Morphology Commons^™

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 …

Memetic Epidemiology: A Mathematical Model For Tracking The Spread Of Linguistic Features Across Western Europe, Benjamin Shavitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this dissertation is to introduce a powerful new method for demonstrating the role of contact in potential cases of linguistic contact spread, Memetic Epidemiology, that can facilitate extensive future research. This dissertation introduces and demonstrates the use of this method on examples from Western and Central Europe.

Part I begins by providing theoretical background for Memetic Epidemiology using understandings, including Memetics, and Evolutionary Phonology and its extensions. Part I proceeds to lay out the objective of Memetic Epidemiology: to provide a new means of demonstrating that contact influenced the rise of linguistic features in certain languages during …

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 …

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

Journal of Amazigh Studies

N/A

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 …

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 …