The Japanese infinitive-clause construction (InfCx) and gerund-clause construction (GerCx) may convey a wide range of interclausal semantic relations, including ‘temporal sequence’, ‘cause’, and ‘manner’, largely due to pragmatic enrichment. This work addresses the question of what the core meaning(s) of the two constructions is (are), and demonstrates (i) that the InfCx and GerCx indicate eith...

A very large Russian dictionary is described. It contains currently 3.6 million links between its 120,000 entries. The links are syntagmatic (collocations), paradigmatic (WordNet-like), or paronymic (words similar in letters or in morphs). The entries of the dictionary are singleor multiwords belonging to four main POS. The entries represent so-called grammemes rather than lexemes: e.g., nouns ...

Some recent theories of gerunds account for their hybrid properties by saying that the gerund is both a noun and a verb simultaneously. Such theories are inconsistent with the Reference-Predication Constraint (RPC), a cornerstone of Baker’s (2003) theory of lexical categories. In contrast, I defend the traditional idea that gerunds are fusions of a true verb and a syntactically distinct nominal...

Standard architectures favor sequential processes for the semantic and syntactic part of natural language generation. Some semantic decisions, however, require information from the syntactic part, as is shown at the example of translating English gerunds into German. As a solution to this problem, a model is proposed in which syntactic and semantic modules work in parallel, computing preference...

In this paper I discuss the English NP and its diachronic development into DP via the introduction of a D system within nominals. Since NPs are inherently predicative, and N has a R(eferential)-role, that R-role must be bound, if NP is to be used as an argument. Either a functional category D or morphological case binds the R-role. Since there was no DP in OE, and the status of nominal projecti...