Grammatical Components Research Articles

The Communicative Approaches Revisited and the Relevance of Teaching Grammar

AbstractThe field of English as a second language has gone through a number of changes in the last decades and has seen extreme adjustments throughout the methods of teaching and curriculum planning. This article finds the relevance of the old methods to the new methods. After providing the background it becomes apparent that almost all the older methods have some relevance to the contemporary classroom and linguists are reaching out and calling on teachers to use the old techniques alongside the new techniques. Emphasis in this article, however, is put on the relevance of introducing grammar to the learner, what to introduce, how and when is discussed in light what we know of the communicative.Keywords: Communicative approaches, Teaching grammar1. IntroductionIt has been noted that a great deal of development has been taking place in the field of foreign language teaching. Paradoxically, most of these changes have been taking place in the field of methods and strategies of teaching rather than teaching content. Over the years a great diversity has developed in the methods of teaching as opposed to stability in the principles underlying the choices of the materials prepared for teaching. Syllabus is seen rather to be controlled in terms of grammatical and pedagogical considerations.2. Historical BackgroundSince it has been accepted that language learning consists of acquiring a mastery of the grammatical system, it is not surprising that language programs have a grammatical basis. There are, however, varieties of ways in which language can be presented to the learner. Wilkins drew the attention to two main approaches, the synthetic and the analytic, in his book Notional Syllabus.2.1 The Synthetic ApproachesIn planning courses based on this approach, language items to be taught are broken down to grammatical structures and lexical items. These grammatical structures are taught to the learner carefully and a step-by-step. Such approaches accentuate what Chomsky calls competence as opposed to performance as we will see later on in the development of the communicative syllabuses. (Canal and Swain 1980, Quoted in Brown, 1987: 199) The synthesis of the elements usually takes place in the final stages of learning. Using such syllabus the teacher may use the grammar-translation method or the audio-lingual approach for teaching.Over the years, syllabus constructors have learned to reduce the number of items to be learned in a given unit. By doing so the learning task is simplified. As a result the same linguistic content can be spread over more units and over a longer period of time and the method of presentation differ from course to another. Thus, the presentation may be explicit grammatical rules or it may be embedded in a dialogue. The vocabulary content, however, can be chosen according to certain criteria. The criteria for choosing words are formed in relation to their usefulness, frequency, range, availability, familiarity, and coverage.Syllabus constructors commonly choose vocabulary items that mainly operate the basic patterns of the language. The term frequency, however, refers to the words that are thought to have an immediate use in the classroom. Range refers to the distribution of lexical items over a number of different types of text; whilst availability refers to the lexical items which may not be frequent, but are available to the speaker when he needs them. Familiarity is commonly measured by means of the speaker's responses rather than by the statistical analysis of texts. The term coverage refers to the lexical items which have a wide range of meaning and which could replace other items in a particular context (Wilkins 1976).It is equally important also to select and grade the grammatical component of the foreign language course in using a synthetic approach. The criteria that are most often related to grammatical content of teaching are: simplicity, regularity, frequency, and contrastive difficulty. …

Doubling as a Sign of Morphology: A Typological Perspective

The main goal of the paper is showing that there are three different kinds of iterative phenomena in languages: phoneme reduplication, not analyzed here, reduplication, and repetition. The phenomena differ on the basis of the grammatical components involved and therefore have very different effects. My work argues that reduplication is first and fore-most a formal phenomenon. It can involve several kinds of meaning, some of which of very iconic origin, but all the meanings get encoded grammatically. Then, phrases can be iterated, as well, and they are candidates for repetition. I take repetition to have an exclusively iconic function, basically with a single meaning: emphasis. No formal aspects are involved here. I insert the preceding generalization in the wider framework of the Parallel Architecture (Jackendoff 1997, 2002).

Prosody and Syntax in Sign Languages.

Prosody and Syntax in Sign Languages.

