Native Speaker Judgments Research Articles

What native speaker judgments tell us about the grammaticalization of a progressive aspectual marker in Dutch

This paper focuses on native speaker judgments of a construction in Dutch that functions as a progressive aspectual marker ( aan het X zijn , referred to as aan het -construction) and represents an event as in progression at the time of speech. The method was chosen in order to investigate how native speakers assess the scope and conditions of use of a construction which is in the process of grammaticalization. It allows for the inclusion of a large group of participants of different age groups and an investigation of potential age-related differences. The study systematically covers a range of temporal variables that were shown to be relevant in elicitation and corpus-based studies on the grammaticalization of progressive aspect constructions. The results provide insights into the selectional preferences and constraints of the aan het-construction in contemporary Dutch, as judged by native speakers, and the extent to which they correlate with production tasks.

Principles of syntactic reconstruction (review)

Reviewed by: Principles of syntactic reconstruction Jared S. Klein Principles of syntactic reconstruction. Ed. by Gisella Ferraresi and Maria Goldbach. (Current issues in linguistic theory 302.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008. Pp. xvii, 219. ISBN 9789027248183. $158 (Hb). For all the stunning accomplishments of nineteenth-and twentieth-century linguistics in the areas of phonological and morphological reconstruction, syntactic reconstruction remained a backwater throughout most of this period. It is of course easy to see why this should have been the case. The arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign together with the concrete, discrete nature of the linguistic items that feed into the comparative method enables us to reconstruct a starting point; this point may be interpreted as the latest construct that will allow for an unambiguous one-way mapping relationship back to the input items. The syntagmatic axis of this reconstruction is occupied by sounds that are generally subject to well-documented change based on a combination of auditory and articulatory factors. The nature of syntactic reconstruction is significantly different. The constructions we may wish to feed into the comparative method are less discrete, are more abstract, and may not involve the same material substance. They are patterns that are not subject to the same arbitrariness as the word. Consequently, any reconstruction that we arrive at will not possess the same determinable quality as phonological reconstruction. With such considerations as background, the articles included in this volume were solicited and brought together. After the ‘Foreword’ by Giuseppi Longobardi (ix–xvii), the first article by the editors, ‘Syntactic reconstruction: Method and new insights’ (1–26), introduces a general background on the comparative method, offers a brief historical overview of syntactic reconstruction as well as its relationship to generative syntax, and presents synopses of the six articles that form the core of the volume. The articles are: ‘How much syntactic reconstruction is possible’ by Acrisio Pires and Sarah G. Thomason (27–72); ‘Reconstruction in syntax: Reconstruction of patterns’ by Alice C. Harris (73–96); ‘Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective’ by Ferdinand von Mengden (97–120); ‘Competitive Indo-European syntax’ by Rosemarie Lühr (121–60); ‘Principles of syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”: The case of some secondary Indo-European verbal formations’ by Irene Balles (161–86); and ‘Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar’ by Claire Bowern (187–216). The main issue that pervades every article in this collection, including the foreword and the introductory overview, is the status of syntactic reconstruction relative to generative grammar. A [End Page 720] key distinction is drawn between what Noam Chomsky (1986) called internalized language (Ilanguage), an ‘element of the mind of the person’ (22), and externalized language (E-language), or language as an externalized entity manifested in linguistic data. In contemporary synchronic linguistic theory, it is the former that is universally deemed to be the proper object of linguistic research; and, unless synchronic and diachronic linguistics are different disciplines, each with separate objects of concern, synchronic notions of language should be applicable to the diachronic arena as well, because diachronic layers within language history presuppose synchronic states that are linked to each other via linguistic change. 1 It therefore follows that I-language should in theory be the proper object of diachronic analysis as well. Although it is perhaps achievable for the diachronic linguistics of the future by those who will study linguistic change in a technologically rich environment from the late twentieth century forward, such a goal is generally impossible to meet for the diachronic linguistics focusing on linguistic states of the past for numerous reasons. First, we do not have access to randomly generated corpora of spoken language of all varieties; rather, only corpora of stylized texts are available to us. Second, any act of syntactic reconstruction recovers merely a piece of the system, not an entire system ‘où tout se tient’, which can then be evaluated from the point of view of I-language as a complete Gestalt. Third, many if not most of the insights and analyses attained by modern syntactic theory depend on grammaticality judgments of native speakers, as they frequently serve...

