Syntactic Features Research Articles

The Syntax of the Genitive Case in Longus’ Novel Daphnis and Chloe

This study aims to explore the syntactic functions and characteristics of the genitive case in the ancient Greek novel “Daphnis and Chloe” by Longus, a text from the 2nd century AD, which exemplifies the “second sophistic” period of rhetorical development. The primary source for this research is the text of “Daphnis and Chloe”, which has been thoroughly analysed to ascertain the usage of the genitive case in various syntactic roles. The research employs descriptive and structural methods of linguistic analysis. The descriptive method identifies and explains instances of the genitive case within the text, while the structural method examines the relationships between these instances and other linguistic elements. The genitive case in the novel is found to perform multiple syntactic functions, including controlling verbs, nouns, adjectives, and expressing various semantic nuances. Detailed examples are provided to illustrate these functions and their impact on the text’s meaning. The findings offer a foundation for further studies of the genitive case in ancient Greek texts, providing significant insights for researchers and linguists interested in ancient Greek grammar and its syntactic constructions. The study enhances understanding of ancient rhetorical techniques and their application in literary texts during the “second sophistic” period.

Aspect-specific Parsimonious Segmentation via Attention-based Graph Convolutional Network for Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis

Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA) involves determining sentiment polarity in sentences concerning specific aspects. Recent approaches in ABSA have incorporated dependency parsing to gain a deeper understanding of word associations within aspect-related terms. Nevertheless, these models typically concentrate solely on dependency connections while neglecting their specific characteristics or types. This can lead to sentiment inconsistencies, particularly when analyzing sentences with multiple aspects and diverse polarities. To address this challenge, we propose an innovative solution known as Aspect-specific Parsimonious Segmentation via Attention-based Graph Convolutional Network (APSA-GCN) for ABSA. Our model consists of two key modules that harness a variety of features, including syntax, semantics, and lexicon-based representations. The aspect-specific parsimonious segmentation framework segments the data and directs it to parsimonious dual filters, retaining only aspect-specific sentences called explicit data for lexicon-based representation. Subsequently, the Attention-based Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) is employed to extract syntactic and semantic features more explicitly, thereby enriching the representation of aspect-related features. Extensive experiments were conducted on various benchmark datasets, and the results confirm the model’s efficacy as our method achieves state-of-the-art performance. Moreover, our introduced APS framework can be effortlessly incorporated into other benchmark models to enhance the outcomes of ABSA.

ON THE RELATION BETWEEN TIMBRE AND SYNTAX

The article is devoted to the question of the relationship between timbre and syntax in different functional styles of speech. The methodological basis for investigating the mutual influence of syntax (the level of conditioned constructions) and timbre (the level of inductive wholeness) is selected and explained. When considering the notion of “intentionality” within the framework of the direction of phenomenology, it becomes obvious that timbre should be understood as a hierarchy of communication elements, which creates the desired sound taking into account the invariants already available in consciousness. The timbre forms not only direct, syntactic links, but also expressive components contained in both the structure and semantics of the parts of a particular speech work. In order to create convenience and maximum objectivity of analysis when describing syntactic features of works of various functional styles, a specific range of consideration is set within the framework of this study - from the level of simple morphological relations to the level of hypertext unities. The field of analysis is represented as a simple target, where the core is the zone of well-known standardized types of syntactic links, zone-2 is the space of links existing in the form of visible repetitions (anaphora, epiphora, refrain, syntactic repetitions), zone-3 is the zone of links of all existing linking elements within the text, which is difficult to interpret objectively (links fixed by ritual). The final part of this study presents an example of analyzing a poetic text in English and its translation into Russian in order to demonstrate the close relationship between syntax and timbre at different levels of the hierarchy.

Analyzing Prefix /me(N)-/ in the Indonesian Affixation: A Corpus-Based Morphology

This paper presents a corpus-based study of the prefix /me(N)-/ in Indonesian, a productive affix used to form predicative constructions. The analysis was based on the Indonesian – Leipzig Corpora Collection (ILCC). It explored the prefix’s distribution, functions, and productivity, focusing on its role in encoding semantic and syntactic features. The results showed that the prefix /me(N)-/ was predominantly used to derive verbs, accounting for over 68,7% at the mean value of 7,1. However, /me(N)-/ was also employed to derive adjectives, albeit less frequently (19.4%), at the mean value of 6,3, and about 12% of forming new words from noun stems (mean value was about 5,9). Semantically, the prefix can uniquely express causative (49,24% at a mean value of 43), instrumental (11,45% at a mean value of 10), reflexive (19,47 at a mean value of 17), possessive/state meanings (10,31% at a mean value of 9), and reciprocal (9,54% at a mean value of 8,3). Derived verbs with the prefix /me(N)-/ had syntactic functions influenced by their semantic meaning. Some of the most common and distinctive syntactic functions of /me(N)-/ are form monovalent (29,18% having a mean value of 27,33), bivalent (48,40% having a mean value of 45,33), and trivalent (22,42% having a mean value of 21). The study demonstrated that /me(N)-/ was highly productive. Future research could examine the cognitive and processing mechanisms involved in understanding /me(N)-/-derived words.

