Causative constructions

This paper develops a formal methodology for capturing and representing the semantics of causal expressions in natural languages. Focusing on two causative constructions—covert causatives (change-of-state verbs) and overt causatives (the verb cause)—it provides a proof of concept for analyzing the distinguished meanings of different causative constructions. We adopt the formal framework of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze causality and integrate it into model-theoretic semantics for interpreting causal statements. In our approach, the selection of a cause within a particular construction depends on its inclusion in a sufficient set of conditions that bring about the effect, as well as on specific properties of the cause itself. To formalize this process, we introduce the concept of causative-construction selection (CC-selection), which captures how speakers select a causative construction that aligns with the relational structure between states of affairs. For each relevant condition within the sufficient set, CC-selection determines whether it can be encoded as the cause in a statement articulated through a specific causative construction, thereby describing a particular state of affairs. We argue that CC-selection plays a central role in shaping the meaning of causal statements. By
leveraging the SEM framework, CC-selection effects can be formally explained through contrasts within the structure of a model. For instance, notions of sufficiency and necessity, which play a crucial role in these selections, are rigorously defined within SEM, allowing for a precise account of CC-selection effects. This paper further illustrates how CC-selection accounts for contrastive inference patterns across constructions. By focusing on the two causative constructions central to our discussion, it resolves longstanding puzzles associated with change-of-state verbs. The proposed framework establishes a foundation for the systematic study of causal language, bridging semantics and philosophy while providing tools to investigate the interplay between causative constructions and their associated causal meanings.

The chapter presents a case study of the repetition mechanism within the development of discourse formulae, i.e., multi-word formulaic replies similar to yes and no. It closely examines the process of pragmaticalization in the Russian formula Kak že! ('how part') and its duplicated counterpart. The diachronic corpus data shows that the formula Kak že! emerged from the rhetorical use of the interrogative construction Kak že [clause]? in negative contexts. The function it initially obtained was unequivocal confirmation (cf. English Of course!). Due to the frequent ironic uses, Kak že! acquired a second meaning of intensified negation and hence became enantiosemic. The further development of this formula involved the mechanism of repetition and resulted in a new formulaic unit Kak že kak že! The duplicated Kak že kak že! significantly increased in frequency and followed its own trajectory of semantic development. Its function shifted from simple confirmation to a more specialized marker of recognizing and remembering a person or an event. The historical development of Kak že kak že! demonstrates that repetition in discourse can be a driving force of diachronic change, along with other mechanisms such as irony or rhetorical questions. Moreover, it shows that the repetition and the semantic effects it entails are not only applicable to single lexemes but also to multi-word items if they were previously constructionalized. This suggests that the replies that frequently occur in discourse in a duplicated form are likely to evolve into new units with non-compositional meanings.

Cet article a pour objectif de lever le voile sur la négation en tupuri, en partant du questionnaire élaboré par Miestamo (2016) pour décrire le système de négation d'une langue. Le tupuri utilise divers morphèmes qui servent à former la négation dans les phrases déclaratives, les propositions subordonnées, les phrases non-déclaratives, les prédications non-verbales, les réponses négatives. L'emploi de chaque morphème négatif varie selon les types de phrases et l'aspect verbal. En plus des morphèmes principaux de négation, le tupuri utilise d'autres morphèmes comme les quantifieurs pour renforcer la négation. Mots-clés : négation -morphème négatif -quantifieur -types de phrases -aspect verbal.

This study analyses the relationship between four near-synonymous Swedish prepositions, namely angående, beträffande, gällande and rörande, which are used to establish what we call a topic-marking relation, as in statens avtal angående finansieringen 'the agreement of the state regarding the financing'. By focusing on a single, loosely defined genre consisting of the written texts included in the Swedish PAROLE corpus, we address the question of what differences there are among these four prepositions, which intuitively seem highly similar and mutually interchangeable. In order to find out which contextual and grammatical factors might influence the choice of one preposition over the others, two complementary analyses were performed. First, a so-called collostructional analysis (see ) was performed on 791 cases of these prepositions found in the PAROLE corpus. Secondly, the corpus examples were annotated according to ten syntactic and four semantic criteria and a multinomial logistic regression analysis was performed on the annotated data set. The results show some tendencies pointing to differing usage patterns of the four prepositions. Beträffande stands out as the most frequent of them all and is also preferably used when no explicit head element is present, typically in sentence-initial position. Angående prefers words of communication while rörande is used when another topic-marking preposition is also present. On the other hand, neither of the two analyses leads to a clear distinction among the four prepositions, thus pointing to the fact that these topic-marking prepositions indeed constitute a fairly good case of adpositional synonymy, with few distinguishing factors separating one from the other.

