Thematic Hierarchy Research Articles

On the Causative/Anti-Causative Alternation as Principle of Affix Ordering in the Light of the Mirror Principle, the Lexical Integrity Principle and the Distributed Morphology

This contribution is organized as follows: in section 1, I propose a formulation of the Mirror Principle (MP) based on syntactic features; the examples will be taken from Causatives and Anti-Causatives that are derived by affixes (in Russian, Czech, Polish, German, English as compared to Japanese and Chichewa) by head-to-head movement. In section 2, I review some basic facts in support of a syntactic approach to Merge of Causatives and Anti-Causatives, proposing that theta roles are also syntactic Features that merge functional affixes with their stems in a well-defined way. I first try to give some external evidence in showing that Causatives and Anti-Causatives obey a principle of thematic hierarchy early postulated in generative literature by Jackendoff (1972; 43), and later reformulated in terms of argument-structure-ordering principle by Grimshaw (1990:chapter 2). Crucial for my paper is the working hypothesis that every syntactic theory which tries to capture the data not only descriptively but also explanatively should descend from three levels of syntactic representation: a-structure where the relation between predicate and its arguments (and adjuncts) takes place, thematic structure where the theta-roles are assigned to their arguments, and event structure, which decides about the aspectual distribution and division of events.

The thematic hierarchy in sentence comprehension: A study on the interaction between verb class and word order in Spanish.

Linking is the theory that captures the mapping of the semantic roles of lexical arguments to the syntactic functions of the phrases that realize them. At the sentence level, linking allows us to understand "who did what to whom" in an event. In Spanish, linking has been shown to interact with word order, verb class, and case marking. The current study aims to provide the first piece of experimental evidence about the interplay between word order and verb type in Spanish. We achieve this by adopting role and reference grammar and the extended argument dependency model. Two different types of clauses were examined in a self-paced reading task: clauses with object-experiencer psychological verbs and activity verbs. These types of verbs differ in the way that their syntactic and semantic structures are linked, and thus they provide interesting evidence on how information that belongs to the syntax-semantics interface might influence the predictive and integrative processes of sentence comprehension with alternative word orders. Results indicate that in Spanish, comprehension and processing speed is enhanced when the order of the constituents in the sentence mirrors their ranking on a semantic hierarchy that encodes a verb's lexical semantics. Moreover, results show that during online comprehension, predictive mechanisms based on argument hierarchization are used rapidly to inform the processing system. Our findings corroborate already existing cross-linguistic evidence on the issue and are briefly discussed in the light of other sentence-processing models.

Structure building and thematic constraints in Bantu inversion constructions

Bantu inversion constructions include locative inversion, patient inversion (also called subject–object reversal), semantic locative inversion and instrument inversion. The constructions show a high level of cross-linguistic variation, but also a core of invariant shared morphosyntactic and information structural properties. These include: that the preverbal position is filled by a non-agent NP triggering verbal agreement, that the agent follows the verb obligatorily, that object marking is disallowed, and that the preverbal NP is more topical, and the postverbal NP more focal. While previous analyses have tended to concentrate on one inversion type, the present paper develops a uniform analysis of Bantu inversion constructions. Adopting a Dynamic Syntax perspective, we show how the constructions share basic aspects of structure building and semantic representation. In our analysis, cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of inversion constructions result from unrelated parameters of variation, as well as from thematic constraints related to the thematic hierarchy. With some modification, the analysis can also be extended to passives.

Reciprocal Pronouns Binding within Psych-verb Constructions

This paper aims at giving an analysis of certain syntactic peculiarities of reciprocal pronouns within verbs of psychological state, commonly known as psych-verbs. The analysis reveal that psych-verbs constructions have a peculiar property in that the binding conditions of reciprocal pronouns are satisfied in Experiencer-Subject (ES) psych-verbs constructions but are not in the Experiencer-Object (EO) at the surface level; though the latter constructions are grammatical. However, the paper argues that though binding conditions are not satisfied in EO psych-verb constructions at the surface level, they are satisfied in the deep structure (D-structure) construction wherein the reciprocal pronoun, in the theme argument, is bound by a c-commanding Experiencer argument. By so doing, it satisfies binding condition A which holds that a reciprocal pronoun must be bound by an appropriate c-command antecedent. This analysis shows that reciprocal binding in Experiencer-Object psych-verb constructions, at the D-structure, does not reflect the linear order in the thematic hierarchy as proposed by Grimshaw (1990) and the psych-verb in EO D-structure construction is construed as one with two internal arguments. Keywords: antecedent, binding theory, D-structure, psych-verb, reciprocal pronoun, S-structure

