Word Order Research Articles

Neural correlates of semantic-driven syntactic parsing in sentence comprehension

For sentence comprehension, information carried by semantic relations between constituents must be combined with other information to decode the constituent structure of a sentence, due to atypical and noisy situations of language use. Neural correlates of decoding sentence structure by semantic information have remained largely unexplored. In this functional MRI study, we examine the neural basis of semantic-driven syntactic parsing during sentence reading and compare it with that of other types of syntactic parsing driven by word order and case marking. Chinese transitive sentences of various structures were investigated, differing in word order, case making, and agent-patient semantic relations (i.e., same vs. different in animacy). For the non-canonical unmarked sentences without usable case marking, a semantic-driven effect triggered by agent-patient ambiguity was found in the left inferior frontal gyrus opercularis (IFGoper) and left inferior parietal lobule, with the activity not being modulated by naturalness factors of the sentences. The comparison between each type of non-canonical sentences with canonical sentences revealed that the non-canonicity effect engaged the left posterior frontal and temporal regions, in line with previous studies. No extra neural activity was found responsive to case marking within the non-canonical sentences. A word order effect across all types of sentences was also found in the left IFGoper, suggesting a common neural substrate between different types of parsing. The semantic-driven effect was also observed for the non-canonical marked sentences but not for the canonical sentences, suggesting that semantic information is used in decoding sentence structure in addition to case marking. The current findings illustrate the neural correlates of syntactic parsing with semantics, and provide neural evidence of how semantics facilitates syntax together with other information.

The autonomous word as a component of a compound predicate in European languages

The article is devoted to a typology of the compound predicate in a number of European languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Turkish and Bashkir), which goes a long way to building a theory of language in general and a theory of the sentence in particular. The method of our analysis is based on contrasting inductively selected verbal structures of some natural languages with a language etalon. The aim is to establish factors determining the positional and syntactic autonomy of the word. Positional autonomy is related to the word’s ability to change position in a sentence according to a certain degree of word order freedom, while syntactic autonomy suggests the ability of a word to function as an isolated one-word sentence. An ideal model characterized by absolute positional and syntactic word autonomy stands for the mentioned language etalon. It is assumed hypothetically that languages with a maximum possible free word order enjoy a marked word autonomy, unlike languages with a fixed word order being suggestive of reduced word autonomy. The hypothesis is verified on the basis of optional sampling of various types of the predicate in three temporal forms of the verb representing the category of person. The research ascertains dependence of word autonomy on agreement of grammatical form and meaning. The index of agreement determined as a ratio between the signifier and the signified in the paradigm of the verb conjugation enables to reveal the autonomy degree for each language of contrast. According to the decrement of autonomy the contrasted languages can be disposed in the following order: (Polish, Turkish, Bashkir) → (Russian) → (Italian) → (German) → (French) → (English).

Relativization in Ikwuano Dialect of Igbo

This paper examines relativization in Ikwuano Igbo. The problem of word order and the selectional rule for grammaticality in the realization of semantic affinity that exist in sentence construction cannot be ignored. This study investigates the embedding features that make sentential structures to be embedded in other sentences. The relative pronouns found in Ikwuano Igbo include; “ónyé- who,whom”, “nkè- which”, “nà- that”, “mà- whether”, “kà- that”. The relative pronoun occurs as the subject of a relative clause making it to be grammatical. The theoretical framework adopted by this study is the embedding principle of “Principles and Parameters”. This theory is a brain child of Noam Chomsky. This study takes a descriptive approach of language analysis. The data for this paper is elicited utterances by adult native speakers and intuition from the researcher. The aim of this paper is to examine relativization in Ikwuano Igbo with a view to establishing the Ikwuano strategy. This paper explains the motivation for the relative pronoun strategy and its behavior in the language. This study reveals that relativization in Ikwuano Igbo remains the most productive strategy in Igbo and many other languages for grammaticality. The study shows that relativization performs an emphatic function in the grammatical structure of Ikwuano Igbo.

