Showing papers on "Phrase published in 1983"

Prosodic Structure Above the Word

Abstract: Since in various studies the term “prosody” has been used in a variety of ways, we will begin by clarifying our use of it in this contribution. We include under “prosodic phenomena” any phonological rules or processes that are not purely local, in that they cannot be described solely in terms of their phonotactic environments. Instead, additional information is required as to what larger units, or “prosodie domains”, they belong to. In other words, while certain phonological phenomena can be described with rules that modify particular segments in particular segmental contexts, these segmental contexts are not enough to determine whether or not a rule applies. Following recent proposals [e.g. Liberman and Prince, 1977; Selkirk, 1978 b, 1980], we take the prosodie domains to include rhyme, syllable, foot, phonological word, phonological phrase, intonational phrase, and utterance. To take a simple illustration, consider a rule in Dutch that inserts a schwa between a liquid and a following consonant1.

The use of time in storytelling

Abstract: Finnish, French, German, and Spanish) were examined under the hypothesis that they are characterized by commonalities in the use of time Each study was based on the same speech type, story telling elicited by pictorial materials The temporal measures were speech and articulation rates, pause duration, phrase length, and percentage of pause time/total time The hypothesis was confirmed except for studies carried out with identifiably variant methodologies Further support for the hypothesis was found by contrasting the use of time characteristic of interviewees’ speech Temporal phenomena have come to assume an important role in research on speech production as the relationship of various independent variables to these phenomena has gradually become known Among the independent variables, age (eg, Starkweather, 1980; Kowal, O’Connell and Sabin, 1975) and foreign language proficiency (eg, Wiese, 1983) are perhaps the most obvious Differential use of time has typically been interpreted in terms of the various cognitive demands involved in speech production Although speech type has clearly been acknowledged to be an important independent variable, it is not as yet clear how narrowly a speech type must be operationally defined in order to yield temporal data that can be replicated As long as speech type categories as broad as reading and spontaneous speech are used, the purpose of replicability and predictability will not be attained On the other hand, if the speech type category yields replicable data only for a trivially narrow subset of experimental situations, again it becomes a useless category It is the thesis of the

The Diachronic Development of the Black English Perfective Auxiliary Phrase

Abstract: The perfective auxiliary structures used by lower-class Black speakers in the United States of America have certainly been one of the most prominent and most intensely discussed areas of the grammar of the dialect commonly referred to as Black English. 1 The central question of this debate has been whether the Black English system is basically identical in its underlying structure with the English one, with tense as its preeminent category, or whether, owing to a Creole origin, it is closely related to African language systems, which are characterized by monosyllabic constituents inserted between subject and predicate to denote aspectual rather than tense distinctions. It has been suggested repeatedly that done and been are relexifications of such aspect markers, the former used for perfective and the latter for remote aspect. Irrespective of the synchronic status of these forms, the question of the diachronic origin of the Black English perfectives can only be solved by a detailed analysis of a large body of valid historical data, which, however, is practically impossible to obtain for the early centuries of slavery. The best possible source is most likely the so-called Slave Narrative Collection compiled by the Federal Writers’ Project in the mid-1930’s at the instigation of John Lomax and published in 1972 by George Rawick. This collection consists of more than two thousand interviews with very old Blacks who had been

The effects of text segmentation on children's reading comprehension∗

Abstract: This study investigated two methods of segmenting text based upon phrase boundaries, in an attempt to make social studies textbooks more readable for elementary school children A pausal phrase format, a syntactic phrase format, and a standard prose format were administered to 648 grade four and grade seven students The results indicated that phrasing the passages for the participants improved their reading comprehension approximately one level That is, poor readers reading phrased passages read as well as average readers normally do, and average readers reading phrased passages read almost as well as good readers normally read There were no interactions with Text Segmentation, indicating that Text Segmentation is facilitative for all children when reading passages at or above grade level Further research is necessary to evaluate the effects of teacher assistance on these findings, and the effects of Text Segmentation on reading very easy passages

