L’objectif de ce travail de recherche est d’étudier la distinction formelle entre les locutions verbales et les constructions à verbe support telles qu’elles sont présentées et décrites par les chercheurs travaillant dans le cadre théorique du lexique-grammaire. Dans ce but, nous avons conçu quatre tâches que nous avons proposées à nos deux groupes de participants : des locuteurs natifs du français et des apprenants du FL2. Nous avons testé plusieurs aspects de la maîtrise des constructions verbales complexes (...) en français par nos participants en mettant en lumière les différences dans les tâches de perception ainsi que dans les tâches de production des structures ciblées. Cette étude démontre que, bien que la perception des structures verbales complexes par les apprenants du FL2 soit assez semblable à celle des locuteurs natifs de cette langue, leur production représente un aspect assez difficile pour les premiers. (shrink)

Innovative verbs in Japanese are formed from nouns of various sources including loanwords, Sino-Japanese nouns, mimetics, and proper names. Regardless of their different origin, these innovative denominal verbs exhibit a collection of intriguing properties, ranging from phonological, morphological, to semantic and pragmatic. These properties are not strictly predictable from the component parts including the nature of the parent noun and verbal morphology. Such an unpredictable nature is suggestive of a constructional analysis. The form-meaning-function complex takes a templatic representation, which expresses (...) the phonological and morphological characteristics, and associated with it are semantic and pragmatic properties. These phonological, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic properties combine to capture the nature of innovative denominal verbs as a construction. The analysis supports the idea of applying construction grammar to morphology along the lines of the developing field of construction morphology (e.g., Booij, Compounding and derivation: Evidence for construction morphology, John Benjamins, 2005, Construction morphology and the lexicon: 34–44, Cascadilla Press, 2007, Linguistische Berichte 19: 1–14, 2009a, Compounding and construction morphology, Oxford University Press, 2009b). We further show how insights from templatic (or prosodic) morphology (e.g., McCarthy and Prince, Prosodic morphology, University of Massachusetts and Brandeis University, 1986, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8: 209–282, 1990) can be conceptualized in terms of construction grammar. (shrink)

Nous examinons ici les schémas lexico-grammaticaux (LG) associés à trois verbes supports (« effectuer », « réaliser », « procéder ») dans deux corpus juridiques comparables (un corpus de directives européennes rédigées en français et leur transposition en France dans les textes de lois). A cette fin, nous utilisons Le Trameur, un logiciel de textométrie qui permet une comparaison systématique des données textuelles en mobilisant plusieurs méthodes statistiques exploratoires : analyse des fréquences par partie, spécificités, segments répétés, co-occurrences, poly-cooccurrences, (...) etc. Le recours à ce type d’outils permet au linguiste d’élaborer des unités de base de son système analytique en suivant un protocole de recherche précis, qui tient compte des indices quantitatifs. Finalement, des distinctions lexico-grammaticales fines entre des lexèmes dont le sémantisme serait trop proche pour une comparaison hors contexte, sont visualisées de façon synthétique au fil du texte, tout en permettant de différentier certaines constructions spécifiques du français « eurolectal » et les éléments du discours technocratique « national ». (shrink)

This paper addresses the correct analysis of Korean examples like those in (1).∗ An event is presented against a contrastive or negative implication, through either a copy of the verbal lexeme, or the use of the supporting verb ha-ta.

Many studies show a developmental advantage for transitive sentences with familiar verbs over those with novel verbs. It might be that once familiar verbs become entrenched in particular constructions, they would be more difficult to understand (than would novel verbs) in non-prototypical constructions. We provide support for this hypothesis investigating German children using a forced-choice pointing paradigm with reversed agent-patient roles. We tested active transitive verbs in study 1. The 2-year olds were better with familiar than novel (...) verbs, while the 2½-year olds pointed correctly for both. In study 2, we tested passives: 2½-year olds were significantly below chance for familiar verbs and at chance for novel verbs, supporting the hypothesis that the entrenchment of the familiar verbs in the active transitive voice was interfering with interpreting them in the passive voice construction. The 3½-year olds were also at chance for novel verbs but above chance with familiar verbs. We interpret this as reflecting a lessening of the verb-in-construction entrenchment as the child develops knowledge that particular verbs can occur in a range of constructions. The 4½-year olds were above chance for both familiar and novel verbs. We discuss our findings in terms of the relative entrenchment of lexical and syntactic information and to interference between them. (shrink)

Whilst certain verbs may appear in both the intransitive inchoative and the transitive causative constructions (The ball rolled/The man rolled the ball), others may appear in only the former (The man laughed/*The joke laughed the man). Some accounts argue that children acquire these restrictions using only (or mainly) statistical learning mechanisms such as entrenchment and pre-emption. Others have argued that verb semantics are also important. To test these competing accounts, adults (Experiment 1) and children aged 5–6 and 9–10 (Experiment (...) 2) were taught novel verbs designed to be construed — on the basis of their semantics — as either intransitive-only or alternating. In support of the latter claim, participants' grammaticality judgments revealed that even the youngest group respected these semantic constraints. Frequency (entrenchment) effects were observed for familiar, but not novel, verbs (Experiment 1). We interpret these findings in the light of a new theoretical account designed to yield effects of both verb semantics and entrenchment/pre-emption. (shrink)

