This corpus-based study investigates the most frequent occurring prepositional verbs collocated with the Japanese syntactic compound verb -kiru and aims to establish how the prepositional verb affects the semantic meaning of the verb-kiru construct. The study uses sketchengine’s online database, “Japanese Web2011”, which contains around 8 billion Japanese terms collected from the internet from various online sources from 2011 and onwards. From my results I was able to establish the most frequent occurring prepositional verbs in a -kiru construct from the database, and through a concordance analysis I was able to identify three semantic meanings incurred by the syntactic compound verb -kiru: the semantic meaning of completion, the dual semantic meaning of completion and extremity and the semantic meaning of extremity. Further analysis showed that the semantic meaning of extremity exists in the deep structure of the sentence and when transformed to the surface structure the semantic meaning shifts to that of completion.

The ultimate aim of this research is to design a Catalan>English bilingual electronic dictionary of somatic idioms. To do so, we undertake a semasiological characterisation of somatic idioms to determine their semantic value and morphosyntactic combinatorial possibilities going from language to abstraction, identifying the differences in conceptualisation between Catalan and English and their equivalence relationship on the basis of their occurrences in corpora. The methodology used for the description of these somatisms is based on lexicogrammar but in a bottom-up manner. The theory of lexicogrammar (M. Gross 1975, 1981) holds that every elementary phrase is constituted by at least one first order predicate that introduces its arguments, represented by nouns or phrases. For example, in the phrase 'Luc admire le courage de Léa', we can find the verbal predicate 'admirer' with its arguments 'Luc' and 'Léa', that are morphologically equivalent to 'Luc est admiratif (pour + devant) le courage de Léa', with an adjective predicate, and 'Luc a de l'admiration pour le courage de Léa', with a nominal predicate, since there is no change in the structure of arguments (Le Pesant & Mathieu-Colas 1998: 8). This entails a systematic description of the syntactic and semantic properties of verbs, predicate nouns and adjectives in the form of tables that represent a class of lexical elements –characterised in terms of syntactic-semantic features (such as human, animal, plant, concrete, abstract, locative and temporal)–which correspond to a certain syntactic category with a series of common distributional and transformational properties. However, this description is insufficient for the complete automatic treatment of language; this is why in 1992 G. Gross adds to lexicogrammar the notion of object classes: semantic groups defined by the syntactic relations they maintain with one or more classes of verbs, called appropriate predicates (Gross 2012: 101). This exhaustive description of the language has made it possible to consider certain linguistic phenomena like fixation for the automatic treatment of language. Considering that computerised corpora play a very prominent role in usage-based linguistics, a trend that considers grammar and use to be closely interrelated, lexicogrammar can represent a theoretical model particularly suitable for the detection and analysis of phraseological units (PhUs) in corpora. In particular, we focus on the description of the 50 most frequent idioms in Catalan containing one of the five most common anthropomorphic somatic lexemes in all languages: hand, head, heart, eye and ear (Mellado 2004). To identify which are these 50 most frequent idioms (10 per each lexeme), we retrieve all the occurrences for each of the five mentioned lexemes from the Corpus Textual Informatitzat de la Llengua Catalana (CTILC) (~ 52M words with texts from 1833-1988). Then we carry out a semi-automatic extraction of the different combinations of the most frequent bigrams (candidates for idioms of the dictionary) for each somatic lexeme using the software Metaconcor. For example, for mà (hand), we obtain: a mà (at hand), a mà (by hand), entre mans (on [one’s] hands), de mà en mà (from hand to hand), mà d’obra (labour force), mà dura (firm hand), picar de mans (to clap [one’s hands]), lligar de peus i mans (to tie [sb’s] hands and feet), a mans plenes (liberally) and rentar-se’n les mans (to wash [one’s] hands [of]). We also consider the most frequent verbal and nominal co-occurrences of each bigram. Once we have translated the Catalan idioms into English, we apply this step to the English equivalents based on their occurrences in the British National Corpus (BNC) (~ 100M words with texts from 1985-1994). In order to design the dictionary, we undertake a syntactic-semantic description of the Catalan idioms and their equivalents in English –indicating its argument structures and semantic values according to the object class to which we ascribe them (the one referring to the values of <somatisms>)–, based on the occurrences of these units offered by the CTILC for Catalan and the BNC for English. This analysis is expressed through a tagging recognised by automatic language processing systems, based on the one used by the Laboratoire de Linguistique Informatique (LLI) –current LDI (Lexiques, Dictionnaires, Informatique) from the Paris 13 University–, whose dictionaries follow the system of the Laboratoire d’Automatique Documentaire et Linguistique (LADL) (Paris 7) –founded by M. Gross in 1968– and incorporate the notion of G. Gross’ object classes (1992). Having identified the most frequent idioms and their English equivalents, as well as their distributional (syntagmatic relations) and