Verbal Predicates Research Articles

Some properties of prosodic phrasing in Thompson Salish

In Nłeʔkepmxcin, consonant-heavy inventories, lengthy obstruent clusters and widespread glottalization can make potential F0 cues to prosodic phrase boundaries (e.g. boundary tones or declination reset) difficult to observe phonetically. In this paper, I explore a test that exploits one behaviour of phrasefinal consonant clusters to test for prosodic phrasing in Nłeʔkepmxcin clauses. Final /t/ of the 1pl marker kt is aspirated when phrase-final, but not phraseinternally. Use of this test suggests that Thompson Salish speakers parse verbs, arguments and adjuncts into separate phonological phrases. However, complex verbal predicates and complex noun phrases are parsed as single phonological phrases. Implications are discussed, especially in regards to findings that (absence of) pitch accent is not employed to signal the informational categories of Focus and Givenness, even though Nłeʔkepmxcin is a stress language.

Toward a unified functional account of structural focus and negation in Hungarian

The goal of this paper is to provide a unified analysis of the function of various types of (structural) focus and the negative particle (used preverbally) in Hungarian. It is argued that the function of these elements (each inducing the inversion of verbal modifier and verb) is best understood with respect to the interpretation assigned to the verbal predicate in different contexts. By treating the verbal predicate as a schematic positive declarative clause (or “proto-statement”) in its default interpretation, it becomes possible to define the function of the elements concerned in terms of (i) the kind of relation in which they stand with the proto-statement, (ii) the kind of relation in which the overall symbolic pattern (as a Gestalt) stands with the unmarked positive declarative clause type.

Les adverbes de manière : propriétés inhérentes et propriétés héritées des prédicats verbaux

In this article, I try to demonstrate that the distribution of manner adverbs can be accounted for in the framework of a fine grained lexico-conceptual analysis. Manner adverbs are of two kinds : first, they can refer to inherent properties of verbal predicates, and in this case they are restricted to active predicates, since only active predicates have a complex internal structure, which is a condition for nouns as well as verbs to be qualified, by adjectives or manner adverbs ; second, they can refer to properties inherited by the predicate from its subject, if the subject bears an agentive or proto-agentive role. The fact that certain properties of the subject may be inherited by the predicate explain why certain stative verbs (verbs of sentiment, for instance) admit manner adverbs.

Relators and linkers: The syntax of predication, predicate inversion, and copulas (review)

Reviewed by: Relators and linkers: The syntax of predication, predicate inversion, and copulas Alain Rouveret Relators and linkers: The syntax of predication, predicate inversion, and copulas. By Marcel den Dikken. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Pp. 363. ISBN 9780262541862. $34. Marcel den Dikken's book constitutes an outstanding contribution to the syntactic study of predication, a topic that has been on the research agenda of generativist syntacticians since at least Higgins's 1979 groundbreaking dissertation and Williams's 1975 and 1980 foundational articles and that has given rise to an impressive body of work: Heycock 1994 and Moro 1997, 2000 (to which D steadily and extensively refers), but also Rothstein 1983, Stowell 1983, Heggie 1988, Napoli 1989, and Déchaine 1993 (which are also discussed), among many others. What sets D's book apart is that he manages to bring together a broad range of intriguing and challenging syntactic data relating to predication and copular constructions, some of them new, others already known but never before considered in this perspective, under an original and impeccably organized analysis. This analysis is built around two simple ideas. The first is that 'all predication relationships are syntactically represented in terms of a structure in which the constituents denoting the predicate and the subject are dependents of a connective or RELATOR that establishes the connection—both the syntactic link and the semantic one—between the two constituents' (11). This claim, which at first sight only recapitulates a well-established traditional conception, is less innocuous than it seems. It must be interpreted as meaning that the proposal that 'the RELATOR accommodates the predicate and the subject in its MINIMAL DOMAIN' (12) is ALL that the grammar has to say about predication relations. They are both configurational and hierarchically asymmetrical, that is, defined in X'-theoretic terms, AND nondirectional, contrary to what Rothstein 1983 and Déchaine 1993 propose. There are thus two ways of linking a predicate to its subject: either the predicate stands in the complement position of the RELATOR, as is standardly assumed in the small-clause approach to predication, or it occupies its specifier position. Reverse-predication constructions, which instantiate the predicate-specifier structure, should thus be distinguished from straight-predication ones, which exemplify the predicate-complement structure. The second core idea of the book is no less innovative than the first. D adopts Moro's 1997 proposal that predicate-inversion constructions involve A-movement of a null-headed small-clause predicate around the subject. In a wide variety of constructions, well-formedness appears to be dependent on the projection in the tree of a LINKER element, surfacing between the inverted predicate and the subject. The gist of D's proposal is that the projection of the LINKER should be viewed as the result of the syntactic constraints imposed on the inversion process. Its function is to extend the domain of predication beyond the RP projection and to make a specifier position available to host the raised predicate. D insists that the RELATOR should be distinguished from the other elements that have been taken to provide the connection between a subject and a predicate, in particular from Bowers's 1993 Pr head, a 'new functional category' according to its proponent. D's RELATOR is an 'abstract functional head', a 'placeholder' for any functional head in the structure that mediates a predication relation, not a designated category. That head can be a copula (The earth must be round), a prepositional element (They regard him as a strong president; an idiot of a doctor), T (Imogen [End Page 706] fell), or a head in the periphery of the sentence, such as Topic (Brian, Imogen really adores: a RELATOR of some sort is needed to connect the initial DP topic and the TP comment). The question arises of whether v should be included in this set. D's answer is that there is no need to introduce a light verb v to mediate the relation between the verbal predicate and its subject in unaccusative constructions, because the T-head suffices to achieve this result, but that wherever it occurs, in particular in transitive constructions, v relates a predicate to a subject, even if its presence...

