This thesis introduces a special form of pseudopassive that differs from previously discussed forms in that it includes a direct object adjacent to the verb. It is shown that the direct object position in this construction is restricted to NPs that lack D(eterminer)-level projections. As a result, the direct object can only receive a non-specific interpretation, resists certain types of modific...

This paper describes a computational model which simulates the change in the use of optional infinitives that is evident in children learning Dutch as their first language. The model, developed within the framework of MOSAIC, takes naturalistic, child directed speech as its input, and analyses the distributional regularities present in the input. It slowly learns to generate longer utterances a...

The correct translation of verb tenses ensures that the temporal ordering of events in the source text is maintained in the target text. This paper assesses the utility of automatically labeling English Simple Past verbs with a binary discursive feature, narrative vs. non-narrative, for statistical machine translation (SMT) into French. The narrativity feature, which helps deciding which of the...

We present a speeded production study of the English past tense that is designed to evaluate between conflicting theories of the mechanism of verb inflection. Test items are verbs that systematically differ in regularity but also in overall ease of processing as defined by a number of statistical and distributional factors. We show that overall ease, but not regularity, predicts differences in ...

The relationship between children's language acquisition and their nonverbal intelligence has a long tradition of scientific inquiry. Current attention focuses on the use of nonverbal IQ level as an exclusionary criterion in the definition of specific language impairment (SLI). Grammatical tense deficits are known as a clinical marker of SLI, but the relationship with nonverbal intelligence bel...

The Tanzanian Bantu language Rangi uses a combination of simple and complex verb forms to encode a range of tense-aspect distinctions. Whilst simple verb forms comprise of a single inflected verb, complex forms involve an auxiliary and a lexical main verb. This paper presents an account of auxiliary constructions in Rangi from the perspective of Dynamic Syntax. Dynamic Syntax (Kempson, Meyer-Vi...

Tense and aspect, together with mood and modality, usually form the entangled structure of a complex verb. They are often hard to translate by machines, because of both syntactic and semantic differences between languages. This problem seriously affects upon the generation process because those verb components in interlingua are hardly rearranged correctly in the target language. We propose her...

The role of lexical frequency, telicity & phonological factors on past tense production in children with SLI & their typically developing peers. ii ii ABSTRACT Limited research is available about how lexical and phonological verb properties interact with past tense production by children. Frequency of the inflected form and phonotactic probability might serve as input-driven alternatives to pre...

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is a developmental language disorder characterised by morpho-syntactic errors in the absence of neurological trauma, cognitive impairment, psycho-emotional disturbance, or motor-articulatory disorders. Among the hypotheses that have argued for SLI as an impairment at the linguistic level, rather than at the cognitive or perceptual level, there is a debate as t...

The relationship between children's language acquisition and their nonverbal intelligence has a long tradition of scientific inquiry. Current attention focuses on the use of nonverballQ level as an exclusionary criterion in the definition of specific language impairment (SU).Grammatical tense deficits are known as a clinical marker of SU, but the relationship with nonverbal intelligence below t...