Subject Verb Research Articles

Precis of Conjoining Meanings

Precis of Conjoining Meanings

Testing the Bottleneck Hypothesis: Chinese EFL learners’ knowledge of morphology and syntax across proficiency levels

This study tests the Bottleneck Hypothesis (BH) that functional morphology presents the greatest difficulty in second language acquisition by examining Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ knowledge of both functional morphological properties and core syntactic properties across three language proficiency levels. Specifically, this study compares Chinese EFL learners’ grasp of subject–verb agreement (a functional morphological property) vs. their grasp of the syntactic formation rules (properties) of WH-questions including WH-movement, WH- do-insertion (i.e. the insertion of the auxiliary do), and WH- do-inversion (subject–auxiliary inversion): three core syntactic transformation rules. Analyses of the experimental results using generalized mixed-effects models yield complex results that generally support the BH. While subject–verb agreement was found to be persistently more difficult than WH-movement and WH- do-inversion, it was shown to pose essentially the same level of difficulty as WH- do-insertion due to the fact that the latter also involves the application of the functional features of SV-agreement and tense, i.e. the high level of difficulty of WH- do-insertion likely lies in its accompanying application of functional features. Possible explanations for the complex results and their implications are discussed.

El sujeto de las formas no personales: problemas de caracterización y orientaciones para su enseñanza

In this paper we will deal with non-finite verbs that head sentences. The infinitive, gerund and participle forms have traditionally been associated with the categories of noun, adverb, and adjective, respectively. However, such parallelism does not imply a categorial equivalence: the fact that an infinitive occupies similar contexts to those of a noun phrase does not turn into a noun. We will see that non-finite forms constructions constitute bimembral predicative structures and, therefore, have a subject, although it is conditioned by the absence of verbal inflection. To understand the properties of the subject of non-finite verbs, it is necessary to insist on three basic grammatical notions: argument structure, null subject and locality. Based on this approach, we outline a content sequencing to teach non-personal forms in secondary school and we propose a sample of possible exercises of short sequences and minimal pairs. These exercises are based on a methodology that seeks to get students to reflect on grammar by linking meaning to form. 

INFLUENCE OF L1 WHILE LEARNING SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

The study aims at investigating the poverty of subject verb agreement of Gujari learners of English at primary level. According to the term subject-verb agreement in English that verb should agree with the noun or pronoun. It is either singular or plural, the verb changes accordingly. In other words, the SVA can be defined as the change of verb according to the subject’s number and person. The study focusses upon the influence of the first language while constructing the English sentences. It investigated the Gujari speakers of English learners at district Kotli at primary level how their writing is packed with already learned languages. The study used the Brown (1994) model to classify the errors. The model categories the errors such as addition, substitution, wrong selection, omission. Learners writing sample were collected to classify the errors. It was found that adding the helping verb or main verb where it is not required in English. Similarly, they omit the verb despite its requisition likewise they substitute it according to the drive of their already learned languages. they were also found committing errors in the use of pronouns that automatically impact the subject-verb agreement. Keywords: Subject Verb Agreement, Errors, Gujari Learners, First Language Influence.

Processing Gapped and Gapless Relative Clauses in Mandarin: Evidence from Event–Related Brain Potentials

