Academic literature on the topic 'Cross-linguistic ontology'

Abstract Human cultures and languages are diverse. To some, these differences imply incommensurate ways of being human. To others, these differences only serve to underscore our profound sameness. Most cross-linguistic studies of categorization offer up their evidence on one side or the other of this philosophical divide. In this chapter, we summarize recent results from our cross-linguistic studies of early noun learning by English-speaking and Japanese-speaking children. The findings are clearly relevant to issues of linguistic and conceptual diversity. However, these issues were not the proximal impetus for our studies. Instead, our questions were pitched at a different level, to a mechanistic understanding of the development of categories and early noun learning. Still, by pursuing mechanisms of developmental change, we arrive at a deeper understanding of the processes that create both universal and linguistically specific ways of knowing.

The goal of this research, a work in progress, is to address areas in second/foreign language acquisition prone to cross-linguistic influence, and to examine related cultural factors. More specifically, the authors aim to identify such areas, map available knowledge in this respect using ontological engineering methodology, and devise appropriate teaching strategies and learning scenarios to help overcome cross-linguistic influence with the help of computer-assisted language learning systems. The authors have been working mainly with Japanese-speaking students of English and first-year university English-speaking students of French. In this chapter, the authors describe culture in relation to foreign language learning, cross-linguistic influence, their cultural framework as well as ontological engineering methodology. They demonstrate their work with examples of the use of modals by Japanese students/speakers of English. They further provide an illustration of ontological modeling in addition to a basic simulation of how a CALL system based on an ontology could potentially work.

This chapter focuses on the syntax of (argument introducing/valency increasing) serial verbs in Creole/Pidgin languages, providing empirical arguments for the model of grammatical relations advanced in a series of recent works by Manzini and Savoia (2011a, 2011b), Manzini and Franco (2016), Franco and Manzini (2017a,b), Manzini et al. (2015, 2020). These authors lay out an analysis of the syntax and interpretation of dative to, instrumental with and Differential Object Marking (DOM) relators, based on the assumption that these elements are predicates endowed with an elementary interpretive content interacting with the internal organization of the event. We assume that these oblique relators, expressing a primitive elementary part-whole/possession relation, may be instantiated also by serial (light) verbs in the grammar of natural languages. We provide a formal approach to cross-categorial variation in argument marking, trying to outline a unified morpho-syntactic template, in which so-called ‘cases’ do not configure a specialized linguistic lexicon of functional features/categories – on the contrary they help us outline an underlying ontology of natural languages, of which they pick up some of the most elementary relations. Such primitive relations can be expressed by different lexical means (e.g. case, adpositions, light verbs, etc.).