Showing papers on "Head (linguistics) published in 2012"

Complex Sentence Processing: A Review of Theoretical Perspectives on the Comprehension of Relative Clauses

Abstract: A major goal of psycholinguistics is to gain a better understanding of how syntactically complex sentences are processed. Pursuit of this goal has frequently focused on the contrast between objectand subject-extracted relative clauses (RCs). Although a large body of literature demonstrates that comprehension is more difficult for object RCs than for subject RCs, the proposed explanations for this processing asymmetry are diverse and hotly debated. This article reviews theoretical accounts of RC processing in terms of whether they characterize the critical differences in comprehension difficulty as arising from memory processes, interpretive processes, or processes tuned to the frequency with which different types of language are encountered. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms that enable us to process and comprehend syntactically complex sentences is a central goal of psycholinguistics. The contrast between subject-extracted and object-extracted relative clauses (RCs) has provided an empirically rich test bed for pursuing this goal. In a subject-extracted RC (SRC), as in (1), the head noun phrase (NP) serves as the subject of the RC, whereas in an object-extracted RC (ORC), as in (2), the head NP serves as the object of the RC. According to standard linguistic accounts, both SRCs and ORCs contain a phonologically empty placeholder—or gap—that is co-indexed with the head NP (the senator in the examples below). In (1), this gap (denoted by D) appears in the subject position of the embedded verb (e.g., the senator bothered the reporter), whereas in (2), this gap appears in the object position of the embedded verb (e.g., the reporter bothered the senator). In order to understand the sentence, the listener or reader must use information from the filler to interpret the gap, which would otherwise lead to an ungrammatical sentence.

Prosodic cues to word order: what level of representation?

Abstract: Within language, systematic correlations exist between syntactic structure and prosody. Prosodic prominence, for instance, falls on the complement and not the head of syntactic phrases, and its realization depends on the phrasal position of the prominent element. Thus, in Japanese, a functor-final language, prominence is phrase-initial and realized as increased pitch (^Tōkyō ni ‘Tokyo to’), whereas in French, English or Italian, functor-initial languages, it manifests itself as phrase-final lengthening (to Rome). Prosody is readily available in the linguistic signal even to the youngest infants. It has, therefore, been proposed that young learners might be able to exploit its correlations with syntax to bootstrap language structure. In this study, we tested this hypothesis, investigating how 8-month-old monolingual French infants processed an artificial grammar manipulating the relative position of prosodic prominence and word frequency. In Condition 1, we created a speech stream in which the two cues, prosody and frequency, were aligned, frequent words being prosodically non-prominent and infrequent ones being prominent, as is the case in natural language (functors are prosodically minimal compared to content words). In Condition 2, the two cues were misaligned, with frequent words carrying prosodic prominence, unlike in natural language. After familiarization with the aligned or the misaligned stream in a headturn preference procedure, we tested infants’ preference for test items having a frequent word initial or a frequent word final word order. We found that infants’ familiarized with the aligned stream showed the expected preference for the frequent word initial test items, mimicking the functor-initial word order of French. Infants in the misaligned condition showed no preference. These results suggest that infants are able to use word frequency and prosody as early cues to word order and they integrate them into a coherent representation

Head movement as a PF-phrenomenon: Evidence from identity under ellipsis

Abstract: Within the minimalist approach, however, this traditional view has been argued to be problematic (cf. e.g. Chomsky 1995, 2001; Brody 2000; Surányi 2005; Matushansky 2006).Firstly, head movement generally seems to lack semantic effects. Secondly, it violates well-established principles of narrow syntax: for instance, it goes against the Extension Condition and the head of the movement chain does not c-command its tail. These problems have been considered evidence that head movement cannot be part of narrow syntax or the semantic component. Chomsky (1995:358) therefore suggested that verb second word order may be “formed by phonological operations”. Later, he extended this proposal, saying that “a substantial core of head-raising processes” may take place in the phonological component instead of narrow syntax (2001:37). This stance was adopted by for instance Boeckx & Stjepanović (2001), Hale & Keyser (2002), Harley (2004), and Platzack (to appear). Other researchers (such as Matushansky 2006; Lechner 2007; Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2010; Roberts 2010) continue to adhere to syntactic head movement. This paper aims at contributing to this discussion, by considering the interaction between head movement and ellipsis. Identity requirements under ellipsis provide evidence that there are cases of head movement that take place in the PF-component. The paper proceeds as follows. Section two introduces the phenomenon of verb-stranding VPellipsis, which involves verbal head movement out of an ellipsis site. The ‘stranded’ verbs in this

