DOCSLIB.ORG

Semantic Definitions a Collocational Approach To

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Semantic Definitions a Collocational Approach To Boris Hlebec A COLLOCATIONAL APPROACH TO SEMANTIC DEFINITIONS Fokus – Forum za interkulturnu komunikaciju Boris Hlebec [email protected] A Collocational Approach to Semantic Definitions Table of contents Typographical conventions Abbreviations Glossary of terms Introduction 1 Semantic definitions 1.1 An overview Tests for definitions But-test Connection between the primary and secondary meanings Redundancy and pleonasm Zeugma Entailment Paradox Good-test 1.2 Typicality Tests for typicality Idiomatic expressions But not-test Obligatory adverbs Unmodified nouns Hedges Canonical features 2 Collocation 2.1 Defining collocation 2 Directive and analysis Classifying collocations Lexical and grammatical collocations Specialized language Importance of collocations Compounds Related collocations Formal presentation of collocates Lexical fields 2.2 Semantic roles Agent Patient Experiencer Objective Stimulus Instrument Recipient and donor Comitative Result Locative Source Goal and Locatum Origin Actor Essive Causation Equivocation of roles Speaker 2.3 Aspectualities Stative verbs Privative verbs Relational verbs Dynamic verbs Durative verbs Punctual verbs Achievements Ambient verbs Benefactive verbs 3 Evaluative verbs 2.4 The collocational method Background of the collocational approach The procedure Marker and distinguisher Agreement of defining semes Transference Semantic tailoring 2.5 Transitivity Object Double object Lexical-syntactic alternation Ditransitive verbs Verbs of transfer Triple object Transitivity conversion Unaccusatives Detransitivization (Middle voice) Reciprocal and reflexive verbs 3 Defining parts of speech and grammatical categories 3.1 Function words Articles The definite article The indefinite article Prepositions Conjunctions Pronouns A portrait of it Personal pronoun it1 Phenomenon it2 Ambient it3 Emphatic it4 Anticipatory it5 Conclusion 3.2 Syntactic patterns and grammatical categories 4 Syntactic patterns Countability Non-finite clause To be Be + being To-infinitive Bare infinitive Modal verbs Passive Subjunctive That-clause 3.3 Adjectives Connecting adjectives with nouns Indirect connection Indirect connection via entity Non-inherent connection Partonimic connection Attributive and predicative uses of adjectives Attributive adjectives Classifying adjectives Intensifying adjectives Limiter adjectives Predicative adjectives Post-nominal adjectives Order of adjectives Connecting adjectives with prepositions A portrait of wild “Strong” adjectives Stance adjectives Discussion 3.4 Verbs Connecting verbs with adjectives “Legal” verbs Performatives Conclusion Factive and non-factive verbs “Strong” verbs Have 5 “Light” verbs Linking verbs: a portrait of remain 3.5 Nouns Partonomy Some relations of nouns with adjectives and verbs Partitivity Partitive transitivity Connexity “Strong” nouns “Legal” nouns 3.6 Adverbs Intensifying adverbs 4 Semantic hierarchy 4.1 Hyponymy and redundancy rules 5 General conclusions Notes References Index of lexical items Subject index Typographical conventions * An asterisk marks an anomalous or deviant connection of words. ? A question mark indicates a possibly deviant phrase or sentence ?? A double question mark indicates a dubious phrase or sentence ! An initial exclamation mark indicates a dis- harmonious connection of words in a particular meaning, but acceptable in another meaning. 6 ‘ ’ Single quotes enclose semes, i.e. meaning content. [ ] Within definitions square brackets enclose redundant features. In quotations they signal inserted elements. < > Angular brackets enclose semantic definitions. { } Braces enclose typical semes. Thus, ‘true {and good}’ should be understood as obligatory ‘true’ and typically ‘good’. < ( ) > end of §3.5.0 Round brackets within a noun definition are used to represent two different sememes sharing a part of content, the one that is outside the brackets. With other parts of speech, the round brackets indicate an alternative alloseme; e.g. with1 <sthx | existing / making same phenomenon | at same time (and space) as «sthy»>. Usually participants involved in with1 share time and space, but owing to modern technology this need not be the case. When one speaker is talking with another over the telephone, they are talking at the same time but in different spaces. The definition of in1 <using - occupying «┌space - area of┐ thing - substance - (lack of) light»> covers both in the sun and in the shadow. # # Hashes enclose directives (content of noun slots). #( ) #… §3.3.1c I Round brackets within a subject directive enclose a directive expansion leading to indirect connection. #(( ))#… §3.3.1 d Double brackets within a subject directive indicate a doubly indirect connection. 7 …(#) (#) §2.5.1a ii Bracketed hashes of a single object directive indicate a possible intransitive (pseudointransitive or “absolute”) use of an otherwise transitive verb. …# #...