Verb Clusters Research Articles

Russian Pulp: The Detektiv and the Way of Russian Crime by Anthony s> Olcott (review)

732 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 Olcott, Anthony. RussianPulp. The Detektivand the Way of RussianCrime. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MA, and Oxford, 200I. X+ 205 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. $75.00; $24.95. THIS is a splendid book. Anthony Olcott is associate professorof Russian at Colgate University, but also the author of some of the best and most true-tolife mysterynovels set in the last years of the USSR. As such, he is admirably well placed to embark on this study of the detektiv, Russia's own distinctive 'take' on the mystery genre, and through this shed light on idiosyncrasiesof both Soviet and modern Russianculture. These lurid pulp fictions are a ubiquitous sight in Russia. Tracing their pedigree fromthepinkertony that emerged as literacyspreadaroundthe turnof the last century, through the rathermore earnest mysteriesof the Ig6os and 1970s, they have now become a veritable publication phenomenon. Freewheeling and mafiya-ridden modern Russia has not only proved a fine market for these works, but the genre has even spawned sub-sets, such as the offensivelyand ludicrouslyviolent boyeviky, whose protagonists -often known simply by some nickname as Yray ('Savage') or Beshenyy ('Rabid') -smash and kill their way through flimsyplots in a manner that would leave Rambo lookingpositivelyeffete. Olcott begins by defining this genre, and in particular explaining what makesitdistinctfromtheWesternmysteryorwhodunnit,inparta reflectionof ideologicalpressures,inpartculturaldistinctiveness,andin partthe characteristics of Soviet law enforcement. In this section, as in many other chaptersof the book, Olcott shows his excellent understandingof Soviet and Russianlaw and policing, which he explains in a clear and lucid way. This is especially evident in the second chapter, 'The Peculiaritiesof Russian Crime', in which he also widens his focus to consider what the detektivy say about Russian attitudesto gender,propertyandthe natureof evil.A compelling themewhich emerges through the book is that the Soviet 'police state' was often anything but, aspolice officersandprosecutorsaliketurneda blind eye to some offences while goingout of theirwaytopursueothers.This wasnot necessarilytheresult of corruptionorpoliticalpressure -though bothundoubtedlyplayedarole butbecauseofafundamentalculturalpredispositiontobelievethatspravedlivost, righteousness, is more important than mere zakon,law. This is a powerful theme, as importantfor explaining the moral economy of the pre-Emancipation serf as the apparenttolerance of the use of the mafiya today as protector, enforcerof contractsand all-roundproviderof services. It perhaps goes without saying that Olcott is well-informed on the detektiv genre and Russian culturalpredispositionsalike. It is also worth noting that he is even-handed in his analysis, devoting his last substantive chapter to Westerncrime fiction set in the USSR and Russia. This could so easily have become an exercise in self-indulgenceand back-scratchinggiven his own role within the field, but instead it proves a wonderfullyacerbic but also insightful dissection of what is, after all, an often shoddy and two-dimensional body of work. He gleefully highlights the poor research and crass assumptions too often made by Westernauthors,aswell as the more importantideological and culturalprejudicesdisplayed. REVIEWS 733 Overall, then, this is much more of a book than may appear at firstsight. It manages to pull offthat greattrickof takingsome relativelyesoterictopic and genuinely opening it up as a window throughwhich to look at Russia'speople and theircultureand valuesin general. Organized Russian& Eurasian Crime Research Unit MARKGALEOTTI Keele University Sarsenov, Karin. PassionEmbracing Death.A Reading ofNina Sadur's Novel'The Garden'. Lund Slavonic Monographs, 3. LundUniversity,Lund, Sweden, 2001. X+ 252 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Price unknown. WITH PassionEmbracing Death, Karin Sarsenov breaks new ground by presentingthe firstmonograph analysingNina Sadur's I997 novel TheGarden. Though initiallyknown as a dramatist,Sadur continues to garner praise for and attention to her prose works;the non-linear, highly disjointedplot of 7he Garden may account for the sparse criticism of the novel in any language. Narratorsand charactersall are unreliableor deficient in some way, and the text repeatedlyfailsto conform to the reader'sexpectations. Sarsenov's text consists of a close reading followed by several chapters of analysis. Leitmotifsreveal links and patterns not only within 7The Garden but also to Sadur'sother dramaticand prose workswith recurringimages, verbal clusters, and even characters. It is in this way that the novel achieves its coherence and meaning is generated. A progressive analysis of attributesof the garden itselfis one particularlyeffectiveaspectof Sarsenov'sclose reading in its illustrationof the significanceof leitmotifs. In her close reading of the three parts of...

