Regular Syntax Research Articles

Prenominal Adverbs, or Apparent Selectional Violations in Coordination

Abstract A robust generalization about coordinate structures is that X and Y may be conjoined in position P if and only if each of X and Y alone may occur in P. In particular, different grammatical categories (e.g., the NP a Republican and the AdjP proud of it) may be coordinated in a position that allows for either (e.g., Pat is [a Republican and proud of it]; Sag et al. 1985). Apparent violations of this generalization are sometimes taken as evidence for an asymmetric structure of coordination, where a single conjunct determines categorial features of the coordinate structure. Bruening and Al Khalaf 2020 and Bruening 2023 posit that one such violation involves coordination of AdvPs and AdjPs in prenominal positions that apparently do not allow for AdvPs alone; e.g., The [Once and Future] King (a book title) is grammatical, while the once king alone is claimed either to be ungrammatical or to involve a hypothetical compound once king that only a minority of English speakers accept. On the basis of rich attested data and acceptability judgment experiments, we demonstrate that adverbs such as once, now, soon, and twice combine with nouns in regular syntax, rather than via hypothetical compound forming processes. Hence, constructions exemplified by The Once and Future King do not violate the discussed generalization and do not provide an argument against the symmetric nature of coordination.

The use of magnets for the nonvisual construction of syntax-based tangible object assemblies by individuals who are blind or visually impaired

ABSTRACT Many students have difficulty in mastering syntax when programming. To alleviate this problem, the Scratch programming language was developed to have a visual block-based drag and drop code editor, where the shapes of the blocks and animation are used to make the syntax intuitive. To similarly make syntax intuitive to individuals who are blind or visually impaired (BVI) using tangible code blocks, a method needs to take into account perceptual processing differences between the senses and implementation differences between the physical and virtual world. The studies in this paper examined the effectiveness of using localized reciprocal shape information in combination with magnetic attraction for providing intuitive feedback about syntax. Supplementing the use of localized reciprocal shape constraints with magnetic attraction increased the accuracy and perceived ease of use by blindfolded BVI users to detect whether blocks successfully connected and, therefore, represented a code segment with valid syntax. This did not appear to change significantly with changes in the size and weight of the blocks, although stronger magnetic connections appeared preferred. We also introduced a “stopper” design to allow for code blocks to have exceptions to the regular syntax rules, while not adding complexity to the majority of code blocks.

Field programmable gate array implementation of variable‐bins high efficiency video coding CABAC decoder with path delay optimisation

Context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) is a single operation mode for entropy coding in the last video coding standard high-efficiency video coding. For high-resolution applications, the throughput of one bin/cycle is not sufficient and it is a very challenging task to implement pipeline and/or parallel CABAC decoding architecture by simply adding more stages. Indeed, the tight data dependencies make it difficult to parallelise and cause it to be a throughput bottleneck for video decoding. Consequently, in order to improve the CABAC decoder throughput, parallel and pipeline architectures are used in authors’ design. In this work, an algorithm-architecture adequation is proposed to implement a CABAC decoder on a field programmable gate array. Mainly, a new classification of 32 syntax elements is given to speed up the authors’ solution. Furthermore, the context selection and modelling of regular syntax elements are studied, designed and implemented. Finally, a novel technique of memories rearrangement to reduce the critical path delay required to process each binary symbol is proposed. As a result, the implementation can process 2.2 bins/cycle when operated at 123.49 MHz and exhibits an improved high-throughput of 271.678 Mbins/s. The hardware architecture is coded using hardware description language and synthesised using ISE Xilinx tools targeting the Virtex4 platform.

Grammatical metaphor and functional idiomaticity

Abstract One of the main challenges for research in the field of Phraseology is to discover how phraseological combinations can be integrated into the grammatical rules they seem to contradict. This paper explains some theoretical concepts which may shed some light on the relation between regular syntax and phraseological fixedness. Firstly, we explain how the concept of grammatical metaphor, applied to phraseology, allows to distinguish phrasemes from free combinations, and also to separate the phrasemic subclasses from one another. Secondly, we analyze the different degrees of fixedness of phrasemes in terms of functional idiomaticity, as a consequence of grammatical metaphor, resulting from the relation between the inner and outer syntax of the phrasemes, which is parallel to their semantic idiomaticity. Thirdly, we focus on some particular cases of this mechanism, such as discontinuous, interlocking and overlapping phrasemes, as well as the so-called open-slot idioms. We conclude that the application of grammatical metaphor to phraseology brings up to surface a parallelism between idiomatic meanings and idiomatic structures, which is an essential property of phrasemes.

Neural basis for processing hidden complexity indexed by small and finite clauses in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract In this study we investigate how the human brain processes small clauses and finite clauses. Small clauses are instances of ‘simpler’ syntax in the sense that they do not involve operations such as Move and Tense, and have been argued to represent an earlier stage of syntactic evolution before the development of fully-fledged syntax (Bickerton, 1990; Jackendoff 2010; Uriagereka, 2008). Understanding how the brain processes instances of different levels of syntactic complexity may further our understanding of (i) the analytical functions of specific brain regions, and (ii) the distribution of labor in the interpretation or different levels of syntax. To pursue this hypothesis, we ask whether small clauses require different analytical processes than regular syntax. This report provides evidence that they do. In an fMRI study of syntactic processing in a group of Mandarin speakers, small clauses showed greater activation of areas involved in semantic processing. In addition, both small and finite clauses showed substantial activation of areas implicated in syntactic and semantic processing, including significant RH activation. We interpret these findings with reference to Levinson's articulatory bottleneck: structures which appear simpler in terms of syntactic production may require more effort in parsing.

