Phrase Structure Research Articles

Onomatope pada Pamflet Digital Produk Komersial Makanan dan Minuman Berbahasa Jepang: Kajian Struktur

This research is a structural study that focuses on describing the syntactic categories and the types of Japanese onomatopoeia that taken from advertising pamphlets of commercial food and beverage products. The data analysis method that applied in this research is the intralingual pairing method. Some of the theories that used are the theory of syntactic categories from Ikuhiro and Lawrence (1998) as well as from Kaori (2006), the theory of onomatopoeia types from Kaori (2006) and the theory of sentence analysis through phrase structure trees from Tsujimura (1996). From the analysis that have done, it was found about 78 data, including 33 different onomatopoeias that appearing in 68 sentences on 48 digital pamphlets of commercial products from various brands. Based on syntactic categories, Japanese onomatopoeia can be categorized as verb, adjective, noun and adverb with particles and affixes as the marker that are quite diverse. Based on the type, Japanese onomatopoeia in digital pamphlets can be classified as giongo, giseigo, gitaigo, giyougo and also gijougo, with gitaigo is the most dominant type of onomatopoeia that used in digital pamphlets of food and beverages.

Text mining of syntactic complexity in L2 writing: an LDA topic modeling approach

Abstract The present study provides an overview of syntactic complexity (SC) in second language (L2) writing research, employing the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling approach. Analyzing 470 abstracts sourced from the WoS Core Collection (2005–2023) and Scopus (1978–2023), this investigation explores the broad spectrum of research themes in SC in L2 writing. By employing perplexity and coherence tests, the study identifies the optimal number of topics in the model as five: writing quality, proficiency, genres, SC development, and task-based conditions. The finding reveals that: (1) In cross-sectional studies, the interplay among writing quality, proficiency levels, and genres often involves studying one variable as reliant on the others. Additionally, there is a growing inclination toward regarding phrasal structures as more dependable complexity indicators. (2) Longitudinal investigations predominantly emphasize the evolution of SC, yet there’s a scarcity of exploration in continuation writing tasks. (3) Regarding measurement metrics, a transition from broader SC evaluations to more intricate assessments is evident, though several studies lack thorough examinations, particularly in continuation tasks.

Syntax of Exceptive Constructions in English and Central Kurdish

In this paper, I examine and compare exceptive constructions in English and Central Kurdish: two languages with distinct linguistic properties. This involves discussion of the characteristics, distribution and syntactic analysis of the linguistic elements used to express exceptive meaning, such as except, except for and but in English, as well as tanhā/tanyā ‘only, except’ and jiga la/bejga la ‘except, other than, apart from’ in Kurdish. It is shown that English and Kurdish share common exceptive features in that both can suggest clausal and phrasal structures. Syntactically, following Al-Bataineh’s (2021) hypothesis these elements are qualified to house a projection of their own, called Exceptive Phrase. Therefore, I reject the assumptions made by García Álvarez (2008) and Potsdam and Polinsky (2019) that exceptive markers in, for example English, are coordinating conjunctions.

De la cohésion et de la cohérence dans le texte modianien : Analyse de quelques procédés discursifs participant de la rupture thématique.

Any attentive reader to the organization of the Modian text will certainly be surprised by the profusion of fragmented phrase structures that are divided and disjoined, forms which do not conform to the model of the canonical sentence and other elements of inconsistency or rupture within the narrative frame. This sounds evident in any novel of Modiano to be convinced about it. One can notice the presence of a set of unfinished sentences, the use ellipsis marks, and see how one is overwhelmed by a plethora of figures such as parcellarization, ellipse, reluctance ... which, by the syntactic discontinuities and thematic rupture generate, commonlythe influence of the textual organization and sometimes compromise the narrative texture. It is within this the context that our study is framed. Through a stylistic analysis of the phrase structures, approached from a textual perspective, we seek to define closely the influence of the use of all these procedures on textual cohesion and coherence while assessing their effects on narration in order to understand how the Modian text generates meaning.

