English Verbs Research Articles

Just Simulating? Linguistic Support for Continuism About Remembering and Imagining

AbstractMuch recent work in philosophy of memory discusses the question whether episodic remembering is continuous with imagining. This paper contributes to the debate between continuists and discontinuists by considering a previously neglected source of evidence for continuism: the linguistic properties of overt memory and imagination reports (e.g. sentences of the form ‘x remembers/imagines p’). I argue that the distribution and truth-conditional contribution of episodic uses of the English verb remember is surprisingly similar to that of the verb imagine – even when compared to the distribution of other experiential attitude verbs like see, hallucinate, or dream. This holds despite the presence of some remarkable truth-conditional differences between remember and imagine. I show how these differences can be explained by a continuist account of remembering, on which remembering is past-directed, referential, and accurate experiential imagining.

Exploring crosslinguistic influence on learning particles in phrasal verbs through a cognitive linguistic approach

Abstract It is now well established that English phrasal verbs cause English as foreign language learners no small degree of confusion due to the semantic complexity. However, the influence of crosslinguistic transfer on learning phrasal verbs has remained unclear. There even has been little qualitative analysis of the crosslinguistic difference between literal and metaphorical meanings of particles. This paper proposes an instructional approach underpinned by metaphor and categorization in cognitive linguistics and highlights particles as a means of disentangling polysemous verb-particle constructions. Fifteen students from four universities in Taipei City and City of Newcastle upon Tyne participated in the study. Results of the qualitative data, i.e., discussion tasks, in-session tasks, and interviews, suggested that despite the difficulty of understanding some target items, the crosslinguistic similarities and differences generally aid the learning of the phrasal verbs via the proposed approach. Raising an awareness of crosslinguistic difference between metaphorical meanings of particles can be pedagogically useful.

The pedagogical effectiveness of the programmed learning of English tenses: A pedagogical experiment

The current study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a programmed approach to teaching English verb tenses. This approach is essential for enhancing grammar instruction in the classroom. A total of 23 first-year students from Toraighyrov University participated in both studies. Before the experiments, the participants were divided into two groups. During the first stage of the experiment (2021–2022), both groups started with a similar level of English proficiency assessed through admission exams. There was a noticeable difference in the initial proficiency between the two groups during the second stage (2022–2023). After completing the learning process, the participants underwent a post-assessment to measure their progress in using tense forms. In a second experiment, the order of events was reversed. In this study, the criterion measures method, statistical method, statistical analysis of the test, and data collection and analysis were employed. Based on the preliminary findings, students experienced enhanced learning and engagement when studying English grammar using programmed learning methods compared to traditional approaches. It was concluded that programmed learning helps students to memorize and comprehend grammar concepts more efficiently through structured progression and immediate feedback, indicating that it is a viable approach to teaching grammar.

An Argument for a Strong Force Semantics of Believe

Abstract The English verb believe is usually taken to encode universal quantification over possibilities (Hintikka 1969) and thus it is predicted to carry a strong modal force. Faced with the intuition that believe feels weaker than uncontroversially strong modals like sure, Hawthorne et al. (2016) instead propose that believe carries a weak modal force, requiring that the agent’s degree of certainty exceed some vague standard and drawing a parallel to relative gradable adjectives like tall. The current contribution takes to heart the idea that believe is gradable but shows that its scale properties in fact argue against a weak force semantics: the scale of believe is upper-closed and so its default standard must be the scale maximum (Kennedy and McNally 2005; Kennedy 2007). This results in a strong modal force, suggesting that the felt weakness of believe is rooted in its ‘subjective’ modal flavor (cf. Lyons 1977; Kratzer 1981) arising from the fact that believe maps propositions to degrees of credence.

The effectiveness of ChatGPT as a lexical tool for English, compared with a bilingual dictionary and a monolingual learner’s dictionary

Traditionally, language learners have relied on dictionaries when trying to read or write in a foreign language. However, new LLM-based chatbots may offer an alternative to traditional dictionaries as lexical tools. This study assesses the effectiveness of ChatGPT versus the monolingual Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE, 2024) and the bilingual Diki.pl (Diki.pl, 2024) online dictionaries in supporting English language learners in receptive and productive lexical tasks. With a sample of 166 university students at B2 to C1 proficiency levels and forty uncommon English phrasal verbs, we investigate whether a leading AI-driven chatbot, a high-quality learners’ dictionary, or a popular free bilingual dictionary offers better support in accurately understanding and producing English. The results reveal ChatGPT to be more effective than either dictionary in production, and better than the monolingual dictionary, but not the bilingual dictionary, in reception.

