3,383 research outputs found
Language Change and SA-OT: The case of sentential negation
No full textSimulated Annealing for Optimality Theory (SA-OT) updates Optimality Theory by adding a model of performance to a theory of linguistic competence. Our aim is to show that SA-OT can contribute to language change simulations. Performance "errors" are considered to be one of the causes of variation and change. We have chosen to model the evolution of sentential negation (SN). The descriptive background adopts Jespersen's Cycle, according to which the evolution of sentential negation follows three main stages (1. pre-verbal, 2. discontinuous, and 3. post-verbal). Therefore, we advance a novel model for SN, based on SA-OT. It reproduces the three pure and the two observed mixed stages, whereas it correctly predicts the lack of an intermediate stage between 3 and 1. The success of the approach corroborates the computational, performance-based approach to the data. Finally, we employ the iterated learning paradigm to reproduce historical changes in a "simulated corpus study". This enterprise turns out to be more difficult than one would naively believe.Appeared open access as: Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands Journal (CLIN), vol. 1 (2011), pp. 21-40, and is available at http://www.clinjournal.org/sites/default/files/Lopopolo.pdfA. Lopopolo and Biró, T., “Language Change and SA-OT. The case of sentential negation”, Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands Journal, vol. 1, pp. 21-40, 2011.Peer Reviewe
Luke’s use of the Old Testament in Luke 22-23
No full textWhile Luke understands Jesus' suffering and death as the fulfillment of OT prophecy, he does not use many OT quotations or allusions to express this fact in his passion narrative. The question arises: How does Luke use the OT in his passion narrative, especially to show prophetic fulfillment?This study seeks to answer this question through an identification and analysis of the OT quotations, allusions, ideas, and stylistic elements in Luke 22-23. The criteria for identification and critical analysis are gathered from studying the history of scholarship on the subject from the Reformation to 1972.Our findings are that Luke presents the fulfillment of the key OT prophecy in his passion narrative, Is. 53:12/Lk. 22:37, through a thematic development of various aspects of its message. Other OT quotes, allusions, ideas, and stylistic elements contribute to the development of this theme. Luke's approach to the OT is Christocentric both in the sense that all the quotations and most of the allusions occur in the reported words of Jesus, and in the sense that most of Luke's OT material refers to the OT promises of a suffering and glorified Messiah. OT ideas also occur mainly in the reported words of Jesus and the OT stylistic elements are best understood as examples of LXX style imitation. We found that Luke's lack of allusions and quotations was probably due to his desire to have his readers relive the fulfillment events of the Passion as they unfold in the narrative without being distracted by editorial fulfillment proof~texts. Yet, at the same time Luke, the Christian theologian to the Gentiles, did make extensive use of the OT. With a Christocentric interpretational approach to understanding OT prophecy and theological content within a salvation history framework, Luke shows how the OT was important to Gentile Christians
Effect of Nomadists‟ Uncontrolled grazing on livelihood activities in Oyo State Nigeria
No full textThe study assessed the effect of Nomadic pastoralists uncontrolled grazing which led to conflicts on the livelihood activities of agro-pastoralists in Iseyin Local Government Area of Oyo State. Fifty percent of the agro pastoralists households (III) in the study area were randomly selected and simple technique was used to sample one male and one female household heads from each of the households, totaling two hundred and twenty two respondents. The agro-pastoralists personal characteristics, livelihood activities and accessibility to resources before and after occurrence of conflicts due to nomadic pastoralists uncontrolled grazing were determined. Findings showed that majority of the agropastoralists had no formal education. The nomadic pastoralists uncontrolled grazing led to conflicts between agropastoralists and crop farmers. Majority of the agro pastoralists assumed that the aggressive attribute of the nomadic pastoralists was the major cause of their uncontrolled grazing, which consequently made agro pastoralists to suffer in numerous ways. Measures to prevent future occurrence of conflict were recommended. Such as enactment of government policy to check the nomadic pastoralists uncontrolled grazing and improvement to nomadic education programme as to provide opportunities for diverse livelihood activities to the pastoralists
Development and evaluation of occupational therapy - Mahidol Clinic System (OT-MCS) for post-stroke rehabiliation in Thailand
No full textIn 2011 it was estimated that in Thailand there were 498,800 stroke survivors of both sexes but most were over the age of 65. They were served by only 625 occupational therapists (OTs). Occupational therapy (OT) plays a key role in the rehabilitation service for stroke patients, in particular, by enabling stroke survivors to reengage with activities of daily living and to resume work or family tasks. OT needs to be culturally appropriate and relevant to the therapists, stroke patients and their families. The Occupational Therapy Mahidol Clinic System (OT-MCS) has been designed to be culturally relevant and is based on collaborative teamwork which can better address the needs of the stroke patients.
