Theory Of Syntax Research Articles

Event-driven grammars: relating abstract and concrete levels of visual languages

In this work we introduce event-driven grammars, a kind of graph grammars that are especially suited for visual modelling environments generated by meta-modelling. Rules in these grammars may be triggered by user actions (such as creating, editing or connecting elements) and in their turn may trigger other user-interface events. Their combination with triple graph transformation systems allows constructing and checking the consistency of the abstract syntax graph while the user is building the concrete syntax model, as well as managing the layout of the concrete syntax representation. As an example of these concepts, we show the definition of a modelling environment for UML sequence diagrams. A discussion is also presented of methodological aspects for the generation of environments for visual languages with multiple views, its connection with triple graph grammars, the formalization of the latter in the double pushout approach and its extension with an inheritance concept.

Good prospects: ecological and social perspectives on conforming, creating, and caring in conversation

Ecological approaches (e.g. [Gibson, J.J., 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston]) to psychology and language are selectively reviewed, focusing on social learning. Is social learning (e.g., acquiring language) a matter of conformity [Tomasello, M., 2006. Acquiring linguistic constructions. In: D. Kuhn, R.S. Siegler, W. Damon, R.M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology, Cognition, Perception, and Language, sixth ed., vol. 2., Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, pp. 255–298], creativity [Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA], or something else? Ecological approaches [Reed, E.S., 1996. Encountering the World: Toward an Ecological Psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford; Hodges, B.H., Baron, R.M. 1992. Values as constraints on affordances: perceiving and acting properly. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 22, 263–294] put the focus on values. Reed’s account highlights the collective appropriation of affordances, the precocious perception and enactment of “unfilled meanings,” and children’s becoming persons through the active structuring of their environment (e.g., gestural games, story-telling). Hodges and Baron’s account of values as multiple, heterarchical, dynamical, and legitimating constraints on actions is applied to cases of pragmatic rule violations, particularly Hodges and Geyer’s [Hodges, B.H., Geyer, A.L., 2006. A nonconformist account of the Asch experiments: Values, pragmatics, and moral dilemmas. Personality and Social Psychology Review 10, 2–19] reinterpretation of Asch’s [Asch, S.E., 1956. Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs 70, (9) (Whole No. 416)] influential experiments on social influence and perception. These ecological, social, and values-realizing accounts suggest that conversations are about seeking good prospects, caring for others and self, and inviting responsible action. The possibility of language as a perceptual system [Gibson, J.J., 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston] for exploring dialogical arrays, and an action system [Reed, E.S., 1982. An outline of a theory of action systems. Journal of Motor Behavior 14, 97–134] for coordinating diverse space–time scales is considered.

A Study on identifying the townscape types in urban areas by applying Space Syntax theory

A Study on identifying the townscape types in urban areas by applying Space Syntax theory

A Study on identifying the townscape types in urban areas by applying Space Syntax theory

A Study on identifying the townscape types in urban areas by applying Space Syntax theory

공간구문론을 이용한 지하공간 비상유도등의 효율적인 위치선정 방법론 검토

지하공간은 화재를 비롯한 재난이 발생했을 때 지상공간에 비해 더 큰 위험이 따르므로 비상유도등 설계시에 공간의 특징을 충분히 고려해야 한다. 공간구문론의 뎁쓰맵(Depthmap) 프로그램은 공간의 정량적인 분석을 가능하게하는 프로그램으로, 이를 통해 개구부의 위치 등 평면 구성에 따른 공간의 정확한 분석을 할 수 있다. 본 연구에서는 공간구문론을 이용한 지하공간 비상유도등의 위치선정 방법론을 검토하기 위해 화재발생시 나타나는 인간 행동의 특징을 파악하고 복잡한 공간에서 생존자들의 피난경로를 선택하는 방법을 분석하였다. 그리고 공간구문론으로 분석된 특정 공간에 이상의 분석결과를 종합하여 천편일률적인 설치가 아닌, 공간의 구조를 고려한 비상유도등의 효율적인 위치선정 방법론을 검토하였다.

LMental: un procedimiento mental simple para la derivación de sistemas complejos de relaciones sintácticas

Este trabajo desarrolla un procedimiento enormemente simple para la generación de sistemas complejos de relaciones. Se propone como un modelo del procedimiento mental empleado en la formación y transformación de estructuras de frase en las gramáticas naturales. Sostenemos que una parte importante de los problemas planteados por la teoría desnuda de la estuctura de frase del Programa Minimalista pueden ser superados gracias a este procedimiento. Proponemos además un primer conjunto de aplicaciones mediante el análisis de ciertos tipos frásticos y de los fenómenos ligados a ellos.

