Numerical Quantifiers Research Articles

Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual morphosyntactic processing: Effects of language-common, language-contrasting, and language-specific information

Abstract This study investigated how second language (L2) learners process the Korean numeral quantifier construction by using transferable and nontransferable information. For Chinese-speaking learners of Korean (Chinese group), agreement between an honorific numeral quantifier and a noun in Korean constitutes transferable information in the canonical structure and nontransferable L2-specific information in the scrambled structure. For Japanese-speaking learners of Korean (Japanese group), this information gives rise to crosslinguistic conflicts in both structures. The results from a self-paced reading task showed that the Japanese group did not exhibit sensitivity to grammatical errors in both structures, whereas the Chinese group detected the agreement violation in the canonical but not in the scrambled structure. When a context sentence was provided to license scrambling in the test sentence, however, another group of Chinese-speaking learners of Korean showed sensitivity to the violation. These findings suggest varying degrees of crosslinguistic influence in L2 sentence processing.

Evolution Function Based Reach-Avoid Verification for Time-varying Systems with Disturbances

In this work, we investigate the reach-avoid problem of a class of time-varying analytic systems with disturbances described by uncertain parameters. Firstly, by proposing the concepts of maximal and minimal reachable sets, we connect the avoidability and reachability with maximal and minimal reachable sets respectively. Then, for a given disturbance parameter, we introduce the evolution function for exactly describing the reachable set, and find a series representation of this evolution function with its Lie derivatives, which can also be regarded as a series function with respect to the uncertain parameter. Afterward, based on the partial sums of this series, over- and under-approximations of the evolution function are constructed, which can be realized by interval arithmetics with designated precision. Further, we propose sufficient conditions for avoidability and reachability and design a numerical quantifier elimination based algorithm to verify these conditions; moreover, we improve the algorithm with a time-splitting technique. We implement the algorithms and use some benchmarks with comparisons to show that our methodology is both efficient and promising. Finally, we additionally extend our methodology to deal with systems with complex initial sets and time-dependent switchings. The performance of our extended method for these systems is also shown by four examples with comparisons and discussions.

Sensitivity to syntactic dependency formation in child second language processing: a study of numeral quantifiers in Korean

AbstractThis study investigates whether child second language (L2) learners can use syntactic information during the processing of sentences involving unbounded dependencies and how their processing patterns compare to those of child monolinguals and adult L2 learners. Through a self-paced reading experiment involving the numeral quantifier (NQ) construction in Korean, we tested participants’ sensitivity to agreement violations between a noun phrase (NP) and an NQ in local and nonlocal conditions. The results showed that a subset of child L2 learners who demonstrated target-like knowledge of NP-NQ agreement in an offline task spent a longer processing time in the NP-NQ mismatch than in the NP-NQ match condition, in both local and nonlocal contexts. These child L2 learners’ processing patterns were comparable to those observed in child monolinguals and adult L2 learners. These findings suggest that child and adult L2 learners rely on the same system of syntactic representations and processing mechanisms that guide first language processing.

Object preference in the interpretation of floating numeral quantifiers of Korean

The present study explores how native speakers of Korean interpret Korean transitive sentences with semantically ambiguous floating numeral quantifiers (FNQs). Previous studies have identified a subject-object asymmetry and proposed three syntax-based hypotheses regarding the underlying source of this asymmetry. Based on the predictions of these hypotheses, we investigated the patterns of FNQ interpretation by conducting a self-paced reading task and an offline comprehension task. The results were in line with earlier findings in that our participants strongly preferred the object as the antecedent of ambiguous FNQs; that is, their reading times to the caseless FNQs were as short as those to accusative-marked FNQs, unlike those to nominative-marked FNQs (Experiment 1). The participants also selected the object more frequently than the subject as the antecedent of caseless FNQs (Experiment 2). Notably, object preference was observed in both canonical and scrambled transitive sentences. These findings seem to support the hybrid approach.

Plural formation in Istro-Romanian numeral quantifier phrases: inflexional calquing from Croatian?

We explore the effects of prolonged contact with Croatian on the inflexional morphology of number-marking in the Istro-Romanian noun. One result of a reorganization of the nominal system is that certain bisyllabic plural desinences, originally associated with feminine gender, are reassigned to the masculine, and come to exist alongside other modes of masculine plural marking. The resultant variation in masculine plural inflexion becomes subject to new patterns of distribution which are clearly sensitive to Croatian models, including the exaptation of masculine plural morphology to provide distinctive specialized morphological marking of plurals in certain numeral quantifier expressions for ‘smaller’ numbers, in ways clearly reminiscent of Croatian. What is involved is a complex array of ‘pattern’ borrowing, although there is also some evidence for ‘matter’ borrowing of a dialectal Croatian plural ending which Istro-Romanian sometimes uses in numeral quantifier phrases with higher numerals. Overall, we seem to be in the presence of an emergent ‘numerative’. While the creation of numeratives is well known from the internal history of various languages, our data may show that they may also emerge through language contact.