Thematic Hierarchy and Derivational Economy

What thematic hierarchy is has been controversial, and whether it should exist as a theoretical construct has been questioned. This work shows that if thematic hierarchy is represented structurally as layers of projections, it helps to account for some newly observed constraints on object deletion in Chinese. Chinese exhibits much flexibility in the number and type of arguments that can occur with verbs, and subjects and objects seem to be interchangeable in many cases. However, it is shown that constraints can be found amid the great flexibility in argument structure-object deletion is not possible in the cases not following thematic hierarchy, although subject deletion is still possible. Moreover, object deletion is unacceptable in the cases where arguments are added syntactically. Again, subjects can be deleted in such constructions. These generalizations will be captured by the aforementioned layers of projections reflecting thematic hierarchy and a notion of derivational economy-simpler structures are favored when choices are available.

An ERP approach to thematic hierarchies regarding grammatical objects of the Chinese verb Chi (eat)

This article investigates the Chinese verb chi ‘to eat’, which licenses a variety of direct objects with the semantic roles Patient, Means, Source, Locative, and Instrument, respectively. An ERP test with Chinese native speakers reveals that N400 wave amplitudes decrease along the cline Instrument>Locative>Source>Means>Patient. Patient objects denoting food represent the default case and require the lowest amount of cognitive effort in their interpretation in comparison to non-Patients. In contrast, the roles Means, Source, Locative and Instrument are literally incongruent with chi and require more complex inferencing processes than Patient objects in order to be interpreted coherently. We propose that non-Patient roles are understood metonymically as Patients with the meaning ‘food’. The metonymic inferences involved in the interpretation of non-Patients are reflected in their stronger N400 effects in comparison to Patients. The results of our experiment and our conceptual analysis support Dowty’s theory of proto-roles, in particular the notion of Proto-Patient.

Processing correlates of verb typologies: Investigating internal structure and argument realization

The paper investigates the processing correlates of core verb features used to generate verb typologies. The aim was to contrast the effects of verb internal structure (as in semantic/conceptual features e.g., Jackendoff [1991]; Levin and Rappaport Hovav [2005]) with argument structure and argument realization in sentence processing. To this end, we designed a self-paced reading task with internal structure and argument realization as variables in verb processing. Results showed that absence of a prototypical Agent or mismatch between thematic hierarchies and argument realization yields longer processing times possibly due to some form of thematic reanalysis or as a reaction to a “surprise” effect by the human processor while detecting a non-expected thematic assignment. No effects of verb internal structure were found. We take this result as an indication that argument structure and argument realization play an important role in verb recognition during sentence processing. We further propose that this reflects their prominent role in verb representation and we suggest that this finding could give additional support to verb classifications based on verb argument structure features compared to those based on internal structure.

Construction of Community Web Directories based on Web usage Data

This paper support the concept of a community Web directory, as a Web directory that is constructed according to the needs and interests of particular user communities. Furthermore, it presents the complete method for the construction of such directories by using web usage data. User community models take the form of thematic hierarchies and are constructed by employing clustering approach. We applied our methodology to the ODP directory and also to an artificial Web directory, which was generated by clustering Web pages that appear in the access log of an Internet Service Provider. For the discovery of the community models, we introduced a new criterion that combines a priori thematic informativeness of the Web directory categories with the level of interest observed in the usage data. In this context, we introduced and evaluated new clustering method. We have tested the methodology using access log files which are collected from the proxy servers of an Internet Service Provider and provided results that indicates the usability of the community Web directories. The proposed clustering methodology is evaluated both on a specialized artificial and a community Web directory, indicating its value to the user of the web.

Argument reduction and anaphora resolution: the case of xiang−verbs in Mandarin Chinese

In this paper, I discuss argument reduction and anaphora resolution of xiang−verbs in Mandarin Chinese. When xiang is prefixed to a verbal stem, one of the arguments of the verbal stem is absorbed, xiang functions as an anaphor replacing the absorbed argument and hence requires an antecedent. I argue that the argument reduction of xiang−verbs depends on the Thematic Role Hierarchy (Bresnan and Kanerva, Language 70:72–131, 1989; Bresnan, Linguistic Inq 20(1):10–50, 1993): the second highest role on the argument structure of a verbal stem to which xiang is attached, is absorbed. For anaphora resolution, I propose a non-subject constraint, Available Candidates for xiang, which includes a principle utilizing attachment sites of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (for short, SDRT) to determine a set of candidates for the antecedent to xiang a last resort to include the speaker and addressee(s) in the set when there is no available candidate, and a pragmatic principle to select the most fitting one from the set of candidates to be the antecedent to xiang. And, I propose an SDRT account for the phenomena observed. I also discuss the reciprocity of xiang-verbs and suggest that reciprocal xiang-verbs and non-reciprocal xiang-verbs have the same origin. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the SDRT account argued in this paper can be extended to zero anaphora resolution (with some modification) and is, at least to a certain degree, applicable to the resolution of the third person singular anaphor ta ‘he/she’.