OT-MCS was introduced in 6 regional OT clinics. This study compared perceptions of stroke clients who took part in the new approach 8 weeks before and during the rehabilitation. One hundred and twenty stroke participants were divided into 2 functional groups (slow and fast stream rehabilitation). Stroke participants (N=120) and OTs (N=60) explored the arrangement of activity items into domains for creating a new activity card sort (ACS). Sixty stroke participants
(slow stream rehabilitation) and 60 OTs were surveyed to investigate the attitudes of “satisfaction” and “importance” via 40 therapeutic activities. Sixty stroke participants (fast stream rehabilitation) evaluated the levels of their activity engagement in diverse cultural-therapeutic
activities. Lastly, 23 stroke participants (slow and fast stream rehabilitation) were interviewed in order to ascertain their lived experiences after the use of OT-MCS and the data were analysed using thematic analysis.
The integrated analysis demonstrated strong satisfaction and engagement with OT-MCS. The use of the activity catalogue met with positive attitudes from the stroke participants and in particular the collaborative approach of OTs and participants gave meaning to the activities and a sense of
self management. In addition in the fast stream rehabilitation participants reported satisfaction
with the transferability of the activities to the home and external environment and their relevance to supporting family life.
The OT-MCS for Thai stroke rehabilitation is a comprehensive OT service, which improves the perception of benefit in stroke clients enabling them to perform meaningful and purposeful activities based on their local and regional lifestyles. This culturally appropriate approach helps stroke clients to re-develop their life-skills. Through the use of meaningful and relevant activities which meet their specific needs, stroke clients can lead more satisfying and fulfilling lives
Parsing in OT
No full textOptimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993; McCarthy & Prince, 1993) maintains that phonological generalizations can be treated by a two-step process. First, all possible pronunciations for some string are generated by the GEN operation. Then, the best of these different pronunciations is chosen by a set of ranked and violable constraints. This is the dominant theory of phonology today. This theory poses a serious problem for theories of phonological performance; the model cannot be implemented in real time because the candidate set is infinite. Even if we eliminate a number of options in generating candidates, we are still left with an extremely large number of candidate pronunciations to sift through in finite time.
In this paper, I propose to implement syllabification in OT as a parser. I propose several innovations that result in a finite and small candidate set. The candidate set problem is handled with several moves: i) MAX and DEP violations are not hypothesized by the parser, ii) candidates are encoded locally, and iii) EVAL is applied constraint by constraint.
The parser I propose is implemented in Prolog. It has a number of desirable consequences. First, it runs and thus provides an existence proof that syllabification can be implemented in OT. There are a number of other desirable consequences as well. First, constraints are implemented as finite-state transducers. Second, the parser makes several interesting claims about the phonological properties of so-called nonrecoverable insertions and deletions. Third, the implementation suggests some particular reformulations of some of the benchmark constraints in the OT arsenal, e.g. *COMPLEX, PARSE, ONSET, and NOCODA. Finally, the implementation is compared with various other proposals in the literature, e.g. Ellison (1994), Hammond (1995), Tesar (1995), and Eisner (1997)
Input 'Clusters' and Contrast Preservation in OT
No full textThe starting point of this paper is the Contrast Preservation Theory (PCT) of Lubowicz (2002), and its novel approach to phonological opacity in OT. A core claim of PCT is that various opaque mappings, which have been problematic in OT, can be readily explained as the effect of systemic contrast preservation. Thus, PCT is an OT model which evaluates not only the Markedness and Faitfhfulness of its candidates, but also their preservation of phonological contrasts. To do so, the EVAL component of PC theory assesses multiple input forms, in an input scenario.The goal of this paper is to provide an alternative to scenarios, which still captures the contrast-preserving patterns suggested by PCT. My alternative is a grammar-based algorithm that builds finite, language-specific sets of input forms called input clusters. In building clusters, the algorithm relies crucially on the existing core of OT: the language-specific ranking of Markedness and Faithfulness constraints, and the decision-making powers of EVAL. Working loosely within the framework of PCT, I use the algorithm and its resulting clusters to analyze a derived environment effect (one opaque pattern explained under PCT). The success of this analysis provides initial support for the algorithm, and for the broader claim that such an algorithm�s clusters will contain all the input forms necessary to capture contrast-preserving opacity.After the introduction, section 2 provides some minimal theoretical background on PCT and its notion of input scenarios, and in section 3 I propose my cluster-building algorithm. Section 4 introduces the derived environment effect (DEE), and uses data from a Campidanian Sardinian DEE to demonstrate how the algorithm builds clusters. Section 5 puts those clusters to work in the analysis of Campidanian Sardinian, using a contrast-preserving constraint based on those of Lubowicz (2002). The last section summarizes the results, and raises questions for future work
