bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Arabic preprocessing for Statistical Machine Translation
Authors: Habash Nizar , Sadat Fatiha
Published: March 2014

Arabic is a morphologically rich language. This poses some problems for statistical machine translation (SMT) approaches. In this chapter, we study the effect of different Arabic word-level preprocessing schemes and techniques on the quality of phrase-based SMT. We also present and evaluate different methods for combining preprocessing schemes. Our results show that given large training data sets, splitting off proclitics only performs best. However, for small training data sets, it is best to apply English-like tokenization using part-of-speech tags, and sophisticated morphological analysis and disambiguation. Moreover, choosing the appropriate preprocessing scheme produces a significant increase in BLEU score if there is a change in genre between training and test data. We also found that combining different preprocessing schemes leads to improved translation quality.
Preprocessing for English-to-Arabic Statistical Machine Translation
Authors: Zbib Rabih , Badr Ibrahim
Published: March 2014

Most research in Arabic Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) has focused on translating from Arabic into English and other languages. Translation to Arabic has drawn very little attention so far, despite being an important, as well as technically challenging task. This chapter describes the application of two preprocessing techniques to English-to-Arabic SMT: Morphological Segmentation and Syntactic Reordering. It shows how these techniques can be adapted to apply to translation into Arabic, providing significant improvements to a phrase-based system.
Lexical syntax for Arabic SMT
Authors: Hassan Hany
Published: March 2014

The current approaches of Phrase-based Statistical Machine Translation lacks the capabilities of producing grammatical translations and handling long-range reordering. In this chapter, we presnet our work for extending Phrase-based SMT with lexical syntactic descriptions that localize global syntactic information on the word without introducing syntactic redundant ambiguity. We presente a novel model of Phrase-based SMT which integrates linguistic lexical descriptions supertags into the target language model and the target side of the translation model. Moreover, we introduce a novel Incremental Dependency-based Syntactic Language Model (IDLM) based on wide-coverage CCG incremental parsing which we integrate into a direct translation SMT system. Our proposed approach is the first to integrate full dependency parsing in SMT systems with a very attractive computational cost since it deploys the linear decoders widely used in Phrase-based SMT systems. The experimental results. show a good improvement over top-ranked state-of-the-art systems.
Automatic rule induction in Arabic to English machine translation framework
Authors: Shaalan Khaled , Hossny Ahmad Hany
Published: March 2014

This chapter addresses the exploitation of a supervised machine learning technique to automatically induce Arabic-to-English transfer rules from chunks of parallel aligned linguistic resources. The induced structural transfer rules encode the linguistic translation knowledge for converting an Arabic syntactic structure into a target English syntactic structure. These rules are going to be an integral part of an Arabic-English transfer-based machine translation. Nevertheless, a novel morphological rule induction method is employed for learning Arabic morphological rules that are applied in our Arabic morphological analyzer. To demonstrate the capability of the automated rule induction technique, we conducted rule-based translation experiments that use induced rules from a relatively small data set. The translation quality of the hybrid translation experiments achieved good results. in terms of WER.
Learner variation
Authors: Pienemann Manfred
Published: March 2014

This chapter provides an introduction to the second set of key descriptive facts about second language acquisition which is related to learner variation. Just because all learners follow the same stages of acquisition does not imply that they all display exactly the same linguistic features. Instead, learners develop different styles at every level of acquisition. This chapter gives an overview of how these learner styles are linked to stages of acquisition and which linguistic mechanisms permit them to emerge. Again, the study questions give the reader an opportunity to apply descriptive statements about ESL variation to the analysis of authentic learner language.
The psycholinguistic basis of PT
Authors: Pienemann Manfred
Published: March 2014

This chapter gives an overview of the psycholinguistic basis of Processability Theory (PT). This includes an outline of the key feature of language production, the processability hierarchy that follows from the architecture of the language processor and it formal description within Lexical-Functional Grammar. Also, the two key mechanisms driving PT are introduced: (1) feature unification and (2) linking arguments and constituents to functions.
Explaining developmental schedules
Authors: Pienemann Manfred
Published: March 2014

The objective of this chapter is to explain the developmental schedule described in Chapter 1 using the processability framework outlined in Chapter 3. For this purpose, we will first look at a summary of the developmental schedule for ESL acquisition. Then two empirical studies supporting this developmental schedule will be discussed. In a third step, the ESL developmental schedule will be explained utilizing the processability hierarchy that underlies PT.
Explaining learner variation
Authors: Liebner Mathias , Pienemann Manfred
Published: March 2014

The objective of this chapter is to explain learner variation as described in Chapter 2 using the processability framework outlined in Chapters 3 and 4. We will focus on two aspects: (1) the limited structural range within which interlanguage variation occurs and (2) the steadiness of learner language across tasks. We will then summarize an empirical study supporting these claims. In the last section of this chapter, we will show how the PT-based view of learner variation can make a contribution towards understanding the stabilization of learner language.
L1 transfer
Authors: Pienemann Manfred
Published: March 2014

