Multiple (simple) context-free tree grammars are investigated, where “simple” means “linear and nondeleting”. Every multiple context-free tree grammar that is finitely ambiguous can be lexicalized; i.e., it can be transformed into an equivalent one (generating the same tree language) in which each rule of the grammar contains a lexical symbol. Due to this transformation, the rank of the nonterm...

To what extent do Modern Greek, Polish, Swedish and American English similarly lexicalize action concepts, and how similar are the semantic associations between verbs denoting natural actions? Previous results indicate cross-linguistic stability between American English, Swedish, and Polish in verbs denoting basic human body movement, mouth movements, and sound production. The research reported...

Some metaphorical mappings between source and target are obvious and appear in collocation patterns in natural language data. However, other metaphors that structure abstract processes or complex topics are trickier to investigate because the target domain is lexically divorced from the source. Using metaphors for the economy as a case study, this paper introduces new techniques to find metapho...

The expression of motion verbs differs between languages. The path of motion, such as crossing or entering, is more prominently featured in path-based languages such as Spanish than in manner-based languages such as English. Here, we revisit the data from a study on manner and path biases in verb lexicalization (Havasi & Snedeker, 2004), and create a hierarchical Baysian computational model to ...

Language is a system of verbal elements that makes communication of meaningspossible in the manners the users intend by employing certain linguistic deviceswhich are partly language-specific. Once communicating cross-linguistically, thereis always a risk of negative transfer of techniques or processes from the firstlanguage (L1) to the foreign language (L2). The current study investigates the“e...

Discourses on herding have focussed the "exact" representations of social actions itinerant herders who clash with farmers while grazing supposed cattle routes. Media coverage herdsmen-farmers conflict has deployed ideologically laden terms to represent as trespassing farmlands and foreigners trespassers. Using van Leeuwen's Representation Social Actions Actors model Martin White's Appraisal Fr...