Pub Date : 2024-03-14DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2022-0054
Liesbet De Vos, Jens Nevens, Paul Van Eecke, Katrien Beuls
Grounded language processing is a crucial component in many artificial intelligence systems, as it allows agents to communicate about their physical surroundings. State-of-the-art approaches typically employ deep learning techniques that perform end-to-end mappings between natural language expressions and representations grounded in the environment. Although these techniques achieve high levels of accuracy, they are often criticized for their lack of interpretability and their reliance on large amounts of training data. As an alternative, we propose a fully interpretable, data-efficient architecture for grounded language processing. The architecture is based on two main components. The first component comprises an inventory of human-interpretable concepts learned through task-based communicative interactions. These concepts connect the sensorimotor experiences of an agent to meaningful symbols that can be used for reasoning operations. The second component is a computational construction grammar that maps between natural language expressions and procedural semantic representations. These representations are grounded through their integration with the learned concepts. We validate the architecture using a variation on the CLEVR benchmark, achieving an accuracy of 96 %. Our experiments demonstrate that the integration of a computational construction grammar with an inventory of interpretable grounded concepts can effectively achieve human-interpretable grounded language processing in the CLEVR environment.
{"title":"Construction grammar and procedural semantics for human-interpretable grounded language processing","authors":"Liesbet De Vos, Jens Nevens, Paul Van Eecke, Katrien Beuls","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2022-0054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0054","url":null,"abstract":"Grounded language processing is a crucial component in many artificial intelligence systems, as it allows agents to communicate about their physical surroundings. State-of-the-art approaches typically employ deep learning techniques that perform end-to-end mappings between natural language expressions and representations grounded in the environment. Although these techniques achieve high levels of accuracy, they are often criticized for their lack of interpretability and their reliance on large amounts of training data. As an alternative, we propose a fully interpretable, data-efficient architecture for grounded language processing. The architecture is based on two main components. The first component comprises an inventory of human-interpretable concepts learned through task-based communicative interactions. These concepts connect the sensorimotor experiences of an agent to meaningful symbols that can be used for reasoning operations. The second component is a computational construction grammar that maps between natural language expressions and procedural semantic representations. These representations are grounded through their integration with the learned concepts. We validate the architecture using a variation on the CLEVR benchmark, achieving an accuracy of 96 %. Our experiments demonstrate that the integration of a computational construction grammar with an inventory of interpretable grounded concepts can effectively achieve human-interpretable grounded language processing in the CLEVR environment.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140150423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-11DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0051
Ming Feng Wan
Research on hashtag popularity presumes hashtag popularity to be correlated with its semantics and lexical clarity, and the popularity of its topic. However, within a single event, hashtags of identical stances can have contrasting popularity; one may attribute this to the assumption that a certain type of hashtag is preferred, but hashtags of identical syntactic format can also have contradictory popularity across events. We theorize that a hashtag’s popularity is heavily impacted by whether there are preexisting popular hashtags of similar syntactic format within the language.
{"title":"The role of syntax in hashtag popularity","authors":"Ming Feng Wan","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0051","url":null,"abstract":"Research on hashtag popularity presumes hashtag popularity to be correlated with its semantics and lexical clarity, and the popularity of its topic. However, within a single event, hashtags of identical stances can have contrasting popularity; one may attribute this to the assumption that a certain type of hashtag is preferred, but hashtags of identical syntactic format can also have contradictory popularity across events. We theorize that a hashtag’s popularity is heavily impacted by whether there are preexisting popular hashtags of similar syntactic format within the language.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140115356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-11DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0112
Ewelina Prażmo
This article provides an overview of linguistic strategies used in the incel community to deindividualize and dehumanize women. Among the most common ways of referring to women there is the use of generic labels (Stacy, Becky), conceptual metaphor (warpig, landwhale) including creative metaphorical morphology (foid, femoid), conceptual metonymy (hole, extrahole), and conceptual metaphtonymy (roastie). The consistent use of such terms within the incelosphere contributes to perpetuating harmful attitudes and potentially even justifying violent and abusive conduct towards women. For this reason, the language of dehumanization in general, and the misogynist discourse of incels in particular, warrants closer attention. This study is carried out within the methodological framework of cognitive semantics and adds to the expanding research on the discourse of the manosphere and the incelosphere.