A Study on the Development of the Infants' Ability to Construct Adnominl Clauses

This study aims to investigte the development of the ability of the infants in the period from 23-months-old to 43-months-old to construct the relative clause and the noun complement through the materials made of their free speech. In this period their ability to use such construction develop steadily, and the most frequent head noun is 'keos(것)'. In case of the relative clause, the restrictive clauses go ahead of the non-restrictive clauses in the frequency and the time of their uses. And the subjecthood of the head noun is learned earlier than the objecthood or adverbhood. The adjective predicate is also earlier-learned compared to the verb predicate in the relative clause construction. The predicate ‘keos(-i-)' is most frequently used among the complement nouns. The acquisition time of ‘(-eul) keos(-i-)' is different from that of ‘(-eun/neun) keos(-i-)'. ‘(-eul) keos(-i-)' that express the intent of the 1st person subject is learned earlier than the one that express the guess of the speaker.

Verbal predicates foster conscious recollection but not familiarity of a task-irrelevant perceptual feature – An ERP study

Research on the effects of perceptual manipulations on recognition memory has suggested that (a) recollection is selectively influenced by task-relevant information and (b) familiarity can be considered perceptually specific. The present experiment tested divergent assumptions that (a) perceptual features can influence conscious object recollection via verbal code despite being task-irrelevant and that (b) perceptual features do not influence object familiarity if study is verbal-conceptual. At study, subjects named objects and their presentation colour; this was followed by an old/new object recognition test. Event-related potentials (ERP) showed that a study-test manipulation of colour impacted selectively on the ERP effect associated with recollection, while a size manipulation showed no effect. It is concluded that (a) verbal predicates generated at study are potent episodic memory agents that modulate recollection even if the recovered feature information is task-irrelevant and (b) commonly found perceptual match effects on familiarity critically depend on perceptual processing at study.

Reply to Gregory Landini’s Review of Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism

In our discussion of Greg Landini’s review, we should distinguish how the logical systems kHST and HST k that I have developed are to be understood in my reconstructions of Gottlob Frege’s and Bertrand Russell’s (1903) ontologies as opposed to how HST k is understood as a (proper) part of my ontology of conceptual realism. Both of these systems are type-free second-order predicate logics that allow predicate expressions (complex or simple) and formulas (propositional forms) to be nominalized and occur in formulas as abstract singular terms. The main logical difference between these systems, as Landini notes, is that whereas kHST contains standard first-order logic (with identity) as a proper part, the system HST k is free of existential presuppositions regarding singular terms, including nominalized predicates as abstract singular terms, which is essential to any argument for Russell’s paradox of predication. In particular, nominalization of the Russell predicate that is not predicable of itself turns out to be denotationless in HST k as an abstract singular term. The main ontological difference between Russell’s and Frege’s ontologies is that one is intensional and the other is extensional. Russell’s (1903) ontology is based on predication as the ontological nexus of propositions, whereas Frege’s is based on predication as a function from properties and relations to truth values. In conceptual realism, predication is based on the mutual saturation of referential and

