Showing papers on "Antecedent (grammar) published in 2010"

Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists

Abstract: Foreword ~ Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett Introduction Inequality: the antecedent and outcome and of injustice 'Elitism is efficient': new educational divisions 'Exclusion is necessary': excluding people from society 'Prejudice is natural': a wider racism 'Greed is good': consumption and waste 'Despair is inevitable': health and well-being Conclusion, conspiracy, consensus Afterword.

Effects of Perceived Interactivity, Perceived Web Assurance and Disposition to Trust on Initial Online Trust

Abstract: We developed an interdisciplinary model to examine how online consumers' perceived interactivity, perceived Web assurance and disposition to trust affect their initial online trust. Perceived interactivity is theorized as an interpersonal-based antecedent, disposition to trust as a personality-based antecedent, and perceived Web assurance as an institution-based antecedent to initial online trust. Results indicate that both consumers' perceived interactivity and perceived Web assurance positively influence their initial online trust. Therefore, it is of importance that e-vendors make efforts to enhance online consumers' perceived interactivity of their Web sites as well as addressing consumers' major trust concerns by adopting third-party Web assurance seals.

Continued use of process modeling grammars: the impact of individual difference factors

Abstract: Process modeling grammars are used by analysts to describe information systems domains in terms of the business operations an organization is conducting. While prior research has examined the factors that lead to continued usage behavior, little knowledge has been established as to what extent characteristics of the users of process modeling grammars inform usage behavior. In this study, a theoretical model is advanced that incorporates determinants of continued usage behavior as well as key antecedent individual difference factors of the grammar users, such as modeling experience, modeling background and perceived grammar familiarity. Findings from a global survey of 529 grammar users support the hypothesized relationships of the model. The study offers three central contributions. First, it provides a validated theoretical model of post-adoptive modeling grammar usage intentions. Second, it discusses the effects of individual difference factors of grammar users in the context of modeling grammar usage. Third, it provides implications for research and practice.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Concern of Communication Satisfaction: The Role of the Formal and Informal Communication

Abstract: Communication cues play an important role in the development of satisfaction within an organization. Communication in most of the related studies has been considered as a one-dimensional construct, while the present study specifically proposed formal and informal communication as predictors of communication satisfaction. Furthermore, although literature introduced job satisfaction as a great predictor of OCB, the present study takes one more step forward and proposes communication satisfaction as an antecedent of OCB. These relationships were tested by 231 survey completed by respondents from Electrical Manufacturing industry in Iran. Formal communication and informal communication were found to predict communication satisfaction. Besides, communication satisfaction was a strong predictor of all dimensions of OCB.

Antecedents and Consequences of market orientation: a brazilian meta-analysis and an international mega-analysis

Abstract: Market orientation has emerged as a significant antecedent of organizational performance and is presumed to contribute to the long-term success of a firm. The growing number of academic studies on market orientation and the mixed findings they have reported complicate the efforts among managers and academics to identify the real antecedents and outcomes of this construct. We have conducted a Brazilian meta-analysis, aggregating a sample size of 4,537 in 27 papers. The findings suggest that the relationship between market orientation and business performance is positive and strong (r = .39). We have also conducted an international mega-analysis, aggregating a sample size of seven meta-analyses on market orientation. The results show that there is a positive, strong and consistent international relationship between market orientation and performance across countries (r = .33).

Adjustment in International Students in Malaysian Public University

Abstract: Study on international students' adjustment while studying in a foreign environment is widely researched in the United States and Britain. A growing body of research has been carried out to study on its determinants. This paper intended to contribute to the Malaysian literature pertaining to this subject. Less attention is given on how the international students adjust successfully in Malaysian public university. This paper proposes seven antecedent variables in predicting the psychological and sociocultural adjustment among international students. Further, academic achievement is proposed as a result of successful adjustment to the psychological and sociocultural. Based on this relationship, several propositions are developed.

