Syntactic Differences Research Articles

A Review on Urdu Language Parsing

Natural Language Processing is the multidisciplinary area of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Computational Linguistic for processing human language automatically. It involves understanding and processing of human language. The way through which we share our contents or feelings have always great importance in understanding and processing of language. Parsing is the most suited approach in identifying and scanning what the available sentences expressed? Parsing is the process in which syntactic structure of sentence is identified using grammatical tags. The syntactically correct sentence structure is achieved by assigning grammatical labels to its constituents using lexicon and syntactic rules. Phrase and Dependency are two main structure formalisms for parsing natural language sentences. The growing use of web 2.0 has produced novel research challenges as people from different geographical areas are using this channel and sharing contents in their native languages. Urdu is one of such free word order native language which is widely shared over social media sites but identification and summarization of Urdu sentences is challenging task. In this review paper we present an overview to recent work in parsing of fixed order (i.e. English) and free word order languages (i.e Urdu) in order to reveal the most suited method for Urdu Language Parsing. This survey explored that dependency parsing is more appropriate for Urdu and other free word order languages and parsers of English language are not useful in parsing Urdu sentence due to its morphological, syntactical and grammatical differences.

LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC CONGRUENCY IN L2 PREDICTIVE GENDER PROCESSING

This article investigates how lexical and syntactic differences in L1 and L2 grammatical gender affect L2 predictive gender processing. In a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, 24 L1 Russian adult learners and 15 native speakers of German were tested. Both Russian and German have three gender classes. Yet, they differ in lexical congruency, that is, whether a noun (“house”) is assigned to the same or a different gender class. Further, gender is syntactically realized on postnominal suffixes in Russian but on prenominal articles in German. For adjectives, both Russian and German mark gender on suffixes. In predictive gender processing, we find interactions of proficiency and congruency for gender-marked articles. Advanced L2 learners show nativelike gender prediction throughout. High-intermediate learners display asymmetries according to syntactic and lexical congruency. Predictive gender processing obtains for all nouns in the (syntactically congruent) adjective condition, yet only for lexically congruent nouns in the (syntactically incongruent) article condition.

Die umbrische Anordnung subra. spahmu: Wege der Forschung

The paper analyses the Umbrian formula subra. spah(a)mu (mediopassive) / subra. spahatu (active) and the various interpretations which have been suggested for it in past research. The investigation of previous work on subra. spahmu shows that, since the beginning of the 20th century, the morphological difference between mediopassive and active forms of the imperative II has been considered negligible, an arbitrary hypothesis first expressed by Buck. Earlier research, however, e.g. Aufrecht and Kirchhoff’s groundbreaking monograph or Bücheler's synthesis on the Iguvine Tables, observed, more cautiously, that a syntactic and semantic difference between both diatheses must exist, even if this difference was difficult to determine. New comparisons within the Umbrian corpus provide an explanation for this opposition and show that the founders of Umbrian studies, whose work did not yet rely on a rigid scientific tradition, were correct in supposing that both variants of the formula subra. spahmu had to be interpreted in different ways.

Noun Countability; Count Nouns and Non-count Nouns, What are the Syntactic Differences Between them?

Words that function as the subjects of verbs, objects of verbs or prepositions and which can have a plural form and possessive ending are known as nouns. They are described as referring to persons, places, things, states, or qualities and might also be used as an attributive modifier. In this paper, classes and subclasses of nouns shall be presented, then, noun countability branching into count and non-count nous shall be discussed. A number of present examples illustrating differences between count and non-count nouns and this includes determiner-head-co-occurrence restrictions of number, subject-verb agreement, in addition to some exceptions to this agreement rule shall be discussed. Also, the lexically inherent number in nouns and how inherently plural nouns are classified in terms of (+/- count) are illustrated. This research will discuss partitive construction of count and non-count nouns, nouns as attributive modifier and, finally, conclude with the fact that there are syntactic difference between count and non-count in the English Language.

A Study on the Syntactic Differences of Why and How come

A Study on the Syntactic Differences of Why and How come

Apex: automatic programming assignment error explanation

This paper presents Apex, a system that can automatically generate explanations for programming assignment bugs, regarding where the bugs are and how the root causes led to the runtime failures. It works by comparing the passing execution of a correct implementation (provided by the instructor) and the failing execution of the buggy implementation (submitted by the student). The technique overcomes a number of technical challenges caused by syntactic and semantic differences of the two implementations. It collects the symbolic traces of the executions and matches assignment statements in the two execution traces by reasoning about symbolic equivalence. It then matches predicates by aligning the control dependences of the matched assignment statements, avoiding direct matching of path conditions which are usually quite different. Our evaluation shows that Apex is every effective for 205 buggy real world student submissions of 4 programming assignments, and a set of 15 programming assignment type of buggy programs collected from stackoverflow.com, precisely pinpointing the root causes and capturing the causality for 94.5% of them. The evaluation on a standard benchmark set with over 700 student bugs shows similar results. A user study in the classroom shows that Apex has substantially improved student productivity.