Speaking apparatus having differing speech modes for word and phrase synthesis

Abstract: The present invention provides a conversion between a speech mode in which each word is clearly enunciated as if spoken in isolation and in which a phrase is spoken as a whole taking into account the influence of adjacent words. In the phrase mode, word ending final phonological linguistic units are replaced with their corresponding internal versions, and short strong vowels are substituted for the corresponding long strong vowels except at the word ends. In the word mode, a word final pronunciation is given when a corresponding internal phonological linguistic unit occurs at a word end, and short strong vowels are replaced by the corresponding long strong vowel when the short strong vowel occurs at the end of a word or prior to a set of voiced consonants. In either mode, a substitution may be made for the pronunciation of frequently used words. This invention is most useful in speaking electronic learning aids which permit word or phrase speech synthesis from the same data.

‘Public domain’ software

Abstract: ‘Public Domain’, in its clearly defined legal sense, is a phrase which is used to describe an item, usually a book or a play, which is no longer copyright, i.e. when the author of the item has been dead for 50 years. It is perhaps peculiar, therefore, to see it used to describe computer software, as there cannot be many program writers who fall into this category.

On English sentence stress and the nature of metrical structure

Abstract: This essay is concerned with a section of the suprasegmental phonology of English that has traditionally been called 'sentence stress': a domain that goes beyond the simple word and its accent, covering prominence relations within lexical compounds and syntactic phrases. Some almost commonplace assumptions are usually made about sentence stress in the phonological literature of English: first, that the distinction between compound stress and phrasal stress leads to a phonological contrast, so that in a compound noun like blackboard the left-hand constituent is the stronger one whereas in a phrase, black board for example, the right-hand one is. Second, that this prominence differentiation consists of a further contouring of the main stresses of the simple words involved so that word stress serves as input for sentence stress differentiation, as in German teacher vs. German teacher. Also frequently observed is a class of exceptions to this second assumption: the thirteen me'n cases, where the primary stress of a word in isolation, thirteen, gets shifted in certain contexts for rhythmic reasons. The notational model that I shall adopt in this analysis of English sentence stress is essentially that advocated by Liberman and Prince (I977, henceforth LP), Giegerich (I980), and others, rather unfortunately dubbed 'metrical phonology'. Relative prominence is assigned to the sister nodes of a strictly binarily branching tree in such a way that one node is strong (S) and the other weak (W) and no other branching is possible. In the domain under discussion here, the tree is a copy of the bracketing of the syntactic surface structure. The rules that assign prominence relations make reference to the category labels of that surface structure. Of these rules there are only two, a Nuclear Stress Rule (NSR) and a Compound Stress Rule (CSR), producing the contrasting stress

Language teaching kit

Abstract: A kit for teaching grammatical aspects of language comprises a plurality of question cards. Each card contains a different sentence of a predetermined number of words, and a plurality of answer cards each of which contains a sentence corresponding to that appearing on one of the question cards, and each of which bears indicia displaying the correct parsing of the sentence at a given level of complexity, there being at least one answer card corresponding to each question card. A plurality of answer forming chips (Figs. 1 (a), (b) & (c), each being colour coded to represent different basic parts of speech or speech functions is provided and at least some of these bear indicia further qualifying the basic parts of speech. At least one answer forming chip support is provided to receive and support, for visual display, sufficient chips to identify and qualify each word, phrase or clause forming each sentence on each question card at a given level of complexity.

A tagmemic analysis of the Wolaitta language.

