Syntactic Composition Research Articles

Neural basis of basic composition: what we have learned from the red–boat studies and their extensions

Language is our mind's most powerful generative system for the expression of meaning and thought. What are the neural mechanisms of our ability to compose complex meanings from simpler representations? This question is impossible to answer unless we decompose the notion of 'meaning composition' in some theoretically guided way and then begin to assess the extent to which brain activity tracks the posited subroutines. Here, I summarize results from a body of MEG research that has begun to address this question from the ground up, first focusing on simple combinations of two words. The work sets off with a hypothesis space offered by theoretical linguistics, positing syntactic and logico-semantic composition as the main combinatory routines, but then reveals that the most consistent and prominent reflection of composition, localized in the left anterior temporal cortex at 200-250 ms, cannot be described with this toolkit. Instead, this activity tracks a much more conceptually driven process, robustly sensitive to the density of the conceptual feature space of the composing items. I will describe our functional understanding of this activity and how it may operate within a broader 'combinatory network.' This article is part of the theme issue 'Towards mechanistic models of meaning composition'.

Dynamic impact behavior of syntactic foam core sandwich composites

Sandwich composites and syntactic foams independently have been used in many engineering applications. However, there has been minimal effort towards taking advantage of the weight saving ability of syntactic foams in the cores of sandwich composites, especially with respect to the impact response of structures. To that end, the goal of this study is to investigate the mechanical response and damage mechanisms associated with syntactic foam core sandwich composites subjected to dynamic impact loading. In particular, this study investigates the influence of varying cenosphere volume fraction in syntactic foam core sandwich composites subjected to varying dynamic impact loading and further elucidates the extent and diversity of corresponding damage mechanisms. The syntactic foam cores are first fabricated using epoxy resin as the matrix and cenospheres as the reinforcement with four cenosphere volume fractions of 0% (pure epoxy), 20%, 40%, and 60%. The sandwich composite panels are then manufactured using the vacuum assisted resin transfer molding process with carbon fiber/vinyl ester facesheets. Dynamic impact tests are performed on the sandwich composite specimens at two energy levels of 80 J and 160 J, upon which the data are post-processed to gain a quantitative understanding of the impact response and damage mechanisms incurred by the specimens. A qualitative understanding is obtained through micro-computed tomography scanning of the impacted specimens. In addition, a finite element model is developed to investigate the causes for different damage mechanisms observed in specimens with different volume fractions.

Failure Mechanism of Two-Phase Syntactic Foam Polymer Composites under Different Coating Conditions

In this study, the impact of coated hollow microsphere (HMs) on syntactic foams (SFs) failure analysis is performed. The HMs was made from polystyrene beads and were coated with CaCO3 and cementite powder to produce the SFs by Vacuum Assisted Mould Fill Technique (VAMFT). The morphological analysis was performed using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and the compressive test conducted using INSTRON 5982 machine model. From the results, the HMs failure mechanism showed the cementite surface coating enhanced the shell-rigidity by 65%. The physical and compressive properties of the SFs increased with increase in % vol. fraction of the HMs. The SFs compressive modulus, flexural strength and tensile strength for the CaCO3 and cementite specimen are 470, 44, 36 MPa and 582, 48, 41 MPa, respectively. The energy absorption characteristic of the SFs was enhanced by 14% and 25% for the CaCO3 and cementite HMs surface coating, respectively. But the optimal concentration for the SFs was 20% vol. weight for both HMs coating.

Compressive behavior of fly ash based 3D printed syntactic foam composite

Syntactic foams are widely used in damage tolerance and low-density applications. In present work compressive behavior of 3D printed three-phase syntactic foams under quasi-static strain rates (0.001, 0.01 and 0.1 s−1) are investigated. Extruded filaments of High density polyethylene (HDPE) with environmentally pollutant fly ash cenospheres (0, 20, 40 and 60 vol%) are used for 3D printing. Micrography reveal that syntactic foam filament and 3D printed samples are three phase systems comprising matrix, cenosphere and porosity. Matrix porosity of about 7% makes these foams lightweight and suitable for buoyant applications. The compressive properties are extracted from the stress-strain plots. It is observed that modulus and specific modulus increases with strain rate and cenosphere content. Specific compressive strength increases with strain rate and decrease with cenosphere content.

