Syntactic View Research Articles

IDSV-GCN: Integrating Dual Syntactic Views Graph Convolutional Network for aspect-based sentiment analysis

Aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) aims to predict the sentiment polarity towards given aspects in a sentence. Recent research has highlighted that graph neural networks based on syntactic dependency trees effectively convey rich syntactic information and are suitable for ABSA tasks. Most existing work typically adopt either dependency type or minimum distance between nodes in the original syntactic tree to construct different views. However, existing work overlooks the high-dimensional local feature information in dependency relations, resulting in inadequate exploration of this view. Meanwhile, most work ignores that the minimum distance view and the dependency view can be complementary and integrated in syntactic analysis. Unfortunately, directly adding the two views introduces noise issues, leading to unsatisfactory results after their integration. To address these issues, this paper introduces an integrating dual syntactic views graph convolutional network (IDSV-GCN) model that seamlessly integrates dependency type view and minimum distance view, enabling comprehensive utilization of syntactic structure and information. To better address the computation of weights in the dependency type view, we innovatively propose a fusion attention mechanism. This approach effectively captures both global and local feature information. To more effectively integrate the two views and reduce the impact of noise, we employ a syntactic mask layer to filter out noise in the dependency type view and highlighting important dependency feature information. Then, we construct a minimum distance weight matrix based on the matrix obtained from the dependency type view. Finally, we merge the two matrices and feed them into the GCN to facilitate the model’s learning of syntactic information. Experimental results on three widely-used benchmark datasets demonstrate that our proposed IDSV-GCN model outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

Two Forms of Functional Reductionism in Physics

Functional reductionism characterises inter-theoretic reduction as the recovery of the upper-level behaviour described by the reduced theory in terms of the lower-level reducing theory. For instance, finding a statistical mechanical realiser that plays the functional role of thermodynamic entropy allows to establish a reductive link between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. This view constitutes a unique approach to reduction that enjoys a number of positive features, but has received limited attention in the philosophy of science. This paper aims to clarify the meaning of functional reductionism in science, with a focus on physics, to define both its place with respect to other approaches to reduction and its connection to ontology. To do so, we develop and explore two alternative versions of functional reductionism, called Syntactic Functional Reductionism and Semantic Functional Reductionism, that expand and improve the basic functional reductionist approach along different lines, and make clear how the approach works in practice. The former elaborates on David Lewis’ account, is connected with the syntactic view of theories, employs a logical characterisation of functional roles, and is embedded within Nagelian reductionism. The latter adopts a semantic approach to theories, spells out functional roles mainly in terms of mathematical roles within the models, and is expressed in terms of the related structuralist approach to reduction. The development of these frameworks has the final goal of advancing functional reductionism, making it a fully developed account of reduction in science.

The connection of mathematics and logic in the structure of axiomatized and formalized theories

The aim of the research is to study the relationship between logic and mathematics in the structure of axiomatized and formalized scientific theories. The object of the study is the explication of this connection and its explanation. The subject of the study is syntactic and semantic views on the structure of scientific theories, the relationship between logic and mathematics has not been studied in detail in them. In the syntactic view, the structure of the theory is understood as a linguistic construct build from various logical propositions of the theoretical level, correspondence propositions and observation propositions. The structure of the theory does not take into account the variety of model representations of the theory that generate a variety of language constructs. The semantic view overcomes this disadvantage, and in it the structure of the theory is presented as a hierarchy of models: from axioms to theoretical-level models, experimental models and data models. The structure of the theory, the connection of logic and mathematics were studied using comparative analysis, methods of interpretive analysis and reconstruction of scientific theories. The methods made it possible to explicate mathematical concepts in the structure of the theory and correlate them with logic and natural language. Comparative analysis has shown that in the syntactic view, the connection between logic and mathematics lies in the fact that mathematical concepts of physics are interpreted in the language of logic of first-order predicates with equality. The connection between mathematical concepts is provided by the axiomatic method, which serves as a means of formalizing concepts. Mathematics comes down to logic. In the semantic approach, in order to identify the connection between mathematics and logic, it was necessary to reconstruct the structure of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. With the help of the set-theoretic predicate of Suppes, its axioms were determined, the connection between mathematical structures, postulates of the theory, axioms, and observable quantities was established. Logic and mathematics are related to each other in such a way that metamathematics or linguistics is a part of mathematics. Mathematics includes set theory and model theory, i.e. mathematical logic. The connection of mathematical formalisms with phenomena and with natural language remains problematic, and there is this drawback in the syntactic approach. The novelty lies in the fact that the research contributes to the methodology and logic of science, to the explanation of the connection between logic and mathematics in scientific theory, which was illustrated by various examples from various fields of physics.

