Noun Terms Research Articles

Zoo visitors' understanding of terms denoting research activity.

Zoos have increasingly sought to justify their existence by reference to a scientific role particularly in the domains of animal welfare and conservation. Given recent initiatives by the UK government to foster public engagement with science, it is timely to investigate public attitudes towards primary research activity by zoos. This study reports the views of 83 visitors to Edinburgh Zoo. Within certain items in a structured interview noun terms denoting research activity were manipulated ("research" versus "studies") as was their qualification (adjective "scientific" present or absent before the noun term). "Research" was associated with a restricted and negative perception of investigatory activity. This effect was intensified when the noun term was preceded by "scientific". It is concluded that there is a continuing need to challenge public perceptions, particularly of the phrase "scientific research"; that in the meantime zoos should perhaps exercise caution when using it in relation to their activities.

Retrieval of Web Pages on Real-World Events related to Physical Objects

The method proposed in this paper searches for web pages using an event-related query consisting of a noun, verb, and genre term. It re-ranks web pages retrieved using a standard search engine on the basis of scores calculated from an expression consisting of weighted factors such as the frequency of query words. For the genres that are characterized by their genre terms, the method optimizes the weights of the expression. Furthermore, the method attempts to improve the scores provided of relevant pages by using machine learning techniques. In addition, some evaluations are provided to show the effectiveness of the method.

Nominal classification in Asheninka Perene (Arawak)

The study describes nominal classification in Ashéninka Perené, of the Kampan subgrouping of Arawak and presents preliminary results from fieldwork data collected in Ashéninka communities of southeastern Peru. The results show that Ashéninka Perené has three systems of nominal classification, (i) class and measure terms, (ii) noun and verbal classifiers, and (iii) a gender-based classification system. Noun classifiers categorize nouns in terms of their shape, dimensionality, and consistency; the categorization of verbal classifiers is based on the semantic parameters of shape, dimensionality, arrangement, and amount.

A pragmatic approach to the interpretations of Mandarin bare nouns

Bare nouns are nouns that occur without demonstratives, numerals or articles. Mandarin bare nouns, like English bare plurals, can have a generic or existential interpretation. But unlike English bare plurals, they can also have definite reference. There have been proposals to account for the interpretations of Mandarin bare nouns in terms of syntactic structure ( Audrey Li, 1997; Cheng and Sybesma, 1999) and predicate types ( Jie Li, 1997). This paper attempts to simplify Jie Li's (1997) generalizations by relating the kind referring vs. object referring interpretations to the semantic distinction between individual-level and stage-level predicates ( Kratzer, 1989). I show that Mandarin bare nouns have a generic interpretation with individual-level predicates. With stage-level predicates, they have a definite interpretation when they are in topic position and an existential interpretation when they are not in topic position. However, bare nouns often do not appear as arguments of any predicates in natural discourse. This paper attempts to reconstruct sentence fragments based on contexts. I show that the Givenness Hierarchy ( Gundel et al., 1993) restricts possible interpretations of Chinese bare nouns and that Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) is needed to explain how people choose the intended interpretation from the possible ones.

Human relationship terms, discourse prominence, and asymmetrical animacy in Swahili

In Swahili, human relationship terms differ from other nouns denoting humans in that they show a complex pattern of concordial agreement with pronominal possessives: with some human relationship terms the possessive must be marked by the concordial prefixes of noun classes 9-10, otherwise used only for inanimates; with others there is variation between animate and Cl. 9-10 concords. By contrast, the connective particle -a 'of' is consistently marked by animate concords with all human nouns, including human relationship terms. Furthermore, use ofCl. 9-10 concords is limited to contexts where the pronominal possessive immediately follows the Human Relationship Term. This paper explains these facts in semantic and discourse-pragmatic terms, arguing that concord is sensitive to the human relationship term's noun class membership, competition for discourse salience between the human relationship term and the inherently topical pronominal possessive, semantic properties of human relationship terms and the role of the possessive in their interpretation, and the meanings of the associated grammatical morphemes. Where variation between concords exists, concord choice may express differences in affect. The argument is supported by examples from Swahili texts, questionnaire and quantitative data. The historical development of the attested patterns is discussed; some comparison with other Bantu languages is included.