This paper reports an event–related potential (ERP) study examining the processing of “gapless” relative clauses (RCs), normal (“gapped”) RCs, attributive clauses, Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) forms and the morphological markers de and le in Mandarin Chinese. The objectives were to (1) determine whether a processing cost signature can be identified for gap–filler processing by comparing gapped RCs with SVO forms; and (2) determine whether processing gapless RCs is more similar to processing gapped RCs that they resemble on surface or attributive clauses that they resemble structurally by comparing gapped RCs, gapless RCs, and attributive clauses. ERP data was collected from 27 native speakers as they read 160 sentences containing gapped, gapless, attributive, and SVO sentences, which differed only in the second word of the string (e.g., 教授设计的/烧菜的/助手的/设计了/那个广告… The professor designed Ø/cooked food/assistant’s/designed that advertisement…). Results indicate that (1) the head noun evoked larger N400 and P600 components and the determiner elicited a larger sustained anterior negativity for the gapped RCs than for the SVO forms, and (2) the word immediately following the head noun evoked a larger P600 and the determiner elicited a larger sustained anterior negativity for both gapped and gapless RCs than for attributive clauses. These results indicate that (1) gap–filler integration in Mandarin is both semantic (hence the N400) and syntactic (hence the P600) in nature, and (2) gapless RCs are neurophysiologically processed more like gapped RCs than attributive clauses. The ERP signatures to verb+le, verb+de, verbs with verb–object (VO)+de morphological structure, and noun+de revealed that the processing costs for VO verbs and noun modifications were higher than for simple verbs, and the morphological markers de and le induced similar processing costs, even though de triggered the positing of a syntactic gap whereas le did not.

Children with hearing loss can use subject–verb agreement to predict during spoken language processing

Rapid processing of spoken language is aided by the ability to predict upcoming words using both semantic and syntactic cues. However, although children with hearing loss (HL) can predict upcoming words using semantic associations, little is known about their ability to predict using syntactic dependencies such as subject–verb (SV) agreement. This study examined whether school-aged children with hearing aids and/or cochlear implants can use SV agreement to predict upcoming nouns when processing spoken language. Although they did demonstrate prediction with plural SV agreement, they did so more slowly than their normal hearing (NH) peers. This may be due to weaker grammatical representations given that function words and grammatical inflections typically have lower perceptual salience. Thus, a better understanding of morphosyntactic representations in children with HL, and their ability to use these for prediction, sheds much-needed light on the online language processing challenges and abilities of this population.

Number attraction in verb and anaphor production

Prior production research using the preamble-completion paradigm has elicited similar number attraction effects for both verbs and anaphora. However, this paradigm relies on comprehension and memory processes in addition to language production, making it difficult to assess the extent to which the observed attraction effects are caused by factors active during more natural production. In four production experiments, we compared number attraction effects on subject–verb and reflexive–antecedent agreement using a novel scene-description task in addition to a more traditional preamble elicitation paradigm. While the results from the preamble task align with prior findings, the more naturalistic scene-description task produced a contrast between the two dependency types, with robust verb attraction but very low rates of anaphor attraction. In addition to analyzing agreement error distributions, we also analyzed the production time-course of participant responses, finding timing effects that pattern with error distributions, even when no error is present. We discuss potential sources of variable susceptibility to number attraction, suggesting that differences may arise from the time-course of information processing across tasks and linguistic dependencies.

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.

The processing of the ambiguous object pronoun in German monolingual and highly proficient L2 speakers with L1 Georgian

Aims and objectives: The current study examines the role of grammatical and positional parallelism on ambiguous German pronoun resolution in monolingual speakers and highly proficient L2 speakers with L1 Georgian. In particular, the study asks whether an object pronoun ihn in a sentence initial position could refer to the non-subject antecedent in a preceding subject–verb–object sentence. Furthermore, it investigates whether L1 and L2 speakers show similar preferences when resolving ambiguous object pronouns. Methodology: Two visual world eye-tracking and two offline experiments were conducted with L1 and L2 speakers of German. During the eye-tracking session, the task was simply to look and listen, while in the offline test, participants were required to decide on the assumed referent of the ambiguous pronoun. Data and analysis: Linear-mixed effect models were applied to the eye-movement data. Two-sample t tests were used in the analysis of the offline data. Findings and conclusions: Eye-movement results revealed a bias toward the subject antecedent in L1 speakers, while the L2 speakers showed a non-subject preference when resolving the referent of the object pronoun. The offline experiments supported the eye-tracking findings of both groups, particularly as regards the role of grammatical parallelism in the resolution of ambiguous pronouns by the L2 speakers. These findings are interpreted in the context of language-specific processing strategies in anaphora resolution. It appears that L1 and L2 speakers may be using different information-structural cues to resolve ambiguous pronouns. Concretely, a less strongly internalized knowledge of the target language or the influence of the first language may produce alternative processing mechanisms in L2 speakers. Originality: This study fills the research gap on ambiguous object pronoun resolution of L1 and L2 speakers of German. Implications: The findings of this study add additional information to the growing body of research into pronoun resolution. It focuses on the resolution of the German object pronoun within an information-structural framework of language processing in L1 and L2.

