The Object Agreement Restriction

[EN]This paper deals with the so-called Person Case Constraint (Bonet, 1991), a universal constraint blocking accusative clitics and object agreement morphemes other than third person when a dative is inserted in the same clitic/agreement cluster. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we argue that the scope of the PCC is considerably broader than assumed in previous work, and that neither its formulation in terms of person (1st/2nd vs. 3rd)-case (accusative vs. dative) restrictions nor its morphological nature are part of the right descriptive generalization.We present evidence (i) that the PCC is triggered by the presence of an animacy feature in the object’s agreement set; (ii) that it is not case dependent, also showing up in languages that lack dative case; and (iii) that it is not morphologically bound. Second, we argue that the PCC, even if it is modified accordingly, still puts together two different properties of the agreement system that should be set apart: (i) a cross linguistic sensitivity of object agreement to animacy and (ii) a similarly widespread restriction on multiple object agreement observed crosslinguistically. These properties lead us to propose a new generalization, the Object Agreement Constraint (OAC): if the verbal complex encodes object agreement, no other argument can be licensed through verbal agreement.

A methodology for the semiautomatic annotation of EPEC-RolSem, a basque corpus labeled at predicative level following the PropBank-Verb Net model

In this article we describe the methodology developed for the semiautomatic annotation of EPEC-RolSem, a Basque corpus labeled at predicate level following the PropBank-VerbNet model. The methodology presented is the product of detailed theoretical study of the semantic nature of verbs in Basque and of their similarities and differences with verbs in other languages. As part of the proposed methodology, we are creating a Basque lexicon on the PropBank-VerbNet model that we have named the Basque Verb Index (BVI). Our work thus dovetails the general trend toward building lexicons from tagged corpora that is clear in work conducted for other languages. EPEC-RolSem and BVI are two important resources for the computational semantic processing of Basque; as far as the authors are aware, they are also the first resources of their kind developed for Basque. In addition, each entry in BVI is linked to the corresponding verb-entry in well-known resources like PropBank, VerbNet, WordNet, Levin’s Classification and FrameNet. We have also implemented several automatic processes to aid in creating and annotating the BVI, including processes designed to facilitate the task of manual annotation.

Soviet-American Cooperative Research on Marine Mammals. Volume 1- Pinnipeds: Under Project V.6. Marine Mammals, of the US-USSR Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection

Some 25 to 30 yr ago, when we as students were beginning our respective careers and were developing for the first time our awareness of marine mammals in the waters separating western North America from eastern Asia, we had visions of eventually bridging the communication gap which existed between our two countries at that time. Each of us was anxious to obtain information on the distribution, biology, and ecological relations of "our" seals and walruses on "the other side," beyond our respective political boundari~s where we were not permitted to go to study them. We were concerned that the resource management practices on the other side of the Bering and Chukchi Seas, implemented in isolation, on a purely unilateral basis, might endanger the species which we had come to know and were striving to conserve. At once apparent to both of us was the need for free exchange of biological information between our two countries and, ultimately, joint management of our shared resources. In a small way, we and others made some initial efforts to generate that exchange by personal correspondence and through vocal interchange at the annual meetings of the North Pacific Fur Seal Commission. By the enabling Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection, reached between our two countries in 1972, our earlier visions at last came true. Since that time, within the framework of the Marine Mammal Project under Area V of that Agreement, we and our colleagues have forged a strong bond of professional accord and respect, in an atmosphere of free intercommunication and mutual understanding. The strength and utility of this arrangement from the beginning of our joint research are reflected in the reports contained in this, the first compendium of our work. The need for a series of such a compendia became apparent to us in 1976, and its implementation was agreed on by the regular meeting of the Project in La Jolla, Calif., in January 1977. Obviously, the preparation and publication of this first volume has been excessively delayed, in part by continuing political distrust between our governments but mainly by increasing demands placed on the time of the contributors. In this period of growing environmental concern in both countries, we and our colleagues have been totally immersed in other tasks and have experienced great difficulty in drawing together the works presented here. Much of the support for doing so was provided by the State of Alaska, through funding for Organized Research at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. For its ultimate completion in publishable form we wish to thank Helen Stockholm, Director of Publications, Institute of Marine Science, University of Alaska, and her staff, especially Ruth Hand, and the numerous referees narned herein who gave willingly oftheir time to review each ofthe manuscripts critically and to provide a high measure of professionalism to the final product. (PDF file contains 110 pages.)

