Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Interface between syntax and semantic'

The question of how to integrate idioms into standard theories of grammar has been a matter of investigation since at least the beginning of generative grammar. Idioms are uniquely positioned at the interface between the lexicon and the syntax, demonstrating properties of both words and phrases. On the one hand, idioms behave like stored units, arbitrary correspondences between sound and meaning that must simply be memorized by speakers of the language. In this way, they are similar to words, which have long been recognized as arbitrary sound-meaning pairs (cf. Saussure (1986)'s arbitrariness of the sign). On the other hand, idioms in the traditional sense are multiword units, often with some degree of syntactic flexibility, ranging from tense inflection (e.g. Eli kicked the bucket yesterday vs. I'm pretty sure Eli's going to kick the bucket tomorrow) to passivizability (e.g. Lisa spilled the beans vs. The beans were spilled (by Lisa)), and beyond. This places idioms in the purview of the syntax, where the combination and manipulation of multiword units is typically assumed to take place. Idioms, then, bridge the gap between the lexicon and the syntax, challenging traditional assumptions about grammar. This dissertation provides a proposal for dealing with just such issues. I provide an account of idiomatic representations that is consistent with theoretical and empirical research in the field. I explore what kinds of structures are licensed to have special idiomatic interpretations, and I present novel experimental and corpus results that bear on the issue of how idioms are represented. Ultimately, I argue that the structural requirement model alone is able to sufficiently account for the data.

A complete Java interface to OpenModelica has been created, supporting both standard Modelica and the metamodeling extensions in MetaModelica. It is bidirectional, and capable of passing both standard Modelica data types, as well as abstract syntax trees and list structures to and from Java and process them in either Java or the OpenModelica Compiler.It currently uses the existing CORBA interface as well as JNI for standard Modelica. It is also capable of automatically generating the Java classes corresponding to MetaModelica code.This interface opens up increased possibilities for tool integration between OpenModelica and Java-based tools, since for example models or model fragments can be extracted from OpenModelica, processed in a Java tool, and put back into the main model representation in OpenModelica.

A first version text generation template language for MetaModelica is also presented. The goal for such a language is the ability to create a more concise and readablecode when translating an abstract syntax tree (AST) to text.

Cette thèse traite de la description formelle et du développement d’une grammaire électronique de la langue arabe. Ce travail est un prérequis à la création d’outils de traitement automatique de l’arabe.Cette langue présente de nombreux défis pour un traitement automatique. En effet l’ordre de mots en arabe est relativement libre, la morphologie y est riche et les diacritiques sont omis dans les textes écrits. Bien que plusieurs travaux de recherche aient abordé certaines de ces problématiques, les ressources électroniques utiles pour le traitement de l’arabe demeurent relativement rares ou encore peu disponibles. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés à la représentation de la syntaxe (ordre des mots) et du sens de l’arabe standard moderne. Comme système formel de représentation de la langue, nous avons choisi le formalisme des grammaires d’arbres adjoints (Tree Adjoining Grammar). Nous avons ainsi proposé une grammaire d’arbres adjoints électronique de l’arabe nommée « ArabTAG V2.0 ». Cette ressource réutilise en partie la modélisation préexistante dans la grammaire définie manuellement «ArabTAG » et l’intègre à une représentation abstraite appelée méta-grammaire. L’expert linguiste peut ainsi décrire la syntaxe et sémantique de la langue avec des outils d’abstraction facilitant la maintenance et l’extension de la grammaire. La grammaire ainsi décrite compte 1074 règles syntaxiques (non lexicalisées) et 27 cadres sémantiques (relations prédicatives). Cette ressource a été évaluée en analysant un corpus issu d’extraits d’un manuel scolaire d’apprentissage de l’arabe
