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Unlike wh-question questions in Standard Arabic (SA), which received much attention in the past decades in different approaches within generative grammar, question particles (yes-no questions) in SA have not yet been studied thoroughly in minimalist syntax, and less attention has been paid to them. There is a need to analyze SA question articles and explore their syntactic behavior within minimalism. The reason why this topic has been selected for study is that SA question particles have not been investigated in detail yet in Chomsky's Phase Theory; it has not been analyzed how question particles are derived and represented morpho-syntactically in a clause structure. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the morpho-syntax of SA question particles and provide satisfactory answers to the following questions: (i) Do question particles in SA undergo any syntactic movement to [Spec-CP] in the derivation of yes-no questions? If not, why?, (ii) Are question particles based-generated in [Spec-CP]?, and (iii) How can question particles be accounted for neatly in Chomsky's Phase-based Theory? The paper adopts Chomsky's Phase Theory to examine the interaction between the assumptions of this theory and the SA data on question particles. The study findings reveal that, unlike English, question particles in SA do not undergo any syntactic movement while deriving yes-no questions and are assumed to be base-generated in [Spec-CP]. Such question particles are not part of the verb morphology and are merely morphological affixes used as devices to mark interrogativity in the syntax; they do not carry any agreement and tense features that trigger syntactic movement to the clause-initial position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The artificial grammar learning paradigm is a classic method of investigating the influence of universal constraints on shaping learning biases on language acquisition. While this method has been used extensively by linguists to test theoretical claims in generative grammar, one of the most prevalent frameworks in language acquisition, several studies have questioned whether artificial grammar learning reflects language acquisition enough to allow us to use it to draw inferences about the validity of universal constraints, particularly those arising from phonetic naturalness. The current study tests whether artificial grammar learning shows the effect of one robust phonetic naturalness constraint: the restriction on nasal harmony patterns arising from the sonority hierarchy. Nasal harmony is of particular interest because it is one of the few types of harmony that occurs between consonants and vowels, which is an under-researched topic. The results, contrary to the skeptical concerns, showed that participants (n = 120) could learn an artificial grammar involving a natural pattern, but could not learn one corresponding to an arbitrary/phonetically unmotivated pattern in the same way or to the same degree. This study contributes epistemic support to the large body of work using artificial grammar experiments to test phonological operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, computer-assisted writing techniques for linear expressions of the structure of polycyclic molecules, branched molecules and clusters, based on formal languages, are tested. The techniques used only require the ability to process written texts, even just using a text editor, and one of the many available molecular drawing/optimization programs that accept input in the form of a SMILES string. A few specific syntactic operators acting on strings are characterized in terms of their effect on the corresponding structure, and although they are simply examples, they are already capable of producing non-trivial structures. The aim of this work is to encourage experiments that may lead to potentially interesting molecular schemata, in view of their symmetry and stereochemistry, as revealed by optimization, and to develop insight into the connection between formal expressions and structures. Given the simplicity and availability of the required tools, it can also be useful for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this note is to offer a critical review of the contrastive analysis hypothesis within the field of second language acquisition. The notions of interlanguage, universal grammar and mental grammar are discussed. Transfer is redefined as the output of underlying rules in the grammar of a second language. Through Jackendoff’s notion of a mental grammar we reconcile the contribution of structural and generative grammar to the understanding of the phenomenon of transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is a broad consensus that both the procedural and declarative memory systems play a crucial role in language learning, use, and knowledge, the mapping between linguistic types and memory structures remains underspecified: by default, a dual‐route mapping of language systems to memory systems is assumed, with declarative memory handling idiosyncratic lexical knowledge and procedural memory handling rule‐governed knowledge of grammar. We experimentally contrast the processing of morphology (case and aspect), syntax (subordination), and lexical semantics (collocations) in a healthy L1 population of Polish, a language rich in form distinctions. We study the processing of these four types under two conditions: a single task condition in which the grammaticality of stimuli was judged and a concurrent task condition in which grammaticality judgments were combined with a digit span