Greater Left Inferior Frontal Activation for SVO than VOS during Sentence Comprehension in Kaqchikel.

Cortical activations during the processing of Kaqchikel transitive sentences with canonical and non-canonical word orders were investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Kaqchikel is an endangered Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. The word order in this language is relatively flexible. We observed higher cortical activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus for sentences with the subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, as compared to sentences with the verb-object-subject (VOS) word order, suggesting that Kaqchikel sentences are easier to process when they have the VOS order than when they have the SVO order. This supports the traditional analysis of Mayan word order: the syntactically simplest word order of transitive sentences in Mayan languages, including Kaqchikel, is VOS. More importantly, the results revealed that the subject-before-object word order preference in sentence comprehension, previously observed in other languages, might not reflect a universal aspect of human languages. Rather, processing preference may be language-specific to some extent, reflecting syntactic differences in individual languages.

Syntactic diacrisis in a rigid and a free word order language

The paper is concerned with some syntactic consequences of Polish being a synthetic language with a rich system of case inflections and English lacking morphological case (or having a residual form of it). It will be argued that this typologically significant grammatical difference provides an essential premise in a unified explanation for the clustering of a number of syntactic differences between the two languages.The argument is based on a set of functionally motivated constraints on grammatical representations. The constraints are proposed as a part of a theory of “syntactic diacrisis” and are claimed to result from a) the general nature of language as a semiotic system, and b) the specific properties of the human parsing mechanism.The paper consists of three sections. The first contains a brief discussion of the role and place of functional explanations in syntax and introduces the concept of a “parser’s requirement on structure” (PROS).The second section introduces and justifies some basic principles of “syntactic diacrisis”.The third focuses on several syntactic differences between English and Polish and shows how they could all be explained by reference to the interplay of the functional (theory of diacrisis)and grammatical factors.

Semantic code browsing

AbstractProgrammers currently enjoy access to a very high number of code repositories and libraries of ever increasing size. The ensuing potential for reuse is however hampered by the fact that searching within all this code becomes an increasingly difficult task. Most code search engines are based on syntactic techniques such as signature matching or keyword extraction. However, these techniques are inaccurate (because they basically rely on documentation) and at the same time do not offer very expressive code query languages. We propose a novel approach that focuses on querying for semantic characteristics of code obtained automatically from the code itself. Program units are pre-processed using static analysis techniques, based on abstract interpretation, obtaining safe semantic approximations. A novel, assertion-based code query language is used to express desired semantic characteristics of the code as partial specifications. Relevant code is found by comparing such partial specifications with the inferred semantics for program elements. Our approach is fully automatic and does not rely on user annotations or documentation. It is more powerful and flexible than signature matching because it is parametric on the abstract domain and properties, and does not require type definitions. Also, it reasons with relations between properties, such as implication and abstraction, rather than just equality. It is also more resilient to syntactic code differences. We describe the approach and report on a prototype implementation within the Ciao system.

A framework for relating syntactic and semantic model differences

Model differencing is an important activity in model-based development processes. Differences need to be detected, analyzed, and understood to evolve systems and explore alternatives. Two distinct approaches have been studied in the literature: syntactic differencing, which compares the concrete or abstract syntax of models, and semantic differencing, which compares models in terms of their meaning. Syntactic differencing identifies change operations that transform the syntactical representation of one model to the syntactical representation of the other. However, it does not explain their impact on the meaning of the model. Semantic model differencing is independent of syntactic changes and presents differences as elements in the semantics of one model but not the other. However, it does not reveal the syntactic changes causing these semantic differences. We define Diffuse, a language-independent, abstract framework, which relates syntactic change operations and semantic difference witnesses. We formalize fundamental relations of necessary, exhibiting, and sufficient sets of change operations and analyze their properties. We further demonstrate concrete instances of the Diffuse framework for three different popular modeling languages, namely class diagrams, activity diagrams, and feature models. The Diffuse framework provides a novel foundation for combining syntactic and semantic differencing.

