Grammatical Content Research Articles

Speech audiometry test with picture-related sentence lists in Modern Greek for partially hearing children

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop Greek sentence-based speech audiometry test in quiet test for hearing-impaired (HI) children (G-SEBSAT).Methods: Seventy-six children were recruited following approval by the local ethics committee and after obtaining informed consent from their parents. The collection of vocabulary was based on showing pictures selected from popular reading materials in Greek to HI children. A grammatical content analysis was carried out to determine the average syntactic and morphological structures of the sentences used by the HI children. Ten picture-related sentence lists were developed based on the vocabulary and the grammatical analysis, and recorded by a male native speaker of standard Modern Greek. These were presented to both normal-hearing (NH) and HI children, and the average speech response threshold (SRT) as well as the slope of the SRT curve at the SRT level of 50% correct responses (S50) were recorded in both groups. Sentence lists were validated with respect to the variability of their difficulty within each group, as well the test-retest variability of the respective SRT scores.Results: The average SRT across all lists for HI children was 65.27 dB and the slope of the SRT curve at the SRT level of 50% correct responses was 3.11%/dB. The corresponding results across all lists for NH children were 17.66 dB and 9.7%/dB, respectively. The SRT of HI children were strongly positively correlated, in a statistically significant manner with the pure tone audiogram (PTA) in both the test and the retest sessions (test: r = 0.750, p < .0005; retest: r = 0.753, p < .0005). The Spearman’s correlation of the rankings of SRT values and the slope values was 0.998 and 0.997, respectively, for the HI and 0.939 and 0.88, for the NH group, indicating very low variability across the test and retest sessions. In addition, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the average SRT in NH children and the SRT residuals in the HI group indicated that the different sentences were of the same difficulty within each group. ((F(9,81) = 0.401, p = .930 and (F(9,93) = 2.241, p = .025, respectively).Conclusions: A validated G-SEBSAT was created in Greek for the first time. SRT and S50 values for both NH and HI children are comparable to similar tests developed in other languages.

Transition of Grammar Education and Core Competence in Korean Language - Focus on Contents of Curriculum and Research Tend -

This article is aimed to found the identity of grammar education through the analysis of national Korean curriculum. From syllabus period to the third curriculum, the beginning of the grammar education, this period was not rich in grammar educational contents, but it laid the foundation for grammatical contents. From the 4th curriculum to the 7th curriculum, grammar education has greatly improved. Grammatical education has been criticized because it is focused on knowledge education, but the results of various studies overcome the crisis, and the contents of grammar education have been refined more concretely. After the 2007 curriculum, grammar education contents have been expanded to `sentence, discourse/text, language` and balanced in terms of `knowledge, use and attitude`, but the contents have recently been reduced. Grammar knowledge and grammar inquiry learning are suitable for educating `self-reflection and self-development competence` and `data and information utilization competence` of core competencies. The grammar of discourse and the education of language`s use is related to `critical and creative thinking competence`, `communication competence`, `community interpersonal relationship competence`. `Culture enjoyment competence` and `community interpersonal relationship competence` can be improved with Korean language recognition and attitude, grammar based on real-life language, etc.

A Sociolinguistic Approach to Teaching Spanish Grammatical Structures

Advanced grammar courses often present standardized grammar rules to students without considering sociolinguistic variation. As a result, many native/heritage students feel that they speak “incorrectly,” and many second language learners do not get an accurate picture of the target language's real-world grammar. This article describes and evaluates a unique approach to teaching advanced Spanish grammar to university students. The curriculum focuses on core grammatical content by studying structures that are subject to sociolinguistic variation, as in habia ∼ habian dos ranas [there was ∼ were two frogs], and it highlights the sociopolitical factors that explain why some forms are deemed prestigious. To test the efficacy of this curriculum, students enrolled in an advanced Spanish grammar course at a large university in the southwestern United States completed a pre- and posttest that measured Spanish grammar knowledge, awareness of sociolinguistic concepts, and positive language attitudes. Results showed statistically significant gains with respect to knowledge of grammar and sociolinguistics. Students also demonstrated a heightened awareness of how prejudice can manifest in judgments of spoken language.