task. Dividing attention impedes access to declarative memory while leaving procedural memory unaffected and hence constitutes a test that dissociates which types of linguistic information each long‐term memory construct subserves. Our findings confirm the existence of a distinction between lexicon and grammar as a generative, dual‐route model would predict, but the distinction is graded, as usage‐based models assume: the hypothesized grammar–lexicon opposition appears as a continuum on which grammatical phenomena can be placed as being more or less "ruly" or "idiosyncratic." However, usage‐based models, too, need adjusting as not all types of linguistic knowledge are proceduralized to the same extent. This move away from a simple dichotomy fundamentally changes how we think about memory for language, and hence how we design and interpret behavioral and neuroimaging studies that probe into the nature of language cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a research that aimed to verify the acquisition of verbal forms related to tense and aspect, demonstrating the results of an investigation carried out after the study of the emergence of verbal structures (in simple form and in periphrastic form -- auxiliary and main verb) effectively produced by five monolingual children, between 2 years old and 5 years and 11 months old, in the process of language acquisition. The corpus used was cataloged by two members of the eLinC group -- Studies in Language and Cognition (in press). The objective was to understand, in addition, to what extent the notions of semantic/ lexical aspect influence or not on the appearance of grammatical aspect marks. This work has two hypotheses: (i) in children's grammar, the notion of aspect appears, more recurrently, before the notion of tense and (ii) when the verbal forms in the present tense and in the perfect past tense appear, the aspect is expressed. Based on qualitative analyses, we understand that the aspect is a category that appears before tense, but, even so, younger children present the tense category in their spontaneous productions, which is in line with what the Generative Theory advocates, which is the theoretical framework adopted to carry out this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different analyses of complex cardinal numerals have been proposed in Generative Grammar. This article provides an analysis of these expressions based on the Strong Minimalist Thesis, according to which the derivations of linguistic expressions are generated by a simple combinatorial operation, applying in accord with principles external to the language faculty. The proposed derivations account for the asymmetrical structure of additive and multiplicative complexes and for the instructions they provide to the external systems for their interpretation. They harmonize with those of coordinate nouns, and thus offer a unified Minimalist account of their core properties. Firstly, the empirical problem addressed is stated. Secondly, the theoretical framework is presented. Thirdly, Minimalist derivations for additive and multiplicative complexes are provided. Fourthly, the proposed derivations are contrasted with derivations not relying on the Strong Minimalist Thesis. Lastly, consequences for linguistic theory are identified as well as questions open to further inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chomsky and his followers routinely introduce linguistic minimalism as a «program», in the sense that it merely provides some guidelines for the elaboration of grammatical theories proper. According to this orthodox interpretation, these theories can be attributed factual content, that is, content open to empirical refutation, but the program as such is immune to this type of rebuttal. This article discusses this vision of the minimalist «program» and proposes a reconceptualization of both minimalism and generativism in its different phases of development. According to this proposal, the minimalist thesis has factual content and minimalism, although it can be trivially described as programmatic, has an inescapably theoretical character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This predicts that extraction from EQs under rogative verbs should yield structural island effects, typically associated with stark unacceptability, whereas extraction from EQs under responsive verbs should yield no structural island effects and should obtain acceptable ratings. Applying this logic to EQs, we make the following predictions: If EQs under rogative verbs are necessarily analyzed as structural islands, extraction from EQs under rogative verbs should be consistently judged unacceptable and we expect to see large island effects. The preponderance of acceptable ratings in both EQ-island conditions suggests that neither EQ is a syntactic island in Spanish, contrary to the analysis in [60], where it was proposed that I ask i -EQs were syntactic islands and I know i -EQs were not. In the non-island conditions (10a), (10c), the embedded structure is a declarative clause, which does not give rise to island effects, whereas in the island conditions (10b), (10d), it is an EQ, expected to yield island effects. If, on the other hand, EQs under rogative verbs are not structural islands we either expect to see (i) no island effects at all, or (ii) smaller island effects characterized by inconsistent judgment distributions. [Extracted from the article]

