Showing papers on "Head (linguistics) published in 2007"

BRIEF REPORT The Time Course of Plausibility Effects on Eye Movements in Reading: Evidence From Noun-Noun Compounds

Abstract: Readers’ eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing noun–noun compounds that varied in frequency (e.g., elevator mechanic, mountain lion). The left constituent of the compound was either plausible or implausible as a head noun at the point at which it appeared, whereas the compound as a whole was always plausible. When the head noun analysis of the left constituent was implausible, reading times on this word were inflated, beginning with the first fixation. This finding is consistent with previous demonstrations of very rapid effects of plausibility on eye movements. Compound frequency did not modulate the plausibility effect, and all disruption was resolved by the time readers’ eyes moved to the next word. These findings suggest (contra Kennison, 2005) that the parser initially analyzes a singular noun as a head instead of a modifier. In addition, the findings confirm that the very rapid effect of plausibility on eye movements is not due to strategic factors, because in the present experiment, unlike in previous demonstrations, this effect appeared in sentences that were globally plausible.

DEVELOPMENT OF RELATIVIZATION IN KOREAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: The Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy in Head-Internal and Head-External Relative Clauses

Abstract: This study examines how Keenan and Comrie's (1977) noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) intersects with the typological characteristics of Korean in the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs). Korean has two types of RC constructions: head-external and head-internal. The head-external relative has its head to the right of the RC, whereas the head-internal relative has its lexical head in the RC and is marked by the complementizer kes. In first language development, it has been observed the head-internal type emerges earlier than the head-external type. The current study investigates how the use of the two types of RCs interacts with the NPAH, with a focus on subject (SU) and direct object (DO) RCs in Korean second language development. Oral production data were collected from 40 learners of Korean as a foreign language. The results showed that there was an advantage for SU over DO in the head-external RC and that the head-external construction was preceded by headless and head-internal constructions. The results suggest that a head-external RC in Korean involves the syntactic mechanism of linking the head and the gap relation, whereas this might not be the case for a head-internal RC.The authors would like to thank Yasuhiro Shirai, Stephen Matthews, Virginia Yip, and the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their valuable input and feedback on this paper. Any errors, of course, are our own.

How Complex Are Complex Predicates

Abstract: . This paper argues that clause union/restructuring constructions such as verb clusters in German do not involve head clustering in the form of (lexical or derived) complex head formation. I provide several arguments showing that clause union properties are licensed in the absence of complex head formation and that complex head formation hence cannot be seen as a condition on clause union/restructuring. Complex head approaches are compared to syntactic complementation approaches—in particular, to an approach where the verbs of a restructuring construction project independent VPs that include all the internal arguments associated with the particular verbs. A series of empirical facts are considered (constituency, word order, modification, event structure properties, and nominalizations) that all point to the conclusion that these constructions involve regular VPs rather than complex V-V heads. Although it is not excluded that complex head approaches could be adjusted to accommodate these facts, the main advantage of the VP-complementation approach is that the sum of the properties discussed follows without additional assumptions from the structure suggested and that this approach also correctly predicts which constructions are excluded.

Prosody-Driven Head-Gesture Animation

Abstract: We present a new framework for joint analysis of head gesture and speech prosody patterns of a speaker towards automatic realistic synthesis of head gestures from speech prosody. The proposed two-stage analysis aims to "learn" both elementary prosody and head gesture patterns for a particular speaker, as well as the correlations between these head gesture and prosody patterns from a training video sequence. The resulting audio-visual mapping model is then employed to synthesize natural head gestures from arbitrary input test speech given a head model for the speaker. Objective and subjective evaluations indicate that the proposed synthesis by analysis scheme provides natural looking head gestures for the speaker with any input test speech.

The Distribution of Relative Clauses in Chinese Discourse

Abstract: The particular forms of relative clauses (RCs) in Mandarin Chinese lead to particular cognitive, semantic, pragmatic, and discourse constraints on speakers and writers. In this study, analyses of oral and written Mandarin Chinese narratives demonstrate that SS structures (subject head noun phrase [NP] modified by a subject RC) are produced more frequently than OS (object head NP modified by subject RC) and OO structures (object head NP modified by object RC), which are more frequent than the rare SO (subject head NP modified by an object RC) structure. These patterns can be explained by the interaction of cognitive strategies of closure and the semantic and discourse functions of RC constructions. In particular, the center-embeddedness of Mandarin Chinese RCs likely leads to greater cognitive load for speakers than writers, and the fact that head NPs are more likely to refer to humans helps predict the predominance of the SS pattern.

