Lexicase

Last updated

Lexicase is a type of dependency grammar originally developed beginning in the early 1970s by Stanley Starosta at the University of Hawaii. [1] Dozens of Starosta's graduate students also contributed to the theory and wrote at least 20 doctoral dissertations using Lexicase to analyze numerous languages of Asia (Japanese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, Tagalog, etc.), Europe (Greek, Russian, etc.), and Africa (Swahili and Yoruba). [2]

Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesnière. Dependency is the notion that linguistic units, e.g. words, are connected to each other by directed links. The (finite) verb is taken to be the structural center of clause structure. All other syntactic units (words) are either directly or indirectly connected to the verb in terms of the directed links, which are called dependencies. DGs are distinct from phrase structure grammars, since DGs lack phrasal nodes, although they acknowledge phrases. Structure is determined by the relation between a word and its dependents. Dependency structures are flatter than phrase structures in part because they lack a finite verb phrase constituent, and they are thus well suited for the analysis of languages with free word order, such as Czech, Slovak, and Warlpiri.

Contents

Lexicase is a monostratal X-bar grammar (i.e. it is not a transformational grammar) in which words are the heads of their own phrases (i.e. there are no assumed empty phrases). [3] In Lexicase, words have features that determine the morphosyntactic distribution of their dependents. [4] A primary goal of Lexicase is to provide a simple, transparent, disprovable means of testing cross-linguistic tendencies.

X-bar theory is a theory of syntactic category formation. It embodies two independent claims: one, that phrases may contain intermediate constituents projected from a head X; and two, that this system of projected constituency may be common to more than one category.

In linguistics, transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language and involves the use of defined operations to produce new sentences from existing ones.

As a lexically focused theory, Lexicase has been used to identify verb subcategories in Korean, [5] Russian, Thai, [6] and Vietnamese, [7] and noun subcategories in Khmer [8] and Thai [9] and to provide an overall language description of Pacoh in central Vietnam. [10] Regarding arguments and clause structure, it has been used to explore case in Greek [11] and Mandarin Chinese [12] and transitivity and ergativity in Amis, an indigenous language in Taiwan [13] and in Proto-Central Pacific Austronesian, [14] among other topics.

Related Research Articles

In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order. The term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages.

In linguistic typology, subject–verb–object (SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements in unmarked sentences. The label is often used for ergative languages that do not have subjects, but have an agent–verb–object (AVO) order.

Phrase Group of words

In everyday speech, a phrase may be any group of words, often carrying a special idiomatic meaning; in this sense it is synonymous with expression. In linguistic analysis, a phrase is a group of words that functions as a constituent in the syntax of a sentence, a single unit within a grammatical hierarchy. A phrase typically appears within a clause, but it is possible also for a phrase to be a clause or to contain a clause within it. There are also types of phrases like noun phrase, prepositional phrase and noun phrase

A noun phrase or nominal phrase is a phrase that has a noun as its head or shows the same grammatical function as such a phrase. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occurring phrase type.

Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) is a highly lexicalized, constraint-based grammar developed by Carl Pollard and Ivan Sag. It is a type of phrase structure grammar, as opposed to a dependency grammar, and it is the immediate successor to generalized phrase structure grammar. HPSG draws from other fields such as computer science and uses Ferdinand de Saussure's notion of the sign. It uses a uniform formalism and is organized in a modular way which makes it attractive for natural language processing.

The subject in a simple English sentence such as John runs, John is a teacher, or John was ran over by a car is the person or thing about whom the statement is made, in this case 'John'. Traditionally the subject is the word or phrase which controls the verb in the clause, that is to say with which the verb agrees. If there is no verb, as in John - what an idiot!, or if the verb has a different subject, as in John - I can't stand him!, then 'John' is not considered to be the grammatical subject, but can be described as the 'topic' of the sentence.

The term phrase structure grammar was originally introduced by Noam Chomsky as the term for grammar studied previously by Emil Post and Axel Thue. Some authors, however, reserve the term for more restricted grammars in the Chomsky hierarchy: context-sensitive grammars or context-free grammars. In a broader sense, phrase structure grammars are also known as constituency grammars. The defining trait of phrase structure grammars is thus their adherence to the constituency relation, as opposed to the dependency relation of dependency grammars.

In grammar and theoretical linguistics, government or rection refers to the relationship between a word and its dependents. One can discern between at least three concepts of government: the traditional notion of case government, the highly specialized definition of government in some generative models of syntax, and a much broader notion in dependency grammars.

In linguistics, valency or valence is the number of arguments controlled by a predicate, content verbs being typical predicates. Valency is related, though not identical, to subcategorization and transitivity, which count only object arguments – valency counts all arguments, including the subject. The linguistic meaning of valency derives from the definition of valency in chemistry. The valency metaphor appeared first in linguistics in Charles Sanders Peirce's essay The logic of relatives in 1897, and it then surfaced in the works of a number of linguists decades later in the late 1940s and 1950s. Lucien Tesnière is credited most with having established the valency concept in linguistics.