An Analysis of Lukabaras Borrowed Verbs from English

English as an official language, has come in contact with indigenous languages in Kenya. English has therefore become one of the major donors of loanwords to these indigenous languages, Lukabaras being one of the beneficiaries. This study investigated the morpho-phonological constraints that English loan verbs encounter when adapting into Lukabaras. The research utilized Lukabaras native speakers as respondents to elicit data. A purposive sampling technique was employed to select a sample of 15 English loan verbs, which were then analyzed descriptively based on the tenets of Optimality Theory which states that constraints are universal and are fixed in their ranking and apply to all languages. The loan verbs were transcribed, and the study first analyzed the morphological constraints, followed by the phonological constraints. The findings reveal that English and Lukabaras have different morphological and phonological structures, leading to modifications of English loan verbs to fit the morphological and phonological patterns of Lukabaras. Additionally, the study identifies specific morpho-phonological constraints affecting the adaptation of English loan verbs into Lukabaras, including NOCODA, COMPLEX C, MAX IO, ONSET, DEP IO, IDENT IO, DEP-PREF, DEP-SUFFIX, and ALIGN left edge. Furthermore, faithful constraints are ranked higher than markedness constraints in Lukabaras. The study’s findings contribute to the understanding of morpho-phonological adaptation processes in language contact scenarios. Overall, the study’s findings align with the theoretical framework provided by OT, illustrating how languages manage the integration of foreign elements through a balance of faithfulness and markedness constraints. These findings not only enhance the understanding of loanword adaptation in Lukabaras but also contribute to the broader field of language contact and borrowing, providing a detailed case study of how specific constraints operate in a real-world linguistic context.

ENGLISH NOUNS AND VERBS MORPHOLOGICAL INFLECTION MISTAKES AMONG UNIBA’S TOEFL PREPARATION STUDENTS’ ASSIGNMENTS

This research attempts to find and describe the types and factors of English nouns and verbs morphological inflection from the student's assignments. This research can also be seen as one form of language development research since it also discusses the factors of the mistakes that the students commit in the making of the assignment. The assignment was to write a paragraph about anything in English then the outcome was analyzed to find the morphological inflection mistakes and classify the data based on the criteria. This research applies descriptive qualitative design and uses observation for the data collecting technique and later uses document analysis. The techniques in this research are Spradley's domain, taxonomy, and componential analysis. This research finds 16 data of inflectional mistakes that fulfill the three categories of the factors while the discussion shows that the factor following each type is dominated by unfamiliarity with inflectional rules whereas the dominant type of inflectional mistake is omission. The conclusion shows that the most common mistakes happen in nouns by the supports from Tomasello's Usage-based theory (2009). Finally, the students mostly fail on noun inflection because they are unfamiliar with the inflectional rules of nouns.

English-to-Hindi translation divergence study of English phrasal verbs

English phrasal verbs pose complex semantic interpretations and cause significant problems in their translation into the target language. The paper selects some frequent and highly polysemous English phrasal verbs listed with 10 or more senses in the English WordNet, collects sample English sentences from the British National Corpus and examines their Hindi translation equivalents in terms of the morpho-syntactic structure of Hindi verbs and the representation of semantic information. This study attempts to present the semantic equivalence in rendering the identical semantics in the verbal system of both languages under consideration. The study found that the most frequent and common way of realising the concepts represented by English phrasal verbs in Hindi is by incorporating the compound verb constructions in the Hindi language. Besides that, we observe multiple mapping patterns of English phrasal verbs in Hindi, including the simple Hindi verb (v), compound verb (v1-v2), and conjunct verb (noun/adjective/adverb-verb) constructions.

