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SUMMARY:Clitic Pregroups: in search for a uniform pattern of clitic moveme
 nt in natural languages - Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh\, Oxford University Computin
 g Laboratory
DTSTART:20090813T110000Z
DTEND:20090813T120000Z
UID:TALK20024@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Laura Rimell
DESCRIPTION:The idea behind this  line of research is  applying  mathemati
 cal structures\, e.g. the ones  used in arithmetic\,  to formalize grammar
  of natural languages. The early example of such an attempt is Lambek's sy
 ntactic calculus in the 50's. In the 90's Lambek simplified  his calculus 
 and developed a novel mathematical structure which he called a  Pregroup. 
 Meanwhile\, Pregroups have been  applied to formalize  the grammar of a wi
 de range of natural languages\, from English and French\, to Japanese\, Po
 lish\, and Persian. Independently\, they have  gained popularity in Physic
 s and Computer Science communities where they are applied  to reasoning ab
 out Quantum Protocols. \n\nI will present recent joint work with Lambek an
 d C. Casadio where we show\nhow Pregroups can be extended with a simple ru
 le to formalize\, explain\, and\npredict clitic and clitic-like movements 
 in some natural languages.  Based\non our previous work on these languages
 \, we observed that where one\ndirection of the rule defines such movement
 s in Persian\, its converse is\nneeded for French. Italian\, on the other 
 hand needs both of these\ndirections\,  since it has both pre and post ver
 bal clitics.
LOCATION:SW01\, Computer Laboratory
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