If there is no adjunction to X', or D' specifically, the second construction cannot involve a Doubly-filled DP. 3.3.2 Option 2: complex Spec,DP In this option, the embedded DP and the indefinite article form a constituent inside the specifier of DP. As such, we could propose that the embedded DP is in Spec,DP, and the indefinite article is in D. Spec-head constellations are often employed to explain cases of adjacency (e.g., the Verb-Second constraint in the Germanic languages). To sum up thus far, I eyner i and I epes i are similar to the possessive pronoun in the second construction: these elements can precede the indefinite article, and they can be separated from it by other words. Focusing on the possessive pronoun, the latter and the indefinite article could form a doubly-filled DP (29a) where the pronoun is in Spec,DP and the article in D. Both of these elements could also form a complex specifier in Spec,DP (29b). Keywords: definiteness; DP-structure; possessives; Yiddish EN definiteness DP-structure possessives Yiddish 347 393 47 03/11/22 20220301 NES 220301 1 Introduction The interpretation of a possessive DP ( I John's book i ) depends on the definiteness of the possessor itself ( I John i ). [Extracted from the article]

In subordinate clauses, the finite verb also belongs to the verb cluster, so that the terms "verb cluster" and "verb construction" in that syntactic context refer to the same verbs. Keywords: Dutch; functional category; selectional restriction; semantic scope; verb construction EN Dutch functional category selectional restriction semantic scope verb construction 123 176 54 01/18/22 20220101 NES 220101 1 Introduction Dutch is known for its ability to combine a wide variety of verbs into complex verb constructions. Our corpus data (Table 15) show that perception and causative verbs are overwhelmingly used as nonfinite verbs in three-verb constructions (point estimate proportion for finite perception/causative verbs 0.04; 95% CI, 5 comparisons, finite I zien: i 0 I . i 04-0.30, which means that I zien i is somewhat more commonly finite than the other perception/causative verbs, according to our data). In particular, the tendency for a particular verb or a group of verbs to appear as finite or nonfinite verbs in a three-verb construction is of interest, which is captured by the proportion of finite versus nonfinite occurrences for this verb or verb group. A last verb that requires some extra discussion is I gaan. i As an aspectual marker, it differs from other external aspect verbs, in that it is frequently used as a finite verb with scope over internal aspect verbs, causative verbs and passive auxiliaries. [Extracted from the article]

Under the P» M model, the generalization is that the glottal stop can only be realized when the stem is monosyllabic (as well as other phonological factors, such as the presence of a lexical glottal stop in the stem and if the stem begins with a cluster or not). The prosodic word in Tlapanec can consist simply of a stem, a stem + an affix, or possibly stem + stem compounds. Recall that the alternation was between the allomorphs I gita i - and I gi - i , the former occurring with disyllabic stems, while the latter with monosyllabic stems; with the latter, the glottal stop is deleted before a stem-initial consonant cluster or when the stem contains a glottal stop. (44) HT

Relational triple extraction is a critical step in knowledge graph construction. Compared to pipeline-based extraction, joint extraction is gaining more attention because it can better utilize entity and relation information without causing error propagation issues. Yet, the challenge with joint extraction lies in handling overlapping triples. Existing approaches adopt sequential steps or multiple modules, which often accumulate errors and interfere with redundant data. In this study, we propose an innovative joint extraction model with cross-attention mechanism and global pointers with context shield window. Specifically, our methodology begins by inputting text data into a pre-trained RoBERTa model to generate word vector representations. Subsequently, these embeddings are passed through a modified cross-attention layer along with entity type embeddings to address missing entity type information. Next, we employ the global pointer to transform the extraction problem into a quintuple extraction problem, which skillfully solves the issue of overlapping triples. It is worth mentioning that we design a context shield window on the global pointer, which facilitates the identification of correct entities within a limited range during the entity extraction process. Finally, the capability of our model against malicious samples is improved by adding adversarial training during the training process. Demonstrating superiority over mainstream models, our approach achieves impressive results on three publicly available datasets. • Solving overlapping triples problems by employing global pointer. • Context shield window is designed to eliminate redundant information. • Merging entity type information with designed entity-type cross attention module. • Adversarial training is added to improve the generalization ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In mainstream generative grammar (MGG), Logical Form (LF) is at the same time a syntactic representation delivered by the grammar and a representation that can be truth-conditionally evaluated. Iacona (2018) argues however that formal logic raises a problem for MGG's intrinsicalist notion of LF: logic requires that the logical form assigned to a sentence should not depend solely on the sentence itself, but also on the logical relations the sentence bears to other propositions in the language, making logicians' logical form dependent on something outside the sentence. This paper argues that LF is also