Early humans out of Africa had only base-initial numerals

The vast majority of languages have numerals involving multiplication. Cross-linguistically, a numeral that involves a multiplier and a numeral base can be base-final, e.g., three hundred [three × hundred] in English, or base-initial, e.g., ikie ita [hundred × three] in Ibibio (Niger-Congo). A worldwide survey of 4099 languages reveals that 39% of the languages are base-initial, 48% are base-final, 4% use both orders, and 8% are without numeral bases. As the first step towards explaining this diversity and worldwide distribution, we offer convergent evidence to support the hypothesis that the languages of early humans in Africa had base-initial numerals. From a linguistic point of view, linearization is necessary for the verbal expression of multiplicative numerals. Between the two linear orders of multiplication, we demonstrate that the base-initial order has an initial advantage in communicative efficiency. We also offer typological evidence from the dominant head-initial word order in present-day numeral systems and nominal phrases in African languages. Finally, results from a phylogenetic analysis based on a global tree of human languages show that the base-initial order is more stable diachronically and more likely to be at the root of the reconstructed tree of languages in Africa between 100 and 150 thousand years ago. The dominant base-final order in non-African languages of modernity is thus likely to be a development after the Out-of-Africa exodus between 60 and 80 thousand years ago.

Machine learning based software effort estimation using development-centric features for crowdsourcing platform

Multi-label text classification is a method for categorizing textual data based on features extracted from the original textual information. When it comes to modelling text structural properties, Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) has demonstrated outstanding performance. However, most existing graph-based models do not model the structure of a single text unit and do not consider the sequence information in each document (e.g., word order). To resolve these issues and fully utilize the text’s structural and sequential details, a text classification model called Sequential GCN with Multi-Head Attention (SGCN-MHA) is proposed in this paper. For each text, a separate text graph is constructed in which nodes are the words of the text, and the edges between nodes corresponding to the word relations. Then the GCN is used to extract the structural feature. To enable the word nodes in the document graph to hold contextual information, the BiLSTM is also applied to learn the sequential feature for each graph. Finally, the Multi-Head Attention mechanism is adopted to interact with these two features and then aggregate them to get access to critical information in the text. The efficiency of our approach has been tested on two standard datasets, including comparative and ablation experiments.

Atypical brain lateralization for speech processing at the sublexical level in autistic children revealed by fNIRS

Autistic children often exhibit atypical brain lateralization of language processing, but it is unclear what aspects of language contribute to this phenomenon. This study employed functional near-infrared spectroscopy to measure hemispheric lateralization by estimating hemodynamic responses associated with processing linguistic and non-linguistic auditory stimuli. The study involved a group of autistic children (N = 20, mean age = 5.8 years) and a comparison group of nonautistic peers (N = 20, mean age = 6.5 years). The children were presented with stimuli with systematically decreasing linguistic relevance: naturalistic native speech, meaningless native speech with scrambled word order, nonnative speech, and music. The results revealed that both groups showed left lateralization in the temporal lobe when listening to naturalistic native speech. However, the distinction emerged between autism and nonautistic in terms of processing the linguistic hierarchy. Specifically, the nonautistic comparison group demonstrated a systematic reduction in left lateralization as linguistic relevance decreased. In contrast, the autism group displayed no such pattern and showed no lateralization when listening to scrambled native speech accompanied by enhanced response in the right hemisphere. These results provide evidence of atypical neural specialization for spoken language in preschool- and school-age autistic children and shed new light on the underlying linguistic correlates contributing to such atypicality at the sublexical level.

The word order in multicomponent culinary synonyms of the Russian and Chinese languages and its influence on the perception of information about the dish