Research focusing on Anglo-European languages indicates that children’s acquisition of the subordinate structure of complement-clause constructions and the semantics of mental verbs facilitates their understanding of false belief, and that the two linguistic factors interact. Complement-clause constructions support false-belief development, but only when used with realis mental verbs like ‘think’ in the matrix clause (de Villiers, Jill. 2007. The interface of language and Theory of Mind.Lingua117(11). 1858–1878). In Chinese, however, only the semantics of mental verbs seems to (...) play a facilitative role in false-belief development (Cheung, Him, Hsuan-Chih Chen & William Yeung. 2009. Relations between mental verb and false belief understanding in Cantonese-speaking children.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology104(2). 141–155). We argue that these cross-linguistic differences can be explained by variations in availability and usage patterns of mental verbs and complement-clause constructions across languages. Unlike English, Mandarin-Chinese has a verb that indicates that a belief might be false:yi3wei2‘(falsely) think’. Our corpus analysis suggests that, unlike English caregivers, Mandarin-Chinese caregivers do not produce frequent, potentially unanalyzed, chunks with mental verbs and first-person subjects, such as ‘I think’. In an experiment, we found that the comprehension of complement-clause constructions used withyi3wei2‘(falsely) think’, but not withjue2de2‘think’, predicted Mandarin children’s false-belief understanding between the ages of 4 and 5. In contrast to English, whether mental verbs were used with first- or third-person subjects did not affect their correlation with false-belief understanding. (shrink)

This paper investigates frequency effects in the L2 acquisition of the catenative verb construction by German learners of English from a usage-based perspective by presenting findings from two experimental studies and a complementary corpus study. It was examined if and to what extent the frequency of the verb in the catenative verb construction affects the choice of the target-like complement type and if the catenative verb construction with a to-infinitive complement, which is highly frequent in English, is more accurately acquired (...) and entrenched than the less frequent variant with an -ing complement. In all three studies, the more frequent construction with a to-infinitive yielded higher numbers of target-like complement choices. Furthermore, it was shown that the verb’s faithfulness to the construction made a significant prediction of a target-like complement preference. It is argued that a higher faithfulness promotes a target-like entrenchment of the construction and motivates a taxonomic generalisation across related exemplars. Furthermore, the results provide support for the idea that the mental representation of language is comprised of item-specific as well as more abstract schema knowledge, where frequency determines the specificity with which the construction is entrenched. (shrink)

In this paper, we present our Construction Grammar account of light verb constructions in the Indo-Aryan language Odia. These light verb constructions are asymmetric complex verb predicates that combine a main verb with a light verb. While the LVs are form-identical with a lexical verb, they are “light” because they have lost their lexical content as well as their argument structure. We argue that LV constructions present a coherent system: they all modulate the interpretation of the event (...) encoded by the main verb by adding a particular aspectual profile on the event and some of these light verbs further add a mirative interpretation. The present paper focuses on this subset of “aspectuo-mirative LVs” which can be characterised as non-parasitic expressions of mirativity; in particular, it presents new work on the light verb -uʈh ‘-rise’ that combines a profile on ONSET with mirativity. The constructional view that we present here offers an account of light verbs that is both descriptively and theoretically innovative. Its descriptive value resides in its systematic and fine-grained corpus-based analysis of the formal and semantic features of LVs beyond what is found in the existing literature. The theoretical contribution of our paper not only resides in offering a better understanding of the status of LVs in the grammar, but by situating the semantic value of some of these in the complex category of mirativity, it offers a more unified answer of quite disparate observations in the literature. Finally, we also address the question of whether this mirative value of the aspectuo-mirative LVs is semantic or pragmatic. As we will show, such a strict dichotomy cannot be maintained, which gives further support for a constructional approach. (shrink)

Questions about the nature of the relationship between language and extralinguistic cognition are old, but only recently has a new view emerged that allows for the systematic investigation of claims about linguistic structure, based on how it is understood or utilized outside of the language system. Our paper represents a case study for this interaction in the domain of event semantics. We adopt a transparency thesis about the relationship between linguistic structure and extralinguistic cognition, investigating whether different lexico-syntactic structures can (...) differentially recruit the visual causal percept. A prominent analysis of causative verbs like move suggests reference to two distinct events and a causal relationship between them, whereas non-causative verbs like push do not so refer. In our study, we present English speakers with simple scenes that either do or do not support the perception of a causal link, and manipulate (between subjects) a one-sentence instruction for the evaluation of the scene. Preliminary results suggest that competent speakers of English are more likely to judge causative constructions than non-causative constructions as true of a scene where causal features are present in the scene. Implications for a new approach to the investigation of linguistic meanings and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

This article suggests evidence for and reasons why prior acquisition may either facilitate or inhibit acquisition of a new construction. It investigates acquisition of the German passive and future constructions which contain a lexical verb with either the auxiliary sein “to be” or werden “to become”, and are related through these to potential supporting constructions. We predicted that a supported construction should be acquired earlier, faster, and unusually rapidly. An inhibited construction should show an extended depressed usage. We (...) analyzed a dense corpus of a German boy between 2;0 and 5;0. He acquired the sein- before the werden-passive. The former was supported by his prior acquisition of the sein copula, whereas the werden-passive itself supported one werden copula construction. He acquired the werden-future extremely slowly due to the hindrance of a semantically identical construction. These results fit with an emergentist approach in which apparently “sudden” acquisition is still due to gradual learning mechanisms. (shrink)