The paper describes ways of expressing causative semantics in Gban: by lexical means (suppletive pairs and lability), by periphrastic means, and by morphological means: the productive derivational suffix -kà with broad causative semantics. In the case of suffixal causatives from transitives, a peculiar “double object” coding pattern is observed, with two preverbal clause-level NP positions. The suffixal causative construction is hypothesized to have grammaticalized from a construction with a causative verb and an unmarked nominalization (as its object), which could itself have two left-side nominal dependents. The hypothesis is supported by a number of independent synchronic facts, including the syntactic properties of nominalizations.

The Role of Agreement in Natural Language: TLS 5 Proceedings, WE Griffin (ed.), 135-146. Texas Linguistics Forum, 53 © 2003 Mary S. Linn & Sara Thomas Rosen The Functional Projections of Subject Splits Mary S. Linn The University of Kansas Sara Thomas Rosen The ...

Drawing on the layered verb phrase hypothesis, the unexpected adversity imposed on the subject of causative-passives in Japanese will be explained by the loci of -sase and -rare, both of which may instantiate more than one functional heads. This hypothesis also gives an account of the marginal status of passive-causatives whose passivized subject (=causee) is animate. Turning to Korean, /Hi/ is univocally causative, and its apparent use as passive is the result of Voice-Cause bundling. Furthermore, the possible and impossible uses of /Hi/ and /Hu/ as passive morphology result from their selectional properties.

This paper contributes to the discussion on causative-unaccusative verb pairs in English and Hungarian. It examines numerous assumptions in derivational detransitivisation analyses of such verbs and shows that these assumptions are empirically inadequate. A non-derivational analysis is proposed as an alternative, which seems to be void of the problems that derivational analyses suffer from.

In this talk, we present a case study in which the same morphology marks causative/applicative constructions in one branch of the South Central subgroup of Tibeto-Burman and middles in a second branch of the same language group. Examples in 1a-b show causative and applicative uses of the suffix -haj in Khumi and 2a-b show typical middle uses of the related -ey suffix in Hyow. We argue that an originally verbal element developed into a marker of comitative applicatives, which gained causative uses in one subgroup and shifted to middle uses in the second one.

Although we will outline the grammaticalization pathways involved, our main concern will be on the relevance of this case for other instances of claimed relatedness between primarily transitivizing valence-affecting constructions like causatives and applicatives, and primarily detransitivizing valence-affecting constructions like middles.

We will argue that to date there has been little careful argumentation as to motivations for development in instances where such patterns are attested. Specific cases we will examine in detail include Wolof -e, which marks applicatives and deobjectives (Creissels and Nouguier-Voisin 2008); Bantu, where what is reconstructed as a reciprocal extension sometimes also has apparent applicative uses (Inglese 2023); Arawakan, where it is claimed that a reciprocal construction has developed into a causative (Wise 1990, Payne 2000); Chuckchi, where applicative and antipassive constructions are marked by the same morphology (Malchukov 2017, Zuñíga and Kittilä 2019).

We propose that the evolutionary scenario we demonstrate in accounting for the South Central Tibeto-Burman distribution of the relevant constructions may also be brought to bear in explaining what happened in these, and other comparable situations.

In the literature, it is often assumed that ergative constructions originate in passive constructions. The present contribution explores the likelihood of such a passive-to-ergative analysis for one language (Tima, Niger-Congo, Sudan), showing that this analysis cannot be substantiated and suggesting an origin in active constructions instead. This study is situated in its areal context (outlining similarities to split case marking systems across the region, especially in the Southern branch of Eastern Sudanic) and against the background of discussions in the Indo-Iranian family (from where the passive-to-ergative hypothesis presumably spread).

Based on a large dataset from parallel corpora, the monograph analyzes five linguistic phenomena (causative constructions, ingressive periphrases, the verbal prefix re-, the adjectival suffix -ble/-bile, and the gerund) in four Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish) and their counterparts in Czech, thereby revising some traditional contrastive claims (e.g., the prefix roz- as an equivalent to Romance causative constructions). Furthermore, authors explain and systematically apply methodological principles of contrastive research on parallel (translation) corpora, particularly taking into account the direction of translation, the idiolect of the translator, the representativeness of the corpora, as well as the issue of language comparability.