The Decalogue and practical wisdom: rereading a seminal text

PurposeActing in complex and paradoxical situations cannot be taught through recipes. This article rereads a seminal Biblical text, the Decalogue, and seeks to place it in the actual context for people confronted with difficult decisions and actions. If foundational texts are not actualised, they lose their meaning. This is the base of the Judaic exegetic tradition. Practical wisdom can use the Decalogue to act in a relevant way in uncharted territory.Design/methodology/approachA method combining the reading of an old text with a dialoguing commentary in a group is how this actualisation has been elaborated. Oral and written traditions jointly are essential in making the seminal texts of practical wisdom relevant for our times. This commentary has been elaborated as a result of a dialogue with three different groups of more than ten members. This is the way the author uses the term “validation”.FindingsIn the Judaic language verbs are the most important grammatical components. The First Testament texts have their origin in the wisdom to act in a social context. The Decalogue is the central tenet of this practical wisdom. The author has been introduced to this wisdom through the research of communities to create an art of living away from the mainstream individualistic ideology. Currently in management discourse, the use of the words, social networks, stakeholder focus, community development and the attention to systemic and ecological relationships is increasing and this experience can provide an alternative discourse helping them in their endeavours.Originality/valueActualising an ancient tradition, the article makes it relevant for issues with which decision makers are struggling today.

Grammar in the New Zealand English curriculum: Implications for primary school teachers and teacher educators

In this review of the English area of the New Zealand curriculum, the spotlight is focused on the grammar teachers in primary schools are expected to know and understand in order to effectively teach and assess literacy. It is suggested that, despite some professional development in the 1990s during the Exploring Language project, teachers currently fronting New Zealand primary school classrooms lack sufficient declarative knowledge of grammar to teach and assess the grammatical components of literacy in the English curriculum. This may be cause for concern, particularly in light of the introduction this year of Reading and Writing Standards for Years 1 to 8, which places teachers' judgements about learners' literacy proficiency under increased scrutiny. Overseas studies of teachers' knowledge about grammar are reviewed and implications drawn for the local context.

Meaning in Language

C OMPONENT and componential analysis are terms more popular these days among general ethnologists than among linguists. Nevertheless, notions involved seem to me to be basically linguistic and to call for elucidation within framework of a linguistic theory. Linguists have in past spoken of in several contexts: sometimes in relation to phonology (Harris 1944; Hockett 1955:126-137), and sometimes in relation to grammar (Harris 1948). In an earlier article (Chafe 1962) I tried to show a parallelism between what I called phonological components and grammatical components. I would like now to clarify, expand, and revise some of points made there with relation to area of language of most concern to ethnologists, area of meaning. There has long existed a school of thought within linguistics which has approached this area warily, believing that investigation of sound is our only avenue to knowledge of mental linguistic substances (Hill 1962:38). My own view is rather at other extreme: that meaning is in every way as important as sound in our approach to an understanding of language as a whole. The remarks that follow are a sketchy attempt to define role of meaning within language, and along way to pin down place of semantic within this larger picture. When people speak or when they listen to speech, they make use of a very complex set of habits that enable them to relate to sound. I am using these terms as Edward Sapir used them when he wrote that the essence of language consists in assigning of conventional, voluntarily articulated, sounds, or of their equivalents, to diverse elements of experience (Sapir 1921:11). Either a person attempts to communicate a part of his own to others by making sounds, or he perceives sounds and from them modifies his own to accord in some way and to some degree with which producer of sounds wished to communicate. The habits underlying this kind of behavior generally and fruitfully are assumed to involve imposition of on both universe of and universe of sound. Structure is usually thought to involve, first, an inventory of discrete units, and, second, a network of patterns within which these units co-occur. We might use term semology to refer to total complex of linguistic habits that involve structuring of experience, and phonology to refer to habits of structuring sound. There is a third, and equally important set of habits that determines way units of semological structure are phonologically symbolized; it may be called morphophonemics. Figure 1 gives a rough indication of relationships between semology, phonology, morphophonemics, experience, and sound. We are concerned here first and foremost with semological structuring, but morphophonemic factors have to be brought

Common usage of cardiologic anatomical terminology: critical analysis and a trilingual discussion proposal

