Lexical Noun Phrases Research Articles

The dynamics of changes in linguistic complexity and writing scores in timed argumentative writing among beginning-level EFL learners

Abstract This study investigates longitudinal changes in linguistic complexity and holistic scores in EFL timed argumentative writing among beginning-level learners using Complex Dynamic Systems Theory. It also explores relationships among linguistic complexity over time and with writing scores. Over nine months, 42 Japanese EFL learners completed six timed essays. Linguistic complexity was assessed through lexical, phraseological, and syntactic features. Findings indicate linear growth in writing scores, lexical sophistication, and noun phrase (NP) complexity, alongside stable phrasal complexity and non-linear subordination. Interrelated growth patterns included connections between lexical sophistication and phrasal complexity, and phraseological complexity and subordination. Competitive dynamics were observed between lexical diversity and NP complexity, and phraseological complexity and phrasal sophistication. Linear associations emerged between writing scores and lexical sophistication or syntactic complexity, while a non-linear relationship occurred with phraseological sophistication. This study illuminates the intricate dynamics of linguistic complexity and L2 writing scores among beginning-level learners in argumentative writing.

Same or different? Subject realization in the majority and the heritage language of Polish-German bilingual children

Abstract The paper examines the extent to which bilingual children select lexical noun phrases and null and overt pronouns as referring expressions in their majority language German and their heritage language Polish. Both languages are similar regarding the availability of lexical noun phrases but differ in terms of the distribution of null and overt pronominal forms. Our focus lies on discourse contexts with a subject antecedent in the preceding clause, which require only light processing for both speaker and hearer due to the high accessibility of the intended subject referent. Drawing on experimental data from a picture story retelling task (MAIN) to investigate the distribution of referring expressions in the two languages compared to age-matched monolingual control groups, our results reveal that bilingual children are sensitive to crosslinguistic differences in the syntactic and discourse-pragmatic constraints that regulate the distribution of null and overt subjects in Polish and German, depending on the mode of speech (narrative or dialogic). Furthermore, there are no significant differences between the bilingual and monolingual children, irrespective of language and age group. Thus, our study cannot confirm findings of previous studies concerning the tendency of bilingual children to be either overspecific or underspecific in subject reference production.

Information Status Predicts the Incidence of Gesture in Discourse: An Experimental Study

ABSTRACT The study aimed to disentangle the influence of information status and referential form on the distribution of gestures in sustained discourse. Previous research shows that new and less accessible rather than old and more accessible information, expressed by rich rather than lean referential forms, is more likely to be accompanied by gestures. However, earlier studies have drawn on correlational results. This study probes the relationship between information status and gesture production experimentally. Participants retold stories referring to discourse entities as normal (Control), using only lexical noun phrases (NOUN condition), or only pronouns (PRONOUN condition). The results from the experimental conditions showed that speakers tend to produce gestures with reintroduced rather than maintained referents regardless of referential form. The findings suggest a strong and direct relationship between information status and gesture production when referential forms are controlled for, lending further support to a view of speech and gesture as an integrated system.

A Probabilistic and Syntactic Account of Variable Clitic Agreement in Spanish Double Object Constructions.

In Spanish clitic-doubling constructions, the clitic should agree in number with its coreferential doubled noun phrase. However, the present corpus analysis with data from 21 Spanish varieties reveals that, under certain structural configurations, number agreement is not always realized on the third-person dative clitic. In fact, the data shows that non-agreement appears to be the norm when the indirect object is a lexical noun phrase (77 vs. 23%). In this paper, I investigate two possible explanations for this phenomenon: (i) a processing account via an attraction effect and (ii) a syntactic account based on intervention effects. These two hypotheses make clear and testable predictions that I examine by means of conditional inference trees and Bayesian generalized mixed-effects logistic regression modeling. The results of the statistical analyses are incompatible with an intervention account because this type of phenomenon is not sensitive to semantic features of the intervening element or to the true controller of agreement. Thus, I propose that the data is best analyzed as the interplay between attraction and the morphosyntax of the unmarked. In Spanish, this results in attraction effects from the DO in the unmarked word order and inanimate IOs showing a sort of differential dative marking, where animate IOs show a preference for full agreement. The findings reported herein show evidence of a complex and highly dynamic agreement mechanism of the clitic and highlight the probabilistic nature of morphosyntactic processes.