From Dichotomy to Divergence: Number/Gender Marking on Hebrew Nouns and Adjectives Across School Ages

Abstract: This study investigates the development of plural adjective agreement in Hebrew, focusing on the consolidation of Hebrew number/gender morphology in children and adolescents across the school years in comparison with adults. A total of 240 Hebrew-speaking participants in seven consecutive grade levels (kindergarten to sixth grade) plus a group of 30 adults were administered a set of 32 singular noun-adjective noun phrases, which they had to pluralize. Head nouns were classified by noun gender (masculine and feminine), suffix type (regular and irregular), and stem type (nonchanging and changing). Children's ability to correctly pluralize nouns and adjectives increased markedly from kindergarten to adulthood, whereas reaction time to the correct plural phrase decreased concomitantly. Noun gender, stem, and suffix morphology impacted noun and adjective plural marking as well as reaction time. Results are discussed in view of the critical role of noun gender as a central organizing factor in the development of Hebrew plural marking.

Using Syntactic Head Information in Hierarchical Phrase-Based Translation

Abstract: Chiang's hierarchical phrase-based (HPB) translation model advances the state-of-the-art in statistical machine translation by expanding conventional phrases to hierarchical phrases -- phrases that contain sub-phrases. However, the original HPB model is prone to over-generation due to lack of linguistic knowledge: the grammar may suggest more derivations than appropriate, many of which may lead to ungrammatical translations. On the other hand, limitations of glue grammar rules in the original HPB model may actually prevent systems from considering some reasonable derivations. This paper presents a simple but effective translation model, called the Head-Driven HPB (HD-HPB) model, which incorporates head information in translation rules to better capture syntax-driven information in a derivation. In addition, unlike the original glue rules, the HD-HPB model allows improved reordering between any two neighboring non-terminals to explore a larger reordering search space. An extensive set of experiments on Chinese-English translation on four NIST MT test sets, using both a small and a large training set, show that our HD-HPB model consistently and statistically significantly outperforms Chiang's model as well as a source side SAMT-style model.

Thinking in the right direction: An ellipsis analysis of right-dislocation

Abstract: We propose to analyze right-dislocation constructions in terms of clausal coordination, coupled with ellipsis. While neither rightward movement nor base-generation of backgrounded and afterthought phrases is descriptively accurate, we show that the facts follow straightforwardly on an analysis that takes the dislocated phrase to be the surface remnant of a second clause that is underlyingly parallel to the host clause and reduced by ellipsis at PF. Right-dislocated XPs are thus theoretically assimilated to sluiced wh-phrases, fragment answers, and other sentential fragments. We furthermore suggest that the two clauses in right-dislocation are syntactically related by an abstract coordinating head, making right-dislocation an instance of specifying coordination.

Plausibility Effects When Reading One- and Two-character Words in Chinese: Evidence from Eye Movements