Differential Profiles of Verbal Learning in Traumatic Brain Injury

Several recent investigations have utilized cluster analytic procedures to elucidate profiles of verbal learning on the California Verbal Learning Test following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Although the results of these studies have contributed to our understanding of verbal learning following TBI, limitations in sample composition and methodology render the results difficult to evaluate. The current study provides an analysis of verbal learning clusters in the most comprehensive sample (n = 160) of TBI patients reported thus far. Results obtained from multiple hierarchical agglomerative clustering procedures suggested the presence of two distinct clusters, the first consisting of performance patterns falling within normal limits and the second consisting of moderate-to-severe impairment. Two iterative partitioning analyses further suggested a reliable solution with better-than-chance agreement (kappa coefficients >.85, p < .001). Thus, it is concluded that a two-cluster classification solution provides a parsimonious understanding of verbal learning profiles after TBI.

The unbearable lightness of GOing: The projection parameter as a pure parameter governing the distribution of elliptic motion verbs in Germanic

It is a well-known fact that most of the Germanic languages can use modal verbs with non-verbal complements. In the present paper I will focus on modals with directional PPs such as the German Ich muss nach hause (I must home). There are two ways to analyze such constructions. Either we say that the modal can (also) be used as a main verb, in which case it can have a complete theta-structure, a full-blown subcategorization frame (e.g., Barbiers (1995)), or we say that, among the verbal complements the modal verb can combine with, there is a super-light motion verb [e]GO. Swiss German presents us with two incontrovertible arguments to the effect that there has to be an empty GO. The first, due to J. Hoekstra (1997), is based on the distribution of PPs in verbal clusters. A second argument comes from Verb Doubling. Dutch and German differ from Swiss German in this respect. It is tempting to assume that these languages lack the empty GO. However, West Flemish confronts us with a paradox: according to one argument it must have empty GO, according to the other argument it must lack it. The only way in which the paradox can be resolved, it is argued, is to assume that all varieties (there are relevant additional data from Afrikaans, Alsatian, German, Frisian, and Luxemburgish) have the phonetically empty super-light motion verb GO but that the variation is due to a 'Pure Parameter'. This parameter, the Projection Parameter, is argued to regulate the licensing of empty light motion verbs as well as the occurrence of Verb (Projection) Raising.

ARG-ST on phrases

One of the major controversies in present-day HPSG is whether the information about a word's argument structure should also be available on this word's phrasal projections. Some works assume that ARG-ST is present on words only; this is the claim of, e.g., Pollard and Sag 1994, Miller and Sag 1997, Abeillé, Godard and Sag 1998, and Bouma, Malouf and Sag (to appear). The reason for this assumption is that it leads to more restrictive grammars: with this restriction, words cannot select their arguments on the basis of the argument structure of these arguments' heads (e.g., there seems to be no language in which a verb selects exactly VPs with an NP[dat] argument). On the other hand, various other works assume the presence of the complete information about a word's argument structure on this word's phrasal projections. This is the stance of, e.g., Grover 1995 (to formulate a fully nonconfigurational binding theory), Frank 1994 (to deal with verb second in German), Frank and Reyle 1995 (to account for the interactions between scope and word order in German), Calcagno and Pollard 1997 and Abeillé and Godard 2000 (to analyze French causatives), Baxter 1999 (in an account of purpose infinitives in English), and Meurers 1999 (to deal with case assignment in German verb clusters).&#x0D; In this paper, I endeavor to make two kinds of linguistic contribution.&#x0D; On the theory-internal side, I argue that the issue whether ARG-ST or any such attribute should be present at the level of possibly saturated phrases, in addition to its presence on words, is not an "all or nothing" issue. Although I show that there are some environments in Polish which do seem to require the presence of ARG-ST on phrases, I also link this presence to the common feature of such environments, namely, to their semantic vacuity (understood in the sense of Pollard and Yoo 1998). Although no formal proof can be given that this is the only possible analysis, I try to proceed carefully by examining a variety of possible alternatives and showing that all of them fail in one way or another.&#x0D; Since semantically vacuous environments are extremely rare, the resulting grammar is not less restrictive than, say, a grammar which allows a verb to subcategorize for a lexical argument (and, hence, have access to this argument's ARG-ST), a possibility often taken advantage of in HPSG analyses of complex predicates in various languages.&#x0D; On the empirical side, I look at two rarely considered and ill-understood constructions in Polish, namely, at "long raising" across a preposition, and at case agreement with predicative phrases. Neither of these constructions has been successfully analyzed so far. Although the analyses proposed in this paper may be perceived as less than satisfactory on the aesthetical side, they constitute the first formal and uniform account of these phenomena.