This thesis deals with the formal description and development of an electronic grammar of Arabic language. This work is a prerequisite for the creation of automatic Arabic processing tools. This language presents many challenges for automatic processing. Indeed the order of words in Arabic is relatively free,the morphology is rich and the diacritics are omitted in written texts. Although several research studies have addressed some of these issues, electronic resources useful for the processing of Arabic remain relatively rare or not widely available. In this thesis work, we are interested in the representation of syntax (word order) and the meaning of modern standard Arabic. As a formal system of language representation, we chose the formalism of Tree Adjoining Grammar. Thus we proposed an electronic adjoint tree grammar of Arabic named"ArabTAGV2.0". This resource partially reuses the pre-existing modeling in the manually defined grammar "ArabTAG" and integrates it into an abstract representation called meta-grammar. The linguistic expert canthus describe the syntax and semantics of the language with abstraction tools facilitating the maintenance and extension of the grammar. The new described grammar has 1074 syntactical rules (not lexicalized) and27 semantic frameworks (predicative relations). This resource was evaluated by analyzing a corpus from excerpts of an Arabic textbook

Machine Translation (MT) for language pairs with long distance dependencies and word reordering, such as German-English, is prone to producing output that is lexically or syntactically incoherent. Statistical MT (SMT) models used explicit or latent syntax to improve reordering, however failed at capturing other long distance dependencies. This thesis explores how explicit sentence-level syntactic information can improve translation for such complex linguistic phenomena. In particular, we work at the level of the syntactic-semantic interface with representations conveying the predicate-argument structures. These are essential to preserving semantics in translation and SMT systems have long struggled to model them. String-to-tree SMT systems use explicit target syntax to handle long-distance reordering, but make strong independence assumptions which lead to inconsistent lexical choices. To address this, we propose a Selectional Preferences feature which models the semantic affinities between target predicates and their argument fillers using the target dependency relations available in the decoder. We found that our feature is not effective in a string-to-tree system for German-English and that often the conditioning context is wrong because of mistranslated verbs. To improve verb translation, we proposed a Neural Verb Lexicon Model (NVLM) incorporating sentence-level syntactic context from the source which carries relevant semantic information for verb disambiguation. When used as an extra feature for re-ranking the output of a German-English string-to-tree system, the NVLM improved verb translation precision by up to 2.7% and recall by up to 7.4%. While the NVLM improved some aspects of translation, other syntactic and lexical inconsistencies are not being addressed by a linear combination of independent models. In contrast to SMT, neural machine translation (NMT) avoids strong independence assumptions thus generating more fluent translations and capturing some long-distance dependencies. Still, incorporating additional linguistic information can improve translation quality. We proposed a method for tightly coupling target words and syntax in the NMT decoder. To represent syntax explicitly, we used CCG supertags, which encode subcategorization information, capturing long distance dependencies and attachments. Our method improved translation quality on several difficult linguistic constructs, including prepositional phrases which are the most frequent type of predicate arguments. These improvements over a strong baseline NMT system were consistent across two language pairs: 0.9 BLEU for German-English and 1.2 BLEU for Romanian-English.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates the applicability and suitability of the syntactic decomposition approach to account for the causative and anticausative alternation in Kikongo (Kizombo) in terms of the structural nodes of Voice, vCAUS and Root as posited in this approach to (anti-)causativity (see Alexiadou 2010). In addition, the aspectual approach postulated by Vendler (1957) and further developed by Verkuyl (1972) and Smith (1997) is invoked for the reason that the two alternants in the causative and anticausative alternation in Kikongo (Kizombo) are associated with aspectual verb class differences. Research on the causative and anticausative alternation has long been the focus of extensive work in typological and theoretical linguistics. Two central issues revolve around the debate: first the properties of meaning that determine the alternation and the derivational relationship between the alternants, and second, the relation between the causative alternation and other transitivity alternations, e.g. passives and middles. This dissertation demonstrates that there is a wide range of acceptability judgments associated with anticausative uses of Kizombo in externally and internally caused change of state and change of location/position verbs. The verb root is the element of meaning that allows the Kizombo verbs to alternate irrespective of their verb classes, including agentive verb roots. All the causative