In the modern world, against the background of globalization, the tendency to carefully preserve regional and national customs is manifested in the growing interest in the culinary traditions of different peoples. Restaurants of national cuisines of different nations are becoming popular in the world; against this background, modeling of optimal ways of gastronomic nomination, which is in demand by business, is relevant. An important component of the formation of ideas about the dish is the order of presentation of information, which is reflected in the order of words. Following stereotypes developed within the framework of other languages and cultures can influence the recipient's perception of information. The object of the study is the influence of ways of presenting information about the composition and qualitative characteristics of a dish on the client's consciousness. The subject is the differences in the order in which information about the dish is presented on the menu in Russian and Chinese. Russian culinary names obtained by the method of continuous sampling from restaurant menus (1319 units), data from a questionnaire aimed at clarifying the preferences of native speakers of the Russian language when choosing a dish (142 questionnaires) are the material of the study. The analysis of the usual word order in elementary phrases that make up culinary names is based on quantitative and descriptive methods. The analysis revealed the most significant differences between the accepted order of information presentation in Russian and Chinese culinary names. The place of lexemes indicating the type of dish, culinary tradition, main ingredients, side dishes and sauces in Russian and Chinese culinary names often does not coincide. Russian, as a language with a free word order, presents a greater variety of types of information structures, while the word order is limited not only by grammatical rules, but also by various traditions of gastronomic nomination adopted in Russian and Chinese cultures. Cultural stereotypes are reflected in the order in which information is provided about cooking methods, dishes and the quality characteristics of the dish. Even in cases where calculating does not lead to errors in the Russian menu, following other people's traditions can cause misunderstanding and laughter, which must be taken into account when nominating a dish.

The Missing VP Illusion in Spanish: Assessing the Role of Language Statistics and Working Memory.

In English, double center-embedded sentences yield a so-called "missing VP illusion": When they are ungrammatical due to a missing verb, they are judged as equally or even more acceptable than their grammatical counterparts. The illusion is often attributed to working memory limitations. Additionally, it has been suggested that statistical differences across languages-e.g., the lower frequency of consecutive verb clusters in verb-initial languages-play a role, since languages with verb-final embedded clauses are less susceptible to the illusion than English. In two speeded acceptability experiments, we demonstrate that the illusion arises in Spanish, a verb-initial language. We also find that the strength of the illusion is modulated by the number of consecutive verbs, consistent with the involvement of language statistics. By contrast, we do not find that participants' working memory modulates the illusion, failing to support a role of memory limitations. Our results support the generalization that cross-linguistic variation in the missing VP illusion is associated with language statistics and verb position and they demonstrate that this is the case even in languages in which word order is not a reliable processing cue.

Wh-questions in Japanese: Challenges for Vietnamese L2 learners

The study explored how Vietnamese learners of Japanese handle structural differences in wh-questions. Despite both being wh-in-situ languages, the divergent word order poses challenges for Vietnamese learners. The research involved 65 high school students with 2.5 to 13 years of Japanese learning. Survey results showed a positive correlation between Japanese proficiency and performance. Students were more accurate when Japanese wh-questions mirrored Vietnamese word order, especially in ‘why’ and ‘when’ questions. Difficulties arose when structures differed. Advanced learners could acquire L2 wh-questions with parametric values distinct from L1, but native-like interpretations in Japanese remained challenging. The study advocates for explicit classroom instruction on Japanese wh-question word order, particularly with scrambled sentences, to enhance accuracy and improve overall teaching effectiveness.

Universal 20 restriction reloaded

In this work we show that Old Italo-Romance varieties have two types of pragmatic related movement to the left periphery of both the clausal and nominal domains: one that focuses the moved constituent itself and another that marks the moved constituent as background, resulting in emphasis of the non-moved portion. While Focus fronting does not obey the U20 restriction originally proposed in Cinque (2005), (back)grounding does. This counters the idea that only meaningless movements (i.e., movements deriving the canonical word order of a language) need to obey the U20 restriction, since some meaningful movements do as well. After having examined the properties of both types of constructions, we derive the distinction on the basis of the type of feature that triggers the movement. While operators like Focus have their own feature, which is read by the labeling algorithm, all other cases of movement must use the label of the lexical head, which therefore must be contained in the moved subtree. Hence, (back)grounding must drag along the lexical head to be labeled, while Focus does not need to.

