<p>This licentiate thesis deals with automatic syntactic analysis, or parsing, of natural languages. A parser constructs the syntactic analysis, which it learns by looking at correctly analyzed sentences, known as training data. The general topic concerns manipulations of the training data in order to improve the parsing accuracy.</p><p>Several studies using constituency-based theories for natural languages in such automatic and data-driven syntactic parsing have shown that training data, annotated according to a linguistic theory, often needs to be adapted in various ways in order to achieve an adequate, automatic analysis. A linguistically sound constituent structure is not necessarily well-suited for learning and parsing using existing data-driven methods. Modifications to the constituency-based trees in the training data, and corresponding modifications to the parser output, have successfully been applied to increase the parser accuracy. The topic of this thesis is to investigate whether similar modifications in the form of tree transformations to training data, annotated with dependency-based structures, can improve accuracy for data-driven dependency parsers. In order to do this, two types of tree transformations are in focus in this thesis.</p><p>The first one concerns non-projectivity. The full potential of dependency parsing can only be realized if non-projective constructions are allowed, which pose a problem for projective dependency parsers. On the other hand, non-projective parsers tend, among other things, to be slower. In order to maintain the benefits of projective parsing, a tree transformation technique to recover non-projectivity while using a projective parser is presented here.</p><p>The second type of transformation concerns linguistic phenomena that are possible but hard for a parser to learn, given a certain choice of dependency analysis. This study has concentrated on two such phenomena, coordination and verb groups, for which tree transformations are applied in order to improve parsing accuracy, in case the original structure does not coincide with a structure that is easy to learn.</p><p>Empirical evaluations are performed using treebank data from various languages, and using more than one dependency parser. The results show that the benefit of these tree transformations used in preprocessing and postprocessing to a large extent is language, treebank and parser independent.</p>

<p>This essay deals with subject-verb concord in written compositions by Swedish students at Uppsala University. The essay investigates the possibility that students who continue studying English beyond the A level at the university make fewer errors than students who do not continue.</p><p>In order to minimize the influence of the students’ gender and first language, only essays written by female students were included in the study; in addition, all students included had Swedish as their first language, and so did their parents. 25 essays by students who continued their studies and 25 essays by students who may not have done so were chosen. All 50 essays were examined for both correct and incorrect instances concerning concord between subjects and verbs in the present tense. The primary verbs to be, to do and to have were analysed as well as regular and irregular verbs.</p><p>The results show that the 25 students who continued beyond the A level made fewer errors than the 25 students who may not have continued. The results also indicate that subject-verb concord is not a serious problem for Swedish learners.</p>

The phrasal verb is defined as a two-word idiom consisting of a verb and an adverbial or prepositional particle (such as put off for delay or come across for find or meet by chance). The increased use of such constructions in written and spoken modes of English has been noted by Kennedy 1920, Traugott 1972, Meyer 1975, and others. The categories of verb combinations that fall under the heading of phrasal verb are various. An analysis of the construction within grammars of English, from the seventeenth century Latinate grammars to the twentieth century linguistic treatments, reveals some inconsistencies in terminology and definition, posing a problem for ESL teachers and text writers. Most treatments of the structure concern surface form (such as Fraser 1976), but some recent analyses, particularly Woody 1974 and Lindner 1981, attempt to account for the semantics of the combination; however, these studies limit the category of phrasal verbs analyzed to verb + adverbial particle. Although the phrasal verb is an example of what Rutherford 1977 terms 'lexical grammar', a grammatical structure that must be taught together with a specific lexicon, an examination of the description of phrasal verbs within ESL grammars reveals a concentration on the syntactical patterning of the structure. Extensive listings of phrasal verbs (along with their meanings and appropriate use) are found mainly in dictionaries of idioms and two-word verbs (such as Meyer 1975, Cowie and Mackin 1976, Hall 1982, and Courtney 1983). This study suggests that ESL specialists consider both syntax and semantics when presenting and describing phrasal verbs and include what Rivers 1978 terms 'three levels of meaning': lexical, structural or grammatical, and socio-cultural. Because of the large number of phrasal verbs, a problem arises concerning which phrasal verbs should be presented formally in the ESL class. The study cites Larsen 1974, Dulay and Burt 1977, and Turano-Perkins 1979, who suggest that frequency of use should be a criterion in determining the order of grammatical structures to be taught. The study suggests that more research is needed in the area of frequency studies.

