Simple Noun Phrases Research Articles

An NLP-Based Exploration of Variance in Student Writing and Syntax: Implications for Automated Writing Evaluation

In writing assessment, expert human evaluators ideally judge individual essays with attention to variance among writers’ syntactic patterns. There are many ways to compose text successfully or less successfully. For automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems to provide accurate assessment and relevant feedback, they must be able to consider similar kinds of variance. The current study employed natural language processing (NLP) to explore variance in syntactic complexity and sophistication across clusters characterized in a large corpus (n = 36,207) of middle school and high school argumentative essays. Using NLP tools, k-means clustering, and discriminant function analysis (DFA), we observed that student writers employed four distinct syntactic patterns: (1) familiar and descriptive language, (2) consistently simple noun phrases, (3) variably complex noun phrases, and (4) moderate complexity with less familiar language. Importantly, each pattern spanned the full range of writing quality; there were no syntactic patterns consistently evaluated as “good” or “bad”. These findings support the need for nuanced approaches in automated writing assessment while informing ways that AWE can participate in that process. Future AWE research can and should explore similar variability across other detectable elements of writing (e.g., vocabulary, cohesion, discursive cues, and sentiment) via diverse modeling methods.

AN ANALYSIS OF MORPHOSYNTACTIC CONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH WRITING TEXT PRODUCED BY THE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS AT UNISMUH MAKASSAR

This research aimed to find out the most frequent types of inflectional suffixes, derivational suffixes, noun phrases and verb phrases produced by the Postgraduate Students in writing argumentative text. This research used Descriptive Quantitative Research. The data were obtained by using writing test. The samples of this research were 16 Postgraduate Students of English Education Master Program in Academic Year 2023 selected by using Total Sampling Technique. The results of data analysis from 16 samples found that 1) The inflectional suffixes of plurality {-s} were 46,06%, 3rd person singular {s/es} were 8.33%, past tense/passive {-ed} were 14.58%, participle {-ing} were 17.59 %, possessive {-s} were 3,93%, and comparative/ superlative degrees {er/est} were 3.47%. 2) The derivational suffixes forming noun were 52.4%, forming verb were 3.2%, forming adjective were 23.92%, and forming adverb were 19.28%. 3) The constructions of simple noun phrases were 18.86%, rather complex noun phrases were 23.58 %, and very complex noun phrases were 56.83%. 4) The constructions of simple verb phrases were 82.5% and rather complex verb phrases were 16.87%. Thus, it can be concluded that the most frequent types of inflectional suffixes used by the students were plurality {-s}, the type of derivational suffixes was noun formation, the type of noun phrases was very complex noun phrases, and the type of verb phrases was simple verb phrases.

Noun phrase in Nigerian Pidgin English

Works showing the extent to which structural complexity characterizes syntactic structures in contemporary Nigerian Pidgin English are underrepresented in the main literature. For instance no works have shown the extent to which noun phrase (NP), an important syntactic measure of variability and complexity, exhibits variability and complexity, and the extent to which pattern found converges with /diverges from similar linguistic varieties. The present study provides the basic corpus-driven contemporary nature of simple-complex NP structures in NPE, including how factors such as syntactic function and weight explain context where we might find simple or complex NPs. Our results, though tentative, show that NPs in NPE exhibit considerable complexity, which is against simplification hypothesis exemplified in standard Nigerian English.

Structure Shift of Noun Phrases in "The Story of An Hour" and Its Translation "Kisah Satu Jam"

One of the short stories that is rather popular among teenagers and adults is The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin in 1894. When reading the translation of the story, there are various translation shifts that can be found, especially the structure shift which is the type that most often occurs in the world of translation because every language has its own grammatical structure. Therefore, this study intended to analyze noun phrases that represent structure shifts using the theory of translation shift by Catford (1965) and the theory of noun phrases by Quirk and Greenbaum (1985). The data were collected using note-taking and observation method which were analyzed descriptively and qualitatively in the form of words and language. This study found two types of noun phrases that represent structure shifts, namely: three data were classified as simple noun phrases and four data were classified as complex noun phrases

An Algorithm for Automatic Recognition of Chinese Spatial Prepositional Phrases for Academic Texts

