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The encoding of countability and numerosity in nominal morphology
Full text linkThe aim of this research was to examine the role of Number morphology for what concerns the encoding of information about the numerosity and countability of referents. The issue was approached both from a theoretical and from an experimental point of view. Number morphology is a widespread category and only few languages in the world seem to completely lack it (Corbett, 2000). Why is Number such a common feature among natural languages? In general, it can be assumed that language grammaticalises only some of all the possible information present in the referential world. The fact that information about numerosity is rammaticalised in such a widespread way in natural languages may mirror the salient role that such information has from a biological point of view, i.e. the fact that this information stems from cognitive processes that are biologically relevant in order to behave successfully in a given environment (Hauser & Spelke 2004). Language provides the means to communicate salient information readily. Morphology is one of these means in general, and Number morphology is the one specifically set for the encoding of the information about numerosity of referents. Number morphology is designed to convey salient information expressing numerosities, but this possibility takes place only when the noun is linked to a countable interpretation. Within morphological Number systems, countability plays a crucial role: in fact, in absence of countability, nouns are not inflected but assigned a Number value by default. Although the great amount of interest dedicated to countability both by theoretical and experimental approaches, no account has fully succeeded in explaining countability and its relation with morphological Number. In the present thesis we propose a formal model and provide empirical data - collected in quantitative morphology, psycholinguistics and language acquisition – in order to support the idea that in encoding countability more than one factor comes into play: namely, core grammar rules, effects of non-strictly grammatical processing of linguistic stimuli, and effects related to non-verbal cognitive processes that deal with the information encoded into language
Mass is more: The conceiving of (un)countability and its encoding into language in 5-year-old-children
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Semantic interpretability speeds up the processing of morphological features. A psycholinguistic experiment on gender agreement
No full textOne can be some but some cannot be one: ERP correlates of numerosity incongruence are different for singular and plural
Full text linkHumans can communicate information on numerosity by means of number words (e.g., one hundred, a couple), but also through Number morphology (e.g., through the singular vs the plural forms of a noun). Agreement violations involving Number morphology (e.g., *one apples) are well known to elicit specific ERP components such as the Left Anterior Negativity (LAN); yet, the relationship between a morphological Number value (e.g., singular vs plural) and its referential numerosity has rarely been considered in the literature. Moreover, even if agreement violations have been proven to be very useful, they do not typically characterise everyday language usage, thus narrowing the scope of the results.
In this study we investigated Number morphology from a different perspective, by focusing on the ERP correlates of congruence and incongruence between a depicted numerosity and noun phrases. To this aim we designed a picture–phrase matching paradigm in Italian. In each trial, a picture depicting one or four objects was followed by a grammatically well-formed phrase made up of a quantifier and a content noun inflected either in the singular or in the plural. When analysing ERP time-locked to the content noun, plural phrases after pictures presenting one object elicited a larger negativity, similar to a LAN effect. No significant congruence effect was found in the case of the phrases whose morphological Number value conveyed a numerosity of one. Our results suggest that: 1) incongruence elicits a LAN-like negativity independently from the grammaticality of the utterances and irrespectively of the P600 component; 2) the reference to a numerosity can be partially encoded in an incremental way when processing Number morphology; and, most importantly, 3) the processing of the morphological Number value of plural is different from that of singular as the former shows a narrower interpretability than the latter
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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