Verb Agreement Research Articles

Argument structure and the role of the body and space in Kenyan Sign Language

Abstract This paper investigates how systematically a young macro-community sign language, Kenyan Sign Language, uses two different means to communicate about events: (i) word order, and (ii) verb agreement using spatial co-reference. The study finds that KSL signers rely primarily on word order and using the body as a referent, rather than verb agreement, when representing transitive events. Yet, by looking separately at how KSL signers use the sub-components of verb agreement, a pattern emerges that indicates a possible path toward ‘canonical verb agreement’. These sub-components are evaluated using Meir’s stages/types of grammaticalization of verb agreement (Meir 2011, 2016), and compared with other young and emerging sign languages.

Concordância verbal no português brasileiro em Maceió/AL, Brasil

RESUMO: Neste artigo analisamos a concordância verbal no português brasileiro falado na zona urbana de Maceió/AL, tomando como base os pressupostos teóricos e metodológicos da Teoria Sociolinguística Variacionista, de William Labov (2008 [1972]) com o objetivo de descrever e analisar o padrão de concordância dos falantes maceioenses. Para tanto, utilizamos dados do projeto Portal – Variação Linguística no Português Alagoano, com entrevistas gravadas e transcritas ortograficamente de 36 colaboradores, homens e mulheres de três faixas etárias e três níveis de escolaridade. Foram selecionadas como variáveis sociais ‘gênero’, ‘faixa etária’ e ‘escolaridade’; e como variáveis linguísticas ‘posição do sujeito em relação ao verbo’, ‘elementos intervenientes entre sujeito e verbo’ e ‘natureza do sujeito’. Concluímos que a concordância verbal em Maceió é diretamente proporcional à escolaridade e que há interação entre as variáveis gênero e faixa etária. Do ponto de vista linguístico, o processo é favorecido pela 1ª pessoa do plural e desfavorecido pela 3ª pessoa do plural. As variáveis ‘posição do sujeito’ e ‘elementos intervenientes’ não foram estatisticamente significativas.
 PALAVRAS-CHAVE: variação linguística, sintaxe, variedade alagoana.

Cue reliability, salience and early comprehension of agreement: Evidence from Greek.

Previous studies across languages (English, Spanish, French) have argued that perceptual salience and cue reliability can explain cross-linguistic differences in early comprehension of verbal agreement. Here we tested this hypothesis further by investigating early comprehension in Greek, where markers have high salience and reliability (compared to Spanish and English) predicting early comprehension, as in French. We investigated two and three-year-old Greek-speaking children's ability to distinguish third person singular and plural agreement in a picture-selection task. We also examined the frequency of these morphemes in child-directed speech to address input effects. Results showed that three-year-olds are sensitive to both singular and plural agreement, earlier than children acquiring English and Spanish, but later than French, and despite singular agreement being more frequent than plural agreement in the child corpus. These findings provide further support for the role of salience and reliability during early acquisition, while highlighting a potential effect of morpheme position.

Narrative Language Markers of Arabic Language Development and Impairment.

Purpose We examined indices of narrative microstructure as metrics of language development and impairment in Arabic-speaking children. We examined their age sensitivity, correlations with standardized measures, and ability to differentiate children with average language and language impairment. Method We collected story narratives from 177 children (54.2% boys) between 3.08 and 10.92 years old (M = 6.25, SD = 1.67) divided into six age bands. Each child also received standardized measures of spoken language (Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary, Sentence Imitation, and Pseudoword Repetition). Several narrative indices of microstructure were examined in each age band. Children were divided into (suspected) developmental language disorder and typical language groups using the standardized test scores and compared on the narrative indicators. Sensitivity and specificity of the narrative indicators that showed group differences were calculated. Results The measures that showed age sensitivity included subject omission error rate, number of object clitics, correct use of subject-verb agreement, and mean length of utterance in words. The developmental language disorder group scored higher on subject omission errors (Cohen's d = 0.55) and lower on correct use of subject-verb agreement (Cohen's d = 0.48) than the typical language group. The threshold for impaired performance with the highest combination of specificity and sensitivity was 35th percentile. Conclusions Several indices of narrative microstructure appear to be valid metrics for documenting language development in children acquiring Gulf Arabic. Subject omission errors and correct use of subject-verb agreement differentiate children with typical and atypical levels of language development.

