Count Nouns Research Articles

Translational Style: A Corpus-Based Comparative Analysis of English Translations of Urdu Fiction by Memon and Naqvi

The present paper comparatively analyzes English translations of Urdu fiction by Umer Memon and Saeed Naqvi to identify translational stylistic features. The data for this paper consists of two corpora; the first corpus comprises Memon’s translations (TR1) and the second corpus consists of Naqvi’s translations (TR2). To validate the results, the paper takes Corpus of Canons of Western Literature (CCWL) as a reference corpus. Open class lexis is taken as a stylistic marker. All the three corpora are tagged through Stanford tagger (Toutanova, 2003), and the frequencies of open class lexis are acquired by using AntConc (3.4.4). It is found that TR1 and TR2 show almost the same stylistic qualities on the use of proper nouns, lexical verbs, past tense, comparative and superlative adjectives, and comparative and superlative adverbs. However, the variance occurs in the use of count nouns and proper plural nouns. This paper will contribute to better understand the stylistic features of English translations of Urdu fiction and the trending modes of English translation itself.

Syntactic Cues Help Disambiguate Objects Referred to With Count Nouns: Illustration With Malay Children.

Children employ multiple cues to identify the referent of a novel word. Novel words are often embedded in sentences and children have been shown to use syntactic cues to differentiate between types of words (adjective vs. nouns) and between types of nouns (count vs. mass nouns). In this study, we show that children learning Malay (N=67), a numeral classifier language, can use syntactic cues to perform even finer-grained disambiguation-between count nouns. The manipulation of congruence between lexical and syntactic cues reveals a clear developmental trajectory: while 5-year-olds use predominantly lexical cues, older children increasingly rely on syntactic cues, such that by 7years of age, they disambiguate between objects referred to with count nouns using syntactic rather than lexical cues.

Система глаголов падения в каратинском языке

In this paper we describe the verbs of falling in Karata, an Andic (<East Caucasian) language. Our research is based on the dialect of Karata which is spoken in the village of Karata (Akhvakhsky district, Dagestan, Russia). The semantic field of falling includes eight verbs. The verb t’araɬa ‘to fall down’ is the dominant one. It can be used in the majority of situations of falling. The remaining seven verbs are more specialized. They are used in the situations of falling which have special features. The verb karaɬa ‘to topple over’ describes the situation of falling from a vertical position. Some of the verbs can only be combined with special subjects of falling (e.g. only with humans). t’oraɬa ‘to drip’ and ͡tʃʷaχːaɬa ‘to fl ow’ describe the falling of water. The first verbal root, t’oraɬa ‘to drip’, describes the falling of small portions of water (e.g. of water drops). Furthermore, the root of this verb may be (partially) reduplicated: in Karata, (partial) reduplication has the semantics of so-called verbal plurality. The meaning of tʼor~t’-aɬa ‘drip~VPL-INF’ presupposes that there was a number of drips, not only one drip. The second verbal root for the falling of water, ͡tʃʷaχːaɬa ‘to fl ow’, describes the falling of water as a substance (i.e. as a mass noun). tort͡ʃʼːaɬa ‘to crash’ is special in that it implies that the falling occurred with a loud sound. It covers many falling situations, including falling from upside down and falling from vertical position. The verb χːeraɬa ‘to pour’ is used with friable substances (e.g. sand). baχːaɬa ‘to collapse’ describes falling with destruction of the subject of falling. Finally, giraɬa ‘to lay down’ specializes in falling of human subjects from a vertical position. Overall, there are two parameters are crucial for the system of verbs of falling in Karata: (i) a kind of the subject of falling (human vs. non-human, mass noun vs. countable noun) and (ii) a kind of the situation of falling (e.g. falling from a vertical position or falling with destruction of the subject of falling)

Discourse Analysis of Short Story 'The Man of the House'