Abstract: Wolaitts is a member of the Omotio group of languages clustered around the Omo river in southern Ethiopia. The thesis represents a data-intensive analysis of the phonology and syntax of this language. The theory of language in which this analysis is framed is the tagmemio one, which, among other things, assumes the existence of phonological and grammatical hierarchies within a language. The first part of the thesis deals with the phonological levels in Wolaitts: the phoneme, syllable, phonological-word, phonological phrase, phonological-clause, and phonological-sentence. Important phonological features of Wolaitts, such as gemination, vowel length, stress, and tone are discussed and exemplified. The rest of the thesis treats the various levels in the grammatical hierarchy. Starting with the clause level, basic clause types are identified, along with their variants and entailments. Exotic entailed clause types, such as the causative-passive-reciprocal clause, are considered together with the accompanying complex morphology. The majority of dependent clauses are shown basically to be embedded within the structure of clausal subordinating postpositional phrases. The clause in microcosm is then seen in the verb phrase and the verb. The numerous aspect categories which are expressed morphologically in the Wolsitts verb phrase are given a prominent place in the analysis; there are at least 21 such categories, e.g., experiential, immediacy, durative, exclusion, etc. Nominal phrases are next treated, together with postpositional phrases, numeral phrases, adjective phrases, and nominalized phrases. The "headless" relative construction, which is a feature typical of the languages of that area is described. Nouns are then analysed, the complicated, morphological feature of definiteness being highlighted. These major sections are followed by chapters containing a brief treatment of sentences, and the other word classes: ie. preforms, determiners, adjectives, numerals, and particles. Only surface structure phenomena have been utilized for the analysis. An attempt has been made to avoid appealing to deep structure in determining the identities and category status of Wolaitta language features.

A prolog implementation of lexical functional grammar as a base for a natural language processing system

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present parts of our system [2], which is to construct a database out of a narrative natural language text. We think the parts are of interest in their own. The paper consists of three sections:(1) We give a detailed description of the PROLOG - implementation of the parser which is based on the theory of lexical functional grammar (LFG). The parser covers the fragment described in [1,§;4]. I.e., it is able to analyse constructions involving functional control and long distance dependencies. We will to show that- PROLOG provides an efficient tool for LFG-implementation: a phrase structure rule annotated with functional schemata likes S → NP VP is to be interpreted as, first, indetifying the special grammatical relation of subject position of any sentence analyzed by this clause to be the NP appearing in it, and second, as identifying all grammatical relations of the sentence with those of the VP. This universal interpretation of the LFG-metavariables ↑ and ↓ corresponds to the universal quantification of variables appearing in PROLOG-clauses. The procedural semantics of PROLOG is such that the instantiation of the variables in a clause is inherited from the instantiation given by its subgoals, if they succeed. Thus there is no need for a separate component which solves the set of equations obtained by applying the LFG algorithm.-there is a canonical way of translating LFG into a PROLOG programme.(II) For the semantic representation of texts we use the Discourse Representation Theory developped by Hans Kamp. At present the implementation includes the fragment described in [4]. In addition it analyses different types of negation and certain equi- and raising-verbs. We postulate some requirements a semantic representation has to fulfill in order to be able to analyse whole texts. We show how Kamp's theory meets these requirements by analyzing sample discourses involving anaphoric NP's.(III) Finally we sketch how the parser formalism can be augmented to yield as output discourse representation structures. To do this we introduce the new notion of 'logical head' in addition to the LFG notion of 'grammatical head'. The reason is the wellknown fact that the logical structure of a sentence is induced by the determiners and not by the verb which on the other hand determiners the thematic structure of the sentence. However the verb is able to restrict quantifier scope ambiguities or to induce a preference ordering on the set of possible quantifier scope relations. Therefore there must be an interaction between the grammatical head and the logical head of a phrase.

Developing Mathematical Maturity

Abstract: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” If Potter Stewart hadn’t coined this phrase, mathematicians would have. Trying to define “mathematical maturity” is about as hopeless a task as defining obscenity, or, for that matter, justice or love. Nevertheless, since that is our task, let us begin.

A preliminary description of sentence structure in the e-Saaka dialect of e-Makhuwa.