AAVE/creole copula absence

This study confirms the robustness of the finding in the literature on African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and creole English (especially in the Caribbean) that omission of copular and auxiliary be varies systematically according to predicate type. Verbal predicates are associated with the highest rates of copula absence and following NPs with the lowest rates; following adjectives or locatives show intermediate rates (see Rickford 1998:190). Although this pattern is highly consistent, convincing explanations for it remain elusive. A recurrent suggestion (McWhorter 2000; Winford 1998, 2004; Wolfram 2000) is that the AAVE and creole English pattern is inherited independently from general processes of imperfect second language learning (simplification, generalization) that operated as the African ancestors of today’s speakers acquired English. In this paper, we pursue this possibility, but discover that the grammatical conditioning of copula absence in AAVE and creole varieties is distinct from the patterns found in second language learning data. We examine four sets of data on English acquired as a second language (Indian English, South African Indian English, Singaporean English, Spanish English) and show, using two statistical measures, that conditioning of copula absence in the second language data does not resemble the AAVE and creole pattern. (One possible exception is the high rates of omitted be with verbal predicates, for which we explore possible explanations.) We show further that typological diversity in copula systems also militates against a universal markedness-based pattern. The findings reduce the possibility that the overall AAVE/creole pattern derives from a general tendency in second language acquisition and increase the possibility that the pattern reflects a shared substrate influence from West African languages or other historical contact factors.

Quelques aspects du fonctionnement de la négation en arabe marocain

Sentential negation in Moroccan Arabic is realized by two elements, ma- and -š/ši. Three aspects will be considered in this paper : first, the origin of these two elements, second, the morphological constraints that characterize sentential negation in the context of verbal and non verbal predicates and finally, a particular use of the sentential negation in verbal sentences, the metalinguistic negation.

Пропозитивный номинант как тип языкового знака

The article shows why we single out the propositional nominant as a special type of a language sign. The nomination process of functionally structured events is considered in onomasiological strategy. The interpretation of the problem stated in this article's title is carried out on the base of functionally structured sign with the signified as a simple sentence with a verbal predicate.

A Complete Automation of Unit Testing for JavaScript Programs

Problem statement: Program testing is expensive and labor intensive, often consuming more than half of the total development costs, and yet it is frequently not done well and the results are not always satisfactory. The objective of this paper is to present an automatic test data generation tool that aims to completely automate unit testing of JavaScript functions. The methodology: In order to use the proposed tool, the tester annotates the files that contain the class to be tested. Moreover, the tester must specify the test data coverage criterion to be used, either branch coverage or mutation analysis. However, the tool is then integrated into the JavaScript compiler and test generation is invoked by a command line option. Also, the code to be tested is parsed into an abstract syntax tree from which the test tool generates a program dependency graph for the function under test. However, if mutation analysis coverage is required, the abstract syntax tree for a meta-mutant program is also generated. To provide guidance for the test data search, the function under test instrumented in accordance with the coverage criterion. Branch predicate expressions are always instrumented, in the case of mutation coverage, mutated statements are also instrumented. Compilation then continues from the modified abstract syntax tree to generate instrumented executables that were loaded into the test data search module. Results: The experiment done in our study by using the proposed tool for branch coverage shows that the most effective result for string equality was obtained using the edit distance fitness function, while no significant difference was found in the fitness function for string ordering. Through exhaustive mulation coverage 8% are found to be equivalent. Conclusion: By having a complete automation it reduces the cost of software testing dramatically and also facilitates continuous testing. It is reported that at least 50% of the total software development costs is due to testing, and 10-15% of development time is wasted due to frequent stops for regression testing. Automation will also help get rid of cognitive biases that have been found in human testers. Acknowledgment: The researcher would like to express their gratitude to the anonymous referees for their valuable and helpful comments and suggestions in improving the study.