Perfects, Resultatives, and Auxiliaries in Earlier English

In this article, we investigate the peculiar distribution of the auxiliaries have and be in Earlier English and its consequences for theories of the perfect and auxiliary selection. We argue on the basis of a large-scale corpus study that the periphrastic construction with be was restricted to a stative resultative interpretation, whereas that with have developed a wider range of uses, crucially including the experiential perfect in addition to resultatives. Support comes from comparing the Earlier English patterns with related ones in Norwegian and German for which native-speaker judgments are available. On the basis of this insight, we propose distinct formal analyses for the two constructions and show how they account for the attested patterns and changes in Middle and Early Modern English. Of particular theoretical relevance is the premise that what has been called the “perfect” is not a homogeneous, monolithic category, and that certain kinds of variation can only be understood by teasing apart the pieces involved. Earlier English and German auxiliaries have distinct distributions because their “perfects” have disinct syntactic and semantic makeups.

Second language influence on perception of first language phonotactics.

The results of a speech perception experiment are reported, examining the responses of speakers of the same L1 (Spanish) with varying experience in the L2 (English). Three groups of speakers participated in a wordlikeness rating task in Spanish, in which nonce words were presented in sets that varied as to whether the final consonant of the word was phonotactically legal or illegal: (1) bilinguals who learned both English and Spanish before the age of 5, (2) L1 Spanish speakers that learned English after the age of 12, (3) monolingual speakers without communicative exposure to a second language. All groups differed significantly in the strength of their overall ratings, even though all speakers were technically native speakers of Spanish. In addition, for both the bilingual and second language speakers, ratings for legal vs illegal codas were significantly different. For monolingual speakers, on the other hand, ratings for legal and illegal codas were similar, but response times for these two conditions were significantly different. These results support the idea that native speaker judgements are affected by the extent of language experience that a speaker possesses, and the processing of phonotactic legality may not proceed similarly for monolingual, second language, and bilingual speakers.

Asymmetric Movement in Raising-to-Object Structures

Linguistic theory seeks to model the cognitive procedures that underlie our linguistic knowledge. The construction and evaluation of linguistic models is intimately connected with the grammaticality of different sentence types. The primary source of evidence for sentence grammaticality is the acceptability judgments of native speakers: the assumption is that such judgments reflect speakers’ intuitive knowledge of sentence grammaticality (Chomsky 1957, 1965, 1972). Thus if a structure is considered to be grammatical according to linguistic theory, it is predicted that native speakers will judge it to be acceptable. It has long been recognized, however, that acceptability judgments do not always match the predicted grammaticality of sentences. For example, a sentence that is considered to be fully grammatical may elicit judgments that are less than optimal, or one ungrammatical sentence may be judged to be more acceptable than another. Numerous psychological and methodological factors have been identified as affecting the judgment task. These include the mental state, education, linguistic sophistication, and theoretical bias of the speaker; clarity of test instructions; order of sentence presentation; frequency of sentence usage; and exposure (Bolinger 1968; Bever 1970; Levelt 1974; Labov 1975; Greenbaum 1976; Derwing 1980; Carroll et al. 1981; Nagata 1988; Schutze 1996; Dabrowska 1997; Snyder 2000; Luka and Barsalou 2005). Recently, though, experimental studies have shown that even after controlling for such non-linguistic factors, there may exist a continuum, or gradience, of acceptability judgments rather than a clear distinction between perfectly acceptable and unacceptable (Bard et al. 1996; Cowart 1997; Keller 2000; Featherston 2005). Such results are problematic for syntactic theories that assume grammatical knowledge to be discrete and categorical, with structures being either fully grammatical or fully ungrammatical.