Sound Change in The Japanese Numeral Quantifiers

This research deals with the sound change of Japanese numeral quantifiers. The data were collected through introspection method and by asking Japanese native speakers as verifiers. The data were identified in order to investigate which numerals have the potential to undergo some sound change. They were then analyzed phonemically and some phonetically as well. The data analysis focused on the segmental elements and it was conducted synchronically. The results show that there are some processes of and reasons underlying the sound change in the Japanese numeral quantifiers. The most common process of the sound change is assimilation, especially regressive assimilation. Meanwhile, the reasons underlying the sound change are the presence of sound co-articulation, phonotactics in Japanese that prevents any consonant clusters except /QC/ and /NC/, devoicing of high vowel /i/, and to comply with the construction of similar numerals.

Customizable Natural Language Processing Biomarker Extraction Tool.

Natural language processing (NLP) in pathology reports to extract biomarker information is an ongoing area of research. MetaMap is a natural language processing tool developed and funded by the National Library of Medicine to map biomedical text to the Unified Medical Language System Metathesaurus by applying specific tags to clinically relevant terms. Although results are useful without additional postprocessing, these tags lack important contextual information. Our novel method takes terminology-driven semantic tags and incorporates those into a semantic frame that is task-specific to add necessary context to MetaMap. We use important contextual information to capture biomarker results to support Community Health System's use of Precision Medicine treatments for patients with cancer. For each biomarker, the name, type, numeric quantifiers, non-numeric qualifiers, and the time frame are extracted. These fields then associate biomarkers with their context in the pathology report such as test type, probe intensity, copy-number changes, and even failed results. A selection of 6,713 relevant reports contained the following standard-of-care biomarkers for metastatic breast cancer: breast cancer gene 1 and 2, estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, and programmed death-ligand 1. The method was tested on pathology reports from the internal pathology laboratory at Henry Ford Health System. A certified tumor registrar reviewed 400 tests, which showed > 95% accuracy for all extracted biomarker types. Using this new method, it is possible to extract high-quality, contextual biomarker information, and this represents a significant advance in biomarker extraction.

Teaching & learning guide for: Risky‐choice framing and rational decision‐making

Teaching & learning guide for: Risky‐choice framing and rational decision‐making

L2 acquisition of definiteness in Japanese floating numeral quantifiers

Abstract This study investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of a constraint on definiteness in Japanese floating numeral quantifiers (NQs) by native English and Korean speakers. The constraint arises because of the specific structural relation between a floating NQ and its associated noun, resulting in an obligatorily indefinite interpretation. The indirect – or, covert – encoding of definiteness in this structure allows investigation of predictions based on the cline of difficulty proposed by Cho and Slabakova (2014), whereby L2 acquisition of a covert property may be facilitated if the first language (L1) expresses the relevant feature overtly. English is such a language, having overt morphology to express definiteness, whereas Korean has floating NQs that are obligatorily, and covertly, indefinite, as in Japanese. Sensitivity to definiteness in Japanese floating NQs was measured using an acceptability judgement task. Although both L1-Korean and L1-English speakers of Japanese showed sensitivity to the constraint at group level, follow-up analyses suggested that the Korean group had more consistent knowledge. We argue that the complexity of the acquisition task – which was greater for the English-speakers than the Korean-speakers – played a bigger role in attainment than overt versus covert encoding of the relevant feature in the L1.

Relational Syllogisms with Numerical Quantifiers and Beyond

Relational Syllogisms with Numerical Quantifiers and Beyond

Risky‐choice framing and rational decision‐making

AbstractThis article surveys the latest research on risky‐choice framing effects, focusing on the implications for rational decision‐making. An influential program of psychological research suggests that people's judgements and decisions depend on the way in which information is presented, or ‘framed’. In a central choice paradigm, decision‐makers seem to adopt different preferences, and different attitudes to risk, depending on whether the options specify the number of people who will be saved or the corresponding number who will die. It is standardly assumed that such responses violate a foundational tenet of rational decision‐making, known as the principle of description invariance. We discuss recent theoretical and empirical research that challenges the dominant ‘irrationalist’ narrative. These approaches typically pay close attention to how decision‐makers represent decision problems (including their interpretation of numerical quantifiers or predicate choice) and they highlight the need for a more robust characterization of the description invariance principle. We conclude by indicating avenues for future research that could bring us closer to a complete—and potentially rationalizing—explanation of framing effects.