XForms 페이지의 접근제어를 위한 공유 조건식의 효율적 계산 방법

최근 폼 기반의 웹 시스템에 대한 접근 제어 방법이 서비스 기반 아키텍처를 가지는 클라이언트 시스템 구현에 유용한 방법으로 주목받고있다. 특히 XForms 언어는 서버와 상호작용하는 XML 기반의 사용자 인터페이스를 기술하는 언어로 많이 채용되고 있다. 이 논문에서는 XForms 페이지에 대한 XPath 기반의 접근 제어 규칙을 효율적으로 계산하는 알고리즘을 제안한다. XForms 페이지는 바인딩된 XML 노드에대한 연속된 질의로 모델링할 수 있으며 클라이언트 시스템은 사용자 인터페이스를 생성하면서 XPath 규칙을 계산한다. XPath 규칙은 인스턴스 데이터를 이용하는 조건부를 가지는데 이 조건부의 계산이 규칙들 사이에 또 연속된 질의 사이에 중복되는 경우가 많다. 중복되는 조건부의 효율적인 계산을 위해서 조건부 그래프 모델을 제안하여 동일한 컨텍스트 노드에 대해 이전에 계산된 결과를 재사용하는 방법을 제안하였다. 이 방법은 각 조건부 식이 해당되는 XML 노드에 대해 한번만 계산되는 것을 보장한다. Recently, access control on form-based web information systems has become one of the useful methods for implementing client systems in a service-oriented architecture. In particular, XForms language is being adopted in many systems as a description language for XML-based user interfaces and server interactions. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm for the evaluation of XPath-based access rules for XForms pages. In this model, an XForms page is a sequence of queries and the client system performs user interface realization along with XPath rule evaluations. XPath rules have instance-dependent predicates, which for the most part are shared between rules. For the efficient evaluation of shared predicate expressions in access control rules, we proposed a predicate graph model that reuses the previously evaluated results for the same context node. This approach guarantees that each predicate expression is evaluated for the relevant xml node only once.

English middles with mental and verbal predicates

In this article we investigate whether verbs of perception, affection, cognition and verbalization can be construed in the English middle voice against (at least partial) claims to the contrary such as Fellbaum (1986), Keyser and Roeper (1984), Quirk et al. (1985). We view the middle as a modal statement about the conduciveness of the subject entity to action on or with it by the implied agent in the way specified by the predication (Heyvaert 2003, Davidse and Heyvaert 2007). Examples with mental and verbal predicates that correspond to this definition were found in data extracted from the COBUILD corpus as well as from the Internet. We then propose that, on the basis of Halliday’s (1994) description of process types and their participant roles, mental and verbal middles can be classified into five subtypes, containing respectively: (1) verbal predicates, e.g. The stories narrate easily, (2) please-type mental predicates, e.g. You astonish easily, (3) like-type mental predicates, e.g. Two-line display sees easily, (4) perception predicates used in attributive mode, e.g. That cheese smells nice, and (5) verbal predicates used in identifying mode, e.g. Xitaqua pronounces chi-ta-qua. We also investigate to what extent these subtypes instantiate the characteristics of core middles, viz. letting modality, conducive subject and specification by the predication of the way the process is carried out

A Study on Mutual Relation of Restriction Features of Predicate verbs in Japanese -Causative・Passive・Potential Expressions-

A Study on Mutual Relation of Restriction Features of Predicate verbs in Japanese -Causative・Passive・Potential Expressions-

Evidenz für syntaktische Nullen aus dem Burgenlandkroatischen, Polnischen, Russischen und Slovenischen: Merkmalsausstattung, Merkmalshierarchien und morphologische Defaults

Summary In the present paper, I investigate different types of impersonal sentences in Slavic languages focusing on impersonal sentences with accusative internal arguments (objects). These constructions pose various questions concerning selectional properties of the categories involved in the syntactic derivation of the respective sentences and concerning the licensing of morphological markers, esp. of the accusative of internal arguments and of the dative of quasi-subjects with certain types of reflexive impersonals. I will discuss these issues in the first two sections following the introduction claiming that at least the main (verbal) predicates of impersonals sentences with accusative internal arguments also select a semantically bleached, phonetically null external argument. The arguments for this analysis involve both theoretical and empirical considerations. In section 4, I will briefly turn to the impersonal morphological markers of verbal and nominal predicates. I will propose a default mechanism for the impersonal variant relying on feature hierarchies and markedness rejecting an agreement analysis with the phonetically null external argument.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF SIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH TO GESTURE UNDERSTANDING: WHAT CAN MULTIMODAL COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEMS LEARN FROM SIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH

This paper considers neurological, formational and functional similarities between gestures and signed verb predicates. From analysis of verb sign movement, we offer suggestions for analyzing gestural movement (motion capture, kinematic analysis, trajectory internal structure). From analysis of verb sign distinctions, we offer suggestions for analyzing co-speech gesture functions.

The semantic category of the subject NP in Mandarin specificational copular sentences

I show that in Mandarin specificational copular sentences (sentences headed by the copula shi, in which the subject NP is typically a definite or indefinite description), the subject NP should be treated as a referential, rather than a predicative expression. This conclusion bears on the recent debate on whether specificational copular sentences should be treated as equative or as (inverted) predicational sentences, coming out against the latter. Evidence is adduced from (i) the distribution of the copula in nominal and non-nominal predication sentences, which I show also suggests that the Mandarin copula has a predicate-creation function; and (ii) asymmetries in the interpretation of bare nouns and indefinite NPs in the subject and complement positions of shi.

Sequential organization of post-predicate elements in Korean conversation

In this paper, various interactional features of turn-constructional unit (TCU) continuation as realized in Korean conversation through post-predicate elements are analyzed from a conversation-analytic perspective. Formulated as increments, post-predicate elements serve as re-completers by expanding the host TCU after it has reached a possible point of completion, which is explicitly marked by the utterance-final verb predicate. In many contexts of TCU continuation, the host TCU tends to be allusively constructed (e.g., in the form of a verb predicate with unexpressed arguments) and saliently indexical of the speaker’s affective stance, and post-predicate elements, mostly taking the form of ‘insertables’, elaborate the host TCU. TCU continuation is often realized when the action of the allusive host TCU is ‘disjunctively’ executed, with the interactional import of being potentially interruptive of the current talk-in-progress. Such an intrusive deployment of the host TCU, which is implicated in the practice of foregrounding the speaker’s collusively motivated responsive stance (e.g., in a confirmation request), is demonstrably oriented to by the speaker, who produces a post-predicate element as a methodic way of mitigating the disjunctive initiation of the prior action. The recipient also orients himself/herself to the potentially topic-derailing import associated with such a disjunctive initiation of action by way of initiating repair and/or promptly resuming his/her talk. As such, the production of a post-predicate element itself, mostly as an insertable that is grammatically and semantically related to the host, may not be directly attributed to interactional contingencies per se; it is often sequentially occasioned by practices geared towards enlivening the sequence being wrapped up, initiating or continuing an assessment sequence by way of highlighting the speaker’s evaluative stance turn-initially, or building the current turn on the prior turn through turn-tying operations. The interactional feature of post-predicate elements ‘re-doing the completion point as a transition-relevance place’ is partially manifested in the way the prosodic contour of the final or whole component of the host TCU is repeated and matched by that of the post-predicate elements.

The scope interpretation of complex predicates in Japanese: A unified lexicalist analysis

This paper proposes a unified analysis of adverb scope and quantifier scope phenomena in a lexicalist approach to complex predicates. I first observe that the availability of scope ambiguity for adverbs and for quantifiers always coincides for a given type of complex predicate, drawing on data from different kinds of compound verb constructions, the verbal noun-taking predicates and the nominative object construction. The challenge for a unified treatment in lexicalist frameworks comes from the fact that syntactic structures cannot be taken as the locus for representing the scope of adverbs and quantifiers, unlike in derivational frameworks where such an analysis is the most natural. Thus, a previous lexicalist analysis by Manning, Sag & Iida (1999) makes use of completely different mechanisms to account for adverb scope and quantifier scope, failing to capture the close parallel between them. I remedy this problem of Manning et al.'s analysis by proposing a unified account of adverb scope and quantifier scope that crucially makes use of a slightly enriched semantic representation explicitly encoding the property of mono-/biclausality with respect to scopal phenomena.

Overt Existential Closure in Bura (Central Chadic)

No abstract.