This chapter focuses on the role of transfer in Processability Theory which is encapsulated in the “Developmentally Moderated Transfer Hypothesis” (Pienemann 1998; Pienemann, Di Biase, Kawaguchi & Håkansson 2005). The chapter is divided into the following sections: (1) a summary of the DMT Hypothesis, (2) an outline of its rationale (3) a review of some of the key empirical evidence and (4) a discussion of a common misunderstanding relating to the DMT Hypothesis.
Bilingual first language acquisition
Authors: Itani-Adams Yuki
Published: March 2014

This chapter gives an overview of bilingual first language acquisition in a PT context. It looks at the simultaneous acquisition of English and Japanese by a bilingual child raised in these two languages. The results of the longitudinal study discussed in this chapter provide strong empirical evidence for the “Separate Development Hypothesis” as put forward by De Houwer (1990). It will be shown that Processability Theory (PT) also accounts for this type of language acquisition.
Diagnosing L2 development
Authors: Keßler Jörg-U. , Liebner Mathias
Published: March 2014

This chapter introduces one of the key applications of Processability Theory. Diagnosing L2 development is equally important for SLA research and for language teaching. We will provide an overview of profile analyses and describe Rapid Profile, a diagnostic tool based on PT, offers a quick, valid and reliable, method of diagnosing interlanguage development. Key aspects in this chapter focus on (a) how to elicit speech samples and (b) how to use Rapid Profile.
Teaching
Authors: Keßler Jörg-U. , Liebner Mathias , Mansouri Fethi
Published: March 2014

In this chapter one of the key components of Processability Theory for classroom applications is introduced: Teaching a foreign language is constrained by the PT hierarchy. This has been known as the “Teachability Hypothesis” introduced by Pienemann in 1984. This chapter summarizes the Teachability Hypothesis and discusses the role of input and output in foreign language classrooms from a PT perspective. The chapter concludes by a discussion of developmentally moderated approaches to foreign language teaching and shows that PT accounts for innovative approaches to focus on form and TBLT.
The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction
Authors: Kerbrat-Orecchioni Catherine
Published: March 2014

This paper advocates an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction analysis, not only because adopting a single point of view on such a complex object is too restrictive, but also because it is impossible to account for fundamental aspects of the ways it operates without having recourse to notions coming from different theoretical paradigms. For this we shall consider first the question of units (particularly speech acts and adjacency pairs) then the question of “preference organization”, a notion which can be dealt with more adequately by resorting to face-work considerations. This investigation will lead us to revisit two problems which are central to discourse analysis (whether in interaction or not): what place is to be allocated to context in description and what the analyst’s interpretation consists in.
Grammar
Authors: Muntigl Peter , Ventola Eija
Published: March 2014

Our aim in this paper is to explore the variety of ways in which grammar can be used as a resource for interaction. We propose that a grammatical analysis of social interaction needs to take two perspectives into account. The first involves showing how the meaning of a grammatical unit depends on its context of use (Schegloff 1996). The second involves identifying speakers’ specific choices of grammatical categories (e.g., verbs, nouns, etc.) and showing how these categories combine to create specific inference-rich meanings (Halliday 1978, 1994). Drawing from couples therapy data, we show that by adopting grammatical categories into our analysis, a unique perspective on the moment-to-moment unfolding of therapy can be provided.
Researching intercultural communication
Authors: Lin Angel M.Y.
Published: March 2014

In this chapter key sociological traditions forming the theoretical backdrop of current discourse-based approaches to intercultural communication research will be discussed and John Gumperz’s contribution to highlighting the interactional nature of everyday communication and language use will be outlined. Then I shall introduce the central thesis of this chapter: that discourse-based approaches to intercultural communication provide helpful frameworks for understanding how power is fluid and mediated through discourse and meaning-making, and how different social actors located in differential, hierarchical social positions, and coming from different cultural backgrounds, can negotiate through discourse for more advantageous positions for themselves. This thesis will then be delineated through drawing on positioning theory, (Davies and Harré, 1990; Harré and Langenhove, 1999), a discourse-based social identity theory, to analyse two examples of intercultural/inter-group communication.
Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system
Authors: Sarangi Srikant
Published: March 2014

In this paper I argue that interaction – as a communicative system – is central not only to forms of everyday social encounters but also to professional-client relationships in institutional settings. The role language plays in these interactional trajectories has to go beyond the dichotomous language as system and language as behaviour divide, and focus on the phenomenon of interaction itself, but not necessarily reducing interaction to language practice. This means that as interaction analysts we can utilise linguistic insights when interpreting professional-client encounters, but not be limited by them. Healthcare interaction, as an institutional and professional site, can be seen as an expert communicative system, with complex variations – along different modalities – reflecting different specialities and participant frameworks. I focus here on the linguistic dimension in the counselling domain, where communicative expertise is to be conceptualised in terms of hybrid interactional competencies for the management of different initiation-response frames, including aspects of uncertainty, risk, self- and other-initiated diagnostic and prognostic scenarios. Interaction analysis – what I refer to as activity analysis – should take as its starting point the structural, interactional and thematic maps of whole encounters, while aligning with the agenda of the professionals and the clients in a given setting in order to make any findings uptake-oriented in practically relevant ways.
The neglected listener
Authors: Erickson Frederick
Published: March 2014

