Morphology Commons^™

Modeling Substitution Errors In Spanish Morphology Learning, Libby Barak, Nathalie Fernandez Echeverri, Naomi H. Feldman, Patrick Shafto

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics

In early stages of language acquisition, children often make inflectional errors on regular verbs, e.g., Spanish-speaking children produce –a (present-tense 3rd person singular) when other inflections are expected. Most previous models of morphology learning have focused on later stages of learning relating to production
of irregular verbs. We propose a computational model of Spanish inflection learning to examine the earlier stages of learning and present a novel data set of gold-standard inflectional annotations for Spanish verbs. Our model replicates
data from Spanish-learning children, capturing the acquisition order of different inflections and correctly predicting the substitution errors they make. Analyses show …

Extending Finite-State Models Of Reduplication To Tone In Thai, Casey D. Miller, Aniello De Santo

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics

Languages exhibiting both tonal and reduplication processes pose a challenge for finite-state technologies. In this sense, Markowska et al. (2021) propose a combination of 2-way FSTs and multi-tape FSTs in order to simultaneously deal with total reduplication on the segmental level and independent tonal processes on the autosegmental level. Here, we evaluate this model for reduplication processes in Thai, which shows total reduplication both for tones and segments, and we suggest that the expressivity of 2-way FSTs is needed at both levels.

Assessing The Featural Organisation Of Paradigms With Distributional Methods, Olivier Bonami, Lukáš Kyjánek, Marine Wauquier

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics

In this paper, we apply distributional methods to Czech data to compare the predictions of two views of inflectional paradigms, as systems of orthogonal morphosyntactic feature oppositions, or as systems of multilateral contrasts between pairs of morphologically related words, not necessarily reducible to orthogonal features.

We define two predictive tasks that probe what it means for two pairs of paradigm cells to contrast in the same features: in the first, we train a~classifier to discriminate between two paradigm cells; in the second, we train a family of models to predict the vector of the word in one cell from that …

Evaluating Neural Networks As Cognitive Models For Learning Quasi-Regularities In Language, Xiaomeng Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many aspects of language can be categorized as quasi-regular: the relationship between the inputs and outputs is systematic but allows many exceptions. Common domains that contain quasi-regularity include morphological inflection and grapheme-phoneme mapping. How humans process quasi-regularity has been debated for decades. This thesis implemented modern neural network models, transformer models, on two tasks: English past tense inflection and Chinese character naming, to investigate how transformer models perform quasi-regularity tasks. This thesis focuses on investigating to what extent the models' performances can represent human behavior. The results show that the transformers' performance is very similar to human behavior in many …

Fathi Ben Maammar, Tinfas Seg Jerba - Ḥikāyāt Amāzīghiyya Jarbiyya, Vermondo Brugnatelli

Journal of Amazigh Studies

N/A

L’Emprunt Lexical De L’Arabe Algérien À L’Amazighe : Étude Sur Un Corpus Parémiologique, Abdelaziz Berkai

Journal of Amazigh Studies

Résumé :

Une étude très récente de parémiologie contrastive entre le kabyle et l’arabe algérien montre, par-delà l’« isomorphisme » parémiologique existant entre les deux langues-cultures, qu’un certain nombre de mots de l’arabe dialectal seraient des emprunts à l’amazighe. C’est l’étude de ces emprunts au plan lexico-sémantique, et subsidiairement étymologique, qui constitue l’objet de notre proposition de contribution. Nous commencerons chaque fois par la vérification des données en arabe classique et en dialectal algérien, avant d’analyser les matériaux amazighs et d’en tirer les conclusions qui s’imposent.

Mots-clés : emprunt lexical, parémiologie, arabe algérien, et langue amazighe

Lexical borrowing of Algerian …

Phylogenetics And Integrative Taxonomy Of African Water Snakes (Squamata: Colubridae: Grayia), Teslin Chaney

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Grayia is a genus of relatively large (1.5 - 2.5 m) aquatic Afrotropical snakes. Recent molecular phylogenies recovered Grayia in its own distinct subfamily (Grayiinae), which was strongly supported as the sister group to Colubrinae. Because tropical African snakes are generally understudied, the relationships within Grayia are poorly known. Due to high degrees of intra- and interspecies variation, identification is often difficult and previous studies involving Grayia included misidentified specimens in other genera. The goal of this study is to create a phylogenetic tree that can be used to understand the relationships and taxonomy of Grayia via an integrative taxonomic …

