Linguistics

This paper reflects on the understanding and the use of prototype theory of concepts in cognitive linguistics. Particularly, it focuses on the understanding and misunderstanding by the adherents, its primary use and extended use in the field. To assess prototype’s life and role in cognitive linguistics a group of selected literature both from cognitive psychology mainly of Rosch, 1978; Smith & Medin, 1981; Cohen & Murphy, 1984; Murphy & Medin 1985; Komatsu, 1992: Murphy, 2002 and cognitive linguistics mainly the writings of Taylor, 1990; 1991; 1994; 1995;
2002; 2003; 2004; Geeraerts, 1989; Wierzbicka, 1990, Newmeyer, 1998 and Grezga, 2003 have been read. As a result, it is observed that: (1) There are some misunderstandings of prototype’s basic tenets and confusing them with other models of the theory of concepts. (2) Prototype is considered to be ‘a catchall theoretical device’ instead of an analytical tool.(3) Like in cognitive psychology prototype model is primarily used for the study of lexical semantics specifically nouns and prepositions of Indo-European languages, and (4) Unlike in cognitive psychology,
prototype has exhibited an extended use and application in phonology, syntax and diachronic lexical semantics. This effected into introducing new ideas in prototype like paragon, generic neutral, real world versus ideal world prototype distinction and what Grzega (2003) calls conceptual recategorization.

A grammar checker for Swedish, launched on the market as Grammatifix, has been developed at Lingsoft in 1997-1999. This paper gives first a brief background of grammar checking projects for the Nordic languages, with an emphasis on Swedish. Then, the concept and definition of a grammar checker in general is discussed, followed by an overview of the starting points and limitations that Lingsoft had in setting up the Grammatifix development project. After this, the initial product development process is described, leading to an overview of the error types covered presently by Grammatifix. The error treatment scheme in Grammatifix is presented, with a focus on its relationship with the error detection rules. Finally, the error types included in Grammatifix are compared to those of two other known projects, namely SCARRIE and Granska.

In this study we explore the concurrent, combined use of three research methods, statistical corpus analysis and two psycholinguistic experiments (a forced-choice and an acceptability rating task), using verbal synonymy in Finnish as a case in point. In addition to supporting conclusions from earlier studies concerning the relationships between corpus-based and experimental data (e.g., Featherston 2005), we show that each method adds to our understanding of the studied phenomenon, in a way which could not be achieved through any single method by itself. Most importantly, whereas relative rareness in a corpus is associated with dispreference in selection, such infrequency does not categorically always entail substantially lower acceptability. Furthermore, we show that forced-choice and acceptability rating tasks pertain to distinct linguistic processes, with category-wise incommensurable scales of measurement, and should therefore be merged with caution, if at all.

This paper adopts a multi-methodological approach to information systems research in order to produce new information through data mining. This approach is particularly suitable for mining material that consists of both qualitative and quantitative information. The contents of quarterly reports from three telecommunications companies were compared. The study focused on the years 2000-2001, a period of economic decline for many IT companies. The central quantitative data, reflected by seven financial ratios, were visualised using self-organising maps. The qualitative data, consisting of the textual contents of the reports, were visualised using collocational networks; these showed the relationships between the central concepts in the texts. As the visualisations of the contents were compared, certain patterns could be found. The results seemed to suggest that changes in the networks indicated future changes in the self-organising maps. In the cases studied, a change in the textual data usually indicated a change in the financial data in the following quarter. This may be a consequence of the fact that the texts reflected the plans and future expectations of management, whereas the financial ratios reflected the current financial situation of the company. #

This paper observes with the help of corpora and statistical methods the usage preferences of two synonymous Finnish verbs and their inflected forms (and the features that constitute these forms), an aspect in lexical relationships that has hitherto been little observed. On the basis of the analyses, I claim that synonyms can have purely inflectional selectional differences in a morphologically rich language such as Finnish. However, the reasons for this remain still open. This would and should have an impact on lexicographical work and the content of lexicographical products such as dictionaries for such languages.

Geoffrey Sampson has for quite some time now argued for an empirical basis of linguistics, as he has done in earlier works (e.g., Sampson 2001) as well as in this paper under discussion. It seems, however, that Sampson has hitherto considered only corpus-based evidence as sufficiently empirical, and he sees little or no role, not only for intuition, but also for experimentation, because he sees no difference with the researcher's own intuition and that of an (external) informant, characterizing this as "merely treat[ing] the informant's intuition rather the linguist's as the source of authority." (2005: 28). In his present paper, it now seems that Sampson has fallen into a pessimistic stance not far from defeatism, when he asserts that not even corpora can provide reliable evidence on rare linguistic items and phenomena. And if one considers corpora as the only reliable source of empirical evidence in linguistics, and intuition as the only but in effect unreliable alternative, this is, of course, a conclusion that one could possibly reach. However, in our opinion Sampson's analysis is at times incoherent and often fallacious, and his view of the range of methods and sources of evidence available to linguistic research in general is too restricted, to say the least.

Terminology databases of specialist domains contain a wealth of lexical, semantic and pragmatic data associated with each of the terms stored. However, until recently, the amount of syntactic and morphological data associated with each term is either nonexistent or entered as ad-hoc grammatical data, like compound nouns, adjectival nouns, etc. The recently completed EC-sponsored TRANSTERM project has demonstrated that through the use of a linguistically well-grounded model and an accompanying toolbox, it is possible to enrich and re-use terminology resources in a number of applications ranging from terminology management to information retrieval. The toolbox comprises a corpus manager and a morphosyntactic analyser that increases the overall performance of the toolbox.

A paper pre-print of this electronic publication was presented to Professor Kimmo Koskenniemi at a special Colloquium on Friday, September 2nd, 2005, at the Auditorium of the Arppeanum building of the University of Helsinki, arranged in association with the Workshop on Finite State Methods for Natural Language Processoring (FSMNLP)< http://www. ling. helsinki. fi/events/FSMNLP2005/>.

In the Nordic countries, Finland has stood out in the number of start-ups commercializing language technology, as until the late 1990s practically all of the language technology companies founded in the Nordic countries were of Finnish origin.