Parallelism in conversation

Speakers often construct their utterances based on the immediately co-present utterances of dialogue partners. They array their linguistic resources parallel to their partners’ and activate resonance. Based on the theories of dialogic syntax and cognitive linguistics, this study undertakes to explain how speakers activate resonance and how parallelism contributes to constructing linguistic forms as well as to shaping the ongoing flow of conversation. Three phases of resonance activation are illustrated in relation to cognitive processes: (a) parallelism constituted with extension of multiple categories in synthesis; (b) parallelism meeting or failing the previous speaker’s intention due to schematization; and (c) parallelism achieved as a consequence of priming through schematization and extension. It is concluded that linguistic forms develop in the ongoing flow of socially coordinated cognition, where patterns emerge through activation of mapping relations between linguistic elements. This process is anchored in speakers’ concepts of grammatical equivalences, ability of categorization, and grasp of linguistic conventions.

Rational-design process and evaluation of street-lighting design for apartment complexes

This study proposes the application of a rational-design process for street-lighting design considering the characteristics of space and the apartment complex on the basis of the recommended illumination levels for such. In this study, space syntax theory, which is used to generate a strategic-design framework based on detailed analysis of spatial configuration and represent any urban area as a matrix of connected spaces using computer simulations, is implemented in the design process. Based on previous research, which utilized the application of the space syntax theory to street-lighting design in a commercial area, this study extends such research to include street-lighting design of residential areas. In addition, this study evaluates current street-lighting designs in apartment complexes including selection of proper luminaires and relocation of existing luminaires. This study proposes further detailed improvements of the street-lighting design process.

Explicit substitutions and higher-order syntax

Recently there has been a great deal of interest in higher-order syntax which seeks to extend standard initial algebra semantics to cover languages with variable binding. The canonical example studied in the literature is that of the untyped ?-calculus which is handled as an instance of the general theory of binding algebras, cf. Fiore et al. [13]. Another important syntactic construction is that of explicit substitutions which are used to model local definitions and to implement reduction in the ?-calculus. The syntax of a language with explicit substitutions does not form a binding algebra as an explicit substitution may bind an arbitrary number of variables. Thus explicit substitutions are a natural test case for the further development of the theory and applications of syntax with variable binding. This paper shows that a language containing explicit substitutions and a first-order signature ? is naturally modelled as the initial algebra of the Id + F ??_ +_ ? _ endofunctor. We derive a similar formula for adding explicit substitutions to the untyped ?-calculus and then show these initial algebras provide useful datatypes for manipulating abstract syntax by implementing two reduction machines. We also comment on the apparent lack of modularity in syntax with variable binding as compared to first-order languages.

On the role of semantics in a theory of adverb syntax

The recent literature on adverb positioning is roughly divided between two theoretical camps, one of which claims that adverbs are licensed in spec positions by empty functional heads (Cinque, 1999), the other taking adverbs as adjoined and licensed largely by semantically based principles (Ernst, 2002). This paper defends the latter view, presenting two sets of evidence. First, the syntactic approach invoking functional heads holds that certain aspects of an adverb's meaning are encoded in the functional heads, such as the different scopes of frequency adverbs, e.g. in Texans often drink beer versus Texans drink beer often. It is shown that this approach to adverb meaning leads to significant redundancy and great difficulties in representing adverb semantics in a coherent way. Second, while the functional-head theory does account for the normal order of subject-oriented adverbs and negation ( She probably didn’t leave versus *She didn’t probably leave), the existence of exceptional cases where adverbs may follow negation requires this theory to adopt a semantically based explanation (invoking the adverbs’ status as positive polarity items) in any case. As a result, its original account of subject-oriented adverbs is redundant. For both sets of evidence, the semantically based theory handles the data easily: scope and related patterns are predicted by its basic semantic principles, and the polarity explanation for the second set also fits naturally into this framework without redundancy. Thus, the two phenomena provide evidence for the semantically based theory.