transformational possibilities (paradigmatic relations), we give account of their semantic relations (for both languages): conceptual variations (polysemy), intersynonymic variants (relations of synonymy), their eventual relations of antonymy and hyperonymy and their paradigmatic variants (according to their occurrences in the corpora used). All this information is registered in the dictionary in the form of four coordinated files with fields of different nature (cf. 2): two files containing the arguments of the idioms (one file for Catalan and another file for English) and two files containing the predicates (i.e. the idioms as entries) (one file for Catalan and another one for English). Considering the relevance object classes may have in fixed expressions, our dictionary mostly contains idioms –predicates– that combine invariable (argument human nouns) and variable (anthropomorphic somatic lexemes) elements –arguments–: for example, to wash <one’s> hands (of)/C:<so-ma:elre>/G:v/N0:<hum>/N1:<so-ma:elre>/N3:<ina>/Ca:rentar-se les mans (d’) <alguna cosa>, where N0 refers to the subject (a human), and N1 to the first complement (direct object) in the argument structure of this idiom with the somatic lexeme (so) hand, which in this case has a semantic value of refusal of responsibility (elre) (in other cases this lexeme will be in idioms which may evoke, among others, proximity or facility [at hand], manual labour [by hand], activity [on (one’s) hands], severity [firm hand], itinerancy [from hand to hand], human resources [labour force], approval, enthusiasm or attention [to clap (one’s hands)], immobility or repression [to tie (sb’s) hands and feet] and abundance [liberally], which will be reflected in the argument file). N3 is the third complement, which here corresponds to a concrete inanimate object (<ina>)(e.g. “I’m entirely opposed to the er (pause) the idea that they should wash their hands of their (pause) er, obligations er, the nineteen sixty eight act (pause) as” [BNC]). In this case there is no N2 complement, which usually refers to an indirect object. Ca indicates the Catalan equivalent of the idiom. Opting for an electronic phraseological dictionary with a semasiological approach implies, on the one hand, finding the PhUs contained in it more easily, since instead of departing from specific concepts, it departs from the semantic values of the units (idioms) grouped in a linguistically well-defined object class. On the other, it offers the advantage of being suitable for Natural Language Processing, as it has a coding recognised by automatic language processing systems, incorporating numerous fields with information of morphological, syntactic-semantic (the most common distributional and transformational properties) and diasystematic nature (if applicable). It also contains a specific field referred to translations into other languages (bilingual or multilingual). Therefore, these repertoires have a dual function: decoding and encoding information. In fact, one of the main advantages offered by semasiological electronic dictionaries over more traditional ones is that they present in different entries each of the argument structures of a predicate, which allows it to be monosemised. Thus, each usage of a predicate is conceived as a lexical unit to which a description is assigned, a sine qua non for machine translation. This is particularly relevant to hybrid systems, which combine statistics with syntax and semantics (e.g. Systran and Sadaw). The eventual product derived from this thesis, as well as the linguistic data (methodology, examples, tagging and files), can be considered unprecedented. Until now, lexicogrammar had been implemented based on linguistic intuition, which could make the creation of object classes somehow biased by the linguist’s idiolect. Using a syntactic-semantic tagging based on the above-mentioned methodology enables precision and objectivity, starting from real language instances (occurrences of these idioms in corpora). All in all, the usability and replicability of the linguistic data provided in the research may offer a wide range of possibilities, since this tagging could be implemented into linguistic analysis tools (e.g. in the form of tags in the “part of speech” label if idioms are used) and the model could be replicated to expressions from other lexico-phraseological fields, different types of PhUs and other languages. / La present tesi doctoral ha rebut el finançament del contracte d’investigació predoctoral Ayudas para la Formación de Profesorado Universitario (Ref. FPU17/0032) concedit pel Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte d’Espanya (actual Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades). El projecte de tesi s’ha inscrit en el si de l’Institut Superior d’Investigació Cooperativa IVITRA [ISIC-IVITRA] (Programa per a la Constitució i Acreditació d’Instituts Superiors d’Investigació Cooperativa d’Excel∙lència de la Generalitat Valenciana, Ref. ISIC/012/042) i s’ha desenvolupat en el marc dels projectes, xarxes i grups de recerca següents: «Variación y cambio lingüístico en catalán. Una aproximación diacrónica según la Lingüística de Corpus» (MICINUN, Ref. PGC2018-099399-B-100371); (IEC, Ref. PRO2018-S04-MARTINES); Grup d’Investigació VIGROB-125 de la UA; Xarxa de recerca en innovació en docència universitària «Lingüística de Corpus i Mediterrània intercultural: investigació educativa per a l’aplicació de la Lingüística de Corpus en entorns multilingües diacrònics. Aplicacions del Metacorpus CIMTAC» (Institut de Ciències de l’Educació de la UA, Ref. 4581-2018), i Grup d’Investigació en Tecnologia Educativa en Història de la Cultura, Diacronia lingüística i Traducció (Universitat d’Alacant, Ref. GITE-09009-UA).