This thesis explores the mental representation of subject-verb agreement, and the factors that can affect the determination of agreement in language production. It reports nine experiments that used a task in which participants produced sentence completions for visually presented complex subjects such as “The greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting”. Such completions typically agree with the head noun (greyhound) as in “A greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting is jumping” but sometimes agree with the local noun (rabbits) as in “A greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting are jumping”. The first experiments examined the value of the concept of markedness in subject verb number agreement to see whether it has explanatory power for languages like Slovene with more than two number values. Results from two experiments employing complex sentence preambles including a head noun post modified by a prepositional phrase or a relative clause (e.g., “The nudist(s) near the sand dune(s)”) show that Slovene number agreement differs from number agreement in languages with no dual, but that it is not possible to simply state that the singular is the least marked and the dual the most. I argue that using languages with more complex number systems allows greater insight into the processes of correct and erroneous subject-verb agreement, and shows that it is necessary to dissociate susceptibility to agreement from error-causing status. To conclude, the concept of markedness seems unable to explain my results. Semantic effects in agreement are then examined using two comparison experiments in English. Experiment 3 shows that although English has only a two value system, speakers are sensitive to semantic differences in number. Experiment 4 explores the possible influence of speakers’ native language three-value number system on their two-value second language system. It shows that native speakers of English are more sensitive to semantic number differences in English than Slovene speakers of English. Experiment 5 explores gender agreement in Slovene (which has three genders) and shows that there is a complex pattern of agreement. As with number, there is not just one number value which is problematic: neuter and masculine are most confusable, but masculine errors are also common when feminine agreement would be expected, thus suggesting that speakers revert to two different defaults, masculine and neuter. Finally, the results of four experiments examining number and gender agreement in coordinated phrases are presented. Agreement in such phrases may be resolved (i.e. the verb agrees with the whole subject) but may instead agree with one conjunct. Agreement with one conjunct is affected byword order (agreement with the nearest conjunct is most common), coordinator (e.g., single-conjunct agreement is more common after “or” than “and”) and the gender or number of the conjuncts (e.g., dual number is associated with single-conjunct agreement). Taken together, my results suggest that agreement is affected by a complex interplay of semantic and syntactic factors, and that the effects of a three-valued system are quite distinct from those of a two-valued system.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether nonnative speakers of English have access to specifically-linguistic constraints governing past tense morphology. Forty non-native speakers of English rated the naturalness of 29 exocentric, or headless, verbs in a partial replication of Kim, Pinker, Prince, and Prasada (1991) which looked at the same phenomenon in native speakers. Nonnative speaker performance was similar to the 40 subject native speaker control group. A correlation also existed between length of residence and subject ratings. The results imply that non-native speakers have access to the rules governing past tense morphology although not as completely as native speakers.

(in English): In this thesis several types of temporal verbal constructions in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic are to be discussed. The main focus was headed on the verbal forms connected with the most occuring auxiliary/temporal verbs kān and ba'a. An inextricable part of the thesis was a detailed insight in the theory of Arabic verbs, both in Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Dialect. Our aim was to find out the frequency of these verbal forms, comparing their appearance and their contextual embedding. For the purpose of the analysis an original corpus of texts in Egyptian dialect (more than 700 thousands words) was created. The sources of the corpus came almost exclusively from texts of Egyptian bloggers. Last but not least programm PERL served as the tool for our analysis - statistically and contextually allowing working out of all possible combinations of verbal forms in question.