XIX. mendeko euskal gramatikagintzari buruzko ikerketak

lx, 407 or. [Bibliografia: 345-397; Index nominum: 399-405; Taulen aurkibidea: 407]

Euskal Gramatika prozesatzen: Hastapenetako zenbait emaitza

Beñat Oihartzabali Gorazarre: Festschrift for Bernard Oyharçabal / Ricardo Etxepare, Ricardo Gómez, Joseba Andoni Lakarra (arg./eds)

Processamento mental da concordância verbal em estruturas do português brasileiro: investigação de possível interferência em sentenças com elemento movido sintaticamente

Muitos trabalhos têm buscado compreender como se dá o processamento da concordância entre sujeito e verbo e investigar fatores que possam influenciar a produção correta da concordância, gerando os chamados erros de concordância verbal. Franck et al (2010) realizaram pesquisa na língua francesa e encontraram interferência devido a elemento movido sintaticamente na produção da concordância verbal. Se faz necessário investigar se o fenômeno envolvendo movimento é o mesmo em sentenças do português brasileiro. Sendo assim, nosso objetivo foi investigar uma possível interferência de cópia de número plural entre sujeito e verbo (em relação de concordância) de elemento movido sintaticamente em construção de árvore sintática do PB, observando a origem do erro e tentando mostrar se há autonomia do formulador sintático. Ao propormos o diálogo entre Teoria Linguística e Psicolinguística utilizando o Programa Minimalista, versão mais atual do Gerativismo de Chomsky, a fim de observar a derivação sintática e o processamento das sentenças, acreditamos que o estudo de formulação sintática e um olhar por meio de um modelo de processamento, que abarquem tanto a formulação como a produção, esclareceriam a nós pontos importantes sobre o funcionamento da concordância verbal. A nossa hipótese é a de que um erro de concordância verbal não ocorra devido ao formulador sintático em estruturas de PB, buscaremos respostas para isso no modelo MIMC (Modelo Integrado Misto da Computação On-Line) (Corrêa & Augusto, 2007). No entanto, por outro lado, se um erro de concordância ocorre, tentaremos encontrar uma outra explicação que não proveniente da sintaxe, tal como, por exemplo, devido a aspecto de ordem morfofonológica e devido a tamanho da sentença, como colocado pelo modelo PMP (Modelo de Processamento Monitorado por parser (Rodrigues, 2006). À medida que realizamos dois experimentos com sentenças declarativa e interrogativa com o movimento do elemento DP e QU, os resultados mostram que o tamanho da sentença e fatores morfofonológicos podem produzir interferência devido ao tipo de elemento movido. Os resultados cedem terreno para assumir um formulador sintático autônomo e abre caminho para próximas investigações sobre o processamento da concordância verbal e possíveis interferências durante a sua produção

Contributions on agreement in dynamic distributed systems

139 p.

The acquisition of gender agreement in L3 English by Basque/Spanish bilinguals

211 p.

The use of agreement measures and latent class models to assess the reliability of classifying thermally marked otoliths

Otolith thermal marking is an efficient method for mass marking hatchery-reared salmon and can be used to estimate the proportion of hatchery fish captured in a mixed-stock fishery. Accuracy of the thermal pattern classification depends on the prominence of the pattern, the methods used to prepare and view the patterns, and the training and experience of the personnel who determine the presence or absence of a particular pattern. Estimating accuracy rates is problematic when no secondary marking is available and no error-free standards exist. Agreement measures, such as kappa (κ), provide a relative measure of the reliability of the determinations when independent readings by two readers are available, but the magnitude of κ can be influenced by the proportion of marked fish. If a third reader is used or if two or more groups of paired readings are examined, latent class models can provide estimates of the error rates of each reader. Applications of κ and latent class models are illustrated by a program providing contribution estimates of hatchery-reared chum and sockeye salmon in Southeast Alaska.

Improving statistical machine translation by classifying and generalizing inflected verb forms

This paper introduces a rule-based classification of single-word and compound verbs into a statistical machine translation approach. By substituting verb forms by the lemma of their head verb, the data sparseness problem caused by highly-inflected languages can be successfully addressed. On the other hand, the information of seen verb forms can be used to generate new translations for unseen verb forms. Translation results for an English to Spanish task are reported, producing a significant performance improvement.