The Role of Topicality in Subject Selection

The problem of subject selection is one of the frequently discussed topics concerning the lexical semantics-syntax interface. In the present article we have critically reviewed three representative approaches: the thematic hierarchy approach, Randall`s (2010) lexical decomposition approach, and Dowty`s proto-role approach. Dowty`s (1991) analysis seems to have greater explanatory power than the other two, but it is far from satisfactory in that it cannot account for subject selection in sentences containing symmetrical predicates or location subject predicates. Building upon the observations by Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2005), Wunderlich (2006), and Dowty (2000), we have claimed that topicality of an argument plays a crucial role in subject selection when the two coarguments have (almost) the same number of proto-role entailments and that the semantic idiosyncrasies of the location subject sentence are attributable to the topical nature of its subject, not to the polysemous nature of the predicate, as Dowty (2000) claims.

Personalizing Web Directories with the Aid of Web Usage Data

This paper presents a knowledge discovery framework for the construction of Community Web Directories, a concept that we introduced in our recent work, applying personalization to Web directories. In this context, the Web directory is viewed as a thematic hierarchy and personalization is realized by constructing user community models on the basis of usage data. In contrast to most of the work on Web usage mining, the usage data that are analyzed here correspond to user navigation throughout the Web, rather than a particular Web site, exhibiting as a result a high degree of thematic diversity. For modeling the user communities, we introduce a novel methodology that combines the users' browsing behavior with thematic information from the Web directories. Following this methodology, we enhance the clustering and probabilistic approaches presented in previous work and also present a new algorithm that combines these two approaches. The resulting community models take the form of Community Web Directories. The proposed personalization methodology is evaluated both on a specialized artificial and a general-purpose Web directory, indicating its potential value to the Web user. The experiments also assess the effectiveness of the different machine learning techniques on the task.

Introduzindo e problematizando papéis temáticos e hierarquias temáticas: uma questão de interfaces

The thematic roles and thematic hierarchies have been utilized largely in linguistic theory which focus on argument realization. In this work, our specific aims are (a) to introduce and to discuss the thematic roles and the thematic hierarchies; and (b) to demonstrate that the utilization of notion of the thematic roles and the thematic hierarchies reflects the interface between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. In order to prove this idea, we will make a revision of literature about thematic roles, focusing the controversial questions of this theory. At the end, we will come to two conclusions: (i) the thematic roles can not be the primitives to argument realization, but even can be largely utilized in linguistic descriptions as elements of primary description of language; e (ii) the thematic hierarchies reflect generalizations about argument realizations governs by interfaces between semantics, syntax and informational structure.

Passive, locative inversion in Ndebele and the unaccusative hypothesis

This article discusses the Ndebele passive derivation using the Lexical Mapping Theory (henceforth LMT). Using LMT the article discusses the syntactic properties of the passive sentence in Ndebele. The article demonstrates that the architecture of LMT is largely applicable to the Ndebele language. The article further demonstrates that Ndebele is unique by allowing active transitive verbs to undergo locative inversion. It is this uniqueness in the violation of the thematic hierarchy that persuades us to agree with Harford's (1990) proposal that locative inversion may be formulated without any contextual restriction at all. Blevins' (2003) argument is also tested, and it is our conclusion that Ndebele data presents a fresh challenge to the Unaccusative Hypothesis (henceforth UH) even after Blevins' (2003) attempt to sharpen the distinction between passives and impersonals. In brief, the article demonstrates that whereas LMT is a theory that is largely applicable to and can account for the syntactic properties of the passive sentence in Ndebele, Ndebele data presents complications for the theory due to the theory's restrictive nature.

Pour un traitement unitaire de l’assignation du datif en français

The aim of this paper is to propose a unified account of dative assignment for both verbs and adjectives in French. We will show that both types of predicates assign dative case to their second internal argument, provided that this argument is situated in a higher position in the thematic hierarchy than the first internal argument. This hypothesis, which considers the dative in French as a structural rather than a semantic case, can easily account for all three-argument verbs, for most two-argument verbs and even for adjunct datives. As for the adjectival predicates, we will show that only ergative adjectives, whose first argument is an internal argument, can assign dative to their second internal argument. The few exceptions to this hypothesis can be explained by the fact that, although the dative is not a semantic case, it is associated with certain semantic roles, given that its semantic role is situated in the thematic hierarchy between the role of the external argument and the role of the first internal argument.

