Noun Phrase Structure Research Articles

Pragmatic Errors and Transfer of Foreign Learners of Indonesian: The Case of Refusals

Pragmatic transfer, an emerging part of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), has been receiving serious attention from applied linguists currently. This study was aimed at investigating pragmatic errors and pragmatic transfer learners made and effect of second language (L2) proficiency to their pragmatic transfer. Eighteen students of Darmasiswa who have been learning Indonesian language and culture form Bali State Polytechnic (PNB) and from Teacher Training Institute of Saraswati Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia were involved as research participants. Discourse completion test (DCT) consisting of nine situations designed with sociocultural aspect of power, distance, and rank of imposition (PDR) was used to elicit data of refusal strategies. The data were analysed to see pragmatic errors, pragmatic transfer, and effect of L2 proficiency on participants’ pragmatic transfer. Result of analysis revealed that learners’ pragmatic competence was still low. They were pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic errors made dealing with Indonesian noun phrase (NP) structure, the use of verb, noun, prepositions which are very different from English patterns. Moreover, pragmatic transfer was frequently made due to learners’ shortage of L2 pragmatic proficiency and learners’ L1 cultural knowledge. In addition, learners’ pragmatic transfer was found to be strongly influenced by learners’ L2 proficiency.

Contrastive Analysis: Gorontalonese and English Noun Phrase

The main objective of this study is to gain an understanding of the different and similar features of Noun Phrase in the vernacular language of Indonesia; Gorontalonese, with English. Gorontalonese is one of Indonesia's vernaculars that is rarely investigated, including the structure of Noun Phrases. Comparative study of Gorontalonese and English is also very rare. This study presents the similarities and the differences of Noun Phrase structures of Gorontalonese and English. To achieve this purpose, the structure of the Noun Phrases in both of the languages have been provided. They were taken from newspapers, relevant text-books, online journals and other data sources. The theories about Gorontalonese are very limited, because there was only handful of researchers. The findings of this study will be helpful for further researchers to develop their arguments when conducting their study in the same field. This study has supported the theory, in which the order and structure of Noun Phrases in both languages are distinct, while Gorontalonese is considered as a head-last language and English is a head-initial language. In Gorontalonese, the head of the Noun Phrase is always placed at beginning of the phrase followed by the other supporting elements, which helps in the description of the head noun. On the other hand, the Noun Phrase in English follows the supporting elements, which is placed in the beginning of the Noun Phrase, which helps in the description of the head Noun Phrase.

Noun phrase complement in Nigerian English

The present study investigates the structure of of-complement noun phrase in Nigerian English, comparing findings with those of British and Ghanaian varieties. Of-complement is high in frequency and is a typical complement that has structural tendencies for recursiveness and complexity. A review of literature explicating the structural simplification hypothesis (Gorlach, 1998) suggests that the structure of-complement (or any other type) has received very little attention. Perhaps such scanty works show the different arguments surrounding its syntactic and theoretical status in different grammatical descriptions. Unlike many previous NP frameworks, Huddleston & Pullum (2002, 2004) argued that complements are not only a syntactic element within the NP structure, but also that they are of equal obligatory syntactic status as a head noun within an NP. This framework, unlike many others, therefore conceptualizes the complement slot as an important part in the scheme of things for an NP structure viz-a-viz its complexity. Thus, a serious examination of NP complexity would consider the cooperation (relationship) between a complement and the other syntactic elements constituting the NP structure. This is one of many issues that the present study sheds light on. On the basis of variables representing syntactic function and text type, together with corpus analyses of NPs extracted from the Nigerian component of International Corpus of English (ICE), the structural behavior of of-complement in the lights of other internal elements constituting an NP structure, is clearly shown. It is found that a complement is less likely to co-occur with other all internal elements (20%). Also, it is shown that an of-complement is likely to co-occur with prenominal elements (30%). Furthermore, the paper shows that a structural type of of-complement representing h-complement (i.e. an NP structure consisting of a head noun + a complement, see Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, 2004, and Akinlotan & Housen, 2017) is more likely to occur (26%) as an independent NP structure than to co-occur with postnominal elements (24%). The structural simplification hypothesis is manifested in our corpus data, as it is found out that a complement is more likely to be simple-structured (54%) than complex-structured (46%). On the predictive strength of syntactic function and text type (Biber et al., 1999; Schilk & Schuab, 2016; Akinlotan, 2017), the study finds syntactic function a better predictor than text type.