Compensatory Lengthening via Mora Preservation in OT-CC: Theory and Predictions
No full textUnlike 'classic' OT (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004), Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (OT-CC) (McCarthy 2007) allows an account of compensatory lengthening via mora preservation, as in Hayes (1989). The OT-CC constraint ranking that permits compenstory lengthening makes a novel prediction about the rime structure of languages that exhibit these alternations. The OT-CC analysis presented here predicts both that VC rimes will be bi-moraic, as in Hayes (1989), and that the second mora of these rimes will be shared between the syllable nucelus and the syllable coda, a novel prediction of OT-CC. If shared moras distribute phonetic duration across segments (as argued by Broselow et. al. 1997), this prediction links the formal analysis of compensatory lengthening in OT-CC to the typologically rare phenomenon of closed syllable lengthening.The definitive version of this paper is published in NELS 38: Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society (2008) and is available at https://www.createspace.com/339068
Reader, Authors, and the Divine Author: An Evangelical Proposal for Identifying Paul\u27s OT Citations
No full textThe article discusses several approaches for the identification of Old Testament (OT) citations made by Paul. The author-centered approach of Stanley Porter allows the investigation of verbal and thematic parallelism between the Old and the New Testament, while the reader-centered approach of Christopher Stanley, Dietrich-Alex Koch and Richard Hay, considers the impact on the reader. It highlights the method of the Divine Author-centered approach which considers the context of the citation based on the book, the Bible and the canon
FootForm Decomposed: Using primitive constraints in OT
No full textHayes (1995) gives a typology of the world's metrical stress systems, which is marked by several striking asymmetries (parametric gaps). Most work on metrical stress within Optimality Theory (OT) has adopted this typology without explaining the gaps. Moreover, the OT versions use uncomfortably non-local constraints (Align, FootForm, FtBin).
This paper presents a rather different and in some ways more explanatory typology of stress, couched in the restrictive framework of primitive Optimality Theory (OTP), which allows only primitive, radically local constraints. For example, Generalized Alignment is not allowed. The paper presents a single, coherent system of rerankable constraints that yields the basic facts about iambic and trochaic foot form, iambic lengthening, quantity sensitivity, unbounded feet, simple word-initial and word-final stress, directionality of footing, syllable (and foot) extrametricality, degenerate feet, and word-level stress.
The metrical part of the account rests on the following intuitions:
(a) iambs are special because syllable structure allows them to lengthen their strong ends;
(b) directionality of footing is really the result of local lapse avoidance;
(c) any lapses are forced by a (localist) generalization of right extrametricality;
(d) degenerate feet are absolutely banned, but primary stress does not require a foot in all languages.
An interesting prediction of (b) and (c) is that left-to-right trochees should be incompatible with extrametricality. This prediction is robustly confirmed in Hayes.The definitive version of this paper was published in the Proceedings of the 8th Student Conference in Linguistics (1997) and is available at http://mitwpl.mit.edu/catalog/mwpl31/Eisner, J. (1997). FootForm decomposed: Using primitive constraints in OT. In B. Bruening (Ed.) Proceedings of the 8th Student Conference in Linguistics (pp. 115-143). Cambridge, MA: Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.This material is based upon work supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship
Russian prefixes and prepositions in Stratal OT
No full textSince the work of Zubritskaya (1995) and Matushansky (2002), it has been known that prefixes and prepositions instantiate a synchronically unified and unique class in Russian phonology. A less discussed point is that Russian prefixes and prepositions cannot be unified on the basis of their morphosyntactic characteristics. An existing analysis (Rubach 2000) addresses only the phonological facts, implicitly assuming that the two categories are identical morphosyntactically. To resolve the apparent contradiction between the phonological identity and the morphosyntactic nonidentity of prefixes and prepositions, I propose a Stratal OT (Kiparsky 2000) approach to the jer vocalization and palatalization patterns within the complex containing the prefix/preposition and its host. The account takes as its foundation the work of Blumenfeld (2003), and posits that prefixes and prepositions are processed at distinct strata (word and postlexical, respectively). The paper also provides tentative evidence, based on jer realization patterns, to support the claim that there is a phonological, not just morphosyntactic, reason to associate the composition of prefixes and prepositions with different strata.This is the authors' draft version of the paper. The definitive version of this paper is published in Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (2008) and is a available at http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/26/abstract1675.htmlGrobanova, V. (2008). Russian prefixes, prepositions and palatalization in Stratal OT. In C.B. Chang & H.J. aynie (Eds.) Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 217-225). Somerville, MA, USA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.ISBN 978-1-57473-423-2 (published conference proceedings
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