Phrase In Sentence Research Articles

ERP responses to processing prosodic phrasing of sentences in amplitude modulated noise

Intonation phrase boundaries (IPBs) were hypothesized to be especially difficult to process in the presence of an amplitude modulated noise masker because of a potential rhythmic competition. In an event-related potential study, IPBs were presented in silence, stationary, and amplitude modulated noise. We elicited centro-parietal Closure Positive Shifts (CPS) in 23 young adults with normal hearing at IPBs in all acoustic conditions, albeit with some differences. CPS peak amplitudes were highest in stationary noise, followed by modulated noise, and lowest in silence. Both noise types elicited CPS delays, slightly more so in stationary compared to amplitude modulated noise. These data suggest that amplitude modulation is not tantamount to a rhythmic competitor for prosodic phrasing but rather supports an assumed speech perception benefit due to local release from masking. The duration of CPS time windows was, however, not only longer in noise compared to silence, but also longer for amplitude modulated compared to stationary noise. This is interpreted as support for additional processing load associated with amplitude modulation for the CPS component. Taken together, processing prosodic phrasing of sentences in amplitude modulated noise seems to involve the same issues that have been observed for the perception and processing of segmental information that are related to lexical items presented in noise: a benefit from local release from masking, even for prosodic cues, and a detrimental additional processing load that is associated with either stream segregation or signal reconstruction.

Incorrect Phrase in Sentence

Incorrect Phrase in Sentence

A resource-saving collective approach to biomedical semantic role labeling.

BackgroundBiomedical semantic role labeling (BioSRL) is a natural language processing technique that identifies the semantic roles of the words or phrases in sentences describing biological processes and expresses them as predicate-argument structures (PAS’s). Currently, a major problem of BioSRL is that most systems label every node in a full parse tree independently; however, some nodes always exhibit dependency. In general SRL, collective approaches based on the Markov logic network (MLN) model have been successful in dealing with this problem. However, in BioSRL such an approach has not been attempted because it would require more training data to recognize the more specialized and diverse terms found in biomedical literature, increasing training time and computational complexity.ResultsWe first constructed a collective BioSRL system based on MLN. This system, called collective BIOSMILE (CBIOSMILE), is trained on the BioProp corpus. To reduce the resources used in BioSRL training, we employ a tree-pruning filter to remove unlikely nodes from the parse tree and four argument candidate identifiers to retain candidate nodes in the tree. Nodes not recognized by any candidate identifier are discarded. The pruned annotated parse trees are used to train a resource-saving MLN-based system, which is referred to as resource-saving collective BIOSMILE (RCBIOSMILE). Our experimental results show that our proposed CBIOSMILE system outperforms BIOSMILE, which is the top BioSRL system. Furthermore, our proposed RCBIOSMILE maintains the same level of accuracy as CBIOSMILE using 92% less memory and 57% less training time.ConclusionsThis greatly improved efficiency makes RCBIOSMILE potentially suitable for training on much larger BioSRL corpora over more biomedical domains. Compared to real-world biomedical corpora, BioProp is relatively small, containing only 445 MEDLINE abstracts and 30 event triggers. It is not large enough for practical applications, such as pathway construction. We consider it of primary importance to pursue SRL training on large corpora in the future.

A statistical analysis of regional variation in adverb position in a corpus of written Standard American English

AbstractThis paper investigates whether the position of adverb phrases in sentences is regionally patterned in written Standard American English, based on an analysis of a 25 million word corpus of letters to the editor representing the language of 200 cities from across the United States. Seven measures of adverb position were tested for regional patterns using the global spatial autocorrelation statistic Moran's I and the local spatial autocorrelation statistic Getis-Ord Gi*. Three of these seven measures were indentified as exhibiting significant levels of spatial autocorrelation, contrasting the language of the Northeast with language of the Southeast and the South Central states. These results demonstrate that continuous regional grammatical variation exists in American English and that regional linguistic variation exists in written Standard English.

Repeating words in sentences: Effects of sentence structure.

An online picture description methodology was used to investigate the interaction between lexical and syntactic information in spoken sentence production. In response to arrays of moving pictures, participants generated prepositional sentences, such as "The apple moves towards the dog," as well as coordinate noun phrase sentences, such as "The apple and the dog move up." In Experiments 1 and 2, speakers produced the same sentence structures on prime and target trials. In addition, a pictured object was repeated in either similar or different sentence positions. Lexical repetition speeded sentence production when it occurred on the first item of the target sentence (Experiments 1 and 2). However, priming was dependent on the structural position of the to-be-repeated word in the prime sentence. In particular, a noun that occurred in a prepositional phrase did not result in facilitation when it was repeated as the head of the subject phrase (Experiment 1). This effect was shown to be independent of differences in the linear position of the repeated word in prime and target trials (Experiments 2). Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that lexical repetition returns when the effect of sentence structure is removed. Possible mechanisms for this interaction between lexical and structural repetition are explored.