How phenomena are arranged in a transcript always incorporates a theory of the phenomena represented by it. The playscript transcripts of conversation analysis embody a logocentric view of interaction: they arrange interaction around the sequential progress of talk and obscure relations of mutual influence between the speaking behavior of speakers and the listening behavior of listeners. A transcription system that adapts musical scores is better able to capture the embeddedness of talk in interaction and the coordinated timing of instrumental acts that provides an independent resource of interactional organization. In this way it contributes to a renewed effort toward the study of space, time, and visual phenomena in social interaction. The chapter includes examples of  quasi-musical transcription whose notation  shows both the sequential and the simultaneous occurrence of verbal and nonverbal actions of speakers and listeners.
Contexts in context
Authors: Fetzer Anita
Published: March 2014

Adopting an integrated approach, the contribution demonstrates that context can no longer be seen as an analytic prime. Rather than being looked upon as an external constraint on linguistic performance, it is analyzed as a product of language use, as interactionally constructed and as negotiated. The first part categorizes context as social context, sociocultural context, linguistic context and cognitive context, and the second part examines the dynamics of context captured through a relational conception based on the premises of indexicality and intentionality.
Who communicates in the media supported by the Russian Church?
Authors: Siilin Lea
Published: March 2014

The Russian Orthodox Church has established new Church media in order to gain a new audience, e.g. young people. The aim of this study was to determine what kind of interaction is typical of this media, and how interactional relations between representatives of the Church and ordinary readers of Church media are constructed. The material consisted of three texts published in the journal, Foma (Issue 5, 2005). The analysis of the texts indicates that to some extent they constitute an institutional discourse because the interaction expressed by the priest, the bishop and the ordinary readers of the journal “Foma” demonstrates the difference between authoritative and individual opinions. On the one hand, the use of colloquial language shows a tendency toward a more casual interaction between the clergy and the readers. On the other hand, interactional linguistic features such as modality markers and attitude markers does not occur very frequently in written interaction, which, however, may refer to a certain distance between the debaters. Hence the official voice of the Church tends to prevail.
“O England! England! She says – my Father – my Sisters – my friends! – shall I ever see you more?”
Authors: Nevala Minna , Palander-Collin Minna
Published: March 2014

This study focuses on reporting in the letters of eighteenth-century writer Frances (Fanny) Burney. Our purpose is to study the occurrence of reporting from a socio-pragmatic perspective, with the aim of understanding the function of reporting in all its communicative situations as well as in personal and interpersonal functions. The results from the analysis show that reporting is more typical in Burney’s letters to close recipients, and that the saying of those closest are much more often reported than general sources like newspapers. Her reporting is often accompanied with evaluative remarks that further highlight the interactive nature of letters and emphasise the use of reporting to show personal stance. Direct reporting also seems to appear in emotionally laden contexts in particular.
Power in Early Modern English courtroom discourse
Authors: Kryk-Kastovsky Barbara
Published: March 2014

The paper discusses power in Early Modern English courtroom. A few levels of linguistic analysis are examined for the occurrence of the exponents of power. As regards lexicon, it is the specific vocabulary which creates the social distance between the interrogators and the interrogated. My hypothesis is that the vocabulary items include not only what I call “overt” exponents of power, e.g. impolite expressions, but also “covert” ones, like an ironic use of politeness markers or forms of address. Moreover, power can be reflected in the syntax of the utterances, e.g. in the questions asked by the interrogators. Finally, many (socio-)pragmatic devices contribute to the demonstration of power. Thus, specific speech acts, e.g. covert orders can be disguised as overt requests, and the inferencing strategies used by the interrogators can reveal the presuppositions often contained in their utterances.
“I desire to have some tyme to consider of it”
Authors: Martínez-Insua Ana E.
Published: March 2014

Enclosed within a larger project on the variation experienced by the English language in its recent history, the paper explores the use of indirect speech acts of refutation and denial in speech-related Modern-English texts. The corpus employed contains trial proceedings from the period 1560–1760, and the conclusions drawn from its analysis provide an interesting insight into the possibility of characterising this particular group of illocutionary forces, in the particular context of trials, during the Modern-English period. The study also points to the possibility of comparing the uses and values of indirect speech acts in Modern-English and Present-Day English trials, tracing any possible course of evolution and/or change.
Interactive aspects of computer-mediated communication
Authors: Kleinke Sonja
Published: March 2014

