Relational Nouns Research Articles

Internal and External Relative Clauses in Ancient Greek

In this paper I argue that Ancient Greek has two distinct strategies for relative clause formation, corresponding to what is known in typology as externally and internally headed relative clauses. Furthermore, I explore two differences between these constructions. First, in comparison with their external counterparts, internal constructions are more restricted semantically. They can only be interpreted as restrictive relative clauses, while external constructions can also be interpreted as non-restrictive. Second, internal constructions are more restricted syntactically, given that they are not used when the domain nominal is subject in the relative clause. For external constructions there is no such syntactic restriction. Finally, I point out a number of convergences between internal relative clauses and noun phrases with an attributive participle. The findings presented in this paper are based on a study of Xenophon.

Amount definites

Our project in the paper is twofold. First, we present an analysis of weak definites in general. Second, we present an analysis of the Semitic state inflection and its role in determining strong and weak definiteness, and introduce a novel type of weak definites which we call amount definites. Adopting the choice-function analysis of (in)definiteness, we analyse weak definiteness as the application of a type-shifted definite determiner to a relational noun. This application results in the reinterpretation of the relational noun as functional. When this function is in turn applied to the possessor, the definiteness of the result depends on the definiteness of the possessor. In Hebrew, weak definites often take the form of noun phrases headed by a noun marked with construct-state inflection; the paper discusses the interpretation of all construct-state nouns as relational. In colloquial Hebrew, the type-shifted definite determiner used in the formation of weak definites may take the form of a numeral (or other amount nouns) marked with emphatic-state inflection. We name weak definites headed by emphatic-state amount nouns amount definites, and compare the properties of amount definites to those of definite noun phrases where the amount noun is marked with construct-state inflection, which are strong definites.

The semantics of possessives

We investigate what possessives mean by examining a wide range of English examples, pre-and postnominal, quantified and nonquantified, to arrive at general, systematic truth conditions for them. In the process, we delineate a rich class of paradigmatic possessives having crosslinguistic interest, exploiting characteristic semantic properties. One is that all involve (implicit or explicit) quantification over possessed entities. Another is that this quantification always carries existential import, even when the quantifier over possessed entities itself does not. We show that this property, termed possessive existential import, is intimately related to the notion of narrowing (Barker 1995). Narrowing has implications for compositionally analyzing possessives’ meaning. We apply the proposed semantics to the issues of the definiteness of possessives, negation of possessives, partitives and prenominal possessives, postnominal possessives and complements of relational nouns, freedom of the possessive relation, and the semantic relationship between pre- and postnominal possessives.

Anaphoric one and its implications

The nominal anaphoric element one has figured prominently in discussions of linguistic nativism because of an important argument advanced by C. L. Baker (1978). His argument has been frequently cited within the cognitive and linguistic sciences, and has provided the topic for a chain of experimental and computational psycholinguistics papers. Baker’s crucial grammaticality facts, though much repeated in the literature, have not been critically investigated. A corpus investigation shows that his claims are not true: one does not take only phrasal antecedents, but can also take nouns on their own, including semantically relational nouns, and can take various of -PP dependents of its own. We give a semantic analysis of anaphoric one that allows it to exhibit this kind of freedom, and we exhibit frequency evidence that goes a long way toward explaining why linguists have been inclined to regard phrases like the one of physics or three ones as ungrammatical when in fact (as corpus evidence shows) they are merely dispreferred relative to available grammatical alternatives. The main implication for the acquisition literature is that one of the most celebrated arguments from poverty of the stimulus is shown to be without force.*

Towards an Analysis of Complex Motion Event Packaging in South Eastern Huastec (Maya, Mexico)

This paper presents an underdescribed way of encoding the Path component of complex motion events in South Eastern Huastec (HSF), a Mayan language spoken in Mexico. The collected data show that HSF does not have directionals (contrary to most Mayan languages), and no real adpositions. Instead, HSF has a typically Mayan general locational preposition, and some relational nouns. HSF also lacks gerunds. These properties lead this language to segment complex motion events into multiple clauses. HSF event segmentation is interesting typologically because this language is one of thefew that are knownto segment events into sub-events. From the perspective of comparative Mayan Linguistics, Huastecan languages, along with Yucatecan languages, differ from other Mayan language groups in that the grammaticalization process of directionals expressing Path did not take place.