A Harmonic Serialism Approach to Spirantization in English

This study delves into spirantization in English whose examples are divided into three based on the syntactic category and composition of a base. It is argued that spirantization is triggered by an English-specific generalized constraint which prohibits the sequence of base-final alveolar stops plus non-low unstressed front suffix initial vowels. The data for the process are delimited to class 1 suffixes because the process is motivated only by specific class 1 suffixes in English. The issues we discuss are the voiceless nature of a resulting spirantization segment irrespective of voicing feature of a target segment, and a unified analysis of both transparent and opaque cases of spirantization examples. By including such issues in the analysis, the current study tries to show more extensive aspects of spirantization in English.

Syntactic complexity and writing quality in assessed first-year L2 writing

This study explores the relationship between syntactic complexity and writing quality in assessed source-based research papers produced by ESL undergraduate writers in a first-year writing course through a combination of holistic and fine-grained measures of complexity. The analysis is based on a corpus of 280 student papers across three grade tiers: high, mid, and low. A one-way MANOVA was used to explore the statistical significance of differences of five commonly used syntactic complexity measures (assessed using Lu’s Second Language Syntactic Complexity Analyzer, 2010) across these grade tiers. Results reveal little variation in clausal subordination and coordination, but statistically significant lower complex nominal densities, mean length of clauses (phrasal measures), and mean length of T-units (global measure) in low-rated papers. Analysis of complex nominal composition using the Stanford Tregex with differences assessed with a one-way MANOVA shows that the highest densities of complex nominal types are present in high-rated papers, with statistical significance in adjectival pre-, prepositional post-, and participle modification, and the lowest densities in low-rated papers. While clausal complexity did not demonstrate a relationship with assessed quality, both global and phrasal complexity features appear to be important components. We conclude with implications for syntactic complexity research and ESL composition pedagogy.

Syntactic composition and selectional preferences in Hindi Light Verb Constructions

Previous work on light verb constructions (e.g. chorii kar ‘theft do; steal’) in Hindi describes their syntactic formation via co-predication (Ahmed et al., 2012, Butt, 2014). This implies that both noun and light verb contribute their arguments, and these overlapping argument structures must be composed in the syntax. In this paper, we present a co-predication analysis using Tree-Adjoining Grammar, which models syntactic composition and semantic selectional preferences without transformations (deletion or argument identification). The analysis has two key components (i) an underspecified category for the nominal and (ii) combinatorial constraints on the noun and light verb to specify selectional preferences. The former has the advantage of syntactic composition without argument identification and the latter prevents over-generalization, while recognizing the semantic contribution of both predicates. This work additionally accounts for the agreement facts for the Hindi LVC.

Effect of wall thickness and cutting parameters on drilling of glass microballoon/epoxy syntactic foam composites

Effect of glass microballoon (GMB) wall thickness and cutting parameters (cutting speed, feed and drill diameter) on thrust force (Ft), surface roughness (Ra), specific cutting coefficient (Kf), cylindricity (CYL), circularity error (Ce-Exit) and damage factor (Fd-Exit) in drilling of GMB/epoxy syntactic foam is presented. CNC vertical machining centre is utilised for conducting experiments based on full factorial design. Significant process parameters are identified through response surface methodology. Wall thickness significantly affects the Ce-Exit and CYL of the drilled hole. Increasing wall thickness significantly reduces the Ra (30%), CYL (41%) and Ce-Exit (56%) due to the increased thermal stability of syntactic foams. This observation is very crucial for the syntactic foams used in structural applications pertaining to structural stability. Drill diameter is observed to be significant for Ft, Ra, CYL and Fd-Exit; while Kf is governed by feed. Furthermore, grey relation analysis (GRA) is used to identify the specific combination of process parameters to obtain good quality drilled hole. Combination of higher particle wall thickness and feed, lower cutting speed and drill diameter produces a sound hole quality as observed from GRA. Hole quality is highly influenced by drill diameter followed by cutting speed and GMB wall thickness. The present study offers guidelines for the industries (structural applications) to produce quality holes in GMB reinforced epoxy matrix.

Damage mechanisms in elastomeric foam composites: Multiscale X-ray computed tomography and finite element analyses

To understand the mechanisms of damage initiation and propagation in glass microballoon (GMB)/silicone elastomer matrix syntactic foam composites, multiscale X-ray computed tomography images obtained during in situ compression were analyzed using quantitative image processing and digital volume correlation (DVC) techniques. High-resolution tomograms revealed that both the initiation and propagation of GMB collapse depended on the local clustering of GMBs, leading to the formation of pseudo-crush bands in the composite. This resulted in prominent bands of axial strain variation that grew to several millimeters in length as revealed by DVC. A new mechanism based on stress redistribution around collapsed GMBs is proposed to explain the damage propagation, which is supported by finite element analysis and successfully captures the effects of cluster orientation on the observed damage.

