Subject-verb Agreement Research Articles

Towards Abstract Syntax at 24 Months: Evidence from Subject-Verb Agreement with Conjoined Subjects

ABSTRACTWe examined French-learning toddlers’ sensitivity to Subject-Verb agreement with conjoined subjects. In French, a conjoined NP triggers plural agreement even when made up of individual singular NPs. Processing of this infrequent structure in the input (see Corpus Analyses) requires going beyond surface patterns of non-adjacent dependencies to abstract, feature-based syntactic knowledge. In Experiment 1, results revealed a significant grammaticality effect in 24-month-olds, but not in 18-month-olds, with no interaction with the condition (with either conjoined or non-conjoined agreement; all tested with Head-Turn Preference Procedure). In Experiment 2, 30-month-olds (tested with conjoined agreement only) showed the same pattern as 24-month-olds: a strong grammaticality effect limited to the first half of the experiment. Overall, these results provide some support to the hypothesis that 24- and 30-month-olds (but not 18-month-olds) have abstract knowledge of SV agreement with conjoined subjects, although it imposes a high processing cost. Importantly, this abstract syntactic sensitivity precedes the earliest evidence of simple agreement comprehension.

Writing Essays Made Easy with Instawrite

Writing is a mammoth task especially to English as a Second Language Learners (ESL). In the Malaysian education setting, Year 6 Pupils are required to sit for a public exam where their writing skills are evaluated. However, it was discovered that feedbacks from teachers to pupils take more time. This action research was carried out to determine how far the use of InstaWrite can improve writing essays among Year 5 Pupils. These pupils were from rural primary schools in Alor Gajah, Melaka and Jempol, Negeri Sembilan. The research participants were a total of seven males and seven females with low to intermediate proficiency levels. Participants would use InstaWrite to help them to write narrative essays. These essays are based on a specific context and in an environment that is relatively fun for the participants. The data collected for this research were analysed using document analysis and semi-structured interviews. Participants wrote a single paragraph daily and feedbacks were given by both teachers and other participants. These feedbacks were used to refine the work. After the implementation of InstaWrite, results of the study showed an increase in the number of correct sentences written. The sentences constructed post-InstaWrite adhered to the Subject-Verb Agreement (SVA) structure. The study showed that the use of Instawrite could be a suitable teaching tool to strengthen pupils writing of paragraphs to form an essay. This beneficial use of technology would encourage more pupils to practice writing in English.

INTERLANGUAGE ANALYSIS OF SYNTACTIC AND DICTION ERRORS FOUND IN THESES WRITTEN BY MAGISTER STUDENTS

Postgraduate students are expected to show more advanced writing skill than others. However, the writer observed that they still made some errors in their thesis writing. Having reread the theses written by graduate students, Linguistic Surface Category and Surface Strategy Taxonomy proposed by Dulay, Burt Krashen were utilized to analyze the data. It was found that syntactic errors (89%) such as subject-verb agreement (15.42%), tenses (15.71%), redundancy (13.14%), article (7.71%), and pluralization (6.28%) are the most frequent errors occured. While lexical errors (11%) such as wrong selection of verb (5.14%) and adjective (3.14%) also still made by graduate students. The study revealed that intralingual interference still be the cause of the blunders in writing a thesis. It is hoped that the present study could initiate university students to contemplate that self-correction and self-awareness in making errors in scholarly writing are essential. Emphasizing more assignments in academic writing can be applied by the lecturers of higher education know students ability and train students to write academically. Faculty of teacher training of education should afford students with seminars and workshop of academic writing to motivate them to write and enhance their knowledge about academic writing.DOI: doi.org/10.24071/ijiet.2019.030110

THE ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL PROBLEMS AND GENERIC STRUCTURE OF NARRATIVE TEXT WRITTEN BY THE ELEVENTH GRADUATE STUDENTS OF LANGUAGE PROGRAM AT SMAK ST.KLAUS WERANG-WEST FLORES

The study was intended to analyze grammatical problem and generic structures of narrative text written by the eleventh grade students of Language program at SMAK St. Klaus–West Flores in the academic year 2016/2017. The data were mainly collected through assigment on narrative written text and itervies and were analyzed descriptively using Dulay’lingistics taxonomy (1982) and Fink’ category (2005). The result of data analysis revealed that the students committed errors in their narrrative writing, namely article, possessive case, omission of – ed, regularization by adding –ed, simple present tense used in place of simple past tense, omission of –be, pluralization, pronoun, preposition, omission of main verb, subject verb agreement, word order, diction, spelling, passive form, adverb, conjunction, double marking, and modals. The cause of error was interference, lack of vocabularies, and motivation, and teacher’ ability/qualification.

