verb and the associated noun phrases (subject, direct and indirect objects) offers interesting ch... more verb and the associated noun phrases (subject, direct and indirect objects) offers interesting challenges to grammarians (see references). We will describe the basic features of Basque grammar using a computerized grammar called Permutational Grammar (PG; see, Eeg-Olofsson & Sigurd, 2000). It is a variant of Swetra Grammar which has been presented in various publications, notably Sigurd (ed.) Computational Grammars for Analysis and Machine Translation (1994).
Passive typology -the case link Holmer, Arthur 1996 Link to publication Citation for published ve... more Passive typology -the case link Holmer, Arthur 1996 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA):
Fontes linguae vasconum: Studia et documenta, 1999
for sharing with me their native intuitions in Basque as well as their linguistic insight, and to... more for sharing with me their native intuitions in Basque as well as their linguistic insight, and to Ms Temi Nawi Tseng, of CARPRS, Puli, Taiwan, for helping me with information on Seediq. The reasoning presented here has greatly benefited from comments by Sheila Dooley-Collberg, Stephen Matthews, Pan Haihua and Mikael Vinka. Needless to say, any mistakes are mine and mine alone. 2 The exception being in the past tense with 3rd person ABS and non-3rd person ERG. In such a case ABS agreement is not realized at all, and ERG agreement is prefixed. That this phenomenon, termed ergative displacement, is not a tense-conditioned split in ergativity in the traditional sense has, however, been argued by Laka (1993b: 54ff ). 'Peru drinks in the tavern'. d. *Peru eda-ten da. PN-ABS drink-IPF AUX.3sA e. Peru ardoa eda-ten ari da. PN-ABS wine-ABS drink-IPF PROG AUX.3sA 'Peru is drinking wine'. f. Reagan ikusi da. PN see AUX.3sA 'Reagan has seen himself '. / 'Reagan has been seen'. (Hualde 1988) [4] g. Ardobeltza eda-ten da hemen. wine black-ABS drink-IPF AUX.3sA here 'Red wine is drunk here. / Here one drinks red wine'. This can be contrasted with the situation in Eskimo-Aleut languages 8 , where ERG may only be assigned an Agent if the Patient is realized, either overtly or by pro. Thus the only possible reading of a verb with an ERG Agent but without an overtly realized Patient is that the Patient is implied and referential (2a). If there is no referential patient implied, the Agent appears in ABS case (2b). In fact, even if the Patient is overt but not referential, it is either incorporated (2c) or expressed as an oblique with an antipassive morpheme on the verb (2d) 9 . Both of these strategies require that the Agent be in ABS case. 2 a. John-am ner-aa. PN-ERG eat-3s/3s 'John ate *(it)'. (Yup'ik; Bobaljik 1993, p 74) b. John ner-uq. PN-ABS eat-3s 'John ate (*it)'. (Yup'ik; Bobaljik 1993, p 74) c. Piita tuktu-siuq-puq. PN-ABS caribou-look.for-3s 'Piita is looking for a caribou'. (Central Arctic Eskimo; Manning 1996, p 153) d. Hansi inun-nik tuqut-si-vuq.
This study presents the first results from a trial of an electronic translation of Euskara. At pr... more This study presents the first results from a trial of an electronic translation of Euskara. At present, the work limits itself to the syntax and to the specialised field of periphrastic conjugation and the ergative and the dative in word declensions. Although no major problems of a linguistic nature remain when it comes to including an extremely wide vocabulary and the completemorphology, it is only a simplified prototype which does not claim to be a commercial programme.
Sound symbolism emerged as a prevalent component in the origin and development of language. Howev... more Sound symbolism emerged as a prevalent component in the origin and development of language. However, as previous studies have either been lacking in scope or in phonetic granularity, the present study investigates the phonetic and semantic features involved from a bottom-up perspective. By analyzing the phonemes of 344 near-universal concepts in 245 language families, we establish 125 sound-meaning associations. The results also show that between 19 and 40 of the items of the Swadesh-100 list are sound symbolic, which calls into question the list’s ability to determine genetic relationships. In addition, by combining co-occurring semantic and phonetic features between the sound symbolic concepts, 20 macro-concepts can be identified, e. g. basic descriptors, deictic distinctions and kinship attributes. Furthermore, all identified macroconcepts can be grounded in four types of sound symbolism: (a) unimodal imitation (onomatopoeia); (b) cross-modal imitation (vocal gestures); (c) diagr...
Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a well-known academic support model to address retention and stu... more Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a well-known academic support model to address retention and student performance in higher education. However, in studies reporting the effect of SI, the number of attendees at SI sessions are seldom mentioned or reflected upon. This study investigates whether there is a lower, optimal, and upper number of SI attendees for SI sessions with viable learning conditions. A literature review of 135 publications on studies of SI programmes was conducted along with a survey of 44 SI Leaders and 176 SI attendees at Lund University in Sweden. The literature review shows that there is no consensus regarding minimum, optimum, or maximum numbers of SI session size for viable learning conditions. In the survey, the number of attendees for optimal learning conditions was estimated to be 11–12 by both leaders and attendees. These respondents also estimated that if the number of attendees is below five or above 16 students, the learning conditions are likely to suff...
This report is based on the contributions from SI/PASS/PAL supervisors at 63 Universities in Euro... more This report is based on the contributions from SI/PASS/PAL supervisors at 63 Universities in Europe to a basic survey of 13 questions. Each institution that responded to the survey was invited to provide more detailed information about the programme including attendance statistics and examples of evaluation/impact; 45 universities provided these more detailed responses. At present, there are nine countries in Europe (mostly in the north-western part) with SI/PASS/PAL schemes. However, with supervisors trained recently from Belgium and Spain it is likely that an expansion will happen in the nearfuture. There is a great variation in the programmes described below, which is a strength when growing the SI/PASS/PAL community. Some are quite small with one supervisor, a handful of Leaders and SI/PASS/PAL attached to a single subject. Others are huge with 10+ supervisors, several hundreds of leaders and where SI/PASS/PAL is attached to 100+ courses in all subject areas. Some programmes are...
Sound symbolism emerged as a prevalent component in the origin and development of language. Howev... more Sound symbolism emerged as a prevalent component in the origin and development of language. However, as previous studies have either been lacking in scope or in phonetic granularity, the present study investigates the phonetic and semantic features involved from a bottom-up perspective. By analyzing the phonemes of 344 near-universal concepts in 245 language families, we establish 125 sound-meaning associations. The results also show that between 19 and 40 of the items of the Swadesh-100 list are sound symbolic, which calls into question the list’s ability to determine genetic relationships. In addition, by combining co-occurring semantic and phonetic features between the sound symbolic concepts, 20macro-conceptscan be identified, e. g. basic descriptors, deictic distinctions and kinship attributes. Furthermore, all identified macro-concepts can be grounded in four types of sound symbolism: (a) unimodal imitation (onomatopoeia); (b) cross-modal imitation (vocal gestures); (c) diagra...
Feature stability, time and tempo of change, and the role of genealogy versus areality in creatin... more Feature stability, time and tempo of change, and the role of genealogy versus areality in creating linguistic diversity are important issues in current computational research on linguistic typology. This paper presents a database initiative, DiACL Typology, which aims to provide a resource for addressing these questions with specific of the extended Indo-European language area of Eurasia, the region with the best documented linguistic history. The database is pre-prepared for statistical and phylogenetic analyses and contains both linguistic typological data from languages spanning over four millennia, and linguistic metadata concerning geographic location, time period, and reliability of sources. The typological data has been organized according to a hierarchical model of increasing granularity in order to create datasets that are complete and representative.
This paper presents the first results of analyzing the functions of intonation and word order in ... more This paper presents the first results of analyzing the functions of intonation and word order in Puyuma. Puyuma is an endangered Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan. As other languages of this branch, Puyuma is verb initial and displays variations in word order, so that VOS, SVO and VSO are attested. The aim of our study is to explain these word variations. We investigate the connection between information structure, word order and intonation in three Formosan languages: Puyuma, Seediq and Bunun. We show that in Puyuma information structure is reflected in word order while the main function of intonation is to cue phrasing. The study is performed on semi-spontaneous speech.
This paper is the partial result of research carried out within the project Parametric Typology (... more This paper is the partial result of research carried out within the project Parametric Typology (henceforth PARATYP; Riksbankens Jubilemumsfond). I gratefully acknowledge financial support from this foundation, as well as practical support from the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University. I am also grateful for valuable comments from Xabier Artiagoitia, Bemard Comrie, Sheila Dooley-Collberg, Itziar Laka and Revaz Tchantouria. Any mistakes are mine and mine alone.
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Papers by Arthur Holmer