Denne artikkelen behandler to syntaktiske strukturer i norsk som her omtales som akkusativ med infinitiv (AcI) og akkusativ med presens partisipp (AcP), først og fremst i konstruksjoner med verbene finne, se og høre. Artikkelen argumenterer for at presens partisipp (V-ende) i norsk kan ha verbal funksjon, og når bestemte kriterier oppfylles, er det mulig å snakke om en struktur i norsk som har en del til felles med den latinske AcP-konstruksjonen. Artikkelen viser at det er vanskelig å operere med et klart og tydelig skille mellom bruk av infinitiv og V-ende etter persepsjonsverb i norsk og i andre germanske språk. Forskjellene mellom AcI og AcP handler først og fremst om aksjonsart, men det er også viktige strukturelle og semantiske forskjeller mellom dem som blir diskutert i artikkelen.
Philology. Linguistics, Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages
Francisco Oliveira, Alexandra Mendes, Carolina Carreira
Software reliability is critical in ensuring that the digital systems we depend on function correctly. In software development, increasing software reliability often involves testing. However, for complex and critical systems, developers can use Design by Contract (DbC) methods to define precise specifications that software components must satisfy. Verification-Aware (VA) programming languages support DbC and formal verification at compile-time or run-time, offering stronger correctness guarantees than traditional testing. However, despite the strong guarantees provided by VA languages, their adoption remains limited. In this study, we investigate the barriers to adopting VA languages by analyzing developer discussions on public forums using topic modeling techniques. We complement this analysis with a developer survey to better understand the practical challenges associated with VA languages. Our findings reveal key obstacles to adoption, including steep learning curves and usability issues. Based on these insights, we identify actionable recommendations to improve the usability and accessibility of VA languages. Our findings suggest that simplifying tool interfaces, providing better educational materials, and improving integration with everyday development environments could improve the usability and adoption of these languages. Our work provides actionable insights for improving the usability of VA languages and making verification tools more accessible.
Traditionally, in linearly typed languages, consuming a linear resource is synonymous with its syntactic occurrence in the program. However, under the lens of non-strict evaluation, linearity can be further understood semantically, where a syntactic occurrence of a resource does not necessarily entail using that resource when the program is executed. While this distinction has been largely unexplored, it turns out to be inescapable in Haskell's optimising compiler, which heavily rewrites the source program in ways that break syntactic linearity but preserve the program's semantics. We introduce Linear Core, a novel system which accepts the lazy semantics of linearity statically and is suitable for lazy languages such as the Core intermediate language of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler. We prove that Linear Core is sound, guaranteeing linear resource usage, and that multiple optimising transformations preserve linearity in Linear Core while failing to do so in Core. We have implemented Linear Core as a compiler plugin to validate the system against linearity-heavy libraries, including linear-base.
We study the notion of sparseness for regular languages over finite trees and infinite words. A language of trees is called sparse if the relative number of $n$-node trees in the language tends to zero, and a language of infinite words is called sparse if it has measure zero in the Bernoulli probability space. We show that sparseness is decidable for regular tree languages and for regular languages of infinite words. For trees, we provide characterisations in terms of forbidden subtrees and tree automata, leading to a linear time decision procedure. For infinite words, we present a characterisation via infix completeness and give a novel proof of decidability. Moreover, in the non-sparse case, our algorithm computes a measurable subset of accepted words that can serve as counterexamples in almost-sure model checking. Our findings have applications to automata based model checking in formal verifications and XML schemas, among others.
The research deals with the problems of the borrowed Germanic terms in French сivil engineering terminology. We analyze the assimilation degree of borrowings from Germanic family of languages and semantic processes that occur when these lexical units enter the system of French civil engineering terms.
