Longitudinal Corpus Research Articles

Developmentally Changing Attractor Dynamics of Manual Actions with Objects in Late Infancy.

Human infants interact with the environment through a growing and changing body and their manual actions provide new opportunities for exploration and learning. In the current study, a dynamical systems approach was used to quantify and characterize the early motor development of limb effectors during bouts of manual activity. Many contemporary theories of motor development emphasize sources of order in movement over developmental time. However, little is known about the dynamics of manual actions during the first two years of life, a period of development with dramatic anatomical changes resulting in new opportunities for action. Here, we introduce a novel analytical protocol for estimating properties of attractor regions using motion capture. We apply this new analysis to a longitudinal corpus of manual actions during sessions of toy play across the first two years of life. Our results suggest that the size of attractor regions for manual actions increases across development and that infants spend more time inside the attractor region of their movements during bouts of manual actions with objects. The sources of order in manual actions are discussed in terms of changing attractor dynamics across development.

Does EAP affect written L2 academic stance? A longitudinal learner corpus study

This study explores the longitudinal development of L2 academic ‘stance’ features resulting from instruction in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at a university in Hong Kong. We analysed the frequency and wordings of hedges, boosters, attitude markers and self-mention within a 205,682 word longitudinal corpus of essays and reports collected over a semester's instruction via pre-, mid- and post-instruction submissions, alongside data on submission grade. Data was analysed for frequency and wording differences alongside mixed-effect models to confirm the impact of instruction on the data. Results show significant longitudinal variation in the frequency of hedging, boosting, marking attitude and self-mention devices as the result of instruction, with a rise in the use of hedging and an overall reduction in the use of boosting and self-mention, serving to leave students with a more careful, narrower, less polarising and less personal range of expressions with which to convey their stance over time. We also present longitudinal genre-specific effects on stance features between essays and reports, and show how a longitudinal increase in hedges and boosters results in texts that receive a higher grade from teacher-raters. Our findings recommend explicit instruction of stance features as crucial in raising students' awareness of how to achieve persuasive academic writing.

Densidade lexical na escrita de textos escolares

Este artigo apresenta um estudo de correlação entre a densidade lexical e a progressão escolar em textos escritos por crianças e adolescentes em idade escolar monolíngues de português europeu. Enquanto um indicador do desenvolvimento lexical, a densidade mensura-se pela razão entre as palavras lexicais e o total de palavras, como proposta por Ure (1971). Complementam-na a obtenção de razões baseadas em classes de palavras específicas, que são a densidade nominal, verbal, adjetival e adverbial. Com o recurso à ferramenta IMS Open Corpus Workbench, estas medidas foram extraídas de um corpus quasi-longitudinal, com 244 textos de registros narrativos (n=122) e argumentativos (n=122), escritos por alunos do quinto (n=26), do sétimo (n=46) e do décimo (n=50) ano do sistema escolar português. Os resultados mostram que, em ambos os registros, não há correlação entre a progressão escolar e a densidade lexical se considerada indistintamente. Tomadas as medidas por classes de palavras, identificou-se, por um lado, uma correlação positiva entre a densidade nominal e a progressão escolar e, por outro, uma correlação negativa entre a densidade verbal e a progressão escolar. Pretende-se, com este trabalho, contribuir para uma compreensão mais pormenorizada dos percursos configuradores do desenvolvimento da língua escrita de crianças e jovens em idade escolar.

A Longitudinal Study on the Korean Past Tense Acquisition : Focused on the Interview of L1 Chinese Learners

This paper examines the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology in two Chinese learners of Korean. This paper has been designed to track developmental aspect of past tense form and to verify the Aspect Hypothesis through a longitudinal corpus. It was found that (1) two children use past tense form predominantly with [+telic] (accomplishment/ achievement verbs) than [-telic] (action/ state verbs); (2) in the stage 1 and stage 4, they use past tense form with accomplishment verbs the most; (3) in the stage 2 and stage 3, they use past tense form with achievement verbs the most. The result shows the pattern of the development of tense-aspect form is based on prototype formation (the correlations between verbs with [+telic] and past tense form `-ess-`) partially from non-past tense errors in the past tense obligatory contexts; the pattern in the early development of tense-aspect of Chinese acquisition of Korean have gaps with earlier studies.

Assessing the impact of conversational overlap in content on child language growth.