Natural language semantics in biproduct dagger categories

Biproduct dagger categories serve as models for natural language. In particular, the biproduct dagger category of finite dimensional vector spaces over the field of real numbers accommodates both the extensional models of predicate calculus and the intensional models of quantum logic. The morphisms representing the extensional meanings of a grammatical string are translated to morphisms representing the intensional meanings such that truth is preserved. Pregroup grammars serve as the tool that transforms a grammatical string into a morphism. The chosen linguistic examples concern negation, relative noun phrases, comprehension and quantifiers.

De l’existence des prédicats d’achèvements

The very existence of achievements (defined as instantaneous eventualities) is often questioned in the literature, which is why our first objective is to maintain that this aspectual class does exist, in the verbal as in the nominal domains. Thanks to a series of tests, we distinguish three subclasses of achievements : pure achievements (mere boundaries), right-boundary achievements (boundaries that are preceded by preparatory activity), and left-boundary achievements (boundaries that are followed by a stative interval). We use this aspectual classification as a basis to study aspectual inheritance from verbs to morphologically related (derived) nouns.

Effects of noun–verb conceptual/phonological relatedness on verb production changes in Broca's aphasia

Background: Individuals with Broca's aphasia show better performance on nouns than on verbs, but the distinction between nouns and verbs is not always clear; some verbs are conceptually and/or phonologically related to nouns, while others are not. Inconsistent results on effects of noun–verb relatedness on verb production have been reported in the literature. Aims: We investigated (1) whether verb instrumentality (a conceptual relationship to nouns) or homonymy (a phonological relationship to nouns) would affect verb production in individuals with Broca's aphasia and (2) whether conceptual/phonological noun–verb relationship would affect responsiveness to aphasia therapy that focused on verb production. Methods & Procedures: Three English-speaking individuals with Broca's aphasia produced 96 verbs in sentences in response to picture stimuli. The target verbs included those that use an instrument and those that do not (e.g., to hammer vs. to yawn) and verbs that are phonologically identical to a related noun (e.g., to comb vs. a comb), morpho-phonologically related to a noun (e.g., to grind vs. a grinder) and those that are not morphologically related to a noun (e.g., to lean). The participants’ verb retrieval ability was assessed before and after a 4-week period of aphasia therapy. Outcomes & Results: The participants produced more accurate instrumental than non-instrumental verbs both pre- and post-treatment. They also produced more verbs correctly that are homonyms with nouns than verbs that are phonologically related or unrelated to nouns before treatment. However, the effect of homonymy was not observed following treatment. Conclusion: Individuals with Broca's aphasia were more accurate in their production of verbs that were conceptually and phonologically related to nouns than on verbs that were not. The performance of verb production improved significantly after therapy. We interpret the results to indicate that, whereas prior to treatment, the participants relied on phonologically related nouns to retrieve the target verbs, this reliance on knowledge of nouns decreased following therapy that was designed to improve verb production.

Prepositions inside (and at the edge) of words: a view from agrammatism

In this work, we aim at investigating the performance of an Italian Agrammatic speaker with compound words, with major emphasis on the processing of (complex and simple) prepositions inside words, thus aiming at especially evaluating the performance with prepositional compounds of the [NOUN HEAD-PREP-DEPENDANT NOUN; N-P-N] form (coda di cavallo, horse-tail) and exocentric compounds of the [PREP-NOUN; P-N] form (sopracciglio, eyebrow). Bisetto and Scalise (1999) showed that it is realistic to consider N-P-N items as fully productive compound words in Italian, due to the fact that they obey to a set of classic compound-hood tests.Our results demonstrate that SM is selectively impaired in retrieving the prepositions linking the modifying nouns to their head. Our data can trigger interesting interpretations, from a theoretical viewpoint. In particular, complex prepositions (e.g. fuori, outside), which are produced with no significant problems by SM, are likely to be relational nouns and not functional axial parts (Svenonius, 2006) when involved in the formation of Italian P-N compounds. Otherwise, a deficit in retrieving them correctly would be expected (specific agrammatic deficits for axial parts have been detected in Zampieri et al., 2011). Moreover, a crucial question is raised: are N-P-N real compounds, since they behave very differently from other compounds in SM performance? Possibly, the same underlying architecture holds both when these items are processed as phrased and when they are processed as “lexicalized syntax” in a constructionist fashion (Jackendoff, 2002; Booij, 2005; Starke, 2009). Given the very similar poor performance of SM with both N-P-N compound-like-items and analogous phrases, a unified analysis of this sort is strongly suggested by our study.