In Anbetracht der zunehmenden Diversität der Schülerschaft besteht ein dringender Bedarf, den Deutschunterricht inklusiver zu gestalten. Speziell für die Kompetenzbereiche „Sprache und Sprachgebrauch untersuchen/reflektieren“ stellt die Mehrdimensionalität des Sprachsystems mitunter Schüler*innen, für welche die deutsche Standardsprache Zweitsprache oder -varietät ist, vor nicht geringe Herausforderungen. Durch den in der vorliegenden Studie erforschten Einsatz Interaktiver Grammatikanimationen als innovatives Lernmedium wird innerhalb eines diversitätsorientierten Unterrichtskonzepts ein exploratives und adaptives Lernen ermöglicht. Dem von Knopp / Becker-Mrotzek (2018) formulierten akuten Bedarf an konkreter Unterrichtsforschung, die (inklusions-)geeignete Lehr-Lern-Konzepte der Sprachreflexion modelliert und evaluiert, wird hiermit begegnet und auch der Einsatz digitaler Medien als alternativer Zugang zum Lerngegenstand und damit individualisierte Lernmöglichkeiten werden berücksichtigt. In der empirischen Erprobung erweist sich der kognitionslinguistische Ansatz vor allem im Hinblick auf medienaffine Lerner*innen als effizient, während Potenziale der Selbststeuerung von der instruktiven Rahmung bedingt erscheinen.
Abstract (english): Interactive grammar animations in secondary education. A cognitve linguistic approach for a diversity-orientated focus on language
Given the increasing heterogeneity of the student body, there is an urgent need to make the teaching of German more inclusive. The multidimensionality of the language system poses considerable challenges for pupils for whom standard German is a second language or a second variety, especially in the competence areas of „analysing/reflecting on language and language use“. The use of interactive grammar animations as an innovative learning medium investigated in this study enables explorative and adaptive learning within a diversity-oriented teaching concept. This addresses the urgent need, identified by Knopp / Becker-Mrotzek (2018), for concrete educational research that models and evaluates language reflection teaching- learning concepts suitable for inclusion. Furthermore, the use of digital media as an alternative approach to the learning object and thus individualised learning opportunities is also taken into account. In empirical testing, the cognitive-linguistic approach proves to be efficient, especially with regard to media-savvy learners, while the potential for self-direction seems to depend on the instructive framework.
We deal with a normal form for context-free grammars, called Dyck normal form. This normal form is a syntactical restriction of the Chomsky normal form, in which the two nonterminals occurring on the right-hand side of a rule are paired nonterminals. This pairwise property, along with several other terminal rewriting conditions, makes it possible to define a homomorphism from Dyck words to words generated by a grammar in Dyck normal form. We prove that for each context-free language L, there exist an integer K and a homomorphism phi such that L=phi(D'_K), where D'_K is a subset of D_K and D_K is the one-sided Dyck language over K letters. As an application we give an alternative proof of the inclusion of the class of even linear languages in AC1.
Over the last two decades practically all object-oriented programming languages have introduced features that are well-known from functional programming languages. But many features that were introduced were fragmentary. In Java-TX we address the latter features and propose a completion. Java-TX (i.e. Type eXtended) is a language based on Java. The predominant new features are global type inference and real function types for lambda expressions. Global type inference means that all type annotations can be omitted, and the compiler infers them without losing the static type property. We introduce the function types in a similar fashion as in Scala but additionally integrated them into the Java target-typing as proposed in the so-called strawman approach. In this paper, we provide an integrated presentation of all Java-TX features. The focus is therby on the automatic inference of type parameters for classes and their methods, and on the heterogeneous translation of function types, which permits the preservation of the argument and return types in bytecode.
Niccolò Marini, Leonardo Pampaloni, Filippo Di Martino
et al.
AI is demanding an evergrowing portion of environmental resources. Despite their potential impact on AI environmental sustainability, the role that programming languages play in AI (in)efficiency is to date still unknown. With this study, we aim to understand the impact that programming languages can have on AI environmental sustainability. To achieve our goal, we conduct a controlled empirical experiment by considering five programming languages (C++, Java, Python, MATLAB, and R), seven AI algorithms (KNN, SVC, AdaBoost, decision tree, logistic regression, naive bayses, and random forest), three popular datasets, and the training and inference phases. The collected results show that programming languages have a considerable impact on AI environmental sustainability. Compiled and semi-compiled languages (C++, Java) consistently consume less than interpreted languages (Python, MATLAB, R), which require up to 54x more energy. Some languages are cumulatively more efficient in training, while others in inference. Which programming language consumes the most highly depends on the algorithm considered. Ultimately, algorithm implementation might be the most determining factor in Green AI, regardless of the language used. As conclusion, while making AI more environmentally sustainable is paramount, a trade-off between energy efficiency and implementation ease should always be considered. Green AI can be achieved without the need of completely disrupting the development practices and technologies currently in place.