Cet article décrit le fonctionnement des suffixes causatif et applicatif en nuasúɛ (A62A), langue bantoue parlée au Cameroun et appartenant au groupe de langues yambassa central du Mbam. Il a pour but de montrer que les suffixes causatif et applicatif fonctionnent non seulement comme des extensions verbales qui augmentent la valence des verbes, mais aussi comme des verbalisateurs qui participent, en vertu de leurs propriétés sémantiques, à la formation des verbes à partir des radicaux non-verbaux. Il s’agira de déterminer la structure et la distribution de ces deux types de suffixes, de relever leurs valeurs sémantiques, les changements qu’ils apportent aux propriétés des bases dérivatives, les réajustements syntaxiques qu’ils induisent dans les propositions et les effets possibles de leurs combinaisons en nuasúɛ. De cette description, il en ressort qu’il existe un seul morphème polysémique de l’applicatif -ɪn et que le nuasúɛ emploie le causatif -i seul pour les verbes singulactionnels et ceux pluractionnels à pluralité interne et le causatif -i toujours accompagné du pluractionnel causatif –is pour les verbes pluractionnels à pluralité externe. Les combinaisons de l’applicatif et du causatif se conforment à un ordre rigide où l’applicatif précède toujours le causatif

The aim of the paper is to examine verb-particle constructions and the nature of their composition to fi nd out what mechanisms account for the fi gurative reading of so-called phrasal verbs. By means of the fi ndings of cognitive linguistics, I aim to show that verb-particle expressions can be analyzed on several levels of formation and that they are constructions in their own right, whose idiomaticity lies not only in the way in which the components affect each other's characterizations, but it also results from the quality of the constructional schema which they instantiate. For the purpose of this paper, the discussion will focus on the constructions composed of a verb and the prepositions IN and ON. This will be followed by a context-embedded study of sentences including the verb+ON combination extracted from the articles published in the magazine "Newsweek" (the online version).

A verb can license multiple constructions. For instance, the verb replace licences (at least) three constructions: (i) Alice replaced Bill with Charlotte, (ii) Alice replaced Bill, (iii) Bill replaced Charlotte. Each construction realises different arrays of semantic roles (i.e., Alice as the responsible entity for the transition of Bill and/or Charlotte, Bill as the "new" entity, and Charlotte as the "old" entity) which are called valence patterns. Since each construction represents different meanings, a hearer (or reader) must identify the appropriate construction to understand a given utterance. Despite its theoretical importance, the cues used in identifying each valence pattern have yet to be explored. This paper aims to reveal the attributes used in identifying each pattern by annotating data with semantic attributes (i.e., ANIMACY of subjects and objects) and a formal attribute (i.e., the presence of with-phrase). The analysis based on conditional inference tree shows that active sentences with the verb replace can be classified by nearly 80% accuracy, which is fairly "good" (baseline: 35.4%). Moreover, the analysis of misclassifications reveals that a fine-grained semantic characterisation of participants is needed for a more accurate specification of a construction suggesting the effectiveness of event ontologies in constructional modelling.

Ce memoire propose une etude contrastive non seulement entre la construction factitive faire +Vinf et ses equivalents fonctionnels en thai a l’aide d’un roman francais et sa traduction en thai, mais aussi entre les constructions causatives dans le roman thai donnant lieu a une traduction par la construction factitive faire +Vinf en francais. Les resultats de cette analyse fonctionnelle permettent d’etablir l’eventail des equivalents fonctionnels pour montrer le fonctionnement des mecanismes causatifs dans la litterature linguistique en thai.

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Cross-linguistically, many auxiliary verbs are also used as main verbs. Generally, the main-verb use has a more specific or substantive meaning than the auxiliaryverb use has. The purpose of this paper is to propose a systematic way of capturing the relation between these two uses, using Brazilian Portuguese as the empirical base. If successful, the account proposed here should shed light on how the representations of functional/grammatical elements and lexical/substantive elements differ in the (distributed) lexicon and in the syntax.