Morphosyntactic Restructuring in Child Heritage Georgian

This study investigates morphosyntactic restructuring in Heritage Georgian, a highly agglutinative language with polypersonal agreement. Child heritage speakers of Georgian (n = 26, age 3-16) completed a Frog Story narrative task and a lexical proficiency task in Georgian. Heritage speaker narratives were compared to narratives produced by age-matched peers living in Georgia (n = 30, age 5-14) and Georgian children and young adults who moved to the United States during childhood (n = 7, age 9–24). Heritage Georgian speakers produced more instances of non-standard nominal case marking and non-standard verbal subject agreement than their homeland peers. Individual morphosyntactic divergence was predicted by lexical score, but not by oral fluency or age. Patterns of divergence in the nominal domain included overuse of the default case (nominative) as well as over-extension of non-default cases (ergative, dative). In the verbal domain, person agreement was more consistently marked than number. Subject agreement exhibited more divergence from the baseline than object agreement, contrary to previous evidence from similar heritage languages (e.g., Heritage Hindi, Montrul et al., 2012). Results indicate that morphosyntactic production in child Heritage Georgian generally displays the same divergences as adult heritage-language grammars, but language-specific differences also underscore the need for continued documentation of lesser-studied heritage languages.

STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN USING SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT

This research was aimed at investigating the Students’ Ability in Using Subject- Verb Agreement and the error made by the students in using subject-verb agreement. The writers was used the deductive approach to minimize the errors on learning grammar process and improving their ability in using subject-verb agreement. The students ability in using subject-verb agreement was categorized into the poor categories with 17 students and followed by very poor categories with 8 students from 34 students are there in the class. This research also found some causes of the students error while learning the grammar structure especially subject-verb agreement. The error occurred while learning subject verb agreement was on intralingua error like, false analogy and misanalysis.

The article <i>a(n)</i> in English quantifying expressions: A default marker of cardinality

Certain English quantificational expressions feature what appears to be an indefinite article, e.g. a bunch, a few, a hundred. These can be divided into three types of quantifying expressions: pseudopartitives (a lot, a bunch, a ton), article-requiring quantifiers (a few, a couple, a hundred), and article-free quantifiers (three, many, several); article-free quantifiers have an article under certain circumstances, e.g. modification by an adjective (a surprising 30 …). While standard analyses would take the article in these expressions to be a D head, it is argued here that the article is not in D, nor is it singular or count, as evidenced by its (lack of an) interaction with verbal agreement. Instead, it is claimed that a(n) is a default cardinality marker, which surfaces when a QP is present, but fails to be spelled-out by other material. The distribution of default a(n) further interacts with adjective placement (a surprising 30), plural marking on some quantifiers (tons of), other determiners (the hundred), and the functional status of the quantifier (a wealth of vs. a lot). The resemblance of this article to the English indefinite article a(n) is also considered, and a possible unifying analysis is given.

الگوهای مطابقه در ساختهای کنایی در هورامی: رویکردی کمینهگرا

Accounting for the verbal agreement and its interaction with case marking in both accusative and ergative alignments have always been an interesting line of investigation in generative syntax. Two main approaches have been proposed in this regard within the general framework of Minimalism. The first one, referred to as the classic approach in the available literature, envisages agreement as a parallel mechanism with case marking, taking place in narrow syntax. The second approach, generally known as dependent case-marking approach, not only separates agreement from case marking, but also analyzes it as a two-step phenomenon being unfolded both in narrow syntax, through Agree-Link, and PF, through Agree-Copy. Employing the theoretical apparatus of the dependent case-marking approach, the present paper seeks to study the patterns of verbal agreement in ergative constructions in Hawrami. The explanatory adequacy of this very approach is specifically observed in the theoretical analysis of a special type of ergative constructions in which the direct object takes the form of a possessive NP. The manner through which the possessor of the direct object is overtly manifested in these ergative constructions can determine the outcome of the verbal agreement: if the possessor is expressed via person-marker clitics, the verb agrees in person and number with the possessor, however, if the possessor is realized as an overt NP, the verb agrees with the possessed element. With the intention of analyzing this pattern, it is argued that in both cases the potential targets which the head of T, and consequently the main verb, can agree with are determined in narrow syntax, through Agree-Link while the ultimate form of the agreement affix is determined post-syntactically via Agree-Copy. More specifically, we maintain that Agree-Copy has a direct access to the internal structure of potential targets, and this very fact plays a vital role in determination of agreement patterns.

