Specific Grammatical Features Research Articles

Features of Grammatical Writing Competence among Early Writers in a Norwegian School Context

In this article, we investigate how grammatical competence is manifested in young students’ written texts and how this contributes to the students’ overall writing competence. We pose the following two research questions: (i) Which grammatical features appear in a selection of young students’ texts? and (ii) What do these features reveal about different aspects of the students’ grammatical writing competence? The empirical fundament for this study is a representative sample of texts gathered through the project FUS—Functional Writing in the First School Years. Our primary material amounts to a total of 534 texts written by first- and second-grade students (ages 6–7). The students have completed two writing tasks, in which they were asked to write one descriptive and one narrative text. In our analyses, we see grammatical writing competence as consisting of several sub-competencies—namely, grammatical repertoire, grammatical complexity, grammatical variation, and grammatical choice. Our analyses show that the grammatical repertoire of beginner students is well-developed. The frequency of specific grammatical features differs between the two writing tasks, underpinning the argument that certain text types trigger certain grammatical choices.

Возможная корреляция семантики Genetivus Objec­tivus с социо-практикой в разных философских культурах

The article suggests specific grammatical features of some languages of the leading philosophical traditions of Eurasia, which can explain some of the differences in philo­sophical thinking that exist in these traditions. In particular, the use of Genetivus Objec­tivus in Sanskrit, New European, Latin and Arabic languages is considered, its possible correlation with the socio-practice of cultures in which these languages are dominant is analyzed. As a theoretical preamble, which allows not only to raise, but also to compre­hend the designated problems, the author refers to the logical-semantic theory proposed by the Russian philosopher and arabist Andrei V. Smirnov (b. 1958), which deals with subject-predicate constructions in substantive and procedural logic, the problems of cor­relation of language and thinking, as well as the commensurability of the bases rationality in different philosophical cultures. Analyzing the peculiarities of the use of the so-called object genitive case (Genetivus Objectivus) in different linguistic traditions, the author comes to the conclusion that it is the grammar of a language that often determines the pe­culiarities of a person’s thinking, which in turn are reflected in the socio-practice of a par­ticular culture. Using the example of the Sanskrit fragment “Śrībhāṣya” by the Indian me­dieval philosopher Rāmānuja (XI–XII), in which the compound word (brahmajijñāsā) is proposed to be read as a combination of two nouns in the construction of Genetivus Ob­jectivus (brahmano jijñāsā) (with reference to the grammar of Pāṇini), the author of the article shows the peculiarity of Sanskrit-speaking thinking in comparison with New Euro­pean, Arabic and Latin languages. This feature is understood in the light of the defini­tions offered by philosophical traditions to understand the nature of God or the Absolute Principle.

Distributed Agency in the Novel

In this study, I propose to side-step the philosophical complexity surrounding free will, agency, or volition in favor of their linguistic proxy, syntax. Whatever the belief about willful subjects, the English language forces our thoughts into linear propositions, where subject verbs object. As such, nouns in the subject position become semantically the causes of action, and objects their passive effects: pilots fly planes, maintenance crews clean snow, terrorists detonate bombs. Such complex personifications don't need to be mapped out perfectly before observing that actors are those entities that act, and that action manifests itself through verbs. Assuming little more than that, one can ask: What sorts of nouns get to "do" stuff in the novel? Who are the most common syntactical actants? And who or what do they act upon? With this bit of shorthand we can discuss characterization not in terms of contested philosophical categories, such as name or being, but in relation to specific grammatical features. The syntactic points to the philosophical subject. I proceed, then, by developing a computational method for extracting a set of main characters from a novel (or any other collection of sentences in which agency might be implicated). Hailey's Airport bears the brunt of my analysis, where a few other more familiar novels supply comparison for an experiment in formal literary method.

Afro-Brazilian Cupópia

The present paper focuses on the speech of a rural Afro-Brazilian community called Cafundó, situated 150 km from São Paulo. In 1978, when linguistic data were collected, the community constituted approximately eighty individuals, descendants of two slave women who inherited their owners’ proprieties. According to earlier studies, when the inhabitants of Cafundó spoke in their supposed ‘African language’, Cupópia, they used structures borrowed from Portuguese and a vocabulary of possible African origin. A lexical analysis shows that the etymologies match historical and demographical data, indicating that speakers of varieties of Kimbundu, Kikongo, and Umbundu dominated in the community. Through a morphosyntactic analysis, specific features were found in the data, such as copula absence and variable agreement patterns. By showing that some of Cupópia’s specific grammatical features are not derived from the Portuguese spoken by the same speakers but are instead shared with more restructured varieties, this paper defends the hypothesis that this lexically driven in-group code is not simply a regional variety of Portuguese with a number of African-derived words.