This study is placed in the context of current pragmatic research on public news group Internet communication as well as Watts’ notion of ‘emergent networks’ in the context of linguistic politeness. It investigates the functions and use of ‘disagreement’ in public news group Internet interaction in English and German. The paper starts with an analysis of the specific frame conditions holding in an English and a German discussion group including the development of ‘emergent networks’. Part two deals with the communicative functions of disagreement in the data and investigates their distribution, strategies of mitigation, preference organization, and communicative effects. Finally two closed discussion threads are analyzed in detail, with regard to their developing ‘emergent networks’ and their interactional effects.
‘A little story, for food for thought.......’
Authors: Lindholm Loukia
Published: March 2014

The use of narrative in advice discourse has been primarily discussed as an advice-seeking strategy related to the statement of a problem. This paper focuses on the functions of narrative in advice-giving messages in the context of computer-mediated discourse. Drawing on data from asynchronous peer-to-peer discussions, the analysis shows that advice-givers employ narratives for argumentative purposes, such as supporting assessments and advice, or for relational work. The paper also reports on instances of tellings found in the data that fall under the scope of non-canonical narrative activities which recent research has brought into focus (Georgakopoulou 2004, 2006).
Appropriateness in interpersonal communication
Authors: Sivenkova Maria
Published: March 2014

The paper investigates a variety of communicative moves in which interlocutors negotiate appropriateness of an utterance. Two types of such moves are analysed: prospective (the speaker prepares the ground for her future speech act by checking on the utterance’s appropriateness) and retrospective (the hearer signals that the speaker’s previous utterance is viewed as inappropriate). Four types of appropriateness explication are discussed: role, interpersonal, temporal and locative. The study shows that there exist correlations between different types of prospective and retrospective communicative moves, and that they demonstrate both universal and culture-specific features. The article builds on the author’s PhD dissertation and is the first in a series of papers aimed at investigating the phenomenon of appropriateness in various discursive spheres.
Filling the German vorfeld in written and spoken discourse
Authors: Speyer Augustin
Published: March 2014

The sentence-initial position (vorfeld) in German is filled in accordance with discourse structural consideration. Several types of elements compete for this position. Their distribution can be modelled by Stochastic Optimality Theory. It is filled in general by phrases that have at least one of the following functions: scene-setting elements, contrast, topic. In conflict cases the functions are ranked scene-setting >> contrast >> topic. In dialogic discourse other considerations play a role, too, such as the explicit marking of origo (deictic center) and rhetorical relation. Two additional constraints, dann-vorfeld and subject-pronoun-vorfeld, can be fit in; the ranking including those would be dann, scene-setting >> subject-pronoun, contrast >> topic. After insertions, the re-introduction of the topic is sensitive to which of the participants started the insertion: topics re-introduced by another participant than the one starting the insertion pattern rather with contrastive elements.
Phatic expressions in French and German telephone conversations
Authors: Smith Anja
Published: March 2014

This article is based on a paper given at OID3 Conference referring to my PhD research about ‘phatic expressions’ in French and German (see Smith 2007). Starting with a tentative definition of ‘phatic expressions’ (PhEs) with reference to Jakobson (1960) and Malinowski (1923), I attempt to refine this definition through a mainly qualitative analysis of occurrences of French “hein” and German “ne(ich)” in telephone conversations. One major objective consists in developing a methodology drawing on the dialogical and oral character of the PhE as well as possible use-manifested cultural differences by combining ethnomethodological conversation analysis principles and methods, speech act and politeness theory, and basic notions of prosody.
In support of a syntactic analysis of double agreement phenomena in Spanish
Authors: Alcázar Asier , Saltarelli Mario
Published: March 2014

Compound tenses may display double agreement in non-standard varieties of Spanish. Harris & Halle (2005) present a body of new data for affirmative imperatives, where third person plural -n is reduplicated (once or twice) or switches places with a clitic (metathesis). Kayne (2008) proposes a syntactic reinterpretation of the data, analyzing imperatives as compound tenses with silent auxiliaries (Kayne 1992). The contending assumptions in these works concern a long standing debate on whether agreement morphology is a product of syntactic operations or the syntax-phonology interface. This paper defends the former view building on an independent proposal by Alcázar and Saltarelli (2008a,b), who identify a prescriptive light verb in imperative clauses. We extend the analysis to imperative expressions with first and third person subjects, proposing that these imperative clauses feature an additional causative head.
The syntax of Spanish comparative correlatives
Authors: Borgonovo Claudia , Valmala Vidal
Published: March 2014