МУЗЫКАЛЬНОСТЬ ЛИРИКИ: ТЕОРЕТИКО-ЛИТЕРАТУРНЫЕ АСПЕКТЫ ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЯ ЕВРОПЕЙСКОГО И РУССКОГО ИСКУССТВА

В статье прослеживается история взаимосвязей европейского и русского искусства, среди которых идея музыки слова была одной из самых востребованных и плодотворных, не случайно словесная музыка не только имела широкое истолкование в философии, эстетике, филологической науке, нои получила стремительное развитие в поэзии барокко, романтизма, чистого искусства, символизма. При этом музыкальность лирики осмысливалась совершенно поразному в статье обосновываются теоретиколитературные критерии музыкальности, связанные как с родовидовой спецификой лирики, так и с особенностями стихотворной речи The paper looks into the evolution of interconnections between European and Russian art, in which the concept of music of word (verbal music) was most prominent. It can be exemplified by the fact that it was researched in philosophy, aesthetics, philology and was central to poetry of Barocco, Romanticism and Symbolism. At the same time musicality of lyrical poetry has been viewed from absolutely different angles. The author defines theoretical and literary criteria of musicality related to the specifics of the poetic verse as well as the genre specifics of poetry. These methodological principles stem from a number of objective causes as the concept of music has evolved into a dynamic artistic trend. The first comprehensive theory of musical lyrical poetry in Russian poetics was propounded by A. Fet. Later Symbolism put this theory on the philosophical footing, taking it to its most developed form. On top of this, searching for musical expression of poetry brought about an array of studies in the field of poetic theory. Some musical theories of Russian poetry in the 1920th centuries are relevant in the historic perspective only. Others serve as the basis for further analysis. One of the key premises which remain relevant up to this day is that poetry is an acoustic phenomenon, thus it correlates with the structure of musical art. The analysis of Russian lyrical poetry helps define two types of poetic music: harmonious and disharmonious. The history of Russian poetry proves that the criteria of musicality have evolved naturally including aesthetic and artistic trends, genre specifics, content structure, phonetic, rhythmic and melodic structure, intonation and syntactic structure and composition of poetic verse. These criteria are also applicable to European poetry. The theory of lyrical music in contemporary literary studies as well as in the 1920th centuries serves in this paper as a foundation for defining musicality from the perspective of literary theory and poetic studies. These criteria help uncover both general approaches to musical lyrical poetry and its specific features, determined by the language, historic trends and ethnic traditions.

Localising memory retrieval and syntactic composition: an fMRI study of naturalistic language comprehension

ABSTRACTThis study examines memory retrieval and syntactic composition using fMRI while participants listen to a book, The Little Prince. These two processes are quantified drawing on methods from computational linguistics. Memory retrieval is quantified via multi-word expressions that are likely to be stored as a unit, rather than built-up compositionally. Syntactic composition is quantified via bottom-up parsing that tracks tree-building work needed in composed syntactic phrases. Regression analyses localise these to spatially-distinct brain regions. Composition mainly correlates with bilateral activity in anterior temporal lobe and inferior frontal gyrus. Retrieval of stored expressions drives right-lateralised activation in the precuneus. Less cohesive expressions activate well-known nodes of the language network implicated in composition. These results help to detail the neuroanatomical bases of two widely-assumed cognitive operations in language processing.

A crack healable syntactic foam reinforced by 3D printed healing-agent based honeycomb

In this study, a novel grid skeleton (i.e., the 3D printed healing-agent based honeycomb structure) was embedded in a syntactic foam matrix to enable the composites to own crack closing and healing capabilities. There is always a trade-off between crack healing efficiency and overall structural properties. The new type grid skeleton was proposed here to make syntactic foam composites owning excellent crack healing ability without sacrificing overall mechanical properties. The volume fraction of glass microballoons within syntactic foam matrix remained constant at 30%. The reinforcing honeycomb cell sizes varied with a ratio from 3.8, to 5.4 and 7.3, which resulted in various physical and mechanical properties, such as different density and compressive strength. The thermal properties of the syntactic foam composites were tested through Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). The interfaces between the syntactic foam matrix and PCL grid skeleton (i.e., printout) was investigated by the Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrum. It displayed that the interaction between those phases were completely in a physical manner. Nano-indentation tests were conducted to study the composite component mechanical properties. Three-point bending tests were conducted to initiate structural level cracks to examine the crack healing capability. Healing efficiency was obtained according to the comparison between specific flexural strength before and after the crack healing event. Under free constraint condition, the 3D printed PCL honeycomb reinforced syntactic foam exhibited promising crack healing performance with healing efficiencies above 80%. This study provided an understanding on the interface property and crack healing mechanisms in the 3D printed honeycomb reinforced syntactic foam system.