Between pronouns and R-expressions: Pronoun-like lexical noun phrases

AbstractWe discuss an empirical study that suggests a finer categorization of pronouns versus lexical noun phrases in terms of their feature valuation. We argue that not all lexical noun phrases have their ϕ-features valued from the lexicon. By investigating Polish politeness markers, we demonstrate that certain noun phrases can have their features (specifically, the person feature) valued in a manner parallel to feature valuation in free pronouns. The proposal thus refines our understanding of the categorial distinction between different types of nominals, and suggests that in addition to known morphological and syntactic variation in the domain of pronouns and lexical noun phrases, there is a more fine-tuned classification of feature valuation types.

Locativos no verbales en Mazahua (otomangue)

El objetivo de este trabajo se centra en la descripción y explicación de los diferentes mecanismos gramaticales que dispone la lengua para expresar la locación no verbal. La importancia de este trabajo radica en explicitar que el mazahua dispone de recursos morfológicos, léxicos y sintácticos para exhibir los sentidos locativos; esto bajo la perspectiva de que esta lengua como muchas otras lenguas otomangues es muy productiva en codificar los sentidos de locación en los predicados verbales, etiquetados como verbos diposicionales, posicionales, locativos. Las formas no verbales que expresan locación se centran expresadas en el nivel morfológico, el léxico y el sintáctico. Estos rasgos gramaticales pueden coocurrir dentro de uno oración; la frase nominal, la frase prepositiva y el predicado locativo son adjuntos con rasgos sintácticos particulares.

Deficits in nominal reference identify thought disordered speech in a narrative production task.

Formal thought disorder (TD) is a neuropathology manifest in formal language dysfunction, but few behavioural linguistic studies exist. These have highlighted problems in the domain of semantics and more specifically of reference. Here we aimed for a more complete and systematic linguistic model of TD, focused on (i) a more in-depth analysis of anomalies of reference as depending on the grammatical construction type in which they occur, and (ii) measures of formal grammatical complexity and errors. Narrative speech obtained from 40 patients with schizophrenia, 20 with TD and 20 without, and from 14 healthy controls matched on pre-morbid IQ, was rated blindly. Results showed that of 10 linguistic variables annotated, 4 showed significant differences between groups, including the two patient groups. These all concerned mis-uses of noun phrases (NPs) for purposes of reference, but showed sensitivity to how NPs were classed: definite and pronominal forms of reference were more affected than indefinite and non-pronominal (lexical) NPs. None of the measures of formal grammatical complexity and errors distinguished groups. We conclude that TD exhibits a specific and differentiated linguistic profile, which can illuminate TD neuro-cognitively and inform future neuroimaging studies, and can have clinical utility as a linguistic biomarker.

Word order in German child language and child-directed speech: A corpus analysis on the ordering of double objects in the German middlefield

We report two corpus analyses to examine the impact of animacy, definiteness, givenness and type of referring expression on the ordering of double objects in the spontaneous speech of German-speaking two- to four-year-old children and the child-directed speech of their mothers. The first corpus analysis revealed that definiteness, givenness and type of referring expression influenced word order variation in child language and child-directed speech when the type of referring expression distinguished between pronouns and lexical noun phrases. These results correspond to previous child language studies in English (e.g., de Marneffe et al. 2012). Extending the scope of previous studies, our second corpus analysis examined the role of different pronoun types on word order. It revealed that word order in child language and child-directed speech was predictable from the types of pronouns used. Different types of pronouns were associated with different sentence positions but also showed a strong correlation to givenness and definiteness. Yet, the distinction between pronoun types diminished the effects of givenness so that givenness had an independent impact on word order only in child-directed speech but not in child language. Our results support a multi-factorial approach to word order in German. Moreover, they underline the strong impact of the type of referring expression on word order and suggest that it plays a crucial role in the acquisition of the factors influencing word order variation.

Testing the effect of an arbitrary subject pronoun on relative clause comprehension: a study with Hebrew-speaking children.