The Structure of Chinese Compounds: The Perspective of Predicative Implicitness

This paper examines Chinese nominal compounds with respect to their internal structure, thematic relations, generation process, and constraint mechanism from the perspective of predicate implicitness. Findings reveal that constituent functions in these compounds vary based on their structural positions, closely aligning morphological and syntactic structures. Predicate implicitness necessitates hierarchical adjunction, disallowing cross-layered adjunction. Corresponding relations exist between theta-roles, semantic relations, syntactic, and morphological structures. The study delineates differences between agentive and non-agentive compounds and explores how syntactic structure influences morphological structure. It also delves into theta-roles, argument structure, and linear order, arguing that constituent word order adheres to the Prominence and Locality Principles, dictated by their syntactic hierarchy positions.

Foreword

Dear Linguistic Enthusiasts and Scholars,  It is with our great pleasure to announce that the new issue of Acta Linguistica Asiatica is now available. As you pursue this issue, you will notice a refreshed look inspired by the new outlines of the University of Ljubljana, reflecting our commitment to growth and innovation. We take pride in our dedicated team whose expertise drives our exploration of linguistic intricacies and cultural nuances. This issue features four scientific articles and one review article, offering diverse perspectives on Chinese and Japanese as the East Asian languages in focus. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all contributors and reviewers whose scholarly rigor enriches our journal. To begin with, Tereza SLAMĚNÍKOVÁ and David UHER wrote an article entitled “Rhythmical Features of Spontaneous Spoken Narrative in Mandarin Chinese”, in which they introduce and expand a notation system for teaching Chinese rhythm pioneered by Oldřich Švarný, a Czech phonetician. They analyze spontaneous speech to outline rhythmical features in personal narratives and compare these features with a contemporary understanding of Chinese speech rhythm, showcasing the applicability of Švarný’s framework in diverse spoken discourses. Following is the work by KUANG Lincai “A Colexficational Analysis of Chū in Modern Chinese” that deals with directional verbs in modern Chinese, in particular with chū. The author delves into colexification and mechanisms surrounding chū, using the CLICS3 database. It explores colexified pairs of chū and constructs a colexificational network, emphasizing conceptual metaphor and metonymy as core mechanisms.  Yet another scientific paper was authored by YANG Yongzhong and is entitled “The Structure of Chinese Compounds: The Perspective of Predicative Implicitness”, which explored Chinese nominal compounds' structure, relations, generation, and constraints, emphasizing predicate implicitness. Findings reveal varying constituent functions aligning morphological and syntactic structures, and the author offers a detailed account of their hierarchy.  Trang PHAN and Giang VU submitted the paper “Wh-questions in Japanese: Challenges for Vietnamese L2 learners” in which they explored how Vietnamese learners handle structural differences in Japanese wh-questions. Results showed a correlation between Japanese proficiency and performance. Though learners were evaluated as more accurate with mirrored word orders, advanced learners also struggled with native-like interpretations. The study suggests explicit instruction to enhance accuracy in teaching. Last but not least is the survey article by Duc Du HUYNH, “Sino-Vietnamese Bilingual Dictionaries from the Middle Ages to the Present”, in which the author thoroughly surveys Sino-Vietnamese bilingual dictionaries from the Middle Ages to the Modern Ages, often overlooked in scholarly discourse. It delineates their evolution, regional differences, and historical context, aiming to catalyze further research in this field. Editors and Editorial Board invite the regular and new readers to engage with the content, to question, challenge, and reflect. We hope you have a pleasant read full of inspiration and a rise of new research ideas inspired by these papers. Editors

V1 clauses and EPP in Old Italian

This work discusses some aspects of the so-called “relaxed verb-second hypothesis” for Old Romance languages focusing on Old Italian data. Although the idea that Medieval Romance varieties displayed some kind of verb-second grammar is often accepted in the literature, careful consideration of the data and the predictions casts some doubts on this hypothesis and suggests pursuing a different road to account for word order phenomena in these varieties. The focus here is on verb-first main clauses, which result from merging a null element in the left periphery according to Wolfe’s (2015) influential work. If this approach is adopted, problems arise for the definition of the null categories that can occupy the left periphery of the clause: there is no motivation to postulate such elements unless a rule of obligatory pre-field occupation is independently justified, and the data speaks against such a rule. The question then arises whether a further weakened version of the relaxed V2 hypothesis is still preferable to a non-V2 analysis of Old Italian Grammar.