When engaged in conversation, both parents and children tend to re-use words that their partner has just said. This study explored whether proportions of maternal and/or child utterances that overlapped in content with what their partner had just said contributed to growth in mean length of utterance (MLU), developmental sentence score, and vocabulary diversity over time. We analyzed the New England longitudinal corpus from the CHILDES database, comprising transcripts of mother-child conversations at 14, 20, and 32 months, using the CHIP command to compute proportions of utterances with overlapping content. Rates of maternal overlap, but not child overlap, at earlier time-points predicted child language outcomes at later time-points, after controlling for earlier child MLU. We suggest that maternal overlap plays a formative role in child language development by providing content that is immediately relevant to what the child has in mind.

Evidence and Interpretation in Language Learning Research: Opportunities for Collaboration With Computational Linguistics

This article discusses two types of opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration between computational linguistics (CL) and language learning research. We target the connection between data and theory in second language (L2) research and highlight opportunities to (a) enrich the options for obtaining data and (b) support the identification and valid interpretation of relevant learner data. We first characterize options, limitations, and potential for obtaining rich data on learning: from Web‐based intervention studies supporting the collection of experimentally controlled data to online workbooks facilitating large‐scale, longitudinal corpus collection for a range of learning tasks and proficiency levels. We then turn to the question of how corpus data can systematically be used for L2 research, focusing on the central role that linguistic corpus annotation plays in that regard. We show that learner language poses particular challenges to human and CL analysis and requires more interdisciplinary discussion of analysis frameworks and advances in annotation schemes.

Does EAP writing instruction reduce L2 errors? Evidence from a longitudinal corpus of L2 EAP essays and reports

AbstractDespite the efforts exerted on error correction by teachers and students during English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses, the literature is split about whether such instruction succeeds in reducing grammatical and lexical errors in student writing. In this study, a longitudinal corpus of essays and reports collected at three key data points along a tertiary EAP course (pre-course, immediate post-course and final assessment) totalling 205,682 words was annotated for 12,996 errors across 10 grammatical and lexical error types. The results, including a mixed-effects linear model, showed a general significant decline in the number of errors produced over the duration of the course. However, closer examination revealed that the frequencies of the majority of individual lexical and grammatical error categories remained unchanged over time, despite specific out-of-class instruction on these errors as well as numerous occasions where teachers provided written corrective feedback. The overall usefulness of the error correction feedback and instruction resulting from the EAP course in question therefore remains inconclusive, although students and other stakeholders may still call for the inclusion of such feedback and instruction on EAP curricula.

The Development of Syntactic Complexity in the Writing of Russian Language Learners: a Longitudinal Corpus Study

The Development of Syntactic Complexity in the Writing of Russian Language Learners: a Longitudinal Corpus Study

Early null and overt subjects in the Spanish of simultaneous English-Spanish bilinguals and Crosslinguistic Influence

This study assesses the scope of the Crosslinguistic Influence (CLI) hypothesis’ predictions with regard to early bilingual acquisition. To this end, we analyze longitudinal corpus data from four bilinguals attesting the acquisition of subjecthood (null versus overt; preverbal versus postverbal) and the pragmatic adequacy of early null and overt subjects in a null-subject language (i.e., Spanish) in combination with a language differing in its pro-drop parameter setting (i.e., English). Our results indicate that CLI barely affects the development of subjects in the null-subject language at the initial stages, namely at the outset of null and overt subjects, and in turn support the Separate Development Hypothesis. Our bilingual cohort patterns with their Spanish-acquiring monolingual peer in that both groups display comparable proportions of null subjects as well as acquisitional trajectories of null and overt subjects at the early stages of acquisition. Much like monolinguals, bilinguals begin to produce preverbal and postverbal subjects concurrently. The bilingual children and the monolingual child of this study actually produce extremely high rates of pragmatically appropriate covert and overt subjects, which are for the most part target-like from the start, thus pointing to the absence of CLI effects. In light of monolingual and bilingual data, the paper also revisits the hotly debated issue of the ‘no overt subject’ stage of Grinstead (1998,et seq.), its existence in child Spanish being questionable.

A Usage‐Based Investigation of L2 Lexical Acquisition: The Role of Input and Output

This study investigates relations between second language (L2) lexical input and output in terms of word information properties (i.e., lexical salience; Ellis, 2006a). The data for this study come from a longitudinal corpus of naturalistic spoken data between L2 learners and first language (L1) interlocutors collected over a year's time. The corpus was analyzed using word information properties related to concreteness, familiarity, and meaningfulness to examine word repetitions between input and output, correlations between the input and the output, linear trends over time, and whether lexical properties in the output were predictive of growth in TOEFL scores. The results indicate that L2 learners are more likely to repeat word types found in L1 input and that L1 interlocutors and L2 learners follow similar linear trends over time such that words with lower concreteness, lower familiarity, and lower meaningfulness were produced over the course of the study in both the input and output. A linear mixed model analysis showed that decreases in concreteness scores explained significant gains in TOEFL scores over time. The findings from the study indicate strong associations between L2 input and output and provide evidence linking development in word information properties to development in academic English proficiency.