Dynamical neural representation of song syntax in Bengalese Finch: a model study

ABSTRACT The Bengalese Finch Lonchura striata var. domestica has highly complex songs with element sequences similar in syntactic structure to that of human language. Because young learn songs by comparing their auditory memory of their father's songs to the auditory feedback of a self-generated song, it is important to understand the auditory neural representation of element sequences. We developed a spiking neural network model of the song-control nucleus HVC that changes the weight among connected neurons via spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP), a biologically plausible learning rule. In the model, the dynamics of neural population converged into a stable activity distribution after sufficient learning steps. The network activity differentiated element pairs included in the input sequence from those that were not. Linear input sequences had better fine response selectivity for typical pairs than random or syntax inputs. However, real HVC neurons of Bengalese Finch respond to a wider range of pair ...

Conspiracy of form and context for proper semantic interpretation: The implications of lonesome numeral classifiers in Japanese

Semantic flexibility and pragmatic dynamism of numeral classifiers in Japanese are witnessed through their unexpected behavior in giving rise to ‘unusual looking’ constituents. The unusual constituents are pernicious from a point of view upholding the concept of rigid/stereotypical syntactic constituency often presupposed by traditional theories of syntax. Following Fukushima (2002, 2003), it is argued that, in order to capture such apparently odd behavior of numeral classifiers, an ‘inclusive’ grammatical framework is effective and adequate, which is capable of simultaneously synthesizing information pertaining to both form and context.

Fresh O'Caml: Nominal Abstract Syntax for the Masses

Nominal abstract syntax, as pioneered by the 'FreshML' series of metalanguages, provides first-order tools for the representation and manipulation of syntax involving bound names, binding operations and α-equivalence. Fresh O'Caml fuses nominal abstract syntax with the full Objective Caml language to yield a functional programming language with powerful facilities for representing and manipulating syntax. In this paper, we first provide an examples-driven overview of the language and its functionality. Then we proceed to comment on some of the difficult issues involved in implementing nominal abstract syntax and explain how they have been addressed in the latest version of the compiler.

Phrase Structure Composition and Syntactic Dependencies (review)

Reviewed by: Phrase structure composition and syntactic dependencies by Robert Frank Caroline Heycock Phrase structure composition and syntactic dependencies. By Robert Frank. (Current studies in linguistics 38.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Pp. 324. ISBN 0262062291. $45 (Hb). The content of this book may be viewed in at least two ways. Most straightforwardly, it is an exposition of tree adjoining grammar (TAG) as the formal basis for a theory of syntax. TAG was first defined in Joshi et al. 1975 and has been developed since by Joshi and a number of his students and colleagues, the author having been one of the former. While those with an interest in formal grammars and computational linguistics know TAG from a number of papers that have been written on its formal properties, this book is aimed at syntacticians who do not necessarily have any prior interest in (or belief in the relevance of) the position on the Chomsky hierarchy of the grammar formalism they or others employ. From another angle, this book may be seen as an interesting and original exploration of the notion of locality in syntactic theory—the empirical pervasiveness of such a concept, how it can be reconciled theoretically with unbounded movement, and, most centrally, the claim that it is a fundamental property of the underlying grammatical system. After a brief preface, the book consists of six chapters. Ch. 1 accomplishes two goals. First, it situates TAG within the history of the generative paradigm—a discussion of more than just historical interest, since both TAG and the minimalist program are illuminated by an understanding of their mutual relation via the generalized transformations of Chomsky 1955. Second, it outlines how the formalism works, in particular the two ways in which the finite tree structures called elementary trees can be combined: by substitution and adjunction. The first may be thought of as a way of inserting a subtree into an unexpanded node at the frontier of another tree; the latter allows a subtree to be inserted at any node within another tree. Both operations introduce the possibility of unbounded recursion into the grammar, but in importantly different ways that are explored in the remainder of the book. In this chapter Frank discusses what he calls the fundamental tag hypothesis: that every syntactic dependency is expressed locally within a single elementary tree. For example, dependencies such as the one between a ‘raised subject’ like John and its trace in the lowest object position (or, more theory-neutrally, between the NP and the verb of which it is an argument) in John seems to have been expected to be elected t, or the one between a wh-phrase and its trace in Who do you think that they will say will be allowed t to leave?, are restricted by the nature of the formalism itself to a particular domain (the elementary tree); the apparent unbounded nature of these dependencies can only arise through subsequent adjunction operations introducing one or more subtrees between the head and the tail of the dependency. Having established that elementary trees constitute the domain of locality within the formalism, F argues in Ch. 2 for a particular definition of this domain as the extended projection of a lexical head (Grimshaw 1991) and discusses the formal details of how this can be implemented. Ch. 3 applies the theory as developed up to this point to one well-known and long-discussed syntactic phenomenon, NP-movement or ‘raising’. His goal is to show how a number of limitations on this construction (including the ungrammaticality of ‘superraising’, the position of the associate of expletive there, the absence of raising in nominals and (some) gerunds, and the behavior of predicate nominals) follow from the nature of the formalism itself without recourse to additional principles such as minimalism’s ‘shortest move’, ‘extension condition’, the preference for Merge over Move, and so on. Ch. 4 explores how to characterize crucial properties of elementary trees in the absence of these principles and includes an attempt to adapt Chomsky’s system of feature-checking in a way that is consistent with the TAG framework. It also includes an extensive discussion of how to handle apparent violations of locality...

