This article addresses the problem of coronal palatalization in Harari (Ethiopian Semitic) triggered by the 2nd person singular feminine non-perfective subject suffix /-i/. The palatalization process is unusual in two respects: (a) palatalization operates at a distance over other vowels and consonants and (b) palatalization may optionally affect more than one coronal consonant in the same stem,...

ÐA central feature of the evolution of large software systems is that changeÐwhich is necessary to add new functionality, accommodate new hardware, and repair faultsÐbecomes increasingly difficult over time. In this paper, we approach this phenomenon, which we term code decay, scientifically and statistically. We define code decay and propose a number of measurements (code decay indices) on sof...

Imperfectivity is cross-linguistically associated with the subinterval property and a modal component induced by the famous ‘imperfective paradox’. These properties arguably hold for both the progressive and habitual-iterative readings. However, both in Romance and Slavic, the imperfective may also refer to complete events instantiated in the world of evaluation: the so-called Imparfait narrati...

Model-driven Engineering (MDE) approaches often present themselves as a solution to palliate the complexity of software maintainability tasks. However, there is no empirical evidence of their benefits and limitations with respect to code-based maintainability practices. To fill this gap, this paper illustrates the results of an empirical study, involving 44 subjects, in which we compared an MDE...

This study provides an acoustic analysis of the neutral tone in Brunei Mandarin. Recordings were made of a short text by 20 Bruneian (BN) and 20 Beijing Chinese (CN) speakers. F0 contours and duration of three categories of disyllabic words for the BN and CN data were compared. It was found that the BN data tends to have a neutral tone on grammatical morphemes such as le (perfective) and de (po...

This work addresses the complexities involved in aspectual composition by presenting a cognitively motivated analysis that makes use of active event representations. Verbs, arguments and temporal modiiers are characterized in terms of the conceptual features they impose or contribute to this framework, which employs representations of both motor-schematic and image-schematic change. By accommod...

Case in Lotha, (a Tibeto-Burman language spoken Wokha District of Nagaland) is marked by suffixes that appear to the right noun it marks. In Lotha ergative marker can combine with both nouns and pronouns, however, nominative markers only occur pronouns. has aspectual split ergativity which word class (noun vs. pronoun), aspect, tense are determining factors. The occurs mainly A argument a trans...

Context: Writing documents is a common part of software development practice. Software engineering researchers and practitioners have expressed concerns about costs and benefits software documentation. On one hand, the role of documentation in a development process is challenged by the Agile Development Manifesto. On the other hand, researchers and practitioners need to assess whether documenta...

Recently, several innovative tools have found their way into mainstream use in modern development environments. However, most of these tools have focused on creating and modifying code, despite evidence that most of programmers’ time is spent understanding code as part of maintenance tasks. If new tools were designed to directly support these maintenance tasks, what types would be most helpful?...