Automatic lexical alignment is a vital step for empirical machine translation, and although good results can be obtained with existent models (e.g. Giza++), more precise alignment is still needed for successfully handling complex constructions such as multiword expressions. In this paper we propose an approach for lexical alignment combining statistical and linguistic information. We describe t...

This is a corpus-based study of general nouns, ren ‘people’, shi(qing) ‘matter’, and dongxi ‘thing, object’, as they are used in spoken Mandarin in contemporary Taiwan. Our examination focuses on the co-occurrences and collocations of these general nouns with other linguistic elements. Our investigation shows that the three lexical items display different tendencies in designating referential s...

Serial verb constructions are grammatical that still debatable by linguists from different schools of theories because whether they considered as simple or complex predicates in terms their various structures found world’s languages. Creol languages such Papuan Malay has serial interested for further studies there lacks similar done the language. This research describes Malay. Its focus is to i...

We describe a language understanding model in which idioms, like other units of linguistic knowledge, are treated as constructions linking elements of form with elements of meaning. They may also, however, invoke additional metaphorical mappings that can actively constrain both the interpretation and acceptability of idiomatic expressions. A wide variety of idiomatic phenomena, including compos...

Locative constructions, as an instance of double object constructions with various cognitive-linguistic concepts, have been successful in attracting the linguists. This paper tried to evaluate the acquisition of English locative constructions by Persian native speakers in the absence of negative evidence, focusing on the influence of L1 and participants’ proficiency level in the course of acqui...

Some recent studies concerning language use have shown the significance of frequency/routinization and collocation in the evolution of language structure and grammaticalization. Repeated daily (spoken) language use is believed to be the shaping force of linguistic structure. Linguistic contiguity is further proposed as one of the important sources leading to grammaticalization. In response to t...