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Syntax

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Full-Text Articles in Morphology

Non-Manual Articulators In Irish Sign Language Verbs: An Analysis With Data Mining Association Rules, Robert G. Smith, Markus Hofmann Nov 2018

Non-Manual Articulators In Irish Sign Language Verbs: An Analysis With Data Mining Association Rules, Robert G. Smith, Markus Hofmann

Conference Papers

The Signs of Ireland (SOI) corpus (Leeson et al., 2006) deploys a complex multi-tiered temporal data structure. The process of manually analyzing such data is laborious, cannot eliminate bias and often, important patterns can go completely unnoticed. In addition to this, as a result of the complex nature of grammatical structures contained in the corpus, identifying complex linguistic associations or patterns across tiers is simply too intricate a task for a human to carry out in an acceptable timeframe. This work explores the application of data mining techniques on a set of multi-tiered temporal data from the SOI corpus. Building …

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Contemporary English In The Usa, Melissa Axelrod, Joanne Scheibman Jan 2013

Contemporary English In The Usa, Melissa Axelrod, Joanne Scheibman

English Faculty Publications

Indigenous and immigrant speakers from a variety of linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds have in different ways contributed to the development of present day American English, as have the geographical and social dimensions of the country. This paper provides a survey of contemporary usage of American English by describing and illustrating linguistic features documented for social and regional groups in the United States. The focus on variation in pronunciation, grammar, and meaning in American English highlights the diversity of dialects and styles in the U.S. as well as the centrality of sociocultural identities to language use. We group examples of variation …

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Morphological Alternations At The Intonational Phrase Edge, Robert Henderson Aug 2012

Morphological Alternations At The Intonational Phrase Edge, Robert Henderson

English Faculty Research Publications

This article develops an analysis of a pair of morphological alternations in K'ichee' (Mayan) that are conditioned at the right edge of intonational phrase boundaries. I propose a syntax-prosody mapping algorithm that derives intonational phrase boundaries from the surface syntax, and then argue that each alternation can be understood in terms of output optimization. The important fact is that a prominence peak is always rightmost in the intonational phrase, and so the morphological alternations occur in order to ensure an optimal host for this prominence peak. Finally, I consider the wider implications of the analysis for the architecture of the …

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Valence Sensitivity In Pamirian Past-Tense Inflection: A Realizational Analysis, Gregory Stump, Andrew R. Hippisley Jan 2011

Valence Sensitivity In Pamirian Past-Tense Inflection: A Realizational Analysis, Gregory Stump, Andrew R. Hippisley

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Argument Encoding And Pragmatic Marking Of The Transitive Subject In Shiwilu (Kawapanan), Pilar Valenzuela Jan 2011

Argument Encoding And Pragmatic Marking Of The Transitive Subject In Shiwilu (Kawapanan), Pilar Valenzuela

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Shiwilu (a.k.a. Jebero) is a nearly extinct Kawapanan language from Peruvian Amazonia. The goal of this article is twofold. First, it investigates the obligatory cross-referencing of arguments in the complex Shiwilu verb. This system is predominantly nominative accusative, with the caveat that main clause object markers coincide with those conveying subject in one type of clause involving nominal predicates, as well as subject and object of dependent clauses. Second, this article provides a first analysis of the enclitic =ler, which may attach to transitive subjects and thus exhibits an ergative-like distribution. Unlike the situation in languages with syntacticized ergative systems, …

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Effects Of Lexical Class And Word Frequency On The L1 And L2 English-Based Lexical Connections, Alla Zareva Jan 2011

Effects Of Lexical Class And Word Frequency On The L1 And L2 English-Based Lexical Connections, Alla Zareva

English Faculty Publications

Three groups of participants—L1 speakers of English, L2 advanced, and intermediate users of English—responded in writing to a word association test containing words balanced for lexical class (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and frequency of occurrence (high, mid, low). The questions addressed in the study concerned the way two word-related factors (i.e., lexical category and word frequency) interplayed with two learner-related characteristics (i.e., proficiency and word familiarity) and influenced 1) the participants’ knowledge of vocabulary, 2) their preference to build specific types of lexical connections among the words they know, and 3) their ability to maintain networks of associations as an indicator …

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Paradigmatic Realignment And Morphological Change: Diachronic Deponency In Network Morphology, Andrew R. Hippisley Jan 2010

Paradigmatic Realignment And Morphological Change: Diachronic Deponency In Network Morphology, Andrew R. Hippisley

Linguistics Faculty Publications

A natural way of formally modeling language change is to adopt a procedural, dynamic approach that gets at the notion of emergence and decay. We argue that in the realm of morphological change, and notably the reorganization of a lexeme’s paradigm, a model that at a given synchronic stage holds together both the actual facts about the paradigm as well as the range of potential or virtual facts that are licensed by the morphological machinery more elegantly captures the nature of the changing paradigm. We consider the special case of morphological mismatch where syntactic function is misaligned with morphological expression, …

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A Categorial Grammar Fragment For Lushootseed, Deryle W. Lonsdale Jan 2002

A Categorial Grammar Fragment For Lushootseed, Deryle W. Lonsdale

Faculty Publications

This paper establishes a basic framework for a Categorial Grammar (CG) description ofLushootseed morpho syntax and semantics. After a brief review of English CG principles, a preliminary attempt is made to apply these fundamentals to Lushootseed free and bound morphemes. Several sample derivations are presented. including one rather complex syntactic ambigiuty previously noted in the literature with its alternative descriptions. Once the syntactic elements have been put in place a short overview is presented of how semantic interpretation can be established in tandem with syntactic composition principles. Finally, the implementation of this framework within the Attribute Logic Engine environment is …

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The Effect Of Usage On Degrees Of Constituency: The Reduction Of Don't In English, Joan Bybee, Joanne Scheibman Jan 1999

The Effect Of Usage On Degrees Of Constituency: The Reduction Of Don't In English, Joan Bybee, Joanne Scheibman

English Faculty Publications

In this paper we take the position that there are many degrees of constituency and that these derive in a direct manner from the frequency with which elements are used together: elements that are frequently found next to each other show a tighter constituent structure than those that collocate less frequently. We use both phonological and functional evidence from conversation to argue that repetition conditions chunking (Haiman 1994), sometimes overriding the syntactic and semantic logic of the organization of utterances. Our study examines the reduction of don't in American English conversation. We find that don't is reduced the most in …

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