variants of externally caused verbs are morphologically unmarked, but all the anticausative variants are morphologically marked. However, all the internally caused change of state verbs are morphologically unmarked. Both the causative and anticausative variants of change of location/position verbs are morphologically unmarked. The anticausative and passive sentences can license an external causer through an implicit argument. While the passive verb sentences can be modified by by-agent, purpose clause and agent-oriented phrases, the anticausative sentences can be modified by instrument, natural force, agent-oriented and by-self phrases. The acceptability of modifiers with anticausatives and passives presupposes a presence of a causer in both constructions. The causative form of change of location/position verbs is syntactically intransitive (i.e. in the locative-subject alternation), but its anticausative variant acquires a transitive-like form. Thus, the concept of causative is related to cause and effect of the argument participating in the process. The study considers competing approaches concerning the derivational direction of the causative and anticausative alternation. Given the data in Kizombo, it is argued that the syntactic decomposition approach is the most appropriate to account for the example sentences in the causative and anticausative constructions. The transitive approach could probably deal with the externally caused change of state verbs, as discussed in chapter 6, but would face a challenge relating to the change of location/position verbs because none of the variants is morphologically marked.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie het die toepaslikheid en geskiktheid van die benadering tot sintaktiese ontleding ondersoek ten einde rekenskap te gee van die kousatiewe en antikousatiewe wisseling in Kikongo (Kizombo) ten opsigte van die strukturele vertakpunte van Voice, vCAUS en Root soos in hierdie benadering tot (anti-)kousatiwiteit gestel (sien Alexiadou 2010). Daarbenewens is die aspektiese benadering soos voorgestaan deur Vendler (1957) en verder ontwikkel deur Verkuyl (1972) en Smith (1997) gebruik omdat die twee alternante in die kousatiewe en antikousatiewe wisseling in Kikongo (Kizombo) met aspektiese verskille in werkwoordklasse geassosieer word. Navorsing oor die kousatiewe en antikousatiewe wisseling is reeds lank die fokus van omvangryke werk in tipologiese en teoretiese linguistiek. Twee sentrale kwessies word by die debat betrek: eerstens die eienskappe van betekenis wat die wisseling en die afleidende verband tussen die alternante bepaal, en tweedens, die verhouding tussen die kousatiewe wisseling en ander transitiwiteitswisselinge, bv. passief- en middelkonstruksies. Hierdie verhandeling toon dat daar ʼn wye reeks aanvaarbaarheidsuitsprake is wat met antikousatiewe gebruik van Kizombo by verandering van toestand en verandering van plasing/posisie van werkwoorde wat ekstern en intern veroorsaak word, geassosieer word. Die werkwoordwortel is die betekeniselement wat dit vir die Kizombo-werkwoorde moontlik maak om te wissel ongeag hulle werkwoordklasse, met inbegrip van agenswerkwoordwortels. Al die kousatiewe variante van ekstern veroorsaakte werkwoorde is morfologies ongemerk, maar al die antikousatiewe variante is morfologies gemerk. Al die intern veroorsaakte verandering van toestandswerkwoorde is morfologies ongemerk. Beide die kousatiewe en antikousatiewe variante van verandering van plasing/posisie van werkwoorde is morfologies ongemerk. Die antikousatiewe en passiewe sinne kan ʼn eksterne doener deur ʼn implisiete argument toelaat. Terwyl die sinne met passiewe werkwoorde gewysig kan word deur deur-agent, doel-sinsdeel en agent-georiënteerde frases, kan die antikousatiewe sinne gewysig word deur instrument-, natuurlike krag-, agent-georiënteerde en deur-self-frases. Die aanvaarbaarheid van modifiseerders met antikousatiewe en passiewes voorveronderstel ʼn aanwesigheid van ʼn doener in albei konstruksies. Die kousatiewe vorm van verandering van plasing/posisiewerkwoorde is sintakties onoorganklik (m.a.w. in die lokatief–onderwerp-wisseling), maar die antikousatiewe variant daarvan verkry ʼn oorganklik-agtige vorm. Die begrip van kousatief hou dus verband met oorsaak en gevolg van die argument wat aan die proses deelneem. Die studie neem kompeterende benaderings met betrekking tot die afleidende rigting van die kousatiewe en antikousatiewe wisseling in ag. Gegewe die data in Kizombo, word aangevoer dat die benadering van sintaktiese ontleding die geskikste is om rekenskap te gee van die voorbeeldsinne in die kousatiewe en antikousatiewe konstruksies. Die oorganklike benadering sou waarskynlik aan die ekstern veroorsaakte verandering van toestandswerkwoorde, soos in hoofstuk 6 bespreek, aandag kon skenk maar sou voor ʼn uitdaging met betrekking tot die verandering van plasing/posisiewerkwoorde te staan kom aangesien geeneen van die variante morfologies gemerk is nie.