Noun-Noun sequences and the complement-modifier distinction: a corpus-based study

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to question the relevance of the complement-modifier distinction in Noun-Noun sequences. It will be argued that neither syntactic nor semantic criteria provide a completely reliable basis for the distinction between complement and modifier in the context of post-head complements or modifiers and even less so in the case of nominal complements or modifiers in pre-head position, i.e. in Noun-Noun sequences. More specifically, it will be contended that the distinction between complements and modifiers in Noun-Noun sequences cannot be held on cognitive grounds either. With this aim it will firstly be shown that there are different types of associations between the two nouns in Noun-Noun sequences, namely thematic-relation associations (e.g. food shopping) and peripheral associations (e.g. strip shopping). Secondly, evidence will be provided to show that, in spite of the fact that these various associations may correspond to our intuitions about the complement-modifier distinction, they manifest a similar degree of semantic bondedness and combination frequency. In order to measure the semantic bondedness and frequency of the different types of relations in Noun-Noun sequences a pilot study on a sample of Noun-Noun sequences will be conducted using corpus data. The relative frequency with which two nouns are combined correlates with different degrees of ‘semantic bonding’, which can be seen as a sign of cognitive relevance. As a result of this, it will be shown that, even in the case of relational nouns, the most frequent combinations are not always thematic-relation ones. In addition, some sequences where nouns are combined with other nouns denoting peripheral relations show a higher degree of semantic bonding than others in which they are combined with thematic-relation nouns. Finally, the distinction between complements and modifiers in Noun-Noun sequences will be addressed from the point of view of interpretation. In spite of the fact that thematic relation interpretations are assumed to have priority over property interpretations, this priority may be reversed by different factors.

Quantified concealed questions

This paper presents a novel treatment of quantified concealed questions (CQs), examining different types of NP predicates and deriving the truth conditions for pair-list and set readings. A generalization is proposed regarding the distribution of the two readings, namely that pair-list readings arise from CQs with relational head nouns, whereas set readings arise from CQs whose head nouns are not (or no longer) relational. It is shown that set readings cannot be derived under the ‘individual concept’ approach, one of the most influential analyses of CQs on the market. The paper offers a solution to this problem. It shows that once we adopt an independently motivated view of traces—according to which traces are copies with descriptive content (Fox, Linguist Inq 30:157–196, 1999; Fox, Linguist Inq 33:63–96, 2002)—nothing else needs to be postulated to derive set readings within an individual-concept-based analysis. Thus, what seemed to be a challenge for this type of analysis turns out to be an argument in its favor.

Forms of predication in Sakha (Turkic): Will the true lexical predicates please stand up?

AbstractThe Turkic language Sakha (Yakut) uses a copular verb with predicate nominals but not with predicate adjectives or verbs in certain environments, including relative clauses, nominalized clauses, and complements to nouns. Previous work takes this as evidence that adjectives but not nouns are true one-place predicates. However, unaccusativity diagnostics show that adjectives pattern with nouns in Sakha, as in other languages: neither is inherently predicative without a predicative functional head. The need for a copula with predicate nominais in certain environments can be explained using Richards’s distinctiveness condition. Relative clauses, noun complements, and nominalization structures all bring a nominal head in close contact with the predicate. If the predicate itself is nominal, a verbal copula must intervene to separate the predicate from the embedding head of the same category.

