All Questions
153 questions
4
votes
2
answers
199
views
How do you gloss "personal a" in Spanish?
The Spanish preposition "a" is used in transitive sentences when the object is definite and animate, for example in
Veo a mi hermana
see.1sg ? my sister
"I see my sister"
...
- 43
2
votes
0
answers
44
views
Dependency grammar based dictionary
A presupposition of constructing the dependency semantic structure of a sentence is the knowledge of semantic features of all sentence's semantemes (actants, semantemes' nature as predicate or name ...
- 171
5
votes
1
answer
269
views
A predicate as argument of a predicate
In Dependency Grammar we consider the meaning of a wordform either as a semantic predicate (:=predicate) or as a semantic name. Let us suppose we have a predicate, which has a predicate as argument (e....
- 171
1
vote
0
answers
124
views
What are linguistic concepts that are not widely applicable outside European languages?
Most linguists are familiar with European languages, and then may have also studied some Eurasian languages that are familiar to Europeans such as Japanese and varieties of Chinese. So it may be that ...
- 576
1
vote
0
answers
56
views
What theory of syntax and grammar do language typologists tend to prefer?
The first concerns the theory of syntax and grammar that typologists prefer:
What theory of syntax and grammar do language typologists tend to prefer? Do they prefer a transformational phrase ...
- 319
2
votes
0
answers
38
views
How do different grammar theory (e.g. PSG, FG) explain word order in different language? [closed]
In typology, how do different types of grammar theories (such as phrase structure grammar, functional grammar, etc.) explain different linear word order in different languages? I know that dependency ...
- 319
-1
votes
2
answers
83
views
Do I need to lemmatize my corpus when performing collocation analysis on inflective languages?
Do I need to lemmatize my corpus when I am going to perform a collocational analysis? Several language, including English, are to a certain extent inflective. These inflections sometimes carries ...
- 43
1
vote
1
answer
128
views
What is Double Zero Grade?
The double zero grade *ǵʰi-m- is preserved in the compounds with numerals.
(de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin 2013: hiems)
E.g. *dwi-ǵʰim-os “two years old”, literally “of two winters” (en....
- 1,391
5
votes
1
answer
160
views
Analysis of relative pronouns in dependency grammar
A dependency grammar represents the structure of a clause as a set of pairs of words, such that the first "depends" on the second. My question is ultimately how loops are prevented in such a ...
- 993
2
votes
0
answers
72
views
Are there any languages where the dependent agrees with the head's intrinsic property?
In head-marking languages, the head usually takes the marking based on the dependent's intrinsic properties. For example, every English noun/pronoun has an intrinsic property of person: "bear&...
- 357
6
votes
2
answers
793
views
What is dependency grammar and what are the possible relationships?
I have just started studying dependency grammar and I am really struggling with the relationship types and trees. I have only ever drawn classic syntactic trees so I keep getting confused. Could you ...
- 61
3
votes
1
answer
82
views
Name for ongoing syntactic dependencies after a word
Consider the sentence "I love my dog." There are three syntactic dependencies in this sentence: (a) the subject dependency from "I" to "love," (b) the modifier dependency ...
1
vote
1
answer
81
views
Are there specified names for categories of morphemes (or words that can combine with morphemes) in morphotactics?
Morphotactics is the study of the rules in a language by which morphemes are allowed to combine.
So at least in how I think of if, morphotactics is like grammar, but at the level of morphemes instead ...
- 161
4
votes
0
answers
160
views
Subject control or object control?
In the recent paper “Universal Dependencies” by de Larneffe, Manning, Nivre and Zeman, published in Computational Linguistics in 2021, page 277 the following example is given:
and it is said that ...
- 141
8
votes
1
answer
612
views
Government versus Agreement
Taking English as an example, as I understand things, the case of a pronominal Subject is governed by the verb—it must be nominative:
She loves elephants.
*Her loves elephants. (ungrammatical)
...
- 4,118
7
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Why do some languages lack family name markers?
This is an extension of the questions that I have asked in the German and French communities: some languages have a subset of family names that are indistinguishable from given names, occasionally ...
- 978
1
vote
0
answers
41
views
What is "operator dependence" in clause-chaining, a grammatical construction that Papuan New Guinea languages are famous for?
The Glossary of Linguistics Terms at the SIL website characterizes clause-chaining by "the possibility of long sequences of foreground clauses with operator dependence."