Discourse analysis is considered as an instrument in analyzing elements which influence on our understanding of a particular text. Thus, discourse analysis is a highly coherent model in analyzing any spoken, like conversation, or written, like short story text. The aim of this study is to analyze the discourse analysis of a short story, to show how the discourse is initiated, developed and terminated. How the characters participate, interact and what are the relationships among them, how those characters are introduced in the story; how they interrupt, ask questions, and how turns are distributed. The study also aims at counting the number of topics and how they are interrelated. To know whether the sequence of events is logical or not, and to know the fillers (Ah, Oh) and their functions. Further, the study tries to analyze a short story fro the grammatical point of view for stylistic characterization relying on (A Practical English Grammar) (1986) (Fourth Edition) by A. J. Thomson and A. V. Martinet. Also, to determine the speech acts and their percentages. In order to achieve these aims, the study adopts the discourse analysis of a written text of a short story namely, The Man of the House, by analyzing and describing the different strategies like initiating, developing, and terminating. In this study, the model of discourse analysis is eclectic, comprising of three models; Hymes model (1972) who suggests the category of "speech event", and Sacks model (1968) which proposes interaction analysis based on four categories "conversation", "topic", "sequence", and "turn". Finally Sinclair-and Coulthard’s model (1975) of speech acts classification. The present study hypothesizes that discourse analysis is conducted depending on the text and context and how the two terms complete each other. The meaning of the text is completed by action. Analysis is to be achieved structurally and linguistically. It is also found that the discourse is composed of the cooperating of acts, interaction of the participants, sequence of events, topics, and other units. Throughout the analysis, it has been found that the participants perform different speech acts such as nomination which is the most frequently used. The frequency of nomination is 1156 which represents 52.3% of the total acts, reaction forms 555 which represents 25.1%. Evaluation records 198 which represents 8.9% of the total number of acts. There are other speech acts like comment, obligation, manner, and metastatement mentioned in the story. These acts vary according to their usages and functions, and percentages. In the analysis of speech events, the number of major events is 22 which forms (24.5%), while the number of minor events is 68 which forms (75.5%). It is worth mentioning that the participants in the aforementioned story are of different social classes. The participants sometimes address each other by using terms of address in order to show respect, especially some of them are of higher status. The story is narrated in the first person pronoun ( I ), which means that the writer talks about his personal life. Sullivan did most of the turns, (41) which represents 47.6% of the total turns as he is the protagonist and the most important participant in the story. Dooley had (14) turns so that she came second in order that represents 16.2%. The mother came third in rank and did (13) turns which represents 15.5%. Some of the participants participated in conversations more than others, Dooley and Sullivan for instance participate in 12 turns which represents 29.2%, while Minnie and Sullivan participate in 9 turns which forms 21.9%. Within the grammatical analysis, it is found that the number of content words are 4632 which represents 76.5%, the number of content words is 1420 which represents 23.4%, the number of definite articles is 290 which represents 73.9%, the number of indefinite articles is 102 which represents 26.0% of the total number of articles. The total number of nouns, such as countable nouns, singular nouns, feminine nouns, used by the story author is 2439. Discourse analysis shows when and where the turns and topics are shifted, and changed. The use of fillers, such as (Ah) and (Oh), is important and related to the use of discourse; (Ah) occurs 8 times that is 72.7%, whilst (Oh) occurs 3 times that is 27.2%. Finally, the linguistic analysis of literature has many implications and benefits for language teaching.

The grammatical distinction between count nouns and mass nouns in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to prove the Mass Noun Hypothesis wrong. The hypothesis claims that all common nouns in classifier languages like Mandarin Chinese are mass nouns. The objection against it consists in displaying its implausible deduction, where false conclusions have been drawn due to relying on the grammar of English, which is incongruent with the grammar of Chinese. Consequently, this paper defends the Count Noun Thesis, stating that in Chinese there are count as well as mass nouns. In support of this statement, first, the typology of numeral classifiers had to be established, which resulted in gathering and completing all the reasons to distinguish classifiers from measure words. After only this necessary differentiation was made, it was possible to show that the count/mass distinction exists in Mandarin Chinese. That is, count nouns by default have only one classifier, with certain disclaimers. Apart from that, count nouns, as in every language, may undergo some measurement with measure words. Mass nouns, however, in the context of quantification may appear only with measure words, but not with classifiers. These conditions naturally follow from the ontological status of the two types of nouns’ referents, i.e. bounded objects denoted by count nouns, and scattered substances denoted by mass nouns.

