Perspective Of Syntax Research Articles

Language aspects of engineering students' view of entropy

Entropy is a central concept in thermodynamics, but has been found to be challenging to students due to its abstract nature and the fact that it is not part of students' everyday language. Interviews with three pairs of engineering students (N= 6) were conducted and video recorded regarding their interpretation and use of the entropy concept, one year after a course on chemical thermodynamics. From a syntax perspective, students were asked to assess whether different sentences involving temperature, internal energy, and entropy make sense. With a focus on semantics, they were asked to rank a set of notions with regards to how closely they are related to entropy, how scientific they are, and how useful they are for explaining what entropy is. From a pragmatics point of view, students were asked to solve two qualitative problems, which involve entropy. The results show that these chemistry students regard internal energy, but not entropy, as a substance-like entity. The students' ranking of how closely related to entropy notions are and how useful they are for explaining entropy was found to be strongly negatively correlated to how scientific the notions were seen to be. For example, disorder was seen as highly unscientific, but very useful for explaining entropy. In the problem-solving tasks, Chemical Engineering students were comfortable relating entropy to enthalpy and Gibbs free energy, the three notions being seen to form a “trinity” in thermodynamics. However, the students had challenges grasping the unchanged entropy in reversible, adiabatic expansion of an ideal gas, in which they did not consider how entropy relates to the second law of thermodynamics. In final reflections on their learning processes, the students saw weak connections between their problem-solving skills and their conceptual understanding of entropy, although acknowledging that both aspects of learning are important.

Structure building and thematic constraints in Bantu inversion constructions

Bantu inversion constructions include locative inversion, patient inversion (also called subject–object reversal), semantic locative inversion and instrument inversion. The constructions show a high level of cross-linguistic variation, but also a core of invariant shared morphosyntactic and information structural properties. These include: that the preverbal position is filled by a non-agent NP triggering verbal agreement, that the agent follows the verb obligatorily, that object marking is disallowed, and that the preverbal NP is more topical, and the postverbal NP more focal. While previous analyses have tended to concentrate on one inversion type, the present paper develops a uniform analysis of Bantu inversion constructions. Adopting a Dynamic Syntax perspective, we show how the constructions share basic aspects of structure building and semantic representation. In our analysis, cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of inversion constructions result from unrelated parameters of variation, as well as from thematic constraints related to the thematic hierarchy. With some modification, the analysis can also be extended to passives.

Measuring the Changes in Aggregate Cycling Patterns between 2003 and 2012 from a Space Syntax Perspective.

There has been a world-wide surge of interest in cycling over the last 10 years of which London has seen a continuous growth in cyclists and investment in infrastructure that has resulted in the introduction of the Barclays Cycle Superhighway and Barclays Cycling Hiring Scheme. Despite the investment in cycling infrastructure, there has been little understanding of cycling activity patterns in general and the effect of spatial configuration on cycling route choices. This research aims at measuring the impact of cycling infrastructure and spatial configuration on aggregate cyclist movement over two time periods. To do so, this paper presents a spatial-based cyclist movement statistical model that regress cyclist movement flows with measure of spatial configuration, safety and infrastructure and urban character attributes. Using Elephant and Castle, a Central London location, as a case study, the authors analyze cycling movement data sets from 2003 and 2012 to compare the change in cycling behaviour and the impact that the Cycling Superhighway 07, introduced in 2011, has had on cycling patterns. Findings confirm the growth of cycling in London with a 1000% increase in cyclists along some routes in comparison to a 10% increase in population at the same time. More importantly, results also suggest that higher cyclist movement were observed along routes with greater convenience and continuity—over and above route segregation from vehicular traffic. The relationship between spatial configuration and aggregate cyclists movement is consistent between 2003 and 2012 where spatial configuration have remained the same while changes were observed in both modal split and cycling infrastructure. This result is in line with previous research wherein aggregate higher cyclists movement are observed on major routes offering direct connections than less direct routes. From a spatial cognition perspective, this research enriches our understanding on how the external built environment as measured by the spatial configuration measure relates to aggregated cyclists movement overtime and in identifying key potential factors in influencing cyclist wayfinding. Further research is needed into validating the results and examining this relationship at an individual basis on route choice. These results help us better understand the trade off between cycling safety and cycling legibility which could help inform cycling route design in the future.

An Information Mining Model of Intelligent Collaboration Based on Agent Technology

Information can be collected search engine on the Web, but the current search engines can only interpret the characteristic structure of web page data from the perspective of syntax, is lack of semantic understanding, and thus cannot find the desired information quickly and accurately. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposes an information mining model of intelligent Collaboration based on agent technology. By analyzing the information mining process, more to understand the mechanism of Collaboration mining, thus can help users find faster and better desired information.

The syntax of simultaneity

Although language utterances primarily consist of sequences of phonemes, morphemes and words, language is not limited to linearity. There are many linguistic phenomena that show a certain degree of simultaneity: cases in which two (or more) meaningful elements are realized at the same time. Typical cases include intonation contours to mark e.g., focus, topic, questions, etc. While it may be argued that such examples are marginal from the perspective of syntax and can therefore be safely ignored, the same cannot be said for sign languages. Sign languages make extensive use of simultaneity, using it even for negation and adverbial modification, phenomena that are generally considered to be syntactic. Trying to analyze simultaneous constructions syntactically, we run into the problem that under standard assumptions, all terminal elements in a syntactic tree have a unique position in the linear string (Exclusivity & Nontangling Conditions, Partee et al., 1993). The sign language examples obviously violate these conditions. In order to account for these data, we need to extend ideas behind prosodic morphology to syntax: not only morphemes but also syntactic elements can map onto prosodic forms in phonology. Standard principles of the syntax/phonology interface and of the phonological module then apply to construct the simultaneous expression.

The Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue in Non-English Majors’ Compositions from the Perspective of Syntax

This paper is an effort to explore the transfer problem at lexical level in the compositions of non-English majors. The negative transfer of Chinese sentence patterns in Chinese non-major students' English compositions reflects negative transfer of Chinese thought patterns. Three kinds of different sentence patterns are discussed respectively. A statistics is conducted here to calculate the frequency of three kinds of erroneous sentences typical of Chinese sentence patterns in non-major students' English compositions.