La présente recherche s’intéresse à la syntaxe des constructions exceptives (CE) et sa correspondance avec la sémantique au sein de deux langues : le français et l’arabe. À partir d’un corpus d’exemples attestés, nous proposons pour le français une classification des CE en deux classes majeures à comportements syntaxiques distincts : les CE-paradigmatiques qui s’apparentent, du point de vue syntaxique, à la coordination et les CE-hypotactiques qui relèvent au contraire de la subordination. Nous situerons notre analyse des marqueurs sauf, excepté, hormis, etc. dans le cadre des listes/entassements paradigmatiques, constructions dans lesquelles deux éléments occupent la même position syntaxique et dont le cas le plus connu est la coordination. Cette analyse s’éloigne de celle généralement associée à ces marqueurs dans les grammaires et les dictionnaires français qui les traitent comme des prépositions. Pour l’arabe, nous proposons une répartition tripartite des CE qui prend en considération les spécificités de l’arabe par rapport au français. En plus des CE-paradigmatiques et des CE-hypotactiques, nous identifions, en arabe, une troisième classe, celle des CE-paratactiques, qui sont des constructions à tête verbale qui relèvent de la parataxe, procédé particulièrement développé en arabe. Nos analyses nous amènent à considérer les marqueurs ʾillā, ġayr et siwā en arabe comme des conjonctions de coordination. Ces items, comme leurs homologues français, mettent en relation deux éléments X et Y où X à droite du marqueur et Y à gauche forment des listes/entassements paradigmatiques au sens où ils partagent la même fonction syntaxique dans l’énoncé. Nous analysons les unités ʿadā (mā-ʿadā), ẖalā (mā-ẖalā), ḥāšā (mā-ḥāšā) comme des verbes. Ces verbes introduisent une proposition qui entretient une relation de parataxe avec la proposition précédente. Nous considérons, enfin, les unités bistiṯnāʾi et biẖilāfi comme des locutions prépositives introduisant une séquence qui entretient une relation de subordination avec la proposition principale
This research takes an interest the syntax of exceptive constructions (ECs) and its correspondence with semantic within two languages: French and Arabic. Based on a corpus of authentic examples, we suggest a classification of ECs into two major categories with dissimilar syntactic behaviors: the paradigmatic-ECs, which are syntactically related to coordination and the hypotactic-ECs, which are contrarily related to subordination. We will focus our analysis on the markers sauf, excepté, hormis, etc. and analyze them as particular case of paradigmatic lists/piles, in which two segments of the utterance pile up on the same syntactic position and whose most famous case is coordination. This analysis is different from the one generally associated with these markers in French grammars and dictionaries which consider them as prepositions. For Arabic, we propose a tripartite classification of ECs that considers the specificities of Arabic relative to French. In addition to the paradigmatic-ECs and the hypotactic-ECs, we identify, in Arabic, a third class, the paratactic-ECs, which are constructions with a verbal head that belong to the parataxis, a process particularly developed in Arabic. Our analyzes lead us to consider the markers ʾillā, ġayr and siwā in Arabic as coordinating conjunctions. These items, like their French counterparts, relate two elements where X on the right of the marker and Y on the left form paradigmatic lists/piles, in the sense that they fulfill the same syntactic function in the utterance. We analyze the lexical items ʿadā (mā-ʿadā), ẖalā (mā-ẖalā), ḥāšā (mā-ḥāšā) as verbs. These verbs introduce a clause that maintains a parataxic relation with the preceding clause. Finally, we consider the items bistiṯnā'i and biẖilāfi as prepositive phrases introducing a sequence that maintains a subordinate relationship with the main clause

