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No description available.

Much has been written on the Afrikaans verb system and verb categories. This, however, has been unconnected research which does not define the complete picture of the Afrikaans verb system. In research reports various categories of verbs are referred to comprehensively, while only five to six primary categories such as transitive, intransitive, copulative, prepositional and reflexive verbs, and to a lesser degree, "assistant" verbs, are referred to in some textbooks. In addition, research reports indicate that conventional identical verbs are sometimes named differently which raises the question whether the same verb can simultaneously belong to different verb categories. Sometimes the categorization results from a syntactical approach, while the naming of Afrikaans main verbs often result from a semantic perspective. In this study two different approaches of categorization are researched in order to establish which approach should apply as primary principle. The relevant approaches to categorization taken under scrutiny are the traditional or classic approach according tot which the limits of categories are relatively limited, and the prototype approach which provides for typical as well as peripheral categorical examples. The study aims to highlight the great number of Afrikaans verb categories and to place these in a semantic-syntactic framework. Two relevant models of categorization are taken as a basis to systemize the Afrikaans verb system. The method employed is to present an alphabetical exposition of the verb categories and then to establish within which semantic-cognitive image schemata such verbs are found. The part which metaphorical transfer, as principle of classification plays in the process of categorization is reviewed and illustrated. In addition, the semantic and syntactic characteristics of specific main verb categories are highlighted. From this study the following can be concluded: ▪ Afrikaans main verbs may simultaneously belong to different categories. Different 'categories' of main verbs are sometimes a single category with different names. ▪ Categorization from a syntactic perspective is systematic and simplistic and should be used as a point of departure. Verbs are firstly transitive, intransitive, copulative, prepositional, reflexive or "assistant" verbs, and may then be simultaneously connected to different semantic categories such as communicative verbs, verbs of weather conditions or process verbs. ▪ Categorization based only on semantic grounds provides a magnitude of categories which can be reduced by means of syntactic categorization. ▪ The traditional and prototype approaches to categorization do not exclude but complement each other and should be used interdependently as a categorical approach, the semantic subordinate to the syntactic. / Prof. A.E. Coetzee

Syftet med mitt arbete är att undersöka hur jag som bildlärare kan skapa förutsättningar för lärandet av programmering i bildämnet. Detta undersöker jag genom att designa tre bilduppgifter som har med programmering att göra. Min frågeställning är: Hur kan jag som bildlärare skapa förutsättningar för lärandet av programmering i bildämnet? För att undersöka denna fråga kommer jag att fokusera på dessa underfrågor: Vilka är mina intentioner kring förutsättningar för lärandet av programmering i bildämnet? Hur kan jag iscensätta mina intentioner? Hur upplevs mina iscensättningar?Min designprocess består av tre steg. Först identifierar jag problem inom lärandet av programmering i skolan. Detta gör jag med hjälp av tidigare forskning i form av två avhandlingar. Ett problem som beskrivs är att många lärare anser att inte alla elever kan uppnå godkänt betyg och att en förändring i pedagogiken inte hjälper.2 I våra skolor är det även vanligt med ett fokus på lärandet av syntax samtidigt som lärandet av problemlösning hamnar i baksätet.3 Att kunna programmera handlar allt för ofta om att bara kunna skriva kod. De problem som jag vill lyfta fram i mitt arbete är: 1. Ordet programmering betyder olika saker för olika personer. 2. När vi lär oss programmering ligger fokus på syntax istället för problemlösning. För att undersöka dessa problem så vill jag: 1. Synliggöra vad programmering betyder för mig.2. Lägga fokus på problemlösning och ett undersökande av programmering.1Bild 1. 2Rolandsson, Lennart (2015), Programmed or not, Stockholm: KTH, s. 57 ff. 3Winslow, Leon E (1996), Programming pedagogy – A psychological Overview, New York: ACM, s. 21.3I nästa steg designar jag tre bilduppgifter. De är inspirerade av lärare, konstnärer och min egen konstnärliga utbildning. De programmeringsverktyg som bilduppgifterna låter oss undersöka är: Instruering, slinga och selektion. I sista steget av min designprocess så testar jag bilduppgifterna med tre elever. Tillsammans undersöker vi hur uppgifterna fungerar och kommer på förslag på förbättringar eller vidareutvecklingar. Vi diskuterar vad programmering är och vad dessa bilduppgifter berättar om programmering. Samtidigt som jag har utfört denna undersökning så har jag arbetat med en gestaltning som har med programmering att göra. Jag har programmerat en robotarm som ritar en slumpmässig linje vid ett tryck på en knapp. I denna gestaltning så är problemlösning i fokus och jag har programmerat armen utan kunskap om programspråkets syntax. Jag har undersökt samma programmeringsverktyg som bilduppgifterna handlar om. Error Syntax är titeln på detta arbete och min gestaltning. Det är en ordlek där jag vänder på felmeddelandet syntax error. Jag vill flytta felet från människan till syntaxen. Med detta perspektiv vill jag påstå att det vi behöver för att kunna programmera är bara lite nyfikenhet och kreativitet.