우리말 관형절 갈래와 생김새

It is noted in the literature that clausal complex noun phrase constructions in Korean should be divided into four different types; externally headed relative clause constructions, internally headed relative clause constructions, pseudo (or gapless) relative clause constructions and noun complement clause constructions. This paper argues that the externally headed relative clauses in Korean have several peculiar properties, which are incompatible with principles established in the UG. As a by-product, we will see that the Exceptional (Accusative) Case Marking in Korean is another form of the Multiple Accusative Construction of which real internal argument is propositional. As for the internally headed relative clauses, we show that they are not relative clauses in any sense. With regard to the internally headed relative clauses, pseudo relative clauses and noun complement clauses, we claim that it is possible to unify them into a single type of construction.

A system for coreference resolution for the clinical narrative

To research computational methods for coreference resolution in the clinical narrative and build a system implementing the best methods. The Ontology Development and Information Extraction corpus annotated for coreference relations consists of 7214 coreferential markables, forming 5992 pairs and 1304 chains. We trained classifiers with semantic, syntactic, and surface features pruned by feature selection. For the three system components--for the resolution of relative pronouns, personal pronouns, and noun phrases--we experimented with support vector machines with linear and radial basis function (RBF) kernels, decision trees, and perceptrons. Evaluation of algorithms and varied feature sets was performed using standard metrics. The best performing combination is support vector machines with an RBF kernel and all features (MUC score=0.352, B(3)=0.690, CEAF=0.486, BLANC=0.596) outperforming a traditional decision tree baseline. The application showed good performance similar to performance on general English text. The main error source was sentence distances exceeding a window of 10 sentences between markables. A possible solution to this problem is hinted at by the fact that coreferent markables sometimes occurred in predictable (although distant) note sections. Another system limitation is failure to fully utilize synonymy and ontological knowledge. Future work will investigate additional ways to incorporate syntactic features into the coreference problem. We investigated computational methods for coreference resolution in the clinical narrative. The best methods are released as modules of the open source Clinical Text Analysis and Knowledge Extraction System and Ontology Development and Information Extraction platforms.

Converse categorization strategies

The categorization alluded to in the title is the assignment of a lexeme class and/or a syntactic category to a class of concepts. The purpose of the paper is to establish converseness of strategies of categorization among languages as a typological concept. It will be argued that, quite in general, coding strategies in a given functional domain may be oriented in opposite directions across languages. Particular attention will be paid to the relationship between basic/lexical categorization and derived/syntactic categorization. A particular kind of converseness is produced by the alternative of lexicalizing some concept in grammatical category A and transferring it into category B by derivational or grammatical operations, or vice versa. Some case studies representing different functional domains to illustrate this principle will be reviewed: • Categorization of spatial regions as relational nouns vs. adpositions, paired with converse derivational or syntactic processes. • Categorization of dynamic relational (“verbal”) concepts as intransitive or transitive verbs, paired with reciprocal derivational processes. • Categorization of dynamic concepts as verbs vs. non-verbs, the latter paired with prominence of light-verb constructions in the grammar. Whenever the concepts of a certain lexical field or functional domain are uniformly lexicalized in some particular category, this is typically coupled with a regular operation of recategorization into its complementary category. In such cases, both the basic category assignment and the presence of the operation shape the structure of sentences and of texts in the language. Christian Lehmann, Converse categorization strategies

Come et ses propositions subordonnées en italien contemporain

This paper describes the syntactic behaviour, the different possible semantic values and some pragma-textual functions of dependent clauses introduced by come in contemporary Italian. These clauses may occur as arguments of a predicative element (a verb, or a relational noun or adverbial element) or as sentence margins — i.e. adverbial clauses, in traditional terms: in the first case they are embedded as objective/subjective clauses or indirect wh-questions, with a modal meaning ; in the second case the subordinating conjunction come expresses an inter-clausal link between the two connected propositions, with a modal or “analogy” comparative meaning, but it may be also inferentially interpreted in a range of other values. Finally, at the discourse level these clauses may be used by the speaker to comment upon his/her utterance, and assume an inter- or intra(meta)-textual function.