Comparison of Double Object Construction in Chinese and Japanese

Double-object construction is a common cross-linguistic phenomenon, and there exists a special double-object construction which differs from the normal one both syntactically and semantically. This article aims to explore the syntactic and semantic similarities and discrepancies of two types of construction in Chinese and Japanese. Specifically, this article first generalizes the similar and divergent syntactic and semantic features of the two patterns in Chinese and Japanese (also involving other languages, such as Korean). Further, based on the comparison, this article reveals that the formation of the special construction depends on whether its possessor can receive appropriate case.

Corpus Construct: A Research Tool in Syntactic Analysis of Bantu Languages

Syntax of languages is understood to be shaped by syntactic universals principles. Despite operating within the constraints of these universals, languages have managed to display their unique syntactic features. This is explained by specificity in the ranking of these universals across languages. To establish the unique features, researchers have to use data collected using a variety of methods some of which are corpus studies, linguistic elicitation, introspection and experimentation. Each of these methods requires a research tool whose development or adoption is dependent on the research question(s)formulated to fill a study gap. The use of corpus construct to generate data, as other research tools, requires an understanding of what type of data is needed to answer which questions on which linguistic features. The construction of a corpus can be done from plain texts or annotated texts. The question is: how can corpus construct be used as a tool in the study of languages whose corpus is yet to be compiled and made available online? This article, therefore, intends to answer this question with biases on Bantu languages. It will be necessary to make databases from the corpus constructs available by building corpora for the languages in question. The findings of this article are deemed important in offering knowledge on building of corpus and how to use the built corpus to investigate a syntactic feature in a Bantu language.

Does “more complexity” equal “better writing”? Investigating the relationship between form-based complexity and meaning-based complexity in high school EFL learners’ argumentative writing

The study examines the relationship between form-based complexity and meaning-based complexity in argumentative essays written by high school students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in relation to writing quality. The data comprise argumentative essays written by 102 Japanese high school learners at different proficiency levels. The students’ proficiency levels were determined based on the evaluation of their argumentative essays by human raters using the GTEC rubric. The students’ essays were analyzed from multiple dimensions, focusing on both form-based complexity (lexical complexity, large-grained syntactic complexity, and fine-grained syntactic complexity features) and meaning-based complexity (argument quality). The results of the multidimensional analysis revealed that the most influential factor in determining overall essay scores was not form-based complexity but meaning-based complexity achieved through argument quality. Moreover, the results indicated that meaning-based complexity was strongly correlated with the use of complex nominals rather than clausal complexity. These insights have significant implications for both the teaching and assessment of argumentative essays among high school EFL learners, underscoring the importance of understanding what aspects of writing to prioritize and how best to assess student writing.

Entropy-based syntactic tree analysis for text classification: a novel approach to distinguishing between original and translated Chinese texts

Abstract This research focuses on classifying translated and non-translated Chinese texts by analyzing syntactic rule features, using an integrated approach of machine learning and entropy analysis. The methodology employs information entropy to gauge the complexity of syntactic rules in both text types. The methodology is based on the concept of information entropy, which serves as a quantitative measure for the complexity inherent in syntactic rules as manifested from tree-based annotations. The goal of the study is to explore whether translated Chinese texts demonstrate syntactic characteristics that are significantly different from those of non-translated texts, thereby permitting a reliable classification between the two. To do this, the research calculates information entropy values for syntactic rules in two comparable corpora, one of translated and the other of non-translated Chinese texts. Then, various machine learning models are applied to these entropy metrics to identify any significant differences between the two groups. The results show significant differences in the syntactic structures. Translated texts have a higher degree of entropy, indicating more complex syntactic constructs compared to non-translated texts. These findings contribute to our understanding of the effect of translation on language syntax, with implications for text classification and translation studies.