Al-Shaykh Ghulām Rasūl al-Sa‘īdī and the Prelude of his Tafsīr al-Tibyān al-Qur’ān: An Analytical and Descriptive Study

Shaykh Ghulām Rasūl al-Sa‘īdī, an Indian-subcontinent contemporary commentator wrote tafsīr with a scholarly prelude/introduction. Additionally, he derived necessary references to Quranic verses along with the syntactic views in quite expressive and simple manner. Thus, his remarkable tafsīr; tafsīr al-tibyān al-Qur’ān, and more particularly his prelude/preface, expounds on the issues faced by ordinary people and makes valuable addition in layman understanding about the meaning of the text. Therefore, this article presents a descriptive and analytical study of the prelude/introduction to his commentary so that it becomes easy for the reader to know the views and ideas of Shaykh Ghulām Rasūl al-Sa‘īdī before delving into his tafsīr work.

Syntactic view of sigma-tau generation of permutations

We give a syntactic view of the Sawada-Williams (σ,τ)-generation of permutations. The corresponding sequence Seqn of στ-operations of length n!−1 is shown to have a compact description of size Θ(n2) in terms of straight-line programs. Using the compact description, we design almost linear time ranking and unranking algorithms.

Foreword

In these strange days of a limited physical and social contact due to the worldwide pandemic we are especially grateful for the existence of the parallel virtual world, which goes beyond human shortcomings. Our work continued without any obstructions and we are pleased to announce the summer ALA issue of the year 2020. In it we offer six research articles that extend over a broad linguistic area and include languages of the far East Asia, namely Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
 The issue opens with the WU Jiayi’s article “Contextual Conditions and Constraints in Chinese Dangling Topics: Syntax-Discourse Interface Analysis”, in which the author revisits dangling topics in Mandarin Chinese from the semantic and syntactic view, and evolves their findings to the hypothesis concerning language typology.
 The second article on Chinese is Tina ČOK’s “Lexical Aspect Classification for Unrelated Languages: A Case Study on Slovenian and Chinese Lexical Aspect”, in which the author analyzes Chinese and Slovenian verb aspect to show that deeper cognitive differences effect our perception of reality, and upon her findings proposes an upgraded general classification of verb types.
 The following article entitled “The New Chinese Corpus of Literary Texts Litchi” by Mateja PETROVČIČ, Radovan GARABÍK, and Ľuboš GAJDOŠ presents a newly launched corpus of Chinese literary texts Litchi, and exemplifies the variety of its benefits.
 Furthermore, Petra JAKLIN “The Many Meanings of the Japanese Causative:Widening the Pragmatic Take on the -(sa)seru Causative Sentence” is an article in which the author revisits the range of possible interpretations and meanings carried by Japanese causative sentences, and supports her conclusions with comparisons to English and Croatian structures.
 HWANG Yoong Hee’s article “Normative Forms and Synthetic Structure of Japanese in the Incubation Period of L2: Subject to Sentence-final Forms in Longitudinal Discourse Data of Korean Returnee Sisters’ Japanese” focuses on L2 Japanese sentence-final forms and their change mechanism in case of Korean returnees.
 Last but not least, “Examining the Part-of-speech Features in Assessing the Readability of Vietnamese Texts” is an article by An-Vinh LUONG, Diep NGUYEN, and Dien DINH that discusses the present state of research on text readability in Vietnamese and proposes an improved model on estimating readability of texts and consequently their classification.
 
 Editors and Editorial board wish the regular and new readers of the ALA journal a pleasant read full of inspiration.
 
