Lexical Verb Research Articles

The role of frequency in the acquisition of structured variation: The case of Basque ergativity

Aims and objectives: This study examines the extent to which new speakers use the Basque ergative case marking ( –k) in the nominal inflection. I specifically ask whether frequency-based factors (language use and lexical frequency) play a role in its use by also considering speakers’ self-claimed Basque identities. Design/methodology/approach: The spontaneous speech of 39 Basque–Spanish bilinguals was collected by means of sociolinguistic interviews. Participants were self-stratified according to categories of Basque speakerhood ( euskaldunberri “new speaker”; euskaldun “Basque speaker”; euskaldunzahar “native speaker”). We also considered their proficiency, language use, and sex. Data and analysis: In total, 2,755 tokens were extracted for the presence/absence of ergative –k and coded for the following four linguistic factors: verb type, animacy person and number, phonological context, and type of NP. Lexical frequency was operationalized in terms of overall token frequency of lexical verb. Data were analyzed using mixed-effects models in R. Findings and conclusions: Results indicate that despite higher incidence of ergative omissions among new speakers, they show (1) consistent mastery of core internal constraints (verb type, phonological context) and (2) gradual structuring based on lexical frequency effects. These omissions occur in pragmatically structured conditions (topic shift, emphasis, and introducing self in narrative) alongside extensions of –k to unaccusative contexts (focus and topicalization). No independent effects of language use were found. Originality: This study is the first to examine of Basque ergativity among adult Basque speakers, taking also into account discourse factors, lexical frequency, and speakers’ social identities and proficiencies. Significance and implications: First, the mediating effects of lexical frequency are indicative that that sociolinguistic variation is acquired in a piece-meal fashion and that such patterns emerge from discourse as they are used in context. Second, it is argued that the new speakers’ kind of social practices hold key in explaining the reallocation of linguistic constraints in their variable production.

Problems of Translating English Elliptical Structures by Iraqi Students of Translation

This paper deals with an important topic in English language teaching and translation, which is “Ellipsis”. It is possible to define this term as the omission of part of a clause. There are different definitions of this term according to different scholars, for example Krapp (1970: 228) states that ellipsis is the omission from the expression of an idea of certain parts of the thought which may be easily supplied from the context. Translating and understanding sentences with ellipsis is realized to be problematic in a way or another. This study is conducted to shed lights on this problem and try to figure out solutions for such a problem.The aim of this paper is to investigate the ability of students to render into Arabic, sentences containing ellipted structures. To fulfill this aim, the study hypothesized that students of translation are able to translate finite clauses much better than those nonfinite ones without ellipted structures and that they can translate sentences with predicate much better if compared with other structures.Accordingly, a test is conducted to verify such hypotheses. The test will be conducted on 20 fourth year students from the Translation Department, College of Arts, University of Mosul with no female/ male distinction. The test includes (20) sentences with different ellipted structures, then the researcher will analyze their translations. Ellipsis is of many types, for example, ellipsis of subject, ellipsis of lexical verb, ellipsis of auxiliary verb, ellipsis of subject + auxiliary.

The Influence of F1 on the Reception and Production of Lexical Verb Collocations by Arabic Learners

The Influence of F1 on the Reception and Production of Lexical Verb Collocations by Arabic Learners

From a Lexical Verb to a Pragmatic Marker: The Case of the French falloir ‘have to/must’

The paper seeks to present a semantico-functional analysis of the French verb falloir. The empirical data are obtained from a parallel corpus – the Corpus Parallèle de Textes Littéraires (CTLFR-LT), which is composed of French literary texts and their translations into Lithuanian. The paper uses quantitative, qualitative and comparative methods. It is based on the studies focusing on the polysemy of modal verbs (Chu 2010; Dendale 1994; Kronning 1988; Le Querler 2001; Rossari 2012) as well as on the development of discourse markers in language (Dostie 2004; Vold 2008).
 The findings show that the verb falloir, while maintaining its core meaning of necessity, can express conjecture. When it is used in patterns together with verbs of saying (verba cogitandi and dicendi) and verbs of visual perception, falloir no longer functions as a marker of necessity and becomes a pragmatic marker of connection and argumentation.
 The analysis of the translations of the French verb falloir into a typologically different language, Lithuanian, has also confirmed the entrenched use of the verb in question in the modal field of necessity and its rich functional potential in the French literary texts. The paper contributes to the existing contrastive studies between the French and Lithuanian languages, which are not numerous. The findings of the research could serve didactic purposes as well as add to the field of translation studies.

