Plural Marking Research Articles

Drift as a Driver of Language Change: An Artificial Language Experiment.

Over half a century ago, George Zipf observed that more frequent words tend to be older. Corpus studies since then have confirmed this pattern, with more frequent words being replaced and regularized less often than less frequent words. Two main hypotheses have been proposed to explain this: that frequent words change less because selection against innovation is stronger at higher frequencies, or that they change less because stochastic drift is stronger at lower frequencies. Here, we report the first experimental test of these hypotheses. Participants were tasked with learning a miniature language consisting of two nouns and two plural markers. Nouns occurred at different frequencies and were subjected to treatments that varied drift and selection. Using a model that accounts for participant heterogeneity, we measured the rate of noun regularization, the strength of selection, and the strength of drift in participant responses. Results suggest that drift alone is sufficient to generate the elevated rate of regularization we observed in low-frequency nouns, adding to a growing body of evidence that drift may be a major driver of languagechange.

Number marking in Dagara and French

This paper examines how number is marked in Dagara (Gur, Nige-Congo) and French. It argues that number occupies a syntactic position in Dagara and French and that the difference between the two languages resides in the syntactic operation through which number is marked. Following previous studies, the paper mentions that the status of number in Dagara and French can be assumed to be similar to that in English and that the difference among the three languages is the operation involved in number marking and the syntactic position of number in the structure of nominal phrases. This difference is responsible for the morphological manifestation of number on all the constituents of a nominal phrase in French but on only one constituent in Dagara and English. Besides, the paper claims that the difference between Dagara and English in number marking is in the syntactic position of number and that this difference explains why the plural marker is always on nouns but not on adjectives in English. In contrast, nouns do not take the plural marker in the presence of an adjective in Dagara.

Naïve English-speaking learners’ use of indirect positive evidence

Abstract When second language learners are faced with acquiring a grammar that is a subset of their native language grammar, direct positive evidence is unavailable. We question whether learners can instead use indirect positive evidence: evidence drawn from errors in the learner’s L1 made by native speakers of the learner’s L2. We examine if naïve English-speaking learners of Mandarin can determine from plural omission errors in Mandarin speakers’ English productions that Mandarin marks plural in a subset of conditions under which English does. Participants were exposed to indirect positive evidence via an English-medium dialogue where a native Mandarin-speaking interlocutor produced all contextually plural nouns as singulars. Subsequently, participants learnt 12 Mandarin-like nouns in singular contexts, after which their word learning was tested using both singular and plural pictures as prompts. Forty percent of participants correctly deduced that strings to which they had assigned singular interpretations were also appropriate in plural contexts. Follow-up questions revealed that they noticed the errors in the dialogue and used these to inform their understanding of plural marking in Mandarin. This result suggests that indirect positive evidence may be an effective tool for real language learners to acquire a grammar that is a subset of their native grammar.

Semantics of Turkish plural marking revisited

It has been claimed in some recent theoretical and experimental studies that in addition to the exclusive reading, there is evidence for the inclusive reading of the plural marker -lAr in Turkish (Sağ 2019 and Renans et al. 2020, among others). The main argumentation comes from the inclusive interpretation of the plural marker in syntactically negative sentences and in certain other downward entailing contexts. However, based on new data, I argue in this paper that the plural marker is primarily associated with the exclusive reading in Turkish (Bliss 2004, Bale et al 2010, Görgülü 2012, Bale and Khanjian 2014, among others) and the apparent inclusive reading arises only in the context of certain logical operators in the structure. More importantly, I show that the experimental design in recent experimental studies has certain issues. This is because number marking in the nominal system of Turkish was not actually taken into consideration in the design process of the experimentation, which apparently led to certain interpretive complications for participants. Thus I argue that a much better way to look at the meaning of plural marking should be through a more careful consideration of the specification of the number and plural marking system in the language.