Statistics and semantics in the acquisition of Spanish word order: Testing two accounts of the retreat from locative overgeneralization errors

AbstractNative speakers of Spanish (children aged 6–7, 10–11 and adults) rated grammatical and ungrammatical ground- and figure-locative sentences with high frequency, low frequency and novel verbs (e. g.,Lisallenó/forró/nupóla caja con papel; *Lisallenó/forró/nupópapel en la caja, ‘Lisa filled/lined/nupped the box with paper’; ‘Lisa filled/lined/nupped paper into the box’) using a 5-point scale. Echoing the findings of a previous English study (a language with some important syntactic differences relevant to the locative), participants rated errors as least acceptable with high frequency verbs, more acceptable with low frequency verbs, and most acceptable with novel verbs, suggesting that learners retreat from error using statistically-based learning mechanisms regardless of the target language. In support of the semantic verb class hypothesis, adults showed evidence of using the meanings assigned to novel verbs to determine the locative constructions in which they can and cannot appear. However, unlike in the previous English study, the child groups did not. We conclude that the more flexible word order exhibited by Spanish, as compared to English, may make these types of regularities more difficult to discern.

Syntactic and pragmatic transfer effects in reported-speech constructions in three contact varieties of English influenced by Afrikaans

Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) is investigated by various research traditions that examine language contact varieties. This article presents an analysis of syntactic and pragmatic effects of CLI in three corpora of published, written varieties of English influenced by contact with Afrikaans: native White South African English, English second-language writing by Afrikaans speakers, and texts translated from Afrikaans into English. These varieties differ in the strength of bilingual activation as well as in different sociocognitive conditions of production. Three related reported-speech constructions that exhibit syntactic and pragmatic similarities and differences are analysed, to determine how bilingual activation and sociocognitive factors interact with CLI. The findings indicate that overt syntactic transfer is almost completely absent in the language of highly proficient bilinguals, but covert syntactic transfer takes place where an Afrikaans construction corresponds to only one of two variants available to native varieties of English. Extensive evidence of covert pragmatic transfer is found across various registers. The cognitive strain associated with high levels of bilingual activation overrides syntactic and pragmatic CLI for one construction investigated, in favour of a consistent preference for the explicit and more formal variant. This effect is further enhanced by the selection of the more formal variant during the process of post-production editing.

Entropy in Different Text Types

The present investigation is an attempt to investigate how the unique linguistic profile of different text types can be reflected in their respective entropy characteristics. With samples from the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese and the Freiburg–Brown corpus of American English , the research investigates entropy performances in two dimensions: the relative entropy of words and their part-of-speech (POS) on different sentential positions, and entropy of aspect markers. Our research yields the following results: First, it shows a strikingly similar distribution pattern in Chinese and English concerning the relative entropy of word-forms and POS-forms on different sentential positions. The relative entropy of word-forms in descending order yields: news > essays > official > academic > fiction, and the POS-forms yields: fiction > essays > news > academic > official. The relative entropy of POS-forms may be a more reliable indicator of syntactical differences, which helps to distinguish dichotomous ‘narrative vs. expository’ text types in both Chinese and English. Second, there exists a cross-linguistic difference concerning entropy of aspect markers, namely, Chinese displays higher relative entropy than English. This indicates that aspect-marking in terms of variation is more prominent in Chinese grammar than in English. The ‘narrative vs. expository distinction’ is also identified by entropy of aspect markers in both Chinese and English, though more obviously in Chinese.

The effect of syntactic frequency on sentence comprehension in standard Indonesian Broca’s aphasia

ABSTRACTBackground: Comprehension of reversible sentences that have derived word order has often been reported as impaired in agrammatic aphasia. Most accounts of this phenomenon refer to the syntactic differences between derived and base word order of the arguments. However, it has been demonstrated that in agrammatic spontaneous speech in standard Indonesian (SI) passives are produced at a rate that is proportional to that of healthy speakers. The main difference between passives in SI and in other languages is the frequency with which passives are used: passives in SI are highly frequent. The high frequency can be explained by the fact that passives are used for politeness reasons, saliency of the passive morphology, earlier acquisition, and formal simplicity of the passive structure.Aims: The purpose of the current study is to investigate comprehension of the passive as a derived structure in SI and the influence of frequency.Methods & Procedures: A sentence-to-picture matching task was developed to test four reversible sentence types (active, passive, subject cleft and object cleft). There are three variables that are of interest, that is, word order, embedding and relative frequency of structures. Eleven agrammatic speakers classified as suffering from Broca’s aphasia were tested.Outcomes & Results: The passive sentences were comprehended equally well as the active sentences. Embedding had limited effects: subject clefts were understood as well as actives and passives. Object clefts, however, were understood poorly and significantly worse than the three other sentence types.Conclusions: The sentence comprehension deficit pattern shown in SI individuals with Broca’s aphasia introduces frequency of a syntactic structure as an additional factor to consider. Whether frequency or pragmatic constraints protects against erosion of the passive in Broca’s aphasia in SI remains an open question.

