English Pronouns Research Articles

The Difficulty of Translating Relative Pronouns From Arabic Into English for a Sample of Saudi Students

The present study aimed at exploring the difficulty of translating relative pronouns from Arabic into English encountered by a sample of Saudi undergraduate students. Besides, the researcher attempted to pinpoint the underlying reasons behind such a difficulty and find practical solutions to it. This qualitative study employed two data collection tools. The first one was a short translation test on relative pronouns given to a random sample of 30 fourth year Saudi undergraduate students at the English Department of the College of Languages and Translation of King Saud University in the first semester of the academic year 2018. The other data collection tool was a semi-structured interview with the research population. The research findings showed that 41.1% of the students could not translate relative pronouns correctly, 80% could not translate the relative pronoun referring to the possessive case into English correctly and 93.3% had difficulty translating the relative pronoun in the accusative case into English. When interviewed, the students gave some reasons for this difficulty such as the different structures of relative pronouns in Arabic and English and lack of match between Arabic and English pronouns. The students also offered some suggestions for overcoming this difficulty such as practicing Arabic-English translation and reading Arabic and English books. As this difficulty proved to be serious, the researcher suggested carrying out some large-scale studies at other Saudi and Arab universities to either confirm its findings or add other insights into the translation of relative pronouns.

The Effect of Using Short Stories on Undergraduate Students' Achievement in English Pronouns

The current study majorly aims at : 1.identifying some short stories to be used as a technique for teaching English pronouns for undergraduate students. finding out the effect of short stories on the achievement of undergraduate students in the various kinds of English pronouns. The aims have been achieved through verifying a number of hypotheses. A sample of one hundred 3td year students has been chosen from the Department of English at the College of Education for Humanities of Kirkuk University. The sample is divided into two equal groups and subjected to a pre- test. The experimental group is taught English pronouns according to the technique of short stories whereas; the control group is taught the same instructional material according to the traditional method, i. e. without employing the technique of short stories.An achievement test has been constructed, validated, its reliability obtained, its items analyzed and then applied to the two involved groups of students at the end of the instruction period. The required data are collected and analyzed statistically. Results show that the technique of short stories is an effective in teaching English pronouns to college students. Finally, the study ends up with a number of conclusions and recommendations.

The Effect of Using Short Stories on Undergraduate Students' Achievement in English Pronouns

The current study majorly aims at :1.identifying some short stories to be used as a technique for teaching English pronouns for undergraduate students.2. finding out the effect of short stories on the achievement of undergraduate students in the various kinds of English pronouns.The aims have been achieved through verifying a number of hypotheses. A sample of one hundred 3td year students has been chosen from the Department of English at the College of Education for Humanities of Kirkuk University. The sample is divided into two equal groups and subjected to a pre- test. The experimental group is taught English pronouns according to the technique of short stories whereas; the control group is taught the same instructional material according to the traditional method, i. e. without employing the technique of short stories.An achievement test has been constructed, validated, its reliability obtained, its items analyzed and then applied to the two involved groups of students at the end of the instruction period. The required data are collected and analyzed statistically. Results show that the technique of short stories is an effective in teaching English pronouns to college students. Finally, the study ends up with a number of conclusions and recommendations.

"That" and "This" vs "Tot" and "Etot"

The abstracted article summarizes the author's observations concerning the use of the English demonstrative pronouns this and that. The author focuses on the contradiction between what is prescribed by the language system, and what is accepted by the language community. The contradiction mentioned reveals itself in the tendency of the pronoun that to accept the functions of its counterparts by the oppositions of this – that and it – this / that. The speculations of the author are grounded by the theory of oppositional reduction, the fundamentals of which are shortly described after a brief review of literature devoted to the study of demonstrative pronouns. Next, the author passes to the description of the research procedure, which includes statistical, experimental and analytical components. The author's tools also involve elements of comparative analysis of English and Russian demonstrative pronouns, which was ultimately necessary for the implementation of the didactic task. The author's reasoning is accompanied by text illustrations, from which it follows that the main condition contributing to the reduction of the opposition by proximity is anaphoric reference, which is most often accompanied by the stressed position of the pronoun. In conclusion, the author notes the tendency of the pronoun that to secure the status of a universal demonstrative, capable of representing both this and it. This circumstance constitutes one of the specific features of the English demonstrative pronouns in relation to Russian ones, which, in turn, creates additional problems for Russian learners of English.