On agent focus agreement in Proto-Mayan

In many Mayan languages, a special construction is used to focus subjects of transitive verbs, the so-called agent focus construction. Though this construction has two participants, it is morphologically intransitive and agrees with only one argument. Modern Mayan languages differ in which argument is cross-referenced in the agent focus construction, with some of them showing agreement with the agent, others with the patient and others with either the agent or the patient depending on their respective position on a person hierarchy. All of these patterns have been proposed by different authors to be the original pattern found in Proto-Mayan. Based on evidence from colonial Q’eqchi’, this paper suggests that in Proto-Mayan the verb did not agree at all in the agent focus construction. The variety of different agreement patterns in modern Mayan languages reflects the fact that agreement in the agent focus construction developed only after Proto-Mayan had split up.

Achievement Level of Compulsory and Major English Groups of B.Ed. Students in Subject Verb Agreement of English

This paper attempts to test the achievement level of students who are studying English as a Compulsory English (hereafter CE) and a Major English (hereafter ME) at Bachelor of Education (hereafter B.Ed.) level at Dhankuta Multiple Campus under Tribhuvan University's syllabus. Both CE and ME groups are being taught the same books as the Compulsory English in the same class by the same teacher. Most of the CE groups fail in the exam in compulsory English. On the basis of findings, this paper recommends that both CE and ME should not be taught together in the same class. They should be treated differently in different classroom.

The Role of Working Memory, Short-Term Memory, Speed of Processing, Education, and Locality in Verb-Related Morphosyntactic Production: Evidence From Greek.

This study investigates the relationship between verb-related morphosyntactic production (VRMP) and locality (i.e., critical cue being adjacent to the target or not), verbal Working Memory (vWM), nonverbal/visuospatial WM (nvWM), verbal short-term memory (vSTM), nonverbal/visuospatial STM (nvSTM), speed of processing, and education. Eighty healthy middle-aged and older Greek-speaking participants were administered a sentence completion task tapping into production of subject–verb Agreement, Time Reference/Tense, and grammatical Aspect in local and nonlocal configurations, and cognitive tasks tapping into vSTM, nvSTM, vWM, nvWM, and speed of processing. Aspect elicited worse performance than Time Reference and Agreement, and Time Reference elicited worse performance than Agreement. There were main effects of vSTM, vWM, education, and locality: the greater the participants’ vSTM/vWM capacity, and the higher their educational level, the better their VRMP; nonlocal configurations elicited worse performance on VRMP than local configurations. Moreover, vWM affected Aspect and Time Reference/Tense more than Agreement, and education affected VRMP more in local than in nonlocal configurations. Lastly, locality affected Agreement and Aspect (with nonlocal configurations eliciting more agreement and aspect errors than local configurations) but not Time Reference. That vSTM/vWM (but not nvSTM/nvWM) were found to subserve VRMP suggests that VRMP is predominantly supported by domain-specific, not by domain-general, memory resources. The main effects of vWM and vSTM suggest that both the processing and storage components of WM are relevant to VRMP. That vWM (but not vSTM) interacts with production of Aspect, Time Reference, and Agreement suggests that Aspect and Time Reference are computationally more demanding than Agreement. These findings are consistent with earlier findings that, in individuals with aphasia, vWM interacts with production of Aspect, Time Reference, and Agreement. The differential effect of education on VRMP in local vs. nonlocal configurations could be accounted for by assuming that education is a proxy for an assumed procedural memory system that is sensitive to frequency patterns in language and better supports VRMP in more frequent than in less frequent configurations. In the same vein, the interaction between locality and the three morphosyntactic categories might reflect the statistical distribution of local vs. nonlocal Aspect, Agreement, and Time Reference/Tense in Greek.