Syntactic differences of adverbials and attributives in Chinese-English code-switching

Based on a Chinese-English code-mixed treebank, this paper investigates the effect of code-switching on dependency distance and dependency direction of two major grammatical relations (adverbials and attributives). It was found that (1) mixed dependencies generally present longer dependency distances than monolingual ones, especially the adverbial dependencies with preposition or adverb dependents and attributive dependencies with pronoun dependents; (2) mixed adverbial dependencies with English verb heads and Chinese adverb and noun dependents and mixed attributive dependencies with Chinese noun heads and English noun dependents present shorter dependency distances than monolingual ones; (3) word order differences are largely found in adverbial dependencies with adverb, noun or preposition dependents and potentially in attributives with preposition dependents. These findings suggest that: (1) code-switching is constrained by the grammars involved in it; (2) the syntactic properties of dependents mainly determine the word order of adverbials and attributives.

How are functionally similar code clones syntactically different? An empirical study and a benchmark

Background. Today, redundancy in source code, so-called “clones” caused by copy&paste can be found reliably using clone detection tools. Redundancy can arise also independently, however, not caused by copy&paste. At present, it is not clear how onlyfunctionally similar clones(FSC) differ from clones created by copy&paste. Our aim is to understand and categorise the syntactical differences in FSCs that distinguish them from copy&paste clones in a way that helps clone detection research.Methods. We conducted an experiment using known functionally similar programs in Java and C from coding contests. We analysed syntactic similarity with traditional detection tools and explored whether concolic clone detection can go beyond syntax. We ran all tools on 2,800 programs and manually categorised the differences in a random sample of 70 program pairs.Results. We found no FSCs where complete files were syntactically similar. We could detect a syntactic similarity in a part of the files in <16% of the program pairs. Concolic detection found 1 of the FSCs. The differences between program pairs were in the categories algorithm, data structure, OO design, I/O and libraries. We selected 58 pairs for an openly accessible benchmark representing these categories.Discussion. The majority of differences between functionally similar clones are beyond the capabilities of current clone detection approaches. Yet, our benchmark can help to drive further clone detection research.

A Comparative Study of Pound’s and Lu Xun’s Syntactic Experiments

<p>The first half of 20th century saw two translators coming from the west and east respectively choose the same translation strategy to carry out their syntactic experiments in their translation practice. The two renowned translators are Ezra Pound and Lu Xun. Staying in different historical contexts and encountered with the dominant target poetics they were dissatisfied with, both Pound and Lu Xun attempted to fulfill their syntactic experiments by signifying the syntactic differences of the source texts through the use of foreignization strategy. Although attracting many negative comments because of the unfluent translation resulting from them, Pound’ and Lu Xun’ syntactic experiments exert great influence on the development of their target languages, further contributing a lot to the development of their target culture. This paper will make a comparative study of Pound’s and Lu Xun’s syntactic experiments by exploring their motives, elaborating their translation principles and strategies, and analyzing their influence and significance.</p>

Paysage linguistique : reflet d'une réalité bilingue à Moncton, Nouveau-Brunswick, Canada

The linguistic landscape of Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, seems particularly interesting because Moncton is situated at the edge of the Acadian French-speaking territory. It therefore represents a mixed region where French- and English-speaking inhabitants share space. Near Moncton lies Dieppe, a community with 74% of French-speaking inhabitants, but also Riverview, where 80% of the population is English-speaking. Both cultures collide in downtown Moncton. The results of this study show that even though English is clearly the dominant language, apparently existing as an independent culture, as seen in unilingual signs and symbols, French occupies its own, yet shared, space in this linguistic landscape. There is a surprising interaction between English and French, visible in signs that mix both languages by using syntactic differences, which seems to indicate that the inhabitants of Moncton are used to both languages and are relatively at ease with it.

A MINIMALIST ANALYSIS OF TWO TYPES OF ENGLISH RIGHT NODE RAISING CONSTRUCTIONS

This article builds on Citko’s (2005) Parallel Merger (PM) analysis of Right Node Raising (RNR) constructions in English, and argues that, unlike standard RNR (SRNR) constructions, focused RNR (FRNR) constructions, in which the sentence-final element gains phonologically and semantically focal interpretation, are derived through two kinds of discourse-related movements in the phase-based cartographic CP configuration. I will demonstrate that the proposed analysis can straightforwardly account for many of the syntactic differences between these two types of RNR constructions.

Finding available services in TOSCA-compliant clouds

The OASIS TOSCA specification aims at enhancing the portability of cloud applications by defining a language to describe and manage them across heterogeneous clouds. A service template is defined as an orchestration of typed nodes, which can be instantiated by matching other service templates. In this paper, we define and implement the notions of exact and plug-in matching between TOSCA service templates and node types. We then define two other types of matching (flexible and white-box), each permitting to ignore larger sets of non-relevant syntactic differences when type-checking service templates with respect to node types. The paper also describes how a service template S that plug-in, flexibly, or white-box matches a node type N can be suitably adapted so as to exactly match N.