АНГЛІЙСЬКИЙ ЗАЙМЕННИК: РОЛЬ ТА ЗМІНИ У СУЧАСНІЙ МОВІ

Стаття написана в руслі актуальних досліджень, оскільки проблема ролі та перекладу займенника зумовлена поширеністю цієї частини мови, її складними взаємовідносинами з актуальним референтом. Визначення оптимальних засобів перекладу займенників є певним внеском до загальної теорії перекладу. Існує декілька значних проблем, пов'язаних з теорією та типологією займенників і найбільш актуальних в контексті сучасної лінгвістики. До цих проблем належать: універсальні категорії особових займенників, функційні типи вживання займенників тощо. Значну увагу приділено ролі займенників у роботах А. Вежбицької, Е. Лассан, Л. М. Синельникової, М. Шефера та інших авторів. Незважаючи на наявність значної кількості праць, присвячених займенникам, їх роль у сучасній мові ще не є вичерпно висвітленою. Тому метою, яку ми ставимо у цій статті, є проаналізувати функції особових займенників у сучасній англійській мові. За нашими спостереженнями, окрім традиційних функцій, притаманних займеннику як частині мови, треба звернути увагу на тема-рематичну функцію займенника, стилістично-видільну та функцію психологічну. В сучасній розмовній англійській мові відбуваються певні зсуви в співвідношенні називного і об'єктного відмінків особових займенників, особливо займенника «I». Сфера використовування об'єктного відмінку розширяється за рахунок звуження сфери вживання називного відмінку. Ці особливості співвідношення відмінкових форм зумовлюють появу та розвиток таких функцій займенника, як стилістично-видільна та психологічна. Перспективи подальшого дослідження ми бачимо в аналізі форм питальних займенників.

HEDGING IN RESEARCH MEDICAL ARTICLES: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC BULGARIAN-ENGLISH STUDY

In linguistics, the word “hedge” has the meaning of "mitigating", “reducing the power of expression”. It was Brown and Levinson [1], who, based on Goffman's work [2], [3], introduced the concepts of “Positive Face” and “Negative Face”. The latter is the need for an individual not to be interrupted, while the former is the desire to be liked and approved by others (Goffman, 1967). Hedging, from a theoretical point of view, is a form of the author's Ethos and identity, their degree of presence in the text. It also suggests that there may be factors in language interaction that make it possible for the sender's message to be perceived as a "threat" - for example, when using the English personal pronoun "YOU" in summarizing, the recipient can subconsciously associate themselves with the referrer of the personal pronoun. Given that scientific hypotheses are proven or refuted in RMA, it is quite natural for the authors to resort to different strategies of distancing or expressing solidarity (Meyers 1989).Objectification strategies of expression also determine the authorial place in the scientific discourse in the socializing community. The author's ethos can be explored by analyzing the different epistemic markers associated with their drive for persuasion and confidence. The study presents a quantitative and qualitative analyses of research medical articles with regard to their strategies for objectification. It is based on a corpus of 207 articles in Bulgarian and 129 in English, all excerpted from prestigious high impact factor journals. The analysis of the different hedging markers has been implemented by using Wordsmith Tools word analyzing programme, version 6.0. (Scott 2012). By examining the different markers for the presence or absence of the author in the text, we can grasp the architectonics of the RMA - not only the certainty encoded in rhetorical conviction, but also the most important feature - the “topos” of authorial perception in the scientific discourse. From the data obtained with regard to hedging, it can be concluded that in both languages, hedge structures are strongly determined by the standards imposed by the discourse community and are similar in volume and content, while the linguistic means inherent in the respective language mediate and define differences in surface structures - especially in view of the greater expression of modal verbs in the articles from the English corps and the "offset" in the BC articles respectively - mainly by means of depersonalization strategies. The very rhetorical structure of the articles of both corpora implies insignificant differences as regards the structure and distribution of hedge forms. In general, the rhetorical function of these forms has an equivalent linguistic force in the excerpted texts of the two large corpora.