 Editors

Contextual Conditions and Constraints in Chinese Dangling Topics

This present study verifies the aboutness condition proposed by Chao, 1968; Chafe, 1976; Li and Thompson, 1981; Xu and Langendoen, 1985 and many others as a relation that holds between sentence-initial NPs and comment clauses of alleged gapless topic-comment constructions in Mandarin Chinese. Four often-cited types of dangling topics in Chinese are re-visited and the arguments from both the semantic (Pan and Hu 2002; 2008; 2009) and syntactic (Shi 2000; Huang and Ting 2006) views are examined. A critical scrutiny from contextual perspective, in particular Nomi Erteschik-Shir’s (2007) notions of topic, reveals that there exist dangling topics in Chinese where the sentence-initial NPs at issue are either contrastive or old topics which need not be syntactically or semantically licensed. The contextual contrast set and commentative conditions are proposed as the licensing conditions with constraints dictating that proper selection and relevance must be observed. At the end the study raises a hypothesis regarding language typology. It is proposed that discourse configurational languages exhibit phenomena of dangling NP topics which are properly licensed by the aboutness relation under which either one of the contextual conditions is satisfied.

A Study on Construction of Newly-coined Words in 2017 Based on Cognitive Linguistics

이 연구는 인지언어학에 기초하여 신어 합성어의 의미 구성과 해석에 관해 살펴보는 데 목적을 두었다. 지금까지 신어에 대한 연구는 조어론적 관점이나 통사론적 관점에서 주로 어종에 따른 분류를 하거나 합성과 파생의 관점에서 이루어져 왔다. 하지만, 인지언어학의 기본 입장에 비추어 보면 언어표현의 의미는 언어 단위 자체에 내재하는 것이 아니라 언어사용자의 정신 속에서 구성된다. 신어 합성어의 의미도 구성요소의 개별 의미와 그 합으로부터 결정되지 않으며 인지 과정에서 구성되고 해석된다. 이 연구는 신어 합성어의 구성에 대한 분석이 의미 특히, 인지언어학적인 관점에서 이루어져야 할 필요가 있음을 주장하였다. 인지언어학적 관점에서 신어의 의미 해석기제로 은유와 환유, 개념적 혼성을 통해 신어 합성어를 분석하였다. 은유는 추상적인 개념 영역(목표영역(target domain))을 다른 구체적인 개념 영역(근원영역(source domain))을 통해서 이해하는 것이다. 은유에 기초한 신어는 선행어가 은유인 신어, 선행어와 후행어 간의 관계가 은유인 신어, 후행어가 은유인 신어, 전체가 은유인 신어롤 나눌 수 있었다. 환유는 매체라는 한 개념적 실체가 동일한 이상적 인지모형 내에서 목표라는 또 다른 개념적 실체에 정신적 접근을 제공하는 인지 과정으로 환유는 형식적 환유와 내용적 환유로 나눌 수 있었다. 형식적 환유는 한 형태소나 단어의 일부가 전체 단어를 대표하는 과정을 나타내는 것으로 한 단어의 어근이나 일부가 합성어의 전체를 대표하는 경우인데 그 예가 다양하게 나타난다. 내용적 환유는(내용적 환유를 기반으로 신어들은) 선행어가 환유인 신어, 후행어가 환유인 신어, 전체가 환유인 신어, 두 구성소의 관계가 환유인 신어로 나눌 수 있다. 은유나 환유만으로는 신어에 나타나는 의미 구성이나 해석이 되지 않는 것은 개념적 혼성 이론으로 설명할 수 있다. 이 연구를 통해 은유와 환유, 개념적 혼성이 신어 구성과 해석의 핵심 기제로 작동한다는 것을 볼 수 있었다.The purpose of this study is to examine newly-coined compounds’ meaning construction and interpretation based on cognitive linguistics. Previous studies on new words have often categorized word types from the perspective of word formation or have otherwise taken a syntactic view, with a focus on synthesis and derivation. In light of cognitive linguistics’ fundamental position, linguistic expressions’ meanings are not embedded in linguistic units themselves, but rather in language users’ minds. Moreover, the meanings of newly-coined compounds are not determined by their components’ individual meanings or the compounds’ conjunction; rather they are constructed and interpreted during cognitive processes, suggesting that their construction can be analyzed based on meanings, especially from the cognitive linguistic perspective, which analyzes newly-coined compounds through metaphor, metonymy, and conceptual mixture, as the mechanisms of semantic interpretation. The metaphor facilitates understanding abstract concept (target) domains through other specific concept (source) domains. Metaphor-based newly-coined words can be divided into those with metaphor antecedents, those in which the antecedent-consequent relationship is characterized by metaphor, those in which the consequents are metaphors, and those in which both the antecedents and the consequents are metaphors, respectively. The metonymy, which is a cognitive process in which the conceptual substance of media provides mental access to another of the objectives within the same ideal cognitive model, can be either a formative or a content metonymy. The former refers to the process in which a morpheme or a part of a word represents the whole word, and the root or another part of a word represents a whole compound. There are a variety of examples for this. Based on the latter, newly-coined words can be divided into those with metonymy antecedents, those with metonymy consequents; those in which the antecedent-consequent relationship is characterized by metonymy, and those in which both the antecedents and the consequents are metonymy, respectively. The conceptual mixture theory cannot account for why the meaning construction or interpretation of newly-coined words cannot be completed with only metaphor or metonymy. This study demonstrates that metaphor, metonymy, and conceptual mixture act as core mechanisms for the construction and interpretation of newly-coined words.