Thematic roles in Alzheimer's disease: Hierarchy violations in psychological predicates

The nature of the verb deficit in Alzheimer's disease (AD) was investigated with a special focus on thematic-role assignment, employing verbs whose argument realization follows canonical thematic hierarchy, with Agent and Theme as main roles (e.g., The hunter killed the deer), and verbs whose argument realization deviates from canonical hierarchy, such as psych verbs (e.g., fear, frighten). Subject- Experiencer verbs (e.g., fear) do not assign an Agent role to the subject position of the sentence, but instead assign the role of Experiencer to that position. Object- Experiencer verbs (e.g., frighten) deviate from canonical thematic hierarchy in two ways. Like fear verbs, the frighten verbs do not assign the role of Agent. Moreover, they assign the role of Theme to the subject position and the role of Experiencer to the object position, thus resulting in the non-canonical Theme < Experiencer argument realization. Ten AD patients, 11 matched elderly controls, and 49 young controls performed a sentence completion task in which they had to choose a verb that would render the sentence grammatical and meaningful. AD patients showed no problems with canonical structures, but performed worse than controls in psych verb sentences, demonstrating greater difficulty with object- Experiencer sentences. Results suggest that AD patients may have an impairment in more fine-grained aspects of verb-semantic representation, such as thematic roles.

Modeling and manipulating the structure of hierarchical schemas for the web

The Semantic Web is the next step of the current Web where information will become more machine-understandable to support effective data discovery and integration. Hierarchical schemas, either in the form of tree-like structures (e.g., DTDs, XML schemas), or in the form of hierarchies on a category/subcategory basis (e.g., thematic hierarchies of portal catalogs), play an important role in this task. They are used to enrich semantically the available information. Up to now, hierarchical schemas have been treated rather as sets of individual elements, acting as semantic guides for browsing or querying data. Under that view, queries like “find the part of a portal catalog which is not present in another catalog” can be answered only in a procedural way, specifying which nodes to select and how to get them. For this reason, we argue that hierarchical schemas should be treated as full-fledged objects so as to allow for their manipulation. This work proposes models and operators to manipulate the structural information of hierarchies, considering them as first-class citizens. First, we explore the algebraic properties of trees representing hierarchies, and define a lattice algebraic structure on them. Then, turning this structure into a boolean algebra, we present the operators S-union, S-intersection and S-difference to support structural manipulation of hierarchies. These operators have certain algebraic properties to provide clear semantics and assist the transformation, simplification and optimization of sequences of operations using laws similar to those of set theory. Also, we identify the conditions under which this framework is applicable. Finally, we demonstrate an application of our framework for manipulating hierarchical schemas on tree-like hierarchies encoded as RDF/s files.

Captain Nemo: A metasearch engine with personalized hierarchical search space

Personalization of search has gained a lot of publicity the last years. Personalization features in search and metasearch engines are a follow-up to the research done. On the other hand, text categorization methods have been successfully applied to document collections. Specifically, text categorization methods can support the task of classifying Web content in thematic hierarchies. Combining these two research fields, we have developed Captain Nemo, a fully-functional metasearch engine with personalized hierarchical search spaces. Captain Nemo, retrieves and presents search results according to personalized retrieval models and presentation styles. Here, we present the hierarchical Web page classification approach newly adopted. Captain Nemo Jets users define a hierarchy of topics of interest. Search results are automatically classified into the hierarchy, exploiting hierarchical k-Nearest Neighbor classification techniques. The user study conducted demonstrates the effectiveness of our metasearch engine

Posições argumentais e propriedades semânticas

Este artigo apresenta uma diferente abordagem para as regras de projeção da estrutura semântica conceitual sobre a estrutura sintática. A abordagem é diferente no que diz respeito à utilização de somente quatro propriedades semânticas - desencadeador, afetado, estativo, controle - e suas combinações para a elaboração dessas regras de projeção, também conhecidas como Princípio da Hierarquia Temática. Além disso, as regras não são elaboradas com papéis temáticos, como o usual na literatura. Diferentemente de outras propostas, a localização de um argumento em determinada posição sintática se deve à propriedade que compõe o papel temático (e não pelo papel temático "per se"). Papéis temáticos são definidos como um grupo de propriedades atribuídas a um determinado argumento a partir dos acarretamentos estabelecidos por toda a proposição em que esse argumento encontra-se.

