1. Modeling gender variation in Russian indeclinable nouns : optimality over structuralism, hierarchical MaxEnt, and degrees of idiosyncrasyVarvara Magomedova, Kirill Chuprinko, Natalia Slioussar, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: In this paper, we provide an analysis of the grammatical gender of 131 inanimate
indeclinable Russian nouns based on the data from the General Internet Corpus
of the Russian Language. We demonstrate that most nouns show substantial variation,
being used in two or even in all three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
We identify several factors affecting this, primarily the gender of the semantic analogy
noun and the root-final vowel. We argue that these data can be used to compare
several major morphological frameworks and conclude that some approaches, namely
optimality-theoretic probabilistic ones, are better suited to account for them. We also
compare different models within the chosen set of approaches and show that the hierarchical
Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) models are superior to the classical MaxEnt
models.
Keywords: gender, MaxEnt, indeclinable nouns, gender agreement, gender variation, Russian, corpus data
Published in RUNG: 16.05.2025; Views: 81; Downloads: 1
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3. Flipping the on/off switch: change in progress in the prepositional complements of verbs like "base" : lecture at the American Dialect Society, Annual Conference, January 8, 2023Guy Tabachnick, Laurel MacKenzie, 2023, unpublished conference contribution Abstract: Traditionally, verbs like base, survive, and capitalize have combined with the preposition on to express a meaning of derivation (based on). Since 2000, the use of off (of) in this construction has rapidly risen in prevalence and acceptability (Curzan, 2013; Behrens, 2014; Janda, 2020). We confirm the relative increase of off in this construction in a corpus of posts from the discussion website Reddit and in two other corpora in both real and apparent time, and find verb-specific effects on rate of off usage.
Keywords: Morpho-Syntactic Variation, prepositions, Reddit corpus, American English
Published in RUNG: 04.03.2024; Views: 2063; Downloads: 12
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4. Gender variation in indeclinable inanimate nouns and gender markedness in modern RussianKirill Chuprinko, Varvara Magomedova, Natalia Slioussar, 2023, original scientific article Abstract: Abstract
In this paper, the results of a large web-corpus study on gender of Russian inanimate indeclinable common nouns are presented. In most cases, neuter is assigned to indeclinables as a default. However, morphophonological and semantic analogy may lead to feminine and masculine gender assignment. An extensive variation is observed in the whole group of indeclinables and for particular words, which is much larger than anything that can be found in indeclinable nouns. These data support the idea that both masculine and neuter genders have a special status in the Russian gender system (Magomedova & Slioussar 2023). Masculine tends to be chosen in case of conflicting gender cues. When there are no strong cues pointing to any gender, neuter is assigned as the default option. The results of the study are hardly compatible with various structural approaches to gender assignment, but can be accounted for in competition-based models.
Keywords: grammatical gender, Russian, gender variation, corpus study, linguistics
Published in RUNG: 26.01.2024; Views: 1887; Downloads: 4
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5. Adjective ordering and concept perception: two sides of the same coinFranc Marušič, Petra Mišmaš, Vesna Plesničar, Rok Žaucer, unpublished conference contribution Keywords: adjectives, adjective ordering restrictions, corpus, cognition, noun phrase, Slovenian, perception
Published in RUNG: 21.02.2023; Views: 4194; Downloads: 0
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6. A CORPUS INVESTIGATION OF THE ORDERING OF SELECTED ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVES IN SLOVENIANVesna Plesničar, 2022, published scientific conference contribution Abstract: The paper investigates the question of attributive adjective ordering in
Slovenian against the background of the cartographic model of natural
language syntax (e.g., Cinque 1994, 2010, Scott 2002, Shlonsky 2004,
Laenzlinger 2005, Ramaglia 2014). Using the nearly 1.2-billion-word
Gigafida 2.0 corpus, we conducted a study in which we check the frequency
of attested orders of selected attributive adjectives belonging to thirteen
semantic categories and determine whether we can adequately predict
language use if we adopt a cartographic model as a working theoretical
framework, specifically the adjective hierarchy proposed in Scott (2002).
The results show that the probability of encountering an order that violates
the hierarchy is in general extremely small compared to the probability of
encountering an order that respects the hierarchy, which indicates that
the order of adjectives attested in the Slovenian corpus is by-and-large
compatible with the proposal that the order is governed by a hierarchy of
adjective projections.
Keywords: generative grammar, cartography, attributive adjective string, language use, corpus
Published in RUNG: 07.11.2022; Views: 2213; Downloads: 0
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7. A corpus investigation of the ordering of selected attributive adjectives in SlovenianVesna Plesničar, 2021, published scientific conference contribution abstract Abstract: The paper investigates the question of attributive adjective ordering in Slovenian against the background of the cartographic model of natural language syntax, outlined already in Rizzi (1997). According to this model, the order of adjectives within a complex noun phrase results from a hierarchy of functional projections (e.g., Cinque 1994, 2010, Scott 2002, Shlonsky 2004, Laenzlinger 2005); a proposal for how the hierarchy should be structured is given below:
DETERMINER > ORDINAL NUMBER > CARDINAL NUMBER > SUBJECTIVE COMMENT > ?EVIDENTIAL > SIZE > LENGTH > HEIGHT > SPEED > ?DEPTH > WIDTH > WEIGHT > TEMPERTURE > ?WETNESS > AGE > SHAPE > COLOR > NATIONALITY/ORIGIN > MATERIAL > COMPOUND ELEMENT > NP
(Scott 2002: 114)
The model has been very influential, but has also attracted various types of criticism, ranging from the problem of innateness, origin and plentitude to the problem of rigidity (i.a., Truswell 2009, Larson 2017, Scontras et al. 2017, 2019, Leivada and Westergaard 2019). Given the conclusions based on large databases, the concerns of corpus studies focusing on the rigidity problem seem particularly relevant (i.a., Wulff 2003, Truswell 2009, Kotowski and Hartl 2019, Trotzke and Wittenberg 2019).
Using nearly 1,2-billion-word Gigafida corpus, we conducted a study in which we check the frequency of attested orders of selected attributive adjectives of thirteen semantic categories and determine whether we can adequately predict language use if we adopt a cartographic model as a working theoretical framework, specifically the adjective hierarchy proposed in Scott (2002).
The results show that the probability of encountering an order that violates the hierarchy, compared to the probability of encountering an order that respects the hierarchy, is in general extremely small, and indicates that the order of adjectives attested in our Slovenian corpus is by-and-large compatible with the proposal that the order is governed by a hierarchy of adjective projections.
Keywords: generative grammar, cartography, attributive adjective string, language use, corpus
Published in RUNG: 08.12.2021; Views: 2948; Downloads: 0
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