LA INTERDISCIPLINARIEDAD DE LA GRAMÁTICA Y LA ESTILÍSTICA: UNA EXPERIENCIA EN EL PROCESO DE ENSEÑANZA-APRENDIZAJE

This article shows the results of a study about the interdisciplinary relation between Grammar and Stylistic. One of the causes that generate such analysis is the insufficient didactic argumentation of the grammatical content from the Stylistic point of view. Here it is stated as hypothesis that the Stylistic characterization of the grammatical structures favors a better analysis of the text, hence, a more adequate writing. An experiment was carried out with 27 students from fist year who are enrolled in Social Communication Measurement in Las Tunas University, Cuba. A pre-experimental design was applied with pre-test and post-test. The gotten results allowed demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposal through the transformation of the scientific sample.

Análise linguística no ensino de língua materna: uma abordagem sistêmico-funcional

Neste trabalho, investigamos saberes de diferentes origens na construcao da inovacao em atividades de analise linguistica para aulas de Lingua Portuguesa na Educacao Basica. Os dados foram gerados por meio da pratica de laboratorio de criacao de material didatico, estendendo-se numa pesquisa piloto para aplicacao de uma unidade didatica, numa turma do Ensino Fundamental. Os resultados mostraram como o conteudo da tradicao gramatical emerge diante da tentativa de construcao de objetos de ensino diferenciados quando comparados a tradicao do ensino de lingua materna. A inovacao produzida e decorrente do enfoque sistemico-funcional da gramatica para leitura e analise linguistica, resultando num trabalho didatico com e sobre a lingua. Palavras-chave: gramatica, Linguistica Aplicada, material didatico.

A NEW MANUSCRIPT OF CONSENTIUS’ DE BARBARISMIS ET METAPLASMIS

Modern knowledge of the grammarian Consentius’ De barbarismis et metaplasmis, a work valuable for the study of the Latin language, dates back to a relatively recent past: it was only in 1817 that its editio princeps was published by Ph.C. Buttmann, just a few years after the legal scholar A.W. Cramer came across a mention of the then unknown treatise in a ninth-century MS in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich, numbered Clm 14666. Based on this solitary manuscript, H. Keil published the short treatise in the fifth volume of his Grammatici Latini. With no little enthusiasm did W.M. Lindsay announce his unearthing of what, in his own words, had ‘long been a “desideratum”, a second authority’ for this text, in the MS F 15 III d at the Universitätsbibliothek Basel; this was followed by E.O. Winstedt's complete collation and M. Niedermann's critical edition. After about a century now there comes to light a third authority, surprisingly enough in a codex which has enjoyed such fame in the past decades that one might wonder how Consentius could have gone unnoticed in it for so long: this is the eleventh-century MS of Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Lat. Z. 497 (= 1811), in which the De barbarismis et metaplasmis is contained on fols. 84vb 39 - 90va 39; moreover, a so-far-unnoticed quotation from it (32.9-14), together with one from Consentius’ De nomine et uerbo (Consent. gramm. V 353.6-7), is found on fol. 41vb 16–21 of the same manuscript in a famous grammatical florilegium. The codex, written in Romanesque minuscule and probably originating in Rome, is regarded as a handbook of liberal arts designed by Lawrence Archbishop of Amalfi, formerly a monk at Montecassino, thereafter a teacher in Florence and Rome, where he died in about 1049. Based on palaeographical evidence, F.L. Newton rightfully assumed as an exemplar for this codex a MS in Beneventan script, as some features can be detected that betray the scribal imitation of that typical South Italian script, namely the use of the distinctive abbreviation for eius as ‘ei in ligature with stroke through the descender of the i’, the Beneventan ti ligature for the assibilated sound, and the 2-shaped Beneventan interrogation sign, to which I would add the typical abbreviation for in as a long i cut by a horizontal stroke and the confusion of a and t. Interestingly enough, none of these features is found on fols. 66–95, those containing the new Consentius: from a codicological point of view, this is an autonomous section, written by a different scribe from the rest of the MS and preserving some grammatical texts generally attributed to insular authors, such as Smaragdus’ Liber in partibus Donati (fols. 66–81vb) and part of the compilation entitled Pauca de barbarismo (fols. 81vb - 84vb), which precedes the De barbarismis et metaplasmis; not surprisingly, the new text of Consentius displays numerous features of the Insular script, such as the symbols for enim, autem, eius, est, nihil and et. On this basis it is most likely that this whole section was never included in the Beneventan exemplar, but was added at the time and place of copying of our MS in order to enrich the grammatical content.