The French verb laisser ('to let') allows for two different syntactic constructions, an Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) construction and a Faire-Infinitive (FI) construction with a postverbal Causee, and for two different interpretations, authorize Isogloss 2024, 10(4)/6 Raffy, Donazzan & von Heusinger and not-intervene. According to previous studies (e.g. Kayne 1975), constructions are related to interpretations: the ECM can express intentionality, the FI cannot. In this paper, we explore a different hypothesis: the ECM construction is underspecified and allows for both interpretations, while the FI is restricted to the not-intervening interpretation. We provide empirical evidence from three distinct forced choice tasks in which participants had to match constructions and interpretations. The results reveal that, contrary to both early observations and our initial hypothesis, both constructions may allow for both interpretations, and variation depends less on the syntactic configuration than on semantic and pragmatic factors, namely on the lexical inferences triggered by the embedded verb and the authority relation between Causer and Causee expressed in the contexts.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo descrever, sob a ótica da Linguística Funcional Centrada no Uso, a emergência de um subesquema de valor causativo no português brasileiro, que pode acarretar mudança de transitividade e aumento de valência em verbos tipicamente monoargumentais, como desaparecer e sumir, ou expandir as possibilidades de uso de verbos já transitivos, como ocorre com acabar. Com base na visão de construção defendida por Goldberg (1995), defende-se a existência de uma correspondência de forma-sentido de natureza mais esquemática e abstrata. Nesse sentido, os verbos supracitados sofrem uma coerção tanto na forma quanto no sentido, a partir do momento em que são recrutados por uma nova construção.

In Wolof (Niger-Congo, North Atlantic), information structure is mainly expressed by means of specific constructions, which are often assumed to be integrated into the verbal system of the language and to constitute conjugation paradigms. In this dissertation, the author explores the semantics and the grammatical structures of those constructions, or more precisely, of the four constructions that have been associated with the expression of focus in the literature. It appears, after all, that not all the constructions at issue are about focus, since one of them is used to make verum-assertions while another, in fact, encodes the absence of information hierarchy within the proposition. At the morphosyntactic level, the author describes Wolof as a language without conjugations, and more generally, with poor inflectional morphology. What the author proposes instead, is an elegant but radically simplified grammar of Wolof, which exclusively consists of syntactic structures derivable from two fundamental grammatical rules: verb / predicate raising and clitic attraction.

We propose a novel method for detecting optional arguments of Hungarian verbs using only positive data. We introduce a custom variant of collexeme analysis that explicitly models the noise in verb frames. Our method is, for the most part, unsupervised: we use the spectral clustering algorithm described in Brew and Schulte in Walde (2002) to build a noise model from a short, manually verified seed list of verbs. We experimented with both raw count- and context-based clusterings and found their performance almost identical. The code for our algorithm and the frame list are freely available at http://hlt.bme.hu/en/resources/tade.

Comment la polysémie de la causalité morphologique apparaît-elle en français et en chinois ? Afin de répondre à cette question, nous avons appliqué (dans l'article) la grammaire cognitive de constructions de Goldberg (1995) ainsi que la structure d'événement de Croft (2012) pour expliquer la formation sémantique de la causalité morphologique dans ces langues. Les discussions menées dans cet article révèlent que la polysémie de la causalité morphologique se manifeste dans la diversité des relations causales entre les participants des événements causaux, telles qu'elles sont représentées par les énoncés. Cet article s'intéresse particulièrement aux cas liés aux suffixes-iser en français et-化 [huà] en chinois. Les verbes dérivés initient une relation de transformation liée au référent de leur base. L'interaction entre les participants de l'événement causal affine et précise cette relation de transformation.

Revue des linguistes de l'université Paris X Nanterre 84 | 2022 Nouvelles perspectives sur les langues romanes à l'interface de la grammaire Une composition [ V V-V] productive dans trois créoles à base française …et en français : l'univerbation à l'interface syntaxe-lexique

A verb can license multiple constructions. For instance, the verb replace licences (at least) three constructions: (i) Alice replaced Bill with Charlotte, (ii) Alice replaced Bill, (iii) Bill replaced Charlotte. Each construction realises different arrays of semantic roles (i.e., Alice as the responsible entity for the transition of Bill and/or Charlotte, Bill as the "new" entity, and Charlotte as the "old" entity) which are called valence patterns. Since each construction represents different meanings, a hearer (or reader) must identify the appropriate construction to understand a given utterance. Despite its theoretical importance, the cues used in identifying each valence pattern have yet to be explored. This paper aims to reveal the attributes used in identifying each pattern by annotating data with semantic attributes (i.e., ANIMACY of subjects and objects) and a formal attribute (i.e., the presence of with-phrase). The analysis based on conditional inference tree shows that active sentences with the verb replace can be classified by nearly 80% accuracy, which is fairly "good" (baseline: 35.4%). Moreover, the analysis of misclassifications reveals that a fine-grained semantic characterisation of participants is needed for a more accurate specification of a construction suggesting the effectiveness of event ontologies in constructional modelling.

