Subject Verb Research Articles

Exploring nonlocal subject–verb agreement in L2 English: The role of proficiency and language experience

ABSTRACT This study explores the effects of second language (L2) proficiency and the extent of exposure to the L2 on how L2 learners process nonlocal subject–verb agreement in English. A group of 61 adult Tagalog–English bilinguals, who began learning English before the age of 11, and a control group of 23 native speakers of English completed acceptability judgment and self-paced reading tasks. In the acceptability judgment task, both groups exhibited sensitivity to agreement violations, indicating their knowledge of subject–verb agreement in English. In the self-paced reading task, the L2 group exhibited delayed sensitivity to agreement violations compared to native speakers. Notably, the processing patterns of L2 learners were significantly influenced by their L2 proficiency in English. In contrast, the effect of language exposure was not significant. These results indicate that the ability of L2 speakers to compute nonlocal agreement in English is predominantly shaped by their proficiency. These findings suggest that while both L1 and L2 processing rely on fundamentally similar underlying mechanisms, L2 parsing appears to be more closely tied to language proficiency.

Grammatical Representations of the Verb Phrase in Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from Syntactic Priming in Five-Year-Olds.

Background/Objectives: Debates regarding how to represent verb phrases (VPs) consisting of the verb plus the complement and the aspectual marker -le in Mandarin Chinese remain an issue. Methods: Syntactic priming under a memory disguise paradigm was employed to investigate the issue using the SVO-ba alternation, where the SVO structure consists of a subject verb object, and the ba structure of a subject ba object verb, in five-year-olds (n = 216), an age with fully fledged grammatical knowledge but little interference from literacy. Results: The results indicate that both the complement and the marker -le should be represented in terms of phrasal rather than morphological structures. When -le is inflected to the verb alone, realization, which makes an event a fact, rather than completion, which makes an event finished, is accomplished. The event must be telicized to a state through a resultative complement to induce reliable production of the ba construction. The postverbal elements represent their own phrasal structure and challenge the verb-centered lexico-syntactic account because there are no additional representations left within a verb. Conclusions: More elicitations of the SVO than the ba invite future neurolinguistic explorations to disentangle the impacts of the frequency and thematic arrangement of agent and patient on grammatical representations cross-linguistically.

How Infants Link Nonce Phrases to Scenes With Objects and Predicates.

When infants hear sentences containing unfamiliar words, are some language-world links (such as noun-object) more readily formed than others (verb-predicate)? We examined English learning 14-15-month-olds' capacity for linking referents in scenes with bisyllabic nonce utterances. Each of the two syllables referred either to the object's identity, or the object's motion. Infants heard the syllables in either a Verb-Subject (VS) or Subject-Verb (SV) order. Learning was tested using preferential looking. The results showed that infants learned the nouns and verbs equally well. In addition, in both the VS- and SV-consistent conditions, infants learned the meaning of the utterance-final syllable, but not the utterance-initial one. A follow-up experiment that manipulated the prosodic cues of the test phrases confirmed that infants had decomposed the bisyllabic phrases into two distinct word-units. Thus, any biases potentially favoring noun or verb learning played a smaller role than utterance position did when noun and verb learning were equally supported by context.

The Argument of the Matrix Verb Seems in Spec T: The Raised DP or the Given DP

Generative linguists claim that the argument of the matrix verb as in Mary seemed to be innocent is the DP (determine phrase), which is the raised argument of the to-infinitive clause being raised to be landed in the Spec T. However, the current study argues that the DP argument as the subject of the matrix verb seems to be the given DP and this is supported by functional linguistics. The argument in this study is statistically supported by the empirical evidence of international applied linguistic research articles. The data collection was English for Specific Purposes (ESP), which were indexed in the Q1 SCOPUS database. A total number of approximately 250,000 words was derived from 25 applied linguistics research articles, which contained 47 tokens concerning the argument with the matrix verb seem. The data analysis was divided into the framework of syntactic analysis and the quantitative study of inferential statistical analysis. The framework of syntactic analysis follows functional linguistics called the pragmatic discourse of givenness. The statistical analysis in this study was Pearson Correlation in SPSS29. The results showed that there was a statistically significant relationship between the given DP of the matrix verb seem and applied linguistic research articles. The p-value was reported at 0.044. Thus, the hypothesis in this study was accepted. The discussion follows the principle of cohesion and fixed colligations. It is recommended that the hypothesis in this study be tested by other English materials, such as novels and business documents, to contribute to the field.