Layers of (un)boundedness: The aspectual–quantificational interplay of quantifiers and partitive case in Finnish object arguments

AbstractI present an account of the interplay between quantifiers and the partitive–accusative case alternation in Finnish object marking, with special reference to the aspectual and quantificational semantics of the clause. The case alternation expresses two oppositions (in affirmative clauses): (a) bounded (accusative) vs. unbounded (partitive) quantity, (b) culminating (accusative) vs. non-culminating (partitive) aspect. The quantifiers analyzed are of two main types: (i) mass quantifiers (e. g.,paljon‘a lot of’,vähän‘(a) little’), which quantify a mass expressed by a mass noun or a plural form, (ii) number quantifiers (e. g.,moni‘many’,usea‘a number of’), which quantify a multiplicity of discrete entities expressed by a count noun in the singular or plural. Finnish mass quantifiers only quantify nominals in the partitive, while number quantifiers agree with the quantified nominal in number and case and are used throughout the case paradigm. With a mass quantifier, the partitive form of the quantified nominal expresses unbounded quantity, which the quantifier then renders bounded (quantized). This is why object phrases with mass quantifiers behave like accusative objects: they express a bounded quantity together with culminating aspect. Number quantifiers quantify both accusative and partitive objects, in the singular and plural. Such objects are able to express aspect and quantity at two levels: (i) that of the individual component events which concern one entity each; (ii) that of the higher-order event which concerns the whole quantity expressed. I argue that the case marking of the object relates primarily to level (i), while the meaning of the number quantifier relates to level (ii). This is why a number quantifier typically renders the quantity bounded and the aspect culminating at level (ii), even when the partitive case expresses unboundedness or lack of culmination at level (i).

Penggunaan Linguistik Korpus dalam Mempersiapkan Bahan Ajar English For Specific Purpose Di Bidang Radiologi

Minimnya buku ajar English for Specific Purpose yang berkenaan dengan bidang radiologi yang sesuai untuk mahasiswa program studi radiologi di Indonesia menjadi tantangan bagi para dosen pengajar Bahasa Inggris di program studi radiologi Politeknik Al Islam Bandung. Untuk mengantisipasi keterbatasan bahan ajar ESP di bidang radiologi tersebut maka dilakukan penelitian terhadap buku teks radiologi yang berbahasa Inggris dengan menggunakan linguistik korpus sebagai alat untuk mendapatkan kosa kata di bidang radiologi serta gramatika dan fitur kelas kata yang digunakan dalam buku tersebut. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode gabungan antara kuantitatif yang diaplikasikan di awal penelitian serta metode kualitatif yang digunakan pada proses analisis untuk mendapatkan simpulan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat 12.395 kata berbeda yang digunakan dengan total jumlah kata secara keseluruhan termasuk kata yang diulang-ulang adalah sebanyak 428.117 kata. Kata-kata tersebut diklasifikasikan ke dalam kelas kata nomina, verba, ajektiva, adverbia, singkatan, dan lain-lain. Secara garis besar, dari hasil tersebut diantaranya ditemukan adanya penggunaan kalimat aktif dan pasif, tenses yang meliputi present, present continuous tense, past tense, present perfect, auxiliary verbs, countable dan uncountable noun, dan comparative degree. Selanjutnya, hasil analisis ini akan digunakan untuk menyusun bahan ajar ESP bidang radiologi.