Terminology and Lexicography have been especially addressed to the Allied Health Sciences regarding discussion of case reports or concerning publication of scientific articles. The knowledge of Human Anatomy enables the understanding of medical terms and the refinement of Medical Terminology makes possible a better anatomicomedical communication in a highly technical level. Most of the scientific publications in both Anatomy and Medicine are found only in English and most of dictionaries or search resources available do not have specificity enough to explain anatomicomedical, terminological, or lexicographical occurrences.To design and produce a multilingual terminological dictionary (Latin-English-Portuguese-Spanish) containing a list of English anatomicomedical terms in common usage in cardiology subspecialties addressed to medical students and professionals, to other allied health sciences professionals, and to translators working in this specific field.Terms, semantical and grammatical components were selected to compose an anatomicocardiological corpus. The adequacy to the thematic terminological research requests and the translation reliability level will be settled from the terminology specificity in contrast to the semantics, as well as from a peer survey of the main terms used by national and international experts in specialized journals, Internet sites, and from text-books on Anatomy and Cardiology. The inclusion criteria will be the terms included in the English, Portuguese, and Spanish Terminologia Anatomica - the official terminology of the anatomical sciences; nonofficial technical commonly used terms which lead to terminology or translation misunderstanding often being a source of confusion.A table with a sample of the 508 most used anatomical cardiologic terms in English language peer-reviewed journals of cardiology and (pediatric and adult) thoracic surgery is shown.The working up of a multilingual terminological dictionary reduces the risk of ambiguities, inconsistencies, inutilities, and repetitions concerning the Nomenclature addressed to the Allied Health Sciences by prioritizing the inclusion of official technical terms and a judicious selection of commonly used terms. Efforts to standardize lists of structures in Humana Anatomy lead to both opportunities of scientific update and conceptual enlightenment.

Where and What is Morphology?

Abstract In contemporary linguistics the debate about the status and character of morphology is as recurrent as it is many-sided. Succinctly put, whereas some authors disperse morphological facts over the main grammatical components, others treat morphology as a subcomponent of the lexicon whose units interact in a regular and systematic way with phonology, syntax and semantics. I contend that it is this lexical status - which has been characterized as interfacial - that gives morphology its shape and character. This paper reviews the different ways the lexiconmorphology is conceived, and located within the grammar, by some of the most representative models put forward in recent years, and goes through the properties that are taken to define a linguistic component. In order to illustrate the interaction of phonology, semantics and syntax that takes place whenever lexicon-morphology is involved, a brief discussion is included of a case of word-formation that clearly reveals the interface nature of morphology.

Discourse particles: Where cognition and interaction intersect—The case of final particle ey in Shishan dialect (Hainan Island, P.R. China)

Based on spontaneous dyadic and multi-party conversation data, we examine final particle ey in Shishan, a dialect of Lingao (Tai-kadai language family) through the multiple lenses of: tense/aspect, stance marking, interpersonal interaction, and evidentiality. In order to explicate the semantic–pragmatic functioning of Shishan ey, 2 2 Particle ey occurs utterance-initially, utterance-medially, and utterance-finally, though instances of utterance-initial and utterance-medial ey are much less frequent. The cognitive-interactional functions of the particle differ according to placement. The current paper addresses ey only in utterance-final position. we provide brief comparisons with the aspectual/interactional functions of Mandarin le, the interactional functions of Mandarin final particles ou and a, and Cantonese final particle wo. We analyze the Mandarin and Cantonese particles from the points of view of the multivariate facets of speaker stance and compare them to Shishan ey. We note that in interactional discourse, the linguistic expression of evidentiality of Shishan ey is triggered by an external, interactionally-based signal. Specifically, when the particle emerges in collaboratively-built talk, it serves to signal the speaker's instantaneous discovery of a speaker–hearer epistemic mismatch and to simultaneously re-gauge the hearer's orientation toward evidence that emerges in the immediate context. By illuminating the semantic and pragmatic meanings of this form, we hope to advance the study of interactional particles as essential grammatical components of linguistic systems.

H.M.'s personal crossword puzzles: Understanding memory and language

The amnesic patient H.M. has been solving crossword puzzles nearly all his life. Here, we analysed the linguistic content of 277 of H.M.'s crossword-puzzle solutions. H.M. did not have any unusual difficulties with the orthographic and grammatical components inherent to the puzzles. He exhibited few spelling errors, responded with appropriate parts of speech, and provided answers that were, at times, more convincing to observers than those supplied by the answer keys. These results suggest that H.M.'s lexical word-retrieval skills remain fluid despite his profound anterograde amnesia. Once acquired, the maintenance of written language comprehension and production does not seem to require intact medial temporal lobe structures.