Although moral responsibility is not circumscribed by causality, they are both closely intermixed. Furthermore, rationally understanding the evolution of the physical world is inherently linked with the idea of causality. Thus, the decision-making applications based on automated planning inevitably have to deal with causality-especially if they consider imputability aspects or integrate references to ethical norms. The many debates around causation in the last decades have shown how complex this notion is and thus, how difficult is its integration with planning. As a result, much of the work in computational ethics relegates causality to the background, despite the considerations stated above. This paper's contribution is to provide a complete and sound translation into logic programming from an actual causation definition suitable for action languages-this definition is a formalisation of Wright's NESS test. The obtained logic program allows to deal with complex causal relations. In addition to enabling agents to reason about causality, this contribution specifically enables the computational ethics domain to handle situations that were previously out of reach. In a context where ethical considerations in decision-making are increasingly important, advances in computational ethics can greatly benefit the entire AI community.

causativización perifrástica en toba deL este y deL oeste de La provincia de formosa (argentina) Periphrastic causativization in Toba from Eastern and Western Formosa province (Argentina) Causativité périphrastique de la langue toba dans l'est et l'ouest de la province de Formosa (Argentine) Resumen El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar, desde la perspectiva funcionalista, las construcciones causativas perifrásticas en toba del este y del oeste de Formosa, y comparativamente entre ambas variedades. En especial, se considera el grado de fusión de los predicados de causa y de efecto, el orden y el grado de variabilidad paradigmática de los mismos. La estrategia de causativización perifrástica registrada en toba del este de Formosa no fue descripta en las variedades de Chaco-con las que es mutuamente inteligible-y se demuestra que presenta diferencias, sobre todo en términos de gramaticalización, con la construcción causativa perifrástica del toba del oeste de Formosa. El corpus está compuesto por relatos orales y cláusulas elicitadas, registrados en trabajos de campo realizados en tres comunidades de la provincia de Formosa: Vaca Perdida, al oeste, y barrio Nam Qom y Bartolomé de las Casas, en el este y centro-este. Este artículo constituye una contribución a investigaciones de tipo comparativo de los mecanismos de causativización perifrástica en dos variedades de toba. A su vez, ante la ausencia de registros diacrónicos, la comparación en la sincronía de lenguas genéticamente emparentadas, pero habladas por pueblos que han atravesado procesos etnohistóricos diferenciales, proporciona evidencia empírica que puede permitir postular, a modo de hipótesis, procesos de gramaticalización en curso.

This paper analyses strategies for forming polar questions and their historical sources in the two main varieties of Livonian – Courland Livonian and Salaca Livonian. The results reveal that the main means for marking polar questions in both varieties are sentence-initial particles. Their usage is compared to the means found in other varieties spoken in the Central Baltic area. This micro-areal comparison offers an in-depth analysis of the main patterns in the area, including their developmental paths. It appears that on several occasions, Livonian, Latvian, Latgalian, and Leivu South Estonian (spoken in Latvia) pattern together as opposed to the Estonian and South Estonian varieties (spoken in Estonia) and Lutsi and Kraasna South Estonian (spoken, respectively, in southeastern Latvia and the southern Pskov region in Russia). The data originate from various sources and different times, and were obtained by using both manual and automated methods; the analyses are qualitative. Kokkuv...

/Amherst 'aJlka~1Q 'make marry, give in marriage' 'xassara, a;nara 'make lose, cause loss or damnge' rabba/ta, 'arbaha 'make gain, make profit, make win (in spons) kassaba, 'ahaba 'make earn, make gain, make win' 'atba'a 'm3ke follow someone or som 7 thing' balla'a, 'abla'a 'make swallow' AAL 9,105 'I showed to him acc. the•house the-new our' 'I showed him our new house'

It has been argued that Algonquian languages feature subject-object “inversion” (Rhodes 1979; Perlmutter and Rhodes 1988; Anderson 1982, 1984). This is a operation inverting the relative grammatical relations of the subject and object. The inversion analysis has mainly been motivated by patterns of morphology appearing on the verb. However, what has been described in the literature as subject-object inversion often does not involve syntactic movement of the object to subject position. Instead, some apparent instances of subject-object inversion arise from split patterns of case assignment, and/or from morphological fusion of the features of subject and object (Marantz 1989, Halle and Marantz 1993). The morphological facts of Algonquian can also be captured under such an account.

