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Descriptors:
Grammar; Classification; Acoustics; Phonology; Learning Processes; Performance; Language Patterns; Language Acquisition; Language Research

Abstract:
Some of recently proposed phonotactic learners are tier-based bigram learners that restrict their hypothesis space to patterns between two segments that are adjacent at the tier level. This assumption is understandable considering that typologically frequent nonadjacent sound patterns are predominantly those that hold between two tier-adjacent segments. However, it is not clear whether the assumption is psychologically justified, i.e., whether speakers are indeed exclusively attentive to patterns between two tier-adjacent segments when it comes to learning nonadjacent sound patterns. In general, many recent studies suggest that learnable sound patterns are not limited to typologically observed sound patterns. Specifically, Koo and Callahan (2012) argue that adult speakers in laboratory settings have no trouble learning artificial patterns that cannot be explained by tier-based bigram learners. In this paper, we replicate their results in a more carefully controlled setting and argue that the assumption of tier-based bigram learning must be relaxed in order to properly explain human performance. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Educational Change; Grammar; Models; Language Usage; Pragmatics; Language Research; Language Classification; Discourse Analysis; Context Effect

Abstract:
The Functional Discourse Grammar model has a twofold objective: on the one hand, to provide a descriptively, psychologically and pragmatically adequate account of the forms made available by a typologically diverse range of languages; and on the other, to provide a model of language which is set up to reflect, at one remove, certain of the stages the analyst assumes the speaker would go through in producing such forms, in terms of the types of discourse acts that may be performed in so doing. The article argues that these goals do not sit easily the one with the other. In practice, the whole emphasis of the levels, components and modules provided by the grammar is designed to achieve only the first of the two objectives. The Contextual component is restricted to representing only those aspects of the context of a given utterance which have a systematic influence on the form of that utterance. So in practice, the analytic approximation to the speaker's performance of discourse act types is far removed from the complexity of the contextual factors which impinge on his or her actual utterance acts in some specific context. The problem is compounded by the lack of any systematic differentiation between considerations relating to the language system, and those having to do with the use of that system in some context. The need to provide for such a distinction is motivated here by a consideration of various types of indexical reference (specifically, "anadeixis" and anaphora) within a discourse. Here an important distinction is made between the nature of the indexical referring procedure being applied, and the particular expression types being used to carry it out. "In fine", the article argues that it is only by attempting to subsume the grammatical apparatus of the modular FDG system within a model of the wider utterance context in which it may be used by a speaker, that the problems raised earlier may be satisfactorily resolved. (Contains 2 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Reading; Essay Tests; Language Tests; Integrated Activities; English (Second Language); Undergraduate Students; Language Usage; Syntax; Grammar; Accuracy; Language Fluency; Information Sources; Statistical Analysis; Foreign Countries

Abstract:
As a growing number of testing programs use integrated writing tasks, more validation research is needed to inform stakeholders about score use and interpretation. The current study investigates the relationship between writing proficiency and discourse features in an integrated reading-writing task. At a Middle Eastern university, 136 undergraduate students completed a reading-based writing task. The essays were holistically scored by two raters and then classified into three proficiency levels. In addition, the essays were analyzed for a number of discourse features, including fluency, lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy, verbatim source use, and direct and indirect source use. A one-way analysis of variance was employed to look into the relationship between writing proficiency and the discourse features of interest. The results yielded significant differences across proficiency levels for a number of discourse features. Nonetheless, follow-up comparisons indicated that the differences were greater between the lowest level and the two upper levels. As for the upper levels, no statistically significant differences were found between these two levels for most of the discourse features. The implications of the study suggest that the selected discourse features play a major role at lower levels, whereas other textual features, such as cohesion, content, and organization, are more critical at higher level writing. The results also support the need in a construct of integrated writing for the inclusion of reading proficiency and knowledge about discourse synthesis. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure and 3 footnotes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Reading Tests; Reading Comprehension; Structural Equation Models; Ability; English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Asians; College Students; Correlation; Questionnaires; Grammar; Learning Strategies; Metacognition; Role; Teaching Methods; Classification; Foreign Countries

Abstract:
This article investigates the relationships between test takers' strategy use and test performance on an EFL reading test. For this study 209 Chinese college students were invited to participate in a reading comprehension test and answer a 30-item strategy use questionnaire. Results showed that two factors underlay test takers' reading test performance: lexico-grammatical reading ability (LEX-GR) and text comprehension reading ability (TxtCOM). In addition, metacognitive strategy use had a significant and direct effect on cognitive strategy use, implying that the former performed an executive function over the latter. Monitoring strategies were found to have a significant effect on LEX-GR and evaluating strategies significantly affected TxtCOM, suggesting that metacognitive strategy use played an important role on the reading test. Pedagogical implications are also discussed. (Contains 6 tables, 6 figures, and 1 note.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Native Speakers; Priming; Morphology (Languages); Language Processing; Psycholinguistics; Second Language Learning; English (Second Language); Semitic Languages; Advanced Students; Eye Movements; Task Analysis; Grammar

Abstract:
We report findings from psycholinguistic experiments investigating the detailed timing of processing morphologically complex words by proficient adult second (L2) language learners of English in comparison to adult native (L1) speakers of English. The first study employed the masked priming technique to investigate "-ed" forms with a group of advanced Arabic-speaking learners of English. The results replicate previously found L1/L2 differences in morphological priming, even though in the present experiment an extra temporal delay was offered after the presentation of the prime words. The second study examined the timing of constraints against inflected forms inside derived words in English using the eye-movement monitoring technique and an additional acceptability judgment task with highly advanced Dutch L2 learners of English in comparison to adult L1 English controls. Whilst offline the L2 learners performed native-like, the eye-movement data showed that their online processing was not affected by the morphological constraint against regular plurals inside derived words in the same way as in native speakers. Taken together, these findings indicate that L2 learners are not just slower than native speakers in processing morphologically complex words, but that the L2 comprehension system employs real-time grammatical analysis (in this case, morphological information) less than the L1 system. (Contains 8 tables, 1 figure, and 2 notes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Grammar; Nouns; Language Processing; Control Groups; Language Proficiency; Morphemes; Native Language; Morphology (Languages); Phrase Structure; Korean; Second Language Learning; Task Analysis; Language Research