Dispersed leadership: Exploring the impact of antecedent forms of power using a communicative framework

Abstract: This article presents an account of a police organization’s attempt to implement what senior officers described as a dispersed leadership initiative. A communicative framework is used to show how a particular historically constituted discourse is embedded in the communicative actions of those officers who participated in the study. Analysis of the effects of this discourse reveals how the organization’s dispersion of leadership, although on the surface representing a new and successful endeavor, is rendered problematic by what the article terms antecedent forms of power.

The critical role of relationship quality in small- and medium-sized enterprise internationalization

Abstract: Due to limited resources, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) carefully develop and leverage relationships with foreign, independent intermediaries. This article investigates “relationship quality,” a collection of intangible organizational resources in the exporter–intermediary relationship that support the internationalization and foreign performance of SMEs. Four dimensions of relationship quality—communication, cooperation, trust, and commitment—are modeled and linked to intermediary performance. Findings highlight the significance of relationship quality, its dimensions, and how they support intermediary performance. Cooperation and commitment are significant performance antecedents. Trust is a significant antecedent of commitment, and communication drives cooperation, trust, and commitment. The study provides SMEs a way to enhance the quality of relationships with, and to help improve the performance of, their intermediaries in export markets.

Extending Nocuous Ambiguity Analysis for Anaphora in Natural Language Requirements

Abstract: This paper presents an approach to automatically identify potentially nocuous ambiguities, which occur when text is interpreted differently by different readers of requirements written in natural language. We extract a set of anaphora ambiguities from a range of requirements documents, and collect multiple human judgments on their interpretations. The judgment distribution is used to determine if an ambiguity is nocuous or innocuous. We investigate a number of antecedent preference heuristics that we use to explore aspects of anaphora which may lead a reader to favour a particular interpretation. Using machine learning techniques, we build an automated tool to predict the antecedent preference of noun phrase candidates, which in turn is used to identify nocuous ambiguity. We report on a series of experiments that we conducted to evaluate the performance of our automated system. The results show that the system achieves high recall with a consistent improvement on baseline precision subject to some ambiguity tolerance levels, allowing us to explore and highlight realistic and potentially problematic ambiguities in actual requirements documents.

Relative complexity in scientific discourse

Abstract: Variation and change in relativization strategies are well documented. Previous studies have looked at issues such as (a) relativizer choice with respect to the semantics of the antecedent and type of relative, (b) prescriptive traditions, (c) variation across text types and regional varieties, and (d) the role that relative clauses play in the organization of information within the noun phrase. In this article, our focus is on scientific writing in British and American English. The addition of American scientific texts to the ARCHER corpus gives us the opportunity to compare scientific discourse in the two national varieties of English over the whole Late Modern period. Furthermore, ARCHER has been parsed, and this kind of syntactic annotation facilitates the retrieval of information that was previously difficult to obtain. We take advantage of new data and annotation to investigate two largely unrelated topics: relativizer choice and textual organization within the NP. First, parsing facilitates easy retrieval of relative clauseswhichwere previously difficult to retrieve from plain-text corpora by automatic means, namely that- and zero relatives. We study the diachronic change in relativizer choice in British and American scientific writing over the last three hundred years; we also test for the accuracy of the automatically retrieved data. In addition, we trace the development of the prescriptive aversion to which in restrictive relatives (largely peculiar to American English). Second, the parsed data allow us to investigate development in the structure of the NP in this genre, including not only phrasal but also clausal modification of the head noun. We examine the contribution of relative clauses to NP complexity, sentence length and structure. Structural changes within the NP, we argue, are related to the increased professionalization of the scientific publication process.

