Proportion Of Verbs Research Articles

Assessing receptive verb knowledge in late talkers and autistic children: advances and cautionary tales

PurposeUsing eye-tracking, we assessed the receptive verb vocabularies of age-matched late talkers and typically developing children (experiment 1) and autistic preschoolers (experiment 2). We evaluated how many verbs participants knew and how quickly they processed the linguistic prompt. Our goal is to explore how these eye-gaze measures can be operationalized to capture verb knowledge in late talkers and autistic children.MethodParticipants previewed two dynamic scenes side-by-side (e.g., “stretching” and “clapping”) and were then prompted to find the target verb's referent. Children’s eye-gaze behaviors were operationalized using established approaches in the field with modifications in consideration for the type of stimuli (dynamic scenes versus static images) and the populations included. Accuracy was calculated as a proportion of time spent looking to the target, and linguistic processing was operationalized as latency of children’s first look to the target.ResultsIn experiment 1, there were no group differences in the proportion of verbs known, but late talkers required longer to demonstrate their knowledge than typically developing children. Latency was predicted by age but not language abilities. In experiment 2, autistic children’s accuracy and latency were both predicted by receptive language abilities.ConclusionEye gaze can be used to assess receptive verb vocabulary in a variety of populations, but in operationalizing gaze behavior, we must account for between- and within-group differences. Bootstrapped cluster-permutation analysis is one way to create individualized measures of children’s gaze behavior, but more research is warranted using an individual differences approach with this type of analysis.

Глагол в лексической структуре житийного текста: синтагматический аспект

Using a comprehensive approach to the analysis of linguistic facts, a fragment of the lexi­cal structure of hagiographic text formed by verbal units is characterized. The material for the study consists of hagiographic lives of saints and martyrs from the Synodal edition, which are part of the May cycle of the Menaion Reader. The authors focus on the syntagmatic aspect of the lexical structure of the hagiographic text, manifested in the distribution of lexical units and their collocations. As a result, a quantitative dynamics of verbal units is identified, re­flected in the increase in the proportion of verbs in the part of the hagiography describing the saint’s journey to righteousness. The distribution of verbs throughout the text of different lexical-semantic groups is determined by the type of monastic or martyric asceticism of the saint and the content of the compositional part embodying various hagiographic topoi. The role of lexical repetition in expressing the content of the text is demonstrated. The specificity of hagiographic lives is established, characterized by the use of verbal units whose meaning has evolved through semantic derivation, reflecting the metaphorical reinterpretation of a specific action in a spiritual plane.

Tracing embodied word production in persons with Parkinson’s disease in distinct motor conditions

Embodied cognition theories posit direct interactions between sensorimotor and mental processing. Various clinical observations have been interpreted in this controversial framework, amongst others, low verb generation in word production tasks performed by persons with Parkinson’s disease (PD). If this were the consequence of reduced motor simulation of prevalent action semantics in this word class, reduced PD pathophysiology should result in increased verb production and a general shift of lexical contents towards particular movement-related meanings. 17 persons with PD and bilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subhtalamic nucleus (STN) and 17 healthy control persons engaged in a semantically unconstrained, phonemic verbal fluency task, the former in both DBS-off and DBS-on states. The analysis referred to the number of words produced, verb use, and the occurrence of different dimensions of movement-related semantics in the lexical output. Persons with PD produced fewer words than controls. In the DBS-off, but not in the DBS-on condition, the proportion of verbs within this reduced output was lower than in controls. Lowered verb production went in parallel with a semantic shift: in persons with PD in the DBS-off, but not the DBS-on condition, the relatedness of produced words to own body-movement was lower than in controls. In persons with PD, DBS induced-changes of the motor condition appear to go along with formal and semantic shifts in word production. The results are compatible with the idea of some impact of motor system states on lexical processing.