Automatic recognition of prepositional phrases has always been pursued in English translation, and its accurate recognition is crucial for various activities and applications in the field of natural language processing. This paper proposes an automatic recognition algorithm for Chinese spatial prepositional phrases in academic texts, which can not only identify parallel prepositional phrases but also improve the recognition accuracy of nested prepositional phrases. First, the method employs a simple noun phrase recognition model to identify and fuse phrase information contained in the corpus, thereby simplifying the corpus and minimizing the internal complexity of prepositional phrases. Second, the method uses the CRF model to identify nested inner prepositional phrases; if there is nesting, it identifies the inner layer of nesting; if there is no nesting, it identifies prepositional phrases; finally, it fuses the inner prepositions identified in the initial corpus phrase, modifies its feature information, and retrains the foreign preposition phrase recognition model for recognition. After the internal and external prepositional phrases are automatically identified, the double error correction method is used to correct the identified prepositional phrases. The experimental analysis shows that the accuracy rate, recall rate, and F -value of the method for identifying prepositional phrases are 95.33%, 94.32%, and 94.73%, respectively, which are higher than those of the other methods for identifying prepositional phrases, which effectively improves the recognition rate of prepositional phrases.

About the Word-Order in Old Russian Noun Phrases with Pronominal Adjectives (on the Material of Direct Speech in “The Tale of Bygone Yearsˮ)

The article is devoted to the study of the word-order in simple noun phrases, which include pronominal adjectives as definitions, in statements of the characters of “The Tale of Bygone Years&8j1; (non-translated dialogic fragments are analyzed). A regularity is established: pronouns in anaphoric and deictic functions are characterized by their common use in postposition relative to the main component, and pronouns in cataphoric and quantifier functions are prepositive usually. It is also established that the main reason for a variation of the usual word-order is the need for communicative highlighting of the component of the phrase moved to the preposition. At the same time, the usual use of quantifiers in preposition is not associated with their communicative selection, but with the fact that, being indicators of referential status, in combination with the components being determined, they form a kind of “complex words&8j1;, the “decoding&8j1; of the meanings of which in a linear flow of speech implies the first stage of this "decoding" is the establishment of a referential status. The described patterns of the word-order are associated, in our opinion, with the fact that direct speech depicts oral speech, reflecting its linearity: the first in the focus of the listener's attention is the prepositive component, which determines its emphasis – semantic and / or communicative.

The (mis-)use of the English definite article in relation to the ‘of-phrase’ construction by speakers of Jordanian-Arabic and Cypriot-Greek

A plethora of second-language (L2) acquisition studies have tested the acquisition of English determiners in relation to simple noun phrases (NPs) of the generic versus non-generic type (e.g., Ionin., et al., 2008; Momenzadea & Youhanaeeb, 2014) rather than complex NPs, such as the ‘of-phrase’ construction, as in ‘the concept of love’. This study, therefore, contributes to our knowledge by addressing how first-language (L1) transfer from Jordanian-Arabic or Cypriot-Greek to English may influence the use of the definite and zero articles in relation to the configuration of the ‘of-phrase’ construction. This construction is comprised of two nominals (Ns): N1: definite noun+of+N2: bare noun. However, the definiteness feature in the equivalent L1 constructions is realised via an Arabic syntactic construct phrase and a Greek spreading feature. The statistical analyses of the data collected by a questionnaire and a forced-choice elicitation task indicated misuse of the before both Ns by the L2 groups at lower proficiency levels of English and provided evidence of L1 negative transfer, which resulted from the syntax-semantics mismatch between the participants’ L1s and L2. The results supported the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2008, 2009). With the increase in the quality and quantity of input in the form of daily exposure to English, the L2 groups figured out how to restructure their L1 features to match the configuration of the L2 regarding their use of the. The age of the Jordanian participants and exposure to English at university/school/work of both groups influenced the use of zero and the; respectively.

The nominative/vocative plural of Vedic masculine a-stems in complex nominal expressions

Abstract In Vedic Sanskrit, masculine a-stem nominals exhibit two different forms of the nom/voc.pl, a short form (ending in ‑ās) and a long form (ending in ‑āsas). In this article, we will argue that the scope of this variation is not a single nominal but the entire noun phrase. This means that whereas the short form may occur several times in a noun phrase, the long form is either absent or occurs only once. From a functional point of view, complex noun phrases containing one long form are equivalent to simple noun phrases consisting of one long form. In contrast, complex noun phrases containing only short forms are equivalent to simple noun phrases consisting of one short form. The presence or absence of the long form marks the presence or absence of a certain linguistic feature, the exact nature of which still has to be determined. We will argue that in those cases in which two long forms occur in relative proximity to each other, they either have to, or at least can be interpreted as being part of two distinct noun phrases. In order to do so, we will apply morphological, semantic, syntactic as well as stylistic and metrical criteria.