The reorganisation of the tense, aspect and mode paradigms of French

My previous studies of the replacement of the imperfect subjunctive by the present subjunctive conclude with the proposal of a reorganised paradigm in which the original temporal distinction between past and present is replaced by an aspectual distinction, i.e. by an opposition between the accomplished and the unaccomplished. This change is interpreted as a type of regrammation in which new grammatical content is ascribed to an existing grammatical expression. In the present article, I propose to study how this regrammation conforms to the reorganisations of the temporal and modal paradigms of Modern French by testing the changes of the TAM paradigms as an instance of connecting grammaticalisation.

Grammatical and lexical meaning of a preposition in Spanish language

The article analyzes the linguistic approaches to the question of studying the grammatical and lexical content of a preposition. The article seeks to clarify what is meant by the lexical meaning of a preposition, and what refers to the grammatical one. By analyzing the provisions the article proves that the lexical and grammatical meaning of a preposition must be studied complexly, without being separated from each other.

Les prédicats complexes en wolof

Determining the morphosyntactic status of verbal constructions is an enduring issue in African linguistics. In Wolof, most verbal constructions are split predicate constructions involving a predicative marker, which encodes the greater part of the grammatical content, and a verb, which contributes to the lexical content. The aim of the current paper is to investigate the morphosyntactic status of these complex predicates. Based on several kinds of criteria (phonology, morphology and semantics), I show that the predicative markers must be analysed as phonologically dependent words (clitics). Thus, Wolof complex predicates clearly display syntactic construction features and cannot therefore be considered as morphological units.

Grammar matters: How teachers' grammatical knowledge impacts on the teaching of writing

Teaching grammar has been mandated in statutory curriculum documents in England since 1988. Yet despite this, research evidence continues to suggest that metalinguistic knowledge is an area of challenge for many teachers. Drawing on data from a larger study, this paper considers the role of teachers' grammatical knowledge, both content and pedagogical content knowledge, in mediating learning about writing in the classroom. It also illustrates how students' learning about writing is influenced by teachers’ metalinguistic knowledge. The study highlights that grammatical pedagogical content knowledge is more significant than grammatical content knowledge in supporting meaningful teaching and learning about writing.

Parental influence on the development of children's storytelling

Storytelling represents an aspect of children's general language competence. The characteristics of the home literacy environment, especially joint reading between parents and children, have a significant effect on children's storytelling. The purpose of this study was to explore the age differences in the storytelling of three- to six-year-old children. In addition, the goal was also to determine the effect of parental education, parents' knowledge of children's books, as an indirect measure of joint reading in the home environment, and child's gender on children's storytelling ability. The sample included 156 children aged three- to six-years-old and their parents. The children's storytelling competence was assessed using the Little Glove Storytelling Test. The stories that the children told using a standard picture book were analyzed in terms of several criteria connected with the words in the story and the structure of the story (grammatical structure and contents). Parents' knowledge of children's book was assessed using a Checklist of children's books. The results showed that the period between the ages of three and six is important for the development of children's storytelling; parental education and parents' knowledge of children's books have a significant effect on children's storytelling. In addition, specific important differences were established between boys' and girls' stories: the girls told stories using a greater number of words, whereas no major gender-related differences were determined with regard to the structure of the stories told. The results obtained were interpreted from the viewpoint of both developmental psychology and selected environmental factors.