Previous studies have found that Hebrew-speaking children accurately comprehend object relatives (OR) with an embedded non-referential arbitrary subject pronoun (ASP). The facilitation of ORs with embedded pronouns is expected both from a discourse-pragmatics perspective and within a syntax-based locality approach. However, the specific effect of ASP might also be driven by a mismatch in grammatical features between the head noun and the pronoun, or by its relatively undemanding referential properties. We tested these possibilities by comparing ORs whose embedded subject is either ASP, a referential pronoun, or a lexical noun phrase. In all conditions, grammatical features were controlled. In a referent-identification task, the matching features made ORs with embedded pronouns difficult for five-year-olds. Accuracy was particularly low when the embedded pronoun was referential. These results indicate that embedded pronouns do not facilitate ORs across the board, and that the referential properties of pronouns affect OR processing.

Input Subject Diversity Accelerates the Growth of Tense and Agreement: Indirect Benefits From a Parent-Implemented Intervention.

This follow-up study examined whether a parent intervention that increased the diversity of lexical noun phrase subjects in parent input and accelerated children's sentence diversity (Hadley et al., 2017) had indirect benefits on tense/agreement (T/A) morphemes in parent input and children's spontaneous speech. Differences in input variables related to T/A marking were compared for parents who received toy talk instruction and a quasi-control group: input informativeness and full is declaratives. Language growth on tense agreement productivity (TAP) was modeled for 38 children from language samples obtained at 21, 24, 27, and 30 months. Parent input properties following instruction and children's growth in lexical diversity and sentence diversity were examined as predictors of TAP growth. Instruction increased parent use of full is declaratives (ηp2 ≥ .25) but not input informativeness. Children's sentence diversity was also a significant time-varying predictor of TAP growth. Two input variables, lexical noun phrase subject diversity and full is declaratives, were also significant predictors, even after controlling for children's sentence diversity. These findings establish a link between children's sentence diversity and the development of T/A morphemes and provide evidence about characteristics of input that facilitate growth in this grammatical system.

Discourse Reference Is Bimodal: How Information Status in Speech Interacts with Presence and Viewpoint of Gestures

ABSTRACTSpeakers use speech and gestures to represent referents in discourse. Depending on referents’ information status, in speech speakers will vary richness of expression (e.g., lexical noun phrase [NP]/pronoun), nominal definiteness (indefinite/definite), and grammatical role (subject/object). This study tested whether these three linguistic markers of information status interact with presence of gestures and gestural viewpoint (observer/character). The results show that gestures are more frequent with less accessible referents expressed with richer spoken forms but that richness of expression does not interact with viewpoint. In contrast, nominal definiteness and grammatical role interact with both presence and viewpoint of gestures. Gestures occur mainly with indefinite lexical NPs and objects. Character viewpoint gestures occur mainly with indefinite lexical NPs and objects plus predicates. The results shed light on when and how speakers use gestures in connected discourse and specifically highlight the discursive function of gestural viewpoint.

Left dislocation in main and subordinate clauses

Left dislocation is a common feature in the Nordic languages. In main clauses, a lexical noun phrase is positioned in a dislocated position in the left periphery, while a pronoun occurs in the clause-internal, prefield position, i.e., in the position preceding the finite verb. This is described by Faarlund et al (1997:904-5) for Norwegian, Teleman et al (1999 4:440–447) for Swedish and Hansen and Heltoft (2011:1828) for Danish.

Input Subject Diversity Enhances Early Grammatical Growth: Evidence from a Parent-Implemented Intervention

ABSTRACTPurpose: The current study used an intervention design to test the hypothesis that parent input sentences with diverse lexical noun phrase (NP) subjects would accelerate growth in children’s sentence diversity.Method: Child growth in third person sentence diversity was modeled from 21–30 months (n = 38) in conversational language samples obtained at 21, 24, 27, and 30 months. Treatment parents (n = 19) received instruction on strategies designed to increase lexical NP subjects (e.g., The baby is sleeping.). Instruction consisted of one group education session and two individual coaching sessions which took place when children were approximately 22–23 months of age.Results: Treatment substantially increased parents’ lexical NP subject tokens and types (ηp2 ≥ .45) compared to controls. Children’s number of different words was a significant predictor of sentence diversity in the analyses of group treatment effects and individual input effects. Treatment condition was not a significant predictor of treatment effects on children’s sentence diversity, but parents’ lexical NP subject types was a significant predictor of children’s sentence diversity growth, even after controlling for children’s number of different words over time.Conclusions: These findings establish a link between subject diversity in parent input and children’s early grammatical growth, and the feasibility of using relatively simple strategies to alter this specific grammatical property of parent language input.