Teaching the unlearnable: a training study of complexyes/noquestions

ABSTRACTA central question in language acquisition is how children master sentence types that they have seldom, if ever, heard. Here we report the findings of a pre-registered, randomised, single-blind intervention study designed to test the prediction that, for one such sentence type, complex questions (e.g.,Is the crocodile who’s hot eating?), children could combine schemas learned, on the basis of the input, for complex noun phrases (the [THING] who’s [PROPERTY]) and simple questions (Is [THING] [ACTION]ing?) to yield a complex-question schema (Is [the [THING] who’s [PROPERTY]] ACTIONing?). Children aged 4;2 to 6;8 (M= 5;6,SD= 7.7 months) were trained on simple questions (e.g.,Is the bird cleaning?) and either (Experimental group,N= 61) complex noun phrases (e.g.,the bird who’s sad) or (Control group,N= 61) matched simple noun phrases (e.g.,the sad bird). In general, the two groups did not differ on their ability to produce novel complex questions at test. However, the Experimental group did show (a) some evidence of generalising a particular complex NP schema (the [THING] who’s [PROPERTY]as opposed tothe [THING] that’s [PROPERTY]) from training to test, (b) a lower rate of auxiliary-doubling errors (e.g.,*Is the crocodile who’s hot is eating?), and (c) a greater ability to produce complex questions on the first test trial. We end by suggesting some different methods – specifically artificial language learning and syntactic priming – that could potentially be used to better test the present account.

Healthy Aging and Sentence Production: Disrupted Lexical Access in the Context of Intact Syntactic Planning.

Healthy aging does not affect all features of language processing equally. In this study, we investigated the effects of aging on different processes involved in fluent sentence production, a complex task that requires the successful execution and coordination of multiple processes. In Experiment 1, we investigated age-related effects on the speed of syntax selection using a syntactic priming paradigm. Both young and older adults produced target sentences quicker following syntactically related primes compared to unrelated primes, indicating that syntactic facilitation effects are preserved with age. In Experiment 2, we investigated age-related effects in syntactic planning and lexical retrieval using a planning scope paradigm: participants described moving picture displays designed to elicit sentences with either initial coordinate or simple noun phrases and, on half of the trials, the second picture was previewed. Without preview, both age groups were slower to initiate sentences with larger coordinate phrases, suggesting a similar phrasal planning scope. However, age-related differences did emerge relating to the preview manipulation: while young adults displayed speed benefits of preview in both phrase conditions, older adults only displayed speed preview benefits within the initial phrase (coordinate condition). Moreover, preview outside the initial phrase (simple condition) caused older adults to become significantly more error-prone. Thus, while syntactic planning scope appears unaffected by aging, older adults do appear to encounter problems with managing the activation and integration of lexical items into syntactic structures. Taken together, our findings indicate that healthy aging disrupts the lexical, but not the syntactic, processes involved in sentence production.

Advance planning in written and spoken sentence production.

Response onset latencies for sentences that start with a conjoined noun phrase are typically longer than for sentences starting with a simple noun phrase. This suggests that advance planning has phrasal scope, which may or may not be lexically driven. All previous studies have involved spoken production, leaving open the possibility that effects are, in part, modality-specific. In 3 image-description experiments (Ns = 32) subjects produced sentences with conjoined (e.g., Peter and the hat) and simple initial noun phrases (e.g., Peter) in both speech and writing. Production onset latencies and participants' eye movements were recorded. Ease of lexical retrieval of sentences' second noun was assessed by manipulating codability (Experiment 1) and by gaze-contingent name priming (Experiments 2 and 3). Findings confirmed a modality-independent phrasal scope for advance planning but did not support obligatory lexical retrieval beyond the sentence-initial noun. This research represents the first direct experimental comparison of sentence planning in speech and writing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Showcasing the interaction of generative and emergent linguistic knowledge with case marker omission in spoken Japanese