In this paper we provide a principled account of the syntactic properties of Spanish Comparative Correlatives (CCs) within Principles and Parameters theory. CCs have lately been at the centre of the debate between Construction Theory proponents, who claim construction status for them because of their idiosyncratic syntax and semantics, and supporters of UG-based syntax.1We contribute to this debate by showing that, despite appearances, Spanish CCs have a regular internal and external syntax. Assuming a cartographic approach to the syntax of Topic and Focus, we argue that their informational properties are the clue to their macrostructure. Specifically, we propose that C1, the first clause of CCs, is a subordinate clause that sits in the specifier position of the topic Phrase of the main clause and is followed by a focus-fronted constituent which occupies the specifier position of the focus Phrase of the main clause. We also show that our analysis can be extended to other sentence-initial adverbial adjunct clauses.
Functional vowels in main questions in Northern Italian dialects
Authors: Cardinaletti Anna , Repetti Lori
Published: March 2014

The goal of this paper is to describe the distribution and to explain the nature of the vowels that appear in preverbal position in main questions in many Northern Italian dialects. We use data primarily from the town of Donceto in the province of Piacenza, as well as data from many other Northern Italian dialects, including other Emilian dialects, Piedmontese dialects, many Veneto dialects, Friulian dialects, and standard Italian. We suggest that the preverbal vowels are the spell-out of functional heads of the CP and IP layers, and that they should be distinguished from true subject clitic pronouns. Furthermore, the functional vowels can realize different functional heads in one and the same dialect, and they can have a different distribution in different dialects.
Middle scrambling with deictic locatives in European Portuguese
Authors: Costa João , Martins Ana Maria
Published: March 2014

This paper discusses the peculiar ability of certain deictic locatives (like lá ‘there’) to appear left-adjacent to the verb in European Portuguese. We propose that leftward movement of lá (and similar deictic locatives) is middle scrambling, understood as movement to Spec,TP. In order to explain why lá-preposing to Spec,TP is not always permitted, we elaborate on the hypothesis of Costa & Martins (2003, 2004) that in EP the strong nature of the polarity-encoding head Σ requires it to be ‘lexicalized’ either by syntactic merger or by morphological merger under adjacency. Middle scrambling is barred whenever Σ and V must be adjacent. The analysis derives the particular syntax of the deictic locatives (in different clausal structures, including restructuring infinitives) and its puzzling parallelism with clitic placement. Finally, we suggest that speaker/utterance-anchorage is what links together deictic locatives and tense, enabling the former to enter the syntactic domain of the latter.
Morphosyntactic variation in the temporal construals of non-root modals
Authors: Demirdache Hamida , Uribe-Etxebarria Myriam
Published: March 2014

We provide a principled account of the morphosyntax-semantics interface of non-root modals in two Romance languages (Spanish/French) vs. English. While English modals are morphologically impoverished, Romance modals are fully inflected for tense and aspect and the possible combinations of tense and aspect constrain the range of construals available: epistemic vs. metaphysical. We uniformly derive the range of possible construals from a restricted set of assumptions: (i) Tense/t°, Modal/m°, Aspect/asp° and v° each contribute to the temporal calculus of the clause in which they occur a time argument projected in the syntax as a Zeit-P; (ii) zeit-ps can enter into anaphoric and scopal dependencies. This proposal derives the temporal construals of non-root modals from a single phrase-structure (Tense-P > Modal-P > Aspect-P) without appealing to dedicated hierarchies of functional projections. Syntactic movement of time arguments (Zeit-Ps) and/or temporal heads (t°/asp°) ultimately accounts for cross-linguistic variation in the morphosyntax of these construals.
On the realization of LF-Binding in some degree dependencies
Authors: Gergel Remus
Published: March 2014

This paper analyzes degree constructions in Romanian and describes a visibility requirement based on representations at the level of Logical Form. The proposal thus follows the mechanism of LF-binding (Hulk & Verheugd 1994). We transfer this insight to the extraction and binding of degrees, by observing certain correlations between constructions for which a parameter of degree binding has been suggested (Beck, Oda & Sugisaki 2004), and the overt realization of the same key constructions in Romanian. The analysis is developed in terms of last-resort insertion of functional material within the adjectival shell which is bound over at LF.
Some remarks on the evidential nature of the Romanian presumptive
Authors: Irimia Monica Alexandrina
Published: March 2014

The Romanian presumptive verbal paradigm (aux + be + present/past participle) is puzzling in several respects: (i) it is the only modal/temporal/aspectual construct which allows the present participle; (ii) it can use any of the modal auxiliaries in the language, in order to assemble verbal forms which convey indirect evidentiality; (iii) with the past participle, indirect evidential meanings and other modal meanings create syncretism. A problem these characteristics pose is to understand the nature of indirect evidentiality, and its mapping to the morphology. This paper proposes a morpho-semantics analysis of the presumptive; the essential part of the account is that aspectual heads can be interpreted modally, in the domain of worlds (Iatridou 2000, Izvorski 1997). The specific semantics of the participles, as well as the contribution of be derive indirect evidentiality, defined as speaker’s non-awareness of the eventuality itself.
Toward a syntactic reinterpretation of Harris & Halle (2005)
Authors: Kayne Richard S.
Published: March 2014

