Reasoning with Intensional Negative Adjectivals: Semantics, Pragmatics, and Context

Intensional negative adjectives alleged , artificial , fake , false , former , and toy are unusual adjectives that depending on context may or may not be restricting functions. A formal theory of their semantics, pragmatics, and context that uniformly accounts for their complex mathematical and computational characteristics and captures some peculiarities of individual adjectives is presented.
Such adjectives are formalized as new concept builders, negation‐like functions that operate on the values of intensional properties of the concepts denoted by their arguments and yield new concepts whose intensional properties have values consistent with the negation of the old values. Understanding these new concepts involves semantics, pragmatics and context‐dependency of natural language. It is argued that intensional negative adjectives can be viewed as a special‐purpose, weaker, conntext‐dependent negationin natural language. The theory explains and predicts many inferences licensed by expressions involving such adjectives. Implementation of sample examples demonstrates its computational feasibility. Computation of context‐dependent interpretation is discussed.
The theory allows one to enhance a knowledge representation system with similar concept building, negation‐like, context‐dependent functions, the availability of which appears to be a distinct characteristic of natural languages.     

《红楼梦》外貌类形容词语翻译及其对比分析

以古典文学外貌类形容词语及其英译作为研究对象,通过对《红楼梦》人物头发、眉眼、唇齿、鼻子、脸面五个方面的形容词语及在典范全英译本的译例对比分析,探索汉英翻译中外貌类形容词语的翻译技巧。     

Repetition deficits, list context, and word-class interactions in the RSVP of words in sentences.

Reports a failure to find a repetition deficit in recall following the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of words within sentences, using adjectives rather than nouns as the critical items. In a series of experiments that ruled out participant and procedural differences as the source of the failure, both word class and list context were found to moderate the repetition deficit, but grammatical necessity did not. The presence in the list of sentences in which the repeated adjectives were separated by more than three words not only eliminated the repetition deficit for the recall of those sentences but also for the recall of sentences in which the repeated adjectives were separated by three or fewer words. However, although substantially reduced, a repetition deficit with noun-based materials was still found in this list context. Matching the adjective-based sentences with the noun-based sentences in sentence length and position of the critical items revealed that the moderating effect of word-class on the repetition deficit was mediated by the biases in sentence structure that using different word classes tend to induce. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic Opposition and WordNet

We consider the problem of semantic opposition; in particular, theproblem of determining adjective-verb opposition for transitive changeof state verbs and adjectivally modified grammatical objects. Semanticopposition problems of this type are a sub-case of the classic FrameProblem; the well-known problem of knowing what is preserved orchanged in the world as a result of some action or event. Bydefinition, grammatical objects of change of state verbs undergomodification. In cases where the object is adjectivally modified, theproblem reduces to determining whether the property denoted by theadjective still holds true after the event denoted by the verb. Inthis paper, we evaluate the efficacy of WordNet, a network of conceptsorganized around linguistically relevant semantic relations includingantonymy, for this task. Test examples are drawn from the linguisticliterature. Results are analyzed in detail with a view towardsproviding feedback on the concept of a network as an appropriate modelof semantic relations for problems in semantic inference.     

英语复合形容词的探讨

介绍英语复合形容词的两种书面表达形式 ,列举其 9种结构并举例分析其语义和特点。     

A Six-Factor Structure of Personality-Descriptive Adjectives: Solutions From Psycholexical Studies in Seven Languages.

Standard psycholexical studies of personality structure have produced a similar 6-factor solution in 7 languages (Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish). The authors report the content of these personality dimensions and interpret them as follows: (a) a variant of Extraversion, defined by sociability and liveliness (though not by bravery and toughness); (b) a variant of Agreeableness, defined by gentleness, patience, and agreeableness (but also including anger and ill temper at its negative pole); (c) Conscientiousness (emphasizing organization and discipline rather than moral conscience); (d) Emotionality (containing anxiety, vulnerability, sentimentality, lack of bravery, and lack of toughness, but not anger or ill temper); (e) Honesty-Humility; (f) Intellect/Imagination/Unconventionality. A potential reorganization of the Big Five factor structure is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)