In typical clause-...
- 8,780
1
vote
1
answer
245
views
Why did the Rebracketing from "Napron" to "Apron" Figuratively Stick?
I read that the cloth that painters and chefs wear, the one now called "apron", used to be called "napron". But then because of rebracketing, "a napron" became "an ...
0
votes
1
answer
62
views
Dependency grammar on ditransitive objects
https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/14.pdf
Page.23
I thought ditransitive verbs are head over direct objects and direct objects are head over indirect objects as in (b) System because I think ...
- 11
1
vote
0
answers
43
views
Are there languages which restrict adverb usage to only one of either preceding or following a verb?
We have adverb sentences like this:
I basically initially ran quickly.
That means the same thing pretty much as:
I basically initially quickly ran.
First part of the question is, why do some ...
- 4,448
0
votes
0
answers
28
views
Other name for "Predeterminer"/"Noun Premodifier" Dependency Relation?
I'm reading a paper which makes use of word dependency relationships from the Stanford Dependencies (SD) list.
One such relation they refer to as "Predeterminer" and "Noun Premodifer&...
- 161
1
vote
1
answer
718
views
Does Morpho-syntax = Grammar?
According to Fukuyama University Asst. Prof. Warren M Tang1 What is morphosyntax? – in other words
Morphosyntax is another word for grammar.
Grammar can be divided into morphology and syntax. ...
user5306
1
vote
0
answers
36
views
Which syntactic dependency parsers perform best on search query phrases?
Lots of NLP libraries contain syntactic dependencies parsers (e.g. spaCy, NLTK, Stanford NLP, Spark NLP...). As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong), these are mostly designed to parse ...
- 11k
0
votes
1
answer
73
views
Is there a Chinese translation of Tesniere's Elements of Syntactic Structure?
Is there a Chinese version of Elements of Syntactic Structure written by Tesniere? Has anyone ever translated it into Chinese?
- 703
2
votes
1
answer
155
views
Do all frameworks of syntax view the string following an inverted auxiliary verb in English as the complement of the auxiliary?
This is a follow-up question of an earlier question titled:
In X bar theory, is the first auxiliary the head of an interrogative clause and the remainder the complement?
In that question, I had this ...
- 812
6
votes
1
answer
227
views
To what extent was Chomsky influenced by Tesnière?
Kind of a question about the meta-history of linguistics as a discipline. Chomsky released 'Syntactic Structures' in the US in 1957; Tesnière released Éléments de syntaxe structurale posthumously ...
- 794
3
votes
0
answers
107
views
Was there a tendency of Indo-European languages to avoid syntactical ambiguity by introducing more complex morphology?
In (Peškovskij, 1914, p. 246) I stumbled upon the following (Russian) assertion:
Opisannoe vytesnenie predikativnogo imenitel'nogo tvoritel'nym možno
rassmatrivat' kak častnyj slučaj obščego ...
1
vote
1
answer
73
views
What is the nominal attribute in Milewski's typology?
The wikipedia page on Milewski Typology gives 6 divisions:
Milewski proposed a division of languages into 6 groups, based upon
consideration of 4 main syntactic relationships; these were:
the ...
- 463
1
vote
1
answer
105
views
Are there any academic papers on the "Adjective like (article) Noun" construction/ phrase?
I am currently working on a paper about the "Adj like (article) Noun" construction. Some would consider that which comes after the "like"-part to be a prepositional phrase if "...
0
votes
2
answers
183
views
For English, is there a finite set of patterns for constructing sentences?
I am wondering about conlangs and thinking about English currently. I'm wondering does English have a finite set of patterns for constructing sentences? That is, could you build a computer program ...
- 4,448
8
votes
3
answers
756
views
Why is the subject outside the VP in most theories of syntax?
I'm trying to understand why in most theories of syntax, the subject of a sentence is the sister of the verb, and not the child eg:
S -> NP VP instead of
VP -> NP V (NP...)
The latter feels more ...
- 181
2
votes
0
answers
1k
views
What exactly is the Structure-Dependency Principle
Could someone explain what structure-dependency is in layman terms, and why it's so important?
Resources I've found on the internet weren't of much help so I'm asking on here.
Thanks!
- 121
2
votes
1
answer
391
views
How does one write out possessive pronouns under DP
Would for example "their" be divided into they and 's under the DP theory when writing out a tree?