Agents Strongly Preferred: ERP Evidence from Natives and Non-Natives Processing Intransitive Sentences in Spanish.

Are non-native speakers able to process their second language in a native-like way? The present study used the Event-Related Potentials’ (ERPs) method to address this issue by focusing (1) on agent vs. agentless intransitive sentences and (2) on person vs. number agreement morphology. For that purpose, native and high proficiency and early non-native speakers of Spanish were tested while processing intransitive sentences containing grammatical and ungrammatical subject–verb agreement. Results reveal greater accuracy in the agent (unergative) condition as compared with the agentless (unaccusative) condition and different ERP patterns for both types of verbs in all participants, suggesting a larger processing cost for the agentless sentences than for the agentive ones. These effects were more pronounced in the native group as compared with the non-native one in the early time window (300–500 ms). Differences between person and number agreement processing were also found at both behavioral and electrophysiological levels, indicating that those morphological features are distinctively processed. Importantly, this pattern of results held for both native and non-native speakers, thus suggesting that native-like competence is attainable given early Age of Acquisition (AoA), frequent use and high proficiency.

SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT ERRORS IN THE NARRATIVE WRITING OF THE FIRST SEMESTER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY

Abstract
 This study aimed at identifying the subject-verb agreement errors in 15 students’ narrative writing of the first semester of English literature. Descriptive qualitative method was used in conducting this study. The data of the study were collected through the use of The Pear Film as the instrument. The data obtained through the instrument were analyzed by classifying the errors into rules of Subject Verb Agreement(SVA) proposed by Azar (2003). The result of data analysis showed that error on the singular subject takes singular verb was 35 sentences. It was followed by plural subject takes a plural verb 6 sentences, sometimes phrases come between a subject and a verb. These phrases do not affect the agreement of the subject and verb 3 sentences, There + be + subject 3 sentences and collective nouns 2 sentences. Based on these findings, it is suggested to the teachers of English to use many various teaching methodologies to help the students understand the SVA rules and apply them in their studies.
 Key words: subject verb agreement, error, narrative, writing.

The use of google classroom in teaching writing skills

Writing is one of the skills that English learners must master. However, in Indonesia where English is taught as a Foreign language (EFL), it has become the most challenging skill to learn. One of the factors is the difference in the usage of subject and verb in the sentence. This paper aims to see the impact of Google Classroom usage on the learning process of writing simple sentences, specifically the accuracy of writing the Subject Verb (S-V) agreement and students’ perception of using this online tool in writing activities. A mixed-method approach is used in this study where one group pretest-posttest of writing accuracy is done for 77 Electrical Engineering students, Jakarta State Polytechnic. For qualitative data analysis, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) are conducted. The result shows an increase in the accuracy of students’ writing accuracy specifically on the writing of S-V agreement. Furthermore, students believe that Google Classroom in the writing class is beneficial due to lesson hand-outs distribution and assignment submission efficiency.

Passive with control and raising in mainland Scandinavian

AbstractThis article gives an overview of the use of non-local passives in mainland Scandinavian, i.e. passives where the subject of the first verb is a thematic argument of a second verb. Three factors are important: whether V1 is a control verb or a raising passive, whether V2 is a passive participle or an infinitive and whether the passive is morphological or periphrastic. Danish and Norwegian allow passive control verbs such as forsøge ‘try’ with passive participles whereas this pattern is only found with semi-control verbs like begära ‘request’ in Swedish. In Swedish there is an alternative strategy for strict control verbs, viz. active control verb plus passive infinitive. All three languages allow both passive infinitival complements and passive participles with raising passives such as påstås ‘is claimed’. These passive constructions need to be distinguished from so called long passives and double passives where a passive feature on either V1 or V2 can spread to the adjacent verb.