This paper investigates the acquisition of residual verb second (V2) in three corpora consisting of data from Norwegian-English bilinguals (Emma, Emily, and Sunniva) in order to determine to what extent these structures are affected by cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from Norwegian V2. The three girls exhibit three different patterns with regard to the relevant constructions. They are very target-like in their use of auxiliaries in the relevant structures. However, when it comes to do-support, Emily and Sunniva are equally target-like, (...) while Emma mainly produces non-target-like structures. These either involve the omission of do, or non-target-like movement of a lexical verb. Furthermore, Emma also allows verb movement across the subject with both lexical verbs and auxiliaries in topicalized structures, suggesting that she has overgeneralized residual V2 across verb types and clause types. Emily, on the other hand, is very target-like in structures involving residual V2 in English, but also allows auxiliaries and dummy-do to move across the subject in topicalized structures, overgeneralizing residual V2 to apply to non-subject-initial declaratives. Finally, Sunniva, is very precocious and very target-like in all the relevant structures, which may be an indication of acceleration due to CLI from Norwegian V2. We discuss these results with reference to language balance, finding that the measures available to us suggest that the differences between the children cannot straightforwardly be explained by language dominance. Instead, we suggest that these results can be accounted for by ambiguity in the English system, leaving the data open to several possible interpretations when acquired in contact with the consistent V2 system in Norwegian. This has several consequences: (i) the three girls’ parsers interpret the input differently, (ii) differences between the three children are qualitative rather than quantitative, and (iii) there has to be some mechanism that ensures that the children can ‘recover’ from these non-target-like grammars. In this paper, we will focus on the first two issues. (shrink)

This study traces the individual learning trajectories of an adult beginner L2 Finnish learner in expressing the extralinguistic concept of evaluation from a dynamic usage-based perspective. Our results provide support for the view of learner language as a dynamic system in which patterns wax and wane and in which a change in one component has the potential to affect the whole system. In the early stages of learning there was a strong preference to use lexical verbs first, and then (...) adjectives. The study also shows that variability plays a role. Finally, the study confirms that the learning of L2 constructions is in some cases item based. However, another highly frequent and superficially similar verbal construction in our data did not develop from a fixed formula. The role of instruction and the learner’s explicit knowledge as well as possibly input frequencies may have played a role in the different developmental trajectories. (shrink)

In this single industry study, the authors examine relationships between forest products companies in Maine and their stakeholders. The research question, why do firms work with stakeholders, is examined from both instrumental and normative perspectives. Specifically, it is hypothesized that stakeholder power and corporate social responsiveness affect the degree to which firms have working relationships with stakeholders. The study found support for the impact of the firm’s perception of stakeholder power on the strength of its relationships with stakeholders. Most (...) notably, it also found support for the firm’s corporate social responsiveness on the strength of its stakeholder relations, indicating that firms do work with stakeholders from both instrumental and normative bases. (shrink)

Cognitive-linguistic theories commonly model speakers’ grammatical knowledge as a network of constructions related by a variety of associative links. The present study proposes that structural priming can provide psycholinguistic evidence of such links, and crucially, that the method can be extended to non-alternating constructions. In a comprehension priming experiment using the “maze” variant of self-paced reading, English caused-motion sentences were found to have an inhibitory effect by slowing down participants’ subsequent processing of resultatives, and vice versa, providing evidence (...) that speakers store distinct but related representations for the constructions. Priming effects of a similar magnitude emerged in both directions, suggesting that the constructions are bidirectionally related, while not supporting previous claims about a metaphorical asymmetry between the patterns. Moreover, priming was only marginally affected when prime and target contained the same rather than different verbs, demonstrating that cross-constructional priming in comprehension can be observed in the absence of a “lexical boost”. The results raise questions for follow-up research on the role of inhibition in the grammatical network and the extension of structural priming to other types of constructional links. (shrink)

Our paper addresses the following question: Is there a general characterization, for all predicates P that take both declarative and interrogative complements , of the meaning of the P-interrogative clause construction in terms of the meaning of the P-declarative clause construction? On our account, if P is a responsive predicate and Q a question embedded under P, then the meaning of ‘P + Q’ is, informally, “to be in the relation expressed by P to some potential complete answer to Q”. (...) We show that this rule allows us to derive veridical and non-veridical readings of embedded questions, depending on whether the embedding verb is veridical or not, and provide novel empirical evidence supporting the generalization. We then enrich our basic proposal to account for the presuppositions induced by the embedding verbs, as well as for the generation of intermediate exhaustive readings of embedded questions. (shrink)

This paper presents a cross-linguistic survey of the interpretations that decomposition adverbs like _again_ permit. The survey distinguishes two different types of predicates that are combined with _again_: lexical accomplishments like ‘open the door’, on the one hand, and combinations of a motion verb with a directional Prepositional Phrase on the other. There is systematic cross-linguistic variation with the latter type of predicate: a language only permits a restitutive reading of _again_ with such a predicate if the language has resultative (...) constructions. I argue that in these languages the PP can function as a result phrase. In languages without resultatives, the PP cannot be a result phrase, and a restitutive reading is impossible. The data support an analysis of restitutive _again_ that is sensitive to the presence of a result phrase in the syntax. (shrink)