This dissertation focuses on treatise of an Italian verb and its development from different points of view of various grammarians through comparison of eighteen Italian grammars from 15th until 19th century. It is looking at the verb from three standpoints: morphological, syntactical, and the aspect. Morphological view - it is examining the way of its classification based on individual grammatical categories: occurrence, description, and its contents. Syntactical view - here the issue of choosing the auxiliary verb is observed in compound tenses, the issue of concord and verbal valency. Verbal aspect, as a separate grammatical category, is not being dealt with by Roman linguistics before 20th century. This dissertation studies if and how authors of older grammars perceive and describe effects that belong to this category, predominantly the expression of perfective and imperfective aspects. Keywords: verb, Italian grammar, morphology, syntax, verbal aspect

Title: Syntactic specialities of stretched verb s in the german journalism Summary: This work interprets the meaning and use of stretched verb constructions. Every element of this construction is described. The practical part analyses the use of these verbs in newspapers. It shows that their use depends on the newspaper and even on the region. The last Chapter offers some grammatical exercises. Keywords: stretched verb, syntax, newspaper analyse, exercises

L’objectif général de la présente thèse est d’évaluer dans quelle mesure la grammaire des verbes, aussi appelée complémentation verbale, peut être basée sur l’usage de la langue. La linguistique de l’usage (usage-based approach) constitue un récent changement de paradigme dans les sciences du langage, qui défend l’idée que la grammaire est un inventaire dynamique d’unités symboliques qui émergent et sont constamment redéfinies par l’usage de la langue. En adoptant une approche constructionnelle de la complémentation verbale et sur la base de données de l’anglais, nous traitons la question de la relation entre la grammaire des verbes et leur usage à trois niveaux d’organisation.Au niveau des verbes, nous comparons des résultats expérimentaux à des données de corpus, et trouvons que les plus fréquentes valences d’un verbe sont traitées plus facilement, ce qui montre que la valence est basée sur l’usage. Au niveau des constructions, nous montrons que, dans le cas de la construction conative, il est possible de formuler le sens d’une construction sur la base du sens des verbes en se plaçant au niveau de classes sémantiques, mais moins facilement au niveau le plus abstrait. Nous considérons ceci comme une preuve supplémentaire de l’importance des schémas de bas niveau sur les généralisations abstraites. Au niveau des alternances, nous suggérons que la productivité verbale peut être basée sur des relations d’alternances. Nous montrons que l’alternance dative présente une asymétrie en productivité, et que cette asymétrie peut être expliquée par des différences correspondantes en termes du nombre de verbes utilisés dans chaque construction. / The general goal of this thesis is to investigate to what extent the grammar of verbs, also called argument realization, can be based on linguistic usage. The usage-based approach is a recent paradigm shift in linguistics which takes the view that grammar is a dynamic inventory of symbolic conventions that emerges through, and is likewise shaped by, actual language use. Adopting a constructional approach to argument structure and on the basis of English data, we address the question of the usage basis of argument realization at three levels of organization.At the level of verbs, we compare experimental results to usage data, and find that more frequent valency patterns of a verb are processed more easily. These findings provide evidence for the usage basis of valency. At the level of constructions, we show that, in the case of the conative construction, it is possible to formulate constructional generalizations on the basis of verbal meaning at the level of semantically defined verb classes, but not so easily at the most abstract level. We take this as further evidence of the importance of lower-level schemas over broad generalizations. At the level of alternations, we present usage-based evidence that productivity can be based on alternation relations. We report that the dative alternation displays a productivity asymmetry, and we show that these differences can be explained by corresponding asymmetries in type frequencies.

Title: Syntactic characteristics (features) of stretched verb constructions in the language of german journalism Summary: This thesis interprets the meaning and the use of stretched verb constructions. The german newspapers "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", "Mannheimer Morgen" and "Bild" were chosen as the research objects. The thesis is devided in three chapters. The first chapter explains the theory in general and describes the newspapers and the research method in detail. The practical part analyses the use of these verbs in newspapers and shows that their use depends not only on the newspaper but on the region. The last chapter offers some grammar exercises for the practical use of this construction. Keywords: stretched verb constructions, syntax, newspaper analyse, exercises