Lexical Bundles in Academic Writing by Undergraduate and Graduate Students of English Language Education Program

Studies related to the ubiquity of lexical bundles used by undergraduate and graduate students in writing their academic writing, more specifically skripsi and thesis, seems to be limited. As an important defining feature of academic discourse and a significant component of fluent linguistic production, its existence in writing not only can contribute coherence in a text but also can determine the writing ability of a writer, either professional or novice one (Hyland, 2012, p. 166; Cortes, 2004, p. 397). Therefore, it is necessary to conduct this study in order to know the most frequent forms, structures, and functions of lexical bundles used by undergraduate and graduate students in composing their skripsi and thesis. It was revealed that (1) graduate students use more varied bundles rather than undergraduate students; (2) both students tend to use the same structure of noun phrase with of fragment bundles; (3) undergraduate students tend to use research-oriented bundles, while graduate students prefer to use more text-oriented bundle.

Pre-D non-possessor positions in Hungarian

The paper investigates pre-D non-possessor positions in Hungarian. In Hungarian, non-deverbal nominal constructions containing pre-D non-possessor positions are acceptable only if they contain a demonstrative pronoun and also an adjective, and the appearance of a pre-D possessor does not impact the acceptability of the sentence. The paper also gives a brief discussion of similar constructions with pre-D non-possessors in German, mainly to shed light on the Hungarian data. Although German also allows for pre-D non-possessors, it does so under different conditions. A short topicalized element can readily appear in German sentences as a non-possessor dependent, but in this language a possessor can never appear in the same noun phrase. The paper also discusses deverbal nominal constructions with pre-D non-possessor dependents in Hungarian. In these constructions the presence of a possessor argument is indispensable. This is due to the fact that the placement of the non-possessor argument in a position preceding the possessor is legitimized by the fact that the former takes scope over the latter within the internal information structure of the matrix noun phrase. The paper also deals with the syntactic structure of said deverbal nominals.

Determination and modification: Topology of prenominal attributes in Lithuanian

[full article and abstract in English]
 This paper offers a description of the linear structure of the definite Lithuanian noun phrase (NP) with an emphasis on prenominal attributes. Morphological and syntactical coding of definiteness is examined through the comparison of NP structures in Lithuanian (a language with relatively ungrammaticalised marking of definiteness) and Swedish (a language with fully developed overt marking of definiteness). The special role of definite attributes, quantifiers and adjectival modifiers is shown through identifying key positions in a linear structure of the Lithuanian NP. A topology of the Lithuanian NP is then suggested reflecting the multi-layered nature of the reference-assigning process mirrored in multi-exponential marking of definiteness, with adjectival marking being a very important one. Variations in NP structures are described using Lithuanian and Swedish data focusing on the combinatorial possibilities of definite adjectival modifiers and other determiners.

‘Transforma zdaniowa’ – próba interpretacji

‘Sentential Transform’ / ‘Transformed (Reduced) Sentence’ – an Attempt at InterpretationThe author analyses a series of Polish sentences, including those utterances which grammatically do not belong to the basic structures of their respective sentences. Her goal is to prove that so-called sentential transform is not a separate type of grammatical structure, but any sentence and/or noun phrase structure that has been transformed in order to be incorporated into another sentence structure The transformation is usually morphological in character, and applied to constitutive members of the respective sentence and/or noun phrase.