Pronominal complex predicates in colloquial Persian are periphrastic constructions with an idiosyncratic syntactic pattern. They show a peculiar behavior compared to the regular agreement system in Persian, and they are the only construction in Persian which requires the obligatory presence of a pronominal enclitic. This work is an attempt to analyze this construction in order to find its function. For this purpose, a lexical semantic classification of them was proposed, which helped in presenting a new analysis. It was found out that this construction is used to express a particular diathesis in which the topic of the sentence (determined according to Givón’s topicality hierarchy) is an indirect participant. I proposed a hybrid dual-layer agreement system which includes a morphosyntactic and a semantic layer. The pronominal enclitic was analyzed as a phrasal affix and agreement marker by reference to Givón’s (1976) and Anderson’s (2005) arguments. The construction was analyzed to be an instance of the external possessor construction proposed by Haig (2008), which is observed in Iranian languages. The classification of the data clarified the mapping of semantics onto syntax. The proposed analysis could be added to and unified with the current analysis of Persian complex predicates (Bonami and Samvelian, 2009).

The aim of this thesis is to define the essential syntactic-semantic properties of three types of objectless sentences in present-day Swedish. The three types of objectless sentences are labeled descriptively as follows: Implicit Object Read type (IOR) with pseudo-transitive verbs like läsa ‘read’; Implicit Object Open type (IOO), which involves various sets of transitive verbs like öppna ‘open’ and bära ‘carry’; and Implicit Object Kill type (IOK), which typically involves destruction verbs like döda ‘kill’. The study is framed within Ramchand’s (2008) syntactic model with a three-partite decomposed verb phrase, which distinguishes between two types of objects: RHEMES, which are inserted into a complement position in the verb phrase, and UNDERGOERS, which are inserted into a specifier position. In this work, IOR is argued to be an objectless version of pseudo-transitive verbs with optional RHEMES, whereas IOO and IOK are argued to involve ‘true’ transitive verbs with omitted UNDERGOER objects. As a consequence, the IOR verbs are analyzed as sharing their structure with some verbs usually regarded as intransitive, such as springa ‘run’ and arbeta ‘work’, which can also marginally take RHEME objects. This opens up for a discussion on the transitive- intransitive distinction and the object status of RHEMES, as well as a discussion of lexical knowledge versus encyclopedic knowledge. The distinction of optional RHEMES and syntactically obligatory UNDERGOER objects is argued to arise from event structural differences among sets of verbs, as well as from different verb-object relations that are made possible within the three-partite verb phrase. The structural verb-object relations are argued to be influenced further by encyclopedic associations of particular verbs and by knowledge about the world. In contrast to IOR, IOO and IOK are both argued to involve the omission of an UNDERGOER object of a true transitive verb. In the case of IOO, the object referent is salient and specific, whereas for IOK, the object referent is non-specific. Thus, the restriction on IOO as well as on IOK can be informally phrased in terms of the object only being omissible if it is interpretable, or somewhat more formally, if the free variable can be bound. However, the variable binding is assumed to occur in two distinct ways, further motivating the distinction of IOO and IOK. Whereas the free variable of an IOO object is pragmatically bound, the variable of an IOK object is instead bound by an existential operator above the VP.

