Adjective Noun Research Articles

Difficulty in Identifying the Adjectival Noun "Izina Ntera" in Kinyarwanda Sentences

Kinyarwanda grammar, particularly its parts of speech, includes modifiers of nouns among which "Adjectival noun (Izina ntera)" plays a crucial role. This category, a combination of a noun and an adjective of quality, has been a source of confusion among students due to ambiguous explanations by Kinyarwanda grammarians. Two distinct structures have been adopted for this grammatical category; however, the confirmed structure does not fully meet the necessary criteria, while the appropriate structure has not been widely accepted. This study addresses the discrepancies surrounding the "izina ntera" category in secondary schools and proposes a clearer explanation for its definition in Kinyarwanda grammar. Employing a mixed-method approach blending qualitative and quantitative methods, and drawing on critical and structuralism theories, the research involved 58 upper-level secondary school students and 30 Kinyarwanda teachers purposively selected from three schools in Gicumbi district. Data collection utilized both hard and soft questionnaires, and analysis was conducted using SPSS software. The research proposed an updated definition of Kinyarwanda adjectival noun, supplemented with examples, to alleviate ambiguity in its usage and enhance student understanding of this grammatical category. The findings indicate that current textbooks perpetuate confusion by presenting conflicting definitions and structures for "izina ntera." Recommendations include the standardization of educational materials to reflect a single structure, acceptance of the revised definition by grammarians and educators, and the organization of seminars and training to facilitate the adoption of these changes. Continued research on Kinyarwanda grammar is encouraged to further refine and innovate the teaching of parts of speech.

What contributes to fluent L2 speech? Examining cognitive and utterance fluency link with underlying L2 collocational processing speed and accuracy

AbstractSecond language (L2) fluency research has suggested that a range of linguistic knowledge and processing speed serve as cognitive fluency (CF) underlying L2 utterance fluency (UF). Building on prior CF-UF link studies, this study explored L2 collocational processing speed and accuracy as underlying CF measures. This study also explored the phrasal frequency effect on the relationship between collocational processing speed and UF to test whether the processing speed of higher-frequency collocations is more strongly related to UF. A total of 108 Japanese university students completed a phrasal acceptability judgment task with adjective–noun collocations pooled from the Academic Collocation List. Speech was elicited in an argumentative speech task, and UF measures were computed based on speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. The results revealed that the collocational processing speed was weakly tied to articulation rate and mid-clause and end-clause silent pause ratio (rho = |.271–.322|), while the collocational processing accuracy was weakly to moderately tied to most UF measures except filled pause ratio (rho = |.281–.368|). The collocation frequency moderated the relationship between the processing speed and UF, suggesting that high-frequency collocations served as a proxy for automaticity in speech production. Implications for CF-UF link research are discussed.

Fine-grained differences in gender-cue strength affect predictive processing in children: Cross-linguistic evidence from Russian and Bulgarian

We tested predictive gender agreement processing in adjective–noun phrases by 45 4- to 6-year-old Russian- and Bulgarian-speaking children using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm. Russian and Bulgarian are closely related languages that have three genders but differ in the nature and number of gender cues on adjectives. Analysis of the proportion and time course of looks to the target noun showed that only Bulgarian children used gender cues to predict the upcoming noun. We argue that the cross-linguistic difference in the gender cue strength is revealed through the operation of economy, transparency, and interdependence in a gender complexity matrix. The documented advantage for Bulgarian children in gender agreement processing and acquisition underscores the need for a comparative language acquisition approach to typologically close languages.

Don’t call me <i>obasan </i>‘aunt’

This study investigates the use of the kinship term obasan “aunt” as an address term in Japanese by analysing three types of data: metalinguistic discourse in online discussion; the most typical collocates for the term in a large corpus of Japanese websites; and the results of a survey of native speakers. The study demonstrates that address practices towards aunts appear to be changing. The most typically collocated adjectives and adjectival nouns with obasan as a term of reference in the corpus reveal an overwhelmingly negative conceptualisation of the term in contemporary contexts. The survey results show an increasing trend towards addressing aunts with their names and nicknames instead of obasan. The analysis shows an almost pejorative connotation of the fictive use of obasan, and this appears to interfere with its literal use as an address term towards actual kin, hence the decrease in its usage.

What makes an awfully good oxymoron?