{"title":"“All women are like that”: an overview of linguistic deindividualization and dehumanization of women in the incelosphere","authors":"Ewelina Prażmo","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0112","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides an overview of linguistic strategies used in the incel community to deindividualize and dehumanize women. Among the most common ways of referring to women there is the use of generic labels (<jats:italic>Stacy</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>Becky</jats:italic>), conceptual metaphor (<jats:italic>warpig</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>landwhale</jats:italic>) including creative metaphorical morphology (<jats:italic>foid</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>femoid</jats:italic>), conceptual metonymy (<jats:italic>hole</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>extrahole</jats:italic>), and conceptual metaphtonymy (<jats:italic>roastie</jats:italic>). The consistent use of such terms within the incelosphere contributes to perpetuating harmful attitudes and potentially even justifying violent and abusive conduct towards women. For this reason, the language of dehumanization in general, and the misogynist discourse of incels in particular, warrants closer attention. This study is carried out within the methodological framework of cognitive semantics and adds to the expanding research on the discourse of the manosphere and the incelosphere.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140105998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-11DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2022-0010
Rodrigo Hernáiz
In many languages, causal clause markers can also function as – or are formally identical to – complement markers (e.g., Bulgarian če, Twi se, or Latin quod). This isomorphism is often explained as the result of independent developments from a common source (interrogatives, relativizers, etc.). By contrast, it is also frequently accepted that in some cases the aforementioned identity originates in a type of structural change by which causal clauses are eventually reanalysed as factive complements. However, the nature of the proposed CAUSE > COMPLEMENT development, involving both semantic adjustments and syntactic integration, is not yet fully understood, and it remains unclear how recurrent this phenomenon might be from a cross-linguistic perspective. This article aims to shed light on these questions by analysing diachronic and cross-linguistic data and assessing some of the evidence given for the development of complementation from causal adverbial clauses. The observations reveal significant documentation gaps for postulated models of the emergence of complement clauses and highlight methodological issues that qualify previous explanations about the diachronic relationship between causal and complement clauses.
在许多语言中，因果状语从句标记也可以充当补语从句标记，或在形式上与补语从句标记相同（如保加利亚语的 če 、特维语的 se 或拉丁语的 quod）。这种同构现象通常被解释为从一个共同来源（疑问词、关系词等）独立发展的结果。与此相反，人们也经常认为，在某些情况下，上述同构现象源于一种结构变化，即因果从句最终被重新分析为事实补语。然而，涉及语义调整和句法整合的 CAUSE > COMPLEMENT 发展的性质尚未完全明了，而且从跨语言的角度来看，这种现象的反复出现程度也还不清楚。本文旨在通过分析异时空和跨语言数据，评估因果副词从句补语发展的一些证据，从而揭示这些问题。这些观察结果揭示了关于补语从句出现的假定模式的重大文献空白，并强调了方法论问题，这些问题限定了以前关于因果副词从句和补语从句之间的异时关系的解释。
{"title":"Causal clauses as source of sentential complementation: cross-linguistic evidence and methodological issues","authors":"Rodrigo Hernáiz","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2022-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0010","url":null,"abstract":"In many languages, causal clause markers can also function as – or are formally identical to – complement markers (e.g., Bulgarian <jats:italic>če</jats:italic>, Twi <jats:italic>se</jats:italic>, or Latin <jats:italic>quod</jats:italic>). This isomorphism is often explained as the result of independent developments from a common source (interrogatives, relativizers, etc.). By contrast, it is also frequently accepted that in some cases the aforementioned identity originates in a type of structural change by which causal clauses are eventually reanalysed as factive complements. However, the nature of the proposed CAUSE > COMPLEMENT development, involving both semantic adjustments and syntactic integration, is not yet fully understood, and it remains unclear how recurrent this phenomenon might be from a cross-linguistic perspective. This article aims to shed light on these questions by analysing diachronic and cross-linguistic data and assessing some of the evidence given for the development of complementation from causal adverbial clauses. The observations reveal significant documentation gaps for postulated models of the emergence of complement clauses and highlight methodological issues that qualify previous explanations about the diachronic relationship between causal and complement clauses.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140106453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-11DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2022-0114