The development of abstract schemas and productive rules in language is affected by both token and type frequencies. High token frequencies and surface similarities help to discover formal and functional commonalities between utterances and categorize them as instances of the same schema. High type frequencies and diversity help to develop slots in these schemas, which allow the production and comprehension of novel utterances. In the current study we looked at both token and type frequencies in two related constructions in (...) German child-directed speech: simple transitive and complement-clause constructions. Both constructions contain high frequency verbs, which potentially support the development of verb-specific schemas. However, only the frequent verbs in the transitive constructions occur with a variety of subject types, which also supports the development of a slot in the subject position. We then used an elicited production task to compare 4- and 5-year-old German-speaking children's productivity with simple transitive constructions and complement-clause constructions. The children were prompted to change the subjects of high and low frequency simple transitive verbs, such as essen ‘eat’ and naschen ‘nibble’, mental-state complement-taking verbs, such as denken ‘think’ and vermuten ‘presume’, and communication complement-taking verbs, such as sagen ‘say’ and berichten ‘report’. In accordance with earlier findings, children had less difficulty producing new utterances with high frequency transitive verbs than with low frequency transitive verbs. For the other verb classes, however, we found either reverse frequency effects or no frequency effects. For these verb classes, children's productivity can be determined by diversity rather than simple token frequency. We discuss how token frequency interacts with diversity, discourse function, semantic complexity, and syntactic complexity. (shrink)

Due to increasing empiricalinformation on farm animal welfare since the1960s, the prospects for sound decisionmakingconcerning welfare have improved. This paperdescribes a strategy to develop adecision-making aid, a decision support system,for assessment of farm-animal welfare based onavailable scientific knowledge. Such a decisionsupport system allows many factors to be takeninto account. It is to be developed accordingto the Evolutionary Prototyping Method, inwhich an initial prototype is improved inreiterative updating cycles. This initialprototype has been constructed. It useshierarchical representations to analysescientific statements and (...) statements describingthe housing system. Welfare is assessed fromwhat is known about the biological needs of theanimals, using a welfare model in the form of atree that contains these needs as welfarecomponents. Each state of need is assessedusing welfare relevant attributes of thehousing system and weighting factors.Attributes are measurable properties of thehousing system. Weighting factors are assignedaccording to heuristic rules based on theprinciple of weighting all components(attributes and needs) equally, unless thereare strong reasons to do otherwise. Preliminarytests of the prototype indicate that it may bepossible to perform assessment of farm-animalwelfare in an explicit way and based onempirical findings. The procedure needs to berefined, but its prospects are promising. (shrink)

Memory perspectives on past events allegedly take one of two shapes. In field memories, we recall episodes from a first-person point of view, while in observer memories, we look at a past scene from a third-person perspective. But this mere visuospatial dichotomy faces several practical and conceptual challenges. First, this binary distinction is not exhaustive. Second, this characterization insufficiently accounts for the phenomenology of observer memories. Third, the focus on the visual aspect of memory perspective neglects emotional, agential, and self-related (...) social aspects. Fourth, the focus on the time of recall neglects the fact that visual, emotional, agential, and social aspects of perspective can also be dissociated in the original experience. In this chapter, we move away from the standard visual dichotomy. Instead, we propose that memory perspective is better understood along four lines: visual, agential, emotional, and social. Drawing on empirical research, we argue that these dimensions predict a disposition to recall a past event based on the present situation of the memorizer. This account supports seeing episodic memory as a natural kind, supported by scenario construction mechanisms and minimal memory traces. By remapping the classic distinction between field and observer perspectives along four dimensions, our proposal provides explanatory advantages and secures practical gains by enabling testable hypotheses. (shrink)

The construction of a distinctively Christian “theology of evolution” or “theistic evolution” requires the incorporation of the science of evolutionary biology while building a more comprehensive worldview within which all things are understood in relation to our creating and redeeming God. In the form of theses, this article brings four support pillars to the constructive work: (1) orienting evolutionary history to the God of grace; (2) affirming purpose for nature even if we cannot see purpose in nature; (3) employing (...) the theology of the cross to discern divine compassion in the natural world; and (4) relying on the divine promise of new creation. Among other things, John Haught's blueprint has located the pedestals on which these pillars will stand. For this groundwork, Haught deserves thanks. (shrink)

Lexicalized theories of syntax often assume that verb-structure regularities are mediated by lemmas, which abstract over variation in verb tense and aspect. German syntax seems to challenge this assumption, because verb position depends on tense and aspect. To examine how German speakers link these elements, a structural priming study was performed which varied syntactic structure, verb position, and verb overlap.structural priming was found, both within and across verb position, but priming was larger when the verb position was the same between (...) prime and target. Priming was boosted by verb overlap, but there was no interaction with verb position. The results can be explained by a lemma model where tense and aspect are linked to structural choices in German. Since the architecture of this lemma model is not consistent with results from English, a connectionist model was developed which could explain the cross-linguistic variation in the production system. Together, these findings support the view that language learning plays an important role in determining the nature of structural priming in different languages. (shrink)

A repository of clinically associated Staphylococcus aureus (Sa) isolates is used to semi‐automatically generate a set of application ontologies for specific subfamilies of Sa‐related disease. Each such application ontology is compatible with the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) and uses resources from the Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry. The set of application ontologies forms a lattice structure beneath the IDO‐Core and IDO‐extension reference ontologies. We show how this lattice can be used to define a strategy for the construction of a new (...) taxonomy of infectious disease incorporating genetic, molecular, and clinical data. We also outline how faceted browsing and query of annotated data is supported using a lattice application ontology. (shrink)