Input frequency and the acquisition of syllable structure in Polish

ABSTRACTThis article examines phonological development and its relationship to input statistics. Using novel data from a longitudinal corpus of spontaneous child speech in Polish, we evaluate and compare the predictions of a variety of input-based phonotactic models for syllable structure acquisition. We find that many commonly examined input statistics can make dramatically different predictions, as do different assumptions about the representational units over which statistics are calculated. We find that development is sensitive to multiple abstract units of phonological representation, supporting a crucial role for feature-based generalization. We also identify departures between the predictions of the best phonotactic models and children’s production patterns that indicate that input sensitivity alone cannot fully explain the developmental patterns. We discuss the role of universal markedness and phonetic difficulty and argue that a full explanation requires reference to these biases.

Constructing Interaction: The Development of Gaze Dynamics

Gaze is one of the first and most important means of communication and coordination in parent–infant dyads. In the present paper we used a novel method, designed to discover patterns in time‐series, to investigate the dynamics of gaze in dyads and its developmental change. Using a longitudinal corpus of natural interactions, mutual mother–infant gaze was coded when the infants were 3, 6, and 8 months old and subjected to recurrence analysis. The cross‐recurrence profiles obtained for the three time points show systematic differences: While the engagement in mutual gaze decreases with age, the behaviour becomes more tightly coupled as a more regular temporal structure emerges. We suggest that this stronger interdependency of gaze behaviour may indicate the development of a social feedback loop enabling engagement in interaction. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A longitudinal multidimensional analysis of EAP writing: Determining EAP course effectiveness

While universities devote great effort to initial EAP instruction, many question the effectiveness of such instruction on student production. The present study seeks to determine whether EAP instruction results in a longitudinal linguistic variation in the direction of the established norms of an academic register, which by extension, would provide a quantifiable linguistic measure of EAP course effectiveness. This paper adopts a multidimensional analysis (Biber, 1988) of a longitudinal corpus of written EAP essays and reports totalling 213,408 words, collected from freshman Chinese undergraduate students at a university in Hong Kong. The data was collected over a semester's EAP training at three data points (pre-EAP training, immediate post-training and final written examination). The results of the multidimensional analysis exhibit considerable variation between data points in the direction of academic discourse across all five dimensions analysed, including a drop in the use of first person pronouns and the mechanical use of discourse connectives, alongside an increased emphasis on nominalisation and more careful, hedged, presentation of stance. The findings suggest a warmly positive effect of EAP instruction on learner production after only a single semester. A number of pedagogical opportunities for the data are also outlined including the benefits of such analysis for written corrective feedback and future analysis of discipline-specific L2 discourse.

Grammatical metaphor: Distinguishing success

This paper presents a systematic analysis of ten first-year university learners' texts. The texts are exposition essays written at the conclusion of the students' first semester of university study and collected as part of the Macquarie University Longitudinal Learner Corpus (MQLLC). The MQLLC is a longitudinal corpus that follows learners from their first year Academic Communication (AC) unit throughout their tertiary careers. These units are taught using a scaffolded, genre-based pedagogy, with explicit instruction of the linguistic resources necessary to navigate the diverse and increasingly specialised demands of tertiary study (Rothery & Stenglin, 1995). As part of a larger study into academic literacy development, this small-scale study focuses on learner deployment of grammatical metaphor, a key linguistic resource for achieving the lexical density, text cohesion and condensation valued in academic discourse (Halliday, 1993, 1998; Hyland, 2009; Martin, 1993, 2008; Schleppegrell, 2001; 2004). Specifically, this paper seeks to identify how high performing learners' deployment of grammatical metaphor differs from that of low performing students to elucidate which patterns distinguish success. The paper concludes with pedagogical recommendations for ensuring learners effectively deploy this valuable resource.

The acquisition of Jamaican Creole: Null subject phenomenon

ABSTRACTThis article provides the first systematic analysis of early subject omission in a creole language. Basing our analysis on a longitudinal corpus of natural production of Jamaican Creole (JC), we observe that early subject drop is robustly attested for several months. Early subject omission is basically confined to the clause initial position, being virtually absent from instances of wh-preposing, as has been observed for other languages. The acquisition of JC thus provides empirical support for the claim that early null subjects are a case of the “Privilege of the Root,” and for the Truncation Hypothesis (Rizzi 1992, 1993/94, 2006). However, the occurrence of subject-drop following null interrogative operators in null wh-questions and yes/no questions suggests that the mechanism of truncation needs fine-tuning. To respond to this challenge, we suggest an approach to the privilege of the root and truncation that capitalizes on the spell-out mechanism, rather than on structure-building operations.