Linguists debate the nature of grammatical knowledge. Many argue it is innate knowledge of syntactic structure that we use when generating utterances; others argue it emerges from linguistic experience, and forms exemplars for modeling novel utterances. Yet, still others argue that grammatical forms are processed in parallel by both types of knowledge (innate or otherwise), and crucially, that these two processing routes compete with each other.Our objective is to support the dual route argument with a corpus study illustrating the interaction of these two types of knowledge. We interpret two proxies as indicators of these two types of knowledge: syntactic complexity for generative knowledge and dispersion for emergent knowledge. Previous psycholinguistic work has shown that increased syntactic complexity correlates with increased judgment reaction times. Conversely, increased dispersion correlates with decreased judgment reaction times. If these two processing mechanisms compete, then we predict an interaction: specifically, we hypothesize that the more dispersed a linguistic form is, the less influence syntactic complexity has.We conducted a mixed-effects logistic regression analysis on case marker omissions in Japanese. Our results show that a casual speech style, a dispersed object–verb pair, and a syntactically simple noun phrase for the object correlate with increased case marker omission. More importantly, syntactic complexity and dispersion interact: as dispersion decreases, the estimated coefficient for syntactic complexity increases. These results support the claim that generative knowledge and emergent knowledge compete during language processing.

LOS NUMERALES DEFINIDOS DEL PURÉPECHA

RESUMEN: En purépecha (lengua aislada hablada en estado occidental de Michoacán, México) los numerales pueden presentarse con una marca final -perani. Este sufijo se ha descrito como colectivo y como distributivo. En este trabajo mostraré que las frases numerales con -perani tienen el significado de una frase nominal definida, pues sólo pueden aparecer en contextos en donde la cardinalidad del numeral es idéntica a la cardinalidad total del conjunto denotado por el sustantivo en la situación de uso. Además, las frases con -perani pueden tener usos anafóricos y no pueden emplearse para introducir por primera vez entidades en el discurso. La existencia de una marca explícita de definitud en los numerales contrasta con su total ausencia en las frases nominales sin numeral, pues, como se sabe, el purépecha es una lengua sin artículo definido. Hay algunas características en la distribución de los numerales con -perani que los hacen diferentes a los numerales con artículo definido de las lenguas europeas: los numerales con -perani pueden co-aparecer con demostrativos y no pueden funcionar como la coda de una expresión partitiva. Los numerales simples (sin -perani) pueden recibir interpretaciones indefinidas y partitivas, pero no pueden interpretarse como definidos.

Types and Features of Noun Phrase in Chinese Scholars’ Abstracts

<p>Noun phrases, as the basic components of sentences, carry large amounts of information. Based on corpus-based research method, this study aims to explore the use of nouns in the journal abstracts written by Chinese scholars. Statistically significant difference was found in the noun <em>effect</em> between Chinese scholars’ dissertation abstracts (CSDA) and English-speaking scholars’ dissertation abstracts (ESDA), so <em>effect </em>was chosen as an example word throughout the research. The results show that (1) Chinese scholars tend to use more simple noun phrases while international journal scholars are inclined to use complex noun phrases in their articles. (2) As for the use of the colligation <em>adjective+effect, </em>Chinese scholars are likely to use synonyms or to replace the more appropriate adjectives, which cause non-native expressions. (3) As for the colligation of <em>effect+preposition</em>, <em>in </em>is most frequently used by Chinese scholars, but seem to be untypical to the international journal scholars. The study found that interlingual transfer (mother tongue transfer) and intralingual transfer appear to be the main causes of these discrepancies.</p>

Sustained attention in language production: an individual differences investigation.

Whereas it has long been assumed that most linguistic processes underlying language production happen automatically, accumulating evidence suggests that these processes do require some form of attention. Here we investigated the contribution of sustained attention: the ability to maintain alertness over time. In Experiment 1, participants' sustained attention ability was measured using auditory and visual continuous performance tasks. Subsequently, employing a dual-task procedure, participants described pictures using simple noun phrases and performed an arrow-discrimination task while their vocal and manual response times (RTs) and the durations of their gazes to the pictures were measured. Earlier research has demonstrated that gaze duration reflects language planning processes up to and including phonological encoding. The speakers' sustained attention ability correlated with the magnitude of the tail of the vocal RT distribution, reflecting the proportion of very slow responses, but not with individual differences in gaze duration. This suggests that sustained attention was most important after phonological encoding. Experiment 2 showed that the involvement of sustained attention was significantly stronger in a dual-task situation (picture naming and arrow discrimination) than in simple naming. Thus, individual differences in maintaining attention on the production processes become especially apparent when a simultaneous second task also requires attentional resources.

