The translation of English phrasal verbs (PVs) into French is a challenge, specially when the verb occurs apart from the particle. Our goal is to quantify how well current SMT paradigms can translate split PVs into French. We compare two inhouse SMT systems, phrase-based and hierarchical, in translating a test set of PVs. Our analysis is based on a carefully designed evaluation protocol for ass...

In languages like German or Dutch, the distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs is borne out by a number of syntactic tests. Unergative verbs appear in impersonal passives while unaccusative verbs do not (cf. Perlmutter (1978)). Unergative verbs select the perfect auxiliary haben/hebben (to have) while unaccusative verbs select sein/zijn (to be) (cf. Hoekstra (1984)). Unaccusative ...

Somali is an East Cushitic language spoken in the Horn of Africa, with determiner morphemes whose initial consonants undergo interesting phonological alternations when suffixed onto noun stems. This could be described as a type of “derived environment contact phenomena,” as the changes in these suffix-initial consonants are totally dependent on the final segment of the stem and are not active i...

This paper investigates the morphosyntax of the Icelandic DP following work by Sigurðsson (1993, 2006); Julien (2005). In addition to providing an analysis of the basic structure of the Icelandic DP, this paper investigates two (apparent) movements within the DP: one involving the definite article suffix -inn, and one involving pronominal possessors (e.g., minn ‘my’). I show that the fronting o...

The prepositions in and on appear early in children's descriptions of simple containment and support relations, such as "apple in the bowl" and "cup on the table". However, mature use of these basic terms extends across a very broad range of object configurations, raising the question of whether children and adults share the same underlying semantic space, and if so, how children's use of in an...

The present study focuses on the relation between a grammatical and a lexical-semantic aspect of verb production. The spontaneous speech of three different populations (normally developing children, agrammatic aphasics, and children with a specific language impairment) has been analyzed with respect to the proportion of finite clauses and the diversity of the produced lexical verbs. The group r...

We report on two individuals with acquired language impairment who made thematic role confusion errors in both comprehension and production. Their confusions were remarkably specific, affecting the roles associated with spatial prepositions ("The box is in the bag" confused with The bag is in the box) and adjectival comparatives ("The glove is darker than the hat" confused with The hat is darke...