A Corpus-Driven Study of Syntactic And Semantic Models of Transitivized English Intransitive Verbs

Transitivized English intransitive verbs, abbreviated as transitivized EIVs in the present study, refer to the English intransitive verbs which are transitively used taking direct objects as normal transitive verbs do. This study aims to systematically explore their syntactic and semantic patterns through a specialized corpus with 585 instances of 211 transitivized EIVs from the EIV corpus and approximately 97,000 words from the instances of 210 transitivized EIVs from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. To code the syntactic and semantic patterns of transitivized EIVs, conventional lexical and phrasal categories as well as the Ideal Motion Event Category were employed. The results of investigation indicate that the transitivized EIVs feature three major syntactic patterns: “EIVs + NP/Pron. + Zero”, “EIVs + NP/Pron. + meaning-supplementing expressions” and “EIVs + one’s way + Prep.-Phr.” while their semantic patterns are governed by law: The basic semantic pattern of the transitivized EIVs is the cause sense, but with its weakening or backgrounding, the other semantic patterns take the stage involving the sense combination of cause and manner, the sense of manner or the sense of abstract motion. This study offers a relatively comprehensive landscape of the linguistic phenomenon of transitivized EIVs and is believed capable of facilitating a better understanding of EIVs, thereby flexible and appropriate use of EIVs in intercultural communication.

SYSTEMS THINKING FORMATION IN THE CONDITIONS OF CLIP THINKING INFLUENCE ON THE PROCESS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Background. Modern higher education is focused on creating conditions for developing systems thinking skills and reducing the negative impact of clip thinking on the cognitive abilities of the younger generation. Digital technologies contribute to the development of students’ skills such as multitasking, reaction speed, a high degree of adaptability, but also negatively affect the perception of the world around them, students stop analyzing the information they receive and do not strive to make a complete picture of the fragments received. Purpose. Identify psychological and pedagogical conditions for the formation of systems thinking skills and reducing the negative impact of clip thinking on the process of learning a foreign language. Materials and methods. The study was conducted by analyzing scientific, educational and methodological literature and pedagogical experience in the formation of cognitive competence among students of higher educational institutions. The article interprets, analyzes and generalizes the theoretical principles and practical experience of developing students’ systems thinking skills, and also studies the influence of clip thinking on the cognitive process in foreign language classes. Results. The author identified the main learning difficulties caused by the negative impact of clip thinking, and proposed psychological and pedagogical conditions for their minimization and the formation of systems thinking skills. The basis of the psychological and pedagogical conditions is the implementation of problem-based learning through solving communicative tasks in the process of studying modern forms of the English verb. The obtained research results contribute to the methodology and technology of modern professional education, expand the understanding of the role of problematic communicative tasks in foreign language classes and speak about the need to rely on students’ ability to multitask and the mechanism of adaptation to information overload.

Parallelisms between Verb–Particle Constructions in English and Verb–Verb Compounds in Japanese: Evidence from Acquisition Research

This study shows two parallelisms between (i) the acquisition process of English verb–particle constructions (VPCs) by children in the process of acquiring English as a native language (henceforth ENL children) and (ii) that of Japanese verb–verb compounds (VVCs) by children in the process of acquiring Japanese as a native language (henceforth JNL children) using the CHILDES database. First, both JNL and ENL children produce creative N–N compounds and complex predicates during the same period, in line with the proposal by Snyder that the Compounding Parameter (TCP) is set to positive for both Japanese and English languages. Second, particles or verbs which are used to represent the path of motion in English VPCs and Japanese VVCs are produced before the VPCs and VVCs they are used in because complex predicates are created by the combination of two or more constituents, such as verbs and particles. Thus, our findings corroborate the proposal that Japanese is a [+TCP] language and suggest that Japanese makes use of VVCs instead of VPCs. Furthermore, this parallelism observed among ENL and JNL children in the acquisition process of creative N–N compounds and VPCs/VVCs, respectively, suggests that English VPCs and Japanese VVCs are related expressions in a grammatical sense. This in turn implies that VPCs and VVCs are connected by more than their semantics; indeed, it implies that they are realizational variations of the same abstract linguistic structure.