On the Italian and the English Finite Verb form from Their Communicative Value Point of View

The article deals with the Italian and the English finite verb form observed in their communicative value, i.e. from the functional sentence perspective (FSP) point of view. The Italian inflectional verbal form is confronted with the English finite verb form with the aim of demonstrating their function within the communicative units of the sentence viewed as a communicative field. The Italian finite verb form, expressing all the grammatical categories, may represent several communicative units: the categories of person and number constitute the theme while the categories of tense and mood constitute the transition proper. The notional component of the verb may have the function of transition or rheme. The grammatical and semantic components are included within one verbal form. Thus the Italian finite verb form may participate in several communicative units and reach high communicative value. The communicative value of the English finite verb form, characteristic for poor inflection and tending to loose its lexical meaning, is lower. Both grammatical and non-grammatical components are conveyed by separate elements. The differences observed between Italian and English on the FSP level reflect the morphosyntactic characteristics of both languages.

Perceptual effects in final cluster reduction patterns

This study investigates word final deletion patterns in English loanword adaptations and in various other phonological data. By comparing the loanword forms in several languages, preference scales for retention of consonants (covert in the native words) emerged. The most robust pattern is the preference for voiceless plosives (T) over voiced ones (D) in the postnasal context (N_#). The asymmetric deletion patterns are predicted by the relative acoustic and auditory saliency of the plosives in the postsonorant context. Saliency predicts that D will be always deleted before T. Similar patterns of cluster reduction are found in productive synchronic alternations, in the course of language evolution, and also in child acquisition data. It is argued that the perceptibility scales are universally defined through auditory perception. However, auditory perception alone does not determine directly the phonological patterns. Instead, the perceptibility scales are encoded into the grammatical component of each language. This is shown by distinct yet implicationally congruent reduction patterns in loanwords across languages.

Thinking in action: thought made visible in contemporary dance

Contemporary dance-movement deliberately and systematically cultivated for its own sake-is examined in the light of the procedural and declarative view of long-term knowledge. We begin with a description of two settings in which new works of contemporary dance are created and performed. Although non-verbal, contemporary dance can be a language declared through movement and stillness of the body. Ideas for new movement material come from objects, events or imaginings that are spoken, seen, heard, imagined, or felt. Declared through movement, the idea becomes visible. Communication in dance involves general psychological processes such as direct visual perception of motion and force, motor simulation via mirror neurons, and implicit learning of movement vocabularies and grammars. Creating and performing dance appear to involve both procedural and declarative knowledge. The latter includes the role of episodic memory in performance and occasional labelling of movement phrases and sections in rehearsal. Procedural knowledge in dance is augmented by expressive nuance, feeling and communicative intent that is not characteristic of other movement-based procedural tasks. Having delineated lexical and grammatical components in dance, neural mechanisms are identified based on Ullman's (Ullman in Cognition 92:231-270, 2004) alignment of lexical knowledge with declarative memory and mental grammar with procedural memory. We conclude with suggestions for experiments to test these assumptions that concern thought in action in composition, performance and appreciation of contemporary dance.

On the parallel organization of linguistic components

This article is concerned with the question as to whether the components of grammar (syntax, semantics and phonology) have a similar architecture. I provide a modest historical background to the recurrent discussion about the parallelisms between syntax and phonology within Generative Grammar and mention some ‘meta-patterns’, i.e., shared properties of linguistic structures in different modules that are quite general and most likely not even specifically linguistic. I also discuss Anderson's [Anderson, J., 1992. Linguistic Representation: Structural Analogy and Stratification. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin] idea of Structural Analogy, the idea that, all things being equal, linguistic components and levels have similar structural properties. I argue in favor of a division between a word and a sentence subsystem for each of the three parallel grammatical components. Finally, I offer a general discussion of the place of phonology in the grammar and its relationship to phonetics. This section also sums up the main points of this article.