Planning in sentence production: Evidence for the phrase as a default planning scope

Controversy remains as to the scope of advanced planning in language production. Smith and Wheeldon (1999) found significantly longer onset latencies when subjects described moving-picture displays by producing sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase than for matched sentences beginning with a simple noun phrase. While these findings are consistent with a phrasal scope of planning, they might also be explained on the basis of: (1) greater retrieval fluency for the second content word in the simple initial noun phrase sentences and (2) visual grouping factors. In Experiments 1 and 2, retrieval fluency for the second content word was equated for the complex and simple initial noun phrase conditions. Experiments 3 and 4 addressed the visual grouping hypothesis by using stationary displays and by comparing onset latencies for the same display for sentence and list productions. Longer onset latencies for the sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase were obtained in all experiments, supporting the phrasal scope of planning hypothesis. The results indicate that in speech, as in other motor production domains, planning occurs beyond the minimal production unit.

BIOSMILE: a semantic role labeling system for biomedical verbs using a maximum-entropy model with automatically generated template features.

BackgroundBioinformatics tools for automatic processing of biomedical literature are invaluable for both the design and interpretation of large-scale experiments. Many information extraction (IE) systems that incorporate natural language processing (NLP) techniques have thus been developed for use in the biomedical field. A key IE task in this field is the extraction of biomedical relations, such as protein-protein and gene-disease interactions. However, most biomedical relation extraction systems usually ignore adverbial and prepositional phrases and words identifying location, manner, timing, and condition, which are essential for describing biomedical relations. Semantic role labeling (SRL) is a natural language processing technique that identifies the semantic roles of these words or phrases in sentences and expresses them as predicate-argument structures. We construct a biomedical SRL system called BIOSMILE that uses a maximum entropy (ME) machine-learning model to extract biomedical relations. BIOSMILE is trained on BioProp, our semi-automatic, annotated biomedical proposition bank. Currently, we are focusing on 30 biomedical verbs that are frequently used or considered important for describing molecular events.ResultsTo evaluate the performance of BIOSMILE, we conducted two experiments to (1) compare the performance of SRL systems trained on newswire and biomedical corpora; and (2) examine the effects of using biomedical-specific features. The experimental results show that using BioProp improves the F-score of the SRL system by 21.45% over an SRL system that uses a newswire corpus. It is noteworthy that adding automatically generated template features improves the overall F-score by a further 0.52%. Specifically, ArgM-LOC, ArgM-MNR, and Arg2 achieve statistically significant performance improvements of 3.33%, 2.27%, and 1.44%, respectively.ConclusionWe demonstrate the necessity of using a biomedical proposition bank for training SRL systems in the biomedical domain. Besides the different characteristics of biomedical and newswire sentences, factors such as cross-domain framesets and verb usage variations also influence the performance of SRL systems. For argument classification, we find that NE (named entity) features indicating if the target node matches with NEs are not effective, since NEs may match with a node of the parsing tree that does not have semantic role labels in the training set. We therefore incorporate templates composed of specific words, NE types, and POS tags into the SRL system. As a result, the classification accuracy for adjunct arguments, which is especially important for biomedical SRL, is improved significantly.

In Beethoven's and Wagner's footsteps: Phrase structures and Satzketten in the instrumental music of Béla Bartók

Abstract Recent studies of formal structure in themes in the Classical repertoire (William Caplin) as well as the music of Wagner (Matthew BaileyShea) point towards the enormous importance and potential of the Sentence phrase structure with its hybrid forms for analyzing tonal music. Initially described by Schoenberg, a Sentence is phrase consisting two main events of equal length, a presentation phrase (consisting of one repeated basic idea) and a continuation phrase. In this paper I will demonstrate Bartók's dependence upon Classical and Romantic phrase structures, including the Sentence, and also the Classical Period (consisting of an antecedent and consequent phrase). In both his small-and large-scale works, Bartók's sentences display a Classical coherence, despite the lack of a functional harmonic framework, due to their clear formal articulation and clearly defined modal pitch centers. Bartók also utilized chains of Sentences, Satzketten, in several works including Concerto for Orchestra. I will describe the different paradigmatic types utilized by Bartók in works such as Divertimento, the String Quartets, along with the Violin and Piano Concertos. Particularly significant is how Bartók alters the repeated basic idea and elaborates the continuation phrase and the creation of compound forms.

Parallel Format: Making Life Easier for the Reader

Use parallel style to show the similarity between items in a series. When headings, bullet lists, and sentence phrases that relate to each other are written in a similar style, the reader can understand the information faster than when they are written in different styles.

Similar, and similar concepts.