Eye-tracking evidence for fixation asymmetries in verbal and numerical quantifier processing

AbstractWhen people are given quantified information (e.g., ‘there is a 60% chance of rain’), the format of quantifiers (i.e., numerical: ‘a 60% chance’ vs. verbal: ‘it is likely’) might affect their decisions. Previous studies with indirect cues of judgements and decisions (e.g., response times, decision outcomes) give inconsistent findings that could support either a more intuitive process for verbal than numerical quantifiers or a greater focus on the context (e.g., rain) for verbal than numerical quantifiers. We used two pre-registered eye-tracking experiments (n(1) = 148, n(2) = 133) to investigate decision-making processes with verbal and numerical quantifiers. Participants evaluated multiple verbally or numerically quantified nutrition labels (Experiment 1) and weather forecasts (Experiment 2) with different context valence (positive or negative), and quantities (‘low’, ‘medium’, or ‘high’ in Experiment 1 and ‘possible’, ‘likely’, or ‘very likely’ in Experiment 2) presented in a fully within-subjects design. Participants looked longer at verbal than numerical quantifiers, and longer at the contextual information with verbal quantifiers. Quantifier format also affected judgements and decisions: in Experiment 1, participants judged positive labels to be better in the verbal compared to the equivalent numerical condition (and to be worse for negative labels). In Experiment 2, participants decided on rain protection more for a verbal forecast of rain than the equivalent numerical forecast. The results fit the explanation that verbal quantifiers put more focus on the informational context than do numerical quantifiers, rather than prompting more intuitive decisions.

Use numbers not words! Communicating hotels' cleaning programs for COVID-19 from the brand perspective.

After hotels in many countries were forced to close in government-imposed lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an inherent need to communicate how they deal with the coronavirus to motivate guests to visit. However, lack of knowledge about how to persuasively communicate about hotels’ cleaning programs for COVID-19 can challenge the industry’s survival. We investigated how hotels that position their brand as a particular personality (sincere vs. exciting) could benefit from different communication styles (inclusion of numerical vs. verbal quantifiers) when presenting their COVID-19 cleaning procedures. Study 1 explored tourists’ central attitudinal responses toward hotels’ cleaning programs. Study 2 demonstrated that sincere hotel brands would benefit from using numerical and verbal quantifiers to communicate their cleaning policies, whereas exciting hotel brands would benefit only from numerical quantifiers. Our results invite hotel managers to use their brand personality positioning to influence tourists’ attitudes and intentions in a pandemic context.

How quantifiers influence the conceptual representation of plurals.

This paper reports the results of two experiments that investigate the nature of plural conceptual representations that are created during sentence comprehension. Previous work has found that comprehenders seem to represent both a singular object and a plural set of objects during the comprehension of plural nouns. The activation of the singular object has been attributed to the pragmatic processing involved in understanding the plural (Patson, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 42, 1140-1153, 2016a). The goal of the current study was to further investigate this hypothesis. Experiment 1 used a picture-matching paradigm to investigate how comprehenders conceptualize plural nouns quantified with many, which renders the scalar implicature unnecessary. Consistent with the pragmatic processing hypothesis, comprehenders did not activate a singular form when the plural was quantified with many. Experiment 2 was designed to further investigate whether all quantifiers block activation of the singular form. The same picture-matching paradigm was used with numerical quantifiers that specify numbers either within or above the subitization range. When the number was within the subitization range, comprehenders' conceptual representations contained exactly that number of objects, and importantly did not contain a singular object. When number was above the subitization range, comprehenders' conceptual representations did not contain an exact number of objects and seemed to activate a singular object. These data are consistent with constraints on how many objects can be represented in visual working memory. Taken together, the results of these two experiments suggest that the plural's conceptual representation emerged as a result of grammatical processing as well as limits on the visual processing system.