Does Higher Grade Indicate More Complex Language Usage? Exploring Syntactic Complexity Development Among High School EFL Learners

Purpose This article aims to investigate the longitudinal Syntactic Complexity (SC) development of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners and the variations by grade level. Design/Approach/Methods This study conducts a longitudinal analysis of SC development among 199 high school EFL learners in eastern China. The corpus contains 920 argumentative essays on scientifically and socially contentious topics. We employ the Second Language Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (L2SCA) to examine syntactic features in these essays through 11 computerized indices measuring different dimensions of SC (i.e., coordination, subordination, phrasal complexity). Multi-level regression analyses are used to depict SC development and cross-level interactions are investigated to examine variations by grade. Findings Results suggest that all SC indices except T-units per sentence exhibit varying growing trends. The results align with Biber's hypothetical stages of syntactic development, indicating learners’ progression toward greater subordination and phrasal complexity. Negative cross-grade interactions suggest that lower-grade students show heightened improvements in phrasal sophistication over time. Originality/Value The study portrays the developmental patterns of SC within and across grade levels, highlighting both group trends and individual variability in language development. It conceptualizes SC as a multidimensional construct and informs more precise measurement of SC features in writing assessment and instruction.

Specifics of syntactic structures of Russian business writing (compared with Arabic)

The object of the study is the syntactic features of modern Russian and Arabic business correspondence; the subject is the specific features of the syntax of modern Russian business documents, which become more obvious in comparison with Arabic business writing. The scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying the features characteristic of Russian business writing at the present stage of its development, and comparing these features with the features of Arabic business letters. Also a certain novelty is the connection made by the author between the history and culture of Russian and Arab official business correspondance styles and the transformations that they are actively occurring. One of the author’s tasks was to find out why new features of business correspondence, spreading under the influence of globalization, manifest themselves differently in different languages. The study was carried out on the basis of structural-semantic, comparative and functional approaches using methods of component analysis of the text of letters, interpretation of their structure and content, observation, description, comparison. Syntactic structure of modern Russian business writing is currently actively developing. The personal nature of a business letter increases, the ways of expressing imperativeness change, the level of emotionality increases, and all of the above is reflected in the types of syntactic structures used. In Arabic business writing, transformations are less pronounced, which is due to the history of its development and the characteristics of Arab culture. In electronic business correspondence, the syntax of Russian and Arabic business letters has similar changes. It is concluded that Russian and Arabic business writing are influenced not only by globalization processes, but also by their original ancient history, as well as Russian and Arabic culture, which determines the differences in the syntactic structure.

Participles as a functional-speech unit of Russian language: stylistic aspect (based on the material of lyrical and prose works by M.Yu. Lermontov)

INTRODUCTION. The work is devoted to the study of participles use in M.Yu. Lermontov’s works. The relevance and scientific novelty lies in the study of the participle in the functionalspeech aspect. The aim is to analyze different literary genres of one author within the framework of a systematic description of the functional plan of participles and the formation of a generalizing theory of functional participle studies. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The study aims to analyze the artistic (poetic and prose) contexts in which different types of participles are used. It focuses on the functional and syntactic features of participles based on the novel “The Hero of Our Time” and the poem “Sad Demon, Spirit of Exile”. Using the selective sampling method, contexts containing participles were extracted from the Russian National Corpus. The analysis of these contexts was conducted using observation, description, and analysis methods.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. The classification of participles functioning in M.Yu. Lermontov’s literary texts of different genres, which has three bases, is presented: 1) by type of units: participles-phraseological units, participles-metaphors; 2) by type of functions: predicative (with a verbal bundle, with a verbal bundle in inversion order), attributive participles; 3) by semantic nature: non-objectified, adjectivated, substantive participles. CONCLUSION. The study of M.Yu. Lermontov’s usage of different types of participles in his novel and poem aids in determining the origins of features that have since become traditional in Russian poetry and prose across various genres. This study aims to conduct a purposeful comparative analysis of functional variations within different styles, genres, and artistic trends.

Structural Complexity in Adapted Reading Materials: A Study Based on the Amount of Information

AbstractMost of the previous studies focused on lexical and syntactic features in adapted texts while little attention has been paid to the structural complexity from the perspective of the amount of information. In this study, we intend to examine the differences in structural complexity in adapted texts from the perspective of the amount of information at the lexical and grammatical levels. We also aim to identify the lexical and grammatical features that contribute most to such differences. The data used in this study were reading texts from Newsela, that is, reading materials for English learners under the educational system of K‐12 in the United States. This study yields several findings of interest. First, the adapted texts differ in the structural complexity at both lexical and grammatical levels in terms of their amount of information. Second, the differences display a decreasing trend. That is, the differences become smaller when the level of the text increases. Third, function words and part‐of‐speech trigrams with a preposition(s) and/or a noun(s) contribute most to the differences. The findings provide significant implications for the adaptation of language materials such as reading texts and test materials.

