this paper provides an analysis of persian verbs within the framework of optimality theory. to be more specific, it mainly cocentrates on past and present stems of persian verbs. since analyzing this subject within the derivational framework would result phonological rules which are not natural, it is analysed by optimality theory which is one of the constraint-based approach. based on this, we...

This contribution introduces a novel unit of syntactic analysis, which is called the component. The validity and utility of the component unit are established in terms of chunking. When informants organize the words of sentences into groups, they are creating chunks, and these chunks then qualify as components in dependency syntax. By acknowledging the nature of chunking and the component unit,...

We present a new approach to language learning which is based on the following idea: if a language learner does not know which phrase-structure trees should be assigned to initial sentences, s/he allows (implicitly) for all possible trees and lets linguistic experience decide which is the ‘best’ tree for each sentence. The best tree is obtained by maximizing ‘structural analogy’ between a sente...

This paper addresses two central issues related to the problem of auxiliary inversion in English wh-questions: 1) there are multiple proposals of the source of the error but none can explain the data in full; 2) the data on children’s wh-questions are inconsistent, due to differences in methods and techniques. We propose that language-specific structural characteristics of the target grammar (e...

The aim of the work to be reported here is to verify that pronunciation variety in German spontaneous speech appears in specific linguistic word categories (POS) while others are less affected. Additionally, the material (transliterations of spontaneous monologues of the RVG1-corpus [5]) allows a detailed view on pronunciation regarding the speakers' origin within the German-speaking regions an...

A recent project to produce a much belated English translation of Lucien Tesnière’s Éléments de syntaxe structurale has provided the opportunity for an in depth look at Tesnière’s theory of syntax. This contribution examines a few aspects of Tesnière’s work through the lens of modern syntactic theory. Tesnière’s understandings of constituents and phrases, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, gapping,...

A large literature has been devoted to the distribution of reduced forms of English auxiliary verbs, apparently just weak forms of the corresponding full auxiliaries. Limitations on their distribution appear to involve syntactic conditions, such as that they not occur in positions immediately followed by the trace of a displaced element, which would put these elements in a class apart from pure...

It is well-known that in many languages copular verbs are not needed with nonverbal predicates when the clause is in present tense, but are needed in other tenses. Hebrew (Rapoport 1987), Arabic (Benmamoun 2000), Russian, and Turkish (Wetzer 1996: 52, Stassen 1997: 46, Baker 2003) are relatively familiar languages that fit this profile. A less familiar example is Sakha (also known as Yakut), a ...

We have developed the very first free online and free framework for teaching and learning Japanese prosody with features for word accent and phrase intonation. This framework is called OJAD (Online Japanese Accent Dictionary) [1], which provides three functions. 1) Visual, auditory, systematic, and comprehensive illustration of patterns of accent change (accent sandhi) of verbs and adjectives. ...