Zombies lost in translation. The translation from English to Spanish of (de)humanizing pronouns

<p>The present paper analyses which strategies are used in order to express the personal/inanimate pronoun contrast that serves the function of (de)humanizing zombies, when passages containing this linguistic feature in English are translated into Spanish. English has two sets of pronouns/adjectives, the ones that express personhood (he/his/him, she/her), and the inanimate ones (it/its). The explicit use of these pronouns is obligatory. Spanish on the other hand, has one set of pronouns (él, ella, su, lo, la) that are used both to express personhood as well as with inanimate references. The Spanish subject pronouns are normally used only when there is a need to highlight the subject or contrast it with another subject. Consequently, translators from English to Spanish face a challenge with regard to the translation of the (de)humanizing effect the pronoun contrast adds to the texts in English. The corpus contains examples of the English pronouns being translated with noun phrases, verb phrases, noun clauses, and pronouns, while in some cases the pronoun contrast is omitted, and therefore lost in the translation.</p>

Comparative Analysis of English Language Learners' Errors across Different Linguistic Backgrounds

The focus of the study is the comparative analysis of English as a second language learners’ errors across different linguistic backgrounds in Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive research design. The population for the study consisted of senior secondary school students in Ondo State. A simple random sampling technique was employed to select four secondary schools and 26 students from four schools in Akoko Ondo State(12 male, 14 female). The sample consisted students from three linguistic backgrounds (Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa). The instrument used to gather data was a verbal ability test. The reliability of the instrument was determined through the test- retest method (r = 0.83). Four research questions were answered. The findings revealed that there was a significant difference in the scores of students from different linguistic backgrounds in their use of tenses, pronouns, spellings and pronunciation. On the basis of these findings it was recommended that students are to be given time to pay attention to their use of English tenses, pronoun, spelling and pronunciation so as to maximize their academic potentials and possibilities. There is need to give teachers chance to experience in-service training and seminars. This will make them conversant with current development in pedagogy and language itself.

THE DIFFERENT CONCEPT OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE POLITENESS OF BROWN AND LEVINSON TOWARD INDONESIAN LANGUAGE THROUGH SECOND PERSON PRONOUN ANALYSIS

This article is trying to see the great difference of positive and negative politeness concept proposed by Brown and Levinson by looking at different second person pronouns of English and Indonesian language. Politeness which ties the use of language universally exists in any language, though the concept is uniquely different. Brown and Levinson’s (1987) proposition of the concept of politeness, despite fruitfully enriching our understanding, could not escape criticism of several points one of which is the relevance of cultural norm. Cultural norm relying substantially on the language use, therefore, governs the people’s use of the language appropriately and properly which necessitates the interplay between dictions and meaningful context. In short, this article will review one marker of politeness, i.e. second person pronouns in English and Indonesian to reveal the great difference in running politeness strategies.

Effects of repeated practice in pre-task planning on the acquisition of English personal pronouns by Chinese EFL learners

While the literature concentrates on the effects of one-time planning on immediate task performance, this article aims to uncover how repeated practice in planning helps promote L2 learners' acquisition of English third-person singular pronouns, conceptualized as pronominal use and selection of referential strategies in their oral monologue. In this study, 63 intermediate-level Chinese EFL learners were enrolled in a longitudinal experiment, in which they narrated picture-prompted stories 12 times under one of three conditions, namely, unguided planning, guided planning, or no planning. Comparison of posttest data among the groups showed that (a) long-term practice in planning facilitated the learners' control over accurate use of “he” but not the use of “she”; (b) repeated planning practice did not alter L2 learners' strategy for reference selection when doing a new task, but task repetition seemed to improve referential use; and (c) planning guidance did not promote their acquisition of the target form. Such results also suggested that effects of pretask planning might be moderated by the cognitive load required for producing the linguistic forms.

Pronouns in English and Arabic: A Contrastive Study

Pronouns are defined as being one of the parts of speech that obtain their meaning from other noun phrases in a sentence. This study is descriptive, analytic, and contrastive. It deals with comparing pronouns in English and Arabic by concentrating on the points of difference and similarity between the two languages.
 
 This study aims at describing pronouns in both languages and then the comparison is made by defining pronouns, showing their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects to know to what extent both languages are similar or different in using pronouns.
 