The Double-o Constraint (DoC) was proposed to explain the ungrammaticality of having two or more noun phrases (NPs) marked by the accusative case marker-o in a single Japanese clause. It has been argued that there are two types of DoCs: the Surface Double-o Constraint (SDoC) and the Deep Double-o Constraint (DDoC). The DDoC prohibits two accusative arguments in a single argument structure and is not affected by the number of accusative case markers on the surface. The evidence is from Japanese causatives. Our study conducted an experiment to test the DDoC and found that it may only apply to some native Japanese speakers.

Esta pesquisa focalizou a integração de completivas preposicionadas ligadas a verbo de cognição, em três variedades do Português. Os objetivos são verificar: a possibilidade de o predicador da matriz selecionar completivas finitas, não-finitas ou ambas as estruturas ;a estrutura completiva prototípica relativa à categoria dos verbos cognitivos, assim como aquelas que se afastam desse modelo. Utilizaram-se os princípios do Funcionalismo Americano e o instrumental metodológico da Sociolinguística laboviana.

Viktoria Apel, Information structure in Fula-Serer. A detailed study of Pular in comparison with its relatives (Asien-und Afrika-Studien der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 54), Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2020, xxiv + 412 p. Par Stéphane Robert CNRS, UMR 8135 Langage, langues et cultures d'Afrique (Llacan) Peul (Fula en anglais) est le terme générique utilisé pour désigner une langue de la famille atlantique parlée dans treize pays à l'intérieur d'une large bande sahélienne qui s'étend du Sénégal et de la Mauritanie, à l'ouest, jusqu'au Tchad et à la Républicaine centrafricaine, à l'est. On lui reconnaît, en général, dix variantes dialectales, avec les habituelles difficultés de délimitation que pose un continuum dialectal. Le terme de « Pular » (qui apparaît dans le sous-titre de l'ouvrage) désigne la variante parlée principalement en Guinée dans la région du Fuuta Jaloo (mais aussi en Guinée-Bissau et au Sénégal) qu'il convient de distinguer du pulaar parlé au Sénégal et dans les pays limitrophes (Mauritanie, Gambie et également Guinée-Bissau). Par ailleurs, depuis la classification proposée par Segerer (2016), présentée en détail dans Pozdniakov & Segerer (à paraître), on considère qu'à l'intérieur du phylum Niger-Congo, le peul et le sereer constituent, à eux deux, un sous-groupe de la branche Nord de la famille Atlantique. Le Serer (plus souvent orthographié Se(e)reer), qui comporte lui aussi diverses variantes dialectales, est donc la langue la plus proche du peul du point de vue génétique. Ces indications préalables, par ailleurs parfaitement explicitées par l'auteure, permettent de justifier le libellé de l'ouvrage recensé ici et surtout d'en mesurer la portée. Enfin, il est indiqué dans les remerciements que cet ouvrage est le fruit d'une thèse de doctorat menée dans le cadre d'un volet africaniste du vaste projet « Information structure: The linguistic means for structuring utterances, sentences and texts » (CRC 632), financé par la DFG allemande. Comme l'indique l'introduction (p. 1-2), le but général de ce volumineux ouvrage est d'étudier la « structure informationnelle » (désormais abrégée en SI), dans le groupe Peul-Sereer (Fula-Serer). Pour s'attaquer à une aussi vaste question, l'auteure a judicieusement procédé en deux étapes, différentes par leur poids et par la nature des données sur lesquelles elles s'appuient. Viktoria Apel (VA) part, en fait, d'une étude exhaustive et très détaillée du pular de Guinée (parties I et II) à partir de données de première main, pour mener ensuite deux études comparatives (partie III), s'appuyant essentiellement sur des données extraites de travaux d'autres auteurs, occasionnellement complétées par ses propres investigations : la

We propose a novel method for detecting optional arguments of Hungarian verbs using only positive data. We introduce a custom variant of collexeme analysis that explicitly models the noise in verb frames. Our method is, for the most part, unsupervised: we use the spectral clustering algorithm described in Brew and Schulte in Walde (2002) to build a noise model from a short, manually verified seed list of verbs. We experimented with both raw count- and context-based clusterings and found their performance almost identical. The code for our algorithm and the frame list are freely available at http://hlt.bme.hu/en/resources/tade.