Errors in Translation: A Comparative Study of Noun Phrase in English and Malay Abstracts

Abstract as a summary of a dissertation harbours important information where it serves to attract readers to consider reading the entire passage or to abandon it. This study seeks to investigate the backward translation of abstracts made by 10 randomly selected postgraduate students. This research serves as a guideline for students in composing their abstracts as it aims to compare the differences in noun phrase structure written in Malay as translated from English. It also analyses the types of errors when English noun phrases are translated to Malay. Preliminary findings from this pilot study found that translation errors committed were mainly inaccurate word order, inaccurate translation, added translation, dropped translation and also structure change. For this study, an exploratory mode of semantic analysis is applied by looking at noun phrases, the meaningful group of words that form a major part of any sentence, with the noun as the head of the group. Syntax is inevitably interwoven in the analysis as the structure and grammatical aspects of the translations are also analysed. They are examined by comparing English texts to its corresponding translation in the Malay language. Particularly relevant in this study is the need to emphasize on the semantics and syntax skills of the students before a good transaltion work can be produced. Language practitioners can also tap on translation activities to improve the learners’ language competency.

Young Children's Structure Production: A Revision of the Index of Productive Syntax.

The Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn; Scarborough, 1990) is widely used to measure syntax production in young children. The goal of this article is to promote greater clarity and consistency in machine and hand scoring by presenting a revised version of the IPSyn (IPSyn-R) and comparing it with the original IPSyn (IPSyn-O). Longitudinal syntax production in 10 30- and 42-month-old typically developing children drawn from the Child Language Data Exchange System (MacWhinney, 2000) Weismer corpus was examined, using both the IPSyn-O and the IPSyn-R. The IPSyn-R provided nearly identical scores to the IPSyn-O with the exception of scores affected primarily by 1 modified noun phrase structure. Structures ranked as more advanced were produced less frequently. The results also reveal which of the IPSyn-R's 59 structures were most and least likely to be produced by this sample at these ages. The qualitative and quantitative differences between the IPSyn-O and the IPSyn-R are relatively minor. The IPSyn-R can make it easier to score the IPSyn, both by clinicians and researchers, and facilitate the IPSyn's move to machine scoring of language samples.

NOUN PHRASES IN TOURISM SLOGANS OF ASIAN COUNTRIES

The aims of the research are to find out the structure of noun phrases and to analyze the textual functions of noun phrases in tourism slogans of Asian Countries. The writer was interested in noun phrase because it is used to promote the product. To promote the product, advertising language uses slogan. Furthermore, the method and the technique used in this thesis were qualitative method and referential technique. Meanwhile, for the process of analyzing data the distributional method was used. The writer applied the theory of Robert (2006), Leech and Svantik (1975), Jacobs and Resebaum (1968) to find out the structures of noun phrase, and theory of Matheson (2005) to find out the textual functions. Based on the analysis there were several textual functions found. The first was to emphasize the noun phrase in order to attract people to visit the country. The second was to make people think, feel and believe in the situation based on the pictures of the slogans. Thus, the writer hopes the readers gain more knowledge and understanding about noun phrases especially noun phrasesin tourism slogans.

FUNGSI EKSTERNAL DAN KATEGORI FRASE NOMINA BAHASA MELAYU MANADO

This research entitled “External Fuctions and Categories of Noun Phrase in Malay Manado Language”. The analysis of this research focuses on describes the external functions and categories of noun phrase structure in Malay Manado language. This research contributes to the development of linguistics in the field of Syntactic especially External Fuctions and Categories of Noun Phrase in Malay Manado Language.The methodology that used in this research is desciptive method. The data is taken from interview natives people by using some social media like WhatsApp, Facebook, instagram, and as well as interview by face-to-face. All the data is primary which is the data obtained comes from first hand or original sources.The collected data are identified and analyzed in term of how the external function and categories of noun phrase is performed in the language by using Aarts & Aarts’s theory (1982).The writer found 16 sentences data in Malay Manado language. The syntactic external function level is filled by subject, predicate, and adverb. The level of the external category, noun phrases attached to the subject function are 11 clauses, noun phrases that attach to the predicate function are 11 clauses, and noun phrases attached to the adverb are 4 clauses.Keyword : Syntactics, Function, Category, Malay Manado Language

Phrasal complexity in academic writing: A comparison of abstracts written by graduate students and expert writers in applied linguistics

