Semantics and Pragmatics Commons^™

The Semantics Of Discontinuous Noun Phrases In Quechua, Rachel Hastings

Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas

In Cuzco Quechua there is a construction in which elements that typically appear noun phrase-internally may appear outside the noun phrase while receiving the same Casemarking as the noun. In this paper I look at the semantics and syntax of this discontinuous noun phrase construction. I argue that when an adjective or a quantifier appears outside the noun phrase it is also interpreted externally and not in a possible base position within the noun phrase itself. I adopt this analysis to explain data in which the discontinuous noun phrase is interpreted as necessarily indefinite. I also examine the behavior of …

Propositional- And Illocutionary-Level Evidentiality In Cuzco Quechua, Martina Faller

Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas

This paper discusses the differences between two grammatical means of conveying evidential contrasts in Cuzco Quechua, and argues that evidential interpretations can arise on different levels of meaning. In Quechua, evidential contrasts are encoded on the illocutionary level by a set of evidential enclitics. Evidential interpretations also arise with the past tense marker -sqa. These, it will be argued, are not encoded by -sqa but arise indirectly from an additional spatial meaning component, which requires that the described eventuality be located outside the speaker’s perceptual field at topic time. It is hypothesized that the distinction between illocutionary-level and event-level evidentiality …

Imperfectivity In Squamish, Leora Bar-El

Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas

This paper investigates the semantics of two imperfective morphemes in Squamish. I show that one of these morphemes, a reduplicant, yields continuous and stative readings, while the other, an auxiliary, yields continuous, stative and habitual readings. I propose that these morphemes are the Squamish progressive marker and the general imperfective marker, respectively. I argue that the progressive morpheme removes the initial state component of a predicate to derive the readings associated with this type of reduplication. I further propose that the readings associated with the imperfective morpheme might be explained by generic quantification.

Sula 2 Front Matter, Jan Anderssen, Paula Menéndez-Benito, Adam Werle

Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas

No abstract provided.

On Polysemy: A Philosophical, Psycholinguistic, And Computational Study, Jiangtian Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Most words in natural languages are polysemous, that is they have related but different meanings in different contexts. These polysemous meanings (senses) are marked by their structuredness, flexibility, productivity, and regularity. Previous theories have focused on some of these features but not all of them together. Thus, I propose a new theory of polysemy, which has two components. First, word meaning is actively modulated by broad contexts in a continuous fashion. Second, clustering arises from contextual modulations of a word and is then entrenched in our long term memory to facilitate future production and processing. Hence, polysemous senses are entrenched …

Mount Banahaw’S Enigma Of Power: A Personal Reflection On Signs And Symbols At The Santa Lucia Complex, Katherine B. Arceta

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

In the Philippines, Mount Banahaw in Quezon province is a pilgrimage site for locals and believers alike. Considered a holy mountain or even a ‘new’ Jerusalem in a mystical sense, people flock to its forested sacred sites or puwestos. The objectives of this study are (1) to identify signs and symbols within the sacred space of Mount Banahaw; (2) to explain how signs and symbols within the mountain are able to convey various religious meanings to the worshippers and; (3) to understand how pilgrims derive and interpret the meanings associated with these signs and symbols. The author retraces a pilgrim’s …

Towards Unifying Grounded And Distributional Semantics Using The Words-As-Classifiers Model Of Lexical Semantics, Stacy Black

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Automated systems that make use of language, such as personal assistants, need some means of representing words such that 1) the representation is computable and 2) captures form and meaning. Recent advancements in the field of natural language processing have resulted in useful approaches to representing computable word meanings. In this thesis, I consider two such approaches: distributional embeddings and grounded models. Distributional embeddings are represented as high-dimensional vectors; words with similar meanings tend to cluster together in embedding space. Embeddings are easily learned using large amounts of text data. However, embeddings suffer from a lack of "real world" knowledge; …

Intercultural Rhetoric In The Written Academic Discourse: The Rhetorical Functions Of Citation In English And Spanish By College Students And Expert Writers, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

This research studies the practice of citation in two cultural communities, the American and the Spanish, in an academic setting. The main objective of this research is to determine what are the rhetorical functions of citations in the master’s thesis of 12 American and 12 Spanish students written in their native language, as well as in scientific articles of 12 American and 12 Spanish professional writers in Applied Linguistics, and to identify the differences found among these groups.

To study this pragmalinguistic phenomenon, I used the computational text analysis of the rhetorical functions of citations via the Antconc 3.2.4w concordance …

Lulling Waters: A Poetry Reading For Real-Time Music Generation Through Emotion Mapping, Ashley Muniz, Toshihisa Tsuruoka

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Through a poetic narrative, “Lulling Waters” tells the story of a whale overcoming the loss of his mother, who passed away from ingesting plastic, as he attempts to escape from the polluted oceanic world. The live performance of this poem utilizes a software system called Soundwriter, which was developed with the goal of enriching the oral storytelling experience through music. This video demonstrates how Soundwriter’s real-time hybrid system was able to analyze “Lulling Waters” through its lexical and auditory features. Emotionally salient words were given ratings based on arousal, valence, and dominance while the emotionally charged prosodic features of the …

The Objectives Of Public Higher Education In New York City Through The Lens Of Language, John-Nicholas Parker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper displays the objectives of public higher education in New York City and their relation to changes in the city. Public higher education in New York City relies on the support of the public. This paper details adjustments to the lexicon of the school in response to changing demographics and historical events by examining statements provided by the school during different periods. Changes to the lexicon relating to class, gender, race, ethnicity, and military service are examined in relation to their historical context. Sources examined in this paper include commission reports, student newspapers, and mission statements. The paper finds …

“So, Literally,…Basically,...It’S Like…”: A Study Into The Generational And Sociological Impact Of American Language Culture, Richard Moreno