The use of gaan+infinitive in narratives of older bilingual children of Moroccan and Turkish descent

In this paper, I will focus on the use of the verbal cluster gaan+infinitive ‘go’ in Dutch jokes told by bilingual children aged between 6 and 13 years of Turkish and Moroccan descent. The children told these jokes at the so-called Salaam Lombok, a multicultural market which is held every year around September in the neighbourhood of Lombok/Transvaal in Utrecht. This neighbourhood is object of research within the TCULT-program (Cornips & Jongenburger 1999). The recordings took place in 1998 and the corpus is collected by all TCULTresearchers. The Moroccan and Turkish children have told their jokes in Dutch or in their native language Berber and Turkish, respectively. If we consider the Dutch jokes, it is striking that these bilingual children use the verbal cluster gaan+infinitive, as shown in (1), to a large extent (see Cornips t.a.):

Linguistics in the Netherlands 1995

1. Preface (by Dikken, Marcel den) 2. List of Contributors 3. Synchronic and diachronic variation in the French il-construction (by Bakker, Cecile de) 4. Another case of scrambling in Dutch (by Barbiers, Sjef) 5. The meaning of structure: The wat voor construction revisited (by Bennis, Hans) 6. The Syntactic Function of the Auxiliaries of Time (by Broekhuis, Hans) 7. Does Dutch really have a Passive? (by Cornelis, Louise) 8. Participant structure and the on-line production of discourse context (by Dam-van Isselt, Jet van) 9. One be (by Dechaine, Rose-Marie) 10. Dutch - Indonesian language mixing in Jakarta (by Giesbers, Herman) 11. Phantom Phonology and Aperture Positions (by Grijzenhout, Janet) 12. Only a matter of context? (by Hoop, Helen de) 13. On foot templates and root templates (by Kager, Rene) 14. The effectiveness of different types of grammatical exercises in Dutch L2 classroom instruction (by Lalleman, Josine) 15. 1st person plural anaphora in Brazilian Portuguese and chains (by Menuzzi, Sergio) 16. A quest for control (by Petter, Marga) 17. Zero Semantics - The syntactic encoding of quantificational meaning (by Postma, Gertjan) 18. Stem allomorphy, verb movement and Case assignment in Coptic Egyptian (by Reintges, Chris H.) 19. Moeilijk is (not) difficult (by Wouden, Ton van der) 20. A note on verb clusters in the Stellingwerf dialect (by Zwart, C. Jan-Wouter) 21. Lexical and Functional Direction in Dutch (by Zwarts, Joost)

A note on verb clusters in the Stellingwerf dialect

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A comparative review of knowledge structure measurement techniques for interface design

Recent research suggests that the structure of user knowledge, in addition to the content, is a significant determinant of user behavior in computer‐oriented tasks. The purpose of this article is to provide the researcher in human‐computer interaction with a comparative review of available knowledge structure measurement techniques and to summarize their potential application for aiding the designer at various stages of interface design. Three general classes of techniques are identified: verbal reports, clustering, and scaling. Each group is reviewed according to (1) the manner in which concepts and relationships are elicited, (2) the method used to derive the knowledge structure, and (3) procedures used to analyze the knowledge structure. With this information, the human‐computer interface designer can more effectively use these techniques for their particular application.

Preface to Mikhail K. Ryklin, "Bodies of Terror"

D URING THAT HEADY PERIOD now known to history as the Gorbachev years, a scholarly section was set up within the Institute of Philosophy of the Soviet Academy of Sciences under the curious title of Post-Classical Studies. It enjoyed support in those reformist government circles appalled at the possibility that Russian state-sponsored culture, once it was opened up to the West, would reveal itself as pinched, naive, crippled by the accumulated silliness of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and desperately out of date. A group of very smart young researchers were recruited to staff the Laboratory, and granted ready access to the canonical texts and reigning gurus of today's literary-critical scene. This group included a prolific philosopher of culture from the Institute, Mikhail Kuzmich Ryklin (born 1948, Ph.D., 1978). Commanding French, English, and German, Ryklin translated into Russian major works and essays by Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Gadamer, Adorno, and the Marquis de Sade; he had already made Frazer's Golden Bough available in Russian, and he answered for the entries on Blanchot, Bataille, and Tel Quel in the Dictionary of Contemporary Philosophy published in Moscow in 1990. But Ryklin was more than a conduit through which the luminaries of continental thought could reach the newly liberated and vulnerable East. He has also served as an energetic conference organizer and commentator, integrating our latest literary categories into the current exSoviet scene, now in the velvet grip of poststructuralist postcommunism. In 1989 Ryklin participated in bringing Jacques Derrida to Moscow; in the same year the Laboratory launched a seminarand-publication project entitled Avant-garde and Marginal Philosophies-to be sure, not marginal for long. Ryklin's recent and forthcoming publications include such familiar verbal clusters as: Power and Soviet Discourse, Sex and Discourse: Foucault's Antirepressive Hypothesis, The Schizoanalysis of Culture, Power and the Politics of Literature, and without Literature (this last essay in a 1990 volume entitled Alternative Russian Poetics).