Abstract: Readers have to build up a coherent meaning representation of the text they read by integrating each word into its sentence context. How rapidly does this process take place? Context is known to exert a very rapid effect on the interpretation of ambiguous words (Sereno, O’Donnell, & Rayner, 2006; Rayner, Cook, Juhasz, & Frazier, 2006). Furthermore, experiments manipulating the plausibility of a word in context suggest that readers detect implausibility almost immediately (Rayner, Warren, Juhasz, & Liversedge, 2004; Warren, McConnell, & Rayner, 2008). Staub, Rayner, Hyona, Pollatsek, and Majewski (2007) explored this plausibility effect in reading using noun-noun compounds in 1a and 1b: 1a.The new principal talked to the cafeteria manager at the end of the school day. 1b.The new principal visited the cafeteria manager at the end of the school day. The compound cafeteria manager as a whole is fully plausible in both sentences. However, the plausibility of the initial noun (which was always singular) as a head noun was manipulated by varying the preceding verb (talked to or visited). For example, cafeteria is implausible as a head noun at the point it appears in 1a, but the implausibility is eliminated when the next word, manager, is encountered. In 1b, cafeteria is plausible as a head noun, although it turns out to be the left constituent of a compound. Reading times on the left constituent noun were significantly longer when the head noun analysis of this word was implausible than when it was plausible. This result suggests that the parser initially analyzes a singular noun as a head instead of a modifier, and plausibility has an automatic and rapid effect on eye movements. Semantic interpretation appears to proceed on a word-by-word basis, with the apparent implausibility of a word in context influencing eye movements even when the next word removes the implausibility. Most studies on the time course of plausibility effects have been conducted with alphabetic languages. Less is known about this issue with respect to Chinese, a script that differs in many aspects from alphabetic languages. Unlike English (and other alphabetic writing systems), Chinese is a logographic script wherein the written text is formed by strings of equally spaced box-like symbols called characters, which represent the basic units of meaning (morphemes). However, the meaning of a character may not be transparent by itself and can be context-dependent. This is because Chinese words can consist of one to several characters; a character can be a one-character word or a morpheme of a multiple-character word, with markedly different meanings in these two situations. Moreover, there is no explicit marker between words in Chinese. That is, the width of the space between words is identical to that between characters within a word. For example, the ambiguous three-character string “” can be segmented in two ways: (1) the first character is a single character word (meaning flower) and the next two characters form a two-character word (grow), and (2) the first two characters form a two-character word (peanut) and the third character is a single character word (grow). Thus, Chinese readers have to rely largely on context to tell if a character is itself a word, or a constituent morpheme of a multiple-character word, and determine its proper meaning (Chen, 1996, 1999). In addition, grammatical properties of Chinese words are highly context dependent, as most words do not have inflectional markers, or markers of tense or case, that help to specify grammatical category (Chen, 1996; Chen, Song, Lau, Wong, & Tang, 2003). Thus, it has been argued that higher level semantic interpretation for Chinese readers would not be expected to function in an immediate manner (Aaronson & Ferres, 1986). Indeed, a delayed comprehension strategy would be more suitable for building up a coherent representation because it would maximize the amount of information available and minimize the ambiguities encountered. However, there is evidence suggesting that Chinese readers conduct semantic interpretation in an immediate manner. Wang, Chen, Yang, and Mo (2008) reported that Chinese readers immediately activate and integrate related background information during discourse comprehension. They found that a target character which was inconsistent with background information from the early part of a passage yielded increased first-pass reading times (the sum of all fixations on a region prior to moving to another region) on a region consisting of the target character and the character prior to it. Moreover, Yang, Wang, Chen and Rayner (2009) investigated the time course of syntactic and semantic processing in Chinese reading. In their experiment, the relation between a one-character target word and the sentence context was manipulated such that three kinds of sentences were presented: (1) congruent, (2) containing a semantic violation, and (3) containing both a semantic and a syntactic violation. Eye movement data showed that first pass reading times on the target word were longer in the two violation conditions than in the congruent condition, and that the semantic plus syntactic violation caused more severe disruption than did the semantic violation alone. Recall that there are no visual cues in Chinese orthography that highlight word boundaries for readers, and the meaning of a character may be very different when it appears within a multi-character word. The present study addressed the question of whether Chinese readers show the same immediate plausibility effects when a character that would be implausible as a one-character word is, in fact, the first character of a plausible multi-character word, similar to the initial noun of a noun-noun compound in the implausible condition in Staub et al.’s experiment. Thus, the present study sheds light on whether semantic integration of multiple-character words in reading Chinese is performed at a word level or at the character level. Since the majority of multiple-character words in Chinese are two characters (about 60-70%, Liu, 1990), they were used as target words. We made the first character of a two-character target word (which was always plausible in context) either plausible or implausible as an independent word at the point it appeared, by manipulating the verb prior to the target word (similar to Staub et al.). In addition, two other sentence frames were created by replacing the two-character target word with its first character, to establish a baseline plausibility effect for one-character words. Therefore, there were four conditions: (1) a plausible two-character target word with its first character plausible at the point it appeared, (2) a plausible two-character target word with its first character implausible at the point it appeared, (3) a plausible one-character target word, and (4) an implausible one-character target word. We will refer to these conditions as plausible-plausible, plausible-implausible, plausible, and implausible, respectively (see below for example sentences). If semantic interpretation proceeds on a character-by-character basis when reading multiple-character words, a sizable reading time penalty on the first character of a two-character target word (and/or the whole target word) should be observed in the plausible-implausible condition as compared to the plausible-plausible condition. The reading time on the target word in these two conditions should be comparable if semantic interpretation proceeds on a word-by-word basis. Reading times on the one-character target word were expected to be longer in the implausible condition than the plausible condition, replicating the results obtained by Yang et al. (2009).