Beyond external possession: genitive and dative with locational nouns in Latvian

The present article deals with the dative external possessor construction in Latvian. Attention is drawn to the widespread occurrence of this construction, extending to constructions with relational nouns practically functioning as adpositions. The carrying-over of the external possessor construction to what would otherwise be described as adpositional phrases creates certain problems for syntactic description. Emphasis is, however, on the semantic aspects. The features commonly associated with the external possessor construction, such as animacy, sentiency and affectedness, play no role here. It is suggested that the differences between the constructions with genitive and dative in spatial expressions with relational nouns are connected with the figure-ground configuration, the constructions with the dative serving to mark the shift of saliency from the figure (located object) to the ground (reference object). This, it is argued, is not an accidental extension of the external possessor construction to a domain where is was not originally applicable, but reflects the general principles underlying the external possessor construction. This can be formulated as the shifting of cognitive or discourse saliency from the figure/possessum to the ground/possessor in a locative/possessive structure.

A Corpus‐Based Study of the Linguistic Features and Processes Which Influence the Way Collocations Are Formed: Some Implications for the Learning of Collocations

In this article I examine the collocational behaviour of groups of semantically related verbs (e.g.,head, run, manage) and nouns (e.g.,issue, factor, aspect) from the domain of business English. The results of this corpus‐based study show that much of the collocational behaviour exhibited by these lexical items can be explained by examining some of the linguistic features and processes which influence the way collocations are formed. These include the semantics of the individual items themselves, the use of metaphor, semantic prosody, and the tendency for many of the selected items to be part of larger phraseological units. I show that it is possible to explain many of these collocations by considering the linguistic features and processes which have influenced the way they have been formed. My contention is that, if the learner is encouraged to look for an explanation, it makes the process of learning collocations more memorable.

The Ibibio Locative Copular Constructions

The Ibibio language, a member of the Lower Cross group of languages is predominantly spoken in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Ibibio has two types of copular construction. One is locative while the other is predicative. Using a purely descriptive approach/method, this paper provides a descriptive account of the copular locative constructions in Ibibio. This study is based on a database collected from adult speakers of Ibibio by the author using an elicitation list. The database includes both actual and potential words/sentences, which standard Ibibio speakers found to be in consistent with their language rules. The paper has observed that Ibibio copular locatives make use of locative copular verbs which have semantic content, but are however, with indeterminate locative precision except when they co- occur with an appropriate locative complement. It has further observed that in Ibibio, the location of a subject entity can be marked with locative elements in two ways. In the first instance, a locative copular verb which can be doro, ‘be on’ sinee ‘be in’ ba ‘be at’ obligatorily co-occurs with a deitic locative complement or a locative prepositional phrase (PP) complement headed by a multipurpose preposition (P), ke. The P is semantically, interpreted as either on, in, at or under depending on the particular locative copular verb that it co-occurs with. In the second instance, in addition to the locative copular verb and the locative PP complement headed by the P ke, there is also within the PP complement (headed by the P ke), a locative relational noun modifier which, modifies the head noun, a complement to the locative P ke. Based on Ameka and Levinson’s (2007) cross-linguistic classification of positional and locative verbs, the paper concludes that Ibibio belongs to the multi-verb type of languages with inherently locative copular verbs which are used to express the spatial locative orientation of subject entities.

EEG theta and alpha responses reveal qualitative differences in processing taxonomic versus thematic semantic relationships

Despite the importance of semantic relationships to our understanding of semantic knowledge, the nature of the neural processes underlying these abilities are not well understood. In order to investigate these processes, 20 healthy adults listened to thematically related (e.g., leash-dog), taxonomically related (e.g., horse-dog), or unrelated (e.g., desk-dog) noun pairs as their EEG was recorded. The data were analyzed using both event-related potentials (ERP) and event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) analyses. The spatiotemporal ERP and ERSP results were analyzed further with principal component analysis (PCA). When comparing unrelated to related word pairs, the expected N400 effect was confirmed, as well as differences in theta and alpha oscillations. When comparing thematically and taxonomically related word pairs, the ERP revealed no significant differences, but the ERSP did. Specifically, theta power increased over right frontal areas for thematic versus taxonomic relationships and alpha power increased over parietal areas for taxonomic versus thematic relationships. The different oscillatory patterns over different brain regions suggest that thematic and taxonomic relationships engage distinct neural processes. Specifically, thematic relationships engage memory processes, while taxonomic relationships may require additional inhibitory or attention processes.