not linguistic enough for linguistics because it is modelled on formal logic rather than on careful analysis of natural language and the natural articulations of linguistic utterances. This leads to a misidentification of the basic linguistic unit, which is not the sentence, and a misanalysis of the sentence's basic structure. The conclusion argues that the only methodologically sound basis for linguistic analysis is not truth, nor the sentence that expresses it, but rather the means that allow the speaker to produce the utterance in the first place, the stable pairings of meaning and sound corresponding to the units that the speaker has stored in memory. • Argues that Logical Form is not logical enough for logic because it does not meet formal logic's requirement that the logical form of a sentence should depend on the relations that it bears to other propositions. • Argues that Logical Form is not linguistic enough for linguistics because it is modelled on formal logic rather than on careful analysis of the natural articulations of linguistic utterances. • Argues that Minimalism is wrong in treating sentences as pairings of sounds with meanings. • Redefines the semantics-progmatics interface as located between notional content that is stably associated with a linguistic sign and notional content that is not. • Argues that the only methodologically sound basis for linguistic analysis is not truth, but rather the stable pairings of meaning and sound corresponding to the linguistic units that the speaker has stored in memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an insight on the centrality of two main paradigms of the current linguistic theory in the field of Spanish as a second/foreign language acquisition, and its operative role in teaching. Generative Grammar (GG) as well as Cognitive Grammar (CG) are mentalist models, however, its postulates on the connection between human cognition and non-native linguistic knowledge are, in many cases, opposite; therefore, these models imply different conceptions of a pedagogical grammar. Throughout the paper, it is taken into consideration the way in which they are antagonistic, but also how they can be complementary. Even though GC has been more popular in classroom teaching, current GG may have a relevant impact on the curriculum, as well as on the instruction, by presenting a greater predictive capacity to identify the learner’s difficulties in processing certain linguistic structures. Finally, other key notions on linguistic knowledge, processability, and input, regarding didactic intervention, are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of this article is twofold: on the first hand, to give an account of the enormous and growing number of derivatives formed from Anglicisms in present-day European Spanish; and secondly, to examine the different derivational patterns found as well as the morphophonological, morphological and semantic variations involved in them. The article also tackles the lexicographic treatment followed in dictionaries when dealing with compound anglicisms. The data have been mainly drawn from the Spanish daily press of the last few decades and they are mostly part of those collected in the Gran diccionario de anglicismos, gda (2017) and in the recent Diccionario de anglicismos del deporte, dad (2021). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insertion systems or insertion grammars are a generative formalism in which words can only be generated by starting with some axioms and by iteratively inserting strings subject to certain contexts of a fixed maximal length. It is known that languages generated by such systems are always context sensitive and that the corresponding language classes are incomparable with the regular languages. On the other hand, it is possible to generate non-semilinear languages with systems having contexts of length two. Here, we study decidability questions for insertion systems. On the one hand, it can be seen that emptiness and universality are decidable. Moreover, the fixed membership problem is solvable in deterministic polynomial time. On the other hand, the usually studied decidability questions such as, for example, finiteness, inclusion, equivalence, regularity, inclusion in a regular language, and inclusion of a regular language turn out to be undecidable. Interestingly, the latter undecidability results can be carried over to other models which are basically able to handle the mechanism of inserting strings depending on contexts. In particular, new undecidability results are obtained for pure grammars, restarting automata, clearing restarting automata, and forgetting automata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his essay Cognitive Linguistics and Autonomous Linguistics, published in the 2007 Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, John R. Taylor suggests dialogue and even integration between cognitive linguistics and other approaches in language studies. Following Taylor's line of argument this article reviews George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor. This study intends to address both authors' empirical and rhetorical excesses since publishing Metaphors we live by forty years ago as an outcome of their rejection of Noam Chomsky's generative grammar. Thus, it is expected to further converge generativism and cognitivism, as already initiated by researchers such as Taylor, Ray Jackendoff, Peter Culicover, Alan Prince, and Paul Smolensky. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Technology and the Lifeworld (1990), Don Ihde advances what he calls "formalisms" for the ways in which we experience or relate to technology. In this article, I seek to clarify the grammar of Ihde's formalisms. Ihde's formalisms have not been the focus of scrutiny. Rather, they have largely been received in the literature as merely aphoristic or epigrammatical devices serving to clarify what can be explained in prose. My hypothesis is that Ihde's formalisms do not merely serve an epigrammatical function but rather admit of a generative grammar that extends his postphenomenological framework. I propose a notation that adheres to six rules of syntax that can be derived from Ihde's framework. I show that the proposed notation makes explicit the inter-relations among hidden dimensions of human–technology relations. Relying on my notation, I also suggest that the so-called cyborg turn is actually a turn away from the unharnessed syntax of Ihde's formalisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metaphysical assumption that nature is perfect has been groundwork for modern physics since the seventeenth century. Due to the success of that discipline, researchers from other fields of study followed its principles, including the idea of nature being perfect. Noam Chomsky's Generative Grammar was a particularly interesting case of such epistemological transposition, which took place in the twentieth century, mainly in his Minimalist Program. In his work, while taking to ultimate levels what he dubbed "the Galilean intuition that 'nature is perfect'", Chomsky proposes language as well is perfect. However, given that in Generativism language is also seen as a biological system, conjecture on its perfection results in a highly unlike assertion that it is unique from a biological point of view, because biological systems are characteristically imperfect since they are results of evolutionary accidents. Built on such almost paradoxical situation reached in Chomsky's minimalism, this article discusses the limits to emulating physics in other fields of study, more specifically in biology and cognitive sciences, among which stands linguistics. As a result of this investigation, this work questions the very metaphysical assumption that nature is perfect, along with ideas from contemporary thinkers such as physicist Marcelo Gleiser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a general summary of some of the current issues in the field of Generative Grammar, the study of the human Faculty of Language. We review some key ideas this approach to language has put forward and pursued, focusing on the basic properties of language and its interactions with other systems. We also point at some of the possibilities that a biological approach to language offers to build bridges between Linguistics and other scientific disciplines. Throughout the paper we take into consideration the advantages that incorporating some of these ideas would have in Secondary Education, -not only for the potentially intrinsic value of linguistic knowledge, but also for the impact of this approach on more general skills like observing, describing and comparing data, reasoning, providing arguments and counterarguments, formulating generalizations, analyzing, summarizing or inferring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to clarify certain features of the systematicity arguments by a review of some of the largely underexamined background in Chomsky's and Fodor's early work on transformational grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am especially proud to join my collaborators and friends who previously received the Lifetime Achievement Award: Bill Woods, Martin Kay, Lauri Karttunen, and Joan Bresnan. Martin had developed a parsing program that was not based on transformational grammar but seemed expressive enough to recognize the patterns of natural language (Kay [24]). This was the seed of the equality predicate of LFG and the unification operator in Martin's Functional Unification Grammar (Kay [25], [26]) and other formalisms in that tradition. Roughly, Martin was attracted to the idea that the grammar itself could be coded as elaborated feature structures, and that parsing consisted of applying implicitly a same-like operator - unification - to combine the grammar matrices recursively with attribute-value representations of the input words. Eventually, in 1994, Martin and I got around to publishing a description of our theoretical results (Kaplan and Kay [21]). [Extracted from the article]

The present study has as object the category Tense in the acquisition of written Brazilian Portuguese by deaf people. The analysis of the phenomenon of acquisition of the Tense category investigated here was based on the generative theory, assuming the innatist proposition of language acquisition. In the context of the acquisition of L2, we assumed the hypothesis of indirect access to Universal Grammar (UG). Our corpus consists of naturalistic samples - texts produced in a school environment. Results indicate the occurrence of specific temporal operators of Libras (Brazilian sign language) in the interlanguage - the past and future lexical items and certain adverbs. We observed the occurrence of lexical operator for past Tense marking in verbs with non-punctual Aspect and the dispensation of this mark in cases of verbs with perfective Aspect, as occurs in Libras according to a study by Silva (2015) and Silva and Lessa-de-Oliveira (2016). This finding characterizes indirect access to the UG in the process of acquisition of L2. The written productions also displayed temporal flexion according to the parameters of Brazilian Portuguese and the use of auxiliary verbs to mark the future