О СИНТАКСИЧЕСКИХ ЕДИНИЦАХ И СИНТАКСИЧЕСКИХ МИФАХ (ЧАСТЬ 2)

Статья посвящена русской грамматической традиции в установлении единиц синтаксиса, рассматриваемой с позиций понимания науки как системы операций с утверждениями. Анализируются два компонента формирования этой традиции: собственные утверждения ученых касательно единиц и объектов синтаксиса и интерпретация утверждений предшественников, которая может находиться на разном расстоянии от оригинальной научной парадигмы, в которой эти утверждения изначально были сделаны. Выявляется ряд неточностей в оперировании утверждениями, сделанными классиками отечественной лингвистики А. А. Шахматовым и В. В. Виноградовым, у их последователей Abstract Within the modern methodological framework of regarding science as operations with statements (B. Latour, S. Woolgar) the article aims at answering the question: which approaches to syntactic units could really be labelled as the Russian grammar tradition Two aspects constituting this tradition are discussed: independent statements made by outstanding scientists (original texts) and their later interpretations (posttexts) which may be rather distant from the original paradigm these statements were made in. Comparing the original texts and later posttexts, we discover and try to systematize the misrepresentations and misinterpretations which are further spread among new generations of linguists via internet. Thus, comparison of statements on syntactic units made by the fathers of Russian linguistics A. A. Shakhamatov and V. V. Vinogradov and their re ection in the works of their successors reveals a number of inaccuracies which themselves form a tradition. The fact that substantial misinterpretations of the fathers syntactic views can be found even in classical university textbooks is illustrated by introducing M. V. Lomonosov and A. A. Shakhamatov in V. A. Beloshapkovas wellknown Russian syntax for universities as the founders of the allegedly traditional idea that two syntactic units should be distinguished: sentence (predlozhenie) and word combination (slovosochetanie). Also we demonstrate the following types of misrepresentations and misinterpretations: 1) the tendency of integrating Shakhamatovs and Vinogradovs views on syntactic units into the structuralistic levelbased approach to language 2) the distortion of causal relations in textbook explanations why this or that scholar formulated his or her idea of syntactic units and 3) the excessively broad or narrow approach to the idea of succession which can be selected by authors of posttexts to defend their own position in Russian grammar tradition and to cross scienti c opponents out of it. Recognizing that some of these inaccuracies arise from the original texts themselves (changes in the scholars views during his life ambiguous statements combination of terminological and nonterminological usage of the same word), we argue that a lot of them still stem from a conscious or unconscious wish of an author of a textbook or other posttext to present an integrated view of the Russian grammar tradition rather than investigate the real history of operations with statements on syntactic units in it.