On the acquisition of tense and agreement in L2 English by adult speakers of L1 Chinese

Abstract This study investigates whether forms associated with verbal inflection can be acquired in relation to two UG-based L2 acquisition hypotheses: the Full Transfer Full Access (FTFA) Hypothesis (Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1994. Word order and nominative case in nonnative language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In Teun Hoekstra & Bonnie D. Schwartz (eds.), Language acquisition Studies in generative grammar, 317–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1996. L2 cognitive states and the ‘full transfer/full access’ model. Second Language Research 12. 40–72) and the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli, Ianthi-maria & Maria Dimitrakopoulou. 2007. The Interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 23. 215–242). The former captures the insight that convergence on grammars like those of native speakers is possible, whereas the latter argues that a native/non-native divergence results from the inaccessibility of some uninterpretable syntactic features. Ninety adult L1 speakers of Chinese of different English proficiency levels were asked to interpret and produce tense and agreement in various contexts in three tasks. Results suggest that the underlying grammatical representations in the end-state grammar may not be the same as native speakers’. We speculate that the inaccessibility of the uninterpretable [uInfl:] feature of v and the uninterpretable [uInfl:*] feature of be are the potential source of difficulty in acquiring verbal inflection in L2 English.

A comparative typology of verbal affixes in Riau-Malay and Sundanese

This study presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of verbal affixes in two Austronesian languages, Riau-Malay and Sundanese, with a focus on their morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. Both languages are spoken in the Indonesian archipelago, and while they share certain linguistic characteristics, they exhibit intriguing differences in their verbal affixation systems. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of linguistic diversity within Austronesian languages and to reveal on the mechanisms underlying verb formation in these two distinct linguistic systems. By comparing and contrasting the verbal affixation systems in these languages, this study aims to reveal striking differences in terms of affix types, attachment patterns, and grammatical functions. The analysis explored the morphology of verbal affixes used in Riau-Malay and its comparison in Sundanese. It identifies clear distinctions in the ways affixes are employed to mark tense, aspect, mood, and other grammatical categories. Furthermore, the study also investigated the syntactic roles of verbal affixes, exploring how they affect word order and argument structure in sentences. This analysis exposes intriguing patterns of valency-changing operations in Riau-Malay and Sundanese. The findings of this study are expected to enhance people’s understanding of Riau-Malay and Sundanese and to contribute to the broader typological and theoretical discussions in linguistics. The comparative analysis of these two languages provides valuable insights into the ways in which languages within the Austronesian family can diverge and adapt to their unique cultural and historical contexts. Ultimately, this study may be valuable to advance our knowledge of linguistic diversity and variation, offering a deeper appreciation of the intricate web of languages that shape human communication in the Indonesian archipelago and beyond.

An AN ANALYSIS OF TRANSLATION ERROR MADE BY STUDENTS AT THE SIXTH SEMESTER OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT IN IKIP MUHAMMADIYAH MAUMERE

The research aims to describe the kinds of translation errors made by Students at the Sixth Semester of English Department in IKIP Muhammadiyah Maumere. The method used in the research was descriptive qualitative. The subject of the research was the sixth semester students from English Department. The translation text consisting of 1 paragraphs (source texts) and all of it’s’ translations in English (the target texts) were used in the research to find out the translation errors. Then the researchers classified them into 5 kinds of translation errors according to Vilar et al. (2006, p. 698). The results of the research revealed that there were 241 translation errors found in students’ translation. There were translation errors in the form of incorrect word (35, 6%), punctuation (11, 6%), missing word (30, 7 %), word order (15, 3%), and unknown words (6, 6%). In conclusion, the three most prominent error categories made by the students were incorrect word, punctuation and missing word errors.