Long Head Movement

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Processing crossed and nested dependencies: An automation perspective on the psycholinguistic results

Abstract The clause-final verbal clusters in Dutch and German (and, in general, in West Germanic languages) have been studied extensively in different syntactic theories. Standard Dutch prefers crossed dependencies (between verbs and their arguments), whereas Standard German prefers nested dependencies. Recently, Bach, Brown, and Marslen-Wilson (1986) investigated the consequences of these differences between Dutch and German for the processing complexity of sentences, containing either crossed or nested dependencies. Stated very simply, their results show that Dutch is “easier” than German, thus showing that the push-down automaton (PDA) cannot be the universal basis for the human parsing mechanism. They provide an explanation for the inadequacy of PDA in terms of the kinds of partial interpretations the dependencies allow the listener to construct. Motivated by their results and their discussion of these results, we introduce a principle of partial interpretation (PPI) and present an automaton, embedded...

Pattern analysis of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for children-revised profiles of delinquent boys.

To help meet the prescriptive needs of juvenile delinquents more effectively, an analysis of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), utilizing Lutey's model of Factor Analytic measures, was performed on 82 profiles obtained from male subjects (aged 13-16) in a Wisconsin correctional facility. Results support the trends of previous studies of juvenile delinquency; a significant 70% of the subjects (chi 2 6.4, p less than .05) had a higher Performance than Verbal score (M = 13.2). The Performance-Verbal results were also significant (t = 4.824, p less than .001). Object Assembly, Picture Completion, and Picture Arrangement were the three highest subtests and Information, Vocabulary, and Coding/Comprehension the lowest. Clusters that measure perceptual and psychomotor abilities yielded high scores, while most verbal ability clusters, Memory, Verbal Comprehension, Freedom from Distractability, and General Factor scores were the lowest. Results indicate that prescriptive models should consider these findings in planning successful educational programs for this population. The need for further studies that involve extensive assessments which include neurological testing for various age groups and gender populations is stressed.

Verbal and nonverbal abstracting--problem-solving abilities and familial alcoholism in female alcoholics.

Women alcoholics (N = 54) had significantly worse performance on clusters of verbal and nonverbal abstracting - problem-solving tasks than peer nonalcoholic controls (N = 48). On the nonverbal cluster, alcoholic women with an alcoholic parent or sibling (FH+) performed significantly poorer than peer alcoholics without such a family history (FH-) and nonalcoholic FH+ and FH- groups. On the verbal cluster, FH+ alcoholics performed significantly worse than the nonalcoholic groups. FH- alcoholics did not differ significantly from the nonalcoholic groups on either of the clusters. There were no differences between FH+ and FH- nonalcoholics on the two types of tasks. The results suggest that female alcoholics have a generalized deficit on cognitive tasks involving abstracting and problem-solving, and that these deficits tend to be more pronounced in alcoholic women with a positive family history of alcohol abuse. Whether these deficits are due to a premorbid lowering of abstracting - problem-solving abilities in the FH+ individuals who subsequently become alcoholics, or are the result of a selective vulnerability of these cognitive processes to the effects of alcohol abuse in such subjects, or some combination of these factors, remains to be investigated.

Crossed and nested dependencies in German and Dutch: A psycholinguistic study

Abstract The clause-final verbal clusters in Standard Dutch and German differ strikingly in the kinds of dependencies they normally permit between verbs and their arguments, with Dutch preferring crossed dependencies and German nested. This study investigates the consequences of these differences for the psycholinguistic processing complexity of sentences containing either crossed or nested dependencies. German and Dutch subjects performed two tasks-ratings of comprehensibility and a test of successful comprehension-on matched sets of sentences which varied in complexity from a simple sentence to one containing three levels of embedding. The results show no difference between Dutch and German for sentences within the normal range (up to one level of embedding), but with a significant preference emerging for the Dutch crossed order for the more complex strings. We argue that this rules out the push-down stack as the universal basis for the human parsing mechanism.

