Topic
Head (linguistics)
About: Head (linguistics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2540 publications have been published within this topic receiving 29023 citations. The topic is also known as: nucleus.
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01 Nov 2019
TL;DR: The authors argued that the hierarchical structure of template corresponds to the syntactic structure of a Cushitic language and that affix ordering is not sensitive to syntactic properties, as it is the case in Qafar.
Abstract: The functional head suggests that verbs acquire their inflectional properties by moving from one head position to the next in the syntactic derivation. A problem arises as affixes’ ordering is not sensitive to syntactic properties, as it is the case in Qafar. This Cushitic language exhibits two verbal classes depending on whether verbs can have prefixes. I argue that the hierarchical structure of template corresponds to the syntactic structure. Phonological constraints on templates formation activate adequate syntactic operations. If we assume that templatic domains lie at the interface between syntax and phonology, we account for some issues of affix ordering, that involve no syntactic property.
5 citations
TL;DR: This study proposed an approach to convert an Indonesian constituency treebank to a dependency tree bank by utilizing an English NLP tool (Stanford CoreNLP) to create the initial dependency treebank and proposed a variant of tree rotations algorithm named headSwap for dependency trees.
Abstract: Corresponding Author: Ika Alfina Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia Email: ika.alfina@cs.ui.ac.id Abstract: To overcome the lack of NLP resources for the low-resource languages, we can utilize tools that are already available for other highresource languages and then modify the output to conform to the target language. In this study, we proposed an approach to convert an Indonesian constituency treebank to a dependency treebank by utilizing an English NLP tool (Stanford CoreNLP) to create the initial dependency treebank. Some annotations in this initial treebank did not conform to Indonesian grammar, especially noun phrases’ head-directionality. Noun phrases in English usually have head-final direction, while in Indonesian is the opposite, head-initial. We proposed a variant of tree rotations algorithm named headSwap for dependency trees. We used this algorithm to convert the head-directionality for noun phrases that were initially labeled as a compound. Moreover, we also proposed a set of rules to rename the dependency relation labels to conform to the recent guidelines. To evaluate our proposed method, we created a gold standard of 2,846 tokens that were annotated manually. Experiment results showed that our proposed method improved the Unlabeled Attachment Score (UAS) with a margin of 32.5% from 61.6 to 94.1% and the Labeled Attachment Score (LAS) with a margin of 41% from 44.1 to 85.1%. Finally, we created a new Indonesian dependency treebank that converted automatically using our proposed method that consists of 25,416 tokens. The dependency parser model built using this treebank has UAS of 75.90% and LAS of 70.38%.
5 citations
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: This paper presents a system for another input modality in a multimodal human-machine interaction scenario, e.g. speech, that extracts head gestures by image interpretation techniques based on machine learning algorithms to have a nonverbal and familiar way of interacting with the system.
5 citations
5 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the associative marker tu is a complementizer, and the structure it introduces should be accommodated under the adjunction analysis, whereas various existing alternative complementation approaches that view tu as a head selecting the modified phrase as its complement fail to capture the noted properties regarding ellipsis.
Abstract: This paper investigates the syntactic status of nominal modifiers in Isbukun Bunun, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan. In Isbukun Bunun, nominal modifiers such as possessors, adjectives, demonstratives, and relative clauses precede the head noun they modify, and they may or must be linked to the head noun by an associative marker tu. Based on the observed NP-ellipsis facts and the formal licensing condition, I argue that the associative marker tu is a complementizer, and the structure it introduces should be accommodated under the adjunction analysis, whereas various existing alternative complementation approaches that view tu as a head selecting the modified phrase as its complement fail to capture the noted properties regarding ellipsis. 1. INTRODUCTION. (1) In many languages, complex noun phrases contain an apparently meaningless, and sometimes optional, element whose function is to provide a link between modifiers and modifiees. The existence of such a linking element or associative marker is attested in several Formosan Austronesian languages (He et al. 1986; Huang 1997,2000; Chang 2000; Wu 2000; Zeitoun 2000; Tang 2007), and in a considerable number of other languages (cf den Dikken and Singhapreecha 2004), as exemplified in (1): (1) a. PAIWAN va'uan a kun new A skirt 'a new skirt' b. AMIS ma-su'su'-ay a tamdaw AV-fat-FAC A person 'a fat person' c. THAI khon thii ken person THII smart 'a smart person' d. MANDARIN CHINESE huangse de chenshan yellow DE shirt 'a yellow shirt' In the principles-and-parameters framework, grammatical constructions arise from the universal principles that work in tandem with parameters with values set for particular languages; therefore, it is very often shown that some intuitively equivalent constructions in two languages involve very different syntactic representations, since there are no a priori universal rules specific to a given construction. This paper examines complex noun phrases in Isbukun Bunun (often referred to as just Isbukun in this paper), and explores the nature of the associative element tu as well as the modification structure in this language. I will examine the existing approaches to such linking elements and investigate whether phrases like (2) should be analyzed as a relative construction or a pure complex nominal construction--or even some other construction. In particular, a careful examination of Isbukun nominal structure shows that Kayne's (1994) antisymmetry theory, which hypothesizes that phrase structure is universally head-initial, does not account for the syntactic patterns of complex noun phrases in Isbukun. (2) ISBUKUN BUNUN madiav *(tu) ulus AV.yellow TU clothes 'yellow clothes' This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 first provides some basics of the morphosyntax of Isbukun, and subsequently introduces the Isbukun tu-construction that is the focus of this study. Section 3 discusses possible accounts for the associative marker as pointed out in the literature, and further argues that tu is a complementizer that introduces an adjoined pure sentential modifier phrase to the modifiee, mainly based on the evidence from ellipsis. Section 4 concludes the paper. 2. THE EMPIRICAL BASE. Bunun is a Formosan Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan. The current study is based on the Isbukun dialect spoken in Taitung County. (2) Isbukun Bunun is a predicate-initial, or more specifically VSO, language (He et al. 1986; Li 1997; Huang 1997; Jeng 1999; Zeitoun 2000; Wu 2013). Just like many other Formosan and Western Austronesian languages, Isbukun Bunun permits a range of arguments to serve as the syntactically most prominent NP of the clause, marked by the a nominative case marker. Such an a-marked phrase has been known by a number of names in the Austronesian literature, including "subject," "topic," and "pivot"; here 1 will refer to it as the subject for ease of presentation, though this term should be regarded with caution. …
5 citations