A central debate in the cognitive sciences surrounds the nature of adult speakers' linguistic representations: Are they purely syntactic (a traditional and widely held view; e.g., Branigan & Pickering, ), or are they semantically structured? A recent study (Ambridge, Bidgood, Pine, Rowland, & Freudenthal, ) found support for the latter view, showing that adults' acceptability judgments of passive sentences were significantly predicted by independent semantic “affectedness” ratings designed to capture the putative semantics of the construction (e.g., Bob was pushed (...) by Wendy is rated as more acceptable than Bob was liked by Wendy, as Bob is more affected in the former). However, because English lacks a separate topicalization construction which provides an alternative means of highlighting the patient (e.g., BOB, Wendy kicked), these findings have a possible alternative explanation: that highly affected entities are more likely to be topicalized, rather than passivized per se. Here we show that, in fact, Ambridge et al.'s () finding replicates in Indonesian, a language with a topicalization construction. The present study therefore provides particularly compelling evidence that grammatical representations have semantic structure. (shrink)

Suppose that fn is a sequence of nonnegative functions with compact support on a locally compact metric space, that T is a nonnegative linear functional, and that equation imageT fn < T f0. A result of Bishop, foundational to a constructive theory of functional analysis, asserts the existence of a point x such that equation imagefn < f0. This paper extends this result to arbitrary Hausdorff spaces, and gives short proofs using nonstandard analysis. While such arguments used are not (...) themselves constructive, they can illuminate where the difficulty lies in finding the point x. An algorithm for constructing x is then given, with a nonstandard proof that the algorithm converges to a correct value. (shrink)

Les noms sous-spécifiés, qui peuvent apparaitre dans une construction spécificationnelle, de la forme Leur ambition a été d’innover, sont par ailleurs souvent des prédicats régissant des arguments, dans une phrase élémentaire de la forme Ils ont eu l’ambition d’innover, où Nss est le prédicat accompagné d’un verbe support et de ses arguments N0 et N1. Nous avons étudié des noms entrant à la fois dans les deux constructions et avec le même sens, et trouvé trois cas de figure. (...) Avec des noms tels que ambition, et ont presque le même sens. Dans d’autres entrées, telles que souvenir et preuve, les deux constructions ne sont pas équivalentes : l’attribut phrastique de est absent de, tandis que l’argument N1 de peut apparaitre comme complément de nom du Nss sujet dans, et spécifie souvent le thème du propos contenu dans l’attribut phrastique de. Enfin, d’autres noms tels que embarras ne sont pas des Nss typiques car l’attribut phrastique de y joue un rôle causal ; il n’a pas le même contenu que N1. Ainsi, dans les types souvenir/preuve et embarras, est à analyser comme une combinaison de plusieurs phrases élémentaires. (shrink)

It is one of the attractions of Greek syntax that it provides an abundance of usages which require careful discrimination, if we are to appreciate their value; and which at the same time present problems of interpretation which have not been completely solved. This is particularly the case with the use of the negatives, and it is one of these constructions with which we are concerned here.

We present a developmental perspective regarding the difference in perceptions toward privacy between young and old. Here, we introduce the notion of privacy conceptions, that is, the specific ideas that individuals have regarding what privacy actually is. The differences in privacy concerns often found between young and old are postulated as the result of the differences found in their privacy conceptions, which are subsequently linked to their developmental life stages. The data presented have been obtained through a questionnaire distributed among (...) adolescents, young adults, and adults and provide support for this developmental perspective. This study is one of the first to include adolescents when investigating the privacy concerns among young and old. The results show that the privacy conceptions held by adolescents indeed differ from those held by young adults and adults in keeping with the expectations as seen from a developmental perspective. In addition, the areas in which the differences in privacy conceptions are found also reflect the strongest relationship with concerns. As such, these findings present an alternative perspective to the commonly held notion that young people are less concerned about privacy. (shrink)

Linguistic dependencies between non‐adjacent words have been shown to cause comprehension difficulty, compared with local dependencies. According to one class of sentence comprehension accounts, non‐local dependencies are difficult because they require the retrieval of the first dependent from memory when the second dependent is encountered. According to these memory‐based accounts, making the first dependent accessible at the time when the second dependent is encountered should help alleviate the difficulty associated with the processing of non‐local dependencies. In a dual‐task paradigm, participants (...) read sentences that did or did not contain a non‐local dependency (i.e., object‐ and subject‐extracted cleft constructions) while simultaneously remembering a word. The memory task was aimed at making the word held in memory accessible throughout the sentence. In an object‐extracted cleft (e.g., It was Ellen whom John consulted…), the object (Ellen) must be retrieved from memory when consulted is encountered. In the critical manipulation, the memory word was identical to the verb's object (ELLEN). In these conditions, the extraction effect was reduced in the comprehension accuracy data and eliminated in the reading time data. These results add to the body of evidence supporting memory‐based accounts of syntactic complexity. (shrink)

Berger and Miller’s “Health Disparities, Systemic Racism, and Failures of Cultural Competence” supports the claim that “cultural competence” as endorsed by the AAMC and operationalized in me...