Dan Villarreal
Sociolinguistics researchers can use sociolinguistic auto-coding (SLAC) to predict humans’ hand-codes of sociolinguistic data. While auto-coding promises opportunities for greater efficiency, like other computational methods there are inherent concerns about this method’s fairness – whether it generates equally valid predictions for different speaker groups. Unfairness would be problematic for sociolinguistic work given the central importance of correlating speaker groups to differences in variable usage. The current study examines SLAC fairness through the lens of gender fairness in auto-coding Southland New Zealand English non-prevocalic /r/. First, given that there are multiple, mutually incompatible definitions of machine learning fairness, I argue that fairness for SLAC is best captured by two definitions (overall accuracy equality and class accuracy equality) corresponding to three fairness metrics. Second, I empirically assess the extent to which SLAC is prone to unfairness; I find that a specific auto-coder described in previous literature performed poorly on all three fairness metrics. Third, to remedy these imbalances, I tested unfairness mitigation strategies on the same data; I find several strategies that reduced unfairness to virtually zero. I close by discussing what SLAC fairness means not just for auto-coding, but more broadly for how we conceptualize variation as an object of study.
{"title":"Sociolinguistic auto-coding has fairness problems too: measuring and mitigating bias","authors":"Dan Villarreal","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2022-0114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0114","url":null,"abstract":"Sociolinguistics researchers can use sociolinguistic auto-coding (SLAC) to predict humans’ hand-codes of sociolinguistic data. While auto-coding promises opportunities for greater efficiency, like other computational methods there are inherent concerns about this method’s <jats:italic>fairness</jats:italic> – whether it generates equally valid predictions for different speaker groups. Unfairness would be problematic for sociolinguistic work given the central importance of correlating speaker groups to differences in variable usage. The current study examines SLAC fairness through the lens of gender fairness in auto-coding Southland New Zealand English non-prevocalic /r/. First, given that there are multiple, mutually incompatible definitions of machine learning fairness, I argue that fairness for SLAC is best captured by two definitions (overall accuracy equality and class accuracy equality) corresponding to three fairness metrics. Second, I empirically assess the extent to which SLAC is prone to unfairness; I find that a specific auto-coder described in previous literature performed poorly on all three fairness metrics. Third, to remedy these imbalances, I tested unfairness mitigation strategies on the same data; I find several strategies that reduced unfairness to virtually zero. I close by discussing what SLAC fairness means not just for auto-coding, but more broadly for how we conceptualize variation as an object of study.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"2016 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140105839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-11DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2022-0134
Yi Li, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, Weiwei Zhang
This paper aims to quantify distances between varieties of Mandarin (diachronic, regional, and situational) as a function of the similarity in the choice between syntactic variants in the Mandarin theme-recipient alternation (yŭ/gěi dative alternation). We use a novel corpus-based method, Variation-Based Distance and Similarity Modeling, which draws inspiration from work in comparative sociolinguistics and quantitative dialectometry. Analysis reveals that, while there is a relatively stable probabilistic grammar across the investigated varieties, historical varieties do exhibit a relatively higher degree of heterogeneity than synchronic varieties. Despite the overall high similarity of the latter, we identify substantial probabilistic differences between fictional writings of Modern Mainland Mandarin and all other synchronic varieties. Our findings thus provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that the transition from Early Mandarin to Modern Mandarin over the past two centuries has witnessed salient grammatical shifts and also empirically demonstrate the interaction between genre variability and regional variability in Modern Mandarin.