Input Training Matters in L2 Syntactic Representation Entrenchment: Evidence from a Follow-Up ERP Study.

The usage-based theory highlights the important role of linguistic input in language acquisition, and assumes that syntactic representations could be entrenched through usage or exposure. In the present study, we used the event-related potential technique to investigate the long-term effect of input training on second language (L2) syntactic representations entrenchment, using English subject-verb agreement structures as the stimuli. Results showed that 3months after the training of the specific subject-verb agreement structures, a significant P600 was observed in the key region (the verb) of the sentences with syntactic violations in the experimental group, but not in the control group. This indicates that linguistic input training contributes to syntactic representations entrenchment, which can be sustained for a relatively long period, indicating a long-term effect of input training. The results suggest that linguistic input is a causal variable in L2 online syntactic processing, supporting the usage-based theory.

Error Analysis of Written Academic Essays of Fijian Undergraduate Students: A Case Study

<em>The purpose of the present study was to examine errors of written academic essays of Fijian undergraduate pre-service and in-service students at the Fiji National University Lautoka campus. Previous studies have focused only on pre-service undergraduate students but this paper takes into account in-service students as well which is a new dimension and knowledge to existing literature. The study mainly focused on eighteen errors as classified and adapted from Darus and Ching (2009) with the top six errors discussed in this paper. Twenty writing samples were analysed with the top errors for pre-service students being mechanics, subject verb agreement, redundancy, prepositions, tense and vocabulary choice while in-service students had errors in mechanics, redundancy, tense, articles, incomplete structures, word form and clarity. The authors found that carelessness and failure to recognize important words in the sentences as the main reasons for the errors. The paper recommends that remedial lessons on usage of articles, word formation, and prepositions are required in the course curriculum to improve upon the areas mentioned.</em>

The Age Factor Revisited: Timing in Acquisition Interacts With Age of Onset in Bilingual Acquisition

In this paper, we investigate whether timing in monolingual acquisition interacts with age of onset and input effects in child bilingualism. Six different morpho-syntactic and semantic phenomena acquired early, late or very late are considered, with their timing in L1 acquisition varying between age 3 (subject-verb agreement) and after age 6 (case marking). Data from simultaneous bilingual children (2L1) whose mean age of onset to German was 3 months are compared with data from early second language learners of German (eL2) whose mean age of onset to German was 35 months as well as with data from monolingual children. To explore change over time, children were tested twice at the ages of 4;4 and 5;8 years. The main findings were that 2L1 children had an advantage over their eL2 peers in early acquired phenomena, which disappeared with time, whereas in late acquired phenomena 2L1 and eL2 children did not differ. Moreover, 2L1 children performed like monolingual children in early acquired phenomena but had a disadvantage in the late acquired phenomena with the amount of delay decreasing with time. We conclude that age of onset effects are modulated by effects of timing in monolingual acquisition. Contrary to expectation, input in terms of language dominance, measured as the dominant language used at home, did not affect simultaneous bilingual children’s performance in any of the phenomena. We discuss the implications of our findings for the hypothesis that acquisition of late phenomena is determined by input alone and suggest an alternative concept: the learner’s internal need for time to master a phenomenon, which is determined by its complexity and cross-linguistic robustness.

The Effects of Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures in Teaching Subject–Verb Agreement among Rural Sarawak Learners

Even after undertaking years of formal education to acquire the language in schools, having a poor command of English remains a problem faced by most Malaysians, especially students in rural schools of Sarawak. Based on the error-analysis carried out by recent research, subject–verb agreement (SVA) is one of the most frequent errors committed by students. To overcome this problem, teachers should significantly improve students’ mastery of SVA in the English language through effective teaching methods. Therefore, this research was conducted to explore the effects of Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures in teaching SVA among rural Sarawak learners. In this study, 35 Form 4 students were selected from a secondary school in the Belaga District, Sarawak as the research participants. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used as data collection tools. Overall, findings demonstrated that students showed positive feedback after the intervention was implemented. Results of this research will hopefully provide insights to secondary school students, teachers and the community in the cooperative teaching and learning of grammar.