This contribution discusses the work of the Dutch dilettante linguist Lambert Ten Kate (1674–1731), the first scholar to describe the system of Ablaut. It is claimed that ten Kate, who was also active as an amateur naturalist and writer-translator of religious works, took the same approach to all his research. This is a physicotheological view. Physicotheology is a school of theology that emerged at the end of the 17th century and remained popular well into the 18th century, which sought to gain knowledge about God through experimental research and which tried to prove his greatness, omnipotence and wisdom on the basis of hard facts which resulted from experimental research. Ten Kate’s important linguistic works should be seen in this context as an attempt to prove that a thorough analysis of the apparently chaotic language facts would reveal the system behind them. This system has been instilled into man by God and mankind has built it up through his reason.
Simone Wills, Yu Bai, Cristian Tejedor-Garcia
et al.
Voicebots have provided a new avenue for supporting the development of language skills, particularly within the context of second language learning. Voicebots, though, have largely been geared towards native adult speakers. We sought to assess the performance of two state-of-the-art ASR systems, Wav2Vec2.0 and Whisper AI, with a view to developing a voicebot that can support children acquiring a foreign language. We evaluated their performance on read and extemporaneous speech of native and non-native Dutch children. We also investigated the utility of using ASR technology to provide insight into the children's pronunciation and fluency. The results show that recent, pre-trained ASR transformer-based models achieve acceptable performance from which detailed feedback on phoneme pronunciation quality can be extracted, despite the challenging nature of child and non-native speech.
Denne artikkelen er et forsøk på å utforske mulighetene for å utvikle ny innsikt i hvordan det var for norske skrivere i dansketiden å tilegne seg skriftspråket. Metoden er å bruke tilnærminger til skriftspråklig variasjon brukt innenfor forskning på begynneropplæring på et historisk materiale. Tekstene som blir utsatt for analyse i denne artikkelen, er brev skrevet av en voksen dame på begynnelsen av 1700-tallet. Disse brevene har, selv hvis en sammenligner med brev skrevet av andre skrivere i samme tid, mye variasjon og mange ortografiske særegenheter. Slike uvanlige skrivemåter har i språkhistorisk forskning tradisjonelt blitt rubrisert som enten interessante norvagismer – altså norske dialekttrekk i tekster skrevet på det dansknorske fellesspråket – eller som uinteressant feilskriving uten språkhistorisk verdi. Det er min påstand at også andre trekk enn det som kan rubriseres som dialekttrekk, har en plass i norsk språkhistorie.
Philology. Linguistics, Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages
A classic result in formal language theory is the equivalence among non-counting, or aperiodic, regular languages, and languages defined through star-free regular expressions, or first-order logic. Past attempts to extend this result beyond the realm of regular languages have met with difficulties: for instance it is known that star-free tree languages may violate the non-counting property and there are aperiodic tree languages that cannot be defined through first-order logic. We extend such classic equivalence results to a significant family of deterministic context-free languages, the operator-precedence languages (OPL), which strictly includes the widely investigated visibly pushdown, alias input-driven, family and other structured context-free languages. The OP model originated in the '60s for defining programming languages and is still used by high performance compilers; its rich algebraic properties have been investigated initially in connection with grammar learning and recently completed with further closure properties and with monadic second order logic definition. We introduce an extension of regular expressions, the OP-expressions (OPE) which define the OPLs and, under the star-free hypothesis, define first-order definable and non-counting OPLs. Then, we prove, through a fairly articulated grammar transformation, that aperiodic OPLs are first-order definable. Thus, the classic equivalence of star-freeness, aperiodicity, and first-order definability is established for the large and powerful class of OPLs. We argue that the same approach can be exploited to obtain analogous results for visibly pushdown languages too.
Given a regular language L, we effectively construct a unary semigroup that recognizes the topological closure of L in the free unary semigroup relative to the variety of unary semigroups generated by the pseudovariety R of all finite R-trivial semigroups. In particular, we obtain a new effective solution of the separation problem of regular languages by R-languages.
We present three protocols for verifying all languages: (i) For any unary (binary) language, there is a log-space (linear-space) interactive proof system (IPS); (ii) for any language, there is a constant-space weak-IPS (the non-members may not be rejected with high probability); and, (iii) for any language, there is a constant-space IPS with two provers where the verifier reads the input once. Additionally, we show that uncountably many binary (unary) languages can be verified in constant space and in linear (quadratic) expected time.