 It is hypothesized that the two languages are similar to each other in terms of their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of pronouns; pronouns are found in both languages; and there are some points of similarity and difference between the two languages, but the differences outweigh the similarities. 
 
 English has a clear division of pronouns. Pronouns are dealt with syntactically, semantically and pragmatically. In Arabic the division of pronouns is completely different.

Experimenting with pro-drop in Telugu and Indian English

This paper investigates pronominal subjects dropping in Telugu and Indian English and the severity of first language impact on learning and usage of a second language. Numerous languages from various language families are spoken in India. Many of the languages among them are pro-drop languages. Telugu is a full-fledged consistent null subject language with rich verbal agreement. So, pro-drop is common in spoken Telugu. This paper aims at how first language (L1) influences its rules and morpho-syntactic properties on second language (L2) in relation to pro-drop at various levels. To some extent, pro-drop parameter helps us to understand how the language acquisition takes place in children and adults mind/brain in setting the parameter in a specific language. Based on the empirical evidence, several Telugu-speaking children and adults are examined on how they drop pronouns in spoken Telugu and Indian English.

Reflexivity in English, French and Kinshasa Lingala: Similarities and Differences

Dunker [15] asserts that “linguistic reflexivity is a feature of the communication process, and it essentially depends on situated participants and time. It is a defining characteristic of the human language but despite its obvious importance, it is not very well understood theoretically, and it is strangely under-researched empirically”. Reflexivity exists in English, French, and Kinshasa Lingala. In all these languages, reflexivity is expressed by reflexive pronouns, reciprocal pronouns, reflexive verbs, and ergative verbs. The position and use of these pronouns and verbs differ from one language to another. Therefore, this article attempts to examine reflexivity in each of these languages in order to point out similarities and differences. The focus is on the use of reflexive pronouns, reciprocal pronouns, reflexive verbs, and ergative verbs in English, French, and Kinshasa Lingala. This article is based on observation, interview, and contrastive analysis which allows to sort out similarities and differences between languages. Observation was used during people’s talk on buses, at markets, on radios, and in avenues. An interview was prepared for some people in the Kinshasa community especially teachers. The results show that English, French, and Kinshasa Lingala use pronouns to express reflexivity. Reflexivity is expressed through the use of reflexive pronouns which have different positions in these three languages. In English, they occur in the object position. In French, they occur after a personal pronoun subject and before the verb. In Kinshasa Lingala, they occur in the verbal prefix position. As far as reciprocal pronouns are concerned, in English a reciprocal pronoun is used without reflexive pronoun whereas in French, reciprocal pronoun is optional and it is used with reflexive pronoun. In Kinshasa Lingala, the reciprocal pronoun is suffixed to the verb. It is a bound morpheme. Reflexivity is expressed by ergative verbs in English, French, and Kinshasa Lingala. In English, no reflexive pronoun is used with ergative verbs. In French, ergative verb is used with a reflexive pronoun “se”. In Kinshasa Lingala, the ergativity is expressed by the bound morpheme –ma or –mi. In conclusion, the similarities are at the level of the use of reflexive pronouns, reciprocal pronouns, and ergative verbs. Whereas the differences appear in the position occupied by the reflexive components. In English, reflexive pronouns and reciprocal pronouns occur in the object position. In French, they occur between the subject and the verb. In Kinshasa Lingala, the reflexive pronoun occurs in the verbal prefix position. Reciprocal pronoun occurs in the suffix position. Ergativity is expressed by –ma/-mi in the suffix position.

Human impersonal pronouns in West Germanic

AbstractIn this article, we examine and compare the main human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans, Dutch and English. The second person singular, the third person plural and the ‘man’- and ‘one’-pronouns are studied by means of an acceptability judgment questionnaire and a completion questionnaire. The combination of the two methods reveals interesting descriptive facts about the three West Germanic languages. They include, among other things, the ‘man’-prominence of Afrikaans versus the ‘you’-prominence of Dutch and English for expressing the universal meaning ‘anyone’ and the more prominent position of ‘they’ in Dutch than in the other languages for conveying the existential meaning ‘someone, some people’. Our findings have a number of more theoretical implications too. The two existing semantic maps for human impersonal pronouns make different distinctions in the existential domain, based on type/level of (un)knownness on the one hand and number on the other. Our study tests both sets of distinctions and shows that the two dimensions interact with each other in Afrikaans, Dutch and English. The results thus support a recent proposal in the literature for a combined semantic map. The data from the completion questionnaire, finally, also indicates that existential uses prefer alternative forms of impersonalization to human impersonal pronouns in all three languages.