En tant que syntagmes sémantiquement non-compositionnels, les locutions sont des unités lexicales à part entière, qui doivent avoir leur propre entrée dans un modèle du lexique. Elles doivent donc recevoir une définition lexicographique, ainsi qu’une description de leurscaractéristiques grammaticales. De plus, en vertu de leur signifiant syntagmatique, les locutionstémoignent – à des degrés divers – d’une flexibilité formelle (passivation, insertion de modificateurs, substitution de certains constituants, etc.).Notre thèse défend l’idée selon laquelle une description des locutions combinant à la fois l’identification des unités lexicales qui les composent et l’identification des relations de dépendance syntaxique qui unissent les unités constituantes, permettra de prédire leurs différents emplois possibles dans la phrase. Une telle description n’est possible que dans un modèle du lexique décrivant précisément la combinatoire des lexies. Notre recherche, basée sur les principes de la Lexicologie Explicative et Combinatoire, exploite et enrichit les données du Réseau Lexical du Français (RL-fr), ressource en cours de développement à l’ATILF.La thèse a deux principaux apports. Le premier est le développement d’un modèle de description lexico-syntaxique relativement fine des locutions du français. Le second est l’identification et l’étude de différentes variations structurales, syntaxiques et lexicales liées à la flexibilité formelle des locutions. Les variations des locutions sont mises en corrélation avec leurs structures lexico-syntaxiques, mais également avec leurs définitions lexicographiques. Ceci nous conduit à introduire la notion de projection structurale, centrale dans le continuum de la flexibilité formelle des locutions
As semantically non-compositional phrases, idioms are lexical units. Consequently, they must have their own entries in a lexical resource, with a lexicographic definition and grammatical characteristics. Furthermore, because of their phrasal signifier, idioms show – to varying degrees – a formal flexibility (passivization, attachment of modifiers, substitution of components,etc.)Our thesis defends the view that a description of idioms that combine identification of their lexical components and identification of dependency links between these components will permit to predict their formal variations. Such a description is possible only in a model of lexicon that describes precisely combinatorial proprieties of lexical units. Our thesis, based on the Explanatory Combinatorial Lexicology’s framework, exploits and enhances the data of the French Lexical Network (fr-LN). This resource is being developed at the laboratory ATILF (Nancy, France).The thesis makes two principal contributions to the study of phraseology. The first contribution is the development of a precise description of idioms’ lexico-syntactic structures. The second contribution is the indentification and the study of structural, syntactic and lexical variations linked to idioms’ formal flexibility. Idioms’ formal variations are correlated with their lexico-syntactic structures, but also with their lexicographic definitions. This work leads us to introduce the notion of structural projection, that plays a central role in the continuum of idiom’s formal flexibility

Esta dissertação tem por objetivo descrever e analisar construções de tópico no português falado no município do Libolo/Angola (doravante, PLB). Tais construções de tópico podem ser caracterizadas, pragmaticamente, por certo sintagma/sentença que está ligado a uma sentença-comentário, sem, contudo, carregar a força ilocucionária do comentário; sintaticamente, o tópico pode ser caracterizado como um tipo de codificação de informação ligada ao sintagma complementizador (CP). Esta pesquisa, que tem como ponto de partida trabalhos sobre o tópico no português brasileiro (PB) e no português europeu (PE), apresenta um primeiro estudo do tópico em PLB, apontando, ainda, uma proposta inicial de aspectos da estrutura gramatical nesta variedade de português falada na África. A pesquisa lança, portanto, novas luzes em estudos inseridos em um projeto maior, denominado Projeto Libolo ver, entre outros, Figueiredo e Oliveira (2016) , cujo corpus centra-se em dados coletados em Angola nos anos de 2011, 2013 e 2016.
This dissertation consists of a study on topic constructions in the Portuguese spoken in the municipality of Libolo/Angola (hereinafter PLB). Such topic constructions can be characterized, pragmatically, by a certain phrase/sentence that is connected to a comment sentence, without, however, carrying the illocutionary force of the comment; syntactically, the topic can be characterized as a type of information coding linked to the Complementizer Phrase (CP). The results of the research here presented, which has as its starting point the studies on topic constructions in Brazilian Portuguese (PB) and European Portuguese (PE), present a first descriptive/explanatory proposal of the topic constructions in PLB, and points out also an initial proposal of structural aspects of this variety of Portuguese spoken in Africa. The research, therefore, throws new light on studies inserted in a larger project, called \"Project Libolo\" see, among others, Figueiredo and Oliveira (2016) whose corpus focuses on data collected in Angola in 2011, 2013 and 2016.