Head-Driven Hierarchical Phrase-based Translation

Abstract: This paper presents an extension of Chiang's hierarchical phrase-based (HPB) model, called Head-Driven HPB (HD-HPB), which incorporates head information in translation rules to better capture syntax-driven information, as well as improved reordering between any two neighboring non-terminals at any stage of a derivation to explore a larger reordering search space. Experiments on Chinese-English translation on four NIST MT test sets show that the HD-HPB model significantly outperforms Chiang's model with average gains of 1.91 points absolute in BLEU.

Voiding Island Effects via Head Movement

Abstract: I argue that Boskovic’s (2011c) generalization concerning the island-voiding effect of incorporation can be captured naturally within minimalist bare phrase structure if head movement (a) is a syntactic operation and (b) leaves no trace/copy. E. Kiss’s (2008) ‘‘domain-flattening’’ phenomena are also expected under the proposed account. Further empirical consequences are discussed.

Abstract pronominal anaphors and label nouns in German and English: selected case studies and quantitative investigations

Abstract: anaphors refer to abstract referents, such as facts or events. This paper presents a corpus-based comparative study of German and English abstract anaphors. Parallel bidirectional texts from the Europarl Corpus were annotated with functional and morpho-syntactic information, focusing on the pronouns ‘it’, ‘this’, and ‘that’, as well as demonstrative noun phrases headed by “label nouns”, such as ‘this event’, ‘that issue’, etc., and their German counterparts. We induce information about the cross-linguistic realization of abstract anaphors from the parallel texts. The contrastive findings are then controlled for translation-specific characteristics by examination of the di fferences between the original text and the translated text in each of the languages. In selected case studies, we investigate in detail “translation mismatches”, including changes in grammatical category (from pronouns to full noun phrases, and vice versa), grammatical function, or clausal position, addition or omission of modifying adjectives, changes in the lexical realization of head nouns, and transpositions of the demonstrative determiner. In some of these cases, the specificity of the abstract noun phrase is altered by the translation process.

Head Movement and Noun Incorporation

Abstract: Head movement (HM), once a mainstay of generative syntax, has undergone a tumultuous series of overhauls over the years (Baker 2009, Boeckx and Stjepanović 2001, Chomsky 2001, Fanselow 2003, Mahajan 2003, Matushansky 2006, Roberts 2010). The problems with HM have been discussed in the literature just cited, and we do not comment further on them here. Rather, we wish to address the issue of HM and noun incorporation (NI) in light of Roberts’s (2010) recent reworking of HM. In a nutshell, we show that the mechanism for HM adopted by Roberts (who uses NI to support his agreement proposal), while well-suited for capturing other properties Roberts discusses such as clitics in Romance and Slavic languages, fails to capture various properties of NI in several languages—notably Fox and Ojibwe (Algonquian) and various Northern Iroquoian languages (Mohawk, Onondaga, and Oneida), though we discuss other languages below. We do not argue that Roberts’s approach for HM is on the whole untenable; we merely contend that it cannot be the right analysis of NI. This squib is organized as follows. In section 1, we give some background to HM and NI. In section 2, we outline the mechanics of HM as presented by Roberts, along with Roberts’s preliminary analysis of NI in Mohawk. In section 3, we present the relevant properties of NI in the languages mentioned above. In section 4, we discuss the problems facing Roberts’s proposal for HM and NI. In section 5, we present our conclusions and the implications of the current discussion for NI.