Delving Into the Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Verb Phrases in a Comparative Context

This research paper aims to investigate and analyze the syntax and semantics of verb phrases in both English and Bangla, with a view of identifying their major similarities and differences. Though English and Bangla verb phrases have a lot of likenesses, they vary in their structure, function and meaning. The term ‘verb’ is often considered to be a most vital syntactic and semantic component of any language. It is, both in English and Bangla, defined as a linguistic unit expressing some ‘action’ or ‘state’. Syntactically, the verb appears as a part or constituent of a phrase and is usually modified or complemented in some way(s): the verb complemented by noun(s), adjective(s), adverb(s), adverb participle(s), infinitive(s) etc. and the main verb is the ‘head’ accompanies other verbs, generally the copulas, verbs to have, modals etc. The verb phrase also involves the so-called concept which is traditionally termed a ‘predicate’. Moreover, in order to analyze the verb phrase semantically too, this research attempts to study the internal structure of the verb phrase consisting of the auxiliary verb and the main verb, where the role of main verbs is to convey the semantic content of the verb phrase and set up various relationships with all the other elements in the sentence. Here, the auxiliary verb often indicates aspect, tense, mood, voice, etc. So, this research is intended to provide readers and learners of both languages with necessary information about the similarities and differences in the verb phrases of English and Bangla.

A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Phrase Structure and Subject Island Violations.

In principle, functional neuroimaging provides uniquely informative data in addressing linguistic questions, because it can indicate distinct processes that are not apparent from behavioral data alone. This could involve adjudicating the source of unacceptability via the different patterns of elicited brain responses to different ungrammatical sentence types. However, it is difficult to interpret brain activations to syntactic violations. Such responses could reflect processes that have nothing intrinsically related to linguistic representations, such as domain-general executive function abilities. To facilitate the potential use of functional neuroimaging methods to identify the source of different syntactic violations, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment to identify the brain activation maps associated with two distinct syntactic violation types: phrase structure (created by inverting the order of two adjacent words within a sentence) and subject islands (created by extracting a wh-phrase out of an embedded subject). The comparison of these violations to control sentences surprisingly showed no indication of a generalized violation response, with almost completely divergent activation patterns. Phrase structure violations seemingly activated regions previously implicated in verbal working memory and structural complexity in sentence processing, whereas the subject islands appeared to activate regions previously implicated in conceptual-semantic processing, broadly defined. We review our findings in the context of previous research on syntactic and semantic violations using ERPs. Although our results suggest potentially distinct underlying mechanisms underlying phrase structure and subject island violations, our results are tentative and suggest important methodological considerations for future research in this area.

The Argumentative Structural Shifts in English-Arabic Translation of BBC News Reports: A Sociolinguistic And Cultural Perspective

The socio-cultural and ideological features of translation have become so prominent that many studies have investigated the translation shifts resulting from the linguistic transference from the source language (SL) into the target language (TL). It is the primary aim of the present article to demonstrate the nature of the structural (morpho-syntactic) shifts in the Arabic written translation of English political British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news, which may be attributable to differences in cultural, ideological and sociolinguistic backgrounds of the target language speakers (Arabic). The heterogeneity of the socio-cultural context in which the English and Arabic political discourses are communicated is reflected in the syntactic shifts in the sentential and phrasal structure in the translation process of BBC News. The target texts (TT) exhibit a substantial tendency to conform to the socio-cultural and ideological context of the target language (TL) at the expense of the morphosyntactic structure of the ST. The research methodology involves analyzing some English BBC news extracts (ST) and their Arabic translation to investigate the structural shifts in translation. The data analysis, conducted with meticulous attention to detail, shows that the Arabic translation alters the (ST) linguistic structures and shifts the socio-cultural and ideological conceptions of the target text (TT) readers. A key aspect of the methodology is the adoption of a comparative approach, which allows for a thorough examination of the structural differences and similarities and their corresponding content. The article also takes cognizance of Hatim's (1997) ideas on translation across different cultures and those of Fishman (1972) on the sociolinguistic reflections of language. The study concludes that the target readers' cultural background, ideological make-up and sociolinguistic perception can be altered due to the structural shifts in translating political news into Arabic. It shows that the structural shifts lead to specific deviations in the argumentative structure of the source text (ST) through argumentation or counter-argumentation.

Grammatical Representations of the Verb Phrase in Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from Syntactic Priming in Five-Year-Olds.