Prototyping Mass Nouns from Students’ Perspective: A Pedagogical Implication

This paper investigates ESL learners’ prototyping mass nouns as a grammatical category. The study is supported by the theory of prototype developed by Rosch in 1970s which plays a wide role in graded categorization of the existent entities in the world. With an expected inspiration from the theory, the prototyping of vocabulary received research attention especially in the pedagogical world. Promisingly, this study seeks to extend the theory to explore a lexico-grammatical category i.e. “mass nouns” from learners’ perspective. Actually, the study was directed to find out which prototypical feature ESL students exploit to prioritize some mass nouns as prototypical examples over some other mass nouns, and how far students’ experientially and pedagogically perceived “prototypes” of mass nouns help them to correctly grouping up nouns as in mass category. The study was focused on shedding some light on a few pedagogical tips and implications in some likely challenging contexts of teaching mass nouns. The study reveals that ESL students shortlist ‘liquids’ (such as water, milk, wine, juice etc.) ‘gases’(such as hydrogen, oxygen etc.), ‘abstract ideas’ (such as childhood, anger, safety, knowledge etc.), ‘powdered substances’ (such as sand, sugar etc.), and some ‘natural entities’ (such as heat, sunshine etc.) as “prototype of mass nouns” which all are un-individuated and sometimes intangible - meaning uncountable - while the learners recognize ‘non-countable’ status as the most important prototypical feature of mass nouns. And, the students isolated ‘rice’, ‘wheat’, ‘hair’, ‘grass’ , ‘cotton’ and ‘coal’ as less prototypical mass nouns based on their intrinsic sense that these mass nouns are plural and they even can be individuated. However, the study reflects that the students’ perceived prototypes are not sufficient as they selected and considered many of mass nouns as so distant members as countable. It was further found that contextual type shifts of mass-count nouns, arbitrary sematic distributions to lexis, cross-linguistic approach to mass nouns, intrinsic and realistic conception, superordinate-subordinate influence, and perception of enumerating status etc. account for students’ this surprise selection of a number of mass nouns as opposite category i.e. count nouns. If pedagogues are non-responsive to these factors and fail to redefine their approaches to mass noun teaching, it is most likely to lead to learners’ grammatical inaccuracy resulted from their determiner-number-mass noun mismatch.

Semantic determination of the noun

English nouns are classified two main groups, such as countable and uncountable nouns. So expressing semantic determination of countable nouns distinguishes from uncountable nouns.

Difficulties in The Acquisition and Use of English Articles among Adult Pashto Learners

The acquisition of the English articles is one of the most difficult areas for the second language learners particularly when there are no articles in the first language of the learners. The purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties in acquisition and use of the English articles. The study aims at identifying the errors the EFL learners make in using the English articles. Two theoretical approaches regarding noun classification for articles choice were adopted in this study. The data were collected in the form of a gap-fill task from seventy five (75) adult Pashto learners of English. The results showed the students used the definite article ‘the’ and the indefinite article ‘a/an’ more often than the zero article Ø. In noun types, a few subjects made errors in using articles before count nouns. In the noun phrase environments, the lowest error rate was in referential indefinite while the highest error rate was in generics. The reasons for difficulties in acquiring and using the English articles were found to be mainly the identification of noun types, NPs environments, and language transfer.

Evolution of Number Names in Modern Russian

The paper deals with the evolution of morphological forms and syntactic relations of numerals which give names to categories of numbers. The ways of formation of a number name тысяча / tysjatscha and its part-of-speech signs are illustrated with the texts taken from the Russian National Corpus. It's the first systematic description of transition of a noun into a number name regarded as a complex grammatical process – morphological unification of case forms (instrumental case тысячью / tysjatschju); substitution of countable noun government by coordination with it in every indirect case; loss of syntactic forms of gender and number (i.e. their ability to correlate with words in gender and number); loss of morphological forms of the plural number and their substitution by forms of the singular number; formation of compound numerals on the bases of the numeral тысяча / tysjatscha; signs of morphological separation of the number name тысяча / tysjatscha and the name of quantity. The development and grammatical adaptation of тысяча / tysjatscha in the line of numerals is reported to have taken long. The article presents a sequence of obtaining new features of the numerals. Evolution of numerals is presented as a relevant grammatical process that implements synthetic potential of the Russian language grammatical system.