# # §2.5.1b II Two pairs of object directive hashes without brackets indicate two object slots of which either or both can surface. (#) (#)…# # §2.5.1b III Bracketed hashes of the first of two object directives indicate an indirect object. (#) (#)...(#) (#) §2.5.1b Two pairs of bracketed hashes indicate two object slots of which only one can surface at a time. …(#) (#)...(#) (#)…(#) (#) §2.5.1c Three pairs of bracketed hashes indicate a triple object. <# (#…#) #> §2.5.2a Round brackets within a definition of a verb, straddling the subject slot and ‘make’ of the analysis, indicate an unaccusative verb. <# # ( ) > The use of round brackets within the analyses of adjectives and verbs indicates omissible parts, which do not constitute a definition proper, but still provide useful information on certain collocators. They can also signal cases when speakers’ opinions are divided about acceptability, or a single speaker is hesitant or inconsistent, as with unexpected and ridiculous (§ 3.6.3 d). < ! ! > §3.2.6 Exclamation marks flank the content proper of an infinitive within its definition. 8 < « » > §3.1.2 Angle quotation marks enclose a directrix (corresponding to a prepositional object) within a definition of a preposition. < [ ] > Square brackets enclose (i) an adverb proper within its definition (see §3.6); (ii) a redundant seme within a verb definition (see §2.2.3); (iii) additions to texts quoted or paraphrased from other sources. <#┌ ┐…#> §3.3.1c III Two mirror-image angles enclose a directive expansion leading to the partonomic connection. < - > A hyphen indicates alternative semes, one potentially exchanged for the other, e.g. ‘heat - light’ = ‘heat’ or ‘light’. A hyphen separating a braced seme represents an alternative between an untypical and a typical seme (e.g. ‘{good} - true’ is to be read as typically ‘good’ or nontypically ‘true’. < / > A slash indicates alternative semes exchanging elements with more than one metalinguistic word (e.g. ‘because of / concerning sth good’ = ‘because of sth good’ or ‘concerning sth good’). < | > The common content is to the left of a single bar and the alternative content is to the right (e.g. ‘weak socially because | sthx is viewed as bad/sby did sth bad’ = ‘weak socially because sthx is viewed as bad + weak socially because sby did sth bad’). || §2.4.4 A double bar is used to separate dis- tinguishers from markers. x, y, z Subscripts within definitions indicate identical or different referents. It is the order of appearances that is important here and the identity within the particular 9 definition. No correlation of subscripts across different definitions is intended. For example, the preposition to9 has in its definition: <sbx being in social role working for «sby with social power»>, while in the definition of the verb appoint, whose abridged version reads <#sbx# using sbx’s social power to make sbx’s language be experienced as strong and true makes (#)sby(#) come to be in social role of #sby# working for sbz>, sbx of to has become sby of appoint, whereas the previous sby changed to sbz In a concrete case: chairman (sbx) to the board (sby), but They (sbx) appointed him (sby) chairman (sby) to the board (sbz). book2 A numerical subscript below a lexeme form identifies a particular lexeme’s sememe. SMALL CAPITALS indicate: (i) semantic roles; (ii) syntactic patterns, such as N + V + N + N; (iii) conceptual meta- phors, e.g. PERSON FOR X. Underlined indicates (i) the content proper of a pre- position or of a conjunction within its definition (see §§3.1.2 and 3.1.3); (ii) the content of a pertainym, the lexeme from which another word is derived, carried over to the definition of the derived word (e.g. in the definition of the verb bait, see §3.3.2a I), or the content of the primary sememe transferred to the definition of a secondary sememe, (e.g. ride in §2.1.5 c); (iii) the content of a non-finite clause (see §3.2.3). Italics are used to mark language forms. Within defi- nitions, they indicate pragmatic elements, like this or using a lot of words. 10 Abbreviations adj adjective AE American English BE British English DO direct object Inf infinitive IO indirect object n noun Past Part past participle sb somebody, human living thing sb sp an implicit speaker (or an implicit writer, pro- ducer of speech or text), the source of subjective attitudes in definitions – see §2.2.18 sbh the hearer (interlocutor, addressee) sbindef people in general or an unspecified indi- vidual sbmore than one more than one person, at least two people sbwith power sbx invested with authority to make sby do as sbx wants, i.e. strongly (= intensely) influential 11 sth something (includes
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Discovering Semantic Links Between Synonyms, Hyponyms and Hypernyms Ricardo Avila, Gabriel Lopes, Vania Vidal, Jose Macedo