The Prosody and Syntax of Zulu Relative Clauses

Abstract: Jokweni suggests this data can be accounted for by placing a prosodic phrase break both at the right and at the left edges of a clause: that is, a prosodic phrase is roughly coextensive with a CP. The prosody of restrictive relative clauses and related structures, as they have an embedded CP, could provide crucial evidence that Nguni prosodic phrases are consistently coextensive with CP, however Jokweni (1995) does not examine them. In this paper we present a study of Durban Zulu, another Nguni language spoken in South Africa. We show first that Zulu has basically the same prosodic phrasing as Xhosa for data comparable to that in (1): prosodic phrases are roughly coextensive with a maximal clause. However, the prosodic phrasing of restrictive relative clauses shows that it is not accurate to propose that, formally, prosodic phrases are consistently coextensive with CPs in Zulu. While such a phrasing algorithm correctly predicts that there should be a prosodic phrase boundary at the right edge of the relative clause, it wrongly predicts that there should either be a prosodic phrase break separating the head noun from the rest of the relative clause (in a traditional analysis) or one separating the whole relative clause including the internal head from the rest of the sentence, in a Kaynian analysis. We argue in section 2 that restrictive relative clauses provide evidence that prosodic phrasing is most consistently conditioned only by the right edge of CP in Zulu. Further evidence for the primacy of right edges of CP in conditioning prosodic phrasing comes from the fact that, in Zulu and in Xhosa, there is no prosodic phrase break preceding a sentential complement, as shown in (1b). In sections 3 and 4, we examine the phrasing of structures related to restrictive relative clauses, namely, non-restrictive relatives and clefts. These constructions appear to be problematic for the analysis, as we find a consistent prosodic phrase

Multiple section read/write head

Abstract: Data tracks are written across a width of a tape by positioning a first head section across the tape and writing a first subset of data tracks onto the tape with a first plurality of write elements on the first head section A second head section is positioned across the tape separately from the first head A second subset of data tracks is written onto the tape with a second plurality of write elements on the second head section so that the second subset is interleaved with the first subset A third head section is positioned across the tape separately from the first head and the second head The first subset and second subsets are read with a plurality of read elements on the third head section to verify that data was correctly written onto the tape

'She had just cut/broken off her head': Cutting and breaking verbs in Tzeltal

Abstract: This paper describes the lexical resources for expressing events of cutting and breaking (CB C&B verbs are formally undistinguishable from many other transitive state-change verbs. But they nicely reveal the characteristic specificity of Tzeltal verb seman

Heads in Oceanic Indirect Possession

Abstract: In many Oceanic languages the "indirect" possessive construction, which is typically associated with alienable possession, uses special forms to host person and number agreement indexing the possessor. This can be contrasted with the "direct" possessive construction, typically associated with inalienable possession, where a lexical possessum noun itself carries possessor-indexing agreement. The host forms used in the indirect construction are often referred to as "classifiers". We argue that this term should not be applied to indirect possession marking in many Oceanic languages, and present evidence to show that indirect possessor-indexing hosts should be treated as the syntactic head of the noun phrase in which they occur, thereby allowing treatment of the syntax of NPs with indirect possession that is consistent with those with direct marking. In both instances, the person and number indexing morphology simply attaches to the syntactic head.

Head movements in the context of speech in Arabic, Bulgarian, Korean, and African-American Vernacular English

Abstract: A previous study among European-Americans (McClave, 2000) observed that particular forms of head movements occur in specific communicative environments. The present study investigates whether any of the form–function relationships observed in the original study are cross-cultural. The database consists of seven hours of videotaped spontaneous conversations in Arabic, Bulgarian, Korean, and African-American Vernacular English. This study suggests that head movements are used for semantic, discourse, and interactive functions in these four languages from three genetically unrelated language families.1 Identical head movements occur in three environments across all four cultures: lateral movements co-occur with expressions of inclusivity, the head changes position for each item on a list, and the head orients toward a specific location selected by the speaker when referring to non-present or abstract entities. Head movements function as speaker backchannel requests in each culture as well, but the particular form of movement corresponds to the culture’s head motion for affirmation.