Hole Quality Assessment in Drilling of Glass Microballoon/Epoxy Syntactic Foams

Syntactic foams reinforced with glass microballoons are used as alternatives for conventional materials in structural application of aircrafts and automobiles due to their unique properties such as light weight, high compressive strength, and low moisture absorption. Drilling is the most commonly used process of making holes for assembling structural components. In the present investigation, grey relation analysis (GRA) is used to optimize cutting speed, feed, drill diameter, and filler content to minimize cylindricity, circularity error, and damage factor. Experiments based on full factorial design are conducted using a vertical computer numerical control machine and tungsten carbide twist drills. GRA reveals that a combination of lower cutting speed, filler content, and drill diameter produces a good quality hole at optimum intermediate feed in drilling syntactic foams composites. GRA also shows that the drill diameter has a significant effect on the hole quality. Furthermore, damage on the hole exit side is analyzed using a scanning electron microscope.

AC and DC electrical properties of graphene nanoplatelets reinforced epoxy syntactic foam**This work was carried out at Southern University, Mechanical Engineering Department, Baton Rouge, LA 70802, United States of America.

Benefits of employing graphene nanopletlates (GNPLs) in composite structures include mechanical as well as multifunctional properties. Understanding the impedance behavior of GNPLs reinforced syntactic foams may open new applications for syntactic foam composites. In this work, GNPLs reinforced syntactic foams were fabricated and tested for DC and AC electrical properties. Four sets of syntactic foam samples containing 0, 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 vol% of GNPLs were fabricated and tested. Significant increase in conductivity of syntactic foams due to the addition of GNPLs was noted. AC impedance measurements indicated that the GNPLs syntactic foams become frequency dependent as the volume fraction of GNPLs increases. With addition of GNPLs, the characteristic of the syntactic foams are also observed to transition from dominant capacitive to dominant resistive behavior.

Influence of axial compressive loads on buckling and free vibration response of surface-modified fly ash cenosphere/epoxy syntactic foams

This work deals with experimental buckling and free vibration behavior of silane-treated cenosphere/epoxy syntactic foams subjected to axial compression. Critical buckling loads are computed from compressive load–deflection plots deduced using universal testing machine. Further, compressive loads are applied in the fixed intervals until critical loading point on different set of samples having similar filler loadings to estimate natural frequency associated with the first three transverse bending modes. Increasing filler content increases critical buckling load and natural frequency of syntactic foam composites. Increasing axial compressive load reduce structural stiffness of all the samples under investigation. Syntactic foams registered higher stiffness compared to neat epoxy for all the test loads. Similar observations are noted in case of untreated cenosphere/epoxy foam composites. Silane-modified cenosphere embedded in epoxy matrix registered superior performance (rise in critical buckling load and natural frequencies to the tune of 23.75% and 11.46%, respectively) as compared to untreated ones. Experimental results are compared with the analytical solutions that are derived based on Euler–Bernoulli hypothesis and results are found to be in good agreement. Finally, property map of buckling load as a function of density is presented by extracting values from the available literature.

Дискурсивные практики В. Шукшина: к вопросу о принципах моделирования вторичного текста

The article describes the discursive practices of V.M. Shukshin. These discursive practices are formed at the junction of discourses of different ontology: epical, film director’s, actor’s. The article examines the characteristics of each type ofdiscourse, defines their dominant characteristics and establishes the influence of the type of discourse on the mode of speech expression. The category of expressiveness is distinguished as an internal dominant of discursive transformations which finds its expression in the breaking of the syntactic composition into paragraphs.