Carrots – perfect as vegetables, but please not as a main dish

0. One of the merits of generative syntax is that it has broadened the data base for syntactic research in a very profound way. There was, e.g., little (if any) discussion of the role syntax plays for anaphoric and pronominal binding before generative syntax came into being, and there was little or no knowledge about restrictions on the placement of elements into the left periphery of clauses, such as the island constraints of Ross (1967) or the crossover phenomena (Postal 1971). The pertinent facts were simply not known before generative grammar. The debate concerning the configurationality of German in the eighties of the last century is a further case in point; it led to the discovery of a multitude of facts about German syntax. This rapid and deep expansion of the empirical base of syntax was due to at least two factors: first, only highly predictive theories such as generative syntax can guide scientists as to where to look for interesting data, and the full acceptance of native speaker judgments as linguistic evidence yields an easy way of (dis-)confirming model assumptions – which was particularly important in times of limited corpus sizes and the absence of effective methods for searching in corpora.

An analysis of the factors reading rate, vocabulary ability, and speaking proficiency in relation to the test of English for international communication (TOEIC) scores of Japanese learners of English

This study investigated the relationships between the TOEIC scores and the two factors of the reading rates and vocabulary abilities of Japanese learners of English. Also studied are the relationships between the scores of the two TOEIC sections and the learners’ speaking proficiencies. Applying the Rauding theory, which reported the same comprehension processes underlying reading and listening, to second language acquisition, this study tested the hypothesis that the processing time for reading had an effect on that for listening. The Japanese subjects in this study took TOEIC and standardized tests of reading rates and vocabulary abilities, and also participated in a production experiment. The results showed high correlations between the TOEIC scores and the two factors of reading rates and vocabulary abilities. They also showed the tendency that the improvement of reading rates and vocabulary abilities contributed to the improvement of not only the scores of the TOEIC Reading Section, but also those of the TOEIC Listening Section. In addition, this study clarified the degree to which the speaking proficiency measured by naturalness judgments of native speakers of English corresponded to the proficiency indirectly measured by the TOEIC Listening Section.

Syntax: A Generative Introduction (review)

Reviewed by: Syntax: A generative introduction by Andrew Carnie Margaret Speas Syntax: A generative introduction. By Andrew Carnie. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. Pp. xv, 390. ISBN: 0631225447. Paper $34.00. This new textbook covers the basic concepts of generative syntax and linguistic argumentation in an exceptionally clear and student-friendly way. The perspective taken is solidly within the GB/principles and parameters/minimalism camp although there are two chapters on other frameworks and many problem sets that would be useful in any syntax class, regardless of framework. The book is aimed at students with little or no background in syntax. As Carnie freely admits, the innovation in this book is not in the material covered but in the style of presentation. The goal is to present the important concepts in the simplest possible way. Details and complexities are noted in grey boxes throughout, but the emphasis is on making sure that students have a solid understanding of every concept. Key concepts are highlighted, and at the end of each chapter, there is a list of all the ‘Ideas, rules and constraints’ that have been discussed in the chapter. Each chapter also includes excellent problem sets and a list of further readings. On the whole, C does a very good job of stripping away complexities while retaining depth of explanation. Some potential users of the text may at times feel he has gone too far. In general, he does not engage in discussion of debates over the precise way to state particular theoretical constructs, and he is purposely not trying to give a thorough overview of the data that have been [End Page 628] important in research over the past 20 years. Almost half of the book is on phrase structure, and the emphasis is on clarity rather than historical accuracy, so those who want to focus on A movement, A’ movement, and Binding may prefer other texts. There is no mention of parasitic gaps, the ECP, small clauses, or v-shells, for example, and the discussion of islands mentions only wh-islands and NP-islands (although many of the problem sets do introduce complicating data and invite the students to think about alternative accounts). My own opinion is that the emphasis of C’s book is effective and appropriate. The kind of grounding that this book provides will equip students with the tools they need to understand and evaluate specific theories. One exciting feature of this book is the wealth of excellent problem sets dealing with a wide variety of languages. There are problem sets at the end of each chapter, a total of 88 syntax problem sets on more than 25 different languages. The problems are very clearly laid out. Some are designed to review and apply the concepts in the relevant chapter while others are designed to get students thinking and questioning. The problem sets alone are worth the price of the book, even for people who do not agree with C’s assumptions or preferred framework. The first chapter is an overview of basic premises of generative grammar. The focus is on explaining why and how linguistics is a science. C’s intent is not to argue conclusively for the various premises of generative grammar but just to lay them out and explain them as clearly as possible. The chapter lays the groundwork for a discussion of syntax in which the existence of some sort of innate language faculty is assumed and shows how we can study human language scientifically by looking at data from both instantiated natural language and the grammaticality judgments of native speakers. Readers who do not already agree with these assumptions may not find themselves convinced and probably will not want to use this book for their classes. For those who share C’s general perspective, this is a very readable introduction. Ch. 2 features a very clear discussion of constituents and parts of speech. It includes the best description of how to draw trees that I know of. It gives a step-by-step method and shows students how to draw trees from the bottom up or from the top down. Further, it shows how to translate from trees to brackets...