The structure of the Dagbani simple noun phrase

This article discusses the structure of the Dagbani simple noun phrase. It is shown that, structurally, the Dagbani simple noun phrase is made up of the obligatory head noun and several optional elements. These optional elements generally follow the head noun of the simple noun phrase and so are labelled as post head modifiers. The adjective, the numeral, the demonstrative determiner and the quantifier are analysed as the modifiers of the simple noun phrase in Dagbani. These modifiers give certain grammatical or semantic information about the noun they modify. Though the Dagbani noun phrase may take several post modifiers, these modifiers are strictly ordered since each modifier has a prescribed syntactic slot.

Word Order Distribution in the English Noun Phrase

This study was carried out to investigate the word order distribution of English Noun Phrases (NPs) by using Saussure’s notion of structural linguistics and Reid’s meaning-based approach. The data from non-literary texts and short stories were examined to see if they comply with the patterns of NPs which have been proposed by other traditional linguists. The results of this study revealed that both literary and non-literary writings share similar word order distribution of simple noun phrases (i.e. ‘determiner + modifier + head noun’) with some slight differences pertaining to the positions of the modifiers in both texts. The analysis can be further improved by focusing on one category of word order distribution to identify the occurrences and to precisely elaborate on the occurrences of the word order.

Subject marking, coordination and noun classes in ciNsenga

Subject marking on the Bantu verb seems to be a straightforward process in clauses with simple subject noun phrases (NP) as the verb only has to agree with a single NP. With conjoined NPs, on the other hand, subject-verb agreement is more complicated as there are three possibilities for such agreement: (i) agreement with both conjuncts (total agreement); (ii) agreement with one of the conjuncts (partial agreement); (iii) no agreement at all (default agreement). This study reveals that in ciNsenga partial agreement with conjoined NPs is not permitted; that total agreement and default agreement are determined by a combination of number, human, and gender features. Total agreement is possible only if the conjuncts denote nouns from the same plural class. Default agreement comes in two different forms: (i) if two conjuncts from different noun classes denote humans then agreement is with Class 2; (ii) if the conjuncts denote singular non-humans or they conflict in noun class then agreement is with Class 8. The study also reveals that default agreement for non-humans is restricted by word order, which suggests that agreement patterns are restricted by a combination of semantic and syntactic factors.

Deciding where to stop speaking

This study investigated whether speakers strategically decide where to interrupt their speech once they need to stop. We conducted four naming experiments in which pictures of colored shapes occasionally changed in color or shape. Participants then merely had to stop (Experiment 1); or they had to stop and resume speech (Experiments 2–4). They were asked either to produce a simple noun phrase (Experiments 1–2 and 4) or a sentence structure in which the word order was reversed (Experiment 3). The task was performed in a non-communicative situation (Experiments 1–3) or in the presence of an interlocutor who needed to understand the utterance (Experiment 4). In all experiments, the time interval (SOA) between the initial and changed picture was varied, and the locus of word-internal interruptions (within color or shape word) depended on this SOA. In contrast to the predictions of Levelt (1983), people stopped both within correct and incorrect words. The proportions of word-internal interruptions and word completions were, however, influenced by the task instructions (e.g., there were more word completions and fewer word-internal interruptions when people resumed speech than when they did not). The results suggest that people sometimes decide to postpone their interruptions and complete their words instead of interrupting as fast as possible. We propose an account of speech interruption that includes strategic stopping.

Planning in sentence production: Evidence for the phrase as a default planning scope

Controversy remains as to the scope of advanced planning in language production. Smith and Wheeldon (1999) found significantly longer onset latencies when subjects described moving-picture displays by producing sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase than for matched sentences beginning with a simple noun phrase. While these findings are consistent with a phrasal scope of planning, they might also be explained on the basis of: (1) greater retrieval fluency for the second content word in the simple initial noun phrase sentences and (2) visual grouping factors. In Experiments 1 and 2, retrieval fluency for the second content word was equated for the complex and simple initial noun phrase conditions. Experiments 3 and 4 addressed the visual grouping hypothesis by using stationary displays and by comparing onset latencies for the same display for sentence and list productions. Longer onset latencies for the sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase were obtained in all experiments, supporting the phrasal scope of planning hypothesis. The results indicate that in speech, as in other motor production domains, planning occurs beyond the minimal production unit.