Academic research articles often involve the frequent use of lengthy noun phrase structures, and those seeking to write such texts, both native and non-native alike, would need to become familiar with this characteristic feature of the register. Biber, Gray and Poonpon (2011) have hypothesized a series of stages predicting development in writing complexity through the increased use of complex phrasal constructions. The purpose of this study is to compare abstracts by MA-level L1 Persian writers, PhD-level L1 Persian writers, and published writers from the field of applied linguistics in terms of phrasal modification features. Our findings revealed that the MA group differed significantly from the expert writers in the use of four types of modifiers: pre-modifying nouns; -ed participles as post-modifiers; adjective-noun sequences as pre-modifiers; and multiple prepositional phrases as noun post-modifiers. The PhD group however did not show any significant difference in producing noun modifiers when compared to expert writers except for multiple prepositional phrases as noun post-modifiers. The findings of this study help further our understanding of how academic writing becomes more complex with experience.

Beyond Verb Meaning: Experimental Evidence for Incremental Processing of Semantic Roles and Event Structure.

We present an event-related potentials (ERP) study that addresses the question of how pieces of information pertaining to semantic roles and event structure interact with each other and with the verb’s meaning. Specifically, our study investigates German verb-final clauses with verbs of motion such as fliegen ‘fly’ and schweben ‘float, hover,’ which are indeterminate with respect to agentivity and event structure. Agentivity was tested by manipulating the animacy of the subject noun phrase and event structure by selecting a goal adverbial, which makes the event telic, or a locative adverbial, which leads to an atelic reading. On the clause-initial subject, inanimates evoked an N400 effect vis-à-vis animates. On the adverbial phrase in the atelic (locative) condition, inanimates showed an N400 in comparison to animates. The telic (goal) condition exhibited a similar amplitude like the inanimate-atelic condition. Finally, at the verbal lexeme, the inanimate condition elicited an N400 effect against the animate condition in the telic (goal) contexts. In the atelic (locative) condition, items with animates evoked an N400 effect compared to inanimates. The combined set of findings suggest that clause-initial animacy is not sufficient for agent identification in German, which seems to be completed only at the verbal lexeme in our experiment. Here non-agents (inanimates) changing their location in a goal-directed way and agents (animates) lacking this property are dispreferred and this challenges the assumption that change of (locational) state is generally a defining characteristic of the patient role. Besides this main finding that sheds new light on role prototypicality, our data seem to indicate effects that, in our view, are related to complexity, i.e., minimality. Inanimate subjects or goal arguments increase processing costs since they have role or event structure restrictions that animate subjects or locative modifiers lack.

Noun Phrases of Jace Wayland�s Utterances in Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

A noun phrase is one of the important elements in building a sentence. Every noun phrase has its own head of the phrase. The structure of the noun phrase can be different according to the modification of the head. There are two kinds of modification to the head of the phrase: pre-modification and post-modification. The existence of the modifiers plays certain roles to the noun phrase. This article presents how the pre-modification affects the character in a literary work. Cassandra Clares Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was chosen as the work to observe. Stylistic approach is used in order to conduct this study. The data of the study is collected from the noun phrases found in one of the characters utterances, Jace Wayland. The analysis presented in this article covers the types of structure, distribution, and function of noun phrases. This study found several results of the analysis. First, there are seven types of noun phrase structure found in the utterances of Jace Wayland. Second, there are four main functions of a noun phrase in a clause: subject, object, prepositional complement, and predicative complement. Third, the noun phrases also have significant role in revealing the character of Jace Wayland: being descriptive and direct.Keywords: noun phrase, stylistics, pre-modification

NOUN PHRASES OF JACE WAYLAND’S UTTERANCES IN MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

A noun phrase is one of the important elements in building a sentence. Every noun phrase has its own head of the phrase. The structure of the noun phrase can be different according to the modification of the head. There are two kinds of modification to the head of the phrase: pre-modification and post-modification. The existence of the modifiers plays certain roles to the noun phrase. This article presents how the pre-modification affects the character in a literary work. Cassandra Clares Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was chosen as the work to observe. Stylistic approach is used in order to conduct this study. The data of the study is collected from the noun phrases found in one of the characters utterances, Jace Wayland. The analysis presented in this article covers the types of structure, distribution, and function of noun phrases. This study found several results of the analysis. First, there are seven types of noun phrase structure found in the utterances of Jace Wayland. Second, there are four main functions of a noun phrase in a clause: subject, object, prepositional complement, and predicative complement. Third, the noun phrases also have significant role in revealing the character of Jace Wayland: being descriptive and direct.Keywords: noun phrase, stylistics, pre-modification