Grammaticalisation of Raħ in Dialectal Arabic: Generative Phases

The lexical item raħ has undergone two phases of grammaticalisation, from a lexical item used as a lexical verb to a temporal-functional particle T-raħ, and further to a discourse-functional particle D-raħ. Syntactic diagnostics show that both T-raħ and D-raħ have developed properties of head status, adopting conventional Minimalist and Cartographic principles (Chomsky, 2000; Rizzi, 1997; Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl, 2007), where evidence is deduced from the fact that movement of a head is sensitive to intervention effects in the course of the derivation (Rizzi, 2006). The novelty about raħ is that, in its first phase of grammaticalised T-raħ, while it has lost its φ-features input, in the sense that it doesn’t spell out any agreeing suffix with the DP it marks, in its second phase of grammaticalised D-raħ, it has retained its φ-features, hence, an agreeing head. Further, this agreeing characteristic of D-raħ, with investigations of more articulated data, brings insight to the current research on discourse particles in that it goes against the widely-adopted characterization of discourse particles that postulates a non-agreeing property of discourse particles; discourse particles do not inflect for agreement. The syntactic properties shown by the grammaticalised raħ propose, on empirical groundings by movement considerations, that discourse particles externally merge in the course of the derivation, giving credence to the theory that the syntax of discourse particles has changed from Move to Merge (Hack, 2014).

Morphological Khoisan influence in the Southern African Bantu language Yeyi

AbstractLanguage contact with Khoisan languages has resulted in the adoption of click phonemes in certain southern African Bantu languages. Contact-induced changes outside the phonological domain, however, are less commonly recognized. This paper provides a first ever analysis of morphological influence from Khoisan languages in Yeyi, a Bantu language spoken in Botswana and Namibia. Firstly, Yeyi has a set of lexical verbs that take an obligatory prefixi-orra-, and both these prefixes and many of the verbs on which they occur are of Khoisan origin. Secondly, Yeyi has four verbal derivational suffixes that have been copied from Khoisan languages. The description of these contact-induced changes in Yeyi shows that contact with Khoisan languages, especially those of the Khoe family, involved extensive bilingualism. Dialectal difference in Yeyi furthermore suggests that Khoisan contact was more intense in Botswana than in Namibia. As some linguistic changes appear to derive from Khoisan languages that are not spoken in the vicinity of Yeyi, the language contact situation in which they arose was quite different from the one that occurs today.

On Coordination and Clitic Climbing in Spanish Auxiliary Verb Constructions

AbstractIn this work we analyse some aspects of the interaction between coordination and clitic climbing in Spanish sentences with auxiliary verbs. We aim at shedding light on three kinds of structures, or ‘scenarios’: (1) those in which we find coordinated auxiliaries taking a single lexical verb as complement (Puede y debe hacerlo); (2) those in which a single auxiliary takes coordinated lexical verbs as complement (estás molestándonos y mirándonos), and (3) those in which coordinated auxiliaries take coordinated lexical verbs as complement (puede y debe terminarlo y entregarlo). Our proposal will involve a combination of Gapping and Across-the-Board rule application for Scenarios (1) and (2) and Right Node Raising for Scenario (3). We will argue that well-known syntactic constraints on long distance dependencies, such as those proposed in Ross, John Robert. 1967.Constraints on variables in syntax. Cambridge: MIT disertation, can account for the facts without the need forad hocmachinery.

The ‘general fact’ copula in Yolmo and the influence of Tamang

Abstract This paper examines the similarity of the Yolmo ‘general fact’ evidential and the ‘generic fact’ evidential in the Tamang dialect spoken in the valley of the Indrawati Khola. Yolmo òŋge is unlike any evidential attested in other Tibetic languages, but shares features with 1kha-pa in the local dialect of Tamang. Semantically, they both are used for situations that are generally known facts. Structurally, both are copulas with evidential functions that are formed using the lexical verb ‘come’. We argue that language contact between Tamang speakers of the Indrawati Khola area and Yolmo speakers in the Melamchi Valley led to the Yolmo language calquing the Tamang form. We illustrate these copulas and their relationship because grammaticalisation of copulas from a lexical verb ‘come’ is cross-linguistically uncommon.