The thesis describes research into graphical notations for software engineering, with a principal interest in ways of formalizing them. The research seeks to provide a theoretical basis that will help in designing both notations and the software tools that process them. The work starts from a survey of literature on notation, followed by a review of techniques for formal description and for computational handling of notations. The survey concentrates on collecting views of the benefits and the problems attending notation use in software development; the review covers picture description languages, grammars and tools such as generic editors and visual programming environments. The main problem of notation is found to be a lack of any coherent, rigorous description methods. The current approaches to this problem are analysed as lacking in consensus on syntax specification and also lacking a clear focus on a defined concept of notated expression. To address these deficiencies, the thesis embarks upon an exploration of serniotic, linguistic and logical theory; this culminates in a proposed formalization of serniosis in notations, using categorial model theory as a mathematical foundation. An argument about the structure of sign systems leads to an analysis of notation into a layered system of tractable theories, spanning the gap between expressive pictorial medium and subject domain. This notion of 'tectonic' theory aims to treat both diagrams and formulae together. The research gives details of how syntactic structure can be sketched in a mathematical sense, with examples applying to software development diagrams, offering a new solution to the problem of notation specification. Based on these methods, the thesis discusses directions for resolving the harder problems of supporting notation design, processing and computer-aided generic editing. A number of future research areas are thereby opened up. For practical trial of the ideas, the work proceeds to the development and partial implementation of a system to aid the design of notations and editors. Finally the thesis is evaluated as a contribution to theory in an area which has not attracted a standard approach.

In this thesis I investigate the relationship between the semantics of a verb and its selectional restrictions, which determine how many and what kind of arguments it must occur with in a clause. For most verbs, these restrictions are predictable from the semantics of the verb, but there are pairs of verbs with very similar semantics that differ in their argument restrictions. For example, both ask and wonder can take questions as their complements (John asked/wondered what time it was), but of the two, only ask can take a noun phrase complement with a question-like interpretation (John asked/*wondered the time). Similarly, while both eat and devour are verbs of consumption, the object can be omitted with eat but not devour (John ate/*devoured yesterday). Due to these and similar examples, many linguists have claimed that selectional restrictions are to some extent arbitrary and unpredictable from the semantics, and therefore must be learned as part of our knowledge of the relevant verbs. In this thesis I argue that these differences are not arbitrary; they recur across languages, and they can be predicted on the basis of lexical semantics, meaning they do not need to be learned on a word-by-word basis. In order for selectional features to be eliminated from the grammar, and replaced with semantic generalizations, two things must be shown. First, it must be demonstrated that the elements being selected for can be defined in terms of their semantics, rather than their syntactic properties. If not, the selectional properties could not be considered to be fully predictable based on the semantics of the selecting and selected items. Second, it must be shown that the selectional restrictions of a predicate are predictable from components of the selecting predicate’s meaning. In other words, the semantics of both the selected and the selecting elements must be accounted for. I focus mainly on the semantics of selected elements in Chapter 2, and on selecting elements in Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 2 provides a brief review of the literature on selectional features, and argues that the elements being selected need not be defined in terms of their syntactic category and features. Instead, what are selected for are the semantic properties of the selected items. While the relationship between syntactic and semantic categories and properties is often systematic, it is not always, which can make it difficult in certain cases to determine the semantic basis for predicting what elements will be selected. Specifically, I argue that what appears to be selection for clausal categories (CPs or TPs) is in fact selection for propositional entities (including questions, assertions, facts, and so on); apparent selection for bare verb phrases (vPs) is selection for eventualities (events or states); and apparent selection for nominals (DPs) is selection for objects or things. Only properties of the nearest semantic entity (i.e., excluding elements embedded therein) can be selected for. In this way, I account for the selectional asymmetries between clausal and nominal complements noted by Bruening (2009) and Bruening et al. (2018): predicates selecting clausal complements can only select for (semantic) properties of the upper portion of the clause (in the CP domain), not for the lower portion (the vP domain), while predicates taking nominal complements can select for any properties of the nominal rather than being restricted to the upper portion. Since all syntactic properties of items are encoded as features, on a syntactic account it is expected that all features should be involved in selectional restrictions, contrary to fact; the semantic approach taken here allows for a principled explanation of what can and cannot be selected for. In Chapters 3 and 4 I turn to the lexical semantics of selecting elements, showing that these too are involved in determining selectional restrictions. I start in Chapter 3 by looking at c-selection (i.e., syntactic selection), specifically the case of eat versus devour. As mentioned above, their selectional properties of these two verbs differ in that the complement of eat is optional, while that of devour is obligatory, despite the two verbs having similar meanings. I show that this is due to the aspectual properties of these verbs: devour denotes an event where the complement necessarily undergoes a complete scalar change (i.e., it must be fully devoured by the end of the event), which means that the complement must be syntactically realized (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2001; Rappaport Hovav 2008). Eat, on the other hand, does not entail a complete change of state in its complement, and so the complement is optional. I show that the correlation between scalar change entailments and obligatory argument realization holds for a wider group of verbs as well. Thus, the c-selectional properties of eat, devour, and similar verbs need not be stipulated in their lexical entries. In Chapter 4 I turn to the selection of complements headed by a particular lexical item, as with rely, which requires a PP complement headed by on, a phenomenon commonly referred to as l-selection. I show that the sets of verbs and prepositions involved in l-selection, and the observed verb-preposition combinations, are not fully random but can instead be (partially) predicted based on the thematic properties of the items in question. Furthermore, I show that there are different kinds of l-selecting predicates, and one kind is systematically present in satellite-framed languages (like English) and absent in verb-framed languages (like French), based on the Framing Typology of Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000). I account for this difference by analyzing l-selection as an instance of complex predicate formation, and showing that a certain kind of complex predicate (exemplified by rely on) is possible in satellite-framed languages but not in verb-framed languages. Thus, I show that the features that get selected for are semantic features, and that the problematic cases of eat versus devour and l-selection have semantic correlates, and need not be stipulated in the lexicon. While this leaves many instances of selectional features unaccounted for, it provides proposals for some components of lexical semantics that are relevant to selection, and demonstrates that a research program directed toward eliminating the remaining cases is plausibly viable.