Developmentally Moderated Focus on Form Instruction and Feedback in an Indonesian Kindergarten EFL programme

This study investigates the effect of developmentally moderated focus on form (DMFonF) instruction and feedback within processability theory (PT) on early grammatical development in an Indonesian kindergarten EFL programme, focusing on the acquisition of plural marking of nouns. The study has a pre-test, DMFonF intervention and post-test design. The participants were a teacher, and ten 1st-year and ten 2nd-year kindergarten children. Before the study, children received a meaning-based EFL programme. The children’s English development was measured based on PT stages pre- and post-test. Linguistic classroom environments before and during the DMFonF programme were analysed based on the DMFonF feedback categories. Regardless of how long they had been learning English, all the children were at the single-word stage at pre-test. They had all acquired lexical plural at post-test. Most of the children also acquired phrasal plural agreement. Additionally, the linguistic environment was much richer in DMFonF classes than in meaning-based classes.

Plural marking in Dolpo Tibetan: A preliminary investigation [HL FR 1

Plural marking in Dolpo Tibetan: A preliminary investigation [HL FR 1

VIETNAMESE EFL COLLEGE STUDENTS’ SENSITIVITY TO THE ENGLISH MASS-COUNT DISTINCTION

This paper examines how Vietnamese learners of L2 English interpret the English mass-count distinction. In a picture-based judgment experiment, sixty-two college students learning English as their L2 made judgments that reflect their sensitivity to the English mass-count distinction and morphosyntax-semantics mappings. The findings indicate that Vietnamese learners of L2 English correctly based their judgments on number for count nouns (e.g., cup) and object-mass nouns (e.g., furniture), and on volume for substance-mass nouns (e.g., milk). In addition, Vietnamese learners performed at chance level with English flexible nouns, i.e., nouns that are interpreted as count in the presence of the plural marker -s and as mass in its absence. Furthermore, no significant correlation was found between learners’ L2 proficiency scores and their judgments. Taken together, these findings suggest that Vietnamese college students are insensitive to the morphosyntactic cues of English flexible nouns when interpreting their meaning. Such insensitivity might be due to L1 effects and can be independent of L2 proficiency.

Testing the Representational Deficit Hypothesis: From the Aspect of Chinese Learners' Acquisition of Affixation '-s' for Third Person Singular Verbs and Plural Nouns.

The persistent difficulty in making verbal inflections is commonly recognized for second language learners, especially for Chinese-speaking students. Researchers put forward different hypotheses to explain the problems in acquiring inflectional morphology. Among them, the representational deficit hypothesis deficit (RDH), advocated by Hawkins and Liszka, indicates that adult learners will fail to make inflectional morphology to interpret the corresponding syntactic feature if there is no counterpart system in their native language. In English, affix morpheme ‘-s’ marks either third person singular (3SG) in the present tense or regular plural nouns. In contrast, Chinese is a language which lacks 3SG markings but presents the morpheme ‘men’ to reflect a plural feature for nouns with a human property. To test the applicability of the RDH in the domain of affix ‘-s’ for English learners of Chinese, the present study observed the morphological inflections of the third person singular and plural ‘-s’ in 33 Chinese EFL learners’ written and spoken production tasks. The results show that the participants distinguished between the inflectional morphology in regular plural and 3SG thematic verb markings, which was compatible with the RDH. Additionally, other phenomena related to 3SG and plural morphological inflections provided strands of evidence for the RDH, for instance, L2 exposure age, a prominent overuse of plural ‘-s’, and exceptional cases for more 3SG ‘-s’ markings in the written data. Except for the account of morphosyntactic processes in the RDH, other factors, such as input frequency, difficulty of paradigm uniformity, and acquisition order, were referred to as the way that the L2 learners’ acquisition of the morphological inflections was affected.