AbstractOxymorons combine two opposite terms in a paradoxical manner. They are closely intertwined with antonymy, since the union of antonymous items creates the paradoxical effect of the oxymoron and generates a new meaning. Compared to other forms of figurative language, oxymorons are largely underinvestigated. We explored what makes good oxymorons through a crowdsourcing task in which we asked participants to judge the acceptability, comprehensibility, effectiveness/aptness, commonness, pleasantness, and humoristic connotation of Italian adjective–noun oxymorons. We hypothesized that oxymorons featuring morphologically related antonyms (felice infelicità ‘happy unhappiness’) may be perceived to be better than oxymorons featuring morphologically unrelated antonyms (felice tristezza ‘happy sadness’) and that oxymorons constructed by complementaries (esatta inesattezza ‘exact inexactness’) may be perceived to be better than oxymorons constructed by contraries (bella bruttezza ‘beautiful ugliness’). The results confirmed only partially our hypotheses: oxymorons with complementaries were perceived as more acceptable, comprehensible, effective/apt, common, whereas no strong trend was found for the other two dimensions. Surprisingly, our analyses revealed that oxymoronic constructions containing morphologically unrelated words were perceived as more acceptable, comprehensible, effective/apt, common, pleasant, contradicting our initial expectations.

Cross-linguistic influence meets diminished input: A comparative study of heritage Russian in contact with Hebrew and English

While it is known that heritage speakers diverge from the homeland baseline, there is still no consensus on the mechanisms triggering this divergence. We investigate the impact of two potential factors shaping adult heritage language (HL) grammars: (1) cross-linguistic influence (CLI), originally proposed for second language acquisition (SLA), and (2) background factors associated with input. To assess the role of CLI and input we compared two groups of adult heritage speakers of Russian ( n = 66) with two typologically distinct societal languages (SLs), Hebrew and American English. Their production was evaluated for three morphosyntactic phenomena: adjective–noun agreement, accusative case morphology, and numerical phrases. Using self-rating and baseline vocabulary tasks as proficiency measures, we conducted controlled experiments to assess mastery of the target phenomena. Our results show that, while CLI is the main mechanism behind HL grammar maintenance, increased input and proficiency can modulate performance in the absence of grammatical similarities between the HL and SL. An analysis of non-target responses revealed systematic patterns, including reliance on default, or unmarked, forms in both groups, in line with previous research. These findings contribute to the literature on the mechanisms of HL grammar formation and maintenance.

Exploring Semantic Relations for Social Media Sentiment Analysis

With the massive social media data available online, the conventional single modality emotion classification has developed into more complex models of multimodal sentiment analysis. Most existing works simply extracted image features at a coarse level, resulting in the absence of partially detailed visual features. Besides, social media data usually contain multiple images, while existing works considered a single image case and used only one image for representing visual features. In fact, it is nontrivial to extend the single image case to the multiple images case, due to the complex relations among multiple images. To solve the above issues, in this paper, we propose a <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">G</b> ated <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">F</b> usion <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">S</b> emantic <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</b> elation (GFSR) network to explore semantic relations for social media sentiment analysis. In addition to inter-relations between visual and textual modalities, we also exploit intra-relations among multiple images, potentially improving the sentiment analysis performance. Specifically, we design a gated fusion network to fuse global image embeddings and the corresponding local Adjective Noun Pair (ANP) embeddings. Then, apart from textual relations and cross-modal relations, we employ the multi-head cross attention mechanism between images and ANPs to capture similar semantic contents. Eventually, the updated textual and visual representations are concatenated for the final sentiment prediction. Extensive experiments are conducted on real-world <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Yelp</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Flickr30k</i> datasets, showing that our GFSR can improve about 0.10% to 3.66% in terms of accuracy on the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Yelp</i> dataset with multiple images, and achieve the best accuracy for two classes and the best macro F1 for three classes on the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Flickr30k</i> dataset with a single image.

When teaching works and time helps: Noun modification in L2 English school children

AbstractThe study focuses on the interaction between length of exposure and instruction in the L2 English acquisition process of L1 Spanish school children. Two target structures involving noun premodification are targeted: noun–noun (NN) compounds and adjective–noun (AN) strings. Four groups of participants have been studied for 3 years: a group that has been exposed to a specifically designed teaching program targeting NN compounds and a group that has received the regular English instruction program which does not address this structure as part of the curriculum. Two age subgroups appear in each case. The longitudinal judgment data elicited show that performance improves in the cooperation between length of exposure and the exposure to the NN instruction program. Furthermore, it is this last issue that actually takes the lead in that the NN instruction program directly impacts on not only NN compounds but also AN strings. This points to instruction being determinant in the L2 learning process; that is, a consciously and carefully directed instruction is proven to be more effective than length of exposure itself. This study on longitudinal experimental data contributes to shed light on the factors involved in instructed L2 acquisition.