Between Verb And Preposition: Diachronic Stages Of Coverbs In Mandarin Chinese, Glynis Jones

Masters Theses

Mandarin Chinese has long been known to possess a category of words known as ‘coverbs’ in the literature, which sit in the gray area between verb and preposition. Li and Thompson (1974) describe the historical origins of Mandarin coverbs to be full transitive verbs, despite their modern state being decidedly less verbal. They also note that coverbs are a non-homogenous class. This thesis works to establish categories of coverbs in Mandarin Chinese and their distance from true verbhood in order to understand the diachronic shift that coverbs are currently undergoing before our very eyes. I will draw on the work …

Language Classification In Western Amazonia: Advances In Favor Of The Pano-Takana Hypothesis, Pilar M. Valenzuela, Roberto Zariquiey

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

The languages of the Pano and Takana families exhibit a considerable number of lexical and structural affinities that cannot be ascribed to mere chance and are not readily detectable instances of borrowing. After the comparative studies by Key (1968) and Girard (1971) the proposal of a genetic relationship between these two families was generally accepted (e.g. Loos 1973, 2005; Suárez 1973; Kaufman 1990; Campbell 1997). Without solid argumentation, however, this classification was later put into question (Fabre 1998; Loos 1999; Fleck 2013) and, even today, there is no full consensus as to whether the observed similarities are due to genetic …

Untangling The Evolution Of Body-Part Terminology In Pano: Conservative Versus Innovative Traits In Body-Part Lexicalization, Roberto Zariquiey, Javier Vera, Simon J. Greenhill, Pilar Valenzuela, Russell J. Gray, Johann-Mattis List

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Although language-family specific traits which do not find direct counterparts outside a given language family are usually ignored in quantitative phylogenetic studies, scholars have made ample use of them in qualitative investigations, revealing their potential for identifying language relationships. An example of such a family specific trait are body-part expressions in Pano languages, which are often lexicalized forms, composed of bound roots (also called body-part prefixes in the literature) and non-productive derivative morphemes (called here body-part formatives). We use various statistical methods to demonstrate that whereas body-part roots are generally conservative, body-part formatives exhibit diverse chronologies and are often the …

Degrees Of Temporal Remoteness In Pano: Contribution To The Cross-Linguistic Study Of Tense, Pilar Valenzuela, Sanderson Castro Soares De Oliveira

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Beyond simply indicating future or past tense, the languages of the Pano family grammatically distinguish various degrees of temporal distance relative to a reference point, typically the moment of utterance; i.e., they possess what has been called ‘metrical tense’ (Chung & Timberlake 1985; Frawley 1992), ‘degrees of remoteness’ (Comrie 1985; Dahl 1985; Bybee et al. 1994; Botne 2012), or ‘graded tense’ (Cable 2013). This article offers a comparative analysis of the rich graded tense systems found in Pano, concentrating on morphologically expressed categories. In so doing, it seeks to expand our typological knowledge of languages exhibiting this feature, particularly …

Nominal Incorporation In Shiwilu (Kawapanan): Nouns, Classifiers And The Deceased Marker =Ku’, Pilar Valenzuela

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Shiwilu is a good representative of the Andes-Amazonia transitional zone, in that it exhibits a mixture of phonological and grammatical traits that are typical of the languages of these two regions (Valenzuela 2015, 2018). The present article addresses a phenomenon that is common in Amazonian languages but absent in the Central Andean families Quechuan and Aymaran: nominal incorporation (Dixon and Aikhenvald 1999: 10; Adelaar with Muysken 2004; Aikhen- vald 2017: 296). In this work, ‘nominal incorporation’ is a cover term to designate the process of inserting into the verb a noun, a classifier, or the deceased marker =ku’."

Morphosyntactic Variation In Bantu: Focus On East Africa, Peter Edelsten, Hannah Gibson, Rozenn Guérois, Gastor Mapunda, Lutz Marten, Julius Taji

Journal of the Language Association of Eastern Africa

Recent studies have developed a systematic approach to morphosyntactic variation among Bantu languages, taking well-known and widely attested construction types as a starting point and sketching their distribution across the family. One such approach, Guérois et al. (2017), utilises 142 morphosyntactic parameters or features, across a sample of some 50 Bantu languages (Marten et al. 2018). The present paper builds on this work and focusses on 10 parameters of variation where there is a significant difference between the values for East African Bantu languages and non-East African Bantu languages of the sample. The parameters relate to areas such as noun …