Harris & Halle (2005) present a carefully worked out analysis of certain nonstandard Spanish phenomena involving pronominal clitics and the verbal plural morpheme -n. At issue are plural imperatives in combination with one or more object clitics. In this paper, I suggest that Harris & Halle’s primarily morphological approach to these phenomena should be replaced by a more syntactic approach. The latter seems more revealing and more likely to tie in to other aspects of Spanish grammar (and to aspects of the grammar of other languages/dialects).
The puzzle of subjunctive tenses
Authors: Laca Brenda
Published: March 2014

Building on previous findings on tense construals and on constraints on modal-temporal configurations, this paper presents a semantic analysis of subjunctive tenses in Spanish which departs from the defective-tense hypothesis. The subjunctive tense system is analysed in a parallel way to the indicative system, and the peculiarities of the imperfect subjunctive are shown to mirror those of the imperfect indicative. Key to the analysis is the notion of ‘fake past’, a tense anchored to an interval Tx distinct from the time of utterance, which can be either temporally or modally bound. The semantic contribution of subjunctive tenses is examined first in root contexts and subsequently in argument clauses. The possibility of temporal disharmony and its limits are interpreted on the basis of Sequence of Tense principles and of temporal restrictions on modal bases.
Nounness, gender, class and syntactic structures in Italian nouns
Authors: Lampitelli Nicola
Published: March 2014

This work proposes an analysis of Italian nouns. It explores the concept of the “final vowel” and claims that it is an analyzable object which is active in the formation of nouns in the language. The paper suggests that each “final vowel” is a complex morphophonological object (in the spirit of Kaye, Lowenstamm & Vergnaud 1985, 1990) and that only a syntactic approach to noun formation (Halle & Marantz 1993) can fully account for the distribution of such morphophonological complexes. On a more general level, the analysis depicted explains the behavior and the formation of non-derived simple nouns in Italian.
Expressing contrast in Romanian
Authors: Bîlbîie Gabriela , Winterstein Grégoire
Published: March 2014

This paper studies the Romanian conjunction iar. After a general introduction to the connective and the existing approaches, we defend an approach of iar as an information structure sensitive item. We describe two constraints on the use of iar that account for a wide range of data. We then use our analysis to compare the system of Romanian conjunctions to that of other languages, especially Russian, which uses a connective that appears similar to Romanian iar.
When the benefit is on the fringe
Authors: Boneh Nora , Nash Lea
Published: March 2014

This paper shows that French non-core datives introduced by applicative heads may attach at two different positions above the VP. If the Appl head attaches in the thematic domain, above V but below v, a new event participant is added; we refer to this configuration as the Benefactive Dative Construction. If the Appl head is attached above v, in a non-thematic environment, it does not introduce a new event participant, hence its deficient realization as se, to which configuration we refer as the Coreferential Dative Construction. We provide arguments against a low-applicative analysis (below VP), and show how to distinguish between the two types of applicative constructions (above VP) both semantically and syntactically.
Degree fronting in Québec French and the syntactic structure of degree quantifier DPs
Authors: Bouchard David-Étienne , Burnett Heather , Valois Daniel
Published: March 2014

In this paper, we compare two syntactic constructions involving degree adverbs in English and Québec French: the Degree Fronting (DF) construction and the Intensification at a Distance (IAD) construction. We argue that, although they display some similar properties, these similarities are superficial. We argue that, while DF can be analyzed as involving movement, IAD cannot. We propose that the quantifiers in IAD sentences are base-generated in their surface positions, and that these syntactic positions coincide with the positions that the quantifiers occupy when they are quantifying over individuals or events. Furthermore, we argue that dialectal variation in distance quantificational structures between Standard European French and Québec French is due to differences in the semantics of degree adverbs in these dialects.
Cartography and agrammatic syntactic production in Ibero-Romance
Authors: Gavarró Anna , Martínez-Ferreiro Silvia
Published: March 2014

Friedmann’s work has shown that the syntactic productions of Broca’s aphasics are much more selectively impaired than previously thought. Here we entertain the Tree Pruning Hypothesis of Friedmann and evaluate its predictions in Catalan, Galician and Spanish, under the assumption that the functional structure of the tree is that postulated by the cartographic approach. We report the results of tests on the production of sentential negation, tense and subject agreement, clitic production, question production, and relative clause production, run with fifteen agrammatic patients. Overall, the results are consistent with the Tree Pruning Hypothesis for all subjects of all these languages. Further, on the basis of various tense and aspect projections, which are all equally impaired, we conclude that there are no distinguishable levels of impairment within a field. The analysis of question production provides an argument for the merge of why questions and yes/no interrogatives in the same functional projection.
Compounding in Romance and English
Authors: Marchis Michaela
Published: March 2014