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Language is unique to the human species. It serves to communicate thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. Within the context of this capstone I outline the theory that language is much more than this. Words can also serve to bond or reject, based on the level of acceptance within social groups towards the speaker. In seeking to discover what effects specific language utterances have on social interaction and the processes involved in developing cohesiveness collective identity in these groups, I found that they do have a definite impact and this is based mainly within generational parameters. Using a mixed method approach of …

The Production And Perception Of Subject Focus Prosody In L2 Spanish, Covadonga Sanchez

Doctoral Dissertations

New information can be introduced in discourse through different strategies, including syntactic and prosodic ones. This project provides an account of the syntactic and intonational strategies used for focus-marking in Peninsular Spanish, Mainstream American English and L2 Spanish using parallel experimental designs and a unitary method of analysis within the Autosegmental-Metrical framework for the study of intonation. It provides a comprehensive description of specific phonological categories and their phonetic implementation not only in monolingual speech, but also as they develop in the L2 grammar of Spanish learners with different experiences with the target language, following the premises of the L2 …

Copulative Compounds Formed By Prepositional Interfixes In Persian Language, Nuriddinov Nodir Mr

Scientific and Technical Journal of Namangan Institute of Engineering and Technology

Copulative compounds are such compound words that are formed by lexicalization. The components of copulative compounds are equal by semantic. The article also discusses the term "copulative compound" and its studying in scientific works of Russian and Iranian linguists. As well as with examples collected from sources it is carried out structural-semantic analysis of copulative compounds formed by prepositional interfixes.

Deaf Translators: What Are They Thinking?, Janis Cole Ms.

Journal of Interpretation

The examination of work performed by Deaf translators in creating translations between written texts and signed languages is an emerging area of inquiry in Translation Studies. Deaf people have been performing ad hoc translations within their community for hundreds of years (Adam, Carty & Stone, 2011; Bartley & Stone, 2008). More recently, Deaf translators have begun to work as paid professionals, creating a new subfield of Translation Studies, one that, to date, is largely unexplored. Using qualitative data, this pilot study examines the thought processes of two Deaf individuals in the rendering of an academic text from written English into …

Knowledge Of The Present Perfect By Albanian/English Bilinguals, Erjon Xholi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper concerns the acquisition process of a specific part of English grammar by native speakers of Albanian. The focus is the English present perfect, and the similarities and differences that it bears to the Albanian Compound Perfective. The two constructions are made from similar parts, but they crucially differ in the aspectual nature of their participles. While the Albanian particle is perfective, the English is underspecified. We argue that the process of the acquisition of the PP by Albanian bilinguals is one where input, analogy, and direct grammar teaching do not suffice. We apply Generative Grammar logic to the …

What Don't Rnn Language Models Learn About Filler-Gap Dependencies?, Rui P. Chaves

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics

In a series of experiments, Wilcox et al. (2019,2019) provide evidence suggesting that general-purpose state-of-the-art LSTM RNN language models have not only learned English filler-gap dependencies, but also some of their associated 'island' constraints (Ross 1967). In the present paper, I cast doubt on such claims, and argue that upon closer inspection filler-gap dependencies are learned only very imperfectly, including their associated island constraints. I conjecture that the LSTM RNN models in question have more likely learned some surface statistical regularities in the dataset rather than higher-level abstract generalizations about the linguistic mechanisms underlying filler-gap constructions.

Modeling Behavior In Truth Value Judgment Task Experiments, Brandon Waldon, Judith Degen

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics

Truth Value Judgment Task experiments (TVJTs) are a common means of investigating pragmatic competence, particularly with regards to scalar inference. We present a novel quantitative linking function from pragmatic competence to participant behavior on TVJTs, based upon a Bayesian probabilistic model of linguistic production. Our model captures a range of observed phenomena on TVJTs, including intermediate responses on a non-binary scale, population and individual-level variation, participant endorsement of false utterances, and variation in response due to so-called scalar diversity.

Immature Representation Or Immature Deployment? Modeling Child Pronoun Resolution, Hannah Forsythe, Lisa Pearl

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics

Children acquiring Spanish interpret subject pronouns differently from adults, initially relying on pragmatic cues instead of morphosyntactic cues that are more statistically reliable. Following Gagliardi et al. (2017), we use Bayesian cognitive modeling to explore the sources of this non-adult-like behavior, investigating whether it is more likely due to (i) noise in children’s representation of the probability that some cues favor certain antecedents, or (ii) noise in children’s deployment of otherwise adult-like probabilities. Results favor noisy deployment as the source of children’s non-adult-like pronoun resolution.

Events And Processes In Language And Mind, Alexis Wellwood, Angela Xiaoxue He, Haley Farkas

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication

Semantic theories predict that the dimension for comparison given a sentence like A gleebed more than B depends on what the verb gleeb means: if gleeb expresses a property of events, the evaluation should proceed by number; if it expresses a property of processes, any of distance, duration, or number should be available. An adequate test of theories like this requires first determining, independently of language, the conditions under which people will understand a novel verb to be true of a series of events or a single ongoing process. We investigate this prior question by studying people’s representation of two …

Possible Nouns For Visual Experiences: A Theory Of The Vision-Language Interface, Francesco-Alessio Ursini, Paolo Acquaviva

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication

The relation between vision and language is analyzed through a formal statement of what defines objecthood in the two domains. An interpretation of independently-motivated approaches to vision and to the grammar of nominals allows us to define the connection between them as an “infomorphism” consisting of two functions. Visual and linguistic objects are only indirectly related: the functions range over types and tokens, whose map defines objecthood in each domain. We show how the inferences proved in this system are empirically correct, and we draw some conclusions about the import of our proposal on the role of language in cognition.