Constructive empiricism is a prominent anti-realist position whose aim is to make sense of science. As is well known, it also crucially depends on the distinction between what is observable and what scientific theories postulate but is unobservable to us. Accordingly, adopting an adequate notion of observability is in order, on pain of failing to achieve the goal of grasping science and its aim. Bas van Fraassen, the originator of constructive empiricism, identifies observation with unaided (at least in principle) human (...) perception. So far, though, he has not put forward any convincing argument to support this (unpopular) stand. He did it on the grounds that it is (allegedly) a matter for empirical investigation and not for philosophical analysis. Nonetheless, he seems to have introduced a criterion for observability that is not the result of any scientific research and is not supported by any scientific theory. Countering his own words, he seems to have instead reflected qua philosopher on how an empiricist should interpret the meaning of the verb ‘to observe’. And then tried to defend his point of view by means of metaphors and analogies. But the very same metaphors and analogies van Fraassen put forward could be used to back up the opposite position. Worse, not only does his criterion counter common sense, it does not work either. Perhaps the time has come for van Fraassen to put forward or endorse alternative criteria of observability. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article we use theory and empirical evidence to synthesize a model for the analysis of autonomy in people with addictions. We review research on motivation and denial as accepted addiction constructs that need to be replaced with non-stigmatizing and autonomy-supportive language when seeking to ?treat? addicts. We present three main factors involved in relational autonomy in addiction (mentalizing, positive self-concept, and stigma), and illustrate our model by examining variations on these parameters in two case studies of heroin (...) addicts. We conclude that a growth perspective is needed to assess functioning in populations believed to be ?addicted? and make suggestions for assessment. (shrink)

In this analysis I apply a Foucauldian approach to ethics to examine the politically prescribed moral and ethical character required of carers of aged persons at home in Australia and the role of nurses in shaping these behaviours. The work that spousal carers provide, although often founded on love and/or obligation, has been formalized through a variety of policy initiatives and technologies that serve to construct the moral approach they must adopt. This shaping of conduct at the most personal level (...) takes place through the application of codes of behaviour policed largely by nurses. These codes redefine the mode of coexistence between an aged husband and wife and propose a new form of relationship that is derived from and supports policies of the deinstitutionalization of care services for elderly persons. In this way modern carer policy has drawn on knowledge and governance of the self to produce a morality of caring that is both authoritative and scientific. (shrink)

En parcourant les registres – Une étude en corpus des usages stylistiques des « Light Verb Constructions » Cette contribution est consacrée aux aspects stylistiques d’usage de ce que l’on appelle des « Light Verb Constructions » (LVC) ; des phrases verbales complexes en Anglais. Alors que la majorité d’études jusqu’à présent se mettent d’accord sur la « note familière » des LVCs, des données empiriques montrent une vision plus complexe et hétérogène. Nos résultats qui sont basés sur (...) le Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) montrent que l’usage des LVCs est loin d’être limité à la parole informelle ou aux contextes familiers, mais que leur diffusion et usage sont beaucoup plus polyvalents que remarqué par le passé. (shrink)

En parcourant les registres – Une étude en corpus des usages stylistiques des « Light Verb Constructions » Cette contribution est consacrée aux aspects stylistiques d’usage de ce que l’on appelle des « Light Verb Constructions » (LVC) ; des phrases verbales complexes en Anglais. Alors que la majorité d’études jusqu’à présent se mettent d’accord sur la « note familière » des LVCs, des données empiriques montrent une vision plus complexe et hétérogène. Nos résultats qui sont basés sur (...) le Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) montrent que l’usage des LVCs est loin d’être limité à la parole informelle ou aux contextes familiers, mais que leur diffusion et usage sont beaucoup plus polyvalents que remarqué par le passé. (shrink)

This paper documents the development and implementation of an ethically valid code of ethics in a newly formed national professional organization. It describes the experience and challenges faced by the National Association of Senior Move Managers (NASMM) and its leaders as they worked to establish ethics as an organizing framework early in its evolution. Designed by the investigators and supported by the NASMM Board, the process took place over a 2 year period and more than 130 people participated. It provides (...) a model for code development that is both practical and grounded in theory. Although the content of a code of ethics (the "product") provides guidance to organizational members in the conduct of everyday business, especially when they face ethically challenging situations, how the code is developed (the "process") influences its ethical validity. Few published cases document an organization's experience developing a code, and this is the first case, to our knowledge, that provides a first-hand longitudinal account of an effective code development process. (shrink)

Over the last 50 years, there has been significant development of qualitative research and related methods in healthcare. Theoretical frameworks support researchers in selecting appropriate research approaches, procedures and analytical tools. However, the implications of the choice of theory are sparsely elucidated. Based on a text excerpt from a public debate article, the study aimed to show how different theory‐inspired analytical perspectives produced varied understandings of the same text. The study presented three subanalyses inspired by Bourdieu's sociological theory, Lazarus (...) and Folkman's psychological theory and utilitarian ethics, respectively. The analyses showed that by using different theoretical analytical perspectives in inductive processes, an immediate interpretation of the text was not obvious. It became possible to spot the underlying meta‐theoretical assumptions, as the interpretations were not taken for granted or indisputable. Our analyses suggest that different theoretical lenses lead to different interpretations of the same empirical material, recognising the existence of multiple truths or realities. Thus, utilising a theoretical perspective in inductive analyses can enhance transparency and rigour because the analytical optics are made explicit to the reader. This allows the reader to follow the analysis processes and comprehend from which theoretical starting point a truth arises. (shrink)