Abstract: This study establishes a framework for the description of sentence structure in the e-Saaka dialect of e-Makhuwa (Mozambique) including the structure of units lower on the rank scale (clause, group/phrase, word). The model of description is eclectic, but draws especially on Halliday's Scale and Category approach as represented by Maw 1969 and on Guthrie 1961. The study is based on a corpus of recorded texts, one of which appears with syntactic annotation and translation as an appendix. Introductory chapters deal with the phonology and tonology of the language, the latter having significance for the focusing and nominal predication mechanisms of the language. Successive chapters then deal with the morphology of the nominal and verbal, the structure of the group, clause and sentence. Selectors (demonstratives, Chapter 4) play a special role in the textual delimitation of nominal groups, and reference is made to their links with psycholinguistic encoding units (Chapter 6). Chapter 5 (verbal morphology) includes consideration of the way in which processes of verbal derivation relate to systems of transitivity and aspect; examination of the syntactic slots associated with the transitivity system (Chapter 7) includes a delicate distinction of categories of object. The analysis of verbal conjugation in the same chapter leads to distinction of mood characterising different clause types whose relationships are discussed in Chapter 8. Chapter 7 also includes an examination of the role of the ideophone in clause structure and its relation to the predicate. Recognition of cleft and situative clauses as special structures simplifies their description and annotation. The final chapter on sentence structure also considers relationships between sentences in larger units termed episodes.

Some experiments with a linguistic processor for continuous speech recognition

Abstract: The linguistic processor of a system for the recognition of fluently spoken Japanese is described. Input to the processor is a phoneme lattice in which scores are given for each of 27 phonemes for each segment. Phrases composed of words from a 112 word vocabulary are recognized by an error correcting parser which tolerates both classification and segmentation errors in the phoneme lattice by means of a Substitution-Insertion-Deletion Mechanism (SID). Some phrase errors are corrected at the sentence level by means of a Cartesian Product Sorting Algorithm. The processor has been tested on a total of 80 sentences from four male speakers. The sentences comprised 496 phrases with an average of 25 phonemes per phrase. The phoneme lattices had a 70 percent accuracy on phonemes with roughly equal numbers of segmentation and classification errors. Under these conditions 77 percent phrase accuracy was observed.

Correcting system of erroneous conversion

Abstract: PURPOSE:To improve the operability, by correcting the error of a phrase dividing position on the display with mixed Kana (Japanese syllabary) and Kanji (Chinese character) as it is in a Japanese language processor. CONSTITUTION:In case of erroneous conversion of a phrase dividing position, a cursor moving key on an input device is operated to designate the position of Kanji ''hatsu'', which is indicated in Fig. by B, by the cursor. In this position, the part of reading ''tsu'' of Kanji ''hatsu'' is designated by the cursor. After the phrase dividing indication is moved to this position, partial reconversion and homonym selection are performed to correct the erroneous conversion.

Speech synthesizing apparatus

Abstract: A speech synthesizing apparatus has a first memory storing a plurality of phrase data each including speech data, an address designating circuit for designating an address of the first memory, a second memory for storing synthesizing condition data, and a synthesizer for synthesizing a speech signal based on speech data from the first memory in accordance with the synthesizing condition data stored in the second memory. Each phrase data stored in the first memory also includes the corresponding synthesizing condition data. When each phrase data is read out from the first memory, the synthesizing condition data is first read out and is stored in the second memory, and then the speech data is read out and is supplied to the synthesizer.

Les grammairiens arabes, la phrase nominale et le bon sens in The History of Linguistics in the Near East.

Abstract: Reflexion sur la valeur explicative des theories des grammairiens arabes a l'aide d'un exemple precis: phrase nominale vs phrase verbale.

On crossing numbers and linguistic structures

Abstract: A spelling net for a phrase consists of the multigraph whose points are labelled with the set of distinct letters in the phrase and whose lines lie on the Eulerian path obtained in "spelling out" the phrase between the (lettered) points Spelling nets can also use phonemes or words as labels An eodermdrome is a non-planar spelling net Thus, the study of structural properties of eodermdromes is the study of non-planar Eulerian multigraphs

Multiple-Choice Modifications of the Cloze Procedure Using Word-Length and Sentence-Length Blanks.