The proprial article and the semantics of names

The proprial article is a functional item that occurs in a number of languages alongside names to the general exclusion of other nouns. In the following I present an account of the semantic function of this article, and how it interacts with names as nouns to form referential expressions in argument position. In particular, I suggest that in line with what a number of researchers have claimed, names generally are count nouns in the lexicon, denoting the property of bearing the name in question. The proprial article then composes with name NPs of a certain sort to yield proprial DPs that rigidly denote individuals, which are presupposed to bear the name in question at their world of use. It follows that ordinary referential names in argument position are not definite descriptions, as related approaches to the semantics of names often suppose, and that the proprial article is a functional element distinct from the definite article. This schema is applied to DP languages with article systems generally: all such languages are taken to have the proprial article, whether it appears overtly or covertly, and to make use of proprial DPs for reference using names. The machinery used further allows for a model-theoretically precise and intuitively compelling characterization of name-bearing. EARLY ACCESS

Lexical semantics in advanced second language French: The acquisition of genericity

The study considered the genericity of count nouns among L1 Arabic adult learners advanced in L2 French. The experimental task was a context-based acceptability judgment test on the interpretation of five nominal forms in NP-level and sentence-level generic contexts: definite, indefinite and bare singulars in addition to definite and bare plurals. The results revealed that the L2 learners did not perform to a nativelike degree. Additionally, their response pattern demonstrated that they did not differentiate between the two types of genericity in French, expressing both by definite singulars and definite plurals as in L1 Arabic. They tended to interpret indefinite singulars in characterizing sentences existentially, due to non-facilitative influence of L1 Arabic. The learners correctly excluded bare singulars and plurals as they are existential in the L1 and ungrammatical in this usage in French. The study concluded that the learners’ knowledge of genericity in L2 French was not monolithic, mixing nativelike and transferred expressions.

Students’ Mastery of Parts of Speech in English Writing

The research is entitled “students’ mastery of parts of speech (noun, pronoun, and verb) in English writing. The purposes of this research are (1) to find out the students’ mastery of parts of speech (noun, pronoun and verb), (2) to find out the most and least understood parts of speech among noun, pronoun and verb often found in English writing, (3) to find out the common problems faced by the students,(4). To find out workable solutions to these problems so as to increase the students’ mastery in using parts of speech (noun, pronoun and verb) in English writing. The data collections are done by giving questionnaire, test in completion item and simple English writing. The conclusion of this research are: (1) the students’ mastery of parts of speech is fair (60,30), (2) the most understood parts of speech is Noun (21,66% error) and the least understood parts of speech is Verb (49,46% error), (3) common problems happened in constructing countable and uncountable noun, using possessive pronoun and pronoun function as object, and using full verb and to be in constructing continuous and future tense. (4) The workable solutions that can be used are by using game, and quiz.

On the asymmetry between names and count nouns: syntactic arguments against predicativism

The standard versions of predicativism are committed to the following two theses: (1) proper names are count nouns in all their (literal) occurrences (the syntactic aspect of predicativism), and (2) names do not refer to objects but express (non-relational) name-bearing properties (the semantic aspect of predicativism). The main motivation for predicativism is to provide a uniform explanation of referential names and predicative names. According to predicativism, predicative names are fundamental and referential names are explained by appealing to a null determiner functioning like “the” or “that.” This paper has two goals. The first is to reject the predicativists’ explanation of the two types of names. I present three syntactic counterexamples to the predicativists’ account of referential names: incorporation, modification, and measure phrase uses. The second goal is to present a novel strategy to explain the two types of names. I propose that referential names are fundamental but that there are null morphemes available for transforming a name into a count noun (and possibly into other syntactic categories).

Making a little go a long way: A corpus-based analysis of a high-frequency word and some pedagogical implications for young Spanish learners

This study explores the different uses of the word little, its equivalents in Spanish and its teaching to young Spanish learners. First, it aims at analyzing the lexico-grammatical behavior of little in a corpus of children’s short stories, where its prevailing use, preceding countable nouns, has been found to be much more frequent than in other domains and registers. A contrastive study follows, which examines how little has been translated in an English-Spanish parallel corpus; the results show that diminutives constitute an important equivalent. Finally, some didactic implications are proposed, with the application of corpus-based findings to the teaching of English to young Spanish learners from an approach that combines lexical syllabi and story-based methodologies.

Concepts of objects and substances in language.

