but those for /n/ showed an advantage for consonant-initial words over liaison-initial ones. These results are consistent with speech segmentation theories in which distributional information supersedes acoustic–phonetic information, but they also suggest a privileged status for consonant-initial words when the input does not strongly favour liaison-initial words.

Extended turn construction and test question sequences in the conversations of three speakers with agrammatic aphasia

The application of Conversation Analysis (CA) to the investigation of agrammatic aphasia reveals that utterances produced by speakers with agrammatism engaged in everyday conversation differ significantly from utterances produced in response to decontextualised assessment and therapy tasks. Early studies have demonstrated that speakers with agrammatism construct turns from sequences of nouns, adjectives, discourse markers and conjunctions, packaged by a distinct pattern of prosody. This article presents examples of turn construction methods deployed by three people with agrammatism as they take an extended turn, in order to recount a past event, initiate a discussion or have a disagreement. This is followed by examples of sequences occurring in the talk of two of these speakers that result in different, and more limited, turn construction opportunities, namely “test” questions asked in order to initiate a new topic of talk, despite the conversation partner knowing the answer. The contrast between extended turns and test question sequences illustrates the effect of interactional context on aphasic turn construction practices, and the potential of less than optimal sequences to mask turn construction skills. It is suggested that the interactional motivation for test question sequences in these data are to invite people with aphasia to contribute to conversation, rather than to practise saying words in an attempt to improve language skills. The idea that test question sequences may have their origins in early attempts to deal with acute aphasia, and the potential for conversation partnerships to become “stuck” in such interactional patterns after they may have outlived their usefulness, are discussed with a view to clinical implications.

The effect of syntax on reading in neglect dyslexia

Individuals with text-based neglect dyslexia omit words on the neglected side of the sentence or text, usually on the left side. This study tested whether the syntactic structure of the target sentence affects reading in this type of neglect dyslexia. Because Hebrew is read from right to left, it enables testing whether the beginning of the sentence and its syntactic properties determine if the final, leftmost, constituent is omitted or not. The participants were 7 Hebrew-speaking individuals with acquired left text-based neglect dyslexia, without syntactic impairments. Each participant read 310 sentences, in which we compared 5 types of minimal pairs of sentences that differed in the obligatoriness of the final (left) constituent. Complements were compared with adjuncts, obligatory pronouns were compared with optional resumptive pronouns, and the object of a past tense verb was compared with the object of a present tense verb, which can also be taken to be an adjective, which does not require an object. Questions that require a verb were compared with questions that can appear without a verb, and clauses that serve as sentential complements of a verb were compared with coordinated clauses, which are not required by the verb. In addition, we compared the reading of noun sequences to the reading of meaningful sentences, and assessed the neglect point in reading 2 texts. The results clearly indicated that the syntactic knowledge of the readers with neglect dyslexia modulated their sentence reading. They tended to keep on reading as long as the syntactic and lexical-syntactic requirements of the sentence had not been met. In 4 of the conditions twice as many omissions occurred when the final constituent was optional than when it was obligatory. Text reading was also guided by a search for a “happy end” that does not violate syntactic or semantic requirements. Thus, the syntactic structure of the target sentence modulates reading and neglect errors in text-based neglect dyslexia, suggesting that the best stimuli to diagnose mild text-based neglect dyslexia are sentences in which the leftmost constituent is optional, and not required by syntax. Another finding of this study is dissociation between neglect dyslexia at the text and at the word levels. Two of the participants had neglect dyslexia at the text level, manifested in omissions of words on the left side of text, without neglect dyslexia at the word level (namely, without omissions, substitutions, or additions of letters on the left side of words).

Phrasal names: A constructionist analysis

Some types of phrases share the naming function with complex words. Hence both phrases and words can be lexical units stored in the lexicon. This article discusses how the functional equivalence between words and phrases can be accounted for without ignoring their formal differences. Such types of phrases can be characterized in terms of phrasal schemas with specific properties, that is, as constructions. The article focuses on the formal properties of adjective+noun sequences with a naming function, in particular in Modern Greek and Dutch. The constructionist approach is able to do justice to the lexical unit properties of phrasal names, and highlights the parallelism between phrasal and morphological constructions.

Additional facts about noun incorporation (in Inuktitut)

This article examines a range of data concerning noun incorporation in Inuktitut. A number of facts are known in the linguistic literature of Inuit languages but are often not addressed in noun incorporation analyses. Possessor stranding is not permitted in noun incorporation, with the exception of a subclass of incorporating verbs which describe location and direction. Names are readily incorporated, a fact which poses a problem for analyses claiming that incorporated nominals are predicates. New empirical evidence about noun incorporation in Inuktitut is also introduced. This includes the fact that noun incorporation verbs can sometimes be optionally transitive, as well as the fact that passive morphemes may be added to the incorporated noun plus verb sequences. Throughout the paper it is shown that all the facts are accounted for by a Root Movement analysis. The nominal is incorporated not because it is a nominal but because it is a root and there is no verbal root element in this construction. Another concern discussed is the translation of elements within complex words, using English glosses. The paper concludes that more empirical research is required on languages which display noun incorporation.