Does one size fit all? The scope and type of error in direct feedback effectiveness

Abstract This study is an attempt to investigate the scope and type of error in feedback effectiveness. This study consists of two experiments. One was conducted to investigate the feedback effects on a rule-based error type (i.e. subject–verb agreement errors) and the other was conducted to investigate the effects on a lexically-based error type (i.e. verb–noun collocation errors). In addition, the scope of error was investigated in both experiments. In terms of the rule-based error type, results for the immediate posttest writing task showed focused feedback to be effective for the narrowly defined subject–verb agreement errors (i.e. subject–verb agreement involving lexical verbs or copula be). In the delayed posttest writing task, the benefit still persisted for the narrowly defined subject–verb agreement errors. In terms of the lexically-based error type, results for the immediate posttest writing tasks showed focused feedback to be effective for the broadly defined verb–noun collocation errors (three or four collocation errors made and corrected in pretests). In the delayed posttest writing tasks, the benefit still persisted for the broadly defined verb–noun collocation errors broadly defined. These findings suggest that the notion of error type should influence the feedback effectiveness. Theoretical implications regarding the role of notice in the second language acquisition process were discussed based on the results obtained in this study.

Lexical expressions and grammatical markers for source of information: A contrast between German and Korean

Specification of information sources in human speech – evidentiality – prevents misunderstandings and allows listeners to assess the validity of the information communicated. Some of the same linguistic forms used for evidentiality, including grammatical markers and lexical items, are also reported to have a ‘mirative’ function, and can be used by speakers to express their surprise. Importantly, languages differ in the type of forms they typically use for evidentiality. For instance, corpus analyses suggest that German uses lexical items, while Korean typically encodes evidentiality via grammaticalized sentence-ending (SE) markers. Little is known, however, about the extent to which such linguistic differences are reflected in speakers' use of these forms in verbal interaction. To fill this gap, we carried out an experimental study in which Korean and German speakers were presented with events in audio and/or visual modalities and asked to describe them verbally as well as to rate their degree of surprise about the events. The results revealed several major differences between the two languages. Korean speakers used a high frequency of evidential SE markers, particularly the hearsay marker -tay, while German speakers, who relied on lexical items, encoded evidentiality much less frequently. In Korean, grammatical markers of evidentiality showed pragmatic extensions: The hearsay marker -tay carried an overtone of mirativity. Korean speakers seldom used markers having to do with perception, -te(la) and -ney; instead, it was the neutral marker -e that correlated with the salience of the visual evidence. In contrast, German speakers encoded hearsay and visual perception with lexical verbs in comparable frequencies, slightly prioritizing visual evidence. In German, lexical expressions (sagen/hören ‘say/hear’, sehen ‘see’) did not show pragmatic extension, and unmarked sentences did not imply a visual information source. These and other findings offer important insight into the lexical-grammatical continuum in evidentiality and the relationship between language and cognition in general.

A Cartographic Approach To The Right Periphery: The Dual Status Of ItalianSembrareAnd Its Korean Counterpart*

AbstractThe cartographic project aims at drawing a map of clause structure that is as precise and as detailed as possible (Cinque 1999, 2004, Rizzi 1997, among many others). In this paper, I focus on the distribution of heads in the right periphery in Korean that I argue provides a direct window into the clausal architecture of the language. Taking as a starting point Cinque's (2004) discussion on the Italian verbsembrarein the context of clitic climbing and restructuring (see also Haegeman 2006, 2010), I examine the behavior of the verbpotain Korean and show that the verbs in question behave in exactly the same way in crucial respects—they can be merged high as functional heads marking speaker‐related evidentiality, while they can also be merged low as lexical verbs. The parallelism betweenpotaandsembrareprovides strong evidence for the universality of the cartographic hierarchy of functional projections.

The Use of Cohesive Devices in Research Paper Conference to Achieve Texts Coherence

This paper employs discourse analysis to investigate cohesive devices and coherence in research articles. The research was based on a purposive random sampling of 10 research articles from the 8th ELTLT Conference 2019. The text analyzed in this paper includes the abstract, introduction, research methodology, findings and discussions, and conclusion. We seek to find out grammatical and lexical cohesion as conceptualized by Halliday and Hasan's (1976) concept, i.e., reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, reiteration, and collocation. Furthermore, we discover the relation among research articles to achieve coherence by employing logical relations that highlight Thornbury's (2005) theory. According to the findings, the authors used cohesive devices in the creation of their writing product. From a total of 1955 clauses in 224 paragraphs, it was determined that almost all types of cohesive devices are used throughout the text. The conjunction of addition was the most frequently used cohesive device in the texts. Our findings demonstrate that authors engage the additional information to create a text without changing the context in the previous clause or sentence. However, there was no evidence of verbal ellipsis in the texts we examined. It was because the authors did not use both lexical verbs and modal operators. In conclusion, a cohesive device binds text together and bridges the gaps to avoid misleading context and achieve text coherence. Further studies need to explore the use of cohesive devices as a tool to improve the quality of writing.