The life cycles of the suffix -ost’- in Russian

The research summarises the general framework of N. M. Shansky’s PhD thesis which initiated a range of historical lexicological and synchronic linguistic studies. The paper provides arguments and examples showing the development of the scientist’s ideas on the lexical material of the 19th century. An example is N. M. Shansky’s concept of "semantic centres" in the process of filling in important socio-cultural lacunae. Involving a range of lexemes in structuring the concept "Social Environment" through the formation of relevant connotative components in them (kazarmennost’ – salonnost’ – kabinetnost’ – berlozhnost’ – keleinost’ / Engl. barrackness – salonness – cabinetness or officeness – denness – secrecy) provides a good illustration of the scientist’s idea. The average (relative) number of derivatives with ­ost’­ in the modern language is 3 500 – 4 000 lexemes. The paper examines the lexical and word-formation innovations that expand the field of derivational bases (foreign vocabulary, calques or loan translations, and semi-calques as well as low colloquial vocabulary). Additionally, the study analyses the mechanisms of interaction between the formal and the semantic criteria with the supremacy of the latter as it contributes to the removal of the previous morphonological limitations (derivation from relative adjectives ending in ­skiy). Deriving lexemes with the double ­ost’ suffix has become possible within the word-formation pattern ending in ­ost’: one suffix is in the derivational base, the other – in the stem of the derived word (skorostnost’, lichnostnost’ / Engl. high­speedness, personhood). The paper also outlines the chronological dissonance in the formation of adjectival nouns ending in ­skost’ in Russian abroad half a century ahead of the time they appeared in the language of the metropole. The ­skost’ pattern expands the nominative field by means of including surname derivatives (dostoevskost’, chekhovskost’, stalinskost’, khrushchevskost’, and others). The semantic-motivational stimulus is the "semantic increment" formed in relative adjectives due to the strong pragmatic connotation of particular precedent surnames. Thus, lexemes with the derivational suffix ­ost’­ in the modern language show ample opportunities for development both on the basis of intralingual potentials and as a result of fo reign language influence. The research employed critical-analytical, constructive-synthetic methods, definitional analy sis, the method of distinguishing between synchronic and diachronic word-formation, multiple motivation, the method of analysing usual and occasional words.

The hurtfulness of slurs, nouns and adjectives as group labels

Abstract Slurs are pejorative terms for groups of people, relating to for example their nationality, their sexual orientation, etc. While there is a lot of discussion about slurs, they are typically characterized in relation to a neutral noun. In this article we will explore this distinction between neutral and offensive group labels. By means of a small experiment, we show that slurs are indeed considered to be more hurtful than their corresponding ‘neutral’ nouns, but that at least some of these nouns themselves are experienced as more hurtful than adjective noun combinations. We suggest that the results are in line with analyses in which the degree to which a term is considered to be hurtful is based on its inherent (i.e. conventionalized) properties, as well as the context in which it is used. We suggest that such analyses could be extended to nouns, such that terms can be neutral or non-neutral to various degrees.

Investigating First and Second Language Speaker Intuitions of Phrasal Frequency and Association Strength of Multiword Sequences

AbstractIn this study, we investigated the accuracy of first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers’ intuitive judgments of phrasal frequency and collocation strength, and examined the linguistic influences that give rise to these judgments. L1 and L2 speakers of English judged 180 adjective–noun collocations as (a) high frequency, medium frequency, or low frequency and (b) high association, medium association, or low association. Results showed that neither L1 nor L2 speakers demonstrated accurate intuitive judgments of phrasal frequency and association strength. Both groups of participants employed linguistic information at phrase and single‐word levels when giving intuitive statistical estimates. We found judgments of phrasal frequency and association strength to be intertwined for both L1 and L2 speakers. Taken together, these findings shed new insight on understanding language users’ statistical knowledge of multiword sequences.

Effects of L1-L2 congruency, collocation type, and restriction on processing L2 collocations.

The present study investigated the effects of L1-L2 congruency, collocation type, and restriction on L2 collocational processing. Advanced Chinese learners of English and native English-speaking controls performed an online acceptability judgment task to investigate how advanced L2 learners processed congruent (sharing the same meaning and structure in L1 language) collocations and English-only (not equivalent in L1 construction) collocations with the same node (right) word and a different collocate (left). The experimental materials included verb-noun (VN), adjective-noun (AN) collocations, free (less fixed), and restricted (more fixed) collocations chosen from BNC. The results revealed that (i) The non-native speakers were sensitive to L1-L2 congruency, but the native speakers were not. (ii) The native speakers were sensitive to collocation restriction, whereas the non-native speakers were not. These results lend initial support to the mapping hypothesis and open choice principle of L2 collocational processing for Chinese English learners.