Background/Objectives: Debates regarding how to represent verb phrases (VPs) consisting of the verb plus the complement and the aspectual marker -le in Mandarin Chinese remain an issue. Methods: Syntactic priming under a memory disguise paradigm was employed to investigate the issue using the SVO-ba alternation, where the SVO structure consists of a subject verb object, and the ba structure of a subject ba object verb, in five-year-olds (n = 216), an age with fully fledged grammatical knowledge but little interference from literacy. Results: The results indicate that both the complement and the marker -le should be represented in terms of phrasal rather than morphological structures. When -le is inflected to the verb alone, realization, which makes an event a fact, rather than completion, which makes an event finished, is accomplished. The event must be telicized to a state through a resultative complement to induce reliable production of the ba construction. The postverbal elements represent their own phrasal structure and challenge the verb-centered lexico-syntactic account because there are no additional representations left within a verb. Conclusions: More elicitations of the SVO than the ba invite future neurolinguistic explorations to disentangle the impacts of the frequency and thematic arrangement of agent and patient on grammatical representations cross-linguistically.

Language at a glance: How our brains grasp linguistic structure from parallel visual input.

Human brains grasp the gists of visual scenes from a single glance, but to what extent is this possible for language? While we typically think of language in terms of sequential speech, our everyday experience involves numerous rapidly flashing written notifications, which we understand instantly. What do our brains detect in the first few hundred milliseconds after seeing such a stimulus? We flashed short sentences during magnetoencephalography measurement, revealing sentence-sensitive neural activity in left temporal cortex within 130 milliseconds. These signals emerged for subject-verb-object sentences regardless of grammatical or semantic well-formedness, suggesting that at-a-glance language comprehension begins by detecting basic phrase structure, independent of meaning or other grammatical details. Our findings unveil one aspect of how our brains process information rapidly in today's visually saturated world.

Noun phrase complexity in English integrated writing placement test responses

Research has shown that the use of noun phrases is a salient characteristic favored in academic writing (Biber et al., 2011; Biber & Gray, 2011; Parkinson & Musgrave, 2014). Although studies have examined the structure of noun phrases, further research is needed to deepen our understanding of noun phrase complexity in order to inform the instructional content of academic writing courses. In response to this need and the call for more empirical evidence for the developmental stages for complexity features proposed by Biber et al. (2011), this study aimed to investigate differences in the use of noun modifiers among second language learners of English at varying proficiency levels. A corpus consisting of 286 essays, written by international students in response to an English integrated writing placement test, was analyzed for grammatical structures of noun phrases. Results indicated that more proficient writers employed significantly more attributive adjectives, prepositional phrases, finite relative clauses with non-animate head nouns, and nonfinite relative clauses. These findings support previous research on the relationship between writing proficiency and the use of noun modifiers and provide implications for both academic writing instruction and the development of writing assessment criteria.

An fMRI study of phrase structure and subject island violations.

In principle, functional neuroimaging provides uniquely informative data in addressing linguistic questions, because it can indicate distinct processes that are not apparent from behavioral data alone. This could involve adjudicating the source of unacceptability via the different patterns of elicited brain responses to different ungrammatical sentence types. However, it is difficult to interpret brain activations to syntactic violations. Such responses could reflect processes that have nothing intrinsically related to linguistic representations, such as domain-general executive function abilities. In order to facilitate the potential use of functional neuroimaging methods to identify the source of different syntactic violations, we conducted an fMRI experiment to identify the brain activation maps associated with two distinct syntactic violation types: phrase structure (created by inverting the order of two adjacent words within a sentence) and subject islands (created by extracting a wh-phrase out of an embedded subject). The comparison of these violations to control sentences surprisingly showed no indication of a generalized violation response, with almost completely divergent activation patterns. Phrase structure violations seemingly activated regions previously implicated in verbal working memory and structural complexity in sentence processing, whereas the subject islands appeared to activate regions previously implicated in conceptual-semantic processing, broadly defined. We review our findings in the context of previous research on syntactic and semantic violations using event-related potentials. Although our results suggest potentially distinct underlying mechanisms underlying phrase structure and subject island violations, our results are tentative and suggest important methodological considerations for future research in this area.

Characteristics of the Fulfulde Nominal Class Suffix and its Implication on the Syntactic Principle of Antecedence

This is a study funded on the opinion that the characteristics of Fulfulde nominal class suffix and its implication on the syntactic principle of the antecedent. It discusses the structure of nominal phrases, and the classes of nominal phrase as well as determine the factors behind nominal classes in Fulfulde language. The data of this research was extracted through verbal interviews with the native speakers, which was collected and interpreted through its English glosses as well as analysed based on the framework ethnolinguistics characteristics. It also reduces the ambiguity that is responsible for the apparent ease with which metaphoric expressions are employed by native speakers of Fulfulde.