    World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Computer and Systems Engineering Vol:13, No:6, 2019 Discovering Semantic Links Between Synonyms, Hyponyms and Hypernyms Ricardo Avila, Gabriel Lopes, Vania Vidal, Jose Macedo Abstract—This proposal aims for semantic enrichment between Other approaches have been proposed to identify such glossaries using the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) mappings (see Section IV), but they are still far from perfect. vocabulary to discover synonyms, hyponyms and hyperonyms In general, previous studies have tried to directly identify semiautomatically, in Brazilian Portuguese, generating new semantic relationships based on WordNet. To evaluate the quality of this different types of relationships, usually with the help of proposed model, experiments were performed by the use of two sets dictionaries such as WordNet. On the other hand, we propose containing new relations, being one generated automatically and the an enrichment strategy using a two-step approach. In the first other manually mapped by the domain expert. The applied evaluation step, we apply the use of a crawler to collect synonyms, metrics were precision, recall, f-score, and confidence interval. The hyponyms, and hyperonyms to generate an XML file, then results obtained demonstrate that the applied method in the field of Oil Production and Extraction (E&P) is effective, which suggests that we generate new relationships between the instances and it can be used to improve the quality of terminological mappings. determine the initial ontology mapping with approximate The procedure, although adding complexity in its elaboration, can be matches of equality. Then, using a unified lexical ontology reproduced in others domains.
    [Show full text]
  • Performative Speech Act Verbs in Present Day English
    PERFORMATIVE SPEECH ACT VERBS IN PRESENT DAY ENGLISH ELENA LÓPEZ ÁLVAREZ Universidad Complutense de Madrid RESUMEN. En esta contribución se estudian los actos performativos y su influencia en el inglés de hoy en día. A partir de las teorías de J. L. Austin, entre otros autores, se desarrolla un panorama de esta orientación de la filosofía del lenguaje de Austin. PALABRAS CLAVE. Actos performativos, enunciado performativo, inglés. ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on performative speech act verbs in present day English. Reading the theories of J. L. Austin, among others,. With the basis of authors as J. L. Austin, this paper develops a brief landscape about this orientation of Austin’s linguistic philosophy. KEY WORDS. Performative speech act verbs, performative utterance, English. 1. INTRODUCCIÓN 1.1. HISTORICAL THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1.1. The beginnings: J.L. Austin The origin of performative speech acts as we know them today dates back to the William James Lectures, the linguistic-philosophical theories devised and delivered by J.L. Austin at Harvard University in 1955, and collected into a series of lectures entitled How to do things with words, posthumously published in 1962. Austin was one of the most influential philosophers of his time. In these lectures, he provided a thorough exploration of performative speech acts, which was an extremely innovative area of study in those days. In the following pages, Austin’s main ideas (together with some comments by other authors) will be presented. 1.1.1.1. Constative – performative distinction In these lectures, Austin begins by making a clear distinction between constative and performative utterances.
    [Show full text]
  • Honorificity, Indexicality and Their Interaction in Magahi
    SPEAKER AND ADDRESSEE IN NATURAL LANGUAGE: HONORIFICITY, INDEXICALITY AND THEIR INTERACTION IN MAGAHI BY DEEPAK ALOK A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Linguistics Written under the direction of Mark Baker and Veneeta Dayal and approved by New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Speaker and Addressee in Natural Language: Honorificity, Indexicality and their Interaction in Magahi By Deepak Alok Dissertation Director: Mark Baker and Veneeta Dayal Natural language uses first and second person pronouns to refer to the speaker and addressee. This dissertation takes as its starting point the view that speaker and addressee are also implicated in sentences that do not have such pronouns (Speas and Tenny 2003). It investigates two linguistic phenomena: honorification and indexical shift, and the interactions between them, andshow that these discourse participants have an important role to play. The investigation is based on Magahi, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the state of Bihar (India), where these phenomena manifest themselves in ways not previously attested in the literature. The phenomena are analyzed based on the native speaker judgements of the author along with judgements of one more native speaker, and sometimes with others as the occasion has presented itself. Magahi shows a rich honorification system (the encoding of “social status” in grammar) along several interrelated dimensions. Not only 2nd person pronouns but 3rd person pronouns also morphologically mark the honorificity of the referent with respect to the speaker.