Longitudinal changes in connected speech over a one-year span in the nonfluent/agrammatic variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia

ABSTRACT Background Connected speech assessment is essential to characterize the language features in primary progressive aphasia (PPA). This is especially true for the non-fluent/agrammatic variant (nfvPPA) in which one of the core features is agrammatism. Identification of agrammatism typically involves the analysis of sentence production, as in connected speech, in order to detect syntactic deficits. However, little is known about the longitudinal changes occurring in connected speech of individuals with non-fluent PPA. Aim The aim of this study was to assess changes in connected speech over a one-year span in participants with nfvPPA using semi-structured interviews. Methods and procedures We conducted a prospective group study including participants with nfvPPA (n=9) and age- and education-matched healthy controls (n=9). For each individual, connected speech was obtained using topic-directed interviews at two testing rounds, each approximately one year apart. Production on each task was recorded, transcribed and analyzed according to the Quantitative Production Analysis (QPA) protocol, a tool developed by Berndt and colleagues (2000) for the analysis of sentence production in aphasia. For each group, the probability of deterioration between the two testing rounds was estimated using Bayesian analysis. Results and outcomes For individuals with nfvPPA, statistical evidence of deterioration from the first testing round to the second was found for five variables, namely the proportion of pronouns, the proportion of verbs, the proportion of closed class words, the inflection index and the proportion of well-formed sentences. Conclusions Results from the present study suggest that variables relating to word-finding and morphology are more vulnerable to time and therefore may be relevant potential targets for intervention.

Early Productive Vocabulary Composition as Precursor of Dyslexia.

The aim of this study was to gain more insight into the linguistic characterization of dyslexia by investigating vocabulary acquisition. In a previous study, vocabulary at 17 months of age appeared to be related to familial risk (FR) of dyslexia. The aim of this study was to investigate how the differences in lexical composition further develop up to 3 years (35 months) of age and, more importantly, to what extent these differences can be considered specific precursors of dyslexia later on. In a total number of 262 children from the Dutch Dyslexia Program, 169 with and 93 without FR for dyslexia, productive vocabulary was assessed with the Dutch version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories at ages 17, 23, 29, and 35 months. Reading tests were administered in Grades 2 and 3, resulting in dyslexia diagnosis in 60 FR children (FR-dys), leaving 109 FR children who developed normal reading skills (FR-nondys) and 93 control children. Children's expressive vocabulary was scored according to the total number of words produced and according to the different major linguistic word categories: nouns, predicates, and closed-class words. The analyses comprised a comparison of total productive vocabulary and the number of words per grammatical category at four different ages for the three groups (FR-dys, FR-nondys, and control). Also, correlations were calculated between vocabulary scores and reading scores. Up to 29 months of age, the total numbers of nouns, predicates, and closed-class words are significantly lower for the FR-dys group as compared with the FR-nondys and control groups; for closed-class words at 23 and 35 months of age, the FR-nondys group's mean values are in between the mean of the FR-dys and control groups. Weak correlations were found between total vocabulary size, number of verbs, number and proportion of predicates at 23 months of age, and word and pseudoword reading fluency in Grades 2 and 3. These results indicate that development of vocabulary is a significant though weak predictor of reading fluency and dyslexia; vocabulary size and proportion of verbs at 23 months of age, as well as proportion of closed-class words up to 35 months of age, seem to be the most sensitive indicators of delayed vocabulary development and later reading difficulties. There is no indication that FR for dyslexia by itself is related to vocabulary development.

English Get-Passives: Reassessing the Frequencies across Genres

This study investigates the get -passive in American English, with emphasis on its distribution in different text types and its semantic features characterized by co-occurring verbs. The data was drawn from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), i.e. the latest version with eight different genres. The findings indicate that the get-passive is a linguistic feature of informal English due to its highest frequency in spoken genres, e.g. TV and movie subtitles, and blogs. Furthermore, common verbs constituting the get -passive were explored and their meanings in context were analyzed. In agreement with previous studies, the semantic analysis of get -passives revealed a higher proportion of verbs expressing adversity, followed by those with positive and neutral meanings, respectively. The existence of non-adversative get -passive predicts a decline in the adversative type.

Język, płeć i władza. Analiza leksykalna przemówień programowych polskich premierów

According to researchers, people in power speak more confidently and more authoritatively and an insecure and unassertive style of communication characteristic of women does not result from the sex but from their weaker social position. In this work the Authors aimed to verify this assumption comparing keynote speeches of people holding the highest political power in Poland over recent years: Prime Ministers Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Donald Tusk, Ewa Kopacz and Beata Szydlo. We assumed that utterances of female politicians will differ from utterances of male politicians in respect of the number of spoken words, a level of agency (proportion of verbs and nouns), confidence of judgments and use of nouns classified by the respondents as feminine or masculine. The conducted lexical analyses showed more similarities than differences. Political views seem to be more important than the sex, which implies a necessity of further research in this area.

