We describe a system which ranks humanprovided paraphrases of noun compounds, where the frequency with which a given paraphrase was provided by human volunteers is the gold standard for ranking. Our system assigns a score to a paraphrase of a given compound according to the number of times it has co-occurred with other paraphrases in the rest of the dataset. We use these co-occurrence statistic...

The blog data we have for the project has already been tokenized, more specifically, the data consist of two parts, training vectors and dictionary. Each training sample is represented as a vector, with approximately 1000 components and each component as a word id mapping to the word in the dictionary. However, the dictionary we have is quite crude. Many words are actually closely related, with...

The aim of this study is twofold: firstly, it presents a general overview the evidentiality system in Galician, and secondly, explores use its marker seica. We will argue that, apart from core evidential meanings, which are independent epistemic modality, markers conversation index social meanings related to asymmetry authority, face-saving strategies, detachment, irony, deference towards heare...

Previous metaphor studies have paid much attention to nominal metaphors and predicative metaphors and little attention has been given to adjective metaphors. The most adjective metaphor studies have only examined how the acceptability of adjective metaphors can be explained by the pairing of adjective modifier’s and head noun’s modalities. Sakamoto & Utsumi (2009) showed that adjective metaphor...

Cognitive semantics relates linguistic expressions to conceptual structures. The purpose of this paper is to present a framework for such a cognitive structure. As a preparation, Putnam’s argument against intensional semantics as a theory of meaning is presented. Some of the main tenets of cognitive semantics as it has developed during the last years are outlined. The notion of a conceptual spa...

Wemodel semantic interpretation operationally : constituents interact as their combination in discourse evolves from state to state. The states are recursive data structures and evolve from step to step by context-sensitive rewriting. These notions of context and order let us explain inverse-scope quantifiers and their polarity sensitivity as metalinguistic quotation of the wider scope.

The event template for a verb is a lexical representation of the type of event that the verb can denote. Manner of motion verbs have a simple template: An entity is engaged in a manner of motion activity (e.g., walk). Change of location verbs have a different template: An entity changes from one location to another (e.g., arrive). We propose, and support empirically, that these templates determ...

Socioeconomic status (SES) differences in language development are ubiquitous, but existing research has yet to wrestle with how gaps reflect ( a) relevant concepts for communication, b) comprehension strategies access meanings, and c) production practices that express social identity. In child-directed input, parents use verbs describe similar across SES, the largest emerge when frequent meani...