Le défini obligatoirement modifié

We study a determiner of French LE_MODIF when MODIF is obligatory and when it is not an adjective. We listed approximately 400 nouns which are compatible with this determination. We show how the semantic characterization of these nouns in terms of classes of objects can explain the different morphological and syntactical features of the constructions where they appear simultaneously with LE_MODIF.

Children’s first verbs in Tzeltal: evidence for an early verb category

A major finding in studies of early, vocabulary acquisition has been that children tend to learn a lot of nouns early but make do with relatively few verbs, among which semantically general-purpose verbs like do, make, get, have, give, come, go, and be play a prominent role. The preponderance of nouns is explained in terms of nouns labelling concrete objects being easier to learn than verbs, which label relational categories. Nouns label natural categories observable in the world, verbs label more linguistically and culturally specific categories of events linking objects belonging to such natural categories (Gentner 1978, 1982, Clark 1993). This view has been challenged recently by data from children learning certain non-Indo-European languages like Korean, where children have an early verb explosion and verbs dominate in early child utterances. Children learning the Mayan language Tzeltal also acquire verbs early, prior to any noun explosion as measured by production. Verb types are roughly equivalent to noun types in children's beginning production vocabulary and soon outnumber them. At the one-word stage children's verbs mostly have the form of a root stripped of affixes, correctly segmented despite structural difficulties. Quite early (before the mlu = 2.0 point) there is evidence of productivity of some grammatical markers (although they are not always present): the person-marking affixes cross-referencing core arguments, and the completive/incompletive aspectual distinctions. The Tzeltal facts argue against a natural-categories explanation for children's early vocabulary, in favor of a view emphasizing the early effects of language-specific properties of the input. They suggest that when and how a child acquires a verb category is centrally influenced by the structural properties of the input, and that the semantic structure of the language - where the referential load is concentrated - plays a fundamental role in addition to distributi

When parting is such sweet sorrow: The comprehension and appreciation of oxymora

Three experiments examined the comprehension and appreciation of figurative phrases known as oxymora (e.g.,intense apathy, loyal opposition). Experiment 1 showed that adjective-noun pairs in which the noun term is the hyponym of the adjective terms' antonym were judged by readers as the most poetic. Experiment 2 found that these same types of phrases were the easiest to understand. Experiment 3 demonstrated that interpreting oxymora requires more than the simple combination of the adjective and noun terms' semantic components. These findings provide additional evidence on the influence of conceptual knowledge for both theories of complex conceptual combinations and for theories of figurative language understanding.

Differences in linguistic representations of concepts in Japanese and English complex noun terms

This paper compares the characteristics of Japanese complex noun terms with those of English in the field of documentation, based on a multilingual corpus. It first presents the basic characteristics of Japanese and English terms at the formal and grammatical level, then it examines the different ways of linguistic representation of concepts in Japanese and English terms, showing that these two languages sometimes adopt different ways of representing concepts, which reflect their linguistic differences.

The noun-category bias phenomenon in 3-year-olds: Taxonomic constraint or translation?

Preschool children exposed to a novel noun label (e.g., “dax”) for a standard picture (e.g., a dog) in a match-to-sample task are biased to match the standard with a picture based on taxonomic relations (e.g., another dog) rather than thematic relations (e.g., a dog bone). This phenomenon, called a noun-category bias, has been interpreted as a generalized constraint on word learning that predisposes children to interpret novel nouns in terms of category relations. This experiment tested the generality of this phenomenon across important variations in the match-to-sample task. It also examined an alternative interpretation of the phenomenon called the translation hypothesis, which suggests that the noun-category bias is mediated by the child's translation of the novel label into a familiar word. The data revealed: (a) that the phenomenon generalizes to a three-choice, match-to-sample procedure including taxonomic, thematic, and irrelevant choices; (b) that exposure to either a novel noun label during each choice trial, or to a labelling pretreatment game prior to the match-to-sample task is sufficient both to induce the noun-category bias and to increase spontaneous naming of the standard picture with familiar words; and (c) that there is essentially a zero correlation between the tendency to name the standard picture and the frequency of taxonomic choices during the match-to-sample task.