tense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an overview of zero derivation in Old English, a description of the vocalic alternations that hold between zero derived nouns, adjectives and weak verbs and their bases of derivation as well as an account of the significance of alternations in the wider context of the evolution of the lexicon of English. Alternations are quantified and related to i-mutation and word-formation processes by distinguishing direct from reverse alternations and alternations with a strong verb source from alternations with a weak verb target. The conclusions reflect the synchronic-diachronic character of alternations. On the synchronic axis, alternations represent a relatively generalised phenomenon that affects all classes of both strong and weak verbs, while, on the diachronic axis, they allow us to assess the progress of the change from variable to invariable base morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1965, I became a student of Dutch and general linguistics at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. The rise of generative grammar played an important role in this change of perspective within Dutch linguistics. Word formation rules, as conceived of and discussed in that monograph, are incompatible with generative grammar or with any grammar-based linguistic framework, because, like the tradition they encode, these rules cross the synchronic-diachronic boundary that is central to all post-Saussurean structural linguistics. The Dutch tradition of morphology before the rise of generative grammar in the 1960s had a different focus, even though it also wanted to account for the word-forming creativity of the language user. [Extracted from the article]

The problem of factual incorrectness in machine-generated abstractive summarization has received widespread attention in the past few years. Although large-scale neural models show excellent capability in generating fluent and coherent summaries, they still struggle with factual inconsistency, in which the named entity incorrectness is the most frequent and notable one, especially for the character-based languages, such as Chinese. Since abstractive summaries are mostly generated character by character in Chinese, the problem of hallucinated entities is more severe than that of other word-based languages. In this paper, we propose CC-Gens, a novel approach for Correctness Checking based on a Generative negative sampling strategy. Considering that the problem is due to the uncertain nature of the language generation process, we leverage fine-tuned generative language models, i.e., UniLMv2 and mT5, to generate summaries with incorrect entities, thereby constructing a synthetic binary classification dataset for the factuality discriminative model. We propose three strategies: Entity Sampling, Sequence Sampling, and Cloze Sampling, to generate summaries with incorrect entities. With such strategies, the negative samples are much more similar in nature to the output of the neural summarization model. We then train a BERT-based discriminator to identify factually incorrect machine-generated summaries with entity errors based on these generative negative samples. We further propose a novel PU learning algorithm to improve the performance of our approach by iteratively training the discriminator to select high confident negative samples from the unlabeled model generated summaries to replace the former artificially constructed ones. By generating multiple candidate summaries and selecting the one with the highest factual correctness score among them, our approach can significantly reduce the probability that an output summary contains factual errors. According to a comprehensive evaluation, the CC-Gens we proposed outperforms previous works in identifying faithless summaries as well as providing faithful ones. [Display omitted] • Named entity error ratio in Chinese abstractive summaries is as high as 58.1%. • We propose generative negative sampling strategies for training the discriminator. • We apply PU learning to improve performance by selecting high-confident samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term Chomskyan revolution, referring to the innovative current in modern American linguistics and Noam Chomsky as it's leading figure, permeated the metaphorical imagery of the popular linguistic and socio-cultural spheres in the USA. This term actually surpassed specialized linguistic circles, where it designated Chomsky's transformational-generative grammar model and normally appeared in quotation marks. However, although Chomskyan revolution came to occupy a central position in the American network of unquestioned cultural mythologemes, its Bulgarian reception was different. The overall impression in Bulgarian linguistic and socio-cultural circles regarding the revolutionary leap has been rather skeptical and reserved, although the Chomskyan grammar model itself has been introduced into research practice. Such a difference in attitudes towards the status of transformationalgenerative grammar in the source and a target country is discussed here in terms of motivations and basic positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditionally called "nominative forms" of pronouns are also oblique representatives without any marginality in its acceptance in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). There is no univocal correspondence between a pronominal form and a unique casual function, as expected in European Portuguese (EP). We also argue, in this work, the plural first-person pronouns integrate the vernacular system of BP pronouns and do not compete