Borrowing matter and pattern in morphology. An overview

Morphological inventories and structures of languages in contact can converge by means of either increasing formal similarity (MAT borrowing), or structural congruence (PAT borrowing), or a combination of both (MAT&PAT borrowing). In order to understand whether and how these borrowing types covary with specific grammatical features and modules of grammar, I propose a typology of MAT and PAT borrowing that distinguishes between functional and realization levels and covers all areas of grammar that can be affected by borrowing. I exemplify selected subtypes of borrowing with a number of crosslinguistic cases focusing on morphology and morphosyntax.

Using meta-analysis of technique and timing to optimize corrective feedback for specific grammatical features

Grammar varies in semantic, morphosyntactic, and phonological complexity, which may influence what type of Corrective Feedback (CF) is effective. The present study was designed to investigate the best form of CF for each grammatical feature, in conjunction with associated variables such as learner proficiency level and L1 influence. Fifteen studies, all of which had English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners with a Korean L1 and productive measures of speech or writing, were selected for study. Results suggest that grammatical features which are very similar to the L1 may benefit more from implicit reformulations (recasts). Explicit CF (direct and metalinguistic feedback) appears more useful for semantically and syntactically complex features such as the English article and past hypothetical conditional. Finally, research of proficiency level suggests that timely emphasis of specific grammatical features is needed in order for CF to be effective.

ESSENCE AND ALPHABETICS OF ADVERTISING OF MEDICINAL PRODUCTS

The article introduces the nature and features of advertising for medicinal products. The requirements for the advertising of medicinal products are determined by an ordinance of the Minister of Health. These are contained in the Law on Medicinal Products in Human Medicine (LMPHM). Pharmaceuticals are part of consumer goods. They are intended to meet precisely defined needs when a particular need arises, in a specific set of situations, and thus they are a kind of special commodity. The subject of alphabetics are the alphabets of the various sign systems. Advertisements for medicinal products are composed of the alphabets of at least five sign systems: verbal, clothing, colour, signs and physical characteristics. There are ads designed only for women, as well as the specific female ads intended for the mother and baby. There are others presenting the masculine position. Typical language strategies in their use are binding them to different types of sentences by speech, their participation in dialogical text structures, in antitheses, in different types of repetitions. The parts of speech used and their specific grammatical features in the realization of the creative are described in detail. The predominant chromatems are also given. The contribution of language takes an important place in the realization of commercial goals in the semiotic realization of ads.

Student Perceptions of Mobile Video Recording to Learn American Sign Language

This article reports an exploratory study of teacher candidate perception of learning, using video recording in an American Sign Language (ASL) class. Video recording for practice and reflection is relevant to learning ASL, a visual language. One advantage of recording video for learning ASL with mobile devices instead of computers is the larger physical space that can be captured. Thirteen teacher candidates in a graduate program participated, by completing three surveys regarding their experiences with mobile app assignments designed for practicing expressive skills using specific ASL grammatical features. Results showed that 10 out of 12 teacher candidates found app assignments helpful in assessing their own sign skills, and 11 out of 12 found them helpful in clarifying ASL concepts. Nine out of 12 teacher candidates reported increased interest in learning ASL, and 11 out of 13 teacher candidates indicated that their ASL improved due to use of the app.

Some Effects of Explicit Grammar Instruction and Syntactic Priming on Students’ Written Language Production

Structural or syntactic priming is a phenomenon in which prior exposure to specific language structures either facilitates or interferes with a learner’s subsequent language production [1]. Exposure to English structures through explicit instruction is reported to have inconclusive results. [2] reported that explicit and implicit grammar instruction ends up with automatization. This study reexamines the effect of syntactic priming and explicit grammar instruction on students’ writing. Specific grammatical features frequently appeared on TOEFL (Written Expression Section) test were intensively practiced and then the students took a test whose items were specifically collected from TOEFL practice tests. Finally, the students were assigned to write a short essay. Sentences with similar structures which the students had been exposed to were extracted from the students’ essays. Out of 40 test items, only 59.86% in average could be answered correctly, and all of the grammatical features to which the students were previously exposed were contained in their essays. However, in average only eight out of 18 sentences were grammatically constructed. It can be concluded that although priming method with explicit instruction leads the students to use similar syntactic features in their writing, it seems to have little impact on students’ grammatical knowledge for immediate use in written language production.

How Does Form-Focused Instruction Affect Korean EFL Students in a Communicative Language Teaching Classroom?