Nominal Split Constructions in Ukrainian

Abstract: Discontinuous (or split) nominal and prepositional constructions are extremely productive in Ukrainian In split constructions, the head and the noun dependents are separated by lexical material which does not belong to the nominal or prepositional phrase Ukrainian, like other Slavic languages, has free word order, a flexible intonation, and no obligatory articles--three properties that are decisive for the emergence of split constructions The paper focuses on the role played by information-structure and intonation A distinction is made between cohesive intonation, in which both parts of the split construction are uttered in a single intonation phrase, and non-cohesive intonation, in which the two parts of the splits are in separate intonation phrases A cohesive intonation favors so-called simple splits in which the order of the constituents is respected, whereas a non-cohesive intonation typically (but not necessarily) correlates with inverted splits, where the order of the constituents differs from the canonical one Both types of splits are triggered by an asymmetric information-structure: the two parts of the discontinuous phrase are separated from each other because they bear different information-structural features, like topic, focus, and givenness 1 Introduction This paper studies discontinuous nominal and prepositional constructions in Ukrainian, a Slavic language with free word order and free intonation (see Shevelov 1993 for a linguistic description of Ukrainian), and focuses on so-called split constructions, (1) in which the heads of a single (extended) nominal projection appear in different positions of a clause Discontinuous constructions have a syntactic and an intonational component and are licensed by a marked information-structure In the following sections, we consider these three elements individually and interactively Examples of split constructions in Ukrainian are given in (1) through (4) We distinguish between simple splits, where the underlying order of (or, rather, the hierarchical relations among) the constituents of the nominal projection are preserved in the split construction, and inverted splits, in which underlying order or hierarchy is inverted (see Fanselow and Cavar 2002 for this distinction) The sentence in (1) is an example of a split embedded in a declarative sentence In the canonical order (1a) the adjective precedes its nominal head (see for instance Bilodid 1972, Hryscenko 1997 and Shevelov 1963 for word order in Ukrainian) In a simple split (1b), the relative order of the adjective and the noun is preserved, but they are separated by the subject and the verb The noun is in what appears to be its canonical position, but the adjective is fronted as a consequence of the narrow focus on this word In (1c), the order of the adjective and the noun is reversed The noun is fronted because it is a topic, and the adjective remains in situ It has narrow focus In all the examples of this paper, the participants of split constructions are underlined The square brackets show the phrasing at the level of the intonation phrase Subscripted i stands for i-phrase or intonation phrase, subscripted p for p-phrase or prosodic phrase and subscripted FOC and TOP indicate the information-structure When necessary for the discussion, a distinction is made between wide focus (WFoc) and narrow focus (NFoc) As shown in section 2, such a distinction is made in the melodic shape of the accented words (1) Declarative Sentence a Canonical Order [Marija procytala cikavu [knyzkulsubi] Mary has-read [interestingsubACCFEM] [booksubACCFEM] 'Mary has read an interesting book' (1) b Simple Split [Cikavu Marija procytala [knyzkulsubi] [interestingsubACCFEM-NFoc] Mary has-read [booksubACCFEM] c Inverted Split [[Knyzkul]subi] [Marija procytala [cikavu] …

Head Movement Synthesis Based on Semantic and Prosodic Features for a Chinese Expressive Avatar

Abstract: This paper proposes an approach for text-to-visual speech synthesis, where the synthetic head movements are rendered with an expressive talking avatar speaking Cantonese Chinese. The input text consists of descriptive information sourced from the Hong Kong tourism domain. The text is segmented into prosodic words (PW) and we adopt the PAD model to describe the expressivity of a prosodic word based on its semantics. Within the PW, we consider two prosodic features relevant to head movement synthesis, namely, the stress and tone of the Chinese syllable. We designed and recorded an audiovisual speech corpus and analyzed the data to derive statistical correspondences between different (P,A) values for a Chinese prosodic word and head movement coordinates. These statistics help parameter selection in a sinusoidal movement model. Corpus analyses also enable us to locate "peak points" of head movements that are synchronized with prosodic features within a prosodic word. These help the design of three heuristics that control head movements within a prosodic word. Perceptual evaluation based on the expressive talking avatar shows that head movement synthesis can raise the MOS by 1.04 points on average, when compared to the baseline which only shows lip articulations without head movements.