Morphophonemic Analysis of Inflectional Morphemes in English and Ibibio Nouns: Implications for Linguistic Studies

Linguists generally acknowledge that there exists an inevitable inter-relationship between different levels oflinguistic analysis---phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Various linguistic labels are usedto describe such a link. In particular, there exists a bridge between the phonology and morphology of particularlanguages. The term “morphophonemics” is generally used to describe linguistic statements that can be made ofthe phonemic structure of morphemes and their effect on the grammatical content of languages. This paperbasically attempts a morphophonemic analysis of inflectional morphemes of nouns in two structurally andhistorically distinct languages (English and Ibibio) in order to discover points of differences and similaritiesusing the Contrastive Analysis (CA) model of investigation as its theoretical framework. The results indicate thatthe two languages are structurally different. For instance, Ibibio is agglutinative, tonal and analytic in naturewhile English is basically analytic and intonational. The paper, therefore, analyzes the problem that the Ibibiospeaker of English is likely to encounter in the study of the English word structure. Again, based on its findings,the paper corroborates Greenberg’s (1964) and Essien’s (2003) classifications of African and Southern Nigerianlanguages respectively.

Paradigm formation: Changes of function and structure in German and Danish mood systems

Recent studies in semantic change have agendas in common with the theory of grammaticalization and thus focus on processes of central interest to grammaticalization theory, namely generalization, bleaching and subjectification. One typical outcome of such processes is the addition of new diachronic meanings (“layering”), leading to a content side that involves more and more sprawling polysemic clusters. The study of morphological changes, however, provides instances of many other types of processes. This article discusses two such types: (1) a regrammation process, namely a change in paradigmatic organization, and (2) a specification of meaning, i.e. reduction rather than proliferation of meaning variants. Both will be illustrated with reference to the development of mood in German: it is a split from what was still in Middle High German one inflectional mood paradigm into three different mood paradigms in the modern standard High German language – and each of the separate paradigms involve a specification rather than proliferation in meaning. Our focus is on the characterization of semantic structure, but as in any usage-based grammatical model, the relation between structure and function is also considered. Former main functions of the subjunctive are promoted to the rank of structurally distinctive features between the modern paradigms, but the modern paradigm structure also contains content variation that was not grammaticalized in the older language – while other forms of content variation remains a matter of context of use. A comparison is offered with Middle Danish (showing a similar split of the older paradigm) and Modern Danish (the reverse process: loss of the distinction between the tense and mood paradigms). Again, regrammation processes like the ones studied show the importance of specification in semantic change and also of the importance of fine-grained language-specific analysis of grammatical content and its paradigmatic organization.

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. …

Alguns apontamentos sobre o texto de apresentação da Gramática Contemporânea da Língua Portuguesa

This article intends to establish a dialogue between the readings done on the second semester of 2009 for the course The teaching of language in Brazil (A constituicao do ensino de lingua no Brasil), and the analysis of the introduction of the Gramatica Contemporânea da Lingua Portuguesa (1994), by Jose de Nicola and Ulisses Infante. The aim of this analysis is to see if the authors´ proposal matches the way the grammatical contents are approach, discussed and problematized. A broader goal is to understand what conceptions of language, grammar, language teaching, student and teacher are conveyed in this reference grammar

Alguns apontamentos sobre o texto de apresentação da Gramática Contemporânea da Língua Portuguesa - Doi: 10.5212/Uniletras.v.32i2.0001

This article intends to establish a dialogue between the readings done on the second semester of 2009 for the course The teaching of language in Brazil (A constituicao do ensino de lingua no Brasil), and the analysis of the introduction of the Gramatica Contemporânea da Lingua Portuguesa (1994), by Jose de Nicola and Ulisses Infante. The aim of this analysis is to see if the authors´ proposal matches the way the grammatical contents are approach, discussed and problematized. A broader goal is to understand what conceptions of language, grammar, language teaching, student and teacher are conveyed in this reference grammar.