Is reasoning from counterfactual antecedents evidence for counterfactual reasoning

Abstract: In most developmental studies the only error children could make on counterfactual tasks was to answer with the current state of affairs. It was concluded that children who did not show this error are able to reason counterfactually. However, children might have avoided this error by using basic conditional reasoning (Rafetseder, Cristi-Vargas, & Perner, 2010). Basic conditional reasoning takes background assumptions represented as conditionals about how the world works. If an antecedent of one of these conditionals is provided by the task, then a likely conclusion can be inferred based only on background assumptions. A critical feature of counterfactual reasoning is that the selection of these additional assumptions is constrained by actual events to which the counterfactual is taken to be counterfactual. In contrast, in basic conditional reasoning one enriches the given antecedent with any plausible assumptions, unconstrained by actual events. In our tasks basic conditional reasoning leads to different ...

Differential effects of constraints in the processing of Russian cataphora.

Abstract: Anaphoric relations between pronouns and their antecedents are subject to a number of different linguistic constraints, which exclude the possibility of coreference in specific syntactic or discourse contexts. Constraints on anaphora may, in principle, impact online sentence processing in a couple of different ways. They may act as constraints on the generation of interpretations, preventing illicit anaphoric relations from ever being considered. Alternatively, they may act as later filters on interpretations, rejecting candidate interpretations after initial consideration. A number of previous studies have sought to determine which of these mechanisms accurately describes the online impact of constraints on anaphora. The current studies present evidence that there is no uniform answer to this question, and that the two mechanisms are both used, for different constraints. Evidence for this is drawn from studies on the processing of two constraints on backwards anaphora or cataphora in Russian that apply in superficially similar contexts but that differ in a number of respects. One self-paced reading study and two judgement studies are reported. The self-paced reading study manipulates the gender congruency between a pronoun and a following name in three pairs of conditions. In conditions where the pronoun-name configuration violates no constraints on anaphora a gender mismatch effect was observed following the name, as in previous studies, suggesting that comprehenders actively search for an antecedent following a cataphoric pronoun. In conditions where the pronoun-name configuration violates Principle C of the classical binding theory no effect of the gender manipulation was observed, suggesting that comprehenders do not even consider the possibility of interpretations that violate this constraint. In conditions where the pronoun-name configuration violates a Russian-specific constraint on cataphora a gender match effect was observed following the name, the reverse of the finding in the no-constraint conditions, suggesting that the constraint applies as a filter on candidate interpretations.

Maternal perception of newborns predicts attachment organization in middle adulthood

Abstract: The goal of the present study was to examine the predictive relation between an individual's newborn status, as rated with the Neonatal Perception Inventories (NPI), and his or her adult attachment...

Epistemological Beliefs and Theory of Planned Behavior: Examining Beliefs about Knowledge and Knowing as Distal Predictors of Indonesian Tertiary Students' Intention to Study

Abstract: Using the theory of planned behavior or TPB (Ajzen, 2005) as a general framework, the study examines the role of Indonesian students' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing (epistemological beliefs) as a distal antecedent predictor of students' behavioral intention in studying for a forthcoming examination. Consistent with the TPB, it was hypothesized that the effects of epistemological beliefs on the behavioral intention to study would be mediated by three proximal antecedent predictors: (a) attitudes toward studying hard, (b) personal norms related to studying hard, and (c) perceived behavioral control over studying hard. Participants were 497 psychology undergraduate students at a private university in Indonesia, who answered a Bahasa Indonesian translation of Chan and Elliott's (2002) Epistemological Belief Questionnaire and a questionnaire on their beliefs and behavioral intentions related to studying hard and persistently for an examination. The results of hierarchical multiple regressions supported the hypotheses. Students' belief that effort is a prerequisite of the attainment of knowledge and belief that ability is innate and non-malleable were positive and negative predictors, respectively, of studying hard-related attitudes, personal norms, perceived behavioral control, and behavioral intentions. And the relationships between effort and ability beliefs and studying behavioral intentions were fully mediated by the three proximal predictors of the behavioral intention.