Editors' Notebook: Ben Boretz and Bob Morris Discuss Ian Quinn's "General Equal-Tempered Harmony"

Editors' Notebook: Ben Boretz and Bob Morris Discuss Ian Quinn's "General Equal Tempered Harmony" Ben Boretz: Thoughts on Quinn after two readings: This is certainly a "good" paper. But what is it about? It's about inherent relations among harmonic configurations. But how are they inherent? By virtue of predicates constructed by Quinn and other theorists, basing their inferences on existingmusic and findingmore generalizable proper ties among phenomena found therein. Theory at this level, however, is, I believe highly problematic?because it invades the compositional domain (which includes, obviously, the analytic domain), purporting to regular ize and generalize attributes ofmusical invention (in composing and lis tening) which are, arguably, the particular province of individual imaginative construal. OK?you can do this; but should you proceed to do thiswithout taking on the responsibility of explaining themusical vir tues of this boundary-blurring, and explaining why a general theory of syntax (i.e., the sense-making juxtaposition of semantically defined enti ties within a particular composition) has relevance to more than one composition, or, rather, to more than one person's preferred construal of any number of compositions? Since all consecutions of any type are sus ceptible of any number of connective-relational attributions, the inven Editors'Notebook 217 tion (or, perhaps, merely, the self-induced fantasy) of some particular relational quality or qualities (maybe changing radically even within a given composition) seems like a creative option?and, indeed, is an option which seems to belong entirely to the realm of the creative rather than the theoretical?at least on the face of it. So my problem isnot nec essarily that someone wants to propound a general theory of this sort, but rather that it entails a need for an explanation of how the composi tional domain is favorably preempted by the theoretical domain in this case?and how this is to be explicated. Short of that,Quinn's theories (and those of his models) seem to me to be impervious to any direct musical applicability that I can think of. But, of course, someone can always findways to use structures of any sort in theirmusic invention work?and Quinn's surveys are informative, and his own work is solid, so there's no distinctly negative reason to not publish this long piece. But don't we need a really?musically significant?positive reason, as against other candidates for representation inPerspectives's limited space? Bob Morris: You know I understand and share your concerns about certain aspects of music theory you feel are represented byQuinn's text.As a pragmatist, I also think that the use of theory may be different from?even contra dict?what it may seem to implyor suggest?by its styleor degree of for mality?about composition and analysis. It is true thatQuinn is actually advancing a theory of natural kinds, based on prototypes, and this both ers me. We should publish this. First of all, it's verywell written, clear and to the point. Then it is an advance on other theories of similarity thatwe have published in the past, first in 1979 (including papers by John,me, and David Lewin) and then in subsequent years; and more generally, the work connects with mathematical research we have more recently pub lished inPerspectives. In any case, this isnot simply another dull alterna tive to some older, partially discredited theories of pc similarity, without a new take or orientation. Quinn's theory of pc-set quality is a creative approach, melding together recent developments in scale, neo Riemannian, and transformational theory, connecting with Howard Hanson's forgotten work (which predated Forte's theory of 1966), and confirming the early insights of David Lewin. (This alone makes it elig ible for publication forme.) As a theory of pc-set relatedness, itmoves away from intervals to partitions?and from networks to partially ordered sets?in the context of a geometric model; this is a new and fresh 218 PerspectivesofNew Music direction. I find the results stimulating to composition, because they show that the generalization of distinctions between sets on the basis of interval-type frequency leads to a different connection for thinking about and using sets in composition?one that...