In this paper, based on Bisetto & Scalise’s (2005) classification of compounds, I discuss the variation between English and Romanian and Spanish in endocentric subordinate compounds, where the constituents are linked by complement-head relations. I argue that in this type of compounding, the different strategies employed by various languages are only Case-related, i.e. the Case of the complement can be checked by incorporation in English, de-insertion in Romance or Th(ematic) relational adjectives in Romance and English. However, de phrases and Th-adjectives differ with respect to the checking of Genitive Case. In the absence of de last resort insertion, Th-adjectives check the Genitive Case only nP internally, as a full Gen DP which is in long distance Agree with AgrP.
Floating parenthetical coordinate clauses
Authors: Matos Gabriela , Colaço Madalena
Published: March 2014

Floating parenthetical coordinate clauses exhibit a challenging behaviour: they disrupt the structure of the host sentence, do not present an overt first term, occur in different positions inside the host clause and, although notionally related to their host, they present syntactic autonomy. Taking into account data from European Portuguese, we claim that these clauses are derived from the core devices of the computational system: the coordinate structure is built up by Set Merge and takes, as first term, a null constituent denoting the host clause; then, Pair Merge operates by adjoining the parenthetical coordinated CP to a functional or verbal projection of the host sentence. Considering the autonomy of the parenthetical clause with respect to its host, we assume that this adjunction is an instance of Late Merge, a counter cyclic operation that applies at PF.
Unfortunate questions
Authors: Mayol Laia , Castroviejo Miró Elena
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the semantic properties of evaluative adverbs, such as unfortunately, in question environments in French. We take Bonami and Godard’s (2008) analysis for malheureusement (‘unfortunately’) in declarative sentences, where such propositional adverbs are analyzed as ancillary commitments, and extend it to a broader array of data, including polar and wh-questions. In a nutshell, we argue that malheureusement can take as input a set of propositions, which triggers an indifference interpretation of the sort that characterizes unconditional sentences. We also show that evaluatives may take a proposition as argument when they occur in polar questions, the only restriction occurring in negative polar questions, where biases are decisive in making the sentence acceptable.
Typology or reconstruction
Authors: Oliviéri Michèle
Published: March 2014

By and large in the generative framework, syntactic comparisons concern isolated mechanisms within different languages in a typological perspective. However, comparison can provide more if, as dialectologists, we consider that variation between closely genealogically related languages throws light on diachronic reconstruction. Indeed, if diatopic variation represents different stages of a change, then different dialects in a homogeneous area display different stages of the evolution and the speakers’ I-language for the earlier stages becomes accessible.
Considering the Null ‘Subject’ Parameter, we focus on the dialects at the boundaries of Occitania since they display subject clitics for some persons only. Our data illustrate the gradual change between a stage zero (with no subject clitics, e.g. Latin) and a stage n (with subject clitics for all persons, e.g. Standard French). Analyzing clitics as bundles of features, we propose a progression in their emergence, which ties in with a functional ‘motivational cycle’ of the morpho-syntactic elements.
Underapplication of vowel reduction to schwa in Majorcan Catalan productive derivation and verbal inflection
Authors: Pons-Moll Claudia
Published: March 2014

In Majorcan Catalan, the process of vowel reduction of the mid front vowels to schwa in unstressed position underapplies under certain circumstances: (a) in productive derived forms with an unstressed vowel located in the initial syllable of the stem which alternates with a stressed mid front vowel in the stem of the underived form (p[é]ix ‘fish’ ˜ p[e]ixet ‘fish dim.’); (b) in verbal forms with an unstressed vowel located in the initial syllable of the stem which alternates with a stressed close mid front vowel in another verbal form of the same inflectional paradigm (p[é]ga ‘(s/he) hits’ ˜ p[e]gam ‘(we) hit’); (c) in learned and loan words with an unstressed e located in the initial syllable of the stem (p[e]culiar ‘peculiar’). In this paper I propose a novel explanation of these patterns framed within a relativized version of the Transderivational Correspondence Theory (TCT) (Benua 1997/2000), the Optimal Paradigms model (OP) (McCarthy 2005), the Positional Faithfulness Theory (Beckman 1998/1999) and the prominence driven approach to vowel reduction (Crosswhite 1999/2001, 2004).
Focus and the development of N-words in Spanish
Authors: Poole Geoffrey
Published: March 2014

During Spain’s ‘Golden Age’ period, n-words in Spanish, such as nada ‘nothing’, changed from being negative polarity items to negative concord items. During the same period, immediately pre-verbal n-words, which previously had expressed wide-focus for VP constitutes, came to acquire a mildly emphatic interpretation, which survives into the modern language as Quantifier Fronting (Quer 2002) or ‘verum-focus’ fronting (Leonetti & Escandell Vidal 2007, 2009). This development, in which negative polarity items seem to acquire a focus feature in the context of becoming negative concord items, is of particular interest because it provides indirect support for Watanabe’s (2004) account of negative concord, in which a focus feature is crucially implicated.
Person restrictions and the representation of third person – an argument from Barceloní Catalan
Authors: Walkow Martin
Published: March 2014