    [Show full text]
  • Glossary and Bibliography for Vocabularies 1 the Codes (For Example, the Dewey Decimal System Number 735.942)
    Glossary and Bibliography for Controlled Vocabularies Glossary AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition) A content standard published by the American Library Association (ALA), Canadian Library Association (CLA), and Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). It is being replaced by RDA. abbreviation A shortened form of a name or term (for example, Mr. for Mister). See also acronym and initialism. access point An entry point to a systematic arrangement of information, specifically an indexed field or heading in a work record, vocabulary record, or other content object that is formatted and indexed in order to provide access to the information in the record. acronym An abbreviation or word formed from the initial letters of a compound term or phrase (for example, MoMA, for Museum of Modern Art). See also initialism and abbreviation. ad hoc query Also called a direct query. A query or report that is constructed when required and that directly accesses data files and fields that are selected only when the query is created. It differs from a predefined report or querying a database through a user interface. administrative entity In the context of a geographic vocabulary, a political or other administrative body defined by administrative boundaries and conditions, including inhabited places, nations, empires, nations, states, districts, and townships. administrative data In the context of cataloging art, information having to do with the administrative history and care of the work and the history of the catalog record (for example, insurance value, conservation history, and revision history of the catalog record). See also descriptive data. algorithm A formula or procedure for solving a problem or carrying out a task.
    [Show full text]
  • “Joking, Kidding, Teasing”: Slippery Categories for Cross-Cultural
    Intercultural Pragmatics 2018; 15(4): 487–514 Cliff Goddard* “Joking, kidding, teasing”: Slippery categories for cross-cultural comparison but key words for understanding Anglo conversational humor https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2018-0017 Abstract: Terms like to joke (and joking)andto tease (and teasing)havea curious double life in contrastive and interactional pragmatics and related fields. Occasionally they are studied as metapragmatic terms of ordinary English, along with related expressions such as kidding. More commonly they are used as scientific or technical categories, both for research into English and for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison. Related English adjectives, such as jocular and mock, are also much-used in a growing lexicon of compound terms, such as jocular abuse, mock abuse, jocular mock- ery,andthelike. Against this background, the present paper has three main aims. In the first part, it is argued that the meanings of the verbs to joke and to tease (and related nouns) are much more English-specific than is commonly recognized. They are not precisely cross-translatable even into European languages such as French and German. Adopting such termsasbaselinecategoriesforcross- cultural comparison therefore risks introducing an Anglocentric bias into our theoretical vocabulary. Nor can the problem be easily solved, it is argued, by attributing technical meanings to the terms. Detailed analysis of the everyday meanings of words like joking and teasing, on the other hand, can yield insights into the ethnopragmatics of Anglo con- versational humor. This task is undertaken in the second part of the paper. The important English verb to kid and the common conversational formulas just kidding and only joking are also examined.
    [Show full text]
  • Teaching Performative Verbs and Nouns in EU Maritime Regulations
    Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141 ( 2014 ) 90 – 95 WCLTA 2013 Teaching Performative Verbs and Nouns in EU Maritime Regulations Silvia Molina Plaza a Technical University of Madrid, ETSIN Avda de la Victoria, 4, Madrid , 28040, Spain Abstract This paper is concerned with performative speech acts in European Union fisheries legislation with a view to relating the semantic analysis of directive and expressive speech act verbs to politeness strategies for the management of positive and negative face. The performative verbs used in directive and expressive speech acts belong to the semantic domain of communication verbs. The directive verbs occurring in the material are: appeal, authorize, call upon, conclude, invite, promise, request, urge and warn while the expressive verbs are: congratulate, express (gratitude), pay (tribute) and thank. The semantic analysis of directive verbs draws on Leech’s framework for illocutionary verbs analysis (Leech 1983: 218). The analysis suggests that the choice of directive and expressive speech act verbs and their co-occurrence with particular addressees are motivated by the socio-pragmatic situation. 30 Naval Engineering students from the UPM also learned how these speech act verbs are used in context in the subject English for Professional and Academic Communication (2011-2012). © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCLTA 2013. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCLTA 2013.