The Selectional Constraint of the Chinese Progressive Operator <i>zai</i>

Previous studies on the Chinese progressive mainly focus on the distinctions between Chinese progressive <i>zai</i> and the continuous <i>-zhe</i>, but few has noticed that the progressive <i>zai</i> is sensitive to the plurality of the event encoded by the predicate in its scope. Inspired by the observations of the selectional constraints of the English progressive, this paper aims to find out the selectional constraints of Chinese progressive <i>zai</i>. It is argued that Chinese progressive <i>zai</i> requires its modified predicates to denote singular durative events as its English counterpart do. Given that no studies have illustrated the semantic criterion for identifying predicates denoting singular events in Mandarin, this study proposes that singular telic (incremental) predicates compatible with <i>zai</i> are those with singular atoms or singular groups as the incremental themes and singular atelic predicates co-occurring with <i>zai</i> are those being incremental homogeneous. An incremental accomplishment with a singular atom as the theme is expressed by the combination of an incremental verb and a quantized incremental object with the cardinal numeral quantifier <i>yi</i> ‘one’ as the measure phrase, while that with a singular group as the theme is expressed by the combination of an incremental verb and a definite object modified by the definite determiner like <i>na</i> ‘that/those’. In contrast, incremental homogeneous predicates are expressed by activities or plural achievements.

Murphree's Numerical Term Logic Tableaux

Murphree's Numerical Term Logic is a logic capable of representing and performing inference with numerical quantifiers by modifying Sommers' Term Functor Logic: in this contribution we offer a tableaux method for it.

P.029 Self-estimation of blood alcohol concentration in patients admitted for acute alcohol intoxication in emergency department

Murphree's Numerical Term Logic is a logic capable of representing and performing inference with numerical quantifiers by modifying Sommers' Term Functor Logic: in this contribution we offer a tableaux method for it.

Chaotic Dynamics of Piezoelectric MEMS Based on Maximum Lyapunov Exponent and Smaller Alignment Index Computations

We characterize the dynamical states of a piezoelectric micrcoelectromechanical system (MEMS) using several numerical quantifiers including the maximum Lyapunov exponent, the Poincaré Surface of Section and a chaos detection method called the Smaller Alignment Index (SALI). The analysis makes use of the MEMS Hamiltonian. We start our study by considering the case of a conservative piezoelectric MEMS model and describe the behavior of some representative phase space orbits of the system. We show that the dynamics of the piezoelectric MEMS becomes considerably more complex as the natural frequency of the system’s mechanical part decreases. This refers to the reduction of the stiffness of the piezoelectric transducer. Then, taking into account the effects of damping and time-dependent forces on the piezoelectric MEMS, we derive the corresponding nonautonomous Hamiltonian and investigate its dynamical behavior. We find that the nonconservative system exhibits a rich dynamics, which is strongly influenced by the values of the parameters that govern the piezoelectric MEMS energy gain and loss. Our results provide further evidences of the ability of the SALI to efficiently characterize the chaoticity of dynamical systems.

Focus to an attribute with verbal or numerical quantifiers affects the attribute framing effect

People find positive attribute frames (e.g., 75% lean) more persuasive than negative ones (e.g., 25% fat). In three pre-registered experiments, we tested whether this effect would be magnified by using verbal quantifiers instead of numerical ones (e.g., ‘high % lean’ vs. ‘75% lean’). This moderating effect of quantifier format was predicted based on previous empirical work and two non-exclusive accounts of framing effects. First, verbal quantifiers are presumed to be a more intuitive format than numerical quantifiers, so might predispose people more to judgement biases such as the framing effect. Second, verbal quantifiers draw a greater focus to the attributes they describe. This could provide a linguistic signal that the positive frame is better than the negative one. In three experiments, we manipulated the attribute frame (positive or negative) and the quantifier format (verbal or numerical) between-subjects, and quantity pairs (e.g., 5% fat and 95% lean or 25% fat and 75% lean) within-subjects. We also tested if participants focused more on the attributes in the frame, by measuring whether participants selected causal sentence completions about the beef that focused on why it had fat meat or lean meat. Results showed a robust framing effect, which was partially mediated by the focus of the sentence completions. However, the verbal format did not increase the magnitude of the framing effect. These results suggest that a focus on the attribute contributes to the framing effect, but contrary to past work, this focus is not different between verbal and numerical quantifiers.

Over- and Under-Approximations of Reachable Sets With Series Representations of Evolution Functions

In this article, we investigate both over- and under-approximations of reachable sets for analytic autonomous dynamical systems beyond polynomial dynamics. We start with the concept of evolution function, whose subzero-level set can be used to describe reachable set, and find a series representation of the evolution function with its Lie derivatives. Afterwards, based on the partial sums of this series, two different methodologies are introduced to compute over- and under-approximations of reachable sets, using numerical quantifier elimination for the semi-algebraic constraints and remainder estimation of the partial sum, respectively. Some benchmarks are given, including an eight-dimensional nonpolynomial quadrotor model, to show the advantages of our computational methods over some existing methods in the literature. Especially, our methods also work for nonconvex initial sets.