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

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

Processing of Grammatical Agreement in the Face of Variation in Lexical Stress: A Mismatch Negativity Study.

Previous electroencephalography studies have yielded evidence for automatic processing of syntax and lexical stress. However, these studies looked at both effects in isolation, limiting their generalizability to everyday language comprehension. In the current study, we investigated automatic processing of grammatical agreement in the face of variation in lexical stress. Using an oddball paradigm, we measured the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) in Dutch-speaking participants while they listened to Dutch subject-verb sequences (linguistic context) or acoustically similar sequences in which the subject was replaced by filtered noise (nonlinguistic context). The verb forms differed in the inflectional suffix, rendering the subject-verb sequences grammatically correct or incorrect, and leading to a difference in the stress pattern of the verb forms. We found that the MMNs were modulated in both the linguistic and nonlinguistic condition, suggesting that the processing load induced by variation in lexical stress can hinder early automatic processing of grammatical agreement. However, as the morphological differences between the verb forms correlated with differences in number of syllables, an interpretation in terms of the prosodic structure of the sequences cannot be ruled out. Future research is needed to determine which of these factors (i.e., lexical stress, syllabic structure) most strongly modulate early syntactic processing.

Rethinking bilingual language assessment: Considering implicit language acquisition mechanisms by means of pupillometry

In this methodological paper, a tool is introduced to the field of bilingual language assessment that has been used widely in other research domains, but has never been applied to the practice of language assessment: The investigation of pupillometric reactions to grammatical violations. The pupillometry approach presented here intends to identify bilingual children at risk for developmental language disorders (DLD) as early as their onset of acquisition of their second language (L2), namely within the first few months of their kindergarten attendance. It focuses the implicit language acquisition mechanisms and the ability to derive linguistic patterns out of a string of input, an ability that is said to be impaired in children with DLD. The approach combines concepts of dynamic and static assessment, and the target structure is an early clinical marker (subject verb agreement, SVA). A SVA-structure is repeatedly presented auditorily within grammatical stimuli in a familiarization phase, followed by a test phase including grammatical and ungrammatical stimuli. During this task, the children's changes in pupil diameters are monitored. It is hypothesized that children whose language processing mechanisms are intact may react to ungrammatical stimuli encountered in their input with surprise – a sign of a violation of their expectations. Therefore, different pupil reactions to grammatical and ungrammatical stimuli after only short exposure are supposed to represent intact language processing mechanisms, whereas similar pupil reactions to grammatical and ungrammatical stimuli are supposed to indicate a risk for DLD. By means of pupillometric observations, an identification of children at risk would be possible at the beginning of L2 acquisition.

Maintenance cost in the processing of subject-verb dependencies.

Although research in sentence comprehension has suggested that processing long-distance dependencies involves maintenance between the elements that form the dependency, studies on maintenance of long-distance subject-verb (SV) dependencies are scarce. The few relevant studies have delivered mixed results using self-paced reading or phoneme-monitoring tasks. In the current study, we used eye tracking during reading to test whether maintaining a long-distance SV dependency results in a processing cost on an intervening adverbial clause. In Experiment 1, we studied this question in Spanish and found that both go-past reading times and regressions out of an adverbial clause to the previous regions were significantly increased when the clause interrupts a SV dependency compared to when the same clause doesn't interrupt this dependency. We then replicated these findings in English (Experiment 2), observing significantly increased go-past reading times on a clause interrupting a SV dependency. The current study provides the first eye-tracking data showing a maintenance cost in the processing of SV dependencies cross-linguistically. Sentence comprehension models should account for the maintenance cost generated by SV dependency processing, and future research should focus on the nature of the maintained representation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).