Role of prosody and word order in identifying focus: evidence from pupillometry

ABSTRACT This study investigated the role of prosody and word order in identifying the focus of sentences in Japanese. Native Japanese speakers listened to sentences with different types of word order (subject–object–verb (SOV) vs. object–subject–verb (OSV)), prosody (whether the first noun phrase is stressed or not) and preceding contexts (object- vs. subject-wh questions), while processing costs were measured using pupillometry. Although syntactically non-basic OSV was more difficult to process than basic SOV, this processing difficulty was considerably reduced when the supportive context (the subject-wh question) required S to be focused. The time–course analysis of pupillometry revealed that the Japanese speakers immediately used prosodic cues to determine the focus of sentences, but the effect of word order cues for focus was delayed until the sentence-final verb was encountered. This study advances our understanding of the temporal dynamics of focus processing and the interplay between syntactic and information structures in sentence comprehension.

English grammar intelligent error correction technology based on the n-gram language model

Abstract With the development of the Internet, the number of electronic texts has increased rapidly. Automatic grammar error correction technology is an effective safeguard measure for the quality of electronic texts. To improve the quality of electronic text, this study introduces a moving window algorithm and linear interpolation smoothing algorithm to build a Cn-gram language model. On this basis, a syntactic analysis strategy is introduced to construct a syntactic error correction model integrating Cn-gram and syntactic analysis, and English grammar intelligent error correction is carried out through the model. The results show that compared with the Bi-gram and Tri-gram, the precision of the Cn-gram model is 0.85 and 0.91% higher, and the F1 value is 0.97 and 1.14% higher, respectively. Compared with the results of test set Long, the Cn-gram model has better performance on verb error correction of the Short test set, and the precision rate, recall rate, and F1 value are increased by 0.86, 3.94, and 1.87%, respectively. The comparison of the precision, recall rate, and F1 value of the proposed grammar error correction model on the complete test set shows that the precision of the study is 19.10 and 5.41% higher for subject–verb agreement errors. The recall rate is 9.55 and 10.77% higher, respectively; F1 values are higher by 12.65 and 10.59%, respectively. The above results show that the error-correcting technique of the research design has excellent error-correcting performance. It is hoped that this experiment can provide a reference for the relevant research of automatic error correction technology of electronic text.

Subject position in Greek and Spanish monolingual and bilingual production: Exploring the influence of verb type and definiteness

ABSTRACT This research study aims to capture linguistic variation in subject distribution in monolingual and bilingual speakers of an understudied language combination of two null subject languages, following the premises of the Interface Hypothesis (IH). Greek and Chilean Spanish are examined with a focus on subject-verb (SV) inversion in neutral contexts as influenced by two factors: verb type and subject definiteness. Oral semi-structured narratives were elicited from 116 participants: Greek and Spanish monolinguals (N = 40) and Greek-Spanish bilinguals (N = 86), namely immigrants, heritage speakers (HS), and L2 speakers of Greek. The findings show crosslinguistic differences between Greek and Spanish regarding verb-subject(-object) [VS(O)] orders, which are allowed more liberally in Greek than in Spanish. The bilingual groups behaved similarly on subject placement regarding verb type. The effect of definiteness, which was statistically significant in all the other groups, was not obtained in the HS data, indicating a relaxed distinction between definite and indefinite subjects in the heritage grammar. The findings are discussed in the light of the Interface Hypothesis (IH) and provide valuable insights into bilingual language production in relation to vulnerability in heritage and bilingual grammars, involving an insufficiently researched linguistic phenomenon.

Grammatical structures of emoji in Japanese-language text conversations

Emojis have become a ubiquitous part of everyday text communication worldwide. Cohn et al. (Cognit Res Princ Implic 4(1):1–18, 2019) studied the grammatical structure of emoji usage among English speakers and found a correlation between the sequence of emojis used and English word order, tending towards an subject–verb–object (SVO) sequence. However, it remains unclear whether emoji usage follows a universal grammar or whether it is influenced by native language grammar. Therefore, this study explored the potential influence of Japanese grammar on emoji usage by Japanese speakers. Twenty adults, all native Japanese speakers, participated in pairs. In Experiment 1, participants engaged in conversations through Google Hangouts on iPads. The experiment consisted of four conversation rounds of approximately 8 min each. The first two rounds involved one participant using only written Japanese and the other using only emojis and punctuation, with roles reversed in the second round. The third round required both participants to use only emojis and punctuation. The results indicated that participants preferred subject–object–verb (SOV) or object–verb (OV) sequences, with OV patterns being more common. This pattern reflects a distinctive attribute of Japanese grammatical structure, marked by the frequent omission of the subject. Experiment 2 substituted emojis for words, showing nouns were more commonly replaced than verbs due to the difficulty in conveying complex meanings. Reduced subject replacements again emphasised Japanese grammatical structure. In essence, emoji usage reflects native language structures, but complexities are challenging to convey, resulting in simplified sequences. This study offers insights for enhancing emoji-based communication and interface design, with implications for translation and broader communication.