The possibility of improving automated calculation of measures of lexical richness for EFL writing: A comparison of the LCA, NLTK and SpaCy tools

Automatically calculating measures of lexical richness is important for L2 learning because they can be used for assessment of productive abilities and general linguistic ability. One popular tool for doing so is the Lexical Complexity Analyzer (LCA), but more advanced tools for parsing have become available since its creation. This paper compares a modified version of the LCA code run with NLTK and SpaCy, two popular natural language processing toolkits, and the online version of the LCA to calculate 26 measures of lexical richness. We show how similarly they calculate the measures and how well each of the three tools' calculations correlate with EFL writer's human-rated scores and TOEFL® ITP scores. We found that six of the measures suggested to be associated with higher oral proficiency by Lu (2012) were also highly correlated with higher human-rated scores and TOEFL® ITP scores in our data set. However, the modifications to our code that utilize a different list to determine word sophistication and allow be and have verbs to be treated as lexical verbs caused four measures which Lu (2012) found to be unassociated with proficiency to be correlated with both human-rated scores and TOEFL® ITP scores, particularly when run with SpaCy.

The processing of bilingual (switched) compound verbs: Competition of words from different categories for lexical selection

AbstractThis paper investigates the production of Persian–English bilingual compound verbs (BCVs) of the type [VERB+VERB]. In this type of code-switched structure, a lexical verb from the donor language English is combined with a light verb from the native language Persian. We tested the hypothesis that in Persian–English BCVs English verbs occupy the nominal slots of monolingual Persian complex predicates of the type [NOMINAL+VERB]. Two methodologies were used. A conversational-corpus analysis confirmed our predictions that Persian–English BCVs have translation-equivalent Persian compound verbs, that the English verbs denote the same action as the nominal constituents of those monolingual constructions, and that the support verbs tend to correspond in both types of compound verbs. A bilingual picture-word interference experiment provided evidence suggesting that English verbs interfere with the production of the nominal constituents of complex Persian verbs in Persian-bilingual speakers. We conclude that words from different word categories can compete for lexical access.

Epistemic stance in L2 English discourse

AbstractThis study investigates the development of pragmatic strategies in study abroad among a group of upper-intermediate to advanced second language (L2) learners studying in English as a lingua franca (ELF) context. For this purpose, their use of epistemic stance markers (EMs) was observed before, during, immediately after, and six months after their study abroad over a period of two years. An analysis of our qualitative results found significant inter-speaker variations in the use of EMs. This close analysis demonstrates that learners with lower-level speaking skills relied more on lexical verbs and adverbs when expressing their epistemic stance than those with higher-level speaking skills. This finding is in accordance with previous studies. Furthermore, our qualitative analysis of two learners demonstrates their pragmatic development through a more nuanced hedged assertion, as well as the non-linear and complex nature of their development. In addition, the pedagogical implications of this study are discussed from the ELF perspective.

On the Relation between Finiteness and Clause Size: Evidence from Romanian and Southern Italo‐Romance Irrealis Clauses*

AbstractThis paper investigates the relationship between finiteness and clause size, taking Romance varieties with an irrealis subordinator as a case study: che/chi in upper southern Italian dialects (USIDs), cu in Salentino, mi/mu/ma in southern Calabrian, and să in Romanian. The last three of these, but not the first, also replace many uses of the infinitive. On a view of finiteness as the result of anchoring of Tense and Person (Groothuis 2020), these irrealis clauses constitute a different degree of finiteness when selected by a functional verb than when selected by a lexical verb. The question thus arises of whether a reduction in finiteness corresponds to a reduction in clause structure. Tests show that these irrealis subordinators form a non‐homogeneous category. Only USID che/chi and Romanian să can be analysed as regular complementisers. Salentino cu and southern Calabrian mu, in contrast, occupy a v‐related position when selected by aspectuals, a T‐related position when selected by modals, and FinP when selected by lexical verbs. The reduced degree of finiteness thus does not correspond to a reduced clause in all varieties. The conclusion is therefore that the same level of finiteness does not necessarily translate into the same amount of functional structure.