This paper analyzes English symmetrical predicates such as collide and match. Its point of departure is an analysis of the concept 'similar' from Tversky (1977) that appears to show that similarity is psychologically asymmetrical. One basis for this claim from Tversky is that the sentences North Korea is similar to Red China and Red China is similar to North Korea are assessed as differing in meaning by experimental subjects; this seems to imply that the symmetrical entailment (R x, y <--> R y, x) fails for this concept. Five experiments are presented that show: (1) the apparent asymmetry of similar is reproduced for 20 predicates that are intuitively thought to be symmetrical, including equal and identical; (2) unique linguistic-interpretative properties hold for these symmetrical words, such as reciprocal interpretation when they appear intransitively, for example, North Korea and Red China are similar; (3) the asymmetrical interpretation of subject-complement constructions containing the symmetrical words is a consequence of general linguistic-interpretive principles. On the basis of the experimental findings, we offer an analysis of symmetrical predication. One major claim of the analysis is that symmetry is a property of lexical items and has no special syntax, that is, that John meets is semantically but not syntactically anomalous. A second claim is that the structural positioning of noun phrases in sentences containing symmetricals--rather than inherent semantic properties of the noun phrases themselves--sets their status as Figure and Ground (as described by Talmy, 1985) or Variant and Referent (as described by Tversky, 1977) in the comparison, even if the nouns are nonsense items. Finally, the behavior of symmetrical predicates is shown to vary as a function of their differing lexical class assignments and collateral semantic designations, such as activity versus state. Most generally, it is claimed that a deeper understanding of symmetrical terms comes from analyzing the semantics of syntactic structures in which they appear.

Facilitating the acquisition of syntax with cross-sentential cues to phrase structure

Several previous studies using miniature language methodology have shown that the acquisition of syntax is facilitated by language input that incorporates cues to sentence phrase structure. These studies have examined effects of LOCAL cues, such as prosody or function words, which are physically identifiable aspects of input and which directly indicate the phrase bracketing of individual input strings. In the present study, we examine the effects of CROSS-SENTENTIAL cues to phrase structure—cues that lack overt manifestations in individual strings, arise solely as consequences of the rule system underlying the input language, and must be extracted from input through comparisons of semantically and syntactically related strings. Grammars incorporating rules of pronominalization and permutation were used to generate input with cross-sentential cues. Subjects exposed to such input were completely successful in learning syntax, whereas subjects exposed to input generated by a simpler grammar (and lacking either local or cross-sentential cues) failed to learn complex aspects of syntax. Natural languages regularly include the types of rules that give rise to cross-sentential cues and also regularly possess multiple local cues to phrase structure. These patterns of universality, coupled with the consistent facilitative effects of structural cues on learning, suggest that such cues may constitute a necessary component of language input.

Conceptual accessibility and syntactic structure in sentence formulation

The grammatical relations of noun phrases in sentences are ordered in a hierarchy that is reflected in a wide array of linguistic phenomena. The hypothesis explored in this paper is that this hierarchy is related to the conceptual accessibility of the intended referents of noun phrases that commonly occur in particular relational roles, with relations higher in the hierarchy typically occupied by noun phrases representing more accessible concepts. An experiment on the formulation of sentences examined the relationship betweeen conceptual accessibility and grammatical relations for three levels in the hierarchy, the subject, direct object, and indirect object. There was a strong and systematic influence of conceptual accessibility on the surface syntactic structure of sentences. The attribution of this effect to grammatical role assignments, rather than to serial ordering mechanisms, was supported by the absence of an effect of conceptual accessibility on the order of nouns in conjunctive noun phrases. This pattern of results can be explained within current theories of sentence production.

IMPLICIT QUANTIFICATION OF TEMPORAL ADVERBIALS

Vague temporal adverbials like soon, recent, just, which are used to locate situations in time, do not set clear boundaries to the time-interval between the reference-point (usually the moment of speech) and the time at which the situation referred to occurs. In the context of particular sentences these vague adverbials receive an interpretation that restricts the length of the time-interval to a more limited range of values (of. John has just smoked a cigaret and John has just married). In two experiments the contextual interpretation of vague temporal adverbials was investigated by means of quantification judgments whereby subjects had to provide numerical estimates for the time-interval. The frequency and the duration of everyday human acts expressed by the verbal phrases of sentences were systematically varied and were shown to have an effect on the assumed length of the time-interval. Larger estimates were obtained when adverbials were combined with verbal phrases that expressed infrequent acts and acts with longer duration. In a final section some theoretical implications of the experimental results are presented.

