Thematic patterning in English and Spanish: contrastive annotation of a bilingual newspaper corpus for liguistic and computational applications

Thematization is recognized as a fundamental phenomenon in the construction of messages and texts by di erent linguistic schools. This location within a text privileges the elements that guide the reader in the orientation and interpretation of discourse at di erent levels. Thematizing a linguistic unit by locating it in the rst-initial position of a clause, paragraph, or text, confers upon it a special status: a signal of the organizational strategy which characterizes di erent text types playing a role as a variable in the distinction of registers, text types and genres. However, in spite of the importance of the study of thematization for message and textual structuring, to date there are no linguistic studies that have undertook the task of validating its aspects in a comparative manner, either for linguistic or computational purposes. This study, therefore, lls a research gap by implementing a methodology based on contrastive corpus annotation, which allows to empirically validate aspects of the phenomenon of Thematization in English and Spanish, it also seeks to develop a bilingual English-Spanish comparable corpus of newspaper texts automatically annotated with thematic features at clausal and discourse levels. The empirically validated categories (Thematic Field and its elements: Textual Theme, Interpersonal Theme, PreHead and Head) are used to annotate a larger corpus of three newspaper genres news reports, editorials and letters to the editor in terms of thematic choices. This characterization, reveals interesting results, such as the use of genre-speci c strategies in thematic position. In addition, the thesis investigates the possibility to automate the annotation of thematic features in the bilingual corpus through the development of a set of JAVA rules implemented in GATE. It also shows the e cacy of this method in comparison with the manual annotation results...

The constitutional rights of children and the Prevention of Organised Crime Act 121 of 1998

The Prevention of Organised Crime Act 121 of 1998 [POCA] embodies a serious attempt by the South African government to effectively police and curb organised crime, money laundering and criminal gang activities in South Africa. The Act provides inter alia for a range of crippling fines and for orders such as confiscation and forfeiture. Asset forfeiture and confiscation orders can affect the rights of third parties directly and indirectly in a number of ways. Young persons and children can beaffected indirectly because asset forfeiture and confiscation orders may violate the right to parental care of the dependent young persons and children of the person who is subject to the order. This brief article will investigate aspects of the protection afforded to the rights of children when such orders are made in terms of the provisions of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act.

Contractual variations and promises to accept less:pragmatism in the Court of Appeal

Examines the Court of Appeal judgment in MWB Business Exchange Centres Ltd v Rock Advertising Ltd on whether a non-oral variation clause in a licence for the occupation of a commercial premises necessarily precluded an oral agreement to revise the licence fee payment schedule. Assesses whether the practical benefit obtained by the claimant from the change amounted to good consideration, notwithstanding the House of Lords ruling in Foakes v Beer.

A Grammar of Tajio. A Language Spoken in Central Sulawesi

This work is a description of Tajio, a Western Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. It covers the essential aspects of Tajio grammar without being exhaustive. Tajio has a medium sized phoneme inventory consisting of twenty consonants and five vowels. The language does not have lexical (word) stress; rather, it has a phrasal accent. This phrasal accent regularly occurs on the penultimate syllable of an intonational phrase, rendering this syllable auditorily prominent through a pitch rise. Possible syllable structures in Tajio are (C)V(C). CVN structures are allowed as closed syllables, but CVN syllables in word-medial position are not frequent. As in other languages in the area, the only sequence of consonants allowed in native Tajio words are sequences of nasals followed by a homorganic obstruent. The homorganic nasal-obstruent sequences found in Tajio can occur word-initially and word-medially but never in word-final position. As in many Austronesian languages, word class classification in Tajio is not straightforward. The classification of words in Tajio must be carried out on two levels: the morphosyntactic level and the lexical level. The open word classes in Tajio consist of nouns and verbs. Verbs are further divided into intransitive verbs (dynamic intransitive verbs and statives) and dynamic transitive verbs. Based on their morphological potential, lexical roots in Tajio fall into three classes: single-class roots, dual-class roots and multi-class roots. There are two basic transitive constructions in Tajio: Actor Voice and Undergoer Voice, where the actor or undergoer argument respectively serves as subjects. It shares many characteristics with symmetrical voice languages, yet it is not fully symmetric, as arguments in AV and UV are not equally marked. Neither subjects nor objects are marked in AV constructions. In UV constructions, however, subjects are unmarked while objects are marked either by prefixation or clitization. Evidence from relativization, control and raising constructions supports the analysis that AV and UV are in fact transitive, with subject arguments and object arguments behaving alike in both voices. Only the subject can be relativized, controlled, raised or function as the implicit subject of subjectless adverbial clauses. In contrast, the objects of AV and UV constructions do not exhibit these features. Tajio is a predominantly head-marking language with basic A-V-O constituent order. V and O form a constituent, and the subject can either precede or follow this complex. Thus, basic word order is S-V-O or V-O-S. Subject, as well as non-subject arguments, may be omitted when contextually specified. Verbs are marked for voice and mood, the latter of which is is obligatory. The two values distinguished are realis and non-realis. Depending on the type of predicate involved in clause formation, three clause types can be distinguished: verbal clauses, existential clauses and non-verbal clauses. Tajio has a small number of multi-verbal structures that appear to qualify as serial verb constructions. SVCs in Tajio always include a motion verb or a directional.

Article 27(3)(b) TRIPS and plant variety protection in developing countries

In comparison with industrialised countries, agriculture in developing countries accounts for a substantial share of GDP and involves a substantial sector of small-holders and traditional agriculturalists. In view of these differences, the biotechnology clause of Article 27.3.b TRIPS with its requirement of plant variety protection either by patents or an effective sui generis system or a combination of the two has been controversial. However, developing countries have made surprisingly little use of the freedom to design their own systems in this field. Instead, there has been a surge in UPOV membership among developing countries and some have gone as far as introducing patent protection for plant varieties. Such countries now have to consider the same exclusions and exceptions to patenting that are normally discussed in countries with much more advanced biotechnology industries. The chapter examines the scope for the use of orde public considerations under Article 27.2 TRIPS, of exclusions for research and experimental purposes under Article 30 TRIPS, compulsory licensing under Article 31 TRIPS as well as the advantages of a specific breeding exemption and it briefly comments on the various sui generis options. While liberal interpretations of the TRIPS exceptions remain possible, the chapter concludes that the majority of developing countries will be better off in more creatively using the freedom to develop sui generis systems suitable for their local conditions rather than struggling to introduce TRIPS conform ‘limited exceptions’ to patent protection for plant varieties.

The common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) demonstration unity system - sudf - applicability potential for family farming.

2016