Grammatical Error Analysis in Descriptive Writing of Accounting Students at Politeknik Harapan Bersama Tegal

Most students have difficulty in learning English especially for Writing material, because in addition to the problem vocabulary there is also a lack of student’s understanding of Grammar. It takes a while to work on Writing because it should consider the aspects of Vocabulary and Grammar. This research was conducted to find some Grammar errors which commonly done by students of Accounting study Program at Politeknik Harapan Bersama Tegal. So the purpose of this research is to analyze student Grammar mistakes in particular in descriptive text. This research uses qualitative descriptive methods as a method of research. Data presented in the form of descriptive analysis. From the results of the study showed that students make mistakes on the Verb Agreement 7.07%, Capitalizing 34.84%, Grammatical Error (Usage) 2.52%, Sentence Pattern 4.04%, pronoun 49.49%, Spelling 2.02%. From the result, it can be concluded that the students should learn Grammar especially about pronoun, because of the mistakes that most students do.

A focus on language in the immersion language arts curriculum

AbstractGrounded in research on explicit and implicit knowledge and on the role of conscious awareness in language learning, this interpretive case study examined the efforts of one Portuguese teacher to implement a focus on language within a language arts curriculum based on literary genres with a class of fourth grade (9-year-old) students over the course of an academic year. The study found that lessons on authentic literary texts provided a meaningful context for calling students’ attention to nominal and verbal agreement patterns in Portuguese. By the end of the year, students’ nominal and verbal agreement had improved dramatically on a written test, but only their nominal agreement had improved significantly in an unstructured interview, although they had begun to use a greater variety of verb forms. Students were also able to correct many of their own errors and to use metalinguistic terminology to explain the language patterns involved.

Constructional analogy and reanalysis in possessive applicatives

Although possessors internal to an argument DP do not qualify as canonical controllers of verbal agreement, in some languages an internal possessor may be cross‑referenced on an applicative verb. The aim of the paper is to propose a historical scenario for the emergence of this pattern, following the basic insights of the constructional approach to language change. The paper argues that this pattern is a historical innovation. It emerged when the external benefactive argument was reanalysed as internal possessor, a process that has parallels in some languages with dative possessors. The change was motivated by cross‑constructional analogy, namely, formal and semantic assimilation to the class of internal possessive constructions. When constituency was reanalysed, the location of agreement remained intact creating a non‑local configuration.

Breast self-examination, mammography and Pap test among Turkish women: Role of healthcare professionals in Sivas.

INTRODUCTIONThe aim of the present study is to determine how often women perform breast self-examination (BSE) and undergo mammography and Pap test, and how healthcare professionals affect them to do so.METHODSThis descriptive study was carried out with 1025 women, aged 20–82 years and living in the central district of Sivas, who presented to the Gynecology and Obstetrics Outpatient Clinics of Hospitals between January and December 2010, and who volunteered to participate in the study and gave their verbal agreement to the researchers.RESULTSOut of the participants, 46.9% lacked mammogram knowledge, 13.2% received advice from healthcare professionals, and 20.1% thought that they were healthy and thus did not need mammography. Out of the participants, 45.9% lacked knowledge about the Pap test, 11.8% received advice from healthcare professionals, and 18.9% thought that they were healthy and thus did not need a ‘Pap test’.CONCLUSIONSWhile one-fourth of the participants stated that they performed BSE and underwent mammography at least once, more than half reported that they did not have a Pap test. In preventive healthcare services, periodic health examinations and screenings for the most common types of women cancers should be increased; midwives should give education and counseling, and the importance of practices aimed at raising social awareness should be emphasized.

Learners’ Subject-Verb Agreement and Simple Past Defect Analysis on Written Text in Learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL)

General principles of linguistics would be related to structure and grammar that has two specific types, for instance subject – verb agreement and simple past which were analyzed and concerned by the researcher. Furthermore, this research focused on what kind of subject-verb agreement and simple past defect chosen by the students in written text. In line with that, the researcher chose 143 responders who study and learn English as a Foreign Language in business administration department in Polytechnic State of Bali and the results were collected by using internet assisted test. In gaining the results, the researcher found that the participants mostly tended to choose the wrong answer from 10 questions were given by the lecturer. Responders could not decide or choose plural or singular noun and surprisingly learners could not take valid simple past which were provided on the options as these determine the correct sentence based on the principle grammar rule.