Some effects of speaking rate on spectral and temporal characteristics of American English vowels

The effects of speaking rate on spectral and temporal characteristics of American English vowels were studied. Five women and five men, native American English speakers without strong regional dialects, produced the carrier phrase sentence “I said hVd again” at slow, conversational, and fast rates. Twelve vowels, /i, ɪ ey, ɛ, ae ɜ, ʌ ɑ, ɔ, ow, ʊ u/ were studied in /hVd/ context. Acoustic analyses were performed using the SPIRE speech analysis programs on a LISP machine. Recordings were digitized at a 16‐kHz sampling rate and low‐pass filtered. Spectral measurements included fundamental frequency and the first four formants. Temporal measurements made were vowel duration, syllable duration, and closure duration. Durations, duration differences, and rate related changes were quite systematic within and across vowel types. Results indicated that the durations of long vowels and diphthongs were compressed more than that of short vowels as speaking rate increased. Spectral differences were relatively small acro...

Subject-Object Concord in Coahuilteco

clausal arguments, show person agreement with the subject NP of their clause. Coahuilteco is typologically SOV, with modifiers and determiners/relators following the noun in that order. Subject concord is marked by personal suffixes on the determiner/relator, or alternatively by person-marked particles or auxiliaries. The system serves to bracket constructions and permit tracking of subject scope (or verb dependency relations), fulfilling some of the same functions as switch-reference. An unusual and possibly unique syntactic feature found in Coahuilteco, an extinct Indian language of southern Texas,' is the marking of OBJECT NOUN PHRASES (and other oblique NP's) for agreement with SUBJECT NOUN PHRASES of sentences. In a recent survey of agreement phenomena in the languages of the world, Moravcsik (1978:363) listed fourteen pairs of constituents between which agreement might obtain, none of which was subject and object. The scope of agreement which a noun imposes on other constituents of the sentence ordinarily does not extend beyond the phrase of which it is the head, the verb with which it is associated, or certain nominal or adjectival predicatives (the only exceptions to this limitation of scope being anaphoric pronominalization, reflexivization, and deletion of identical NP arguments within the same clause or conjoined or subordinated clauses). So far as is known, then, the formal marking of subject agreement on object NP's has not been previously reported. Coahuilteco first gained prominence in American Indian linguistics when Sapir 1920, building on Swanton 1915 and on Dixon & Kroeber 1919, linked it (and other languages of southern Texas) with the Hokan languages of California in a Hokan-Coahuiltecan grouping, which Sapir subsequently (1929) made part of his Hokan-Siouan phylum. The latter is no longer generally accepted as a valid grouping by linguists, and the Hokan-Coahuiltecan grouping must be considered questionable (see Bright 1956 for an early critique). The unity of the respective components themselves has even been questioned; and Coahuilteco is now considered an isolate (Goddard 1979), making it one of the few low-level groupings of American Indian languages which has been revised since Powell 1891.

Locus of distributed lag effect in free recall

In two experiments subjects free recalled object phrases of sentences that were repeated twice at lags of 3, 8, and 16 intervening events. In Experiment I an image task was used to restrict the time available to actively rehearse and organize either the first, the second, or both occurrences at all lag conditions. Lag effects were eliminated whenever time available for rehearsal and organization was restricted for the second occurrence. In Experiment II a completion task was used and actual presentation time was manipulated on the first and second occurrence. Under the 3–9 condition the first occurrence was presented for 3 sec and the second for 9 sec. The reverse was true for the 9-3 condition. As expected, lag effects were obtained only under the 3–9 condition. Results of both studies support the differential-organization hypothesis.

Modeling, imitation training, and the acquisition of sentence phrases

Imitation and modeling were compared in a multiple-baseline individual analysis. Probe pictures and training pictures were presented to normal pre-school subjects. In modeling, an adult used sentences—including either participial, prepositional, appositive, or infinitive phrases—to describe training pictures. Without responding to the training pictures, the children were asked to describe the probe pictures. In imitation training, in addition to responding to probe pictures, subjects were reinforced for directly imitating a description of training pictures. The dependent variable was the frequency with which the children used the phrase type being exemplified on training trials to describe pictures presented on probe trials. Both procedures were successful in producing imitation of the structure of the model's utterances on probe trials even though the content of the utterances on probe trials was not imitative. Imitation training was effective for every phrase type and subject while modeling was effective for only some subjects and some phrase types. Relationships between these two procedures and the normal environment of language acquisition were discussed.

Phrases vs meaning in the immediate recall of sentences

This study evaluated Johnson’s (1965) measure of phrase independence in the recall of sentences. Twenty-five Ss were presented with groups of three sentences that differed in structure and were immediately asked to recall the sentences. Fewer errors were made on subject, verb, and object words for all sentence types, but the probability of a transitional error (TEP) at the phrase boundary was not always greater than at other transitions in the sentence. The results indicate that the TEP is a misleading measure and that sentence meaning is more appropriate as a unit of recall than is the sentence phrase. The number of underlying clauses in the sentence proved to be a valuable metric in predicting errors in recall.