A central aim of Construction Grammar is to model links within the construct-i-con. This paper investigates three constructions that share one property: an atypical element in the object slot. The constructions are therefore not prototypically transitive. Structural priming (implemented with an automatic maze variant of self-paced reading) is used to test hypotheses on the relation among the Reaction Objoid (She smiled her thanks), the Cognate Objoid (She smiled a sweet smile or He told a sly tale), and the (...) Superlative Objoid (She smiled her sweetest) Construction, and between two variants of the latter (They worked (at) their hardest). Results support transitivity as gradient: intransitive COCs prime the ROC and the SOC, whereas COCs with transitives only prime the ROC. For variants of the SOC, we find evidence of asymmetric priming with the bare SOC priming the at-SOC. Within-construction priming effects in the SOC are of greater magnitude than those with the at-SOC and the latter are weaker than those of the COC and of a rather different nature than those from the ROC. This suggests that speakers, rather than creating a constructeme between the bare and the at-SOC, store distinct but closely related constructions on a cline of transitivity. (shrink)

Which and how much of our current drives –individually and as a global community– are driven by ancestral, inherited traits or imprinted on our animal condition? An attempt to approximate this intriguing query is explored here. It pertains to our identity, social constructions, and our ecological interaction. The origin of our species has its roots in ancestral habits, behaviors and a survival drive, transformed from changing environmental conditions. We were not born in a mother-of-pearl cradle nor were protected by (...) magical agents. We grew on the thread of time within the complex nature of bio-ecological interactions. They carved our identity, our genetic expression and the possible origin of our beliefs, resulting in an arch of various behaviors and cultural phenotypes. The biological nature of our construction dragged through millennia through species trials with variable rates of survival times provided traces of inconstant and multiple evolutive chains. Our modern cultural contexts –norms, priorities, values– appear as newly born. Yet, socio-cultural ecology upon which our brain organization and behavioral constructs derive include shared basic behavioral drives with non-human primates. The emergence of humans with a sophisticated language allowed the development of complex virtual constructs based on symbolism and the instruments of culture. This has enhanced cognitive capacity and emotional interaction supported by processes anchored in neural networks distributed within cortical and subcortical levels. Basic, essential neural connectivities were preserved during the evolutionary development of the species. The biological matrix and inheritance are usually segregated from the social and cultural construction. Sophistication of our cultural development tends to set up a divisive fault from primitive foundations of non-human animal behavior (survival, territory, reproduction, prevalence, access to nutrients). These are basic templates and underlie essential individual and group basic drives, and cultural constructs. Humans have not ceased from being territorial (whether applied to virtual or material dimensions). Various forms of social inequities have been expressed in our time and through human history. On evolutive terms, the notion of individual social status within the social structure of a gregarious community generated the probability of an individual ascending or descending that hierarchy. Thus, becoming a potential figure of leadership, or the subordinate or the marginalized. Is there an evolutive antecedent for human social inequities? How do we construct a different future? Post-industrial societies became increasingly dependent on material consumerism and technological cultures, to the point of embraining them; conceptually becoming technological hybrids. Are these a developmental must, or an uncontrolled spin-off of human inventiveness affecting our future? Construction of supernatural agents played a significant role in the socialization/domestication processes. Agents’ intentionality flourished through altered states of conscience, or under fear of natural phenomena attributed to supposed inhabitants of the Natural Kingdom or virtual beings. This imaginary universe, reinforced by ritual behaviors, contributed to control personal/collective distress of various possible origins and conditioned our degrees of emotional and cognitive freedom. (shrink)

A large body of psycholinguistic research demonstrates that both language processing and language acquisition are sensitive to the distributions of linguistic constructions in usage. Here we investigate how statistical distributions at different linguistic levels – morphological and lexical, and phrasal – contribute to the ease with which morphosyntax is processed and produced by second language learners. We analyze Chinese ESL learners’ knowledge of four English inflectional morphemes: -ed, -ing, and third-person -s on verbs, and plural -s on nouns. In (...) Elicited Imitation Tasks, participants listened to length- and difficulty-matched sentences each containing one target morpheme and typed the whole sentence as accurately as they could after a short delay. Experiment 1 investigated lexical and morphemic levels, testing the hypotheses that a morpheme is expected to be more easily processed when it is highly available, and highly reliable. Thirty sentences were made for each morpheme, divided into three Availability-Reliability Distribution groups on the basis of corpus analysis in the Corpus of Contemporary American English : 10 target words high in availability, 10 high in reliability, and 10 low in both reliability and availability. Responses were scored on whether the target morpheme was accurately reproduced given the provision of the correct lemma. A generalized linear mixed-effects logit model revealed fixed effects of morpheme type, availability, and reliability on the accuracy of morpheme provision. There were no effects of lemma frequency. Experiment 2 successfully replicated these results and extended the investigation to explore phrasal formulaicity by manipulating the frequency of the four-word strings in which the morpheme was embedded. GLMMs replicated the effects of word-form availability and reliability and additionally revealed independent phrase-superiority effects where morphemes were better reproduced in contexts of higher string-frequency. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that morpheme acquisition reflects the distributional properties of learners’ experience and the mappings therein between lexis, morphology, phraseology, and semantics. These conclusions support an emergentist view of the statistical symbolic learning of morphology where language acquisition involves the satisfaction of competing constraints across multiple grain-sizes of units. (shrink)