Heuristics-Based Method For Head And Modifier Detection In Malay Sentences From The Cultural Heritage Domain

The process of detection for the head and modifier in Malay sentences from the cultural heritage domain is difficult to identify. This is due to the position of head and modifier which varies in sentences depending on the sentence structures. Hence, there are different point of views about the theory and concept of detection for the head and modifier in a compound noun that have been discussed by language experts. Additionally, the existing research is also limited especially in the areas of computational linguistics. Therefore, research should be conducted to identify appropriate methods especially used in the detection of head and modifier which appear in Malay setences from the cultural heritage domain. The aim of this study is to construct a list of heuristic rules to be used for detecting the position of compound nouns in Malay sentences from cultural heritage domain. By using 15 rules, the position of head and modifier that exist in a compound noun can also be detected. These rules are called heuristic rules. The purpose of formulating these 15 rules is to detect the head and modifier that exist in the Malay sentences from the cultural heritage domain. To measure the accuracy of the results, precision, recall and F1-score values are used. Based on the results of the experiments, Sentence Structure of Malay Cultural Heritage Domain (SADWBM) have an F1-score of 80.4% compared to Noun Phrase Structure (SFN) which is 56%. Consequently, SADWBM shows better scores compared to SFN. Therefore it is clear that the approach used in this study is effective in resolving the identified problems.

Noun phrase complexity in Nigerian English

Structural simplicity/complexity is an important variable with which New Englishes and native varieties are identified and conceptualised, but predicting such variation in complexity has received little attention in the literature. New Englishes, especially the outer circle varieties such as Nigerian or Indian English, differ in form and function from the inner circle varieties, such as British or American English, but the extent of such variation varies greatly and merits further investigation. According to Gorlach (1998), we should expect New Englishes to demonstrate simplification at the levels of morphology, lexis, and syntax. This has indeed been shown to be the case in some varieties, but it has also been shown that this variation differs according to different linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Most recently, Schilk and Schaub (2016) have shown how noun phrase (NP) structure can reveal the underlying structural simpification predicted in the New Englishes varieties. Brunner (2014) examined NP complexity across three New Englishes (British, Singaporean, and Kenyan English), explicating how grammars of the indigeneous languages in Singapore and Kenya influence NP simplicity/complexity.

Structures for plurals

This paper presents a hypothesis about the innermost structure of noun phrases, which aims at explaining the interaction of number and countability in nouns. This is based on a constructionist approach which views nouns as substructures of the noun phrase, and word formation and inflection as the morphological spellout of structures assembled and interpreted at an abstract syntactic level. It argues that nouns fundamentally identify entity types, and the rest of the DP specifies their denotation in part-structural and quantificational terms. This provides the framework for a new unified analysis of nouns likefurniture, waters, andcontents, where number and countability interact in a non-canonical way, which accounts for their morphology and their semantics.

Study of Noun Phrase in Urdu

This paper presents discussion of internal structure of Noun Phrase (NP) in Urdu. It also proposes a computational grammar using LFG (Lexical Functional Grammar) formalism.

Making Use Of Students’ Native Language Potential Strategy To Increase Second Language Acquisition

<p>Alternative learning strategies, in the concept of second language acquisition (SLA), concern more on the identification of second language students’ characteristic. One of the alternative learning strategies that will be discussed in this paper is about the role of native language (L1) with a demonstration of Papuan Malay language possessive pronouns and noun phrases in the context of teaching English as a foreign language (FL) in Jayapura, Papua. The discussion about the structure of Papuan Malay language possessive pronouns and noun phrases might give insight for second language (L2) teachers in Papua on making use their students’ L1 as a potential strategy to help them to increase their second language acquisition.</p>