Head end generalization

Abstract: A computer-implemented method includes receiving information associated with a user of media services, wherein the received information does not uniquely identify one media head end for he user, identifying a plurality of head ends responsive to the received information, and generating, for display on a client device associated with the user, information for displaying a program guide aggregating channels for the plurality of head ends.

Head Movement, Binding Theory, and Phrase Structure

Abstract: This paper proposes a novel model of head movement that solves two seemingly independent problems. The first problem concerns the syntactic characteristics of head movement. Head movement appears to move a head and adjoin it with a non-root node of the syntactic tree. In the minimalist framework, however, only the root node is accessible for syntactic operations and the condition that a moved element should c-command its trace is a direct consequence of this assumption. Thus, head movement poses a serious problem to minimalist syntax. The second problem concerns the binding constraint discussed by Percus (2000). Percus observes that the world variable of the main predicate, if syntactically present, always has to be bound by the nearest λ operator. In addition, I discuss that we can make a similar generalization regarding Tense as well. However, configurationally, it is conceivable that such a variable might be bound long-distance, and it is not clear why such a binding may not obtain. To solve these problems, I propose a derivation model in which heads are combined to form a complex head that looks like something like (1) and derivation proceeds as heads move out of the head complex by head movement.

From the Head of School

Abstract: Head of School Professor P B Humfrey Degree Programmes Single Honours Degree: Art History Joint Honours Degrees: Art History and Ancient History, Biblical Studies, Classical Studies, English, FrenchW, Geography, GermanW, Hebrew, Integrated Information Technology, International Relations, ItalianW, Management, Mathematics, Mediaeval History, Middle East Studies, Modern History, Philosophy, Psychology, RussianW, Social Anthropology, SpanishW. Minor Degree Programme: Mediaeval Studies (See School of History)

Making a thinking-talking head

Abstract: This paper describes the Thinking-Talking Head; an interdisciplinary project that sits between and draws upon engineering/computer science and behavioural/cognitive science; research and performance; implementation and evaluation. The project involves collaboration between computer scientists, engineers, language technologists and cognitive scientists, and its aim is twofold (a) to create a 3-D computer animation of a human head that will interact in real time with human agents, and (b) to serve as a research platform to drive research in the contributing disciplines, and in talking head research in general. The thinkingtalking head will emulate elements of face-to-face conversation through speech (including intonation), gaze and gesture. So it must have an active sensorium that accurately reflects the properties of its immediate environment, and must be able to generate appropriate communicative signals to feedback to the interlocutor. Here we describe the current implementation and outline how we are tackling issues concerning both the outputs (synthetic voice, visual speech, facial expressiveness and naturalness) from and inputs (auditory-visual speech recognition, emotion recognition, auditory-visual speaker localization) to the head. We describe how these head functions will be tuned and evaluated using various paradigms, including an imitation paradigm.

The Signs of Determination: Constraint-Based Modelling Across Languages

Abstract: This study presents a comprehensive treatment of determination, based on English, Italian and other Germanic or Romance languages. Determiners are identified as those dependents of a nominal head that determine the type of reference for the Noun Phrase, covering articles as well as demonstrative, possessive, quantitative, cardinal and ordinal determiners. The work also accounts for their absence with self-determining nominals, like proper names and pronouns. The author's approach is sign-based, as syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects of words or phrases are treated in parallel by a grammar with logical constraints. In particular, the Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) originally proposed by Carl Pollard and Ivan Sag is revised adopting a notion of 'functor' which proves ideal for all sorts of determiners.

'A body without a head': The Idea of Mass Culture in Dickens's American Notes (1842)

Abstract: A touchstone of debate in modern cultural theory is the idea of a tension between the goals of commercial culture and those of a genuinely ‘popular’ culture consonant with the values and interests of the populace.2 Speaking in America at the dawn of ‘the first age of mass culture’, Dickens, like notable recent commentators, did not see this tension as inevitable.3 He rightly assumed that a statement of belief in a model of culture that was both capitalist and communal would meet with approval in nineteenth-century America. At this stage of his first trip to the States of 1842, expectations were still high that there would be a perfect meeting of minds between Dickens, the literary superstar associated with democratic, populist values, and America, a New World founded on the principles of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. Before reaching the States, Dickens had written to the editor of the New York Knickerbocker Magazine of ‘the glow into which I rise, when I think of the wonders that await us’.4 One leading article published during his stay explained that Dickens was a hero for the Americans because of the ‘democratic genius’ and ‘idea of human equality’ that they shared. America was a place ‘where his popular tendencies’ were ‘not likely to be weakened’, and his writings would ‘hasten on the great crisis of the English Revolution (speed the hour!) far more effectively than any of the open assaults of Radicalism or Chartism’.5 But as has been well documented, Dickens and America became mutually disffected during his first visit. Rather than confirming Dickens’s radical or egalitarian tendencies, America had the opposite effect: ‘This is not the Republic of my imagination’, he memorably wrote to Macready.

