Search results for "adjective"
showing 10 items of 30 documents
Whyvery goodin India might bepretty goodin North America
2019
AbstractSituated at the interface of several sub-disciplines (corpus linguistics, World Englishes, variationist sociolinguistics), this study investigates patterns of adjectival amplification (very good,so glad,pretty cool) in the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE). It highlights regional distributions/preferences of amplifier-adjective 2-grams and the idiosyncratic status of certain bigrams according to their frequency status. Globally, clear regional preferences in amplification patterns as well as possible trends concerning change are identified. Regionally, L1 varieties contrast starkly with some regions (Africa, Indian subcontinent) but – maybe unexpectedly – not with others (…
Totally new and pretty awesome : Amplifier–adjective bigrams in GloWbE
2017
Abstract Previous work on adjectival intensification (e.g. very good , so glad , really great ) has mostly focussed on the adverbs in question, showing that different (native) varieties of English display distinctive preferences concerning intensifier choice. However, little is known so far about the role that intensifier-adjective units (bigrams) play. The present paper offers a first contribution to fill this research gap by focussing on a data-driven approach to (mostly) high-frequency bigrams and their collocational behaviour in the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE). Asymmetric and symmetric measures are employed to establish attraction and repulsion between adverb and adjecti…
Word classes and the scope of lexical flexibility in Tongan
2017
Abstract Tongan is an Oceanic language belonging to the Polynesian subgroup. Based on previous work (Churchward 1953, Tchekhoff 1981, Broschart 1997), Tongan has been classified as a 'flexible' language by various typological approaches on word classes (Hengeveld 1992, Rijkhoff 1998, Croft 2001). This means that lexical items are per se not categorised in terms of major word classes, but they can function as noun, verb, adjective and manner adverb without morphosyntactic derivation. However, not all lexemes are entirely flexible occurring within all these constructions. So the crucial issue of how flexible Tongan really is remains. This question will be addressed by a survey based on a comb…
Language and motor control.
2000
We investigated the possible influence of automatic word reading on processes of visuo-motor transformation. Subjects reached and grasped an object on which the following Italian words were printed: 'VICINO' (near) or 'LONTAN' (far) on an object either near or far from the agent (experiments 1, 2); PICCOLO (small) or 'GRANDE' (large) on either a small or a large object (experiment 4); and 'ALTO' (high) or 'BASSO' (low) on either a high or a low object (experiment 5). The kinematics of the initial phase of reaching-grasping was affected by the meaning of the printed words. Namely, subjects automatically associated the meaning of the word with the corresponding property of the object and acti…
Resolving ambiguities in a grounded human-robot interaction
2009
In this paper we propose a trainable system that learns grounded language models from examples with a minimum of user intervention and without feedback. We have focused on the acquisition of grounded meanings of spatial and adjective/noun terms. The system has been used to understand and subsequently to generate appropriate natural language descriptions of real objects and to engage in verbal interactions with a human partner. We have also addressed the problem of resolving eventual ambiguities arising during verbal interaction through an information theoretic approach.
The article <i>a(n)</i> in English quantifying expressions: A default marker of cardinality
2020
Certain English quantificational expressions feature what appears to be an indefinite article, e.g. a bunch, a few, a hundred. These can be divided into three types of quantifying expressions: pseudopartitives (a lot, a bunch, a ton), article-requiring quantifiers (a few, a couple, a hundred), and article-free quantifiers (three, many, several); article-free quantifiers have an article under certain circumstances, e.g. modification by an adjective (a surprising 30 …). While standard analyses would take the article in these expressions to be a D head, it is argued here that the article is not in D, nor is it singular or count, as evidenced by its (lack of an) interaction with verbal agreemen…
De Finnis cornutis
2014
<p><em>Horned Finns</em>. The ‘cornuti Finni’ mentioned in the <em>Historia Norwegiae</em> have not found their explanation, because the Latin word <em>cornu</em>, from which the adjective is derived, has been understood in the strict sense of ‘horn on the head’. The Latin word, however, also means ‘hoof’ of horses or ‘cloven hoof’ of cows and goats, even of the mythologic Faunus and Pan. In December 1913 Kai Donner saw in Dudinka Avam-Samojeds, who because of their cylindrically shaped reindeer winter boots, the front of which was hoof-shaped, were called ‘hoofed men’ (in Finnish ‘kaviolliset miehet’). In the extracts of Aristeas of Proconnesus, wh…
Part-of-speech labeling for Reuters database
2015
Even if the Vector Space Model used for document representation in information retrieval systems integrates a small quantity of knowledge it continues to be used due to its computational cost, speed execution and simplicity. We try to improve this document representation by adding some syntactic information such as the parts of speech. In this paper, we have evaluated three different tagging algorithms in order to select the most suitable tagger for using it to tag the Reuters dataset. In this work, we have evaluated the taggers using only five different parts of speech: noun, verb, adverb, adjective and others. We considered these particular tags being the most representative for describin…
The hidden side of adverbs
2018
This paper will address the predicative nature of manner adverb(ial)s and of three types of sentence adverbs (subject-oriented, modal, and evaluative) in Italian. Predication often becomes overt by means of morphological correlates. Is it possible to find any such evidence with invariable adverbs? To unveil their predicative nature, a procedure will be suggested in which two sentences, one with a -mente adverb, the other with its cognate adjective (a) share the content morphemes (identity of the signifiant) and (b) entail each other (identity of the signifié as regards semantic roles). A number of such pairs will be discussed, examples of which include: Intelligentemente, Leo intervenne ‘Cl…
Discourse markers and modality in spoken Catalan: The case of (és) clar
2012
Abstract The present paper illustrates the fuzzy limits between modality markers and discourse markers by analysing the different uses based on the word clar ‘clear’ in oral Catalan. Clar is lexically described as an adjective, but it has developed different functions in various syntactic and pragmatic contexts. In the adverbial and the interjective uses, (es) clar (que) ‘it is clear that’ is a modality marker indicating certainty and shared knowledge. As a conjunction, clar que has developed a concessive meaning (‘but, nevertheless’). When (es) clar acts as a discourse marker (i.e. introducing an utterance) it can be an effective mitigation device used to soften a potentially face-threaten…