‘-ㄹ거’의 문법화에 대한 가능성 고찰

‘거’는 ‘‘것’을 구어적으로 이르는 말’로 그동안 처리되어 왔다. 문어와 구어의 경계가 모호해지는 상황에서 ‘거’의 사용이 ‘것’과 같이 많아지고 있고 ‘것’과 ‘거’의 교체가 모든 경우에 가능한 것이 아니라는 점에서 본고는 ‘거’에 대해 새로운 처리 방향을 제시하였다. ‘-ㄹ거’가 하나의 문법 형태소로 통합되어 점차 어미로 진행되어 가는 것으로 보려는 것인데, 이를 위해 ‘것’으로부터 ‘거’가 분리되고 있는 현상과 ‘-ㄹ 거’를 포함한 통사적 구성이 어미로 사용되는 현상, 이어 ‘-ㄹ거’가 한 형태로 사용되는 현상 등에 대해 차례로 살펴보았다. 특히 ‘-ㄹ거’의 어미화와 관련하여 관형사형 전성어미와 결합한 ‘-ㄹ 거’가 ‘대상성’을 가지면서 다른 명사형 전성어미와 계열 관계를 이루는 것으로 보았다. 아울러 ‘-ㄹ 거’를 포함한 통사적 구성이 관용구로 처리될 것이 아니라 종결어미로 처리될 가능성에 대해서도 논의하였다.

Microstructure and strength correlation of pure Al and Al-Mg syntactic foam composites subject to uniaxial compression

The microstructure and quasi-static compression of glass cenospheres/aluminum matrix syntactic foams (AMSFs) with three t/R ratio cenospheres (t/R=0.043, 0.052 and 0.064) and three different matrices (cp-Al, 5A03 and 5A06) were investigated. The compression strength and energy absorption of foams were found to increase with t/R ratio and Mg in matrix. The strengthening mechanisms were attributed to the nature properties of cenospheres and the thickness of high strength interfacial reaction MgAl2O4 forming. Two models were provided to predict the quasi-static properties of AMSFs considering the factors including physical properties of matrix and cenospheres, volume fraction of cenospheres, composition changing of matrix and thickness of interfacial reaction coating caused by interfacial reaction between matrix and cenopsheres. The predictions for peak stress, plateau stress, energy absorption capacity and specific energy absorption of AMSFs showed good agreement with experimental data. The Al-Mg syntactic foams in this study exhibited high specific energy absorption (56Jg−1) and specific plateau strength (94MPacm−3g−1).

QoS-aware automatic syntactic service composition problem: Complexity and resolution

Automatic syntactic service composition problem consists in automatically selecting services, from a registry, by matching their input and output data. The composite service, resulting from this selection, allows producing a set of output data, needed by a user, from a set of input data, given by the user. Adding Quality-Of-Service (QoS) values for each service (for example execution time and cost values), this selection problem becomes an optimization one called the QoS-aware automatic syntactic service composition problem. Depending on the QoS criterion used, many models and algorithms resolving the aforementioned problem are proposed in the literature. The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, we provide a unified understanding of the wide variety of existing approaches and we analyse and compare the theoretical complexity induced by each QoS criterion. We state that optimal solution for execution time or throughput QoS criteria can be determined in polynomial time but optimality is no more guaranteed in polynomial time for QoS criteria like cost or reliability. Indeed, we show that the composition problem becomes NP-hard when optimizing such QoS criteria. Secondly, we propose a novel approach for solving more efficiently polynomial cases. This approach is based on a scheduling formulation with AND/OR constraints, using a directed graph structure. For the Web Service Challenge-09 benchmark (considering execution time and throughput QoS criteria), our exact algorithm outperforms the related work.

Water Impact of Syntactic Foams.

Syntactic foams are particulate composite materials that are extensively integrated in naval and aerospace structures as core materials for sandwich panels. While several studies have demonstrated the potential of syntactic foams as energy absorbing materials in impact tests, our understanding of their response to water impact remains elusive. In this work, we attempt a first characterization of the behavior of a vinyl ester/glass syntactic subject to slamming. High-speed imaging is leveraged to elucidate the physics of water impact of syntactic foam wedges in a free-fall drop tower. From the images, we simultaneously measure the deformation of the wedge and the hydrodynamic loading, thereby clarifying the central role of fluid–structure interaction during water impact. We study two different impact heights and microballoon density to assess the role of impact energy and syntactic foam composition on the slamming response. Our results demonstrate that both these factors have a critical role on the slamming response of syntactic foams. Reducing the density of microballoons might help to reduce the severity of the hydrodynamic loading experienced by the wedge, but this comes at the expense of a larger deformation. Such a larger deformation could ultimately lead to failure for large drop heights. These experimental results offer compelling evidence for the role of hydroelastic coupling in the slamming response of syntactic foams.