William Whewell’s Semantic Account of Induction

William Whewell’s account of induction differs dramatically from the one familiar from twentieth-century debates. I argue that Whewell’s induction can be usefully understood by comparing the difference between his views and more standard accounts to contemporary debates between semantic and syntactic views of theories: rather than understanding inductive inference as capturing a relationship between sentences or propositions, Whewell understands it as a method for constructing a model of the world. The difference between this (“semantic”) view and the more familiar (“syntactic”) picture of induction is reflected in other aspects of Whewell’s philosophy of science, particularly his treatment of consilience and the order of discovery.

The semantic view of theories and higher-order languages

Several philosophers of science construe models of scientific theories as set-theoretic structures. Some of them moreover claim that models should not be construed as structures in the sense of model theory because the latter are language-dependent. I argue that if we are ready to construe models as set-theoretic structures (strict semantic view), we could equally well construe them as model-theoretic structures of higher-order logic (liberal semantic view). I show that every family of set-theoretic structures has an associated language of higher-order logic and an up to signature isomorphism unique model-theoretic counterpart, which is able to serve the same purposes. This allows to carry over every syntactic criterion of equivalence for theories in the sense of the liberal semantic view to theories in the sense of the strict semantic view. Taken together, these results suggest that the recent dispute about the semantic view and its relation to the syntactic view can be resolved.

Reflexive -st verbs in Icelandic

The -st morpheme in Icelandic resembles Romance and Slavic reflexive clitics and some Germanic simplex reflexives in that it is associated with a number of different uses on various verbs; this includes, among other uses, a middle/anticausative, a reciprocal, and a reflexive use. The reflexive use of -st is, however, much more restricted than that of typical reflexive clitics. In this article, I discuss in detail one particular class of reflexive -st verb, which I will refer to as the ‘figure reflexive’. With figure reflexive constructions, the subject bears an external agentive Θ-role and is also understood as a ‘figure’ with respect to a spatial ‘ground’, in the sense of Talmy (1985). I discuss two questions that reflexive -st verbs raise for a syntactic view of argument structure: what is the relationship between anticausatives and reflexives, and where does lexical idiosyncrasy arise? For the first question, I propose to analyze -st as an argument expletive, which in figure reflexive constructions is merged in SpecpP (cf. Svenonius 2003, 2007), but in anticausatives is merged in SpecVoiceP. Only in the former case can the Θ-role survive in semantics, which is argued to derive from the fact that VoiceP dominates pP, and not the other way around. For the second question, I argue that there are two separate issues: the first is the syntactic distribution of -st (which limits the kinds of reflexive -st verbs that can exist) and the second is the integration of roots into abstract event structure. This analysis supports a model of grammar where the semantics interprets the syntax, but the syntax operates autonomously from semantics: interpretation is determined ‘late’, just like phonological forms are.

Some algebraic clues towards a syntactic view on the Principles of Non-Contradiction and Excluded-Middle

This short paper just considers the possibility of a new view for posing and proving Aristotle’s Principles of Non-Contradiction and Excluded-Middle. It is done by means of their refutability, or deducibility, respectively, under Tarski’s Consequence Operators.

The Semantic View, If Plausible, Is Syntactic

Halvorson argues that the semantic view of theories leads to absurdities. Glymour shows how to inoculate the semantic view against Halvorson’s criticisms, namely, by making it into a syntactic view of theories. I argue that this modified semantic-syntactic view cannot do the philosophical work that the original “language-free” semantic view was supposed to do.

Rečenični fokus u engleskom i srpskom jeziku by Sabina Halupka-Rešetar (review)