Molte lingue europee consentono sostantivi in ​​posizione di post - copulare senza articoli (eng. Obama is (a) president, nor. Per er (en) advokat) . Secondo molti account (i.a. Zamparelli 2005 , De Swart et al. 2007), la presenza di bare predicates (BPreds) è un fenomeno che riguarda la classe lessicale di nomi di professioni e ruoli. Più in particolare , questo fenomeno è spesso visto come il riflesso di una proprietà sintattica o semantica dei nomi raccolti in tale classe lessicale. Tuttavia, l'alternanza del significato tra predicati bare e determinate è più produttiva di quanto originariamente valutato, e più complessa. In Castella (2014), si sostiene che l'alternanza del significato tra BPreds e predicati determinati (DPreds) dipende dal fatto che i primi si riferiscono a proprietà estrinseche e i secondi a proprietà intrinseche. Si assume, in modo generale la distinzione introdotta da Lewis (1983) tra proprietà estrinseche e intrinseche: "Una proprietà P è intrinseca se e solo se l'istanza di P da parte di un individuo x è indipendente dalle caratteristiche dell'ambiente di x; altrimenti P è estrinseca." Crucialmente, i BPreds coinvolgono in modo piu prominente, nomi che fanno riferimento alle professioni (e.g. avvocato, dentista, insegnante) perché questi esprimono proprietà estrinseche più facilmente di altri nomi (e.g. uomo, donna, eroe). Intuitivamente, una persona è avvocato quando ha ottenuto un certo tipo di titolo e viene assunto per esercitare tale professione. Al contrario, tutto ciò non è necessario affinché qualcuno sia “un avvocato”, poiché i DPreds descrivono (parte de) la "vera natura" del soggetto, dunque come proprietà intrinseche al soggetto. Questa distinzione è avvalorata dal fatto che una dichiarazione del genere “Gianni è stato presidente senza mai essere un presidente” non è contraddittoria.
Many European languages allow nouns in post-copular position to occur without articles (eng. Obama is (a) president, nor. Per er (en) advokat). In many accounts (i.a. Zamparelli 2005, De Swart et al. 2007), the occurrence of bare predicates (BPreds) is a phenomenon that concerns the lexical class of nouns of professions and roles. More specifically, this phenomenon is often seen as the reflex of a syntactic or semantic property of the nouns collected in such lexical class. However, the meaning alternation between bare and determined predicates is more productive than originally assessed, and more complex. In Castella (2014), it is claimed that the meaning alternation between BPreds and determined predicates (DPreds) depends on the fact that the former refer to extrinsic properties and the latter to intrinsic properties. A general understanding of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction, first introduced by Lewis (1983), is that “A property P is intrinsic iff the instantiation of P by an individual x is independent of the features of the environment of x; otherwise P is extrinsic.” Crucially, BPreds prominently involve nouns that refer to professions (e.g. advokat, selger, lærer) because they express extrinsic properties more easily than other nouns (e.g. mann, kvinne, helt). Intuitively, one is advokat when that person has obtained a certain type of title and is hired to practice that profession. In contrast, all of the above is not necessary for someone to be en advokat since DPreds are understood as describing (part of) the “real nature” of the subject, thus as properties that are intrinsic to the subject. This distinction is corroborated by the fact that a statement like eng. John has been president without ever being a president is not contradictory.

碩士
國立政治大學
英國語文學研究所
83
This thesis deals with neutral tone sandhi in Mandarin Chinese at the phrasal and lexical levels. Previous research of the phrasal neutral tone, e.g., R. Cheng (1989), has focused only at the syntactic level. In this research, we employ prosodic theories (Selkirk (1984 & 1986), Nespor and Vogel (1986), etc.) to condition phrasal neutral tone sandhi, and propose a set of focal phrasing principles and a couple of relevant constraints. In addition, we discuss the rhythm of neutral tone under the framework of the beat-counting theory (Hsiao, 1991 & 1994) to see in what ways the theory has to be modified. We propose a pair of revised principles of functor beat assignment and directional beat adjunction, along with a backup rule of the default beat addition. As to neutral tone at the lexical level, we incorporate morphological template theory (McCarthy and Prince (1986)), and lexical phonology theory (Kiparsky (1973 & 1982), Mohanan (1982 & 1986), etc.). We propose that lexical neutral tone target a trochaic foot template, while a default tone target an iambic foot template. Observing the relevant phonological and morphological rules, we find that the neutral- toned data in the literature can be somehow generalized by way of level ordering.