An acoustic study of hiatus resolution in two Romance languages

Spanish and Romanian contrast vowel sequences [CiV] in hiatus and corresponding diphthongs [CjV], with some interspeaker variation. Both languages contain surface diphthongs derived historically by gliding, /CiV/ > [CjV]. They both show a strong tendency for blocking gliding word-initially, supported by native speaker judgments: Sp. [miope], Rom. [miopu] short-sighted; Sp. [italjana], Rom. [italjana] Italianf. Data from six speakers of each language confirmed this variation. The duration and F2 transition rate of the vocalic sequence were compared, in words containing [i.a] and [ja]. [ia] was significantly longer in hiatus, and had a significantly slower transition rate than in [ja]. However, the ranges of the hiatus and [ja] sets showed some overlap, suggesting that hiatus resolution is not a categorical phonological process. Instead, lexical items fall on a hiatus-to-[ja] continuum. Further comparison of ranges and standard deviations confirmed the correlation between this variation and word position. In both languages more word-initial sequences resist gliding. Significantly less variation was found in the range for hiatus word-initially than for [ja] word-medially. This suggests that the combination of lingual gestures between high and nonhigh vowels is more tightly controlled word-initially than word-medially, a result previously reported for stop sequences [Byrd (1996); Chitoran, Goldstein, and Byrd (unpublished)].

ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT IN L2 PHONOLOGY

Within both first and second language acquisition research, a critical or sensitive period for complete attainment has largely been substantiated in phonological studies, although it is questionable whether age should be examined in isolation from sociopsychological influences and the extent of exposure to the second language. This study sets out to challenge the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) by examining phonological performance among highly motivated subjects who use German daily as graduate student instructors and who have been immersed in the language through in-country residence, augmented by years of instruction in both language- and content-based courses. The methodology developed seeks to expand the realm of factors that are potentially conflated with age, such as instruction, motivation, suprasegmental training, and self-perception of productive accuracy, and other factors that have not been addressed in previous studies on ultimate attainment. Production tasks target sounds difficult for nonnative speakers (NNSs) according to contrastive analysis, and task types range in complexity from isolated words to sentences, paragraphs, and free speech. A mean rating was computed for each speaker, including native speaker controls, according to native speaker judgments. When averaged across all tasks, nonnative speaker performance did not overlap with native performance. However, several variables correlated significantly with outcome, including suprasegmental training, which indicated performance closer to native level.

Salience signaling in Oromo

In Oromo, a Cushitic language of Ethiopia and Kenya, the topicality and relative discourse salience of subjects and objects determines both their forms of expression and their relative order within clauses. This paper seeks to discover the precise nature of the particular system of salience signaling that is operative in this language and the general principles of discourse structure that underlie it. The primary data for the investigation consist of different pairings of questions and answers, representing different forms and orderings of subjects and objects, with native speaker judgments of the relative acceptability and naturalness of each question-answer pair. On the basis of these data, it will be shown that subjects and objects each have their own separate hierarchically structured system for signifying relative discourse topicality and prominence, and that the interaction of these two systems yields a unique or nearly unique combination of form and ordering for any given discourse situation.