Este artigo, comemorativo dos 25 anos da Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-graduação em Linguística (ANPOLL), traz um panorama dos principais temas que vêm sendo debatidosrecentemente pelo Grupo de Trabalho Teoria da Gramática (GTTG),que congrega pesquisadores dedicados ao estudo da gramáticadas línguas naturais sob abordagens formais. Com esse panorama,pretendemos dar visibilidade ao percurso que a teoria gramatical debase formalista vem desenvolvendo no Brasil (situando-a no cenáriointernacional), ao mesmo tempo em que pontuamos as perspectivaspara pesquisas futuras no âmbito do GT-TG.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Teoria da gramática. Formalismo. Línguasnaturais. Pesquisa linguística no Brasil.

We examine the phrasal vs. clausal syntactic status of French in®nitives. Whereas a number of current theories assume a VP-hypothesis (contra principles and parameters theories, including the Minimalist Program), data relative to causative constructions in French are often treated as clausal constructions (the so-called`proposition in®nitive'). The aim of this paper is to demonstrate (i) that it is possible to account for causative constructions in French according to the VP-hypothesis (e.g. in the HPSG framework); (ii) that it is in fact impossible to maintain a clausal hypothesis for causative constructions with respect to subject inversion in French. We therefore argue in favour of the VP-hypothesis for all (French) in®nitives. 1 introdution We address here the following issue: should French in®nitives be taken as phrasal (the VP-hypothesis) or as clausal? The question is far from new; it is well-known that in early transformational grammar the`in®nitive-clause' hypothesis was a central axiom of the theory, and remains so to the present day (cf. Chomsky, 1995). Wehrli (1980), however, has demonstrated that the clausal-hypothesis is not logically necessary even within Chomsky's framework. He argues at some length that the assumption of a syntactic empty category like the null subject`PRO' for in®nitives runs into serious dif®culties that render the theory both inconsistent and empirically unmotivated: to take just one argument, the fact that most French and English in®nitives do not exhibit a lexical subject crucially lacks any explanation on this account. Moreover, as Chierchia (1984) points out, by virtue of Occam's razor a theory that does not posit empty categories ± other things being equal ± is better than one that does.

The paper deals with parasynthetic formations combining the prefix enand the suffix -en, which are sometimes regarded as an example of a circumfix in English. The aim is to find more instances of this pattern than the usual three or four mentioned in the literature (enlighten, embolden, enliven, and embiggen). After searching three corpora of several billion words without much success, an experiment was made to search the Web for hypothetical verb tokens constructed from monosyllabic adjectives on the pattern provided by the four initial verbs. The search confirmed that more than a hundred such verbs occur on the Web. The discovery of so many en-Adj-en verbs unacknowledged in standard reference books is attributed to the effect of big data on the Web; it is assumed that the en-Adj-en pattern is the type of process whose function is primarily pragmatic, occasion-specific and discourse-oriented, rather than lexical (i.e. concept labelling). As a result, although the pattern is availab...

This paper describes the word formation processes, i. e . affixation,
compounding, and reduplication, in Gedeo . It is organized in six
chapters. The first chapter presents the introductory statements in
which the background, objective, significance, methodology, and
limitation of the thesis are stated . In the second chapter, earlier accounts
of works on the phonology and morphology of Gedeo, along with brief
descriptions of the people, the area, and the language are discussed .
Some theoretical issues of the present study have also been treated
under this chapter. The third chapter deals with affixation in Gedeo,
where suffixation is the only process to take place . Different suffixes with
a categorical status Naf, Vaf, and Aaf are identified in the language, and
served to de rive nominal, verbal, and adjectiva l forms. Since suffixes are
considered as heads of deriva tion, based on lexicalists' view, all the
derivatives 111 Gedeo take the feature of their suffixes by feature
percolation. The fourth_ chapter is concerned with compound formation.
About four compound classes, which include compound nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs , are attested in the language. The fifth chapter
discusses the possible reduplication processes in Gedeo, where both
partial and complete reduplications are identified . Finally, chapter six
presents a conclusion.

Whereas Heidegger maintains that today's exploitation of nature results not from any human decision, but rather from a new way of disclosing things that shapes both capitalism and socialism. Marx maintains that such exploitation may be tempered as capitalism gives way to communist society, although the development of human self-development remains the goal of evolution.