The fifteen Katuic languages form a branch of the Austroasiatic languages spoken by about 1.3 million people in Southeast Asia. People who speak Katuic languages are called the Katuic peoples. Paul Sidwell is the leading specialist on the Katuic languages. He notes that Austroasiatic/Mon–Khmer languages are lexically more similar to Katuic and Bahnaric the closer they are geographically. He says this geographic similarity is independent of which branch of the family each language belongs to. He also says Katuic and Bahnaric do not have any shared innovations, so they do not form a single branch of the Austroasiatic family, but form separate branches.

Grammatical relation functional relationship between constituents in a clause

In linguistics, grammatical relations are functional relationships between constituents in a clause. The standard examples of grammatical functions from traditional grammar are subject, direct object, and indirect object. In recent times, the syntactic functions, typified by the traditional categories of subject and object, have assumed an important role in linguistic theorizing, within a variety of approaches ranging from generative grammar to functional and cognitive theories. Many modern theories of grammar are likely to acknowledge numerous further types of grammatical relations. The role of grammatical relations in theories of grammar is greatest in dependency grammars, which tend to posit dozens of distinct grammatical relations. Every head-dependent dependency bears a grammatical function.

In linguistics, the head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial or head-final. The head is the element that determines the category of a phrase: for example, in a verb phrase, the head is a verb.

In linguistics, an argument is an expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb and its auxiliaries. In this regard, the complement is a closely related concept. Most predicates take one, two, or three arguments. A predicate and its arguments form a predicate-argument structure. The discussion of predicates and arguments is associated most with (content) verbs and noun phrases (NPs), although other syntactic categories can also be construed as predicates and as arguments. Arguments must be distinguished from adjuncts. While a predicate needs its arguments to complete its meaning, the adjuncts that appear with a predicate are optional; they are not necessary to complete the meaning of the predicate. Most theories of syntax and semantics acknowledge arguments and adjuncts, although the terminology varies, and the distinction is generally believed to exist in all languages. Dependency grammars sometimes call arguments actants, following Tesnière (1959).

In linguistics, a small clause consists of a subject and its predicate, but lacks inflected tense. Small clauses have the semantic subject-predicate characteristics of a clause, but appear to lack the status of a constituent. The structural analyses of small clauses vary in part based upon whether a flat or layered analysis is pursued. The small clause is closely related to the phenomena of raising-to-object, exceptional case-marking, accusativus cum infinitivo, and even object control.

Saaroa language language

Saaroa or Hla’alua is a Southern Tsouic language is spoken by the Saaroa (Hla'alua) people, an indigenous people of Taiwan. It is a Formosan language of the Austronesian family.

Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine-type voice system, is a typologically unusual kind of morphosyntactic alignment in which "one argument can be marked as having a special relationship to the verb". This special relationship manifests itself as a voice affix on the verb that corresponds to a noun within the same clause that is either marked for a particular case or found in a privileged structural position within the clause or both.

In linguistics, inverse copular constructions, named after Moro (1997), are a type of inversion in English where canonical SCP word order is reversed in a sense, so that one appears to have the order PCS instead. The verb in these constructions is always the copula be. Inverse copular constructions are intriguing because they render the distinction between subject and predicative expression difficult to maintain. The confusion has led to focused study of these constructions, and their impact on the theory of grammar may be great since they appear to challenge the initial binary division of the sentence (S) into a subject noun phrase (NP) and a predicate verb phrase (VP), this division being at the core of all phrase structure grammars.

In linguistics, inversion is any of several grammatical constructions where two expressions switch their canonical order of appearance, that is, they invert. The most frequent type of inversion in English is subject–auxiliary inversion in which an auxiliary verb changes places with its subject; it often occurs in questions, such as Are you coming?, with the subject you is switched with the auxiliary are. In many other languages, especially those with a freer word order than English, inversion can take place with a variety of verbs and with other syntactic categories as well.

Kokota is an Austronesian language spoken by perhaps as many as 1,200 people in three villages on Santa Isabel in the Solomon Islands. These villages are, the villages of Goveo and Sisiga, which lie on the north coast, and Hurepelo which lies on the south coast. People in all three villages use the language daily, but may eventually shift to neighboring Cheke Holo to the west, a language spoken by many more people who have recently settled between Goveo and Sisiga.

In linguistics, subcategorization denotes the ability/necessity for lexical items to require/allow the presence and types of the syntactic arguments with which they co-occur. The notion of subcategorization is similar to the notion of valency, although the two concepts stem from different traditions in the study of syntax and grammar.

References

  1. ↑ See Starosta 1988, the main text of the theory. See Trask 1993 for a historical summary.
  2. ↑ See Bender 2002.
  3. ↑ Described in Starosta 1988 and Starosta 2006.
  4. ↑ See Starosta 2001 and Starosta 2008.
  5. ↑ Jeong 1992
  6. ↑ Wilawan 1993 and Indrambarya 1994.
  7. ↑ Clark 1978.
  8. ↑ Sak-Humphrey 1996.
  9. ↑ Savetamalya 1989.
  10. ↑ Alves 2000.
  11. ↑ Acson 1979.
  12. ↑ Starosta 1985.
  13. ↑ Liao 1998.
  14. ↑ See Kikusawa 2000.

External Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.