Reviewed by: Rečenični fokus u engleskom i srpskom jeziku by Sabina Halupka-Rešetar Boban Arsenijević Sabina Halupka-Rešetar. Rečenični fokus u engleskom i srpskom jeziku. Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2011. 1. Introduction While information structure and discourse functions have been at the center of attention of functional and cognitive linguists since the earliest days of these approaches, these domains had to fight their way into more formal schools of grammar, especially generative syntactic frameworks. Recent publications show that they have fully succeeded, as very strong arguments have been provided for the views that the relevant notions do figure as syntactic features, and moreover that such features enter the syntactic generation already at the zero level—the Numeration (see especially Aboh 2010). Even approaches that dispense with information structure in narrow syntax still treat it syntactically at its interface with phonology and/or semantics (see, e.g., Neeleman et al. 2009). The book under review takes on the challenging task of presenting two intersecting oppositions: an empirical one between the structural effects of information structure in what is traditionally labeled a configurational versus a non-/discourse-configurational language and one that is rather methodological, between a functionalist discourse-centered theoretical paradigm and one that is formal and syntax-centered. More precisely, it investigates the syntax of focus in English and Serbian from the perspectives of the functional Prague school and of the generative Minimalist Program. These oppositions are assessed in parallel, each of them receiving its own descriptive and theoretical treatment, and contrastive and comparative perspectives are only taken sporadically, where they are particularly feasible for the discussion of the respective issues. Finally, a hybrid model is presented, analyzing the relevant data with a combined inventory of methodological tools and architectural views of grammar. The book is based on research that led to the author’s doctoral dissertation. Its practical disadvantage with respect to the potential readership is that it is written in Serbian. This review is an attempt to at [End Page 303] least partially compensate, by summarizing and discussing the contributions that it makes. The book is organized into six chapters. Alongside those aimed at introducing the problem and concluding the discussion (chapters 1 and 6, respectively), they include one that discusses the two types of approaches targeted (chapter 2), a chapter that presents the empirical situation and contours of the theoretical picture in each of the two languages (chapter 3), another one that makes a critical appraisal of the theoretical approaches discussed, pointing out their main problems and advantages (chapter 4), and finally a chapter that presents an original framework. This last combines the advantages of both the functional and the formal syntactic views of information structure and applies them to the two languages (chapter 5). There are also five appendices, which contain the questionnaires and other material used in the research experiments constituting the empirical basis of the book. The following section of this review describes the contents of the book, chapter by chapter. This is followed by a section that critically assesses these contents. 2. Contents of the Book The author explicitly announces in the Introduction chapter that she is a generative linguist. However, the presentation of several different functional approaches to the issues of information structuring that follows in chapter 2 is not only highly objective but also manifests a high level of understanding. It is along some dimensions even more exhaustive than the presentation of the generative syntactic theories. An overview of the treatment of information structure related issues before the 20th century is used to set the ground for a detailed overview of the Prague school, which is followed by a section presenting the views of Halliday’s Systemic Grammar. Although these sections are limited to a presentation rather than a discussion, it is already made clear here that viewing sentential structure in relation to its immediate discourse context is considered the most important property of these approaches. The next section presents the status of focus and discourse functions more generally within generative grammar. It also starts with a historical introduction, from Chomsky 1970 and 1976, through Jackendoff 1972 and Guéron 1980, to Minimalist...

Satellite-framed Latin vs. verb-framed Romance: A syntactic approach

Abstract In this paper we are interested in the relation between two facts accompanying the diachronic change from Latin to Romance within the domain of the morphological and argument-structural properties of the predicates expressing change. On the one hand, the element encoding the transition itself, which we call the Path, and the verb are realised as two distinct morphemes in Latin, but as one and the same morpheme in the daughter languages: in Talmy's (2000) terms, the former is a satellite-framed language and the latter are verb-framed languages. On the other hand, there is a whole range of argument-structural patterns which are found in Latin but not in Romance: unselected object contructions, complex directed motion constructions, productive locative alternation, etc. We show, within a syntactic view of argument structure and morphology, that both facts are intimately related. Furthermore, we provide data from Old Catalan showing an intermediate stage between the Latin satellite-framed system and the Romance verb-framed system.