Older Adults With and Without Stroke Reduce Cadence to Meet the Demands of Talking

Cognitive tasks performed while walking can be challenging for older adults, especially for those with stroke. Conversational speech requires attention and working memory. The purpose of this study was to examine how older adults with and without stroke meet the demands of walking while talking. Community-dwelling older adults, 12 without stroke and 24 with, were videotaped walking an irregular elliptical pathway. Audio recordings were made as subjects discussed topics such as describing a memorable vacation. Each participant performed in single and dual task conditions: speaking, walking, and speaking while walking. Primary measures of interest included cadence and speech rate. Components of language including measures of fluency, grammatical complexity, and semantic content were analyzed to examine additional changes in speech. Paired t-tests were used to compare single and dual task performance for each group. Group differences for dual task effects were examined with independent sample t tests. Cadence decreased with the addition of talking for those without stroke, P < .007, and those with stroke, P < .001. Speech rates did not change with walking for either group; those without stroke did not alter the language components. Participants with stroke reduced the grammatical complexity and semantic content of speech when walking, P's < .013. Those without stroke spent more time doing both tasks at once than those with stroke, P < .023. Clinicians can expect older adults to reduce walking speed to meet the demands of walking and talking. Older adults with stroke may use additional strategies to walk and talk simultaneously.

A feature-theoretic account of tense and aspect in Russian

This paper offers an analysis of Tense and Aspect as temporal predicates with complex interpretable content represented as grammatical and abstract semantic features. Building on Klein (1995) and Demirdache and Uribe-Etxebarria (2000), it is proposed that although Tense and Aspect are distinct grammatical categories they both express a relation that can be characterized as (non)-coincidence. Tense expresses (non)-coincidence of the utterance time and the assertion time, while Aspect expresses (non)-coincidence of the assertion time and the situation time. Tense and Aspect are represented by a set of two features: grammatical features [±past] and [±perf], and the abstract feature [±coin]. Thus, they have different grammatical content but the same abstract semantic content. This fine-grained distinction enables us to capture the similarities and differences between the two categories. The interaction between the two types of features together with the syntactic operation of feature agreement accounts for the temporo-aspectual interpretation of verbal morphology, and it also derives the interaction between Tense and Aspect in languages such as Russian.

Towards a Justice System with Low Entropy and Order Through: Reconstruction of Norm Construction Persons, Caps, Norm Construction Methods and Periodical Table of the Juridical Elements

The justice system has an abundance of norms that make the system complex with a high degree of entropy complicating the efficiency of the system and of empirical studies. Using Puerto Rico as a sample, four recommendations for reducing entropy are presented. The first recommendation involves the restructuring of norm-construction bodies. The second recommendation is the establishment of caps in norm construction. The third recommendation will bring to the law a method for converting words into numbers through grammatical content analysis and numbers into images through social network analysis, both with existing software available. The fourth recommendation is the most interesting for its beauty and proven reliability in chemistry, the methodological development of a table of the juridical elements. The recommendations are aesthetically attractive and effective for the empirical theorist and the practitioners of the legal profession.

Apariencias y realidades en la aplicación de la approche communicative

Judging by the classroom planning programmes defined for secondary school teachers of French, the acceptance and implementation of the Communicative Approach have been exemplary. However, our observations of twenty-five schools revealed a somewhat different picture. We discovered conceptual confusion in the Official Guidelines and in the aims of the books, as well as a general lack of knowledge concerning the teaching of French as a foreign language. However, the main reason that the Communicative Approach has not been fully integrated into the classroom is the teachers’ lack of proficiency. We have carried out our own assessment of the sample, based on the main points of the teacher’s methodology questioned by the CEF. Of particular note was a tendency to follow only certain sections of the books, ignoring open-ended activities and individual student work. However, teachers feel the need to add more lexical and grammatical contents. Hence, the level is very low and the performance is poor.