This study aims to explore how Form-Focused Instruction (FFI) in a CLT context would affect Korean EFL university students’ oral communicative competence as well as their perceptions. Fifty two students participated in this study, and 26 in the FFI class were instructed to learn specific grammatical features with communication skills; whereas the rest of 26 in the non-FFI class were never given any grammar instruction or feedback. The two classes’ performance on the group oral conversation test and their responses to the survey questionnaire were, respectively, compared. The test results showed that the FFI class students outperformed those in the non-FFI class in all areas including grammar, vocabulary, content, fluency, turn-taking, and non-verbal behaviors. In addition, the survey results demonstrated that the FFI class students thought they had improved particularly grammar and fluency, and thus gained greater confidence and motivation; whereas the non-FFI class students were concerned much about their grammatical correctness which made them difficult to continue conversation. It can be thus confirmed that FFI in a CLT classroom would help students enhance their communicative competence and confidence.

Using Word Sketch to Investigate the Lexical and Grammatical Environment of Cognates across English and Italian

Word Sketches are automatic, corpus-based summaries – one or two pages in length – of a word’s grammatical and collocational behaviour. Word Sketch is one of the many facilities offered by Sketch Engine and has been extensively adopted by lexicographers in view of its detailed and visually friendly features. However, dictionaries can provide only a limited amount of information and therefore may not necessarily report specific grammatical and/or semantic features – in particular semantic prosodies – of the word in question. This paper offers a critical analysis of examples of Bilingual Word Sketch searches across English and Italian, with particular reference to cognates of the two languages with apparently similar meanings, in an attempt to shed light on the advantages and disadvantages of Word Sketch to investigate cross-language near-synonym differentiation.

An Output-guided Study of Chinese Students’ ESA Difficulty

English subjunctive mood is always considered as the most difficult part of English teaching. English subjunctive mood carries specific grammatical features such as verbal inflexions, sentences structure, tenses and the understanding of counterfactual meaning. Swain (1985, 1995a, 1995b) poses Output Hypothesis to explain the difficulty of the L2 learners. Based on the hypothesis, pedagogical instructions are also provided theoretically. Other scholarly efforts such as Levelt (1989) and Gass (1988, 1997) are also made to establish the models of SLA. Output Hypothesis is largely applied to a lot of empirical studies, but a specific framework is never found to explain and solve the ESA difficulty that Chinese college English majors have. The present research, on one hand, evaluates the models of SLA, on the other hand introduces Schema in cognitive linguistics to establish a framework that can explain and solve the ESA difficulty.

Explicit grammar teaching in EAL classrooms: Suggestions from isiXhosa speakers’ L2 data

The development of the subject English Additional Language (EAL) to serve as a strong support subject in explicitly teaching learners the grammar of English is suggested as an interim solution to the effects of the non-implementation of the 1997 South African Language in Education Policy. To identify specific grammatical features for explicit instruction, an initial step was taken in analysing the second language English free speech and grammatical intuitions of eight first language speakers of isiXhosa. Collectively, results revealed syntactic, semantic and morphological features of English, in that order, to prove most problematic to these speakers. More specifically, in terms of syntax, the omission of especially prepositions and articles was identified as a topic for explicit instruction, along with the syntactic positioning of adverbs and particles. In terms of semantics, incorrect lexical selection, especially of prepositions/prepositional phrases and pronouns, proved the most common non-native feature to be suggested for explicit teaching. Lastly, in terms of morphology, inflection proved most problematic, with the accurate formulation (especially in terms of tense and/or aspect forms) of past tense, progressive and irrealis structures being the features suggested for explicit instruction, along with the third person singular feature.

Syntagms Constructed with Coordinative Particles in Ṛgveda 1.1 –1.50

In the Ṛgveda, several types of syntactic construction expressing a coordinative or copulative relationship occur: dvandva compounds, copulative asyndeta, elliptic duals, and syntagms constructed with coordinative particles. This article investigates the role of coordinative particles in the first fifty hymns of the Ṛgveda, focusing in particular on the most frequently used particle ca and comparing its use to other copulative conjunctions attested in the text, especially where ca is used twice (i.e. ca … ca) and the particle utá. The article investigates how coordination is expressed between two words and aims to identify differences in the usage of coordinative particles if the words coordinated are theonyms or non-theonyms. By examining how two words coordinated with particles occur elsewhere in other coordinative constructions, the article demonstrates that research into coordinative constructions in Vedic ought to pay special attention to the specific grammatical and linguistic features of theonyms.

The use of reformulation markers in Business Management research articles

This paper investigates the use of reformulation markers as a common metadiscourse device in L1 English and Spanish and in L2 English research articles of a particular discipline, namely Business Management. These markers are considered procedural items, i.e. they encode information on how to process lexical meaning. The general frequency of use of the markers, the types of markers used, the functions most commonly performed and their (non-)parenthetical uses are compared in order to explore the degree of transference in their use by the L1 Spanish academics writing L2 English articles. The results are compared to similar studies on reformulation markers in general English and Spanish and also to studies in other disciplines. The results lead us to conclude that some general rhetorical L1 features are more likely to be adapted in the L2 English texts written by L1 Spanish academics than other more specific grammatical features.