Abstract: This paper explains the construction and uses of three exercises in English as a Foreign Language reading comprehension at the advanced level. These techniques combine the techniques of the multiple-choice and cloze formats. In word fill-in exercises, the student chooses the best word or phrase, from among four possibilities given, to fill in the gap in the text. Sentence fill-in exercises contain blank spaces, each representing an entire sentence. There is approximately one blank space per paragraph. The student chooses the best sentence, from among four possibilities given, to fill in the gap in the text. In the exercise rearranging the order of the sentences, each blank space represents a sentence. A list of sentences is given, separate from the text, containing more sentences than there are blank spaces. Among the sentences on this list are all those originally in the text, but they appear in a scrambled order. The student is required to choose the sentences that will fill in the blanks in the text from this list.

Japanese word analyzing system

Abstract: PURPOSE:To realize the processing of significance of a Japanese word by means of a computer, for example, mechanical translation and questionnaire, by expressing the significance expressed in Japanese through the connection of phrases and clauses mechanically. CONSTITUTION:A phrase/clause synthesizer 1 splits a sentence into phrases/ clauses and a connection analyzer 2 receives them and outputs a list among the phrases and clauses. In the device 1, a series of words is inputted to a synthesizer 7 for clauses/phrases, whether each word is an independent word or an adjective word at a discriminator 8 to synthesize th words into a sentence. In the device 2, when two clauses are inputted, an extracting device 9 determines their grammatical characters. A discriminator 4 checks the presence/absence of grammatical modification between the clauses, and if present, the clauses are transferred to an extracting device 10. If absent, the are given to a storage device 11. The device 10 seeks the number of a functional word and conceptional word constituting the clauses, and gives the number to a discriminator 5. The device 10 outputs a list between the connection of clauses when the presence of connection is returned.

Data conversion processing system

Abstract: PURPOSE:To output a candidate of character to be converted successively at an operator's conversion request and to increase a processing speed, by providing a conversion dictionary with the 1st dictionary containing converted character strings showing meanings matching with the reading and the 2nd dictionary containing character strings associated with the character strings CONSTITUTION:The reading of a Japanese sentence is inputted in KANA (Japanese syllabary) to an input preprocessing part 1 and the input character string is supplied to a conversion control part5 Then, KANJI (Chinese character) and KANA characters corresponding to the input character string are retrieved by a work extraction part 2 and idiomatic phrase extraction part 3 under the control of the control part 5 and an output control part 4 outputs a KANJI-KANA mixed sentence The extraction parts 2 and 3 are provided with word and idiomatic phrase extraction control parts 21 and 31, conversion dictionary and idiomatic phrase dictionary retrieval parts 23 and 33, conversion and idiomatic dictionary storage parts 24 and 34, and conversion word and idiomatic phrase candidate storage parts 22 and 23 Then, converted character string candidates are outputted successively at an operator's request to improve the processing speed

Diagnostic tests as residuals analysis, perspective and comment

Abstract: As the Pagan and Hall article demonstrates, considerable technical progress has been made during the fifteen years since I helped to introduce the general topic and coined the phrase specification error tests Unfortunately, as I shall mention below, the theoretical interest now shown by econometicians has not yet altered to any visible extent the statistical behavior of applied economists.

Natural language text segmentation techniques applied to the automatic compilation of printed subject indexes and for online database access

Abstract: The nature of the problem and earlier approaches to the automatic compilation of printed subject indexes are reviewed and illustrated. A simple method is described for the detection of semantically self-contained word phrase segments in title-like texts. The method is based on a predetermined list of acceptable types of nominative syntactic patterns which can be recognized using a small domain-independent dictionary. The transformation of the detected word phrases into subject index records is described. The records are used for the compilation of Key Word Phrase subject indexes (KWPSI). The method has been successfully tested for the fully automatic production of KWPSI-type indexes to titles of scientific publications. The usage of KWPSI-type display formats for the enhanced online access to databases is also discussed.