Subjective selection of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) based on spectral coloration and interaural time differences (ITD) cues

Abstract: The present study describes an HRTF subjective individualization procedure in which a listener selects from a database those HRTFs that pass several perceptual criteria. Earlier work has demonstrated that listeners are as likely to select a database HRTF as their own when judging externalization, elevation, and front/back discriminability. The procedure employed in this original study requires individually measured ITDs. The present study modifies the original procedure so that individually measured ITDs are unnecessary. Specifically, a standardized ITD is used, in place of the listener’s ITD, to identify those database minimumphase HRTFs with desirable perceptual properties. The selection procedure is then repeated for one of the preferred minimum-phase HRTFs and searches over a database of ITDs. Consistent with the original study, listeners prefer a small subset of HRTFs; in contrast, while individual listeners show clear preferences for some ITDs over others, no small subset of ITDs appears to satisfy all listeners.

Is nP Part of Universal Grammar

Abstract: Rutkowski & Progovac (2005) propose to analyze the postnominal placement of classifying adjectives in Polish as resulting from N-movement. Rutkowski (2007a) modifies this account by arguing for a special structural layer (nP) projected immediately above NP, whose head (n°―‘little’ or ‘light’ N) attracts the noun in classifying structures. The goal of the present paper is to discuss the status of nP in more detail and to extend the nP analysis to other nominal constructions―both in Polish and crosslinguistically.

Licensing by modification: The case of French de nominals

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of the positive effect that modification has on the distribution of noun phrases in otherwise illicit environments. I focus on de nominals in French. By focusing on these nominals, whose distribution is altered by the addition of modifiers, the paper shows that modifiers can do much more than simply modify: they can change the syntactic and semantic status of a noun phrase. The licensing property of modifiers is an intriguing topic and has not been greatly discussed in the literature. I argue that modifiers can come to play the role of determiners in French as long as they are accompanied by a head de, which is the spell-out of a Cardinal head (see Lyons 1999). My proposal goes back to an old idea put forward by Damourette & Pichon (1911–1940) according to which, in modified contexts, de functions as one half of the article while the adjective functions as the other half. More generally, articles in French are seen as dual entities comprising of a specifier and a head. In the absence of the determiner les, an adjective can raise to the specifier of CardinalP. This is achieved via phrasal rather than head movement.

Optical flow based Head Movement and Gesture Analyzer (OHMeGA)

Abstract: Automatically identifying and analyzing head gestures is useful in many situations like smart meeting rooms and intelligent driver assistance. In this paper, we show that head movements can be broken into its elemental forms (i.e. moving and fixation states) and combinations of these elemental forms give rise to various head gestures. Our approach which we term, Optical flow based Head Movement and Gesture Analyzer (OHMeGA), segments head gestures into moving and fixation states using optical flow tracking and intermittent head pose estimation. OHMeGA runs in real-time, is simple to implement and set up, is robust and is accurate. Furthermore, segmenting head gestures into its elemental forms gives access to higher level semantic information such as fixation time and rate of head motion. Experimental analysis shows promising results.

English Transparent Free Relatives: Interactions between the Lexicon and Constructions∗

Abstract: English employs two different types of free relatives: standard and transparent. These two types, different with respect to the syntactic and semantic headedness of the clause, have intriguing similarities and differences. In particular, transparent free relatives (TFRs) are peculiar in the sense that the predicative expression within the relative clause functions as the head of the clause with respect to syntactic as well as semantic properties. In this paper, we provide a non-movement analysis that places an emphasis on the interactions between the lexicon and constructional constraints.

Arabic Treebank: from Phrase-Structure Trees to Dependency Trees

Abstract: The aim here is to create a dependency treebank from a phrase-structure treebank for Arabic. Arabic has a number of characteristics,described below, which make it particularly challenging to any natural language processing (NLP) applications. We describe an encouraging semi-automatic technique for converting phrase-structure trees to dependency trees by using a head percolation table.One of the most signi?cant challenges here is the determination of the head of each subtree. We therefore examined different versionsof the head percolation table to ?nd the best priority list for each entry in the table. Given that there is no absolute measure of the?correctness? of a conversion of a phrase structure tree to dependency form, we tested the various transformations by seeing how well astate-of-the-art dependency parser learnt the generalisations that were embodied by the converted trees.