碩士
國立清華大學
語言學系
84
The thesis investigates Yinping Tone Sandhi (YTS) in Miouli Hakka. Direct Reference Hypothesis and Indirect Reference Hypothesis are developed to examine Yinping Tone Sandhi Rule (YTSR) at the interface between syntax and phonology. In this research, we adopt Kaisse''s (1985) Domain C-command to observe the direct syntactic influence upon phonology and find that the domain for Yinping Tone Sandhi cannot be defined by the relations between syntactic constituents. In addition, we discuss the application of Yinping Tone Sandhi Rule from the perspective of prosodic phonology. Based on Selkirk''s (1984, 1986) End-based Parameters, we suggest that the phonological phrase in Hakka is marked at the right edge of a non-adjunct maximal projection. Our investigations show that YTS is better conditioned by the domain of intonational phrase (IP) and whereby we propose a formation rule of IP. Finally, we examine trisyllabic or quadrisyllabic Yinping Tone Sandhi under Hsiao''s (1991,1994) Beat-counting Theory of foot formation, and revise the direction of beat scanning to account for alternative tonal readings.

Cette recherche porte sur l’interface entre la sémantique lexicale et la syntaxe, et elle s’inscrit dans le cadre du projet de base lexicale DiCo (acronyme pour Dictionnaire de combinatoire) à l’Observatoire de Linguistique Sens-Texte [OLST] de l’Université de Montréal. Le projet découle d'une volonté d'inscrire de façon concise et complète, à même le dictionnaire, le comportement syntaxique typique à chaque unité lexicale. Dans cette optique, nous encodons la cooccurrence des lexies nominales du DiCo avec leurs actants à l'intérieur d'un tableau de régime lexical (aussi connu sous le nom de schéma valenciel, structure argumentale, cadre de sous-catégorisation, structure prédicats-arguments, etc.), en notant entre autres les dépendances syntaxiques de surface impliquées. Dans ce mémoire, nous présentons les propriétés syntaxiques d'une dépendance nominale du français, celle que nous avons nommée attributive adnominale, de façon à exposer une méthodologie d'identification et de caractérisation des dépendances syntaxiques de surface. Nous donnons également la liste des dépendances nominales régies identifiées au cours de ce travail. Par la suite, nous exposons la création d'une base de données de régimes généralisés du français nommée CARNAVAL. Finalement, nous discutons des applications possibles de notre travail, particulièrement en ce qui a trait à la création d'une typologie des régimes lexicaux du français.
This research focuses on the interface between lexical semantics and syntax, and is part of the lexical database project called DiCo (acronym for Dictionnaire de combinatoire) at the Observatoire de Linguistique Sens-Texte [OLST] at the University of Montreal. The project aims to register in a concise and complete way the typical syntactic behavior of each lexical unit directly in the dictionary. To this end, we encode the co-occurrence of the DiCo's nominal lexical units with their actants within a government pattern (also known as valency structure, subcategorization frame, predicate-argument structure, etc.), using, among other things, the surface syntactic dependencies involved. In this dissertation, we present the syntactic properties of a French nominal dependency, the one that we named attributive adnominale, so as to expose a methodology for the identification and the characterization of surface syntactic dependencies. We also give the list of valence-controlled nominal dependencies that were identified in our work. Subsequently, we describe the creation of a database of generalized French government patterns named CARNAVAL. Finally, we discuss possible applications of our work, particularly in regard to the creation of a typology of French government patterns.