Grammar and Translation: The Noun + Noun Conundrum

This article deals with the vexed question regarding the translation into French of English NOUN1 + NOUN2 sequences. Using the 15 meaning categories presented by Biber et al. (1999: 589-591), with some modifications and corrections, the authors expand each category into 20 representative items and translate them into French; they then show, by means of case study based on the translation into French of several noun sequences, that students whose first language is English seem to have difficulty rendering certain of these structures; by contrast, students participating in the study whose first language is French tend to commit errors not made by their English counterparts. The pedagogical implications of this pilot project are pointed up, and new linguistic developments concerning the use NOUN1 + NOUN2 in French are identified.

The study on Korean noun sequences construction with the boundary noun

The study on Korean noun sequences construction with the boundary noun

Descriptive genitives in English: a case study on constructional gradience

This article offers an in-depth treatment of a ‘nonprototypical’ s-genitive, i.e. the descriptive genitive (e.g. women's magazine), which has so far received little attention in the grammars of English. Various types of descriptive genitives are distinguished, i.e. classifying, metaphorical, and generic genitives. In addition, the article raises a number of theoretical issues of a more general nature, such as the delimitation of syntactic phrases from compounds. Most importantly, it is argued that descriptive genitives provide evidence for constructional gradience in the English noun phrase in two ways: (1) gradience between determiner genitives and descriptive genitives, and (2) gradience between s-genitives and noun + noun sequences. A central claim is made that semantic overlaps may give rise to constructional gradience. In this respect the present article complements earlier accounts of gradience that have emphasized the importance of structural criteria only. The article concludes with a brief consideration of measure genitives, which are in many ways similar to descriptive genitives.

The Effects of Total Sleep Deprivation on the Generation of Random Sequences of Key-Presses, Numbers and Nouns

According to a recent hypothesis, executive functions should be particularly vulnerable to the effects of total sleep deprivation. Random generation is a task that taps executive functions. In three experiments we examined the effects of total sleep deprivation on random generation of key-presses, numbers, and nouns, in particular on the suppression of prepotent responses and the selection of next responses by way of applying a local-representativeness heuristic. With random key-presses suppression of prepotent responses did not suffer from lack of sleep, but it became poorer at a sufficiently high pacing rate. In contrast, suppression of prepotent responses suffered when numbers and nouns were generated. According to these findings different types of random generation tasks involve different types of inhibitory process. With only four response alternatives, but not with larger response sets, application of the local-representativeness heuristic was impaired after a night without sleep. In terms of a simple formal model, serial-order representations of the preceding responses are used in selecting the next response only for the small response set, and not for larger response sets. Thus, serial-order representations are likely to suffer from loss of sleep. These findings strongly suggest that random generation involves multiple processes and that total sleep deprivation does not impair all sorts of executive functions, but only some.

Automatic term recognition based on statistics of compound nouns

The NTCIR1 TMREC group called for participation of the term recognition task which is a part of NTCIR1 held in 1999. As an activity of TMREC, they have provided us with the test collection of the term recognition task. The goal of this task is to automatically recognize and extract terms from the text corpus which consists of 1,870 abstracts gathered from the NACSIS Academic Conference Database. This article describes the term extraction method we have proposed to extract terms consisting of simple and compound nouns and the experimental evaluation of the proposed method with this NTCIR TMREC test collection. The basic idea of scoring a simple noun N of our term extraction method is to count how many nouns are conjoined with N to make compound nouns. Then we extend this score to measure the score of compound nouns because most of technical terms are compound nouns. Our method has a parameter to tune the degree of preference either for longer compound nouns or for shorter compound nouns. As for term candidates, in addition to noun sequences, we may add variations such as patterns of "A no B" that roughly means "B of A" or "A’ś B" and/or "A na B" where "A na" is an adjective. Experimental results of our method are promising, namely recall of 0.83, precision of 0.46 and F-value of 0.59 for exactly matched extracted terms when we take into account top scoring 16,000 extracted terms.

Acquisition of contrastive emphasis

In English, broad and late narrow focus have identical accent patterns: Pitch accents are aligned with the last accentable constituent within an intonation contour. Under early narrow focus, the pitch accent is claimed to shift to an earlier location and the last accentable syllable is deaccented. This study examined acquisition of the narrow focus pattern, using a picture-naming task, in which either the object or its color differed from the previous picture. Subjects were asked to use adjective–noun sequences to name each picture and then to name the difference from the previous picture. Spontaneous utterances from 42 children (age 3–10) and six adults were obtained with implicit and explicit contrast (narrow focus) on either adjective or noun, and labeled prosodically for pitch-accent type and location. A subset of the utterances was used in a perception experiment: 18 naive listeners judged either the adjective or the noun to be contrastively emphasized. An ANOVA on the contrast-type. Listeners consistently rate the adjective to be more emphasized when implicitly contrasted. Yet, a majority-rule count on the tonal transcriptions for accentuation on this subset shows almost exclusively ‘‘noun-accented’’ ratings, suggesting that nouns were not completely deaccented when narrow focus was on the adjective.