Tapping the Implicit Information for the PS to DS Conversion of the Chinese Treebank

Abstract: We examine the linguistic adequacy of dependency structure annotation automatically converted from phrase structure treebanks with the head table approach and show this method is far from satisfactory. We propose an alternative approach that better exploits the implicit information in the phrase structure and show these two approaches only agree 60.6% of the time when evaluated against the Chinese Treebank.

"Now every word she said was echoed, echoed loudly in my head": Christophine's Language and Refractive Space in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract: Christophine is tangential to this narrative. She cannot be contained by a novel which rewrites a canonical English text within the European novelistic tradition in the interest of the white Creole rather than the native. No perspective critical of imperialism can turn the Other into a self, because the project of imperialism has always already historically refracted what might have been the absolutely Other into a domesticated Other that consolidates the imperialist self. (253)

A Description of Chinese NPs using Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Abstract: In Chinese, as well as in Japanese and Korean, nouns and classifiers share the co-occurrence restrictions, which are known as the noun-classifier matching. (Levy and Oshima, 2003) And this kind of agreement is the most salient feature of noun phrases, which presents a challenge for linguistic description and formalization. In this paper, we propose an analysis of Chinese NPs in the framework of HPSG, especially focusing on the noun-classifier matching. Also, with the implementation in the LKB system, we could figure out the pros and cons of the analysis.

A Formal Analysis Of The Verb Copy Construction In Chinese

Abstract: This paper presents a formal analysis of the verb copy construction in Modern Chinese. Unlike the previous analyses, in which this construction is analyzed as a single-headed structure with the second VP as the head and the first VP as an adjunct, our analysis treats the verb copy construction as a coordinated VP, with each VP as a co-head. We further propose that the first VP subsumes the following VPs in this construction. We also show that this alternative approach can successfully capture and explain all of the three key properties that characterize this construction.

The Definite Article and Possessive Marking in Amharic

Abstract: singular possessive marker. In this paper we would like to account for the left edge effect of the Amharic definite marking as well as the distribution of defi-niteness marking in modified possessive noun phrases. Our suggestion is to promote definiteness from the head of the syntactic left-hand daughter, while, for example, person and number specifications, and also a POSS(essive) feature, are promoted from the head daughter; the latter is in accordance with the more general constraints embodied in the Head Feature Principle of HPSG. Nouns in Amharic may carry affixes to indicate their gender, number, definiteness, and case. The language is at least partially agglutinative. Mor-phemes are suffixed to the noun in the order listed above (see also: Leslau 1995). Nominal modifiers and specifiers may host some of the nominal morphology, leading to patterns of nominal inflection throughout the noun phrase to be described below.

Deconstructing Thinking Like a Lawyer: Analyzing the Cognitive Components of the Analytical Mind

Abstract: “You come in here with a head full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.” Professor Kingsfield’s declaration in the movie The Paper Chase over thirty years ago still rings true as legal educators continue to seek to train students to “think like lawyers.” Despite the popularity of the phrase, legal scholars have not agreed on a detailed conception of what “thinking like a lawyer” means. Does it mean the ability to analyze

A Computational Effective Document Semantic Representation

Abstract: A technique based on noun phrase and verb clause slot structures Is described for representing the semantics of the sentences making up a text document. Thesaurus head word index numbers are placed in the appropriate document sentence clause slots to represent the meta level meaning of the sentences. Many different expressions of the same document content can thus be represented by one semantic representation. An implementation of such a technique is described, and sample output is presented. The document summarisation thus produced is suitable for manipulation by computers for a variety of document processing tasks. The technique has primarily been developed for an automated essay grading system, where a robust context free representation of documents is required.