The Relationship Between Native Speaker Judgments of Nonnative Pronunciation and Deviance in Segmentais, Prosody, and Syllable Structure

This study investigated the relationship between experienced SPEAK Test raters' judgments of nonnative pronunciation and actual deviance in segmentals, prosody, and syllable structure. Sixty reading passage speech samples from SPEAK Test tapes of speakers from 11 language groups were rated impressionistically on pronunciation and later analyzed for deviance in segmentals, prosody, and syllable structure. The deviance found in each area of pronunciation was then correlated with the pronunciation ratings using Pearson correlations and multiple regression. An analysis of the 60 speakers showed that whereas deviance in segmentals, prosody, and syllable structure all showed a significant influence on the pronunciation ratings, the prosodic variable proved to have the strongest effect. When separate analyses were done on two language subgroups within the sample, prosody was always found to be significantly related to the global ratings, whereas this was not always true for the other variables investigated.

The verbal complex in Gurinerdeutsch

This paper examines the word order found within the verbal complex in Gurinerdeutsch, a relatively isolated Swiss German dialect. A novel method- ology, combining the analysis of transcribed texts with grammaticality judgments of naive native speakers, is introduced. The resulting description shows word order within the Gurinerdeutsch verb complex to be similar to that found in other Upper Alemannic dialects, although there are certain features — the order of certain arguments of verbs, the positioning of the particle z (corresponding to Standard German zu) 'to'— that pose interes- ting challenges to current accounts of word order within the verbal complex in Continental West Germanic languages.

RESEARCH ON METALINGUISTIC JUDGMENTS: A REVIEW OF THEORY, METHODS, AND RESULTS

Studies employing or investigating the metalinguistic judgments of native and nonnative speakers are reviewed. Their results and methodologies are compared in an attempt to stimulate reliable and informative applications of such judgments in future research. It is found that, given appropriate controls and validation procedures, metalinguistic judgments can play a useful role in language acquisition studies.

Native-Speaker Judgments of Second-Language Learners' Efforts at Communication: A Review

Native-Speaker Judgments of Second-Language Learners' Efforts at Communication: A Review

Error Analysis in the Adult EFL Classroom

Burt, Marina K. Error Analysis in the Adult EFL Classroom. Jun 74 22p. MF-$0.75 Uc -$1.50 PLUS POSTAGE *Adult Students; *English (Second Language); *Error Patterns; Grammar; Language Instruction; Linguistics; Second Language Learning; Syntax; Teaching Techniques In recent years, there has been a growing research interest in the analysis of errors adults make while learning a second language. The underlying objective of most of these analyses has been to reveal the systematicity of adult errors in an effort to understand the process of adult second language learning. This paper deals with errors from a different point of view, namely, from the listener or reader's point of view. The question asked is, which types of errors cause the listener or reader to misunderstand the message intended by the EFL learner? Based on the judgments of native English speakers about the comprehensibility of hundreds of sentences containing errors of EFL learners all over the world, linguistic criteria for determining the communicative importance of learners' errors are suggested. Areas of English syntax that cause important communicative errors usually neglected in most EFL training materials are discussed. The paper concludes with the application of this particular error analysis approach to the EFL classroom. (Author) ;1\0ERROR ANALYSIS IN THE ADULT EFL CLASSROOM Marina K. Burt State University of New York at Albany ABSTRACT t: CA. ..it 1 UF Efl.:4*ICN S .SELF %41044, S51,TUTEt: CA. ..it 1 UF Efl.:4*ICN S .SELF %41044, S51,TUTE In recent years, there has been a growing research interest in the analysis of errors adults make while learning a second language. The underlying objective of most of these analyses has been to reveal the systematicity of adult errors in an effort to understand the process of adult second language

An experimental investigation of sentence relatedness

Linguists have made various claims concerning the relationships among members of various sentence families. However, such claims have been based upon the individual intuitions of the analysts and not upon empirical investigation of naive native speakers. In order to assess linguists' claims, three experiments were conducted, each dealing with a particular sentence family. In each experiment, subjects were presented with a sentence family and were instructed to relate the members of the family to each other in terms of meaning by means of a nine point, self-anchored scale. The data were analyzed in terms of a hierarchical clustering technique. It was found that sentences differing only by passivization, dative movement, or particle movement tended to be treated as very similar in meaning, much as the linguist would predict. However, it was found that in each sentence family all interrogative sentences tended to cluster together a result which did not obtain for declarative sentences. Linguistic theory must therefore account for such a relationship if the theory is to be responsible to the native speaker's judgments of similarity.