Abstract:
This study examined the second language (L2) acquisition of the Korean plural marker -"tul" by native speakers of English. Seventy-seven learners at four Korean proficiency levels along with 31 native Korean-speaking controls completed five tasks designed to probe for knowledge of particular features and restrictions associated with so-called intrinsic and extrinsic plural-marking in Korean. The results suggest that knowledge of both types of plural developed with increasing proficiency. However, the features associated with the intrinsic plural, which is more similar to the English plural in terms of grammatical function, were more easily acquired than those of the extrinsic (distributive) plural, which requires recruiting the features of a completely distinct morpholexical item from the first language (L1). We also found some developmental evidence for a feature hierarchy in quantified Korean noun phrases, in which the most deeply-embedded featural co-occurrence restriction on intrinsic plural-marking was the latest acquired. (Contains 15 tables, 2 figures and 19 notes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Grammar; Nouns; Language Processing; Second Language Learning; Syntax; Advanced Students; Form Classes (Languages); Computational Linguistics; Morphology (Languages); Adults; English; Native Speakers; German; Language Research; Control Groups; Eye Movements; Task Analysis; Language Tests; Placement

Abstract:
In order to identify the causes of inflectional variability in adult second-language (L2) acquisition, this study investigates lexical and syntactic aspects of gender processing in real-time L2 production and comprehension. Twenty advanced to near-native adult first language (L1) English speakers of L2 German and 20 native controls were tested in a study comprising two experiments. In elicited production, we probe accuracy in lexical gender assignment. In a visual-world eye tracking task, we test the predictive processing of syntactic gender agreement between determiners and nouns. The findings show clear contingencies (1) between overall accuracy in lexical gender assignment in production and target predictive processing of syntactic gender agreement in comprehension and (2) between the speed of lexical access and predictive syntactic gender agreement. These findings support lexical and computational accounts of L2 inflectional variability and argue against models positing representational deficits in morphosyntax in late L2 acquisition and processing. (Contains 7 tables, 3 figures and 2 notes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Form Classes (Languages); Grammar; Language Acquisition; Classification; Linguistic Input; Cues; Generalization; Vocabulary Development; Computational Linguistics; Task Analysis

Abstract:
A fundamental component of language acquisition involves organizing words into grammatical categories. Previous literature has suggested a number of ways in which this categorization task might be accomplished. Here we ask whether the patterning of the words in a corpus of linguistic input ("distributional information") is sufficient, along with a small set of learning biases, to extract these underlying structural categories. In a series of experiments, we show that learners can acquire linguistic form-classes, generalizing from instances of the distributional contexts of individual words in the exposure set to the full range of contexts for all the words in the set. Crucially, we explore how several specific distributional variables enable learners to form a category of lexical items and generalize to novel words, yet also allow for exceptions that maintain lexical specificity. We suggest that learners are sensitive to the "contexts" of individual words, the "overlaps" among contexts across words, the non-overlap of contexts (or "systematic gaps" in information), and the size of the exposure set. We also ask how learners determine the category membership of a new word for which there is very sparse contextual information. We find that, when there are strong category cues and robust category learning of other words, adults readily generalize the distributional properties of the learned category to a new word that shares just one context with the other category members. However, as the distributional cues regarding the category become sparser and contain more consistent gaps, learners show more conservatism in generalizing distributional properties to the novel word. Taken together, these results show that learners are highly systematic in their use of the distributional properties of the input corpus, using them in a principled way to determine when to generalize and when to preserve lexical specificity. (Contains 3 tables and 5 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Research Reports; Computational Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Intellectual Disciplines; Classification; Phrase Structure; Grammar

Abstract:
This article presents a group of lexical bundles identified in a corpus of research article introductions as the first step in the analysis of these expressions in the different sections of the research article. A one-million word corpus of research article introductions from various disciplines was compiled and the lexical bundles identified in it were classified grammatically and functionally. The findings of these analyses agreed with previous studies in the most frequent types of grammatical correlates for these bundles and the most frequent functions performed but showed several new qualities for these expressions (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Biber & Conrad, 1999; Biber, Conrad, & Cortes, 2003, 2004). A further step in the analysis matched these lexical bundles to the moves and steps which are characteristic of research article introductions (Swales, 2004), discovering that a group of lexical bundles were exclusively linked to one move or step in a move while a second group occurred across several moves and steps. In addition, some of these expressions were used to trigger the steps that called for their use while others complemented other expressions and were used as comments. (Contains 3 tables.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Semantics; Discourse Analysis; Writing (Composition); Literacy; History; Biology; Language Variation; Grammar; Role; Classification; Linguistic Theory; Secondary School Students

Abstract:
This paper takes as point of departure the register variable field, and explores its application to the discourse of History and Biology in secondary school classrooms from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics. In particular it considers the functions of technicality and abstraction in these subject specific discourses, and their relation to the high stakes reading and writing expected from students. The paper shows how the practical concepts of power words, power grammar and power composition can be developed from this work as tools for teachers to use for purposes of knowledge building. Specific attention is paid to the role of specialised composition and classification taxonomies and activity sequences in specialised fields, and the relation of this valeur to the concept of semantic density in Legitimation Code Theory. (Contains 14 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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