Advancements in Korean Emotion Classification: A Comparative Approach Using Attention Mechanism

Recently, the analysis of emotions in social media has been considered a significant NLP task in digital and social-media-driven environments due to their pervasive influence on communication, culture, and consumer behavior. In particular, the task of Aspect-Based Emotion Analysis (ABEA), which involves analyzing the emotions of various targets within a single sentence, has drawn attention to understanding complex and sophisticated human language. However, ABEA is a challenging task in languages with limited data and complex linguistic properties, such as Korean, which follows spiral thought patterns and has agglutinative characteristics. Therefore, we propose a Korean Target-Attention-Based Emotion Classifier (KOTAC) designed to utilize target information by unveiling emotions buried within intricate Korean language patterns. In the experiment section, we compare various methods of utilizing and representing vectors of target information for the attention mechanism. Specifically, our final model, KOTAC, shows a performance enhancement on the MTME (Multiple Targets Multiple Emotions) samples, which include multiple targets and distinct emotions within a single sentence, achieving a 0.72% increase in F1 score over a baseline model without effective target utilization. This research contributes to the development of Korean language models that better reflect syntactic features by innovating methods to not only obtain but also utilize target-focused representations.

A Longitudinal Corpus Analysis of the Quantity, Syntactic, and Lexical Characteristics of Maternal and Paternal Parentese

ABSTRACT Research on parentese, the acoustically exaggerated, slower, and higher-pitched speech directed toward infants, has mostly focused on maternal contributions, although it has long been known that fathers also produce parentese. Given recent societal changes in family dynamics, it is necessary to revise these mother-centered models of language input. Using a longitudinal dataset of daylong recordings collected with the same group of USA-born English-speaking infants (N = 21) at 6, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months, we investigate the similarities and differences between maternal and paternal parentese quantity, as well syntactic and lexical characteristics of parentese. We find that mothers are producing quantitatively more parentese than fathers at all ages. We find that the syntactic aspects do not differ substantially between mothers and fathers, however lexical differences do emerge. Specifically, we see that mothers may use more question and mental state words than fathers. Furthermore, use of these types of words increase as the child develops. This research highlight the continued need to further study fathers in order to have a full understanding of child language development.

A CORPUS‐DRIVEN STUDY OF THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE SYNTACTIC COMBINATION STRENGTH AND THE SEMANTIC CONTRIBUTION IN THE ENGLISH “V‐TO‐V” CONSTRUCTION

AbstractThis paper conducted a corpus‐driven study on the syntactic and semantic features of the first verb and the to‐infinitive in the “V‐to‐V” construction. It was found that the syntactic combination strength of the “V‐to‐V” construction and the semantic contribution of the first verb are in general negatively correlated. The “V‐to‐V” construction can, therefore, be classified into three types: (1) Hypotactic clause complex of expansion, where the two verbs in the “V‐to‐V” construction construe the two processes, with weak syntactic combination and high semantic contribution of the first verb; (2) Single verbal group, where the two verbs construe one process with the first verb being auxiliary, with strong syntactic combination and low semantic contribution of the first verb; (3) Hypotactic clause complex of projection, where the two verbs construe two processes, with flexible syntactic combination and high semantic contribution of the first verb. Such correlation can thus form a cline from hypotactic clause complex of expansion through hypotactic clause complex of projection to single verbal groups.

Strange a construction: The “A egy N” in Hungarian

AbstractThe paper gives a detailed description of the “A egy N” construction in Hungarian based on a thorough investigation of carefully collected corpus data. Utterances containing this construction express a speaker-related (mostly derogatory, but sometimes appreciative) value judgement. The morphological, syntactic, and pragmatic characteristics of the construction are presented. Furthermore, some formally and pragmatically similar constructions are also discussed and some misleading pieces of information in the earlier literature are debunked.