Grammatical Spelling and Written Syntactic Awareness in Children With and Without Dyslexia.

Children with dyslexia face persistent difficulties in acquiring not only reading skills but also spelling skills. Among difficulties in spelling, problems in grammatical spelling have been studied very rarely. The goal of the study is to better understand grammatical spelling difficulties in children with dyslexia by assessing written syntactic awareness skills, a linguistic factor that has not been investigated in the context of spelling until now. It is worth noting that while morphological awareness has been well studied in children with dyslexia, only very few studies have focused on syntactic awareness, which is, however, necessary to produce number or gender agreement. Twenty children with dyslexia were matched to typically developing children on both chronological age and on grammatical spelling level. All the children were asked to perform a subject verb agreement grammatical spelling test and a written syntactic awareness test on the same sentences, as well as control measures. Results demonstrated that the children with dyslexia performed equally compared to grammatical spelling matched children in grammatical spelling, whilst they performed less well compared to children of the same age. For syntactic awareness, they were less accurate at identifying the subject of the complex sentences than spelling age matched children, even though both groups were matched in grammatical spelling. These results demonstrate that children with dyslexia face a specific deficit in written syntactic awareness. It highlights how better understanding of the spelling difficulty will better guide treatment.

Teachers’ Assumptions on Teaching English Grammar for Lower-secondary Level Students (A Case Study of Nepal)

Teaching grammar is one of the aspects of language teaching. From the past, different methods, like teaching from rules, teaching from examples, teaching through texts have been used to teach grammar in Nepal. So, this research was prepared to study the teachers’ assumption for teaching English grammar at lower secondary level in Nepal. The issue of teaching prepositions, articles, tense, tags, causative verbs and subject verb agreement are raised in this research. In this research, both the primary and secondary sources of data were used. Questionnaires were used to collect the data for the research. The result shows that most of the teachers use inductive ways to teach grammar lessons or they used student-centered techniques. It also concludes that the level of the learners, context and nature of the text also make the teachers to select the method for teaching.

Especificação morfológica de pronomes nominativos, concordância verbal e sujeitos nulos em português brasileiro

O fato de o português brasileiro (PB) não ser uma língua pro-drop canônica é frequentemente associado ao enfraquecimento de seu sistema de concordância verbal. Entretanto, à parte a concordância associada ao pronome tu, PB padrão e português europeu padrão exibem o mesmo paradigma de concordância verbal. Neste artigo, argumento que essa discrepância encontra explicação nas especificações dos morfemas de concordância do PB. Mais especificamente, defendo que seus pronomes nominativos são maximamente subespecificados (NUNES, 2019) e isso se reflete nos traços-f que T pode portar (FERREIRA, 2000; NUNES, 2008) e em sua valoração via concordância. Assumindo que sujeitos nulos pronominais resultam de uma operação de elipse licenciada quando T tem seu traço-f mais proeminente valorado (MARTINS; NUNES, a sair), explica-se a gradação da aceitabilidade de sujeitos pronominais nulos em PB a depender do pronome elidido, bem como a correlação inversa entre possibilidade de sujeito nulo e possibilidade de hiperalçamento (NUNES, 2015).

ERP indexes of number attraction and word order during correct verb agreement production

Successful subject-verb agreement production requires retrieving the verbal forms that agree with the features of the subject head noun and not of other nouns in the sentence. We investigate, for the first time, the electrophysiological indexes of number attraction and word order during agreement production. Twenty-four Basque native speakers were tested while producing auxiliary verbs during sentence completion of transitive sentence preambles involving singular subjects and singular or plural objects in canonical (SOV) and non-canonical (OSV) structures. ERP results yielded a larger production P2 (pP2) amplitude for mismatching than matching objects in SOV sentences, and larger negativity for OSV than SOV in number matching condition. We explain these results in terms of distinct contributions of number and word order during correct agreement production, with the pP2 indexing morphosyntactic retrieval difficulty of agreement-inflection, and the frontal negativity reflecting word order effects during monitoring the correctness of the selected verbal form.