    [Show full text]
  • GLOSSARY of USAGE Presbyterian College English Department a A, an Use a Before a Consonant Sound, an Before a Vowel Sound
    GLOSSARY OF USAGE Presbyterian College English Department A a, an Use a before a consonant sound, an before a vowel sound. a heavy load, a nap, a sound; an island, an honest man, an umpire. accept, except As a verb, accept means "to receive"; except means "to exclude." Except as a preposition also means "but." Every senator except Mr. Browning refused to accept the bribe. We will except (exclude) this novel from the list of those to be read. advice, advise Advice is a noun; advise is a verb. I advise you to follow Estelle's advice. affect, effect Affect is a verb meaning "to act upon, to influence, or to imitate." Effect may be either a verb or a noun. Effect as a verb means "to cause or to bring about"; effect as a noun means "a result or a consequence." The patent medicine did not affect (influence) the disease. Henry affected the manner of an Oxford student. (imitated) Henry effected a change in his schedule. (brought about) The effect (result) of this change was that he had no Friday classes. aggravate Aggravate means "to make more grave, to worsen." A problem or condition is aggravated. A person is not aggravated; a person is annoyed. CORRECT: The heavy rains aggravated the slippery roads. CORRECT: The drivers were annoyed by the slippery roads. INCORRECT: The drivers were aggravated by the slippery roads. CORRECT: Her headache was aggravated by the damp weather. INCORRECT: She was aggravated by driving in the heavy traffic. CORRECT: She was annoyed by driving in the heavy traffic.
    [Show full text]
  • Language and Definitions
    This asset is intentionally omitted from this text. It may be accessed at Language and Definitions www.mcescher.com. (Waterfall by 1 Language Functions M.C. Escher) 2 Emotive Language, Neutral Language, and Disputes 3 Disputes and Ambiguity 4 Definitions and Their Uses 5 The Structure of Definitions: Extension and Intension 6 Definition by Genus and Difference 1 Language Functions When people reason, they typically do so using language, manipulating proposi- tions in a logical or informative spirit. But language is used in a great variety of ways, only some of which are informative. Without the intention to inform, we may express ourselves using language: “That’s really great!” we may say; and the poet, overcome by the beauty of an ancient city, channels his emotions in writing these lines: Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime— A rose-red city—“half as old as time.”1 Of course, some expressive discourse also has informative content, and may express attitudes as well as beliefs. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life for which the first was made.2 Moreover, some discourse is directive, with or without expressive or informa- tive elements. It seeks to guide or to command. “Step on the scale, please,” we may be told, or we may receive this good advice: Drive defensively. The cemetery is full of law-abiding citizens who had the right of way. A mixture of functions is a natural feature of almost all our uses of language. We can see this in our own speech and writing.
    [Show full text]
  • About Pronouns
    About pronouns Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson Lund University Abstract This essay claims that pronouns are constructed as syntactic relations rather than as discrete feature bundles or items. The discussion is set within the framework of a minimalist Context-linked Grammar, where phases contain silent but active edge features, edge linkers, including speaker and hearer features. An NP is phi- computed in relation to these linkers, the so established relation being input to context scanning (yielding reference). Essentially, syntax must see to it that event participant roles link to speech act roles, by participant linking (a subcase of context linking, a central computational property of natural language). Edge linkers are syntactic features–not operators–and can be shifted, as in indexical shift and other Kaplanian monster phenomena, commonly under control. The essay also develops a new analysis of inclusiveness and of the different status of different phi-features in grammar. The approach pursued differs from Distributed Morphology in drawing a sharp line between (internal) syntax and (PF) externalization, syntax constructing relations–the externalization process building and expressing items. Keywords: Edge linkers, pronouns, speaker, phi-features, context linking, context scanning, indexical shift, inclusiveness, bound variables 1. Introduction* Indexical or deictic items include personal pronouns (I, you, she, etc.), demonstrative pronouns (this, that, etc.), and certain local and temporal adverbials and adjectives (here, now, presently, etc.). In the influential Kaplanian approach (Kaplan 1989), indexicals are assumed to have a fixed reference in a fixed context of a specific speech act or speech event. Schlenker (2003:29) refers to this leading idea as the fixity thesis, stating it as follows: Fixity Thesis (a corollary of Direct Reference): The semantic value of an indexical is fixed solely by the context of the actual speech act, and cannot be affected by any logical operators.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of Idiom Translation Strategies Between English and Chinese
    ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 9, pp. 1691-1697, September 2013 © 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.3.9.1691-1697 A Study of Idiom Translation Strategies between English and Chinese Lanchun Wang School of Foreign Languages, Qiongzhou University, Sanya 572022, China Shuo Wang School of Foreign Languages, Qiongzhou University, Sanya 572022, China Abstract—This paper, focusing on idiom translation methods and principles between English and Chinese, with the statement of different idiom definitions and the analysis of idiom characteristics and culture differences, studies the strategies on idiom translation, what kind of method should be used and what kind of principle should be followed as to get better idiom translations. Index Terms— idiom, translation, strategy, principle I. DEFINITIONS OF IDIOMS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS Idiom is a language in the formation of the unique and fixed expressions in the using process. As a language form, idioms has its own characteristic and patterns and used in high frequency whether in written language or oral language because idioms can convey a host of language and cultural information when people chat to each other. In some senses, idioms are the reflection of the environment, life, historical culture of the native speakers and are closely associated with their inner most spirit and feelings. They are commonly used in all types of languages, informal and formal. That is why the extent to which a person familiarizes himself with idioms is a mark of his or her command of language. Both English and Chinese are abundant in idioms.
    [Show full text]
  • Glossary of Linguistic Terms
    Glossary of Linguistic Terms accent Often used to refer to distinctive pronuncia­ tions which differ from that of Received Pronunciation It differs from dialect which includes syn­ tax and vocabulary as well acronym A word formed from the initial letters of the words which make up a name, e.g. NATO (from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) active A clause in which the subject is the actor of the verb; in a passive clause the actor is not the grammatical subject; seep. 14 addressee The person being addressed or spoken to in any form of discourse adjective In traditional grammar a word which de­ scribes a noun, as happy in 'the happy man'; an adjective phrase is a group of one or more words fulfilling the function of an adjective; seep. 11 adverb In t:r:aditional grammar a word which de­ scribes a verb; in 'he ran slowly', slowly describes how he ran An adverb phrase is a group of one or more words fulfilling the function of an adverb; see p. 11 affix A morpheme which is attached to another word as an inflection or for derivation Affixes include prefixes at the beginning of a word and suffixes at the end of a word, e.g. un-god-ly with prefix un- and suffix -ly A derivational affix is used to form a new word, e.g. the suffix -less with hope gives the new word hopeless; an inflectional affix marks grammatical relations, in comes, the -s marks third person singular present indicative 159 160 Glossary alliteration The repetition of the same sound at the beginning of two or more words in close proximity, e.g.
    [Show full text]
  • Experiments in Idiom Recognition
    Experiments in Idiom Recognition Jing Peng and Anna Feldman Department of Computer Science Department of Linguistics Montclair State University Montclair, New Jersey, USA 07043 Abstract Some expressions can be ambiguous between idiomatic and literal interpretations depending on the context they occur in, e.g., sales hit the roof vs. hit the roof of the car. We present a novel method of classifying whether a given instance is literal or idiomatic, focusing on verb-noun constructions. We report state-of-the-art results on this task using an approach based on the hypothesis that the distributions of the contexts of the idiomatic phrases will be different from the contexts of the literal usages. We measure contexts by using projections of the words into vector space. For comparison, we implement Fazly et al. (2009)’s, Sporleder and Li (2009)’s, and Li and Sporleder (2010b)’s methods and apply them to our data. We provide experimental results validating the proposed techniques. 1 Introduction Researchers have been investigating idioms and their properties for many years. According to traditional approaches, an idiom is — in its simplest form— a string of two or more words for which meaning is not derived from the meanings of the individual words comprising that string (Swinney and Cutler, 1979). As such, the meaning of kick the bucket (‘die’) cannot be obtained by breaking down the idiom and an- alyzing the meanings of its constituent parts, to kick and the bucket. In addition to being influenced by the principle of compositionality, the traditional approaches are also influenced by theories of generative grammar (Flores, 1993; Langlotz, 2006) The properties that traditional approaches attribute to idiomatic expressions are also the properties that make them difficult for generative grammars to describe.
    [Show full text]