- 21
1
vote
1
answer
152
views
How to determine grammatical complexity using quantitative features?
I'm doing a research on defining the complexity of language used in technical documentations for technologies (libraries and modules) used in data science and machine learning engineering. And I'm ...
- 143
2
votes
1
answer
111
views
How can one best formalize dependency structures in terms of rules?
I am looking for guidance in forming mathematically-inspired rules for dependency syntax. I know about the rewrite rules for dependency structures produced by Hays (1964), but I am wondering whether ...
- 5,805
3
votes
2
answers
155
views
Do formal language theory have concepts corresponding to dependency grammars?
If I am correct, phrase structure grammars in linguistics are the grammars for recursively enumerable languages.
Do formal language theory have concepts corresponding to dependency grammars, the ...
- 913
0
votes
0
answers
69
views
Is syntactic understanding of a text actually the most elementary form of semantical understanding of the text?
I am not a Linguist, but I am curious about the question below:
Is there a linguistic theory that points out that syntactic understanding of a text constitutes the lowest level of semantical ...
- 191
0
votes
1
answer
115
views
removing modifiers but still keep the meaning of sentence
I have been running through some examples of DG and from those, I have realized that we can safely remove modifiers from a sentence and still preserve the meaning of the sentence.
For Example, ...
3
votes
1
answer
239
views
Dependency Trees of types of clauses
I have been trying to learn linguistics, mainly English. Recently I have been studying clauses and dependency trees. I have been wondering -
Whether can we assume a rough tree structure for every ...
1
vote
0
answers
129
views
According to the Elsewhere Principle, can a syntactic rule block a morphological one, or a morphological rule a phonological one?
I read up on the Elsewhere Principle. In the linked article two examples are given:
The syntactic comparative "more + adjective" can be overruled by the morphological comparative "adjective+er" for (...
- 4,840
2
votes
1
answer
289
views
Non-projective tree sentences
I'm trying to generate the non-projective tree of the sentence:
"A hearing is scheduled on the issue today."
But with the Stanford Core NLP tool (https://corenlp.run/), I obtain a projective ...
- 121
1
vote
2
answers
427
views
Syntax trees associated with Prepositional Phrases as subject
Whenever we have a Prepositional Phrase as a subject, how should the dependency relations hold?
Specifically, consider the following sentence:
Before Wednesday does not work for me.
One dependency ...
- 19
1
vote
2
answers
2k
views
What is non-headed phrase?
I know most of the phrases in English are headed phrases, like noun is the head of NP. But what is non-headed phrase?
user27687
2
votes
1
answer
104
views
The Meaning <=> Text Theory (MTT)
I have recently read about "The Meaning <=> Text Theory" approach to syntax and would like to know more about it. Specifically,
What are the main differences between this theory and the phrase ...
- 978
1
vote
1
answer
144
views
How to draw the NP "so little" in "He said so little" in a tree diagram?
He said so little.
includes the NP so little, which doesn't include any noun.
In the X-bar theory style tree diagram, how do you go about describing the NP? Do you have N' below the NP? Do you have ...
- 812
1
vote
0
answers
67
views
Stance Detection with Dependencies Tree and POS Tagging
I'm working on a thing at the moment and I'm trying to do what's basically written on the title of this post.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to get my job done by others. Just share ideas and gathering ...
- 11
2
votes
1
answer
131
views
Meaning of "access to Universal Grammar"
I'm reading a paper and the authors that seems to revolve around the concept of L2 learners' "access to Universal Grammar." They argue that the initial state of the learners' L2 grammar is the whole ...
- 121
0
votes
1
answer
150
views
In these sentences, are these direct objects and oprds?
I read about oprd (object predicative: https://www.thoughtco.com/object-predicative-grammar-1691446) and I was thinking about the following sentences. Am I correctly identifying the direct object and ...
- 111
1
vote
1
answer
157
views
Completely schematic construction?
I'm trying to understand what is a completely schematic construction in cognitive grammar.
I found an example: VP --> V NP
So, is that a construction that can be easily described by a general rule ...
- 939
3
votes
3
answers
366
views
Case in German Nouns
German has an interesting situation in its noun phrases - articles and adjectives reflect case, but the noun itself does not.
Der große Mann sieht das Haus. ("The big man sees the house," ...
- 2,364