Grammatical production deficits in PPA: Relating narrative and structured task performance

Grammatical production deficits in PPA: Relating narrative and structured task performance

Early production of the passive in two Eastern Bantu languages

The passive construction is acquired relatively late by children learning to speak many languages, with verbal passives not fully acquired until age 6 in English. In other languages it appears earlier, around age 3 or before. Use of passive construction in young children was examined in two Eastern Bantu languages spoken in Kenya (Kiswahili and Kigiriama), both with frequent use of passive. The passive was used productively very early (2;1) in these languages, regardless of the method used to measure productivity. In addition, non-actional passives, particularly rare in English and some other European languages, were seen at these early ages. The proportion of verbs that were passive varied between individuals, both in children's speech and in the input to children. Pragmatic and grammatical features of the passive in some languages have previously been suggested to drive early passive acquisition, but these features are not found consistently in the two languages studied here. Findings suggest that the relatively high frequency of input found in these languages is the most plausible reason for early productive use of the passive.

Linguistic correlates of asymmetric motor symptom severity in Parkinson’s Disease

Asymmetric motor severity is common in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and provides a method for examining the neurobiologic mechanisms underlying cognitive and linguistic deficits associated with the disorder. In the present research, PD participants ( N = 31) were assessed in terms of the asymmetry of their motor symptoms. Interviews with the participants were analyzed with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program. Three measures of linguistic complexity – the proportion of verbs, proportion of function words, and sentence length – were found to be affected by symptom asymmetry. Greater left-side motor severity (and hence greater right-hemisphere dysfunction) was associated with the production of significantly fewer verbs, function words, and shorter sentences. Hence, the production of linguistic complexity in a natural language context was associated with relatively greater right hemisphere involvement. The potential neurobiological mechanisms underlying this effect are discussed.

Préfixation des verbes de déplacement tchèques

Summary Prefixation of the Verbs of Movement in Czech Prefixed verbs constitute a major proportion of verbs of movement (as defined in 1.1. of the article) in Czech. We consider those formed by the prefixes : při-, od-, vy-, v-, do-, roz- and s-We examine their syntactic properties, especially their compatibility with different locative complements, trying to find typical properties or restrictions for each prefix. Whilst traditional grammar ascribes a meaning to prefixes, we defend the position that a prefix derives its meaning from its interaction with the other elements of the sentence (not only the root verb), and that all elements of the sentence contribute to create the meaning of a sentence.

Agrammatism and adaptation theory

Abstract Ability to process grammatical structures was studied in 14 agrammatic speakers, 11 other non-fluent aphasics, five fluent aphasics and 10 normal controls. Adaptation theory maintains that spontaneous speech gives a poor indication of the underlying impairment, because agrammatic patients adopt a strategy of producing elliptical speech to avoid making errors. It was therefore predicted that the pattern of grammatical errors should look different in tasks that minimized or prevented adaptation, such as elicited speech, written sentence ordering and cloze tasks. The grammatical profile of agrammatic aphasics did show some change under cliciting conditions; they produced a higher proportion of verbs in these circumstances and showed some ability to produce active transitive constructions that were not seen in spontaneous speech. However, elictation had no effect on sentence length or complexity or use of grammatical morphemes. Paragrammatic errors were seen in both agrammatic and fluent aphasics und...

Environmental correlates of variation in lexical style: Interactional style and the structure of the input

ABSTRACTSince the publication of Nelson's (1973) monograph, several studies have reported significant correlations between variation in children's early vocabulary composition and differences in the functional characteristics of mothers' child-directed speech. However, it is still not clear how these relations are actually mediated. The present study attempts to investigate thís issue by differentiating and testing two alternative explanations of the relations found in previous research on data from a study of eight mother–infant dyads between 0;11 and 1;8. Despite replicating previous findings of a relation between maternal descriptiveness and the proportion of nouns and maternal directiveness and the proportion of verbs in children's early vocabularies, the results reveal no relation between differences in mothers' interactional behavior and differences in the functional characteristics of their children's spontaneous speech. On the other hand, specific relations were found between children's referential vocabularies and maternal descriptives that included nouns and between children's verb vocabularies and maternal directives that included verbs. These findings not only raise doubts about the validity of a functional similarity account of relations between maternal speech characteristics and variation in early vocabulary composition, but also suggest that they may be better understood in terms of the interaction between processing mechanisms that are common to all children and differences in the structure of the input to which different children are actually exposed.