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Previous studies suggest that the application of Controlled Language (CL) rules can significantly improve the readability, consistency, and machine-translatability of source text. One of the justifications for the application of CL rules is that they can have a similar impact on several target languages by reducing the post-editing effort required to bring Machine Translation (Ml’) output to acceptable quality. In certain situations, however, post-editing services may not always be a viable solution. Web-based information is often expected to be made available in real-time to ensure that its access is not restricted to certain users based on their locale. Uncertainties remain with regard to the actual usefulness of MT output for such users, as no empirical study has examined the impact of CL rules on the usefulness, comprehensibility, and acceptability of MT technical documents from a Web user's perspective. In this study, a two-phase approach is used to determine whether Controlled English rules can have a significant impact on these three variables. First, individual CL rules are evaluated within an experimental environment, which is loosely based on a test suite.Two documents are then published and subject to a randomised evaluation within the framework of an online experiment using a customer satisfaction questionnaire. The findings indicate that a limited number of CL rules have a similar impact on the comprehensibility of French and German output at the segment level. The results of the online experiment show that the application of certain CL rules has the potential to significantly improve the comprehensibility of German MT technical documentation. Our findings also show that the introduction of CL rules did not lead to any significant improvement of the comprehensibility, usefulness, and acceptability of French MT technical documentation.
The collection of papers in this volume presents results of a collaborative project between the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS) in Berlin, and the University of Leiden. All three institutions have a strong interest in the linguistics of Bantu languages, and in 2003 decided to set up a network to compare results and to provide a platform for on-going discussion of different topics on which their research interests converged. The project received funding from the British Academy International Networks Programme, and from 2003 to 2006 seven meetings were held at the institutions involved under the title Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory, indicating the shared belief that current research in Bantu is best served by combining the description of new data with theoretically informed analysis. During the life-time of the network, and partly in conjunction with it, larger externally funded Bantu research projects have been set up at all institutions: projects on word-order and morphological marking and on phrasal phonology in Leiden, on pronominal reference, agreement and clitics in Romance and Bantu at SOAS, and on focus in Southern Bantu languages at ZAS. The papers in this volume provide a sampling of the work developed within the network and show, or so we think, how fruitful the sharing of ideas over the last three years has been. While the current British Academy-funded network is coming to an end in 2006, we hope that the cooperative structures we have established will continue to develop - and be expanded - in the future, providing many future opportunities to exchange findings and ideas about Bantu linguistics.
Agreement is traditionally viewed as a cross-referencing device for core arguments such as subjects and (primary) objects.1 In this paper, I discuss data from Bantu languages that lead to a radical departure from this generally accepted position: agreement in a subset of Bantu languages cross-references a (sentential) topic rather than the subject. The crucial evidence for topic agreement comes from a construction known as subject-object (S-O) reversal, where the fronted patient agrees with what has uniformly been taken to be a `subject marker'. The correct analysis of S-O reversal as a topic construction with `topic agreement' explains a range of known facts in the languages in question. Furthermore, synchronic variation across Bantu in the presence/absence of S-O reversal and in the properties of the (topic/subject) agreement marker suggests a diachronic path from topic to subject marking. The systematic variation and covariation in the syntax of Bantu languages and the historical picture that it offers would be missed altogether if we continue to reject the idea that the notion of topic can be deeply grammaticized in the form of agreement.
This paper investigates what factors make a particular referent a good antecedent for subsequent pronominal reference. In particular, it explores two seemingly conflicting claims in the literature regarding the effects of topicality and focusing on referent salience. In light of new experimental results combined with a review of existing work, I conclude that neither topicality nor focusing alone can explain referent salience as indicated by patterns of pronoun reference. Rather, the data provide support for a multiple-factor model of salience (e.g. Arnold 1999). More specifically, the results show that grammatical role has a striking effect: being a subject makes a referent more salient than either pronominalization/givenness or focusing alone. Furthermore, the results of the experiment suggest that the likelihood of subsequent pronominal reference is also influenced by structural focusing and pronominalization, but not as strongly as by subjecthood. I argue that these data are best captured by a multiple-factor model in which factors differ in how influential they are relative to one another, i.e. how heavily weighted they are. A single-factor system does not seem adequate for these data.
In this paper I argue that the set of formal features that can head a functional projection is not given by UG but derived through L1 acquisition. I formulate a hypothesis that says that initially every functional category F is realised as a semantic feature [F]; whenever there is an overt doubling effect in the L1 input with respect to F, this semantic feature [F] is reanalysed as a formal feature [i/uF]. In the first part of the paper I provide a theoretical motivation for this hypothesis, in the second part I test this proposal for a case-study, namely the cross-linguistic distribution of Negative Concord (NC). I demonstrate that in NC languages negation has been reanalysed as a formal feature [i/uNEG], whereas in Double Negation languages this feature remains a semantic feature [NEG] (always interpreted as a negative operator), thus paving the way for an explanation of NC in terms of syntactic agreement. In the third part I discuss that the application of the hypothesis to the phenomenon of negation yields two predictions that can be tested empirically. First I demonstrate that negative markers X° can be available only in NC languages; second, independent change of the syntactic status of negative markers, can invoke a change with respect to the exhibition of NC in a particular language. Both predictions are proven to be correct. I finally argue what the consequences of the proposal presented in this paper are for both the syntactic structure of the clause and second for the way parameters are associated to lexical items.
This paper focuses on restrictions on the ordering of internal constituents of noun phrases in Chichewa, especially when those constituents are discontinuous. The motivation for discontinuity of the NP constituents will be given, together with discussion of constructions that can be subsumed under this rubric but that do not really involve discontinuity in the canonical sense. These are constructions where a topic NP in a left periphery position is either linked anaphorically with a modifier "remnant" or semantically with its hyponym in post-verbal position. According to Guthrie's classification of Bantu languages, Chichewa is placed in zone N unit N31. It is regarded as a dialect of Nyanja, classified as belonging to unit N30 (Guthrie 1967-71).
Russian predicate cleft constructions have the surprising property of being associated with adversative clauses of the opposite polarity. I argue that clefts are associated with adversative clauses because they have the semantics of S-Topics in Büring's (1997, 2000) sense of the term. It is shown that the polarity of the adversative clause is obligatorily opposed to that of the cleft because the use of a cleft gives rise to a relevance-based pragmatic scale. The ordering principle according to which these scale
This paper concerns the distribution of wh-words in Asante Twi, which has both a focus fronting strategy and an in-situ strategy. We show that the focusing and the in-situ constructions are not simply equally available options. On the contrary, there are several cases where the focusing strategy must be used and the in-situ strategy is ungrammatical. We show that the cases in Asante Twi are "intervention effects", which are attested in other languages, like German, Korean, and French. We identify a core set of intervening elements that all of these languages have and discuss their properties.