{"title":"Across time, space, and genres: measuring probabilistic grammar distances between varieties of Mandarin","authors":"Yi Li, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, Weiwei Zhang","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2022-0134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0134","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to quantify distances between varieties of Mandarin (diachronic, regional, and situational) as a function of the similarity in the choice between syntactic variants in the Mandarin theme-recipient alternation (<jats:italic>yŭ</jats:italic>/<jats:italic>gěi</jats:italic> dative alternation). We use a novel corpus-based method, Variation-Based Distance and Similarity Modeling, which draws inspiration from work in comparative sociolinguistics and quantitative dialectometry. Analysis reveals that, while there is a relatively stable probabilistic grammar across the investigated varieties, historical varieties do exhibit a relatively higher degree of heterogeneity than synchronic varieties. Despite the overall high similarity of the latter, we identify substantial probabilistic differences between fictional writings of Modern Mainland Mandarin and all other synchronic varieties. Our findings thus provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that the transition from Early Mandarin to Modern Mandarin over the past two centuries has witnessed salient grammatical shifts and also empirically demonstrate the interaction between genre variability and regional variability in Modern Mandarin.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"87 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140106000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0038
Atticus G. Harrigan, Antti Arppe
This paper describes the Plains Cree phenomenon of Order as a form of alternation not yet described as such in the literature. First, we provide a brief description of relevant Plains Cree grammar and Order as a phenomenon. This is followed by an overview of how the concept of alternation has been used in linguistics as an analytic tool. Finally, we discuss how conceiving of Order as an alternation allows for not only a better understanding of the phenomenon, but also results in a new type of alternation. We name this type of alternation a paradigmatic alternation and define it as any alternation where some lexeme can make use of two or more alternative paradigms of the same size and shape but with different morphological exponents, while representing the same set of grammatical features. We exemplify this with Plains Cree, where subject/object agreement has two distinct paradigms which verbs can take while retaining similar meanings. A brief comparison with of a similar phenomenon, Koiari tense/aspect, is also included.
{"title":"Plains Cree Order as alternation","authors":"Atticus G. Harrigan, Antti Arppe","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0038","url":null,"abstract":"This paper describes the Plains Cree phenomenon of Order as a form of alternation not yet described as such in the literature. First, we provide a brief description of relevant Plains Cree grammar and Order as a phenomenon. This is followed by an overview of how the concept of alternation has been used in linguistics as an analytic tool. Finally, we discuss how conceiving of Order as an alternation allows for not only a better understanding of the phenomenon, but also results in a new type of alternation. We name this type of alternation a paradigmatic alternation and define it as any alternation where some lexeme can make use of two or more alternative paradigms of the same size and shape but with different morphological exponents, while representing the same set of grammatical features. We exemplify this with Plains Cree, where subject/object agreement has two distinct paradigms which verbs can take while retaining similar meanings. A brief comparison with of a similar phenomenon, Koiari tense/aspect, is also included.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139928070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-14DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0058
Susana Afonso, Augusto Soares da Silva
Middle voice (MV) comprises a set of marked constructions associated with situation types (Kemmer 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), in which the middle marker functions as an intransitivizer. MV constructions in Portuguese are se constructions in which the clitic se is typically overt, but in Brazilian Portuguese there is variation between constructions with and without the clitic marker. The overt-null variation is observed in all se construction types and it has been argued by Soares da Silva et al. (2021. Null se constructions in Brazilian and European Portuguese: Morphosyntactic deletion or emergence of new constructions? Cognitive Linguistics 32(1). 159–193) that differences in conceptualization of an event as “energetic” or “absolute” primarily drive the variation. This article focuses on the (re)configuration of the network of se constructions in light of the overt-null alternation. Given that the alternation is systematic for all types of se construction, we propose that both the marked and unmarked constructions are plotted onto the conceptual map of MV constructions. As to the introduction of the null variant in the taxonomy of se constructions, we argue that the overt-null variants are allostructions posited at lower levels of abstraction. We also hypothesize that the middle marker at the top node is underspecified for function, instantiated as an intransitivizer, or lexically defined at the immediate subordinate level.