Multiple dimensions of syntactic structure are resolved earliest in posterior temporal cortex

How we combine minimal linguistic units into larger structures remains an unresolved topic in neuroscience. Language processing involves the abstract construction of ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ information simultaneously (e.g., phrase structure, morphological agreement), but previous paradigms have been constrained in isolating only one type of composition and have utilized poor spatiotemporal resolution. Using intracranial recordings, we report multiple experiments designed to separate phrase structure from morphosyntactic agreement. Epilepsy patients (n = 10) were presented with auditory two-word phrases grouped into pseudoword-verb (‘trab run’) and pronoun-verb either with or without Person agreement (‘they run’ vs. ‘they runs’). Phrase composition and Person violations both resulted in significant increases in broadband high gamma activity approximately 300 ms after verb onset in posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), followed by inferior frontal cortex (IFC) at 500 ms. While sites sensitive to only morphosyntactic violations were distributed, those sensitive to both composition types were generally confined to pSTS/pMTG and IFC. These results indicate that posterior temporal cortex shows the earliest sensitivity for hierarchical linguistic structure across multiple dimensions, providing neural resources for distinct windows of composition. This region is comprised of sparsely interwoven heterogeneous constituents that afford cortical search spaces for dissociable syntactic relations.

Semantic Role-Marking in Lunyore Morphology and Syntax

Semantic roles denote different semantic relations that a noun phrase plays with respect to the action or state described by a predicate of a sentence. Semantic is another universal feature of language, if there is an event involving more than one participant, the speaker and the hearer care to know who is the agent, who is the patient or who is the experiencer and who is the stimulus. There seem to be some languages that, despite this obvious concern, do not mark semantic role in any consistent way. The key objective is to examine semantic role-marking in Lunyore morphology and syntax. Descriptive research design was adopted and the target population was the people of Emuhaya Sub county in Vihiga county. Purposive sampling technique was applied to gather head-marked phrases from churches, baraza sessions and Lunyore texts. The research instruments included conversations, written texts from Lunyore, participant and non-participant observations until saturation stage was attained. Data was analyzed through descriptive form. It was found that semantic role-marking was influenced by the morphological structure of the head-marked phrase. The study also found that there is a syntactic and semantic relationship in head-marked phrases. Theta theory was applicable in examining the semantic role marking in Lunyore head-marked phrases.

Naming Buildings in Universities Based on the Names of National Figures to Ignite the Fighting Spirit of the Academic Community

The naming of the building at Universitas “X” as one of the leading universities in Indonesia is not fully known. This study investigates the reasons for naming places using the names of national figures, the language unit structure of place names, and the names of places that have been given special names. This qualitative research data were collected using a documentation study, a search for news on the internet with reliable sources of information, interviews with informants who have information about the building names at Universitas “X”, and direct observations. The data were analyzed qualitatively according to those presented by Miles dan Huberman: data reduction, display, and conclusion drawing. The research results in naming buildings based on the names of national figures intended so that the academic community can emulate national figures’ spirit, achievements, and fighting power. The phrase structure of building names based on the rules for English language toponymy is a combination of common nouns and proper nouns, such as Gedung Prof. Mr. H. Mohammad Yamin, Gedung Prof. Dr. Ace Partadiredja, and Gedung K.H. A. Wahid Hasyim. As a follow-up to this research, it can be investigated, among others, how to name streets or name rooms on campus with this Islamic spirit. Keywords: toponymy, place name, building name, universitas “X”

Syntactic priming in the classroom: using narratives to prime L2 arabic speakers

A robust finding in psycholinguistics is that prior language experience influences subsequent language processing. This phenomenon is known as syntactic priming. Most of the empirical support for L2 syntactic priming comes from lab-based experiments. However, this evidence might not reflect how priming occurs in typical language activities in the L2 classroom. As such, we conducted a classroom-based priming study. Using a between-subject design, 52 L2 Arabic speakers read and listened to eight story-reading sessions over two weeks that either included a high proportion of the fronted temporal phrase (TP) structure (experimental group) or included no fronted TPs (controls). The effect of L2 proficiency was also investigated. Results revealed that the experimental group did not significantly increase their use of fronted TPs in the immediate posttest or the one-week delayed posttest relative to the baseline. A null effect of Arabic L2 proficiency was also observed. We discuss our findings in light of related priming theories and previous findings. This study highlights the need for more research on syntactic priming via common language tasks in the L2 classroom.