استعمال طريقة TAI (Team Assisted Individualization) في تدريس الفعل اللازم والمتعدي (دراسة إجرائية)

The Arabic language is one of the subjects taught in Islamic schools, and there are many lessons, including the study of linguistic grammar. One of the grammar rules taught in the SMPIT MQ is the grammar of the verb. Many students do not understand it well, especially the rule of transitive and intransitive verbs, and some of them feel bored and confused while learning these rules. Therefore, the teacher needs attractive teaching methods in his teaching to obtain the achievement of the desired purposes. The researcher used the TAI method in teaching this subject because in this way the students in the heterogeneous group will learn and help each other. This research aims to know how to conduct the teaching process using the TAI method, and to know its effects in improving students’ understanding of the subject of transitive and intransitive verbs, and to know its effects on their learning motivations. This research is classroom action research. The population for this research is second-grade students from the SMPIT MQ, who are forty students, and the sample is students from second grade A, who are 23 students. In collecting data, she conducted personal interviews, direct observation, and pre-and post-tests. The results of this research show that using the TAI method encourages students to learn intransitive and transitive verbs and increases their ability to understand them, and this method is exciting. We see this phenomenon from the students’ results: in the first round, the average grade was 4.4, in the second round it was 8.8, and in the third round, the average grade was 10.

Competing constructions in Kaqchikel focus contexts

Abstract This study provides new data on the use of agent focus (AF) versus transitive constructions in Kaqchikel. This work follows up on a study done by Heaton et al. (Heaton, Raina, Kamil Deen & William O’Grady. 2016. An investigation of relativization in Kaqchikel Maya. Lingua 170. 35–46) which found that while questioning the subject of a transitive verb regularly requires the use of AF or an antipassive, relativizing the subject of a transitive verb does not. Present findings show that AF is only common in half of the six primary syntactic contexts that allow it, which is unexpected under the assumption that AF is a last resort strategy. I suggest that the differences between these syntactic contexts in Kaqchikel are related to the presence of a preverbal lexical NP element which is available to be interpreted as the agent. Comparative descriptive evidence is also compiled demonstrating that transitive verbs are possible in syntactic contexts that traditionally have been considered to require AF across Eastern Mayan languages.

Subject–verb agreement: Three experiments on Catalan

This study delves into the syntactic parsing abilities of children and infants exposed to Catalan as their first language. Focusing first on ages 3 to 6, we conducted two sentence-picture matching tasks. In experiment 1, 3 to 4-year-old children failed in identifying singular third-person subjects within null-subject sentences, although they performed above chance in all other scenarios, including plural third-person subjects and sentences with overt full DP subjects. This is reminiscent of the results of Pérez-Leroux for Spanish. In experiment 2, with the same design but involving numeral distractors, children’s performance was above chance level across all conditions from age 3 to 4. Then, in experiment 3, we moved to a younger age range with the help of eye-tracking techniques. The findings revealed that infants at 22 months had the ability to parse subject–verb agreement in sentences with third-person null subjects, and at 19 months there was evidence of parsing for third-person plural null subjects. These findings are inconsistent with the perception of children grappling with syntactic agreement computation. We argue that instances of underperformance in subject–verb agreement parsing identified in the literature often stem from task-related and pragmatic issues rather than core syntactic delay. If so, the putative asymmetry between early production of verbal inflection and late comprehension disappears; rather, the results suggest early establishment of matching operations and mastery of language-specific agreement properties before production starts.

The subject of a stative object experiencer verb is an intensional Cause

In the domain of experiencer verbs, little attention has been paid to the potential intensionality of object experiencer (OE) verbs (but see Cheung & Larson 2015). Relying on diagnostics identified in the literature (Dowty 1979; Schwarz 2020), I argue that the intentionality of OE verbs is correlated with their aspectual properties: they are intensional in their subject when stative but not when eventive. I then consider whether this finding can help us choose between competing theories of the argument structure of OE verbs (Arad 2000; Landau 2010). I will argue that the answer is negative.