The Roots of Linguistic Organization in a New Language.

It is possible for a language to emerge with no direct linguistic history or outside linguistic influence. Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) arose about 70 years ago in a small, insular community with a high incidence of profound prelingual neurosensory deafness. In ABSL, we have been able to identify the beginnings of phonology, morphology, syntax, and prosody. The linguistic elements we find in ABSL are not exclusively holistic, nor are they all compositional, but a combination of both. We do not, however, find in ABSL certain features that have been posited as essential even for a proto-language. ABSL has a highly regular syntax as well as word-internal compounding, also highly regular but quite distinct from syntax in its patterns. ABSL, however, has no discernable word-internal structure of the kind observed in more mature sign languages: no spatially organized morphology and no evident duality of phonological patterning.

PAU: PARSING AND UNDERSTANDING WITH UNIFORM SYNTACTIC, SEMANTIC, AND IDIOMATIC REPRESENTATIONS

PAU is an all-paths chart-based unification parser that uses the same uniform representation for regular syntax, irregular syntax such as idioms, and semantics. PAU's representation has very little redundancy, simplifying the task of adding new semantics and syntax fo PAU's knowledge base. PAU uses relations between the syntax and semantics to avoid the proliferation of rules found in semantic grammars. By encoding semantics at the same level of representation as syntax, PAU is able to use semantic constraints early in the parse to eliminate semantically anomalous syntactic interpretations. Examples are given to show how PAU can handle the many eccentricities of different idioms using the same mechanisms as are used to handle regular syntax and semantics. These include the ability of some idioms, but not other idioms of the same syntactic form to undergo passivization, particle movement, action nominalization, indirect object movement, modification by adjectives, gerundive nominalization, prepositional phrase preposing, and topicalization. PAU's representation is bidirectional and is also used by a companion generator. PAU is designed to be efficient, runs in real time on typical workstations, and is being used in a number of natural language systems.

System commands

System commands have always had a very important role in, or, more accurately, just outside, the APL language. They are the pidgin dialect which provides communication between the clean, abstract world of pure APL and the often messy environment of the APL system which allows APL programs to be executed. Despite their importance in the development and use of all APL applications, very little attention has been paid to them. They remain, in contrast to APL itself, ineffectual, irregular, and inconsistent. They have no regular syntax and return no usable result. There are two possible ways to deal with this situation. Get rid of them, or make them better. To date, most APL systems have been gradually implementing the first approach. One by one, system commands have been superseded by system functions and variables which do approximately the same thing. In the case of system variables such as □ IO and □ RL whose values effect the actual results of calculations as implicit arguments, this change has properly moved the ability to set these parameters into the province of the language itself. In the case of the system functions, however, the move has blurred the useful distinction between the language and the host environment and introduced a most unattractive collection of obscure English words and abbreviations into a previously ideographic language. By moving the English words out of APL and into the realm of system commands, we open up the possibility of having the actual words used be a function of some natural language selection facility such as □ NLT in IBM's APL2. One of the problems with the □-function approach is that APL functions take data arguments and return data results. This is, of course, what allows them to be used in ever more complex expressions. Unfortunately, since the environmental constructs acted on by system functions are not data, the arguments and results of system functions often bear only slightly on the main action which is taken as a side effect. Another problem is that an APL function works within a certain name environment (workspace), and generally cannot affect things outside of that environment. As large applications increasingly tend to rely on cooperation between many different workspaces, the need to make extra-workspace adjustments to the environment has become apparent. This is especially true in Analogic APL which is designed to facilitate the sharing of both functions and variables between workspaces. Starting a brand new implementation of APL is a great opportunity. We at Analogic decided to take advantage of it by providing a better environment for our favorite language to run in. Our approach was to leave the language proper alone (Analogic is committed to strict adherence to the ISO APL standard), but to rethink the way that APL applications interact with their environment. To take advantage of these enhancements, an applications programmer must set up a variety of links between different workspaces or name contexts. Usually, this only needs to be done once at the time an application is put together. The exact mechanism, called threaded workspaces, is described elsewhere [1]. The important points for this discussion are that the actions generally need not be dynamic and that there are many variations in the details of the connections. We decided that system functions were not the answer. Doing as many things as we envisioned by using system functions would have entitled either an unacceptably large number of confusingly named &squarel-functions (like the 135 found in STSC APL*PLUS/PC) or unacceptably obscure arguments to a smaller number of □-functions (like the left arguments of □ WS and □ FD in Sharp APL). System commands, many of which are already required by the ISO standard, can provide the answer so long as they are given a regular and self-documenting syntax, and the universe of names visible to any command is expanded to include names in workspaces other than the one in which the command is invoked. It should be understood that Analogic APL is a work in progress. The ideas expressed here reflect the current state of the specification of Analogic APL. Details such as the names of individual fields are likely to change as we the implementation progresses and we gather experience.

Indications of Regular Syntax in Deaf Danish School Children’ Sign Language

Indications of Regular Syntax in Deaf Danish School Children’ Sign Language