Antisymmetry and Word Order in Serial Constructions

Strict head-final surface order derives from underlying left-headedness in Ijo, a Niger-Congo language of Nigeria. A word order anomaly in Ijo SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS (SVCs) strongly suggests this, and left-to-right asymmetric c-command among internal arguments of SVCs confirms it. The anomaly is universal among surface right-headed languages with SVCs, indicating that deep left-headedness is universal, as antisymmetry theory predicts (Kayne 1994). Assuming complements are in Specs, and that a light verb v selects every VP (Chomsky 1999), I derive VOVO from OVOV by two instances of V-to-v movement. I argue for a nonuniform approach to SVCs, involving relations of both raising (Campbell 1989) and control (Collins 1997). Other aspects of SVC word order are predictable from a universal thematic hierarchy nontheme > theme, and short scrambling (Takano 1998).

Morphology and its relation to phonology and syntax Ed. by Steven G. Lapointe, Diane K. Brentari, and Patrick M. Farrell (review)

164LANGUAGE, VOLUME 76, NUMBER 1 (2000) Morphology and its relation to phonology and syntax. Ed. by Steven G. Lapointe, Diane K. Brentari; and Patrick M. Farrell. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 1998. Pp. viii, 440. Reviewed by Mike Maxwell, Summer Institute of Linguistics This book is the outcome of a workshop held at the University of California at Davis in 1995 concerning the relationship between morphology on the one hand, and syntax and phonology on the other. Included are the papers presented, a prepared response for most of the papers, and lightly edited transcripts of most of the discussion sessions. In the introduction, the editors do an excellent job of summarizing both the position papers and those of the commentators. The papers fall into two groups: those treating the interaction of morphology and syntax, particularly the realization and mapping of arguments, and those dealing with morphology and phonology, especially issues of haplology and syncretism within paradigms. The perspective throughout is that of generative linguistics. Issues which would have been more prominent a few years ago, such as the distinction between allomorphy and phonology, scarcely come up (although the issue of level ordering does, which is perhaps surprising given the predominance that nonderivational theories of phonology had achieved by the time of this conference). Rochelle Lieber ("The suffix -ize in English: Implications for morphology', 12-33) examines the semantics of the suffix -ize, abandoning her earlier analysis which attributed the properties of the derived form to the syntax of the construction. Rather, she concludes, lexical semantics calls for a different sort of representation from the hierarchical structures of syntax; derivational morphology cannot be treated as a syntactic operation. The representation which Lieber suggests for lexical semantics is based on Pinker 1989. The commentator, Patrick Farrell, argues that while Lieber's objections to the syntactic account are not fatal, the syntactic approach is nevertheless to be rejected on other grounds, namely that the structure and operations assumed under the syntactic approach are unmotivated. Hagit Borer ('Deriving passive without theta roles', 60-99) calls into question the assumption underlying a wide variety of approaches in which syntactic structure is seen as the projection of properties of lexical items, in particular of the argument structure of verbs. Instead, she argues, the syntactic structure is determined both by the meaning of the verb and by the aspectual properties of the predicate; as a result, 'there remains little motivation for projecting arguments of unaccusatives and unergatives in different syntactic positions' (62-63). The surface structure which is observed is instead the result of the movement of the verb's arguments out of unordered, nonhierarchical VPs into specifiers offunctional projections.' Differences such as those between unaccusatives and unergatives or among actives, verbal passives, and adjectival passives are directly related to the aspectual properties of the clause, properties encoded in functional categories . The connection between transitivity and aspect immediately brings to mind the situation in some split ergative languages where the split is determined aspectually (see e.g. Dixon 1979)—a point which is touched on by the commentator, Andrew Spencer. Unfortunately, the transcript of the discussion session for Borer's and Spencer's papers had to be omitted; apparently the recording failed. The next paper, by Peter Sells (The functions of voice markers in the Philippine languages', 1 1 1-37), concerns a related topic: can the typologically unusual case marking systems of Philippine languages be accommodated within a two-way split between accusative languages and ergative languages, or do they represent a third sort of system? With accusative languages, the subject is normally the highest ranking participant in the thematic hierarchy, often the agent. For a different argument to become the subject requires a passive construction in which the lower ranking argument is promoted to the subject position while the highest ranking participant in the thematic hierarchy is demoted to a chômeur status (to use the relational grammar terminol1 Borer considers, but rejects, the base generation of the arguments in the spec-of-functional category projections (see her footnote 5, pp. 66-67); but this seems to me a possibility deserving further consideration. REVIEWS165 ogy). In ergative languages, the normal choice of subject depends on transitivity, with...