Hedging Strategies in Research Articles: A Comparative Analysis of Indonesian Male and Female English Students

Hedge is claimed as linguistic of full commitment or precision commonly used in academic writing to give the appropriate uncertainty, proper strength of claimed data, politeness, and precise presentation in providing and presenting literary works i.e. research articles. This study aimed at revealing the tendency and preferences of Indonesian English Students in applying hedging strategies, and frequencies of hedges use, and if there were any differences between males and females in using hedges in research articles. Data corpus was composed of 40 articles written in English by male and female postgraduate students majoring English Education. The output was categorized which was referred to a combined framework proposed by Holmes (1988), Hyland (1998), Hyland and Milton (1997), Vartala (2001), and Crompton (1997) covering 9 types of hedges. The statistical result showed that although Indonesian Male English Students (IEMSs) employed Hedges in their research articles more frequently than Indonesian Female English Students (IEFSs) did, MANOVA proved that there was no significant effect of gender on the use of hedges in research articles written by Indonesian English Students. Nevertheless, ANOVA result confirmed significant main effects of gender on the use of some types of hedge (Adverb of Frequency, Quantifiers, Epistemic Lexical Verbs and Adjective& Adverb Informal).

СЪЮЗИТЕ ДА И ЧЕ В РАМКИТЕ НА ПРЕДИКАТА (СЪСТАВЕН ИЛИ СЛОЖЕН СЪСТАВЕН) СЛЕД МОГА И ВЗЕМА / THE SUBORDINATE CONJUNCTIONS ДА AND ЧЕ AFTER МОГА AND ВЗЕМА

The article analyses cases in which the modal verb мога is a component of a verbal predicate or forms a predicate on its own. In addition, I consider verbal predicates formed by взема and a lexical verb introduced by да or че (да не вземе да се откаже; взе че се смили). In these latter cases, the desemantised component preceding a lexical perfective aspect verb shifts from a phase verb to a modal verb expressing suddenness, unexpectedness, surprise with the situation denoted by the lexical verb. The aorist form of взема allows only the subordinate conjunction че followed by a lexical perfective aspect verb (взе че дойде), while the conjunction да is used after the present or future forms of взема (да взема да отида, ще вземе да дойде). There are also morphological restrictions with the modal verb мога – after the aorist form only a perfective aspect verb is possible (не можах да отида). Keywords: subordinate conjunctions да and че, verbs мога and взема, modal verbal predicates.

A Comparative Corpus-based Study on the Use of Phrasal Verbs by Turkish EFL Learners and L1 English Speakers

This quantitative study aims to reveal the most frequently used phrasal verbs (PVs) by L1 speakers of English and Turkish EFL learners in written and spoken registers. With the purpose of spotting any overuse and/or underuse by Turkish EFL learners, it compares their usage to L1 English speakers’ through four corpora – two learner corpora and two native corpora. Additionally, the study investigates the most frequent adverbial verb particles (AVPs) and lexical verbs (LVs) in phrasal constructions comparing learners and native speakers. The results show that although LV types differ to a large extent, Turkish EFL learners display a similar profile to L1 English speakers in terms of types of PVs and AVPs. However, these verbs and particles are significantly underused, especially in spoken register – a result that contradicts previous research. Specifically, within the scope of this study, regardless of the register Turkish learners tend to favour few AVPs out of the mostly used ten while leaving out the others. The findings might be of use to EFL teachers regarding raising their students’ awareness on the contextual use of PVs in different registers with a combination of both implicit and explicit teaching in mind. In addition, learners can benefit from the ready-made PV lists to enhance their prospective usage in meaningful contexts.

Gendered Existence? Existential-There Construction in English-Polish Translation

This paper analyses a possible effect of the variable of gender on semantic enrichment of existential sentences translated from English to Polish. Existential-there clauses in English typically take the form there + be + indefinite NP (+place/time adverbial). Since there-constructions lack a structurally congruent counterpart in Polish, they can be rendered in Polish with several syntactic constructions ranging from the verb ‘być’ (E. to be) through ‘mieć’ (E. to have) to verbs semantically richer than ‘być’ (e.g., verbs of perception, verbs of location, etc). We ask the question of whether the gender factor is correlated with the factor of text type/genre. To this purpose, we compiled a corpus of English texts representing belles-lettres and popular science writing, male-authored, female-authored and multi-authored and translated by male and female translators. Our preliminary results show that the choice of Polish translations of English existential-there follows from the interplay of genre, narrative/descriptive modes of text, and the gender of the translator, with female translators tending to replace the simple copula ‘be’ with a full lexical verb more often than male translators in dialogic parts of belle-lettres.