Korean L2 Overpassivization of Unaccusative Verbs: Focusing on the Relative Effects of Linguistic and Cognitive Factors

This paper examines how linguistic and cognitive factors play roles in Korean learners` overpassivization with English unaccusative verbs. It has been reported in L2 literature that overpassivization with English unaccusative verbs are prevalent among Korean learners as well as learners from various L1 backgrounds (Balcom, 1997; Hwang, 1999, 2001; Ju, 2000; Oshita, 2000, 2001; Yip, 1994, 1995; Zobl, 1989). The causes of this phenomenon have been analyzed predominantly from the syntactic view by many researchers (Balcom, 1997; Oshita, 2000; Yip, 1994; Zobl, 1989). However, as different error patterns have been observed among different unaccusative verbs in terms of overpassivization in recent studies, SLA researchers have tried to relate this phenomenon to diverse factors (Croft, 1995; Ju, Montrul, 1999, 2000, 2001; No & Chung, 2006). In this regard, this study chose to examine the following three factors as major sources affecting overpassivization in the L2 literature: verb alternation, subject animacy, and context type representing not only linguistic but also cognitive fields. In addition to analyzing the main effects of these factors on Korean L2 learners` overpassivization, this study also attempts to examine if there exist any relative effects among them. A grammaticality judgment task was administered to a group of 70 Korean college participants. The results of the GJT showed that all of the three factors above had considerable effects on overpassivization with English unaccusative verbs by Korean L2 learners. When d­values of the three factors were calculated to compare their relative effects, the context type factor was found to have the strongest effect.

A note on generic quantification and the ontology of twins and bikini

Indefinite plural generic sentences in French have very limited distributions. In particular, in the absence of nominal modifiers, modals or constrastive prosody, the set of nominal predicates that can appear in subject position includes only so-called “inherently plural predicates” like twins. Pluralized sortal predicates like squares are banned unless modified. The paper builds on the assumption that generic indefinite statements are quantificational (contrary to plural definite statements in French) and that quantification requires “individuation”. It strives to explain why twins denotes a plural individual whereas squares does not. It considers various views that have used extensional tools to account for the ontology of the entity denoted by inherently plural predicates, and proposes an explanation based on the intensional notion of coordinated whole. The ontological view that is proposed complements the syntactic view that twins is a reciprocal predicate.

URUTAN KLAUSA DALAM KALIMAT MAJEMUK SUBORDINATIF BAHASA INDONESIA: KAJIAN DARI PERSPEKTIF SINTAKSIS DAN WACANA

This paper reports the research result on the order of clauses in subordinative compound sentences in Indonesian from the syntactic and discourse perspectives. There are two types of clause orders in the subordinative compound sentences, namely, (i) lower clauses on the right side of the main clauses, and (ii) lower clauses on the left side of the main clauses. From the syntactic view, lower clauses on the right side of the main clauses may occupy the syntactic functions of O, Complement, S, and Adverbial, while the lower clauses on the left of the main clauses only occupy the function of Adverbials. From the discourse level, lower clauses on the right side of the main clauses only contain information related to the information of the main clauses and not directly connected to the information of the preceding sentence. On the other hand, lower clauses on the left side of the main clauses contain textual presupposition, i.e containing repeated information from the preceding sentence Thus, lower clauses on the left side of the main clause contain old information. The result of the study also proves the truth of Ramsey hyphotesis (1987:385) stating that lower clauses preceding the main clauses have a broader scope as compared to the preceding uterance while those following the main clauses have a more localized scope, i.e, merely related to the main clause.

Meaning between sense and reference: Impacts of semiotics on philosophy of science

Modern philosophy of science was characterized as an analysis of the language of science based on mathematical logic. The formalistic perspective regarding mathematics and logic (which were conceived as linguistic constructions devoid of meaning) had to be corrected when applied to empirical theories. These were presented as formal system to which their intended meaning is granted through an interpretation (reflecting the fact that the initial syntactic view had been integrated in mathematical logic by the elaboration of semantics). But what is the meaning of a linguistic expression? The semantics of mathematical logic (model theory) identifies meaning with the referents of the expression. However, Frege had recovered an ancient distinction specifying that sense and reference are two different constituents of meaning, and the identification of meaning with sense has become widespread in the philosophy of language. Both positions are one-sided and entail difficulties that have affected the analytical philosophy of science. The aim of this paper is to recover the importance of a three level semantics (sign-sense-reference) and discuss other related notions (such as intension-extension), by pointing out the operational and not just linguistic or mental nature of reference. This has also consequences regarding the ontological purport of the different sciences.