Beyond Plural Marker: A new Approach to the Nature of -Men们 in Linxia Dialect

本文以临夏话中指称唯一性事物名词以及不可数名词后加"们"等 非复数用法为切入点，重新分析了临夏话"们"的性质。"们"除了 可表复数，还可以表约量、尊敬、整体、强调等，这些功能与阿尔泰 语系突厥语族语言密切相关，是语言接触的结果。"们"不是单纯的 复数标记，也不是无语义的词缀或话题标记，其语义丛核心是表达 "大"义，本文将它处理成"大称"标记。大称标记与复数标记相关， 这一发现具有语言类型学的价值。

Современное состояние и тенденция унификации формантов множественного числа имен существительных в абазинском языке

The aim of the study is to determine the existing lexical and grammatical possibilities for expressing the category of number and the main direction of their development in the modern Abaza language. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the ascertainment of the emerging trend of the plural formants unification in the language. In the course of the analysis of a large corpus of illustrative linguistic material extracted from lexicographic sources, samples of the Abaza oral folk art, texts of fiction and the authors’ field material, the features of the formation of the modern system of expressing the plural number of nouns and the possible unification of the existing morphological markers of plurality are determined; and, as a result, the suffix -ква can become a universal (or main) formant of this category.

Expletiveness in grammar and beyond

This paper sets out to find the defining characteristics of so-called expletive categories and the consequences the existence of such categories has for Universal Grammar. Looking into different instantiations of expletive subjects and impersonal pronouns, definite articles, negative markers and plural markers in various natural languages, we reach the following generalizations: (i) expletive categories are deficient functional elements interpreted as introducing an identity function at the level of semantic representation, (ii) they can be divided into syntactic expletives, that occur to satisfy some syntactic relationship with another item in the clause, and semantic expletives, that stand in a semantic dependency with some c-commanding category, and (iii) expletive categories tend to develop additional meaning components that are computed beyond core grammar, at the level where speech act-related information is encoded. Our discussion reveals that all categories that have been traditionally considered as expletive in the linguistic literature are interpretable in grammar or beyond and, thus, do not violate Chomsky’s Full Interpretation Principle. We conclude that there are no expletive elements in natural languages and that expletiveness is not a grammatically relevant concept.

THE USE OF GRAMMARLY APPLICATION AS ELECTRONIC FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS WRITING OF ENGLISH THESIS AT UNIVERSITIES IN TERNATE CITY

The development of technology and learning English is towards the concept of providing electronic feedback. This research aims: 1). To find out electronic feedback with ‘Grammarly’ in students' writing of English thesis, and 2). To find out the lecturers’ perceptions and experiences related to the use of the 'Grammarly' application as electronic feedback, including in students’ writing of English thesis at universities in Ternate City. Ten lecturers as supervisors and five research proposal texts of thesis from the three universities in Ternate (Khairun University, Muhammadiyah University of North Maluku, and the Teaching and Education College (STKIP)) became the sources of the data in this study. Data collection techniques in this study were carried out using documents and interviews. The collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis (thematic analysis). The findings show that the use of the 'Grammarly' application in the text of the student thesis research proposal revealed some feedback on the errors in students’ writing of their thesis research proposal. Feedback on errors that occur in all existing texts is primarily related to spelling, followed by grammar (grammar) such as the use of articles (article), plural markers, prepositions, and subject-verb agreement. In addition, errors that occur in some thesis proposal texts are the use of punctuation and capital letters. Ten lecturers’ interview data show a positive perception in the use of 'Grammarly'. However, only four have used its application and six other lecturers have not used it.

Extending !Xun dialect comparisons with a Ju|’hoan variety spoken in |Xae|xae, Botswana: gender classes, plural markers and loanwords

Abstract Dialect clusters in Africa and specifically those of Khoisan languages are relatively underdocumented. !Xun can be described as a complex or a cluster of lects and the Ju|’hoan speakers of |Xae|xae, Botswana, are part of the (eastern) E1 dialect cluster of the !Xun language. Their closest neighbors in Tsum!kwe, Namibia, also speakers of Ju|’hoan, have been the subject of extensive linguistic study. A comparison based on lexical items affiliates speakers from |Xae|xae mainly with those from Tsum!kwe but with several exceptions. Additional comparisons between the Tsum!kwe and |Xae|xae speakers based on morphological markers show differences in plural markers and gender classes as well as differences in influences from neighboring languages. This study adds a specific variety to the description of the E1 dialect cluster that should encourage further research on Ju|’hoan as spoken in Botswana.