On the Syntax-Semantics Interface of Argument Marking Prepositional Phrases

Abstract: The paper investigates a class of argument marking prepositional phrases that have two roles when they occur in some verb phrases. Primarily, such prepositional phrases provide the head verb with a noun phrase as one of its dependents, casting syntax-semantics correlations in the internal argument structure of the verb phrase. Additionally, they can carry substantial semantic information. The paper contributes to methods of language processing by integrated algorithmic syntax-semantics interface. The work is part of development of a new type-theoretic approach to the concepts of algorithm and algorithmic syntax-semantics interfaces.

Construction of compound nouns (CNs) for noun phrase in Malay sentence

Abstract: This paper addresses the process of compound noun construction from simple Malay sentences. To construct the compound noun, we characterize them according to the noun phrase categories in Malay sentence. All these categories are formed based on the combination of noun and noun, noun and noun modifier and noun and non-noun modifier. The noun phrase in Malay sentence is referred to as a word group with a noun as its head. The head noun is then accompanied by modifiers or compliments. The modifiers or compliments can be either noun, verb, adjective, determiner or etc. A good understanding of Malay language is an important skill for evaluating and nominating a correct compound noun found from the data collection. The compound noun then will be match with its appropriate category. We also design a general process flow to show the steps involved in creating compound noun from our data collection. The total number of compound nouns collected is important, so that the searching process becomes more widespread. A suitable searching method and data representation is also significant for handling compound nouns from a database.

Number agreement in Basque: counting vs. measuring

Abstract: This paper argues that Basque non-agreeing quantifiers are conceptually measures and that measures head their own functional projection in the expanded structure of the Noun Phrase. This functional projection is placed in-between the Classifier Phrase (where division occurs) and the Number Phrase (where counting occurs), following Borer (2005). The distinction we make between the measuring field (in Measure Phrase position) and the counting field (in NumP position) affects referentiality; in fact, agreement and reference only become relevant upon reaching NumP -not before that position, i.e. not in Measure Phrase position. We also show that non-agreeing quantifiers are sensitive to the nature of the predicates they associate with.

Relative clauses in Latin: some problems of description

Abstract: Latin grammars usually describe relative clauses as attributes of a head constituent. Independently used relative clauses are regarded as derived from the first type. Latin has in fact two types of relative clauses which should not be regarded as derived from each other.

The Head of the Chinese Adjectives and ABB Reduplication

Abstract: This study investigates whether the head of the Chinese adjective compounds is on the left or right or on both sides. Sproat (1998), Starosta et al (1998), and Ceccagno, et al (2006, 2007) argue that the adjectives are right-headed, and Huang (1998) claims that Chinese adjectives are headless. Using the ABB type of adjectives as evidence, I argued that the head of the Chinese adjectives is more like on the left than on the right. This study supports the Headedness Principle and also calls into questions whether a suffix is the head of a word as traditionally assumed in morphology. On the other hand, it also provides evidence that reduplication is a compounding process as Haugen (2008) has claimed since most of the reduplicated constituents of ABB have a specific lexical meaning and many of them can be used as independent words.

An Investigation into Setting Head Parameters in English as a Head-initial Language from the Minimalist Perspective

Abstract: Opposing to the behaviorist approach, the alternative approach proposed by Chomsky believes that language acquisition cannot be accounted for without considering a linguistically specific system of Principles and Parameters which every healthy child is expected to have genetically in his or her mind. A set of absolute Universals, Notions and Principles exist in the UG which do not vary from one language to another, while certain grammatical principles and rules may be universal. It is also true that languages differ from one another in some important ways like being either head-initial or head-last. Regarding English head parameters, all heads (whether nouns, verbs, prepositions, or adjectives etc.) normally precede their complements. In this study we tried to investigate why this language is considered as a head initial one despite the occurrence of different options for every NP, VP, AP and PP.