Subject-Verb Agreement In Existential Constructions In Contemporary American English:, A Corpus-Based Study

Subject-Verb Agreement In Existential Constructions In Contemporary American English:, A Corpus-Based Study

Development and Validation of an Activity-Based Module on Subject-Verb Agreement Rules

Development and Validation of an Activity-Based Module on Subject-Verb Agreement Rules

Humans, Animals, Things and Animacy

AbstractAnimacy influences the patterns of subject-verb agreement marking in many languages, including Persian and Inari Saami. In Persian, animate plural subjects trigger plural agreement on the verb, whereas inanimate subjects may or may not trigger agreement. The variation is governed by factors such as personification, agency and distributivity. In Inari Saami, verbs fully agree with human subjects and verbs partially agree with inanimate subjects. Verbs may or may not agree with subjects referring to animals. We argue that the intricate interaction between biological animacy and grammatical agreement in these two languages warrants careful consideration of the tripartite distinction between biological animacy in the world, our conceptualization of animacy and formal animacy features in the grammar.

Topic Prominence in the Hawaiian Language

This study explores whether Hawaiian, a canonically VSO language, has the properties of topic-prominent (TopP) languages. Based on tests using the diagnostics for TopP and subjectprominent (SP) languages, this study concludes that Hawaiian is closer to TopP languages than SP languages. First, Hawaiian has a topic marker like other TopP languages. When Hawaiian 'o is followed by an NP in the sentence initial position, the NP becomes the center of attention in the sentence and is definite. In addition, the 'o-marked fronted NP can control co-referential constituent deletion. Second, there are sentences that can be viewed as double-subject constructions, which appear in TopP languages but not in SP languages. Third, Hawaiian has no constraint on what may be the topic, which again suggests that Hawaiian has the properties of TopP languages. Finally, lack of subject-verb agreement and dummy subject supports that Hawaiian is distant from SP languages.

Analysis of Errors Made by First Year Secondary School Students in Writing English Sentences: A Case Study of Libyan EFL Students

The aim of this study is to identify, classify and explain the reasons behind the written errors and difficulties encountered by First Year Secondary School Students, Al-Jufra Region, Libya. A random sample of students and teachers is selected. The sample is thirty students and ten teachers. The data is collected through three tools: written task by students and two questionnaires; one for the teachers and one for the students. The data is analyzed by using a descriptive method. The findings reveal that First Year Secondary School Students encounter difficulties in writing English sentences including verb tense and form, subject verb agreement, word order, prepositions, articles, plurality and auxiliaries. It is also revealed that students are not motivated enough to engage into written activities. These writing errors are mainly due to first language (L1) interference. The study concludes with some recommendations that will help First Year Secondary School Students to minimize their writing difficulties.

Error Analysis of Subject-Verb Agreement Made by Students in Meurandeh Langsa

This research aimed at identifying the subject-verb agreement errors in students’ writing. This research applied a descriptive research. The data were collected through test and non-test instruments. Test instruments were conducted through writing test and non-test instruments were through questionnaire and interview. The data obtained from both test and non-test instruments were conducted by employing descriptive analysis. This research analyzed students’ narrative writing based on Surface Strategy Taxonomy proposed by Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982). This result revealed the types of error in subject-verb agreement in the students’ narrative writing covering omission, addition and misinformation. In conclusion, the students involved in the research made a number of errors. It was found that the students’ ability to use subject-verb agreement in English was still low.

STUDENTS’ PROBLEMS ON S-V AGREEMENT IN TOEFL AND THEIR PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

This article is presented to discover the students’ problems in subject-verb (S-V) agreement and provides pedagogical solutions to these problems. This study employed descriptive design. There were two instruments used to collect data. The first instrument was a test. It consisted of 10 items with two different types of questions. The second instrument was an open-ended questionnaire consisting of two questions. The participants were 25 social science students of a private university in Yogyakarta. The data included in this study were 10 students’ works which were randomly selected. The result shows that the students' problems in S-V agreement came from their misunderstanding on: future continuous tense, singular-plural subject, appositive, the use of present participle as adjective, the use of simple present tense, the use of either … or … to show one subject, the presence of double subjects, and the use of both to show double subjects. To encounter these problems, the teacher is suggested to teach the students about the essential elements of a sentence first rather than teaching other aspects. The essential elements are subject and predicate. In short, the students must understand well that a sentence, at least, must consist of one subject and one predicate (verb). After understanding the essential elements of a sentence, the students can be taught to understand other supporting aspects which also become the causes of students’ problems in S-V agreement.

