• MALSORI
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• no.63
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• pp.67-84
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• 2007

Verb phrase could have two different meanings according to which is followed after verb; adverb or preposition. The meaning of 'verb+adverb' is deduced from a figurative meaning which is idiomatic expression, and 'verb+preposition' is interpreted as the literal meaning. The purpose of this study is to observe how English native speakers and Korean leaners of English distinguish two sentences of the same word strings with acoustic cues like pause and duration. According to the result, as pause was used for meaning distinction, it was likely that the pause length preceding prepositions was longer than that of following adverbs. To distinguish two sentences of the same word strings, all participants seemed to use pause, verb lengthening and adverb/preposition lengthening. Among them, there is a hierarchical significance; in sequence, pause, verb lengthening, adverb/preposition lengthening.

• Annual Conference on Human and Language Technology
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• 1991.10a
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• pp.44-57
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• 1991

In the transfer machine translation, transfer dictionary decides the complexity of the transfer phase and the quality of translation according to the types and precision of informations supplied in the dictionary. Using the phrasal level translated informations within the human readable dictionary, human being translates a source sentence correctly and naturally. In this paper, we propose the verb transfer dictionary in which the various informations are constructed so the machine readable format that the Korean-to-English machine translation system can utilize them. In the proposed dictionary, we first provide the criterions by which an appropriate target verb is selected in phrase-to-phrase translations without an additional semantic analysis in transfer phase. Second, we provide the concrete sentence structure of a target verb so that we can resolve the expressive gaps between two languages and reduce the complexity of the various structure transfer in word-to-word translation.

• Language and Information
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.49-75
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• 2008

English absolutes and free adjuncts, despite their abridged syntactic forms, function as full subordinating adverbial clauses, with their semantic roles varied according to the interpretation of the matrix clauses. This paper investigates how to represent the syntactic structures and semantic variability of absolutes and free adjuncts in a unified way, accounting for overlapping properties among various subtypes of the constructions on the one hand, and differences on the other. In the proposed analysis, the clausal properties of absolutes and free adjuncts are captured by the subject selecting property and the clausal meaning associated with a predicative phrase, thus not calling for a null verb or complementizer. In classifying and defining diverse subtypes of the constructions via type constraints, the present work also provides an account of different uses of with involved in absolutes and free adjuncts.

• Language and Information
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.77-96
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• 2007

This paper investigates syntactic variations in English such as Dative Alternation, Particle Inversion, and Object Postposition (Heavy NP Shift) within the framework of Optimality Theory, and shows that the same set of morphological, informational, and processing constraints affect all these variations. In particular, it shows that the variants that used to be regarded as ungrammatical are in fact used fairly often in reality, especially when processing or informational conditions are met, and therefore, grammatical judgment may not be always categorical but sometimes gradient. It is argued that the notion of distance in constraint ranking in stochastic OT can effectively explain the gradience and variability of grammaticality in the variation phenomena.

• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.275-294
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• 2001

This article aims to define the nature of proverbs from a polyphonic point of view and examine different readings of the complement involved in the combination of a proverb with a verb of personal opinion. An utterer of a proverb is not himself the author of the proverb. He may well be a 'speaker' of a proverb, but from a polyphonic view point he is not an 'enunciator' of the principle that underlies it. When we say that a speaker of a proverb is not its enunciator, we do not simply mean that he is not the author of the 'content' of the proverb he speaks: we mean that he is not the author of its 'form' either. The fact that a proverb loses its proverbial character when one paraphrases it proves that its form is not at the speaker's disposal. But a single factor cannot be held responsible for what a proverb is. As an indicator of the 'wisdom of the nation,' or vox populi, a proverb is the achievement of the 'collective enunciator.' The polyphony inherent in the proverb pits a particular speaker against a collective enunciator. This collective character of the proverb as a vox populi comes from its character as a phrasal denomination. Given that a proverb reflects a collective judgment and not a personal opinion, how do we interpret the combination of a proverb with a verb of personal opinion such as I think that ...\ulcorner Such a combination gives rise to readings at distinct levels: two types of metalinguistic reading and a reading based on the content of the proverb. The first level of reading, being applicative in nature, can be local or general, depending on the speaker's opinion as to the applicability of the proverb to a situation, particular or general. These applicative readings always involve polyphonic dissociation between the speaker and the enunciator. The second level of reading, which depends on the content of the proverb, is the result of the operation of deproverbialization, which makes the proverb lose its denominative status to preserve only its status as a generic phrase. The proverb, thus deproverbialized, looks like the series 'NP + VP.' For this reading, the speaker of the proverb takes into consideration the possibility of attributing a predicate to a nominal syntagm. Here occurs an identity between the speaker and the enunciator. It is not the case, however, that one can deproverbialize just any proverbs. In approaching to a locally typifying generic phrase, a proverb admits of being deproverbialized by an opinion verb only when its form does not render it difficult, either syntactically or metaphorically, to incorporate that proverb into the relevant combination, and when the proverb intrinsically possesses the traits that meet the conditions for the use of the opinion verb at hand. One can also maintain, based on the notion of deproverbialization, that a proverb expresses a collective judgment, a deproverbialized individual judgment.

• Language and Information
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.33-52
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• 2014

This paper proposes a unified structural account of some instances of the English Modals and Semi-auxiliaries. The classification and the syntactic/structural description of the English Modal auxiliary verbs and verb-related elements have long been the center for many proposals in the history of generative syntax. According to van Gelderen (1993) and Lightfoot (2002), it was sometime around 1380 that the Tense-node (T) appeared in the phrasal structures of the English language, and the T-node is under which the English Modal auxiliaries occupy. Closely related is the existing evidence that English Modals were used as main verbs up to the early sixteenth century (Lightfoot 1991, Han 2000). This paper argues for a bi-clausal approach to English Modal auxiliaries with the infinitival particle 'to' such as 'ought to' 'used to' and 'dare (to)' 'need (to)', etc. and Semi-auxiliaries including 'be to' and 'have to'. More specifically, 'ought' in 'ought to' constructions, for instance, undergoes V-to-T movement within the matrix clause, just like 'HAVEAux' and all instances of 'BE', whereas 'to' occupies the T position of the embedded complement clause. By proposing the bi-clausal account, Radford's (2004, 2009) problems can be solved. Further, the historical motivation for the account takes a stance along with Norde (2009) and Brinton & Traugott (2005) in that Radford's (2004, 2009) syncretization of the two positions of the infinitival particle 'to' is no different from the 'boundary loss' in the process of Grammariticalization. This line of argument supports Krug's (2011), and in turn Bolinger's(1980) generalization on Auxiliaryhood, while providing a novel insight into Head movement of V-to-T in Present Day English.