Im)possible deletions in the Spanish DP

Abstract: This paper centers on the problem of identity in Spanish nominal ellipsis. It is argued that a purely formal identity condition on nominal ellipsis, as proposed in Depiante & Masullo (2001), is not a sufficient condition and a structural condition is added to the theory. Concretely, it is argued that nominal ellipsis only affects the nP layer (see also Ticio 2003 and Saab 2004a-b) excluding NumP as a possible target for non-pronunciation. This hypothesis not only accounts for the well-known fact that number, but not gender, can obviate the identity condition on ellipsis, but can also explains why some nouns in the left periphery of the DP cannot be elided even when an identical antecedent is available in the linguistic context. It is also shown that data from ellipsis reveal a non-uniform behavior of some morphosyntactic properties of Spanish nouns, in particular, with respect to gender resolution. It is proposed then that gender is a property on n that is resolved post-syntactically through certain information available on n itself or on Roots (such as the presence of a sex feature). This goes against a long lexicalist tradition in Spanish grammar including Depiante & Masullo (2001) and is in consonance with recent findings in Nunes & Zocca (2009) and Bobaljik & Zocca (2010). Finally, ellipsis data provide an interesting argument in favor of a late insertion approach for Roots and lead me to formulate an identity condition that dissociates functional morphemes and Roots.

Why Do Product-Market Strategies Fail? A Sociostructural Examination Under Conditions of Adherence:

Abstract: The authors contend that structural and managerial antecedents of strategy failure exist and the extent to which these determine failure is different under conditions of high and low adherence to strategy. Our results support these arguments and demonstrate that the drivers of failure differ according to the unusual strategy process environment of both types of firms. Resource scarcity is found to be a common antecedent to strategy failure in organizations regardless of adherence. From there, managerial conditions (symbolic information use, strategy championing, and tenure) drive strategy failure in high-adherence firms. However, only structural conditions (formalization and resource scarcity) are antecedents of strategy failure in low-adherence firms, while failure is mitigated by centralized decision making.

Chinese DE and the DE-construction

Abstract: This paper analyzes the derivations of the DE construction, showing that an antecedent-free DE construction is derived by deverbalization and an antecedent-dependent DE construction is derived by ellipsis. Semantically, the former process is substantivization and the latter defocalization. Relating the antecedent-dependent DE construction to other nominal ellipses and the verb gapping construciton, I discuss a new type of ellipsis which can take an ellipsis site as its linguistic antecedent. Furthermore, I argue that the syntactic status of the word de in a nominal is a functional category, heading an nP consistently.

Temporal interpretation in narrative discourse and event internal reference

Abstract: This dissertation argues that aspectual markers denote birelational functions from a set of events denoted by a verb-phrase (VP) to a set of VP-event-parts that are located relative to: (i) an input encoding explicitly temporal information and (ii) an input encoding information about discourse connectivity. The proposed analysis is implemented within Compositional Discourse Representation Theory and accounts for temporal interpretation in narrative discourse. The view that aspect describes VP-event-parts allows a straightforward comparison between the English progressive and the Russian imperfective. Both lead to the imperfective paradox because when they combine with VPs describing non-atomic events, any one of the VP-event-parts satisfies their truth-conditions. When the base-VP describes atomic events, however, the Russian imperfective leads to an entailment that the described event culminated because the only eventpart that could satisfy its truth-conditions is the VP-event. In the case of the English progressive, however, coercion takes place because its truth-conditions require proper VP-event-parts. The view that aspect is birelational provides an explanation of why the Russian imperfective could lead to an entailment that the described event: (iii) took place within some salient time and (iv) did not follow a salient discourse event. This aspect relates a VP-event-part and its consequent state relative to two inputs, which specify whether (iii) or (iv) holds. One of these inputs is a time that is supplied by the tense and whose value is constrained by temporal adverbials. The other is a state that is supplied by temporal adverbials and whose value may be fixed by the discourse context. An important consequence of the analysis is that the state input supplied by temporal adverbials determines—to a large extent—whether narrative progression is possible. For example, the state input supplied by that same day requires a salient antecedent and narrative progression follows from independent rules of anaphora resolution. Yesterday, however, introduces an unspecified state into the discourse context that is not linked to prior discourse. Finally, now introduces a state that is linked to the discourse context, but the constraints imposed on this state are only compatible with stative VPs, which do not trigger narrative progression.%%%%%%%%