Singular Agreement in Special Partitive Constructions in Dutch

Dutch partitive constructions of the typeone of the (few) X who Yshow a striking pattern of singular subject-verb agreement in their relative clause. This paper presents a corpus study showing that the prescriptively “incorrect” singular agreement pattern is in fact the dominant pattern in Dutch. In order to explain this, we argue that this type of partitive construction often has a specific function in context, namely, to point out that the subject is special or extraordinary, usually for the reason presented by the relative clause. We apply a usage-based approach to this construction within the framework of Construction Grammar, arguing that the prevalent implicature of the subject’s specialness has become a conventionalized part of the meaning of the construction. This analysis then can be used to explain the syntactic pattern of singular agreement within the relative clause. A similar albeit less pronounced pattern can be found in German.*

Independence of syntactic and phonological deficits in dyslexia: A study using the attraction error paradigm.

This paper addresses the question of whether dyslexic children suffer from syntactic deficits that are independent of limitations with phonological processing. We looked at subject-verb agreement errors after sentence subjects containing a second noun (the attractor) known to be able to attract incorrect agreement (e.g., "the owner(s) of the house(s) is/are away"). In the general population, attraction errors are not straightforwardly dependent on the presence or absence of morphophonological plural markers but on their syntactic configuration. The same would be expected for dyslexic children if their syntactic problems are not phonological in nature. We also looked at the possible effect of system overload on syntactic processing by comparing auditory and written presentation of stimuli and stimuli with high and low frequency attractors. Dyslexic children produced more agreement errors than age-matched controls, but their errors were distributed in the expected manner and did not align with the presence of morphophonological number markers in the subject overall. Furthermore, there was no effect of either presentation mode or attractor frequency on the number of agreement errors. Our results confirm the existence of syntactic difficulties in dyslexia and suggest that they are not due to a phonological deficit or to verbal working memory limitations.

Exploration de l’évolution des commentaires métagraphiques relatifs à l’accord du verbe en nombre chez des élèves de la fin de l’élémentaire scolarisés dans le Sud-Ouest ontarien

This article presents the evolution of the verbalizations of three students finishing elementary school in Southwestern Ontario after they completed written tasks on subject-verb agreement in number. Results show that the students used a wide variety of cognitive procedures to spell out their verbs and that those who succeeded the most are also those who, via a morphosyntactic type of linguistic reflection, found the word that shared its grammatical number with the verb. Using this data, we propose pedagogical practices that take into account students who are schooled in French in a linguistic minority context.

Robust neurocognitive individual differences in grammatical agreement processing: A latent variable approach

Many neurocognitive accounts of language processing presume that neural responses detected in grand mean analyses of cortical electrophysiological activity reflect the normative brain response in the population under investigation. However, emerging work now shows that individuals' brain responses can vary systematically in both the size and type of effect elicited. The present research therefore examined individual differences in neural activity elicited by grammatical agreement anomalies during language comprehension in a large cohort of highly literate, monolingual English speakers (N = 114), a population generally assumed to be relatively homogenous in terms of linguistic knowledge and processing. Results showed systematic variability in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by subject-verb agreement anomalies, with brain responses varying on a continuum between N400 and P600 dominant responses. Similar variation was found both when agreement was realized via inflectional morphology or via lexical alternations. Individuals' brain response type correlated strongly across these two conditions. Similar variation was also found for ERPs elicited during rapid serial visual presentation and when self-paced ERPs were recorded. Multilevel latent variable regression showed that variation in brain response amplitude and type was not related to individual differences in language experience or verbal working memory capacity, despite high statistical power. These findings indicate that descriptions of processing dynamics predicated solely on grand mean analyses of central tendency can fail to provide an accurate, generalizable account of how processing unfolds in many or most individual members of the population studied. Furthermore, these findings show that systematic individual variation in engagement of neural system supporting grammatical processing is found even in language users at the highest end of the proficiency spectrum and in grammatically simple sentences. This study therefore has implications for studies of language processing in atypical populations.

TEACHING OF THIRD-PERSON PLURAL SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT WITH DIGITAL MEDIA IN MIDDLE SCHOOL

Este artigo descreve uma mediação pedagógica aplicada numa turma de 7º ano do Ensino Fundamental para o trabalho com a concordância verbal de 3ª pessoa do plural, por meio de atividades de produção de textos de diferentes gêneros, distribuídos num contínuo oralidade-letramento (BORTONI-RICARDO, 2004), em suportes digitais. O objetivo foi propiciar o multiletramento dos alunos seja no uso de novas tecnologias aplicadas ao ensino, seja na ampliação de seu repertório linguístico quanto à concordância verbal segundo as normas urbanas de prestígio. Os resultados mostraram um crescimento na aplicação da regra em direção à semicategorização (LABOV, 2003) no decorrer das atividades.