This thesis focuses on the syntax of the structures with the particle le in Mandarin Chinese. The particle le has two uses: verbal le and sentential le. I will argue the verbal le in Mandarin has a dual function: it is used primarily as a quantity marker and secondarily as a perfectivity marker. This leads to a result that most of the cases with le are both telic and perfective. Others, with the lack of (im)perfectivity, only extend a quantity reading. Meanwhile, I assume the perfective reading in Mandarin solely depends on verbal le, except in negative and interrogative situations. This means in a sentence with a perfective viewpoint, even if le occurs after the object at the end of the clause, it should also be a verbal le. I argue that such a structure is result of VP-fronting. On the other hand, a real sentential le is not directly related to perfectivity. I propose that sentential le is a focus marker that scopes high in the hierarchy and yields flexible readings depending on which structure enters the focus domain under different contexts. In this sense, the configuration with both verbal and sentential le extends an assertion of a perfective event, which, I propose, functionally corresponds to the perfect aspect in English. In short, although there are two uses of the particle le in Mandarin, they should be distinguished by their grammatical functions instead of their linear positions.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis investigates language acquisition and evolution, using the methodologies of Bayesian inference and expression-induction modelling, making specific reference to colour term typology, and syntactic acquisition. In order to test Berlin and Kay�s (1969) hypothesis that the typological patterns observed in basic colour term systems are produced by a process of cultural evolution under the influence of universal aspects of human neurophysiology, an expression-induction model was created. Ten artificial people were simulated, each of which was a computational agent. These people could learn colour term denotations by generalizing from examples using Bayesian inference, and the resulting denotations had the prototype properties characteristic of basic colour terms. Conversations between these people, in which they learned from one-another, were simulated over several generations, and the languages emerging at the end of each simulation were investigated. The proportion of colour terms of each type correlated closely with the equivalent frequencies found in the World Colour Survey, and most of the emergent languages could be placed on one of the evolutionary trajectories proposed by Kay and Maffi (1999). The simulation therefore demonstrates how typological patterns can emerge as a result of learning biases acting over a period of time. Further work applied the minimum description length form of Bayesian inference to modelling syntactic acquisition. The particular problem investigated was the acquisition of the dative alternation in English. This alternation presents a learnability paradox, because only some verbs alternate, but children typically do not receive reliable evidence indicating which verbs do not participate in the alternation (Pinker, 1989). The model presented in this thesis took note of the frequency with which each verb occurred in each subcategorization, and so was able to infer which subcategorizations were conspicuously absent, and so presumably ungrammatical. Crucially, it also incorporated a measure of grammar complexity, and a preference for simpler grammars, so that more general grammars would be learned unless there was sufficient evidence to support the incorporation of some restriction. The model was able to learn the correct subcategorizations for both alternating and non-alternating verbs, and could generalise to allow novel verbs to appear in both constructions. When less data was observed, it also overgeneralized the alternation, which is a behaviour characteristic of children when they are learning verb subcategorizations. These results demonstrate that the dative alternation is learnable, and therefore that universal grammar may not be necessary to account for syntactic acquisition. Overall, these results suggest that the forms of languages may be determined to a much greater extent by learning, and by cumulative historical changes, than would be expected if the universal grammar hypothesis were correct.