Testing Potential Transfer Effects in Heritage and Adult L2 Bilinguals Acquiring a Mini Grammar as an Additional Language: An ERP Approach

Models on L3/Ln acquisition differ with respect to how they envisage degree (holistic vs. selective transfer of the L1, L2 or both) and/or timing (initial stages vs. development) of how the influence of source languages unfolds. This study uses EEG/ERPs to examine these models, bringing together two types of bilinguals: heritage speakers (HSs) (Italian-German, n = 15) compared to adult L2 learners (L1 German, L2 English, n = 28) learning L3/Ln Latin. Participants were trained on a selected Latin lexicon over two sessions and, afterward, on two grammatical properties: case (similar between German and Latin) and adjective–noun order (similar between Italian and Latin). Neurophysiological findings show an N200/N400 deflection for the HSs in case morphology and a P600 effect for the German L2 group in adjectival position. None of the current L3/Ln models predict the observed results, which questions the appropriateness of this methodology. Nevertheless, the results are illustrative of differences in how HSs and L2 learners approach the very initial stages of additional language learning, the implications of which are discussed.

Effect of stimulus complexity on psychometric functions

Factors such as semantic and syntactic context, predictability, talker characteristics, background noise characteristics, and spatial differences between the target and maskers play major role in identifying speech in complex listening environments. Here, we present psychometric properties of two closed set speech corpus: (1) co-ordinate response measure (CRM) and (2) Boston University Corpus (BUC) obtained from a group of fifty young normal-hearing, listeners. CRM sentences are of the form “Ready CALLSIGN go to a COLOR NUMBER now” and BUC sentences are of the form “NAME VERB NUMBER ADJECTIVE NOUN.” Method of constant stimuli was used to obtain psychometric functions for the two corpora in the presence of speech and speech shaped noise. One half of the participants were presented the stimuli at a constant level (20 dB SL), while it was presented at comfortable listening levels for the half. The effect of the stimulus complexity, presentation level, and spatial configuration of the target and noise on the identification thresholds and the shape of the psychometric functions will be discussed.

Neural and behavioural effects of typicality, denotation and composition in an adjective–noun combination task

ABSTRACT Formal semantics states that the meanings of phrases are composed from the meanings of constituent parts and syntax. Little is known about how composition is neurally implemented. We studied ERP and behavioural responses to determiner-adjective-noun phrases. We assessed the effects of typicality and denotation, using intersective (typical: “A green turtle”, atypical: “An orange turtle”) or subsective adjectives (typical: “A slow turtle”, atypical: “A fast turtle”). After each phrase, participants responded to two questions (e.g., for “A fast turtle”: “Is it a common turtle?”; “Is it a fast animal?”). We contrasted these 4 semantic conditions, requiring composition, to 2 nonsemantic conditions, where the adjective was replaced with a pseudoword or a nonword. This contrast revealed a larger P600, if participants performed the task without instructions and feedback (experiment 1), or a larger sustained negativity, if they were nudged to pay attention to meaning by instructions and feedback (experiment 2). Typicality or denotation had an impact only on behavioural responses. We discuss implications for theories of language processing and compositional semantics.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Visual sentiment analysis based on image caption and adjective–noun–pair description

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Visual sentiment analysis based on image caption and adjective–noun–pair description

Behavioral and Brain Responses Highlight the Role of Usage in the Preparation of Multiword Utterances for Production.

Usage-based theories assume that all aspects of language processing are shaped by the distributional properties of the language. The frequency not only of words but also of larger chunks plays a major role in language processing. These theories predict that the frequency of phrases influences the time needed to prepare these phrases for production and their acoustic duration. By contrast, dominant psycholinguistic models of utterance production predict no such effects. In these models, the system keeps track of the frequency of individual words but not of co-occurrences. This study investigates the extent to which the frequency of phrases impacts naming latencies and acoustic duration with a balanced design, where the same words are recombined to build high- and low-frequency phrases. The brain signal of participants is recorded so as to obtain information on the electrophysiological bases and functional locus of frequency effects. Forty-seven participants named pictures using high- and low-frequency adjective-noun phrases. Naming latencies were shorter for high-frequency than low-frequency phrases. There was no evidence that phrase frequency impacted acoustic duration. The electrophysiological signal differed between high- and low-frequency phrases in time windows that do not overlap with conceptualization or articulation processes. These findings suggest that phrase frequency influences the preparation of phrases for production, irrespective of the lexical properties of the constituents, and that this effect originates at least partly when speakers access and encode linguistic representations. Moreover, this study provides information on how the brain signal recorded during the preparation of utterances changes with the frequency of word combinations.