Creation of a new longitudinal corpus of clinical narratives

The 2014 i2b2/UTHealth Natural Language Processing (NLP) shared task featured a new longitudinal corpus of 1304 records representing 296 diabetic patients. The corpus contains three cohorts: patients who have a diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) in their first record, and continue to have it in subsequent records; patients who do not have a diagnosis of CAD in the first record, but develop it by the last record; patients who do not have a diagnosis of CAD in any record. This paper details the process used to select records for this corpus and provides an overview of novel research uses for this corpus. This corpus is the only annotated corpus of longitudinal clinical narratives currently available for research to the general research community.

Syntactic modification at early stages of L2 German writing development: A longitudinal learner corpus study

This study explores ab initio development of syntactic complexity in a longitudinal corpus of learner German writing from a Dynamic Usage-Based perspective. It contributes to the research on L2 writing complexity by focusing on beginning learners of an L2 other than English (German) and on fine-grained measures of syntactic complexity, operationally defined here as syntactic modification.The results show that not only ubiquitous global measures of syntactic complexity but also more specific measures, namely frequencies of syntactic modifiers, can serve as developmental indices at beginning L2 proficiency levels. The learners in this study modified their writing from the very onset of language study and the overall size and range of the modification system did not significantly change over four semesters. However, its composition changed continuously and reflected non-linear waxing and waning of different modifier categories. The study confirmed some results from previous cross-sectional research showing that interlanguage development is characterized by a decrease in cognitively easier (e.g., uninflected) categories and an increase in cognitively more difficult (e.g., inflected and clausal) categories. The high variability that was found along with uniform group trends demonstrates the necessity of simultaneous investigations of linguistic development in groups and individuals.

Analyse d'un corpus longitudinal de SMS produits par de jeunes adolescents

In this paper, our hypothesis is that the SMS register of the written language shares certain features with the spoken language. One of them – the way it is being acquired – will be at the center of this study. In contrast to traditional writing, the SMS register is not the result of explicit academic instruction. It is acquired through daily life activities and interactions, just as spoken language is, although at a later stage in time. To examine this question, we collected a longitudinal corpus of natural SMS data (2009-2010), with the collaboration of a junior high school in the region of Poitou-Charentes (France). Data collection took place over the course of one school year (each month) among youngsters between the ages of 11 and 13 years who had no previous experience using a cell phone (a total of 4,524 SMS messages has been collected). These text messages were analyzed using two kinds of indices: a) orthographic indices (categories of spelling errors) and b) dialogic indices (presence/absence of openings or closings). The data are discussed in terms of the specificities of the SMS register as compared to other large registers (traditional spoken, traditional written language).

Group Testing for Longitudinal Data.

We consider how to test for group differences of shapes given longitudinal data. In particular, we are interested in differences of longitudinal models of each group's subjects. We introduce a generalization of principal geodesic analysis to the tangent bundle of a shape space. This allows the estimation of the variance and principal directions of the distribution of trajectories that summarize shape variations within the longitudinal data. Each trajectory is parameterized as a point in the tangent bundle. To study statistical differences in two distributions of trajectories, we generalize the Bhattacharyya distance in Euclidean space to the tangent bundle. This not only allows to take second-order statistics into account, but also serves as our test-statistic during permutation testing. Our method is validated on both synthetic and real data, and the experimental results indicate improved statistical power in identifying group differences. In fact, our study sheds new light on group differences in longitudinal corpus callosum shapes of subjects with dementia versus normal controls.

Frequency effects and second language lexical acquisition

Frequency effects in an L1 and L2 longitudinal corpus were investigated using Zipfian distribution analyses and linear curve estimations. The results demonstrated that the NS lexical input exhibited Zipfian distributions, but that the L2 lexical output did not match the NS Zipfian patterns. Word frequency analyses indicated that NS interlocutors modify their lexicon such that frequency scores decrease as a function of time that L2 learners have studied English. In contrast, the word frequency scores for the L2 output increased as a function of time. Post-hoc analyses indicated that differences in frequency scores between NS input and L2 output were best explained by the repetition of infrequent words, but not frequent words by L2 learners in the early stages of language acquisition. The results question absolute frequency interpretations of lexical acquisition for L2 learners and provide evidence for usage-based approaches for language learning.