Bilingual Experience in the Hungarian and German Immigrant Communities of the San Francisco Bay Area

Studies on the interaction of languages are gaining importance in today’s world, characterized by accelerated migration and increasing cultural exchange. Unlike most research in this field, which concentrate on one embedded language against a matrix language, this fieldwork-based study examines the linguistic life in two immigrant populations, Hungarian and German, against the background of English. The primary focus of this article is the description of the bilingual and bicultural experience of the two groups. The discussion of language and identity will take a central place in the paper, and diglossia, bilingualism, loyalty, and language as social behavior will also be touched upon (section 4). This is complemented by a socio-historical portrayal of these speech communities of San Francisco, set forth in the preceding section 3. Section 5 provides an outline of the informant sets, spanning three generations in each linguistic cohort, and illustrates the subjects’ attitude towards maintenance. The final, sixth section offers qualitative and quantitative comparative statements about the results of linguistic interference and the ongoing attrition process, thus contributing to our understanding of contact linguistic mechanisms, and shedding light on specific grammatical and lexical features that are most prone to attritional forces.

THE INCIDENTAL ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH PLURAL –S BY JAPANESE CHILDREN IN COMPREHENSION-BASED AND PRODUCTION-BASED LESSONS

Most studies that have investigated the effects of instruction on the SLA of specific grammatical features have focused on intentional learning. This study investigated incidental acquisition by comparing the relative effects of two types of instruction—comprehension-based instruction (CBI) and production-based instruction (PBI)—on young Japanese learners’ incidental acquisition of English plural –s. Results showed that both the CBI and PBI groups performed significantly better than the control group on both the comprehension and production tests. There were no statistically significant differences between the two experimental groups. However, a comparison of those learners in the two groups who were complete beginners indicated an advantage for the CBI instruction. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the interactions in one CBI and one PBI class showed that the students who received both kinds of instruction had ample exposure to plural –s nouns but that the nature of the corrective feedback they received differed. Whereas the feedback that the students in the CBI group received on their comprehension errors enabled them to distinguish the meanings of plural and singular nouns, the feedback that the students in the PBI group received on their production errors—in the form of recasts—did not result in the repair of errors.

Grammatical features of Kenyan English and the extent of their acceptability

This study sought to provide evidence for the existence of specific grammatical features which one could definitely say are characteristic of Kenyan English. Using a questionnaire, it gauged the extent of acceptability of twenty-six features by between 75 and 188 respondents. The twenty-six features appeared in sentences that would be considered as deviant in standard international English, and informants were instructed to correct errors in them. The sample of respondents was drawn, over a two-year period, from eight classes of students specializing in either linguistics or communication at the University of Nairobi. The target features covered “grammar” in its widest sense: from punctuation marks and spelling to morphological, syntactic and lexical aspects. The results showed that fourteen (i.e. 54%) of the twenty-six structures scored acceptability ratings of at least 60%. These could be argued to be indeed characteristic of at least written Kenyan English. But, with acceptability ratings for some other structures being as low as only two and eighteen percent, the results equally suggest that some apparently very common features of Kenyan English would only be accepted in spoken, rather than written language.

Large-scale neural network for sentence processing

Our model of sentence comprehension includes at least grammatical processes important for structure-building, and executive resources such as working memory that support these grammatical processes. We hypothesized that a core network of brain regions supports grammatical processes, and that additional brain regions are activated depending on the working memory demands associated with processing a particular grammatical feature. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test this hypothesis by comparing cortical activation patterns during coherence judgments of sentences with three different syntactic features. We found activation of the ventral portion of left inferior frontal cortex during judgments of violations of each grammatical feature. Increased recruitment of the dorsal portion of left inferior frontal cortex was seen during judgments of violations of specific grammatical features that appear to involve a more prominent working memory component. Left posterolateral temporal cortex and anterior cingulate were also implicated in judging some of the grammatical features. Our observations are consistent with a large-scale neural network for sentence processing that includes a core set of regions for detecting and repairing several different kinds of grammatical features, and additional regions that appear to participate depending on the working memory demands associated with processing a particular grammatical feature.

INTERPRETATION-BASED APPROACH TO GRAMMAR TEACHING: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

A substantial body of empirical research has revealed that the application of a purely communicative approach in the EFL setting is inadequate in helping learners attain high levels of grammatical competence. In fact, it has been found in the previous studies that communicative methodology produced learners with low levels of accuracy. Drawing on the contemporary literature related to grammar pedagogy, this article finds it useful to offer an alternative approach to grammar teaching in the EFL setting an approach that is based on task interpretation. This approach emphasizes the learner s comprehension of the specific grammatical features in communicative content. Specifically, it stresses the importance of input processing rather than output processing. In so doing, the approach allows learners awareness of the grammatical features to develop so as to facilitate and eventually accelerate the acquisition process.