Our group submitted runs for Temporal Information Retrieval (TIR) subtask of NTCIR-11 Temporalia. For one of our runs, we prepared plural sets of search terms for a subtopic. Analyzing experimental results, we observe the effectiveness of using plural sets of search terms for a subtopic.

In Yaeyaman, a critically endangered Japonic language of the Southern Ryukyus, there is a distinction made between singular and plural wh-questions, with plurality indicated by reduplication of the indeterminate (wh) pronoun. I argue that reduplication of the indeterminate is triggered by a morpheme RED that requires the presence of non-atoms in the set of Hamblin alternatives denoted by its si...

This study reports the results of two behavioral and two event-related brain potential experiments examining the processing of inflected words in second-language (L2) learners with Russian as their native language. Two different subsystems of German inflection were studied, participial inflection and noun plurals. For participial forms, L2 learners were found to widely generalize the -t suffixa...

Plural predications (e.g., "the boxes are heavy") are common sources of ambiguity in everyday language, allowing both distributive and collective interpretations (e.g., the boxes each are heavy vs. the boxes together are heavy). This paper investigates the role of context in the disambiguation of plural predication. We address the key phenomenon of "stubborn distributivity," whereby certain pre...

Introduction This paper provides an original phonological analysis of some of the plural noun formations of Western Sisaala. Western Sisaala has several noun classes. The classes are distinguished by the suffixes to used to form the singular and plural. Moran (2006) tentatively identifies a few noun classes. In this squib, I discuss a subset of the plural forms attested in the language. Many of...

1 Determiners and Coordinated Nouns in English Singular determiner with singular noun, plural determiner with plural noun: (1) a. a boy/that boy/*those boy b. those boys/*a boys/*that boys Singular determiner with coordinated singular nouns: (2) a. that boy and girl/a boy and girl b. *those boy and girl Plural verb agreement with coordinated singular nouns: (3) a. That boy and girl *is/are my f...

When children first mark distinctions in language, they may use semantically possible but nonconventional expressions. This can be seen in their initial attempts to express ‘more-than-one’ in English (conventionally conveyed by use of the plural inflection). We explore children’s earliest expressions for ‘more-than-one’ by (a) examining longitudinal records for references to one vs. several obj...

This study reports the results of two behavioral and two event-related brain potential (ERP) experiments examining the processing of inflected words in advanced second language (L2) learners with Russian as their native language (L1) who learnt German as an L2 after childhood. Two different subsystems of German inflection were studied, participial inflection and noun plurals. For participial fo...

In this paper, we present a model of grammatical category formation, applied to English plural determiners. We have identiied a set of semantic features for the description of relevant meanings of plural deeniteness. A small training set (30 sentences) was created by linguistic criteria, and a functional mapping from the semantic feature representation to the overt category of indeenite/deenite...