People distinguish objects from the substances that constitute them. Many languages also distinguish count nouns and mass nouns. What is the relation between these two distinctions? The connection between them is complicated by the facts that (a) some mass nouns (e.g., toast) seem to name countable objects; (b) some count and mass nouns (e.g., pots and pottery) seem to name the same objects; (c) nouns for seemingly the same things can be count in one language (English: dishes) but mass in another (French: la vaisselle); (d) count nouns can be used to name substances (There is carrot in the soup) and mass nouns to name portions (She drank three whiskeys); and (e) some languages (e.g., Mandarin) appear to have no count nouns, whereas others (e.g., Yudja) appear to have no mass nouns. All these cases counter a simple object-to-count-noun and substance-to-mass-noun relation, but they provide opportunities to see whether the grammatical distinction affects thereferential one. We examine evidence from such cases and find continuity through development: Infants appear to have the conceptual OBJECT/SUBSTANCE distinction very early on. Although this distinction may change with development, the acquisition of count/mass syntax does not appear to be an effective factor for change.

Types of transfer in ideational metaphor: a corpus-based study

ABSTRACTIdeational metaphor in the Hallidayan sense comprises experiential metaphor and logical metaphor. Experiential metaphor arises from the semogenic rank-shift and logical metaphor from the semogenic transcategorization. This article conducted a corpus-based diachronic study to identify types of transfer in ideational metaphor. Our findings show that the transfer from verbal groups to countable nouns and finally to adjectives does not necessarily go through all the in-between stages. Five types of semogenic transfer were identified in ideational metaphor: nominalisation of verbal groups, gerundalization of verbal groups, adjectivalization of participles, adjectivalization of nominal groups and verbalization of conjunction groups. These five types of transfer can be generalised as three resources for creating ideational metaphor: nominalisation, adjectivalization and verbalization, all involving semogenic rank-shift. We also found two other types of transfer: mass noun to countable noun and verbal gerund to present participle. Neither transfer creates ideational metaphor because no semogenic rank-shift is involved. The former is transcategorization from living metaphor to dead metaphor, and the latter is transcategorization at the word rank.

Lexical aspect and number variation in French Complex Event Nominals

In this work, we examine the factors allowing or disallowing French Complex Event Nominals (CENs, i.e. deverbal nominals displaying argument and aspectual structures, Grimshaw 1990) to occur in the plural when denoting a plurality of events. Our claim is that French CENs can occur in the plural in such cases (Meinschaefer 2005; Roodenburg 2006; Sleeman & Brito 2010), and thus behave as count nouns. However, a restricted subclass does not exhibit number variation, similarly to other non-count nouns.To account for the distribution of nominal plurality, we rely on lexical aspect. We show that the CENs that do not admit pluralization are strictly atelic: they nominalize strictly stative verbs or push-verbs (Verkuyl 1993). Conversely, CENs derived from any other aspectual verb class can appear in the plural, even when they nominalize atelic VPs, provided these also have a telic use. This leads to a restatement of the role of boundedness previously invoked to account for the relationship between verbal (a)telicity and nominal [±count] distinction (Bach 1976; Mourelatos 1978; Krifka 1989), that linked the [±count] property of the derived event nominal to the actual (a)telicity of the VP.Since the distribution of plural just described is proper to CENs, which have an internal verbal structure, we suggest that it deserves a syntactic analysis. Our hypothesis is that [–count] CENs derive from verbs that are deprived of AspQP (Borer 1993; 2005). This results in turn in the absence of ClP and NumP in the nominal layers. The absence of ClP accounts for the fact that [–count] CENs do not behave as regular mass nouns.

Reference to kinds in L2 English

This study investigated the acquisition of kind referring noun phrase interpretation in L2 English by learners with Turkish, Arabic and Chinese L1 backgrounds. 37 advanced learners of English with Turkish (10), Arabic (10) and Chinese (10) L1 backgrounds, and 7 native English speakers were recruited. The tasks were a 48-item Fill in the gaps task and a 64-item Acceptability judgment task. The results indicated that: (a) native speakers, and L2 learners mostly produced bare plurals for count nouns and bare singulars for mass nouns for kind reference; (b) L2 learners of English transferred the morphosyntactic manifestation of kind reference from their L1s, substantiating the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996); and (c) the similarity between the participants’ L1s and L2 did not always lead them to produce correct noun forms and articles for kind reference, neither did such a similarity consistently help the learners in their acceptability judgments for kind reference.