The be‐auxiliary's categorial status in Old Russian1

AbstractThis article proposes that the present tense forms of the be‐auxiliary byti (AUX) in Old Russian should be identified as weak pronouns, based on their prosodic, morphological, and syntactic properties. The loss of AUX in Old Russian, which distinguishes East Slavic from West and South Slavic languages, is ascribed to the competition between AUX and strong subject pronouns as a consequence of the reanalysis of AUX as a weak subject pronoun. This reanalysis was triggered by the early loss of synthetic past tenses in Old Russian. The AUX's position to the right of pronominal clitics indicates that the AUX remains in its initial merge position either as an auxiliary verb or as a subject pronoun. The co‐occurrence of AUXin situ and a null subject in Old Russian implies that rich verbal agreement and null subjects are unrelated with verb raising to I0.

Enhancing the Sentence Construction Skills of TVL Students through Instruct, Integrate, Involve (3I’s) Method

The ability to communicate entails skill in speaking and confidence. The two can only be achieved when a person is grammatically competent. While some students might be effective English speakers, guidance is still required to become effective authors. Likewise, many students in the Philippines have poor writing abilities as revealed in the results of 2012 National Career Assessment Examination. Thus, the sentence construction is needed. In the academic setting, the researcher observed that not all K12 Technical-Vocational-Livelihood Strand students are grammatically competent yet. These students have been studying English for 11 years and only a few are communicating their emotions or ideas in class confidently and fluently while many do not speak although they have ideas on mind. Evidently, written tests support this weakness. During assessment subject verb agreement, parts of speech, identifying error and essay writing, students can hardly give the correct verb nor construct grammatically correct statements. For this reason, the researcher desires to improve the grammatical competence of these learners. The action research making use of the One Group Pretest Posttest template was carried out to assess the efficacy of the Instruct, Integrate, Involve (3I's) Method in enhancing the sentence construction of Sto. Tomas Senior High School's 25 TVL students for the 2019-2020 school year. A one-tailed t-test on population indicates the use of paired samples was done to fulfill the study objective. This is suitable statistical treatment to be used since the pretest and posttest scores of the respondents are examples of related variables. It is tested in the one-tailed ttest the alternative hypothesis that the mean posttest scores of the respondents is significantly greater than their mean pretest scores. Hence, knowledge building about how the various grammar rules are shaped is a must achieve the desired result. It is not an easy process to create this understanding of grammar skills. The array of ways and uses confuses learners of the English language. Every day they learn new grammar rules but when they speak or write in English, they have trouble applying them. That is why the researcher wants to propose the Instruct, Integrate, Involve (3I’s) Method to enhance the sentence construction of these students. This is a method which will enhance the sentence construction skills by leaning the Subject-verb Agreement Rules and applying these in constructing grammatically correct sentence.

THE ABILITY OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF SMP KATOLIK TRISAKTI 1 MEDAN IN USING VERB BE

Grammar is a description of certain organizing aspects of a written particular language. One of the grammar topic is verb BE. Verb BE is important in English Grammar, BE is the one of the elementary and earlier phases of subject verb agreement. The purpose of this research was to describe the ability of the second year students in using verb BE. This research was descriptive research. The population of this research was the second year students were take as a sample, and totals 40 students. The instrument of collecting data was a test concerning verb BE. The try out test was done in order to know the validity, reliability, item difficulty and power discrimination of test items. The result showed that 9 students (22.50%) belong to high category, 28 students (70%) to moderate category, and 3 students (7.50%) to low category. The mean score was 65.10 it was only 30% of the total students who can do the test well with 12 students who get score above 70. It means that the second year students at SMP Katolik Trisakti 1 Medan are not yet able to use the verb BE. Some students do not understand the rule of verb BE, how to apply it in sentences because there were a lot of rules and exception in verb BE. The students also had some difficulties in using verb BE. The students did not know the form of some tenses such as simple present tense, simple past tense etc. Based on the total incorrect answers made by the students in each tense was 349. The percentage students mistakes made using verb Be in Present Tense was 28.57%, and the percentage students mistakes made using verb Be in Past Tense was 11.46%, So the most mistakes made by the second year students in using verb Be was in present tense, the percentage was 28.57%. Thus, the students are suggested to study more the lesson of verb BE and to do the assignments well. The teacher also expected to give explanation of the materials of verb BE crearly