Does a theory of language need a grammar? Evidence from Hebrew root structure

Hebrew constrains the occurrence of identical consonants in its roots: Identical consonants are acceptable root finally (e.g., skk), but not root initially (e.g., kks). Speakers’ ability to freely generalize this constraint to novel phonemes ( Berent, Marcus, Shimron, & Gafos, 2002) suggests that they represent segment identity—a relation among mental variables. An alternative account attributes the restriction on identical phonemes to their feature similarity, captured by either the number of shared features or their statistical frequency. The similarity account predicts that roots with partially similar consonants (e.g., s gk ) should be at least as acceptable as roots with fully identical consonants (e.g., s kk ), and each of these roots should be less acceptable than dissimilar controls (e.g., gdn). Contrary to these predictions, three lexical decision experiments demonstrate that full identity is more acceptable than partial similarity and (in some cases) controls. Speakers’ sensitivity to consonant identity suggests that linguistic competence, in general, and phonology, in particular, encompass a computational mechanism that operates over variables. This conclusion is consistent with linguistic accounts that postulate a symbolic grammatical component that is irreducible to the statistical properties of the lexicon.

Hybrid agreement in English

Most of the previous approaches to English agreement phenomena have relied upon only one component of the grammar (e.g. either syntax, or semantics, or pragmatics). This article argues that interrelationships among different grammatical components play crucial roles in such phenomena (cf. Kathol 1999 and Hudson 1999). The article proposes that, contrary to traditional wisdom, English determiner–noun agreement is morphosyntactic, whereas subject–verb and pronoun–antecedent agreement are reflections of index agreement (cf. Pollard and Sag 1994). The present hybrid analysis of English agreement shows the importance of the interaction of different components of the grammar in accounting for English agreement phenomena. In particular, once we allow morphology to tightly interact with the system of syntax, semantics, or even pragmatics, we could provide a solution to some puzzling English agreement phenomena. This allows a more principled theory of English agreement.

Interaction between Morph-syntax and Semantics in English Agreement

Most of the previous approaches to English agreement phenomena have relied upon only one component of the grammar (e.g., either syntax, or semantics, or pragmatics). This paper argues that interrelationships among different grammatical components play crucial roles in such phenomenon too (cf. Kathol 1999 and Hudson 1999). The paper proposes that, contrary to traditional wisdom, English determiner-noun agreement is morpho-syntactic whereas subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent agreement are reflections of index agreement (cf. Pollard and Sag 1994). The present hybrid analysis of English agreement shows the importance of the interaction of different components of the grammar in accounting for English agreement phenomena. In particular, once we allow morphology to tightly interact with the system of syntax, semantics, or even pragmatics, we could provide a solution to some puzzling English agreement phenomena. This allows a more principled theory of English agreement. (Kyung Hee University)

Linguistic Knowledge, Metalinguistic Knowledge and Academic Success in a Language Teacher Education Programme

This study is part of an ongoing investigation of the knowledge base, learning and performance of Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) students in the Canadian province of Quebec. The goal of the broad research initiative is to identify valid and reliable criteria for candidate selection and to provide those who are admitted to a programme of study with appropriate and timely academic support. The aim of the specific phase of the project reported here was to look at correlations between different forms of linguistic and metalinguistic knowledge and the academic performance and progress of two different groups of TESL students, the first enrolled in a grammar course and the second in a methodology course. The results reveal that the participants' scores on a metacognitive grammatical explanation task correlate strongly with their academic performance in the two courses considered, even when the course in question had no grammatical component. Vocabulary profiles in both French, the mother tongue of almost all the participants, and English were also found to correlate significantly with academic results in both classes, but to a lesser extent than the grammatical explanation task results. The assessment of the participants' progress over time reserved one of the biggest surprises of this study, with both groups of students showing significant improvement even though one of the groups had no grammatical instruction in the ten-week period of the study.