Anaphoric devices in written and spoken narrative discourse: Data from Catalan

Abstract: In this study, we focus on pronominal anaphora and we investigate the referential properties of null and overt subject pronouns in Catalan, in the semi-spontaneous production of narrative spoken and written texts by three groups of speakers/writers (9–10, 12–13, and 15–16 year olds). We aimed at determining (1) pronoun preferences for a specific type of antecedent; (2) their specialization in a certain discourse function; and (3) whether the pattern is affected by text modality (spoken vs. written texts). We analyzed 30 spoken and 30 written narrative texts, produced by the same 30 subjects, divided into the age groups mentioned above. Results seem fairly consistent across age groups and modalities, showing that null pronouns tend to select antecedents in subject position and are well specialized in maintaining reference, while overt pronouns offer a less clear pattern both in their selection of antecedents and in the discourse function they perform. Our findings partially support those of previous research on other null-subject languages, in particular, the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH) formulated by Carminati (2002) for Italian.

The Real-Time Processing of Sluiced Sentences

Abstract: Ellipsis refers to an element that is absent from the input but whose meaning can nonetheless be recovered from context. In this cross-modal priming study, we examined the online processing of Sluicing, an ellipsis whose antecedent is an entire clause: The handyman threw a book to the programmer but I don’t know which book the handyman threw to the programmerellipsis. To understand such an elliptical construction, the listener arguably must ‘fill in’ the missing material (“the handyman threw___ to the programmer”) based on that which occurs in the antecedent clause. We aimed to determine the point in time in which reconstruction of the sluiced sentence is attempted and whether such a complex antecedent is re-accessed by the ellipsis. Out of the two antecedent constituents for which we probed, only the Object (programmer) was found active in the elliptical clause, confirming that an antecedent is attributed to the sluice in real time. Possible reasons for the non-observation of the Subject (handyman) are considered. We also suggest that ellipses are detected earlier in coordinated than subordinated sentences.

Probabilistic neural network approach to the classification of demonstrative pronouns for indirect anaphora in Hindi

Abstract: In this paper, we propose the application of probabilistic neural networks (PNNs) to the classification scheme of demonstrative pronouns for indirect anaphora in Hindi corpus. The Demonstrative Pronouns in Hindi, ''yeh''(this/it), ''veh''(that/those), ''iss''(this/it), and ''uss''(that/those) can be personal or demonstrative. The differentiation can be ascertained from only the situation or the context. The case marking of pronouns further add the constraints on linguistic patterns. We propose to cast such an anaphora as a semantic inference process, which encompasses several salient linguistic characteristic features such as grammatical role, proximity, syntactic category and semantic cues. Our focus of study is demonstrative pronouns without noun phrase antecedent in Hindi written corpus. We analyzed 313 news items having 3890 sentences, 3101 pronouns, of which 608 instances covered those demonstrative pronouns, which had 183 instances with non-NP-antecedents. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated through set of simulations and evaluations.

“Antecedent-Contained” Sluicing

Abstract: I show that the SIA construction raises two puzzles if the matrix IP serves as the antecedent for the elided IP. First, negation and modal operators in the matrix IP are not interpreted in the elided clause. Second, if the matrix IP were the antecedent of the elided IP, an infinite regress would result because the PP containing the sluiced structure is generated in a VP-adjoined position as shown in (4) and the elided IP must be contained in the antecedent IP.