Health care professionals often face moral dilemmas. Not dealing constructively with moral dilemmas can cause moral distress and can negatively affect the quality of care. Little research has been documented with methodologies meant to support professionals in care for the homeless in dealing with their dilemmas. Moral case deliberation is a method for systematic reflection on moral dilemmas and is increasingly being used as ethics support for professionals in various health-care domains. This study deals with the question: What (...) is the contribution of MCD in helping professionals in an institution for care for the homeless to deal with their moral dilemmas? A mixed-methods responsive evaluation design was used to answer the research question. Five teams of professionals from a Dutch care institution for the homeless participated in MCD three times. Professionals in care for the homeless value MCD positively. They report that MCD helped them to identify the moral dilemma/question, and that they learned from other people’s perspectives while reflecting and deliberating on the values at stake in the dilemma or moral question. They became aware of the moral dimension of moral dilemmas, of related norms and values, of other perspectives, and learned to formulate a moral standpoint. Some experienced the influence of MCD in the way they dealt with moral dilemmas in daily practice. Half of the professionals expect MCD will influence the way they deal with moral dilemmas in the future. Most of them were in favour of further implementation of MCD in their organization. (shrink)

In contrast to the traditional relational semiotics, biosemiotics decisively deviates towards dynamical aspects of signs at the evolutionary and developmental time scales. The analysis of sign dynamics requires constructivism to explain how new components such as subagents, sensors, effectors, and interpretation networks are produced by developing and evolving organisms. Semiotic networks that include signs, tools, and subagents are multilevel, and this feature supports the plasticity, robustness, and evolvability of organisms. The origin of life is described here as the emergence of (...) simple self-constructing semiotic networks that progressively increased the diversity of their components and relations. Primitive organisms have no capacity to classify and track objects; thus, we need to admit the existence of proto-signs that directly regulate activities of agents without being associated with objects. However, object recognition and handling became possible in eukaryotic species with the development of extensive rewritable epigenetic memory as well as sensorial and effector capacities. Semiotic networks are based on sequential and recursive construction, where each step produces components that are needed for the following steps of construction. Construction is not limited to repair and reproduction of what already exists or is unambiguously encoded, it also includes production of new components and behaviors via learning and evolution. A special case is the emergence of new levels of organization known as metasystem transition. Multilevel semiotic networks reshape the phenotype of organisms by combining a mosaic of features developed via learning and evolution of cooperating and/or conflicting subagents. (shrink)

The singular term theory maintains that that-clauses are complex singular terms which designate propositions. Though extremely well-supported, the theory is endangered by the existence of oblique that-clauses; that is, that-clauses occurring in what appear to be nonargument positions (e.g., ‘Lola was upset that Slick Willy had all the fun’). In this paper I argue that the best solution to the problem consistent with the singular term theory, invokes a construction-based grammatical theory. Such an approach challenges traditional views of semantic compositionality (...) by rejecting a central dogma of semantics, namely, that linguistic constructions contribute only trivial logical or quasi-logical information to semantic interpretation (e.g., function-application relations). (shrink)

Context: In the literature of radical constructivism, the epistemology and ontology of religion has been rarely discussed. Problem: I investigate the impact of radical constructivism on some aspects of religion - in particular, on the conflict that is sometimes perceived to arise between religion and natural science, discussed in the context of religious belief. Method: It is argued that the epistemology of radical constructivism serves to distinguish between items of cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge. This makes it possible to discuss issues (...) of religious belief, which are non-cognitive, from a constructivist epistemic and ontological perspective. Results: I conclude that radical constructivism cannot be invoked to support or contradict any particular religious faith; the individual knower will construct her own ontology, as part of her store of non-cognitive knowledge, in interaction with her environment ; on the other hand, any knowledge of it must be constructed in the mind of the knower, and there is no way to identify any one construction as being objectively “right” or “true.” Hence the truth value of propositions of religious conviction cannot be argued in cognitive terms. Implications: It is argued that these results elevate the knower into a position of personal autonomy with respect to religious issues. One consequence of this is the emergence of a fundamental epistemic incompatibility between the worldviews of radical constructivism and religion of any kind. Another is that the old dichotomy between atheism and agnosticism disappears - or rather, becomes irrelevant. Constructivist content: The role played by radical constructivism in the approach to cognitive vs. non-cognitive knowledge is discussed, specifically as pertaining to issues of religion. The construction of knowledge is a strictly personal enterprise, and the use of constructed non-cognitive knowledge then forms a basis for the individual knower’s religious position. (shrink)

This book presents the first systematic typological analysis of applicatives across African, American Indian, and East Asian languages. It is also the first to address their functions in discourse, the derivation of their semantic and syntactic properties, and how and why they have changed over time.Applicative constructions are typically described as transitivizing because they allow an intransitive base verb to have a direct object. The term originates from the seventeenth-century missionary grammars of Uto-Aztecan languages. Constructions designated as prepositional, (...) benefactive, and instrumental may refer to the same or similar phenomena. Applicative constructions have been deployed in the development of a range of syntactic theories which have then often been used to explain their functions, usually within the context of Bantu languages. Dr Peterson provides a wealth of cross-linguistic information on discourse-functional, diachronic, and typological aspects of applicative constructions. He documents their unexpected synchronic variety and the diversity of diachronic sources about them. He argues that many standard assumptions about applicatives are unfounded, and provides a clear guide for future language-specific and cross-linguistic research and analysis. (shrink)