HL Mandarin Speakers Toss the Same Way as Fluent Mandarin Speakers

Abstract Heritage language (HL) speakers often show weaker semantics in HL words than speakers who continue to learn and use the language. In this study, we tested whether HL Mandarin speakers simplified near-synonyms of throw verbs by diminishing the difference between the near-synonyms and/or by diminishing the difference between the generic throw verb and other near-synonyms. Two participant groups, HL Mandarin speakers and English second-language learners, acted out six Mandarin near-synonyms of throw verbs and the English verb throw. The results showed more similarities than differences between the two groups in the core features of throw verb semantics (force, speed, and direction). We observed few signs of simplification. One interpretation of these results is that early and/or naturalistic exposure to Mandarin was an important predictor of speakers’ knowledge of conceptual features. These results add to the literature showing that there can be factors beyond proficiency that contribute to speakers’ lexical semantics.

Argument structure affects relative clause extraposition: corpus evidence from Persian

The extraposition of a relative clause creates a discontinuous dependency between the relative clause and its host noun phrase, as in A man just entered the bank who claimed to have a gun. Since discontinuous dependencies are known to increase processing effort, a key question is why speakers produce them in the first place. Some factors known to affect extraposition – for example, the length of the relative clause and the main verb phrase – have received processing-based explanations, but others haven’t. We focus on two factors described by previous research: verb type and the grammatical function of the noun phrase hosting the relative clause. Specifically, extraposition from grammatical subjects is more common with unaccusative and passive verbs in English; further, extraposition is more common from grammatical objects than subjects in Dutch and German. We replicate these findings using corpus data from Persian. Further, we propose that verb type and grammatical function can be linked to a single underlying notion: argument structure. We demonstrate that argument structure modulates the likelihood of extraposition in Persian. We suggest that this occurs because speakers choose to extrapose relative clauses in order to keep the main clause verb close to its internal arguments. This explanation extends previous findings in psycholinguistics on the role of argument structure in speech planning during language production.

Can the Mismatch Negativity Really Be Elicited by Abstract Linguistic Contrasts?

Abstract The mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential component that reflects pre-attentive change detection in the brain. As an electrophysiological index of processing that responds to differences in incoming consecutive stimuli, the MMN can be elicited through, for example, the presentation of two different categories of sounds in an oddball paradigm where sounds from the “standard” category occur frequently and sounds from the “deviant” category occur rarely. The specificity of what can elicit the MMN is yet to be fully defined. Here we test whether the MMN can be generated by an abstract linguistic contrast with no reliable acoustic cue. Previous studies have shown that the way in which an acoustic cue is used to elicit MMN is influenced by linguistic knowledge, but have not shown that a nonacoustic, abstract linguistic contrast can itself elicit MMN. In this study, we test the strongest interpretation of the claim that the MMN can be generated through a purely linguistic contrast by contrasting tenses in ablauting irregular English verbs (where there is no reliable acoustic cue for tense). We find that this contrast elicits a negativity, as do other linguistic contrasts previously shown to elicit MMN (a contrast between phonologically voiced and phonologically voiceless segments and a purely acoustic contrast between aspirated and unaspirated segments). The findings provide evidence that the MMN is indeed sensitive to purely abstract linguistic categories.

Verbal -s Variation in Earlier African American English

The origins of the variable - s-marking patterns of present-tense verbs in earlier African American English (AAE) have been widely argued, with one of the most common arguments stating that the pattern is indicative of the Northern Subjects Rule (NSR), a variable - s-marking rule common in the northern British Isles. I explored verbal - s in the Federal Writers’ Project ex-slave narratives to understand what patterns of - s-marking existed in earlier AAE and how these patterns differed across regions. Statistical analysis suggested no NSR influence in AAE as a whole or within any of the regions, but - s-marking still significantly differed between and within regions. I discuss other possible causes of this variation, including influence from other concord patterns, aspectual marking, and phonotactics, but highlight the difficulty of proposing concrete hypotheses due to change over time and a dearth of data.