Structural representation in the native language after extended second-language immersion: Evidence from acceptability judgment and memory-recall

Abstract Knowing the sentence structures (i.e., information that guides the assembly of words into sentences) is crucial in language knowledge. This knowledge must be stable for successful communication, but when learning another language that uses different structures, speakers must adjust their structural knowledge. Here, we examine how newly acquired second language (L2) knowledge influences first language (L1) structure knowledge. We compared two groups of Korean speakers: Korean-immersed speakers living in Korea (with little English exposure) versus English-immersed speakers who acquired English late and were living in the US (with more English exposure). We used acceptability judgment and sentence production tasks on Korean sentences in English and Korean word orders. Results suggest that acceptability and structural usage in L1 change after exposure to L2, but not in a way that matches L2 structures. Instead, L2 exposure might lead to increased difficulties in the selection and retrieval of word orders while using L1.

Visual Analysis Method for Traffic Trajectory with Dynamic Topic Movement Patterns Based on the Improved Markov Decision Process

The visual analysis of trajectory topics is helpful for mining potential trajectory patterns, but the traditional visual analysis method ignores the evolution of the temporal coherence of the topic. In this paper, a novel visual analysis method for dynamic topic analysis of traffic trajectory is proposed, which is used to explore and analyze the traffic trajectory topic and evolution. Firstly, the spatial information is integrated into trajectory words, calculating the dynamic trajectory topic model based on dynamic analysis modeling and, consequently, correlating the evolution of the trajectory topic between adjacent time slices. Secondly, in the trajectory topic, a representative trajectory sequence is generated to overcome the problem of the trajectory topic model not considering the word order, based on the improved Markov Decision Process. Subsequently, a set of meaningful visual codes is designed to analyze the trajectory topic and its evolution through the parallel window visual model from a spatial-temporal perspective. Finally, a case evaluation shows that the proposed method is effective in analyzing potential trajectory movement patterns.

A Sememe Prediction Method Based on the Central Word of a Semantic Field

A “sememe” is an indivisible minimal unit of meaning in linguistics. Manually annotating sememes in words requires a significant amount of time, so automated sememe prediction is often used to improve efficiency. Semantic fields serve as crucial mediators connecting the semantics between words. This paper proposes an unsupervised method for sememe prediction based on the common semantics between words and semantic fields. In comparison to methods based on word vectors, this approach demonstrates a superior ability to align the semantics of words and sememes. We construct various types of semantic fields through ChatGPT and design a semantic field selection strategy to adapt to different scenario requirements. Subsequently, following the order of word–sense–sememe, we decompose the process of calculating the semantic sememe similarity between semantic fields and target words. Finally, we select the word with the highest average semantic sememe similarity as the central word of the semantic field, using its semantic primes as the predicted result. On the BabelSememe dataset constructed based on the sememe knowledge base HowNet, the method of semantic field central word (SFCW) achieved the best results for both unstructured and structured sememe prediction tasks, demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach. Additionally, we conducted qualitative and quantitative analyses on the sememe structure of the central word.

Emotional Intelligence Attention Unsupervised Learning Using Lexicon Analysis for Irony-based Advertising

Social media platforms have made increasing use of irony in recent years. Users can express their ironic thoughts with audio, video, and images attached to text content. When you use irony, you are making fun of a situation or trying to make a point. It can also express frustration or highlight the absurdity of a situation. The use of irony in social media is likely to continue to increase, no matter the reason. By using syntactic information in conjunction with semantic exploration, we show that attention networks can be enhanced. Using learned embedding, unsupervised learning encodes word order into a joint space. By evaluating the entropy of an example class and adding instances, the active learning method uses the shared representation as a query to retrieve semantically similar sentences from a knowledge base. In this way, the algorithm can identify the instance with the maximum uncertainty and extract the most informative example from the training set. An ironic network trained for each labelled record is used to train a classifier (model). The partial training model and the original labelled data generate pseudo-labels for the unlabeled data. To correctly predict the label of a dataset, a classifier (attention network) updates the pseudo-labels for the remaining datasets. After the experimental evaluation of the 1,021 annotated texts, the proposed model performed better than the baseline models, achieving an F1 score of 0.63 on ironic tasks and 0.59 on non-ironic tasks. We also found that the proposed model generalized well to new instances of datasets.