Claudia Casadio

A Tale of Four Grammars

In this paper we consider the relations existing between four deductive systems that have been called “categorial grammars” and have relevant connections with linguistic investigations: the syntactic calculus, bilinear logic, compact bilinear logic and Currys semantic calculus.

Semantic Categories and the Development of Categorial Grammars

A main claim about Categorial Grammars is that they involve semantic categories rather than the standard syntactic categories employed in linguistic description. But, what kind of entities are semantic categories? What relation do they impose between syntactic structure and semantic representation?

Parenting stress evaluation and behavioral syndromes in a group of pediatric patients with epilepsy

The aim of the present work was to measure the amount of stress in parents of children with epilepsy and to determine whether and how parenting stress is linked to behavioral symptoms of the children. Parenting stress was measured with the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) and behavioral symptoms with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Data obtained from 26 parents of children with epilepsy were compared with those obtained from 31 parents of healthy children. Children with epilepsy obtained higher scores in all the subscales of PSI and in almost all the subscales of CBCL compared with healthy children. Epilepsy caused a high level of parenting stress and of problematic behaviors since the behavioral symptoms predicting the degree of parenting stress significantly differed between healthy children and children with epilepsy. Therefore, parents of children with epilepsy should be offered psychological support to cope with parenting stress and to improve the relationship with their children.

Non-Commutative Linear Logic in Linguistics

This paper explores the linguistic implications of Non-commutative Linear Logic, with particular reference to its multiplicative fragment MNLL, that exhibits a direct relationship to Lambeks Syntactic Calculus. Such a framework is appealing for linguistic analysis since it allows one to develop a dynamic characterization of the notion of a function, that plays a basic role in the foundations of categorial grammar. The analysis will focus on a variety of constructions involving scope configurations, unbounded dependencies and Wh-clauses. Particular attention is given to the proof nets for MNLL, that are planar graphs in which the communication processes and the flow of information are represented by means of a parallelistic architecture. We will introduce proof nets and sequent derivations associated to each linguistic expression and will show that a direct relationship exists between the types and derivations of the Syntactic Calculus and the corresponding types and derivations in MNLL. Moreover, given the symmetric architecture and the crucial role played by the two negations of Non-commutative Linear Logic in the generation of the logical types, we will show that this system is richer in expressive power and in the capacity of performing left-to-right computations of word strings.

Conditions on Anaphora: An Analysis of Reflexive in Latin

This paper derives from the consideration of some recent results in the Theory of Transformational Grammar concerning the progressive development of grammaticality conditions from conditions on rules of grammar, defined on the syntactic component, to conditions on surface structure interpretation, defined on the interpretive component (see particularly Chomsky 1973, 1975, 1977). As it has been recently suggested by Chomsky (1980), such conditions may be introduced in a simple and explicative way as conditions on anaphora, where pronominal anaphora and bound anaphora (reflexive) represent significative subcases liable to interesting generalizations. Under this general view, the paper tries to reach two main aims: first we propose a brief survey on problems concerning pronominal anaphora and anaphoric relations and the way they are accounted for by certain recent theories of linguistic analysis and particularly in the framework of transformational grammar; secondly, under the insight of some rules which are shown to be of particular interest and generality, we try to develop an analysis of anaphoric relations in Latin, a language which makes an extensive use of various kinds of anaphoras and particularly of reflexives. As we shall see, the evidence offered by Latin shows the inadequacy of the accepted conditions on pronouns and bound anaphoras in a wide range of interesting sentential contexts. If we accept the suggestion of Donna Jo Napoli (see Napoli 1979), this evidence seems not to be exclusive of Latin but it concerns also languages such as Italian, Japanese, Icelandic and Eskimo. In this perspective it can be argued for the necessity of a deeper insight into the syntactic and semantic properties of those languages that share with Latin the particular kind of bound anaphora that we shall call indirect reflexive.