with each other. Based on the assumptions of the Generative Theory, we argue that the grammatical change, related to the opposition of a system composed by six grammatical persons toward an opposition of first and third person singular, has as consequence a change in the grammatical features of the pronouns that are no longer marked as nominative in the lexicon; so, the Brazilian vernacular pronoun paradigm is characterized by a flexional paradigm and a concordance system distinct from EP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shift-reduce parsing enjoys the property of efficiency because of the use of efficient parsing algorithms like greedy/deterministic search and beam search. In addition, shift-reduce parsing is much simpler and easy to implement compared with other parsing algorithms. In this article, we explore constituent boundary information to improve the performance of shift-reduce phrase-structure parsing. In previous work, constituent boundary information has been used to speed up chart parsers successfully. However, whether it is useful for improving parsing accuracy has not been investigated. We propose two different models to capture constituent boundary information, based on which two sets of novel features are designed for a shift-reduce parser. The first model is a boundary prediction model that uses a classifier to predict the boundaries of constituents. We use automatically parsed data to train the classifier. The second one is a Tree Likelihood Model that measures the validity of a constituent by its likelihood which is calculated on automatically parsed data. Experimental results show that our proposed method outperforms a strong baseline by 0.8 % and 1.6 % in F-score on English and Chinese data, respectively, achieving the competitive parsing accuracies on Chinese (84.8 %) and English (90.8 %). To our knowledge, this is the first time for shift-reduce phrase-structure parsing to advance the state-of-the-art with constituent boundary information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article relates the history of the linguistic behavior of the protagonist of the film The Kaspar Hauser's enigma (1974), of the German director, the phenomena of language acquisition and the innate linguistic competence, postulated by gerativism and investigates how they are revealed in the commission of a speaker who later acquired the verbal language. The Generative Theory postulates the existence of a language acquisition device with h the individual is born and which, in contact with a natural language, generates the language of grammar that is exposed, developing communication skills. The present work is a fictional analysis in the form of a case study, of the descriptive and exploratory type, of qualitative character. This fictional analysis, related to gerativism, corroborates the idea that it is possible for someone who has been out of touch with other humans, such as Kaspar, to develop verbal language, although late, but that some limitations, especially related to abstract thinking that makes possible the comprehension of the representativeness of the linguistic signs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider d -dimensional contextual array grammars and investigate their computational power when using various control mechanisms – matrices, regular control languages, and tissue P systems, which work like regular control languages, but may end up with a final check for the non-applicability of some rules. For d ≥ 2 , d -dimensional contextual array grammars are less powerful than matrix contextual array grammars, which themselves are less powerful than contextual array grammars with regular control languages. The use of tissue P systems with their final non-applicability check even yields some additional computational power. In the 1-dimensional case, the family of 1-dimensional array languages generated by contextual array grammars with regular control languages can be characterized as the family of array images of the linear languages, which for a one-letter alphabet means that it coincides with the family of regular 1-dimensional array languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammars with valuations are context-free rewriting mechanisms where the derivation process is controlled by a recursive function that evaluates strings. They have been introduced by Jürgen Dassow as models for the molecular replication process taking into account its selective character. A symbol is active in a grammar with valuation if it can be rewritten non-identically. This paper studies the effect of restricting the number of active symbols in grammars with valuations and several variants thereof to their generative power. It is investigated in which cases the number of active symbols induces infinite strict hierarchies and when the hierarchies collapse. The induced language families are compared among one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish has a restriction on palatal nasals and laterals in the coda so that they are normally realized as dental or alveolar coronals. In the onset position, the palatal point of articulation is retained, bello (be.[ʎ]o) 'beautiful-masc.', beldad (be[l].dad) 'beauty'; doña (do.