中间语态（MV）包括一系列与情境类型相关的标记结构（Kemmer 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins），其中中间标记起着非变位作用。葡萄牙语中的 MV 结构是 se 结构，其中的 clitic se 通常是显性的，但在巴西葡萄牙语中，有和没有 clitic 标记的结构之间存在差异。Soares da Silva 等人（2021.A.）认为，在所有 se 结构类型中都可以观察到 "over-null "变化。巴西和欧洲葡萄牙语中的空se结构：形态句法删除还是新结构的出现？认知语言学 32(1).159-193）认为，将事件概念化为 "能动的 "或 "绝对的 "的差异是造成差异的主要原因。本文的重点是根据过空交替来（重新）配置 se 结构网络。鉴于这种交替对于所有类型的se结构都是系统性的，我们建议将有标记和无标记的结构都绘制到MV结构的概念图上。至于在se构式分类法中引入空变体，我们认为过空变体是在较低抽象层次上假设的异构式。我们还假设，位于顶层节点的中间标记的功能未得到充分说明，被实例化为一个非变位符，或者在直接从属层次上被词义化了。
{"title":"Null and overt se constructions in Brazilian Portuguese and the network of se constructions","authors":"Susana Afonso, Augusto Soares da Silva","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0058","url":null,"abstract":"Middle voice (MV) comprises a set of marked constructions associated with situation types (Kemmer 1993. <jats:italic>The middle voice</jats:italic>. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), in which the middle marker functions as an intransitivizer. MV constructions in Portuguese are <jats:italic>se</jats:italic> constructions in which the clitic <jats:italic>se</jats:italic> is typically overt, but in Brazilian Portuguese there is variation between constructions with and without the clitic marker. The overt-null variation is observed in all <jats:italic>se</jats:italic> construction types and it has been argued by Soares da Silva et al. (2021. Null <jats:italic>se</jats:italic> constructions in Brazilian and European Portuguese: Morphosyntactic deletion or emergence of new constructions? <jats:italic>Cognitive Linguistics</jats:italic> 32(1). 159–193) that differences in conceptualization of an event as “energetic” or “absolute” primarily drive the variation. This article focuses on the (re)configuration of the network of <jats:italic>se</jats:italic> constructions in light of the overt-null alternation. Given that the alternation is systematic for all types of <jats:italic>se</jats:italic> construction, we propose that both the marked and unmarked constructions are plotted onto the conceptual map of MV constructions. As to the introduction of the null variant in the taxonomy of <jats:italic>se</jats:italic> constructions, we argue that the overt-null variants are allostructions posited at lower levels of abstraction. We also hypothesize that the middle marker at the top node is underspecified for function, instantiated as an intransitivizer, or lexically defined at the immediate subordinate level.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139758622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-24DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0041
Yingying Cai, Hendrik De Smet
Functional explanations of alternations often invoke semantic contrast between alternates. In some cases, however, new alternations may arise not to code contrast but simply because the grammar supports multiple roughly equivalent solutions to the same coding problem. Our study illustrates this by exploring the history of English prepositional phrase complements (PPCs) to mental predicates, with a special focus on about and at (as in everyone was enthusiastic about the project). It is shown that about saw a dramatic extension in its use as a PPC marker, resulting in various new alternation contexts. These developments are concomitant to changes in the general semantic structure of about that resulted in stronger grammatical sanction to its use as a PPC marker. Compared to about, at has a far more stable semantic profile overall, contributing to greater stability in its use as a PPC marker as well. In other words, distributional changes in the system of PPCs, and the new alternations that arise as a result, are a side effect of changes in the overall semantic profiles of the prepositions used to mark PPCs.
