MacWhinney (1978) presented a computational model of the acquisition of morphophonology. The present chapter attempts to extend the model presented in that earlier paper to the acquisition of word-order patterns. This extension is supported by an examination of the previous research on syntactic acquisition. In the final section of the chapter, further possible extensions to phonology and semantics are considered. The crucial claim underlying the basic approach to both morphophonology and syntax is that use of a given rule system is governed by a system of alternative strategies. Within such a multileveled model, alternative strategies can be compared in terms of their relative complexity. In the present chapter, these alternative strategies are evaluated through application of the following analytic technique: 1. A relatively simple strategy that can account for at least some of the observed data is presented. 2. It is shown that there are at least some data that are best explained by this strategy. 3. It is shown that, at some point in development, the child produces forms that cannot be explained by this simple strategy alone. 4. A strategy of somewhat greater complexity and power is introduced and it is shown that this strategy can account for at least some of the data not explained by the simpler (and weaker) strategy. This line of argumentation proceeds until evidence has been presented for six alternative strategies in word-order processing.

NULL vs. OVERT SUBJECTS IN TURKISH DISCOURSE: A CENTERING APPROACH Author: Umit Deniz Turan Supervisor: Ellen F. Prince The purpose of this study is to explore an aspect of discourse coherence which involves anaphoric relations between utterances with special emphasis on subjects in Turkish. Based on an analysis of published narratives, three complementary and interrelated questions are addressed concerning discourse anaphora: 1. Which expressions are available for subsequent definite reference? 2. What factors determine the most salient entity in Turkish among a set of potential antecedents for subsequent definite reference? 3. What are the functions of a particular referential expression (null vs. overt pronouns vs. full NPs), depending on appropriate discourse conditions? An exploration regarding question 1 indicates that, while some NPs evoke discourse entities, other NPs do not. These two types of NPs represent referential and nonreferential expressions and they can function as ...

We present a data-to-speech system called D2S, which can be used for the creation of datato -speech systems in different languages and domains. The most important characteristic of a data-to-speech system is that it combines language and speech generation: language generation is used to produce a natural language text expressing the system's input data, and speech generation is used to make this text audible. In D2S, this combination is exploited by using linguistic information available in the language generation module for the computation of prosody. This allows us to achieve a better prosodic output quality than can be achieved in a plain text-to-speech system. For language generation in D2S, the use of syntactically enriched templates is guided by knowledge of the discourse context, while for speech generation pre-recorded phrases are combined in a prosodically sophisticated manner. This combination of techniques makes it possible to create linguistically sound but efficient system...

The almeture imposed apon spoken sentences by intonation seems frequently to be orthogonal to their Ixadifional surface-syntaetic struc- ture. However, the notion of "intonational struc- ture" as formulated by Pierrehumbert, Selkirk, and others, can tm $ubsurned under a rather dif- ferent notion of syntacti safface $ffueture that emexgem from a theory of grammar based on a "Combinatory" exttmsion to Categorial Otan max. Interptationa of constituents at this level are in mrn directly related to "inforrnat[o structure ", or discourse-related notions of "theme", 'heme", "focus" and 'reatippo$ition". Some simplifications appear to follow for the problem of integrating syntax and other high-level modules in spoken language systems.

Variations in postverbal constituent ordering have been attributed to both grammatical complexity (heaviness) and discourse status (newness), although few studies compare the two factors explicitly. Through corpus analysis and experimentation, we demonstrate that both factors simultaneously and independently influence word order in two English constructions. While past investigations of these factors have focused on their effects in language comprehension, we argue that postponing heavy and new constituents facilitates processes of planning and production.* Even relatively fixed-word-order languages like English permit certain phrases to occur in more than one order. Examples 1–3 illustrate three familiar alternations in the sequencing of postverbal constituents. (1) Heavy NP Shift 1 (HNPS) a. The waiter brought the wine we had ordered to the table. b. The waiter brought to the table the wine we had ordered. (2) Dative Alternation (DA) a. Chris gave a bowl of Mom’s traditional cranberry sauce to Terry. b. Chris gave Terry a bowl of Mom’s traditional cranberry sauce.

Accounts of information packaging (focus-ground, theme-rheme, topic-comment) in the pragmatic tradition are inherently dynamic in that they are concerned with the linguistic processes by means of which information is presented to an updating agent in discourse. The main insight gained from this line of research is that, in discourse, speakers not only present information to their interlocutors, but also provide them with detailed `instructions' on how to manipulate and integrate this information. The use of these instructions reveals that speakers treat information states as highly structured objects and exploit their structure to make information update more efficient for their hearers. The analysis of information packaging acts as a valuable probe into the nature of linguistic information update and the structure of information states.

this paper was done during the summer of 1995, when the alphabetically second author visited the first as a guest academic researcher in the Mathematics Department of the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. During this period, Stuart Shieber spent several days with us at IBM discussing several of the complexity issues we address in this paper. We are grateful to him for his help in clarifying these issues, although he bears no responsibility for any of the claims we make. Some of the material in this paper was presented in joint talks at the Linguistics Colloquium of University College, University of London, March 1996, the Third International Conference on HPSG, Marseille, May 1996, and the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, June 1996, and in a seminar on formal syntax which the second author taught in the Linguistics Department, Universite de Paris 7 during May 1996. We are grateful to the participants in these events for helpful discussion. We would also like to thank Elabbas Benmamoun, Robert Borsley, Michael Brody, Chris Collins, Daniele Goddard, Norbert Hornstein, Hans van de Koot, Wilfried Meyer-Viol, Larry Moss, Fritz Newmeyer, Frank Oles, Carl Pollard, Paul Postal, Bill Rounds, Ivan Sag, Andrew Simpson, Eun Jung Yoo, and two anonymous reviewers for useful comments and criticism on earlier drafts of the paper. Needless to say, we alone are responsible for the arguments presented here and any of their shortcomings.

The position in which an argument is projected is usually assumed to be determined strictly by conditions of the computational system (X-bar theory) and the LF interface (Θ-theory). We will argue that these systems, although they obviously restrict the distribution of arguments, still allow in many cases a range of positions in which a given argument can be generated (merged). In the structures we will consider here, the choice between these is made,

Abstract not found

There is increasing awareness of the large degree of crosslinguistic diversity involved in the structural realisation of information packaging (or information structure). Whereas English and many Germanic languages primarily exploit intonation for informational purposes, in other languages, like Catalan, syntax plays the primary role in the realisation of information packaging and intonation is reduced to a secondary role. In yet another group of languages the primary structural correlate is morphology. This paper provides a contrastive analysis of the structural properties of information packaging in a number of languages. It also contains a discussion of some basic issues concerning information packaging and identifies a set of information-packaging primitives that are applied to the crosslinguistic facts. 1 Introduction Alternative sentential structures, differing in string order, in intonational structure, or in both, may be used to express the same propositional content. Neverthe...