Anaforische middelen voor topicverschuiving

Abstract: Third person pronouns that require an antecedent beyond their immediate clause build discourse coherence. There are two kinds of such pronouns in Dutch, p(ersonal)-pronouns and d(emonstrative)-pronouns. They make different contributions to the discourse coherence and the present paper deals with that difference. The d-pronouns have an obviative effect. That is, they have an antecedent restriction. They require a non-topic from the preceding sentence as its antecedent in order to introduce it as the topic of the new sentence. The result is that d-pronouns function as a topic-shifting device. The p-pronouns, by contrast, do not impose such a restriction on their antecedent, nor do they have the ensuing topic-shifting function. The topic-stating function of d-pronouns finds its origin in early child language, where the d-pronoun indicates a referent that is salient in the speech situation: “see pointing gesture or gaze of me speaker”. In later child language the topic-stating function is extended to the linguistic discourse: “or listen to the preceding focus constituent”. A comparison of the topic-stating devices in German, French and Italian leads me to reject Ariel’s (1990) accessibility hierarchy for anaphoric pronouns.

Adaptive case-based reasoning system using dynamic method for knowledge acquisition

Abstract: A method includes receiving a user-specified context comprising one or more natural language contextual antecedents. Then, for each contextual antecedent, a modified contextual antecedent is created by converting each contextual antecedent to a sequence of integers using a word base. Each modified contextual antecedent is compared to each of a plurality of cases stored in a case base, where each case includes one or more case antecedents and one or more case consequents. The case antecedents and case consequents are stored in the case base as sequences of integers representing the respective case antecedents and case consequents. The case having the case antecedents that best match the contextual antecedents is then selected and the case consequents of the selected case are displayed to a user. The user then provides feedback regarding the displayed case consequents. The feedback may be integrated into the contextual antecedent for a new search of the case base. The method is computer-implementable and may be efficiently performed by a distributed processing system.

On the Typology of Donkeys: Two Types of Anaphora Resolution

Abstract: This paper argues that there are two types of donkey pronouns cross-linguistically: donkey pronouns that require an overt NP antecedent and donkey pronouns that do not require such an antecedent. We argue (in section 2) that English donkey pronouns do not categorically require an overt NP antecedent; in contrast, they are subject to licensing conditions very much like referential pronouns. On the other hand, languages with richer pronominal systems, such as German and Kutchi Gujarati, have both donkey pronouns that require an overt NP antecedent and donkey pronouns without such a requirement (section 3). We propose that the difference is structural: donkey pronouns that require an overt NP antecedent contain an empty NP site that needs to be licensed, whereas pronouns without this requirement do not contain such a site (section 4).

Auxiliary-Stranding Relative Clauses

Abstract: A little discussed feature of English are non-restrictive relative clauses in which the antecedent is normally not an NP and the gap follows an auxiliary, as in Kim will sing, which Lee won?t. These relative clauses resemble clauses with auxiliary complement ellipsis or fronting. There are a variety of analyses that might be proposed, but there are reasons for thinking that the best analysis is one where which is a nominal filler associated with a gap which is generally non-nominal: a filler-gap mismatch analysis in other words.

Anaphora Resolution of Malay Text: Issues and Proposed Solution Model

Abstract: Anaphora resolution (AR) is a process to identify the appropriate antecedent with its anaphor which occur before the anaphor. AR able to improve most of the NLP applications such as question answering, short answer examination system and information extraction. Most of AR systems are deal with English language. Thus, in 1990’s the research on AR has been applied for other language, such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Norwegian. There are however limited or no effort in dealing with Malay text. The AR systems for one language cannot be simply adapted to use in other languages. This is due to the fact that different languages have different set of rules relating to syntax and semantic to respective language. This paper proposed a model for resolving anaphora phenomena in Malay text. The model consists of three elements consisting of anaphora resolution process, syntactic knowledge process and semantic-world knowledge process. The elements are defined based on the observable fact occurring in Malay language.