Pragmatic Inferences Of Locative Enclitics In Luganda, Moureen Nanteza

Journal of the Language Association of Eastern Africa

This paper examines the non-locative functions of locative enclitics in Luganda (JE 15). Locative enclitics are words which cannot stand alone but attach on a verb to make meaning. Their status is ambiguous between free word and affix, hence motivating their analysis as enclitics. The enclitics are attached on the post final position of their hosts. Although the locative enclitics occur regularly in some Bantu languages (Luganda, Runyankore-Rukiga, Runyoro- Rutooro, Lunda, Ikizu, Fwe, Chichewa, Kinyarwanda among others), they have not been widely studied in the literature. The paper looks at verbal locative enclitics only but the locative enclitics also appear …

The Structure Of The Iraqw Noun Phrase, Chrispina Alphonce

Journal of the Language Association of Eastern Africa

The structure of the noun phrase (NP) is demonstrated to differ among languages. Albeit studies that paid attention on Southern Cushitic languages in general and Iraqw in particular, their contribution is selective to the general grammar of the language while the structure of the NP is scarcely described. This study contributes to the description of the language through an empirical explanation of the elements and the morphosyntactic properties of the NP in the language. It describes the orders of the elements, their co-occurrence, and constraints to illuminate the structure of the NP of the language. It draws on the data …

The Syntax Of Passives And Related Constructions In Mandarin Chinese, Shangyan Pan

Honors Theses

This thesis discusses the Mandarin Chinese passive, a construction that differs in significant ways from its better known, European counterparts. While the passive is one of the most well-studied constructions in syntax, the passive in Chinese remains understudied and not as well understood. The thesis offers an analysis of multiple passive markers in Chinese, focusing on bei and gei. Superficially, the two markers both participate in passive and passive-like constructions. However, upon closer scrutiny, it is demonstrated that only bei qualifies as a true passive marker, while gei is shown to belong to a more general category of Non-Active …

A Linguistic Analysis Of Rukiga Personal Names, Allen Asiimwe

Journal of the Language Association of Eastern Africa

The goal of the paper is to provide a linguistic description of the structure of personal names in a lesser studied Bantu language of Uganda, Rukiga (JE14). Data show that Rukiga personal names are presented as lexical entities but with underlying elaborate grammatical structures derived from the syntax, morphology, phonology and the lexicon of the language. Personal names in Rukiga form a special category of nouns derived from nouns, adjectives, verbs, phrases, clauses and full sentences. This study establishes that truncation, affixal derivation, lexicalization of phrases, clauses and sentences are employed in name-formation. The study further reveals that the socio-cultural …

The Syntactic And Semantic Atoms Of The Spray/Load Alternation, Michael A. Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

What is the relationship between the word spray in the sentence John sprayed the paint onto the wall and its identically pronounced counterpart in John sprayed the wall with the paint? At some level, we recognize these two uses of spray as the same word. But the fact that they combine with their arguments in different ways means they cannot be identical. The relationship between these two uses of spray—called the spray/load alternation—is productive in a way that a descriptively adequate grammar of English should capture. Other verbs show the same pattern, adults and children extend …

Cross-Linguistic Morphosyntactic Influence In Bilingual Speakers Of Jamaican Creole And Jamaican English, Taryn R. Malcolm

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bilingualism in Jamaica is of considerable consequence, as most individuals are early bilinguals, speaking both a variety of Jamaican Creole (JC) from birth and having standardized English (sE) as the language of instruction in education. Immigrants from Jamaica to the United States are an ideal population to examine how cross-linguistic influence (CLI) impacts morphosyntax as JC and sE differ in morphosyntactic constructions, including verb tense- marking, subject-verb agreement, and copula use. While much of the work in the field of CLI has examined spoken language pairs with varying degrees of similarity (or difference) between the languages, examining CLI in a …

Systematics Of Eastern North American Podothrombium (Parasitengona: Podothrombiidae), Kelsey Lynn Cline

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Velvet mites of the genus Podothrombium Berlese, 1910 are found worldwide with only two described species known from North America, both occurring on the west coast. The present study describes five new species occurring in the east, from both larval and post-larval stages. Species hypotheses are supported with morphology and analysis of mitochondrial (barcoding region of COI) and nuclear genes (D2-3 expansion regions of 28S rDNA). Specimens are incorporated from the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD), allowing our dataset to span most of North America. Therefore, we were able to raise the number of Podothrombium in North America from …