对交替现象的功能性解释通常援引交替现象之间的语义对比。然而，在某些情况下，新的交替出现可能并不是为了编码对比，而仅仅是因为语法支持对同一编码问题的多种大致等效的解决方案。我们的研究通过探索英语介词短语补语（PPCs）到心理谓词的历史来说明这一点，并特别关注 about 和 at（如每个人都对项目充满热情）。研究表明，about 作为 PPC 标记的使用范围急剧扩大，产生了各种新的交替语境。这些发展是与 about 的一般语义结构的变化同步进行的，这些变化导致其作为 PPC 标记的使用在语法上得到了更有力的支持。与 about 相比，at 的整体语义结构要稳定得多，这也使其作为 PPC 标记的使用具有更大的稳定性。换句话说，PPCs 系统的分布变化以及由此产生的新交替，是用来标记 PPCs 的介词整体语义轮廓变化的副作用。
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Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0045
Jane Klavan
This paper investigates three morphosyntactic alternations in Estonian – those between the exterior locative cases allative, adessive, and ablative and the corresponding postpositions peale ‘onto’, peal ‘on’, and pealt ‘off’. It is assumed that the influence of different predictors on speakers’ choices will be relatively stable in terms of the direction of those predictors, but the strength of these will vary. For each alternation, a random sample of the two outcomes (case vs. postposition) from the Estonian National Corpus is used, resulting in a total of 3,000 data points. Using properties of the landmark phrase as independent variables in mixed-effects logistic regression models, the choice of postpositions over case-marked realizations is predicted. The models fitted to the data confirm that the direction of the eight predictors investigated is the same across the alternations, with freqRatio, lemma, and mobility making the most significant contribution to the fit of all three models. The study further shows that the two alternating pairs that have a higher global frequency in Estonian (allative ∼ peale and adessive ∼ peal) behave in a similar way with respect to the predictors under study; the third, less frequent alternation (ablative ∼ pealt), differs from the other two in terms of the number and type of predictors that make a significant contribution to the model fit.
{"title":"The morphosyntactic alternation between exterior locative case affixes and postpositions in Estonian","authors":"Jane Klavan","doi":"10.1515/lingvan-2023-0045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0045","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates three morphosyntactic alternations in Estonian – those between the exterior locative cases allative, adessive, and ablative and the corresponding postpositions <jats:italic>peale</jats:italic> ‘onto’, <jats:italic>peal</jats:italic> ‘on’, and <jats:italic>pealt</jats:italic> ‘off’. It is assumed that the influence of different predictors on speakers’ choices will be relatively stable in terms of the direction of those predictors, but the strength of these will vary. For each alternation, a random sample of the two outcomes (case vs. postposition) from the Estonian National Corpus is used, resulting in a total of 3,000 data points. Using properties of the landmark phrase as independent variables in mixed-effects logistic regression models, the choice of postpositions over case-marked realizations is predicted. The models fitted to the data confirm that the direction of the eight predictors investigated is the same across the alternations, with freqRatio, lemma, and mobility making the most significant contribution to the fit of all three models. The study further shows that the two alternating pairs that have a higher global frequency in Estonian (allative ∼ <jats:italic>peale</jats:italic> and adessive ∼ <jats:italic>peal</jats:italic>) behave in a similar way with respect to the predictors under study; the third, less frequent alternation (ablative ∼ <jats:italic>pealt</jats:italic>), differs from the other two in terms of the number and type of predictors that make a significant contribution to the model fit.","PeriodicalId":55960,"journal":{"name":"Linguistics Vanguard","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139556867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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