Wh- Relative Pronouns in English: Predicativity Versus Virtuality

The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic study of the functioning of wh-pronouns. The idea of their unity in the 'Tongue' Domain stands for us as a major requirement. The occurrence of whoever, whatever, whichever, and wh (o)/(ich) with their antecedents results from a systematicity built in the deep structure of language. The approach adopted in this study opposes a simple description of the linear sequencing of words in language to the potential significate in the Tongue domain, because the observable or the effects of sense have consequence on the mental representation of language. The system of wh-pronouns is mainly based on two concepts: 'predicativity' and 'virtuality'. These two constructs will be shown to underly the functioning of the wh-pronouns in English.

Asymmetries between interpretation and production in Catalan pronouns

The literature on Romance null-subject languages has often postulated a division of labor between Null and Overt pronouns: Nulls prefer to retrieve an antecedent in subject position, whereas Overts prefer an antecedent in a lower syntactic position (Carminati, 2002). However, recent research on English pronouns (Rohde and Kehler, 2014) has shown grammatical function alone cannot explain pronoun interpretation. According to these models, pronoun interpretation and production are sensitive to different sets of factors and, instead of being mirror images of each other, are related probabilistically in a Bayesian fashion. This paper tests this model with Catalan data from two discourse-completion experiments to study the grammatical and pragmatic factors that affect the interpretation and production of Null and Overt pronouns. Our main result is that both Null and Overt pronouns present asymmetries regarding their interpretation and production: (1) the production of Null pronouns is affected mainly by grammatical factors (they are subject-biased), but their interpretation is also influenced by pragmatic factors (in particular, rhetorical relations), and (2) while Overt pronouns have a strong interpretation bias towards the object, the data indicates that they are not the preferred form to refer to the object.

The Interpretation of English Reflexives and Pronouns by Adult Speakers of Chinese An analysis of language transfers

The Interpretation of English Reflexives and Pronouns by Adult Speakers of Chinese An analysis of language transfers

A Comparative Study on Personal Deixis of English and Tukang Besi Language

AbstractThe research is about deixis expression in English and Tukang Besi language. This reasearch attempts to describe types of deixis in English and Tukang Besi language. Descriptive qualitative method is used to reveal the types of deixis that used in English and Tukang besi with contrastive analysis to find out the differences and similarities between personal deixis of English and Tukang Besi language. the total number of subject personal pronouns in English is seven: I, He, She, It, You, We, and They; while in Tukang Besi, there are also seven personal pronouns, they are; yaku,kita, kami, ko'o, komiu, iya, ammai. There are no word which has same meaning with "it" in Tukang Besi. Tukang Besi People only use the name of things directly without use an "it".

Japanese pronoun hon-nin

Abstract This paper investigates the Japanese pronoun hon-nin, which has so far been paid little attention to, and proposes the binding condition to the effect that hon-nin must not be bound by the subject NP. We further show that the Japanese reflexive zibun and the Japanese pronoun hon-nin show complementary distribution just as the English reflexive (himself, etc.) and the English pronoun (him, etc.) do so.

‘Two rules are at play when it comes to none’: A corpus-based analysis of singular versus plural none

This paper identifies discrepancies between prescriptive grammar rules concerning the number of the indefinite pronoun none and the actual use of this pronoun in modern academic English as shown in the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) and Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP). Whereas prescriptive rules state that the number of none is determined by its referent or by the user's desired effect, the analyses of the MICASE and MICUSP search results suggest that, regardless of the modality of discourse, (1) the number of none with an anaphoric referent is determined by the number of its referent and (2) the principle of proximity applies without exception when none is used as part of a ‘none of + singular noun/pronoun’ phrase and applies frequently but not always when followed by an ‘of + plural noun/pronoun’ phrase.