This review of the literature was in investigation of informal measures used to assess syntax in normal-language and language-impaired, school-aged children. From the eighteen studies that were researched in this review of the literature, 86 measures and their variants were reviewed. Data concerning the T-unit, the most widely used measure for determining syntactic maturity was reviewed as well. Any findings uncovered regarding the syntactic skills of normal - language and/or language-impaired, school - aged children were summarized (typically on the basis of ability level, age or grade level, and sex). In addition, the strengths and weaknesses in previous studies of oral syntactic maturity in either normal-language or language - impaired, school- aged children was discussed. This was done by systematically reviewing indicators of study quality.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第18041号 / 理博第3919号 / 新制||理||1566(附属図書館) / 30899 / 京都大学大学院理学研究科数学・数理解析専攻 / (主査)准教授 西村 進, 教授 加藤 毅, 教授 長谷川 真人 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第21911号 / 情博第694号 / 新制||情||119(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科知能情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 黒橋 禎夫, 教授 鹿島 久嗣, 准教授 河原 大輔 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DFAM

This study compared seven syntactic measures which can be automatically generated by the Computerized Profiling (CP) software: Mean Length of Utterance in morphemes or words (MLUm or MLUw), Mean Syntactic Length (MSL), the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn), the Picture Elicited Scoring Procedure (PESP) for the Language Analysis Remediation and Screening Profile (LARSP), the Syntactic Complexity Score (MSC) scoring of LARSP, and Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS). Language samples came from 192 children, 106 typically developing children, ages 5;6 to 11;2 and 86 children with language impairment, ages 5;6 to 11;1. Patterns of correlation were consistent for children with or without language impairment. All measures were computed with CP software, and all coding decisions that were made by the software were accepted. The three measures of length (MLUm, MLUw, and MSL) were highly intercorrelated. MSC correlated with the measures of length and with DSS. DSS correlated with the length measures, though not as highly as MSC. DSS also correlated with IPSyn. IPSyn correlated moderately with PESP, correlated less with MSC, and correlated the least with the measures of length. PESP correlated moderately with each measure. PESP, DSS, and IPSyn correlated more highly for the children with language impairment. These measures correlated highly sometimes and sometimes they did not correlate much. This suggests that they are measuring different aspects of syntactic ability.