Counting with range concatenation grammars

The class of range concatenation grammars appears to be a convincing challenger as a syntactic base for various tasks, especially in natural language processing. These grammars are powerful, since they strictly contain the class of mildly context-sensitive formalisms, while staying computationally tractable, since their sentences can be parsed in polynomial time. The output of their parsers are structures of polynomial size that can be seen as a generalization of classical context-free shared forest. Moreover, this formalism allows a form of modularity which may lead to the design of libraries of reusable grammatical components. And, finally, it can act as a syntactic backbone upon which decorations from other domains (say feature structures) can be grafted. In this paper we explore the behavior of range concatenation grammars in counting, a domain in which bad reputation of other classical syntactic formalisms is well known. This study leads to some surprising results.

The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science (review)

Reviewed by: The algebraic mind: Integrating connectionism and cognitive science by Gary F. Marcus Iris Berent The algebraic mind: Integrating connectionism and cognitive science. By Gary F. Marcus. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Pp. 208. $27.95. How do speakers produce new linguistic forms? Generative accounts attribute the productivity of language to the grammar. Although these theories greatly differ on their specific accounts of the grammar, they all share the assumption that the grammar, the home of linguistic productivity, is a distinct aspect of linguistic knowledge that is separate from and irreducible to the lexicon. With the rise of connectionism, however, this basic assumption has been the subject of fierce debate in the psychological literature. Connectionism is a computational framework that captures knowledge in terms of the activation patterns in a network of interconnected nodes. There are now hundreds of connectionist models that exhibit some degree of linguistic productivity despite having no separate grammatical component. The challenge that these networks present to linguistic research cannot be underestimated: If linguistic knowledge could be captured in terms of the statistical properties of lexical entries, then the notion of grammar would become all but obsolete. Does a theory of language need a grammar? Marcus’s book is a unique, remarkable achievement that is bound to reshape the discussion on this question. M’s argument begins not with grammar but with symbol manipulation. As M explains, symbolic accounts of cognition share three assumptions. First, the mind operates on variables—abstract placeholders such as nouns and verbs, akin to algebraic variables (e.g. X). Second, the mind represents the constituents structure of variables (e.g. recursion, X → XY). Third, the mind distinguishes between types (e.g. ‘mouse’) and individuals (‘Mickey’). Linguistic rules, principles, and constraints are special cases of symbolic processes—algebraic operations whose semantic output is determined by the constituent structure of mental variables. For grammars to exist, the mind must have the capacity to perform symbolic operations. In his book, M identifies numerous areas of cognition, including language, that implicate a symbolic architecture. He demonstrates that the success of connectionist models in these domains critically depends on their maintenance of the symbolic tenets. The most powerful of those analyses is the discussion of relations between variables in Ch. 3. It is this discussion that offers a principled computational explanation as to why grammatical generalizations are irreducible to the properties of lexical instances. Key to the ability of symbolic architectures to generalize is their operation over variables—abstract placeholders such as noun and verb. The incorporation of variables crucially determines the scope of generalizations. Because symbolic operations appeal to variables (e.g. noun), not instances (e.g. house, dog, etc.), they can be extended to any new instance, regardless of its properties, its familiarity, or similarity to known instances. For instance, because the English past tense rule concatenates the variables verbstem and suffix (Pinker 1999), it can apply to both familiar (e.g. flip) and novel (e.g. plip) stems. The representation of variables and the operation [End Page 569] over variables, however, is not necessary for generalization. Numerous connectionist models can generalize without representing variables or incorporating operations over variables. Proponents of such networks claim that generalizations ‘emerge’ in connectionist models that are not equipped with mechanisms for operating over variables prior to training. The implications of such findings crucially depend on what, precisely, such ‘emergent’ generalizations really are—a pivotal question that has not been fully articulated in the connectionist literature. In one view, such systems learn the ability to operate over variables, an ability with which symbolic architectures are innately (i.e. in advance of any training) equipped. Such emergence would not challenge the observational or descriptive adequacy of symbolic operations in general or grammars in particular as the scope of generalizations in these two architectures is indistinguishable. Such emergent generalizations, if they existed, however, would question the explanatory adequacy of symbolic systems, namely, the hypothesis that the ability to operate over variables must be innately specified. The innateness of operations on variables should not be equated with the innateness of specific grammatical principles or constraints: The innateness of the symbolic machinery is not sufficient argument for the innateness of any...