Matching Objects Without Language Extension.

Pattern matching is a powerful programming concept which has proven its merits in declarative programming. The absence of pattern-matching in object-oriented programming languages is felt especially when tackling source code processing problems. But existing proposals for pattern matching in such languages rely on language extension, which makes their adoption overly intrusive. We propose an approach to support pattern matching in mainstream object-oriented languages without language extension. In this approach, a pattern is a first-class entity, which can be created, be passed as argument, and receive method invocations, just like any other object. We demonstrate how our approach can be used in conjunction with existing parser generators to perform pattern matching on various kinds of abstract syntax representation. We elaborate our approach to include concrete syntax patterns, and mixing of patterns and visitors for the construction of sophisticated syntax tree traversals.

Movement Navigator: A Relational Syntax Study on Movement and Space at King’s Cross and Piccadilly Circus Underground Stations, London, UK

The article explores the design and analytical method Relational Syntax [1], using both a syntactical approach as well as on-site observations. The architecture of King’s Cross and Piccadilly Circus Underground stations in London is used as the laboratory in which a theoretical discussion on movement and dimensional relations in architectural space is conducted. The two stations are among the most well-known and used in the London Underground system. Observations were made at these highly-used stations in order to establish an overall understanding of the spatial mechanism through social and natural movement. Considering the case studies as both texts and experiences, the article shows that spatial analysis and bodily movement can be explained, compared and put into sets of relations that can be pre-established or scripted during architects’ design activities. It is argued that the concept of ‘script’ [2] can be used bi-directionally in both the design and analysis of architecture. The research and arguments presented in this paper are being developed to form the basis of an application tool. Based on the theory of Relational Syntax, this application tool can be used to process building requirements generated from the design or analysis of a piece of architecture into scripts in order to systematically and aesthetically describe and generate spatial relations in buildings.

A deficit in noun syntax representation in aphasia

A deficit in noun syntax representation in aphasia

Achieving knowledge interoperability: An XML/XSLT approach

Development of an intelligent system requires not only profound understanding of the problem under study, but also employment of different knowledge representation techniques and tools often based on a variety of paradigms and technological platforms. In this context automation of knowledge sharing between different systems becomes increasingly important. One solution might be to extend a knowledge modeling tool by implementing a set of new classes or functions for importing other knowledge formats (using, e.g. Java, C++, etc.). But, this can be a rather difficult and time consuming task. Since XML is now widely accepted as knowledge representation syntax, we believe that a more suitable solution would be to use eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) a W3C standard for transforming XML documents. A special advantage of this approach is that even though an XSLT is written independently of any programming language, it can be executed by a program written in almost any up-to-date programming language. We experiment on an XSLT-based infrastructure for sharing knowledge between three knowledge modeling and acquisition tools that use different conceptual models for knowledge representation in order to evaluate cons and pros of the proposed XSLT approach. Two of these tools, JessGUI and JavaDON are ongoing efforts of the GOOD OLD AI research group to develop interoperable development tools for building intelligent systems, while the third one is [email protected][email protected]?-2000, a broadly accepted ontology development tool.

New perspectives on language development and the innateness of grammatical knowledge

Chomsky [Chomsky, N., 1965. Aspects of The Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass; Chomsky, N., 1986. Knowledge of Language: its Nature, Origin, and Use. Praeger, New York] presents a series of arguments for an innate syntactic component of the language faculty. Do the arguments proposed at that time still stand, or have they been overridden by newer proposals? The current paper emphasizes three research directions among the most recent advances in cognitive science. These directions lead to alternate proposals to the generative linguistic theory of language development. First, the ‘item-based’ theory of language development, which stresses that development of language knowledge goes from specific to general and is compatible with developing research in cognitive linguistics. Second, the apparent uniformity of adult linguistic competence, which is a fundamental tenet of generative linguistics theory, may be the product of literate cultures but not of invariants of the brain, as attested by the fundamental differences found between spoken and written language. Third, artificial neural networks provide evidence against the necessity to call on algebraic rules to explain language performance and this, in turn, argues in favor of the emergence approach and of the dynamic systems approach to language development. All this calls for a renewal of language development theories and for a separation between statistical, non-algebraic, non-conscious, item-based, and usage-based structures and processes dedicated to spoken language (and to automatized written language processes), and principle-and-rule-governed, algebraic structures and processes dedicated to conscious written or formal spoken language.