Agreement and cliticization in italian: a pregroup analysis

This paper presents an analysis of features specification and agreement based on the parallel computations of a type calculus involving two pregroups grammars: the free pregroup of syntactic types that takes care of the syntactic calculations, and a second free pregroup computing feature operations. As recently argued in [19] , working with two free pregroups in parallel has the advantage of treating featural information more carefully and independently from the type assignments; the calculus is therefore particularly appropriate for the analysis of agreement properties in Romance languages. In the paper we focus on the Italian language, introducing a type syntax of the verbal constructions in which clitic pronouns occur and offering an explanation of the interaction between agreement features and clitic pronouns.

Universal vs. particular reasoning: a study with neuroimaging techniques

The article investigates some general properties of universal vs. particular propositions occuring in syllogistic arguments, in order to explore the kind of interaction played by these two forms of reasoning inside cognition. The theoretical framework of our analysis is represented by recent developments of linear logic, focusing on the distinction between positive vs. negative status of logical operators (connectives and quantifiers). In the first part of the article, this distinction is introduced and applied to the analysis of the categorical propositions occurring in Aristotelian syllogism, the deductive paradigm particularly considered in psychological studies about human reasoning. In the second part of the article, an experimental research is presented in which the positive vs. negative alternation is studied in the transition from a universal (vs. a particular) categorical proposition to its contradictory, a particular (vs. a universal) categorical proposition; the experimental research is based on a reasoning task which shows that significant differences are exhibited by the two types of transitions.

Applying Pregroups to Italian Statements and Questions

We know from the literature in theoretical linguistics that interrogative constructions in Italian have particular syntactic properties, due to the liberal word order and the rich inflectional system. In this paper we show that the calculus of pregroups represents a flexible and efficient computational device for the analysis and derivation of Italian sentences and questions. In this context the distinction between direct vs. indirect statements and questions is explored.

Clitic movement in pregroup grammar: a cross-linguistic approach

The calculus of pregroups is a kind of type (or categorial) grammar introduced by Lambek [17] for the analysis and computation of natural languages; it has been applied to a wide range of languages from English and German, to French and Italian, and many others [11]. Like Lambeks Syntactic Calculus, pregroups are non-commutative structures, but the syntax of natural languages shows also the presence of cyclic patterns, in particular those exhibited by the phenomenon known in the literature as movement of clitic pronouns in different languages. In this paper we propose an extension of the calculus of pregroups including two cyclic rules and use them to formally analyze movement of clitic clusters in Persian, French, and Italian. In the final part of the paper, we discuss the relations of these rules to Yetters and Abruscis cyclic rules for Linear Logic.

Seizure metaphors in children with epilepsy: A study based on a multiple-choice self-report questionnaire

The advantages of metaphorical representation are pointed out in many fields of clinical research (e.g. cancer, HIV, psychogenic nonepileptic seizures). This study aimed at offering a novel contribution showing how children with epilepsy describe the symptomatology of their seizure experiences by means of particular kinds of cognitive metaphors. Twenty-three children with idiopathic generalized epilepsy and thirty-one healthy children were recruited for this study and interviewed with a multiple-choice questionnaire asking them to describe their epileptic seizures by means of suitable metaphors. A psychologist blinded to medical diagnosis assessed and categorized all metaphors. By considering the 89 metaphors produced by the children with epilepsy and the 147 ones by the healthy controls, Agent/Force was the primary metaphor assessed by children with epilepsy, followed by Event/Situation as the second preference. Moreover, comparing the results of the control group with those of the subjects with epilepsy, it was found that controls were oriented towards selecting exogenous forces, while subjects with epilepsy tended to select endogenous forces. In particular, children with epilepsy showed a peculiar preference for an endogenous force resembling the waggle metaphor, which is similar to the effect of a quakes shaking (earthquake or seaquake). The metaphors identified by this research are a useful resource to better understand the seizure experiences of patients with epilepsy, helping to improve clinical treatment.