Syntactic complexity in the comprehension of wh-questions and relative clauses in typical language development and autism

ABSTRACTThis study investigates effects of syntactic complexity operationalized in terms of movement, intervention, and noun phrase (NP) feature similarity in the development of Aʹ-dependencies in 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old typically developing (TD) French children and children with autism spectrum disorder. Children completed an offline comprehension task testing eight syntactic structures classified in four levels of complexity: Level 0: no movement; Level 1: movement without (configurational) intervention; Level 2: movement with intervention from an element that is maximally different or featurally “disjoint” (mismatched in both lexical NP restriction and number); and Level 3: movement with intervention from an element similar in one feature or featurally “intersecting” (matched in lexical NP restriction, mismatched in number). The results show that syntactic complexity affects TD children across the three age groups, but also indicate developmental differences between these groups. Movement affected all three groups in a similar way, but intervention effects in intersection cases were stronger in younger than in older children, with NP feature similarity affecting only 4-year-olds. Complexity effects created by the similarity in lexical restriction of an intervener thus appear to be overcome early in development, arguably thanks to other differences of this intervener (which was mismatched in number). Children with autism spectrum disorder performed less well than the TD children although they were matched on nonverbal reasoning. Overall, syntactic complexity affected their performance in a similar way as in their TD controls, but their performance correlated with nonverbal abilities rather than age, suggesting that their grammatical development does not follow the smooth relation to age that is found in TD children.

Typology, documentation, description, and typology

Typology, Documentation, Description, and Typology Marianne Mithun University of California, Santa Barbara Abstract If the goals of linguistic typology, are, as described by Plank (2016): (a) to chart linguistic diversity (b) to seek out order or even unity in diversity knowledge of the current state of the art is an invaluable tool for almost any linguistic endeavor. For language documentation and description, knowing what distinctions, categories, and patterns have been observed in other languages makes it possible to identify them more quickly and thoroughly in an unfamiliar language. Knowing how they differ in detail can prompt us to tune into those details. Knowing what is rare cross-linguistically can ensure that unusual features are richly documented and prominent in descriptions. But if documentation and description are limited to filling in typological checklists, not only will much of the essence of each language be missed, but the field of typology will also suffer, as new variables and correlations will fail to surface, and our understanding of deeper factors behind cross-linguistic similarities and differences will not progress. 1. Typological awareness as a tool Looking at the work of early scholars such as Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, it is impossible not to be amazed at the richness of their documentation and the insight of their descriptions of languages so unlike the more familiar languages of Europe. It is unlikely that Boas first arrived on Baffin Island forewarned to watch for velar/uvular distinctions and ergativity. Now more than a century later, an awareness of what distinctions can be significant in languages and what kinds of systems recur can provide tremendous advantages, allowing us to spot potentially important features sooner and identify patterns on the basis of fewer examples. As typological findings become finer-grained, they serve as ever sharper tools for observation and analysis. It is now well known, for example, that languages are not simply nominative/accusative, ergative/absolutive, or agent/patient; different areas of grammar often show different patterns. Where there are differences, we know where to start looking for sub- patterns: pronominal systems are more likely to show nominative/accusative or agent/patient patterning, even if lexical noun phrases show ergative/absolutive patterning, but not the reverse, for example. We know, furthermore, that differential argument marking is not uncommon across languages. Rather than standing by helplessly when our ergative/absolutive patterns seem to founder, we can jump right into searching for principles behind the apparent exceptions. Perhaps only animate or identifiable (definite) expressions can carry absolutive marking, or can even have absolutive status at all.

Pick it up: a look at referential devices in Estonian child-directed speech

This paper compares the forms of expression of core verbal arguments in Estonian child-directed speech (CDS) with those in Estonian speech between adults (ADS). The data, consisting of nearly 600 utterances, is taken from a mother speaking to her two-year-old child, and two adult women speaking to each other. The analysis confirms the observation that one-on-one conversation with toddlers includes a reduced number of declarative sentences (43% vs. 62.5% in the ADS sample), in favor of imperatives and interrogatives. Leaving out the unexpressed subjects of imperatives, we find that CDS contains 20% more overt arguments than ADS, and in the object argument role, nearly 30% more. Avoidance of ellipsis and a preference for lexical (rather than pronominal) noun phrases characterises the CDS in our sample; the data analysed support the principles of Preferred Argument Structure, aligning grammatical role, morphosyntactic form and pragmatic prominence, with some peculiarities accounting for the specific character of mother-child interaction.