Research has shown that children with Language Impairment (LI) struggle with social communication skills in addition to their characteristic syntactic difficulties. This pilot study analyzed the potential change in grammatical complexity in narratives of five children with LI when enrolled in a social communication intervention. The intervention itself focused on teaching emotion understanding by reading and reenacting children’s stories and journaling. Grammatical limitations were indirectly addressed by clinician modeling of complex forms during the intervention sessions. Each child’s productions were assessed and analyzed for grammatical complexity during retelling a book in the Mercer Mayer “a boy, a dog, and a frog” series. The children performed this task once a week during the course of the intervention. Specific measures used included the average length of terminable unit (T-unit) and the number of subordinate clauses used in each narrative. Three students’ productions remained steady throughout the course of the interventions; their grammatical complexity neither increased nor decreased. One student’s production showed a clear decrease in complexity but was explained by an obvious and arguably more creative change in her language output. One student’s grammatical complexity increased throughout the sessions as indicated by a steady increase in the average length of T-unit. Thus, the results of this study were equivocal. There were several limitations, however, that might be addressed in future intervention studies.

By analyzing the information structure in Turkish sentences, this study seeks to investigate the strategies for marking the pragmatic functions of topic and focus in Turkish. The material, from which the included sentences are taken, mainly consists of literary works and other prose, but several examples from other linguistic and grammatical studies are also cited. A few sentences have been constructed by the author. Functioning as the point of departure for the analysis, a background section gives an overview of the word order typology in general and in Turkish specifically. In Turkish, the primary role of the basic word order (SOV) and its variations is to signal information structure; the pragmatic functions being associated to specific syntactic positions. Topics are sentence initial in Turkish. Subjects are natural topics, while non-subjects placed in the initial position are marked topics. Verbs can be topicalized by duplication. Focus is indicated by sentence stress, which under normal intonation falls on the element preceding the verb. Hence, the typical focus position is the immediately preverbal.  Objects are neutral focus elements, while other constituents receive contrastive focus. When the intonation is marked, a constituent in another position than the immediately preverbal is focused. Both topic and focus constituents can be marked syntactically. Clitics, conjunctions, adverbials etc. functioning as topic or focus markers form the dominant subject of the analysis. The clitic dA has been giving a special treatment since it can be used for both functions. It seems that in written text, the use of dA as a topic marker to the sentence initial constituent tends to be indicated with a subsequent comma.

The present study investigates the effect of genre on lexical and syntactic complexity. The corpus used for this study is made up of argumentative and narrative texts from the TRAWL (Tracking Written Learner Language) online corpus. The study analyses texts written by 22 Norwegian EFL learners, 10 in year 8 and 12 in year 9. One narrative text and one argumentative text from each student is analysed using an automated method to calculate complexity based on one measure of lexical complexity, the Guiraud Index and two measures of syntactic complexity, mean length of sentence and mean length of t-unit. A qualitative analysis, comparing outlying results to the Swedish National curriculum, also gave insight into different levels of complexity. Previous studies suggest that narrative texts have more lexical complexity while argumentative texts are more syntactically complex. The results of this study support this hypothesis though not all correlations were found to be statistically significant.

In recent years, a significant surge has occurred in the amount of children who are being diagnosed with a disorder on the autism spectrum. Current statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2011) show that 1 in 110 children in the United States have an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and that the diagnosis of such is estimated to grow prodigiously due to a variety of different aspects, such as an ever-increasing broadening definition of autism, an inclusion of autism as a disability category under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990, improved diagnostic methods, and some other unknown factors (In Nickel's work as cited by Nickels in 2010). Also, because a lack of or weakness in communication skills is a common characteristic for students who have an ASD, receiving early intervention to increase communication is imperative for this population. In consideration of this premise, this study looks at whether using a blended, balanced mode of reading instruction, the Language Experience Approach (Stauffer, 1970; Van Allen, 1970) and the work of Patricia Oelwein (1995), through written means can improve oral language fluency output and syntactical structure concurrently for a student who has suffered from many of the symptoms of ASD, but has not been clinically diagnosed. Along with the collection of qualitative data aggregated throughout this study through observational means, quantitative data was also collected before, during, and after the intervention to measure the effects on the subject. Quantitative data was obtained from a Letter-Identification Assessment (Clay 2005), the QRI-5 (Leslie & Caldwell, 2011), the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) , and Mean Length of Utterance (MLU).; Results obtained from this study showed that the interventions had a positive effect on the subject in terms of listening, speaking, reading, and writing where the fluency and complexity of the subject's speech patterns and ability to read and write improved over the course of the intervention period.