Exploring the Impact of VR Integration on ESL Leaners’ English Verbal Communication Skills: A Case Study in a Malaysian High School

Exploring the Impact of VR Integration on ESL Leaners’ English Verbal Communication Skills: A Case Study in a Malaysian High School

Variable agentivity: Polysemy or underspecification

Many English verbs typically used agentively allow non-agentive uses. Some recent approaches assume such verbs are unspecified for agentivity, although in principle, polysemy is also an option. We demonstrate the complexity of variable agentivity through an in-depth examination of the English verb sweep, which shows variable agentivity due to both underspecification and motivated polysemy. Drawing on corpus data, we identify two senses for sweep, each with unique argument realization options and interpretive properties. The prototypical uses of this verb, which involve the use of a broom, are obligatorily agentive; however, we claim they instantiate a specialized sense. We argue that the verb’s basic sense, which underlies all its other uses, is unspecified for agentivity, being found with agentive and non-agentive subjects. We formulate event structures for both senses that encode the grammatically relevant components of meaning common across all the verb’s uses: an entity moves along a surface while imparting a force via contact with it. We show that the event structure for the specialized sense, which fixes the moving entity to be a broom, is derived via established processes involving the lexicalization of instruments and routine goal-oriented activities. We demonstrate how the argument realization options and interpretive properties that the verb shows in each sense emerge from applying established principles of argument realization and semantic composition to these event structures.

Does D Select the CP in Light Verb Constructions? A Reply to Hankamer and Mikkelsen 2021

In this response to Hankamer and Mikkelsen (H&M) 2021, we clarify the meaning of the definite article the in out-of-the-blue occurrences of English light verb constructions such as make the claim. While H&M view these as purely uniqueness-requiring determiners (as opposed to purely anaphoric ones in non−light verb constructions), we classify them as instances of Carlsonian weak definites (e.g., Carlson et al. 2006), which presuppose neither uniqueness nor anaphoricity. This clarification casts doubt on H&M’s idea that the D in light verb constructions selects the descriptive CP, which serves to uniquely specify the intended referent. Crosslinguistic data (from the Dravidian language Kannada) also serve to question the relationship between D and CP claimed by H&M. We conclude that D does not directly select the CP in light verb constructions. Nevertheless, these CPs do empirically behave like syntactically selected complements. We suggest that this is because, if the light verb construction is taken as a whole—that is, the light verb + the weak definite nominal—its complement selection properties altogether parallel those of the corresponding lexical verbs. We propose a compositional analysis that reinforces this conclusion.

The origins of pretend like: A syntactic-semantic puzzle in American English and beyond

Like can be a finite complementizer in present-day varieties of English after a few verbs of perception, apparentness, and/or behavior. Normally, like in this function is an innovation that has replaced the earlier variants as if and as though. Pretend like CP appears to be an exception: it is not clear that a precedent exists in the form of pretend as if or pretend as though. To investigate, this study employs the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) (Davies 2010–), extracting more than 5,000 examples of pretend with CPs between 1900 and 2019. The results offer tentative support for increase in pretend like in recent decades, despite verification that pretend as if and pretend as though were never well-attested. The puzzle of a like complementizer coming to compete with that and Ø complementizers in the absence of as if and as though – which does not happen across other English verbs – is interpreted as analogy on the basis of semantically overlapping verbs of behavior: behave like CP, act like CP, and make (out) like CP. This case study thus illuminates the conditions under which an incoming variant of a morphosyntactic variable can spread to new lexical or grammatical contexts.

Learning Phrasal Verbs Through Cognitive Linguistics-Approaches: A Case Study of Kurdish EFL University Students

This study aims to examine the effects of cognitive linguistic approaches on learning English idiomatic phrasal verbs among Kurdish EFL university students. The participants of this study were 62 sophomores in the English Department, at Soran University. They were enrolled in the course ‘Communication Skills’, the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023, and they were put into two distinct groups the control and the experiment groups, with 31 students in each group. Students in both groups received instruction from the same lecturer for thirteen weeks. The control and experiment groups were given instructional treatments based on traditional methods and cognitive linguistic approaches, respectively. A semi-structured interview and pre-and post-tests were used as the instruments of the study for data collection. The descriptive statistics of SPSS analysis, by paired samples t-tests, indicated that students in the experiment group outperformed those in the control group. Concerning (p < 0.05), the difference between both groups was statistically significant in favour of the experiment group (t = 2.186, p = .037). Besides, the difference between both groups related to exposed items was not statistically significant (t = 1.153, p = .258). Additionally, the difference between both groups related to unexposed items was statistically significant in favour of the experiment group (t = 2.934, p = .006). The interviewees’ statements supported the statistical data, and they considered cognitive-based lesson plans helpful and joyful.