An Examination of Woodcock-Johnson Suppressor Effects With Learning-Disabled and Gifted Subjects

The Oral Language/Verbal Ability clusters and the Broad Reasoning/Reasoning clusters of the Woodcockjohnson Tests of Cognitive Ability were compared for two groups of elementary-aged children: (a) learning disabled, and (b) gifted and talented. Data indicated that the Oral Language and Broad Reasoning clusters were significantly lower than the Verbal Ability and Reasoning clusters for the learning disabled subjects and that the Broad Reasoning cluster was significantly higher than the Reasoning cluster for the gifted and talented subjects. Further subtest analyses indicated an overcompensating suppressor effect within the Reasoning cluster for both groups. The Oral Language and Broad Reasoning clusters provided a more accurate appraisal of student abilities.

The Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability: A Comparison of Two Methods of Cluster Scale Analysis for Three Learning Disability Subtypes

The Woodcock-Johnson Oral Language/Verbal Ability clusters and Broad Reasoning/Reasoning clusters were compared for three samples of learning-disabled children: (a) high math and low reading, (b) high reading and low math, and (c) equally low math and reading abilities. Data indicated each pair of clusters to be highly correlated across subtype (.73-.93). In all instances but one, the Oral Language and Broad Reasoning clusters generated significantly lower mean standard scores than the Verbal Ability and Reasoning clusters, respectively. Implications for interpretation are discussed.

The Temporal Stability of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability for Elementary-Aged Learning-Disabled Children

The temporal stability of the Woodcock-Johnson Full Scale Cognitive Index and the Verbal, Reasoning, Perceptual Speed, Memory, Oral Language, and Broad Reasoning cluster scales were investigated. A sample of 57 elementary-aged learning-disabled children were studied. Results indicated that only the Full Scale Index and the Verbal and Oral Language cluster scales demonstrated adequate stability over a six-month interval. That is, they exceeded the .80 standard for screening instruments. None of the coefficients exceeded the .90 standard suggested for use for major educational decisions. Small but statistically significant gains in mean standard score performance occurred for all measures from one test administration to another. Implications and direction for subsequent research were presented.

Tense and time in English verb clusters of the primary pattern

(2) / / she returned the tickets tomorrow, they would refund her money How, then, can regular temporal significance be imputed to the syntactical form of the English verb cluster? It is the object of this essay to suggest how — as far, at any rate, as concerns primary-pattern verb clusters. A treatment of tense covering secondary-pattern verb clusters as well would require a vastly longer essay. English verb clusters divide into those of the PRIMARY PATTERN and those of the SECONDARY PATTERN, the former being all and only those not incorporating a secondary auxiliary (Palmer 1974:30ff, 94ff). The secondary auxiliaries are will, would, shall, should, can, could, may, might, must, ought and two or three others. The point of the segregation is that secondary-pattern verb clusters are systematically one word longer than primary-pattern ones — a syntactical fact which can hardly lack semantic significance.

The Development of Organizational Strategies in the Storage and Retrieval of Categorical Items in Free-Recall Learning

The present study examined the relative effectiveness of organization strategy use at study versus test in a single-trial, free-recall learning task, 90 subjects from each of 3 grade levels (second vs. sixth vs, college) were presented with 36 pictures selected equally from 6 different taxonomic categories. 3 levels of organizational strategy use were factorially crossed during study and test: Categorical cues were either (a) absent, (b) available, or (c) imposed. Developmental increases in performance were observed for the dependent measures of correct recall, study-trial organization, test-trial organization, frequency of cue use, and self-reported study activities. Generally speaking, imposed organization at study attenuated age differences in correct recall performance and study-trial organization, whereas imposed organization at test served to attenuate age differences in verbal clustering. Performance in the available cue condition at study or test was indistinguishable from performance in the control condition (i.e., cues absent). The results from the present study are generally consistent with previous assessments of organizational effects and provide new evidence concerning their independent and additive functions at study and test in developmental free-recall performance.

Infinitive Constructions in German: A Reply to Mark Twain

In the essay entitled The Awful German Language, Mark Twain suggests a number of ways in which the German language might be improved. Among the reforms proposed by the author is one which would require a speaker of German stop talking when he is done, and not to hang a string of those useless 'haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden seins' to the end of his oration! While Twain's reforms were set forth tongue-in-cheek, most students of German fully share his dismay at the verb clusters which so frequently occur at the end of a grammatical clause. Since these verb clusters often involve infinitive constructions, it is essential for students to be able to recognize all forms of the infinitive if this aspect of German grammar is ever to be mastered.