Overexplicit Referent Tracking in L2 English: Strategy, Avoidance, or Myth?

The tendency of intermediate and advanced second language speakers to underuse pronouns and zero anaphora has been characterized as a developmental stage of overexplicitness, yet little consideration has been given to whether learners create sufficient contexts for their use. This study analyzed references across eight degrees of accessibility, revealing that this did not account for infrequent pronoun use by Chinese learners of English. Further analysis revealed that participants were seldom overexplicit when referring to highly accessible individuals, particularly those that represented continued topics, but were significantly more likely than native speakers to use lexical noun phrases elsewhere, particularly for main characters. This is discussed in relation to a possible role of overexplicitness as a clarity‐based communication strategy.

Pronominal datives

Based on a large corpus of dative constructions in Hebrew, we propose that dative-marked pronominals manifest a facilitated path from adjunct to argument. Since datives tend to be pronominal, adding them onto existing argument structures avoids a clash with the Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) Quantity constraint against more than one lexical noun phrase per clause. Supporting a more fluid adjunct/argument distinction, our first claim is that different Hebrew datives are grammaticized as arguments to different degrees. We then demonstrate a correlation between the degree of grammaticization of the dative as an argument and pronoun/lexical ratios. We show that incipient grammaticization phases involve virtually exclusive use of pronominal datives, but deeper grammaticization phases allow increased use of lexical nouns, within the constraints of PAS. Thus, it is pronouns that blaze the path from adjunct to argument status.

The Auditory Comprehension of Wh-Questions in Aphasia: Support for the Intervener Hypothesis.

This study examines 3 hypotheses about the processing of wh-questions in both neurologically healthy adults and adults with Broca's aphasia. We used an eye tracking while listening method with 32 unimpaired participants (Experiment 1) and 8 participants with Broca's aphasia (Experiment 2). Accuracy, response time, and online gaze data were collected. In Experiment 1, we established a baseline for how unimpaired processing and comprehension of 4 types of wh-question (subject- and object-extracted who- and which-questions) manifest. There was no unambiguous support found for any of the 3 hypotheses in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2 with the Broca's participants, however, we found significantly lower accuracy, slower response times, and increased interference in our gaze data in the object-extracted which-questions relative to the other conditions. Our results provide support for the intervener hypothesis, which states that sentence constructions that contain an intervener (a lexical noun phrase) between a displaced noun phrase and its gap site result in a significant processing disadvantage relative to other constructions. We argue that this hypothesis offers a compelling explanation for the comprehension deficits seen in some participants with Broca's aphasia.

Pronoun processing in anglophone late L2 learners of French: Behavioral and ERP evidence

Abstract This study investigated offline, behavioral, and online cortical responses to French clitic and strong pronouns by two groups of anglophone learners (L2) and native French controls. English in situ object pronouns behave morphosyntactically like full lexical noun phrases (I saw Bill/I saw him), whereas in French they are cliticized to the verb (J'ai vu Guillaume/Je l'ai vu/*J'ai vu le/lui). We used ERPs, known to be sensitive to word order and morphological violations in natives, to investigate neural responses to word order violations of in situ pronouns. Results indicate native sensitivity to ungrammatical in situ pronoun placement in offline (grammaticality judgment (GJ)), as well as online end-of-sentence and ERP responses, notably a robust P600. L2 groups demonstrated distinct capacities according to level. Both high- and low-intermediates showed online cortical sensitivity to ungrammatical in situ prounouns, producing a P600 in response to such violations (though with distributions that sometimes differed from native controls). However, on behavioral measures the L2 groups differed, both from natives and from each other. Native controls correctly rejected more in situ clitic and strong pronouns than both the L2 groups, and the high-intermediate group correctly rejected more than the low-intermediate group. For natives, the similarity of online/offline responses confirmed a grammaticalized representation and processing of pronouns. Both groups of learners showed a stronger ERP response to in situ pronoun placement than behavioral data would suggest. This is especially true for low-intermediate learners who, despite high rates of acceptance of strong pronouns/clitics in situ, showed a cortical response in the P600 window though without the canonical topography of the native response. While both learner groups are apparently using (at least some) L1 English settings for pronoun placement, their cortical response clearly demonstrates unconscious increasing sensitivity to French parameters.