[ʎ]a) 'Madam', don (do[n]) 'Mister'. Alternations such as these led phonologists to propose a rule of depalatalization that turns an underlying palatal nasal or lateral into a coronal (Contreras 1977; Harris 1983). More recently, within an optimality-theoretic framework and on the basis of loan word evidence, Lloret and Mascaró (2006) argue again in favor of an active process of depalatalization in the phonology of Modern Spanish. Taking the proposal of Lloret and Mascaró as its point of departure, this paper expands the discussion on depalatalization to consider diachronic data, the role of the underlying representation and the perception grammar, in particular regarding loanword phonology. Historical data support depalatalization as an active phenomenon in Old Spanish and Medieval Spanish; yet the morphophonological alternations cannot be considered active/productive synchronically. Unlike previous serial models of phonology, an OT framework allows for the incorporation of diachronic data into the analysis, through constraints, constraint re-ranking and Lexicon Optimization, thus explaining how the current situation came about and shedding light on apparent synchronic alternations. OT also provides a formalization of the role of the underlying representation in diachronic change and in synchronic loanword evidence, in connection with the perception grammar, thus providing support for depalatalization as an active phonotactic restriction in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One important aspect of the faculty of language, as understood in generative grammar, is its capacity to form operator-variable structures. Such structures are crucial for definite descriptions, as understood in the broadly Russellian tradition. The paper proposes a research program for exploring the relation between the uniquely human ability for "knowledge" (more properly, cognition) by description and the capacity of the language faculty to produce operator- variable structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A number of experiments with skilled adult readers have shown that a transposed-letter pseudoword (e.g., CHOLOCATE) is considerably more word-like than a control replacement-letter pseudoword (e.g., CHOTONATE). For instance, in lexical decision, response times are longer and less accurate for CHOLOCATE than for CHOTONATE (i.e., a transposed-letter effect). Method: Here, we examined how letter position coding is attained in individuals who excel in orthographic-lexical processing: competitive Scrabble players. To this end, we conducted a lexical decision experiment with two types of pseudowords (transposedletter vs. replacement-letter pseudowords). Results: Data showed that while the transposed-letter effect does occur in expert Scrabble players, the magnitude of the effect is dramatically smaller than in a control group of university students--in particular, for the accuracy data. Conclusions: The parameters responsible for the flexibility of letter position coding in models of visual word recognition must be modulated by the degree of expertise in orthographic-lexical processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous generative approaches to explaining tonal structure and/or Schenker's theories have been proposed since Babbitt noted a resemblance between Schenker's analytical method and Chomskian generative grammars in 1965. One of the more challenging features of Schenker's theory to replicate in a generative system is the interaction of counterpoint and hierarchy. Many theorists, such as Lerdahl and Jackendoff, skirt the problem by developing non-contrapuntal systems, meaning ones that do not allow for layers with conflicting hierarchical descriptions. This article tackles the counterpoint problem by first proposing a dynamic model for tonal hierarchy, which matches the usage of basic Schenkerian symbols (slurs and beams), and differs from the representational model used by Lerdahl and Jackendoff and others. I then summarize Schenker's argument for a contrapuntal theory of tonal structure and show that this implies a relativity of contrapuntal voices to structural level which necessitates a theory of voice-leading transformation. This concept of voice-leading transformation marks a crucial turning point in Schenker's analytical practice leading directly to his theory of levels, and is fundamental to understanding his late theory. The article also operationalizes the idea of voice-leading transformations within a generative system, and illustrates it with short analyses of themes from Bach's Partitas and an extended analysis of the Menuetto from Beethoven's Op. 21 Piano Sonata. In the latter analysis the concept of voice-leading transformation facilitates the discovery of an exceptional feature in the deep middleground of the piece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notions of design and design expertise are often argued about, but rarely agreed upon, by the design community. Cognitive linguists suggest that metaphors structure our perceptions and understanding, and affect the way we organize our ideas. Based on this argument, the article investigates metaphors related to design, in particular design expertise, to address how these metaphors shape our understanding of design. It examines how design expertise is represented through the use of metaphors and explores the use of metaphors as a tool to recognize, share, and acquire expertise. Metaphors examined in this article are identified through a literature review on design knowledge and skills, and interviews conducted with designers. The metaphors are analysed in a framework that identifies the linguistic roots, associated meanings, underlying theories, and their possible impacts on the design discipline. This analysis contributes to the ongoing debate on design and design expertise. It also suggests ways of improving how we communicate design expertise with communities who often do not share the same language and mindset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]