Several Romance languages show restrictions on combinations of third person direct and indirect object clitics (Bonet 1995) and combinations of such clitics involving local person direct objects (the Person Case Constraint (PCC), Bonet 1991, 1994). The former have received morphological analyses, while the later have recently been treated as syntactic. A unified, syntactic analysis of both of these restrictions is developed by extending existing analyses of the PCC. Person restrictions are derived in a syntactic configuration where DO bleeds person licensing on IO. A more complex syntactic representation of third person is proposed. The starting point for the investigation is Barceloní Catalan, which evades both restrictions by not realizing person morphology on third person indirect objects. The proposal is subsequently extended to Spanish, in particular restrictions on animate direct objects pronouns in some varieties of leísta Spanish (Ormazabal & Romero 2007). The syntactic proposal combines with the proposal for the semantics and pragmatics of person features in Sauerland (2004, 2008) to derive interpretive aspects of the leísta Spanish data.
Chapter 1. Discourse genres, academic and professional discourses
Authors: Parodi Giovanni
Published: March 2014

This introductory chapter describes the aim of the book and explains how each chapter contributes to this aim; so they do not stand alone as isolated or disconnected pieces. In addition, background information is provided about the production process of this volume and how all of the pieces came to be part of this unit. The book focuses on the collection, in-depth description, and quantitative and qualitative analysis of one the largest available on-line corpora on academic and professional disciplinary written discourse of Spanish across four disciplines (59 million words).
Chapter 4. Academic and professional genres
Authors: Parodi Giovanni
Published: March 2014

This chapter focuses on describing the largest available on-line corpora (59 million words) of written specialized Spanish on four disciplines: Psychology, Social Work, Industrial Chemistry, and Construction Engineering. The corpora were collected in one Chilean university and in the corresponding professional settings. The corpus description shows that access to disciplinary knowledge is constructed, on the one hand, through a varying repertoire of nine written academic genres. On the other hand, a larger group of twenty-eight professional genres is detected. Interesting variations across the four disciplines under study are identified.
Chapter 6. Multi-dimentional analysis of an academic corpus in Spanish
Authors: Venegas René
Published: March 2014

Recent studies on Spanish oriented to describe specialised and multi-register corpora have been carried out using diverse corpus methodologies, such as multi-dimensional analysis. This chapter presents two studies based on the written academic PUCV-2006 Corpus of Spanish. Both employ the five dimensions (i.e. Contextual and Interactive Focus, Narrative Focus, Commitment Focus, Modalising Focus, and Informational Focus) identified by Parodi (2005a). Each of these dimensions emerged out of the functional interpretation of co-ocurrent lexicogrammatical features identified through a multi-dimensional and multi-register analysis. In the first study, we calculate linguistic density across the five dimensions that provide a lexicogrammatical description of the nine academic genres that compose the corpora. In the second study, we compare the PUCV-2006 Corpus with four corpora from other different registers. The findings confirm the specialised nature of the genres in the PUCV-2006 Corpus, where both a strong lexicogrammatical compactness of meanings and a regulation emphasis of the degree to which certainty is manifested are strongly expressed.
Chapter 7. Automatic text classification of disciplinary texts
Authors: Venegas René
Published: March 2014

The aim of this research is to classify, using and comparing two automatic classification methods, the academic texts included in the PUCV-2006 Corpus of Spanish. The methods are based on shared lexical-semantic content words present in the corpus of academic texts. The classification methods compared in this study are Multinomial Naive Bayes and Support Vector Machine. Both enable the identification of a small group of shared words that help, according to statistical weights, to classify a new text into the four disciplinary areas involved in the corpora. The results allow us to establish that Support Vector Machine classifies academic texts efficiently. Using this method, we were able to automatically identify the disciplinary domain of an academic text – based on a reduced number of shared content lexemes – delivering high performance even in highly-refined disciplines such as Psychology and Social Work.
Chapter 8. Rhetorical organisation of Textbooks
Authors: Parodi Giovanni
Published: March 2014

In this chapter, we identify and describe the rhetorical organization of the Textbook genre, based on a part of the PUCV-2006 Academic Corpus of Spanish. This corpus includes a total amount of one hundred and twenty-six textbooks collected from four disciplines: Social Work, Psychology, Construction Engineering and Industrial Chemistry. In order to do so, we identify steps and moves of the genre, and we describe the communicative macro-purposes underlying these discourse units. In addition, we selected passages from the texts to exemplify the corresponding steps and moves. A new macro-level of analysis is introduced and justified, which becomes necessary for a better description of an extensive textual unit such as this. We have named it macromove. At the end of the chapter, we answer the question appearing in the chapter’s title and we explain why the Textbook would have a rhetorical organization, which we denominate “colony-in-loops”.