Adults regularize variation when linguistic cues suggest low input reliability

Children regularize inconsistent probabilistic patterns in linguistic input, yet they also acquire and match probabilistic sociolinguistic variation. What factors in the language input contribute to whether children will regularize or match the probabilistic patterns they are exposed to? Here, we test the hypothesis that low input reliability facilitates regularization. As a first step, we asked adult participants to acquire a variable plural marking pattern from a written (Exp 1) and a spoken (Exp 2) artificial language under different conditions, where they were led to believe input was more, or less, reliable. In both experiments, input reliability was manipulated through both information about the speaker (e.g., whether the speaker was likely to make mistakes) and linguistic cues (e.g., typos or pronunciation errors). Results showed that adults regularized the written language more only when they were told the speaker would make mistakes and the plural variants resembled typos (Exp 1), whereas they regularized the spoken language more when the plural variants resembled pronunciation errors regardless of the speaker’s said reliability in the spoken language. We conclude that input reliability is an important factor that can modulate learners’ regularization of probabilistic linguistic input, and that linguistic cues may play a more critical role than top-down knowledge about the speaker. The current study lays down an important foundation for future work exploring whether children are able to incorporate input reliability cues when learning probabilistic linguistic variation.

Hapten-labeled fusion-polymerase chain reaction of multiple marker genes for the application of immunochromatographic test

A variety of methods have been reported using polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based nucleic acid testing (NAT) because of its potential to be used in highly sensitive inspection systems. Among these NATs, fusion-PCR (also called as overlap-extension-PCR) has been focused on this study and adopted to generate the fused amplicon composed of plural marker gene fragments for detection. Generally, conventional agarose gel electrophoresis followed by gel staining is employed to check the PCR results. However, these are time-consuming processes that use specific equipment. To overcome these disadvantages, the immunochromatographic test (ICT) for the detection of PCR amplicons with hapten-labels that were generated by PCR using hapten-labeled primers was also adopted in this study. Based on these concepts, we constructed the systems of hapten-labeled fusion-PCR (HL-FuPCR) followed by ICT (HL-FuPCR-ICT) for the two and three marker genes derived from pathogenic microbe. As a result, we successfully developed a two marker genes system for the pathogenic influenza A virus and a three marker genes system for the penicillin-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae. These detection systems of HL-FuPCR-ICT are characterized by simple handling and rapid detection within few minutes, and also showed the results as clear lines. Thus, the HL-FuPCR-ICT system introduced in this study has potential for use as a user-friendly inspection tool with the advantages especially in the detection of specific strains or groups expressing the characteristic phenotype(s) such as antibiotic resistance and/or high pathogenicity even in the same species.

Частотность употребления показателей множественного числа существительных в калмыцком языке (в сравнении с монгольским и бурятским)

Introduction. The article deals with the frequency use of nominal plurality markers in Kalmyk with comparative insights into Khalkha Mongolian and Buryat. Goals. The study aims at clarifying how different the parameter is in the Mongolic languages (given that in all the analyzed idioms the use of the plural is considered optional) for further understanding of how alterable the latter are in contacts with other languages. Materials and methods. The research includes two stages: 1) analysis of a ‘microcorpus’ (10.115 word tokens), 2) analysis of online Kalmyk and Buryat corpora (800.000 and 2.200.000 word tokens, respectively). The work employs methods of calculation and comparative research. Results. The ‘microcorpus’ study shows that plurality markers in Kalmyk discourse are used somewhat less frequently than in Buryat (each twenty first and eighteenth lexemes, respectively). Whereas the ‘big’ corpora study shows that plurality markers in Kalmyk are used twice as frequently as in Buryat. Unfortunately, currently it is technically impossible to extract relevant data from the ‘big’ Mongolian corpus. Nevertheless, the available data prove that plurality markers both in Kalmyk and Buryat are used more frequently than in modern Mongolian. Conclusion. The paper suggests that around the 17th century or later there must have been a decrease in the use of plurality markers by Mongolian speakers (according to J. Street, in Middle Mongolian — i.e. in the 13th-16th centuries AD — plurality markers were four times as frequent). Probably, this phenomenon had not affected Kalmyk and Buryat that would be detached from genetically close surrounding to experience influence of Russian, which resulted in that these languages witnessed a ‘conservation’ of their original feature of comparatively frequent use of nominal plurality markers.