Piled Modifiers, Buried Verbs, and Other Turgid Prose in the American Political Science Review

ABSTRACTAcademic writing is notoriously difficult to read. Can political science do better? To assess the state of prose in political science, we examined a recent issue of the American Political Science Review. We evaluated the articles according to the basic principles of style endorsed by writing experts. We find that the writing suffers most from heavy noun phrases in forms such as noun noun noun and adjective adjective noun noun. Further, we describe five contributors that swell noun phrases: piled modifiers, needless words, nebulous nouns, missing prepositions, and buried verbs. We document more than a thousand examples and demonstrate how to revise each one with principles of style. We also draw on research in cognitive science to explain why these constructions confuse, mislead, and distract readers.

Independent effects of collocation strength and contextual predictability on eye movements in reading

ABSTRACT Collocations are commonly co-occurring word pairs, such as “black coffee”. Previous research has demonstrated a processing advantage for collocations compared to novel phrases, suggesting that readers are sensitive to the frequency that words co-occur in phrases. However, a further question concerns whether this processing advantage for collocations occurs independently from effects of contextual predictability. We examined this issue in an eye movement experiment using adjective–noun pairs that are strong collocations (e.g. “black coffee”) or weak collocations (e.g. “bitter coffee”), based on co-occurrence statistics. These were presented in sentences where the shared concept they expressed (e.g. coffee) was predictable or unpredictable from the prior sentence context. We observed clear effects of collocation strength, with shorter reading times for strong compared to weak collocations. Moreover, these effects occurred independently of effects of contextual predictability. The findings therefore provide novel evidence that a processing advantage for collocations is not driven by contextual expectations.

Cross-linguistic influence on the use of L2 collocations: the case of Vietnamese learners

AbstractUsing collocation is a key part of second language ability (Granger, Sylviane. 2018. Formulaic sequences in learner corpora: Collocations and lexical bundles. In Anna Siyanova-Chanturia &amp; Ana Pellicer-Sanchez (eds.),Understanding formulaic language: A second language acquisition perspective, 228–247. New York: Routledge; Nattinger, James R. &amp; Jeamette S. DeCarrico. 1992.Lexical phrases and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Nesselhauf, Nadja. 2004.Collocations in a learner corpus. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.; Pawley, Andrew &amp; Frances H. Syder. 1983. Two puzzles for linguistics: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In Jack Richards &amp; Richard W. Schmidt (eds.),Language and communication, 191–228. London: Longman). Researchers often hypothesize that the influence of the first language is an important factor in the production and understanding of unconventional collocations (Huang, Li-Shi. 2001. Knowledge of English collocations: An analysis of Taiwanese EFL learners.Paper presented at the Texas Foreign Languguage Education Conference, Texas; Laufer, Bhatia &amp; Tina Waldman. 2011. Verb-noun collocations in second language writing: A corpus analysis of learners’ English.Language Learning61(2). 647–672.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00621.x; Phoocharoensil, Supakorn. 2013. Cross-linguistic influence: Its impact on L2 English collocation production.English Language Teaching6(1). 1–10) but we are only now starting to understand this. The present study provides a robust investigation of cross-linguistic influences by exploring how Vietnamese influenced Vietnamese learners’ use of English language verb-noun and adjective noun collocations in 104 350-word argumentative essays, using a framework derived from Jarvis, Scott. 2012. The detection-based approach: An overview. In S. Jarvis &amp; S. A. Crossley (eds.),Approaching language transfer through text classification: Explorations in the detection-based approach, 1st ed., Vol. 64, 1–33. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, drawing on homogeneity among speakers of Vietnamese; heterogeneity between users of Vietnamese and other language; and formal and conceptual congruity between collocations learners produce in English and equivalent terms in Vietnamese. The study found that less than 10% of the collocations learners produced were unconventional and of these, 40% of collocations were influenced by the first language (L1); errors associated with incorrect use of prepositions in verb-noun collocations (e.g. the addition, omission or misuse of prepositions) are strongly L1-motivated. Learners make errors with not only incongruent collocations (collocations with no direct L1 equivalents) but also with congruent collocations (collocations with direct L1 translation).