Examining the Linguistic Tapestry of Globalization: Structural Borrowings

Purpose: Redefining economies, cultures, language dynamics, and societies worldwide, globalization has become one of the hallmarks of the contemporary era. The impact of this phenomenon in language is examined in this article, with a particular emphasis on structural borrowings from English into Albanian. Theoretical Framework: Scientific criteria have been chosen to determine whether the linguistic data are internal constructions of the language or structural borrowings from English, and to examine the extent to which a global language like that has influenced the structure of 'small' languages like Albanian. Methodology: Thirty-three new constructions were chosen from Albanian textual media, which were then split into groups examined in detail according to their semantic and syntactic features. Findings: Fifty-five percent of native speakers accept semantic-syntactic borrowings from English, which exhibit synonymy and compete with existing normative constructions. Borrowings enhancing the semantics of Albanian are welcome, while those affecting syntactic structure and leading to ambiguity, meaninglessness, and ungrammaticality are not. Research Practical and Social Implication: The knowledge of how syntactic-semantic systems can be modified and impacted by interaction with other language systems is increased by this work. Simultaneously, it advances our understanding of the social dimensions of language use, including language planning and identity maintenance in the area of globalization. Originality/Value: The connections between ‘small’ languages like Albanian and world culture have not received adequate consideration. This study advances our understanding of how globalization impacts communication between speakers of diverse languages and cultural backgrounds by shedding light on the process of structural borrowings.

Clustering source code from automated assessment of programming assignments

AbstractClustering of source code is a technique that can help improve feedback in automated program assessment. Grouping code submissions that contain similar mistakes can, for instance, facilitate the identification of students’ difficulties to provide targeted feedback. Moreover, solutions with similar functionality but possibly different coding styles or progress levels can allow personalized feedback to students stuck at some point based on a more developed source code or even detect potential cases of plagiarism. However, existing clustering approaches for source code are mostly inadequate for automated feedback generation or assessment systems in programming education. They either give too much emphasis to syntactical program features, rely on expensive computations over pairs of programs, or require previously collected data. This paper introduces an online approach and implemented tool—AsanasCluster—to cluster source code submissions to programming assignments. The proposed approach relies on program attributes extracted from semantic graph representations of source code, including control and data flow features. The obtained feature vector values are fed into an incremental k-means model. Such a model aims to determine the closest cluster of solutions, as they enter the system, timely, considering clustering is an intermediate step for feedback generation in automated assessment. We have conducted a twofold evaluation of the tool to assess (1) its runtime performance and (2) its precision in separating different algorithmic strategies. To this end, we have applied our clustering approach on a public dataset of real submissions from undergraduate students to programming assignments, measuring the runtimes for the distinct tasks involved: building a model, identifying the closest cluster to a new observation, and recalculating partitions. As for the precision, we partition two groups of programs collected from GitHub. One group contains implementations of two searching algorithms, while the other has implementations of several sorting algorithms. AsanasCluster matches and, in some cases, improves the state-of-the-art clustering tools in terms of runtime performance and precision in identifying different algorithmic strategies. It does so without requiring the execution of the code. Moreover, it is able to start the clustering process from a dataset with only two submissions and continuously partition the observations as they enter the system.

Incorporating knowledge for joint Chinese word segmentation and part-of-speech tagging with SynSemGCN

PurposeRecent trends have shown the integration of Chinese word segmentation (CWS) and part-of-speech (POS) tagging to enhance syntactic and semantic parsing. However, the potential utility of hierarchical and structural information in these tasks remains underexplored. This study aims to leverage multiple external knowledge sources (e.g. syntactic and semantic features, lexicons) through various modules for the joint task.Design/methodology/approachWe introduce a novel learning framework for the joint CWS and POS tagging task, utilizing graph convolutional networks (GCNs) to encode syntactic structure and semantic features. The framework also incorporates a pre-defined lexicon through a lexicon attention module. We evaluate our model on a range of public corpora, including CTB5, PKU and UD, the novel ZX dataset and the comprehensive CTB9 dataset.FindingsExperimental results on these benchmark corpora demonstrate the effectiveness of our model in improving the performance of the joint task. Notably, we find that syntax information significantly enhances performance, while lexicon information helps mitigate the issue of out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words.Originality/valueThis study introduces a comprehensive approach to the joint CWS and POS tagging task by combining multiple features. Moreover, the proposed framework offers potential adaptability to other sequence labeling tasks, such as named entity recognition (NER).

HotCFuzz: Enhancing Vulnerability Detection through Fuzzing and Hotspot Code Coverage Analysis

Software vulnerabilities present a significant cybersecurity threat, particularly as software code grows in size and complexity. Traditional vulnerability-mining techniques face challenges in keeping pace with this complexity. Fuzzing, a key automated vulnerability-mining approach, typically focuses on code branch coverage, overlooking syntactic and semantic elements of the code. In this paper, we introduce HotCFuzz, a novel vulnerability-mining model centered on the coverage of hot code blocks. Leveraging vulnerability syntactic features to identify these hot code blocks, we devise a seed selection algorithm based on their coverage and integrate it into the established fuzzing test framework AFL. Experimental results demonstrate that HotCFuzz surpasses AFL, AFLGo, Beacon, and FairFuzz in terms of efficiency and time savings.