Taking Hindi presumptive modality as a case study, this paper argues that modality is detrimental in an overall organization of the tense-aspect system in languages in which these categories are marked, although only tense and aspect categories have attracted much attention in linguistic research. The paper analyzes different usages of the future form of the Hindi verb honā ‘to be’ – both as a ...

This paper proposes an analysis method for Japanese modality. In this purpose, meaning of Japanese modality is classified into four semantic categories and the role of it is formalized into five modality functions. Based on these formalizations, information and constraints to be applied to the modality analysis procedure are specified. Then by combining these investigations with case analysis, ...

The paper describes a novel rule-based approach to classification of opinion statements on the level of individual sentences. In contrast to existing approaches, the proposed method relies on the rules elaborated for semantically distinct verb classes. To deeply analyse the type, strength, and confidence level of expressed opinion, the system relies on the compositionality principle and lexicon...

We propose a model for knowledge attribution and epistemic evaluation in scientific discourse, consisting of three dimensions with different values: source (author, other, unknown); value (unknown, possible, probable, presumed true) and basis (reasoning, data, other). Based on a literature review, we investigate four linguistic features that mark different types epistemic evaluation (modal auxi...

When verbs of motion are accompanied by gestures, this comes along with a relatively complex relation between the two modalities. In this paper, we investigate the semantic coordination of speech and event-related gestures in an interdisciplinary way. First, we explain how to efficiently construct a speech-gesture-interface for a gesture which accompanies a verb phrase from a theoretical viewpo...

According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis, unaccusative subjects are base-generated in object position and move to subject position. We examined this hypothesis using the cross-modal lexical priming technique, which tests whether and when an antecedent is reactivated during the online processing of a sentence. We compared sentences containing unergative verbs with sentences containing unaccusati...

Breaking away from traditional attempts at coreference resolution from discourseonly inputs, we try to do the same by constructing rich verb semantics from perceptual data, viz. a 2-D video. Using a bottom-up dynamic attention model and relative-motion-features between agents in the video, transitive verbs, their argument ordering etc. are learned through association with co-occurring adult com...

A survey of reports of sign order from 42 sign languages leads to a handful of generalizations. Two accounts emerge, one amodal and the other modal. We argue that universal pressures are at work with respect to some generalizations, but that pressure from the visual modality is at work with respect to others. Together, these pressures conspire to make all sign languages order their major consti...