The Use of Translation Techniques for Translation of Post -Modifier Noun Phrases in “The Frog Prince” Subtitles by EFL Learners

This research aims to identify the structure of post-modifier noun phrases and analyze translation techniques of post-modifier noun phrases in ‘The Frog Prince’ subtitles that translated by EFL learners. This research is a descriptive qualitative method to compare the uses of translation techniques of post-modifier noun phrases translation between A class students and B class students of English Literature at STIBA Invada. This research used the theory of post-modifier noun phrases based on Aarts (2001) and translation techniques are proposed by Molina & Albir (2002). Then, the technique of collecting data is document analysis. The findings of this research show that there are 4 data of post-modifier noun phrases found in ‘The Frog Prince’ subtitles. Next, there are 4 translation techniques are applied by the A class students and B class student including established equivalent, adaptation, discursive creation, and reduction generally. It can be concluded that translation techniques that we chose between A class student and B class students can influence the meaning and form (structure) of post-modifier noun phrase from source language into target language.

What Formal Approaches to Syntactic Interfaces Can Tell Us about the Syntax of Preverbal and Prenominal Constituents in Galician

An important line of research within a generative, formal approach to syntax in the early 21st century has centered on exploring phenomena related to the interface between syntax and other linguistic modules in human language. In this paper, we review the notion of interfaces and how they have been viewed within formal theoretical approaches to monolingual and bilignual competence and language acquistion, noting their relevance as they relate to language acquisition and bilingualism in the context of Galicia (Spain). We review a selection of Noun Phrase (NP) structures that implicate a syntactic interface: subject position, clitic directionality, and determiner clitic allomorphy. We provide a review of the relevant literature and the theoretical issues of interest as they relate to our understanding of these syntactic interfaces, reporting on our current theoretical understandings, persistent questions, and our view of the path forward as it relates to linguistic research on the Galician language.

Elkallódó metaforák? – Az ószövetségi költői szövegek nyelvészeti-poétikai elemzésének haszna a teológiai interpretáció számára

Are Metaphors Getting Lost? – The Usefulness of Linguistic-Poetic Analysis of Old Testament Poetic Texts for Theological Interpretation This paper presents an interdisciplinary experiment. The core of the experiment is to examine the Hebrew poetic text of the Old Testament through a textual analysis of its textuality prior to theological interpretation and to ask why and which linguistic-literary solutions, i.e. poetic procedures, are used in the construction of meaning. On this basis, a research design can be created that asks how linguistic-poetic analysis can help in the exegesis of Old Testament poetic texts (or of any other textual genre). Poetics is about the production of meaning: all of our verbal utterances are made with some kind of poetics or speech strategy in mind – our communications are not formulated randomly. The linguistic analysis proposed here examines not only whether a word or phrase in a particular poetic text of the Hebrew Bible is written correctly or not but also the poetic role of that phrase, word, sentence, and grammatical or other structure in the larger textual unit (i.e. the poem) under study.

Segmenting and Predicting Musical Phrase Structure Exploits Neural Gain Modulation and Phase Precession.

Music, like spoken language, is often characterized by hierarchically organized structure. Previous experiments have shown neural tracking of notes and beats, but little work touches on the more abstract question: how does the brain establish high-level musical structures in real time? We presented Bach chorales to participants (20 females and 9 males) undergoing electroencephalogram (EEG) recording to investigate how the brain tracks musical phrases. We removed the main temporal cues to phrasal structures, so that listeners could only rely on harmonic information to parse a continuous musical stream. Phrasal structures were disrupted by locally or globally reversing the harmonic progression, so that our observations on the original music could be controlled and compared. We first replicated the findings on neural tracking of musical notes and beats, substantiating the positive correlation between musical training and neural tracking. Critically, we discovered a neural signature in the frequency range ∼0.1 Hz (modulations of EEG power) that reliably tracks musical phrasal structure. Next, we developed an approach to quantify the phrasal phase precession of the EEG power, revealing that phrase tracking is indeed an operation of active segmentation involving predictive processes. We demonstrate that the brain establishes complex musical structures online over long timescales (>5 s) and actively segments continuous music streams in a manner comparable to language processing. These two neural signatures, phrase tracking and phrasal phase precession, provide new conceptual and technical tools to study the processes underpinning high-level structure building using noninvasive recording techniques.