Thoughts on the taxonomy and semantics of value terms

In several areas of ethics frequent reference is made to value. In environmental ethics there seems to be a major division between those who attribute value to animals and plants, or to species or nature as a whole, and those who see all value in terms of human interests alone. Issues in social ethics raise questions about the value of individual persons, the society of humans and groups within that society, and such entities as embryos and dead bodies. Unfortunately the terminology which has been used to talk about value in relation to ethical issues is a bit of a muddle, especially the use of the terms "intrinsic" and "inherent.', The dictionary meanings of these terms are not distinctly different, and numerous writers have used the terms interchangeably or with specific meanings which varied with each writer; one person's "intrinsic" was another's "inherent." These two terms have played an important role in the discussion of ethical issues, and they have caused no small amount of confusion. The need for clarification does not stop with these two words; the notion of instrumental value and the various senses in which value can be extrinsic also call for examination. Stipulating meanings for the terms used in discussions of value will not be enough; various stipulations have been made before, and usually ignored. In my attempt to make a contribution to the clarification of the taxonomy of value and its relation to ontological issues (the semantics of value terms), I will use some familiar terms which do not seem to be problematical, but I will also use some new terms, which I hope will not be terribly awkward. Let me enter a clarification at this point. My use of the noun term "value" should not be taken to imply acceptance of an ontology; this would be quite premature this early in the paper, and it might never be called for. References to value should, until further notice, be read as a

Location nouns in standard Basque

The term noun is a convenient designation for the type of nouns represented by aurre and atze . These two items, together with their synonyms aitzin , gibel and oste , can be viewed as prototypes: their behavior is typical of location nouns, but need not be shared by the whole class. In part one, this behavior is analyzed in some detail from the point of view of a learner of Basque. In part two, roughly two dozen other location nouns are studied and occurring deviations from prototypical behavior pointed out. As a whole, the article is meant to portray the author's views as to what should be taught in this domain as part of a course in Euskara Batua , and how to teach it to a certain type of audience. It also demonstrates that location nouns can be taught early in the course, since nothing more than a knowledge of the nominal declension needs to be presupposed.

Literature as Discourse

I would say that syntax is a significant, if shifty, index of a writer's perspective on his subject-matter. In this light, please consider the syntax of my title. It is two nouns connected by a logical term, ‘as’. On one version of the programme for this lecture series, the word ‘as’ is misprinted as ‘and’; this makes a big difference. A simple conjunction of two nouns, ‘Literature and Discourse’, would suggest that I accept the meanings of the two words as stable, unanalysed. The connective ‘as’, however, is intended to announce that this juxtaposition of the two noun terms is an analysis of the two nouns, particularly the first – an examination of the nature of the first term in the light of the meaning of the second.

On relationship abstraction and concretization in assimilation of grammar

Many authors who study the psychological features of grammar assimilation state that lexical and specific word meaning impedes the assimilation of grammatical meaning. The article attempts to show that this happens only when the first meaning is assimilated inaccurately and too narrowly. Correctly assimilated objective word meaning and primary lexical abstractions are necessary for secondary grammatical abstractions.
 This conclusion is made based on the study of assimilation of noun meaning. The results of experiment showed that it is possible to distinguish two stages of abstraction, based on concretization, in assimilation of noun meaning. In the first stage, the concrete feature of a noun is abstracted and notes the object features that are recognized by sensory organs. In the second stage, the subject begins to understand that one an object is all that includes the system of some features, and thus the noun term includes also abstract nouns.
 Since difficulties that arise in assimilation of abstract nouns are related with understanding the meaning of nouns, it is important to go deeper into their meaning, which can help more than just focusing on formal features.