Changes in progress in late Northumbrian: the extension of -s as genitive and plural marker

Some of the linguistic changes which are crucial in the history of English and have traditionally been ascribed to Middle English can already be observed in late Northumbrian. One of these changes is the extension of genitive singular -es from the a-stems to other noun classes. Another is the spread of nominative/accusative plural -as from the masculine a-stems to the neuters and to other declensions. The aim of this article is to establish the actual scale on which these two interparadigmatic analogical changes are found in the glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels and to the Durham Collectar, both dating from the tenth century.The present study intends to shed more light on the process of morphological restructuring affecting the declensional system of late Northumbrian, and has three main aims: (a) to determine the pattern of dissemination of the innovative inflectional endings; (b) to establish which variables are significant in these analogical processes: declension, type and token frequency, grammatical context, Latin lemma, demarcation; and (c) to account for the different developmental tendencies of these two linguistic changes.

The directionality of reduplicative plurality

One instantiation of the well-known suffixing preference is the strong predominance of suffixes over prefixes in nominal-plural marking. Plurality may also be expressed by (partial) reduplication. In contradistinction to the rightward bias of affixes, reduplication in general exhibits a leftward bias. These opposite effects lead to a notable prediction regarding the directionality of reduplicative plurals, which are expected to show a compromise between the rightward bias of affixing and the leftward bias of reduplication. This prediction is not borne out in a sizeable sample of languages with reduplicative plurals. Almost all these languages put the reduplicant in word-initial position. That is, the leftward bias in reduplicative plurals is even more pronounced than that in reduplication generally. The explanation of this striking set of results revolves around a conspiracy of several factors which render the occurrence of word-final reduplicative plurals extremely unlikely. Thus, word-initial and word-final sites are much more unequal competitors in reduplicative plurality than prefixes and suffixes are in affixal plural marking.

The Status of the Derivative Adjective Forms in the Lexicon: Evidence on Pseudo Default Patterns

This paper investigates the applicability of the plural masculine suffix /-i:n/ as a default inflection marker to nouns having an irregular inflection plural form with /-i:n/ suffix marker. The data taken from Jordanian Arabic (JA) derivatives show that the notion canonical root has a substantial role in the emergence of such a default inflection. The findings also show that there is a tendency for the suffix /-i:n/ to be the marking default as an apparent form among other possible forms in JA despite the fact that they fall outside the ubiquitous regularity domain. These results provide strong evidence on the existence of multiple default systems in JA in addition to the Sound Feminine Plural marker with /a:t/. Finally, these findings conform to the symbolic accounts that rely upon computational mechanisms for the emergence of the default patterns. The findings also draw attention to the systematic suffixes that the derivative forms have /-a:n/ and thus motivate more predictions to the status of the inflected form bearing pseudo default features. Keywords: Pseudo default, Default Patterns, JA, Canonical Root, Symbolic Mechanism, Single Mechanism.

A Contrastive Analysis of Pluralisation of Nouns in English and Ikwerre (Omuanwa): Implications for the Second Language Learner

Human language is rule-governed. These rules are innate in the native speakers and vary from one language to another. The variations in the morphological and syntactic structures in languages pose difficulties to the second language learner in the target language. This paper therefore, examines and contrasts the plural formation of nouns in English and Ikwerre (Omuanwa) with a view to identifying the morphological and syntactic structural differences associated with pluralisation which may pose difficulty to the second language learner. The theoretical framework adopted is Contrastive Analysis (CA). This paper revealed that there is an overwhelming difference between plural formation of nouns in English and Ikwerre (Omuanwa) as English plural markers are suffixes while Ikwerre plural markers are prefixes. While English is full of irregularities and a lot of exceptions to given rules of pluralisation, most nouns in Ikwerre form their plurals by using plural markers which are free morphemes before the host. This paper therefore, recommends that second language learners of English whose first language is Ikwerre should make conscious effort to learn the plurals of words in English the way they are, so as to use the correct plural forms of words in English sentences.