Spanish–English bilingual heritage speakers processing of inanimate sentences

This study investigated how heritage Spanish–English bilinguals integrate their cue hierarchies to process simple sentences in both Spanish and English. Sentence interpretation is achieved by weighing the various cues that are present in the sentence against that language's cue hierarchy. The Unified Competition Model (UCM) suggests that bilinguals show a variety of patterns in sentence interpretation strategies depending on language proficiency. Previous research on heritage Spanish–English bilinguals and late bilinguals has demonstrated differences in cue utilization and sentence interpretation compared to monolinguals. However, good-enough processing suggests that when a sentence does not meet certain heuristics, like the first-noun agent heuristic, a semantic representation of the sentence will be processed instead of a syntactic one. Even with reliable sentential-level cues such as word order, a plausible semantic representation of the sentence is favored. This is especially the case with inanimate–inanimate (IA-IA) sentences, like in the present study, in which there is less reversibility of thematic roles without competing with semantic plausibility. For this study, participants (n = 32) read a total of 80 inanimate sentences in English and Spanish with subject–verb–object and object–verb–subject (OVS) word orders, indicated the subject of the sentences, and completed language proficiency and dominance tasks. When reading Spanish sentences, participants read the OVS word order faster. English proficiency was a significant predictor of sentence reading time and choice selection time but did not predict word choice. The results suggest that IA-IA sentences pose challenges for cue utilization and thematic role assignment due to semantic limitations. This study found that participants may prioritize semantic plausibility over syntactic representations in sentence processing, supporting a good-enough processing model.

Analyzing Grammatical Errors in Students’ Essays: the case of BBS 1st Year Management Students at Bal Kumari College

This paper attempts to assess the grammatical errors committed by bachelor first-year management students studying English as a foreign language at Bal Kumari College, Naryangarh in the year 2023. To identify the errors, every student was assigned to write an essay on “The Pros and Cons of Social Media for Students” in about 500 words within 50 minutes. 80 essays were collected through the simple random sampling method, and those essays were checked in depth. All the errors in their essays were collected, identified, classified, explained and analyzed. The results revealed that the most common grammatical errors made by the students involved subject–verb agreement, verb tenses, spellings and punctuation and the causes of the errors were due to intralingual transfer and interlingual transfer.

Infinitive fronting as a transparency effect in Old and Middle French

In this article, we present a novel analysis of infinitive fronting in Old and Middle French (9th-16th century). We find that in sentences with modal verbs and clitic climbing, the infinitive may either follow the main verb or precede it. When the subject of the main verb is overt and the infinitive is fronted, the order is Subj-Vinf-Vfin. Moreover, we find that the object of the fronted infinitive either cliticises onto the main verb (i.e. clitic climbing) or moves as a full DP with the infinitive, in which case the order is Subj-Obj-Vinf-Vfin. We compare our data to Stylistic Fronting, and we show that infinitive fronting in Old and Middle French is a different mechanism. Our analysis takes infinitive fronting to be vP-movement to Spec,TP, an operation which patterns alongside other Transparency Effects. Therefore, infinitive fronting provides further evidence for monoclausal restructuring in earlier French.

The lexical source of BIN and habitual be in African American English

AbstractAlthough various works on African American English (AAE) offer significant and insightful analyses of the semantic interpretation of its aspectual elements, including in particular stressed remote past BIN and habitual be (behab), the syntactic analysis of these elements is problematic. BIN and behab are claimed to be invariant lexical elements with fixed semantic values, and to not interact with INFL (Tense) as auxiliaries do, thus not displaying subject–verb agreement or undergoing any operations typical of finite auxiliaries. However, considerations including syntactic positioning, accompanying auxiliaries, patterns of verb affixation, and the formation of active and passive sentences point instead to BIN and behab being in most instances phonetic manifestations of any of the various ordinary auxiliary verbs be (progressive, passive, and copular), elements of the system of auxiliaries common to both AAE and Mainstream American English (MAE). The surface forms BIN and be are sufficient to trigger their special meanings in logical representation. Semantically dedicated lexical elements are unnecessary. The various interpretations of sentences containing these forms are due to constructional semantic interpretation of various combinations of surface elements. This analysis further reveals the existence of another AAE innovation, a fourth auxiliary verb be unique to AAE indicating simple past.

The Orientation of Evidentials in Attitude Contexts: A Case Study Based on Narratives in Paraguayan Guarani

This paper examines the orientation of evidentials in complements of attitude verbs, with Paraguayan Guarani evidential ra’e as a case study. It argues that embedded evidentials can be directed either towards the speaker or towards a matrix attitude-holder argument (e.g., the subject of the attitude verb) and that a syntactic representation of the evidence-acquisition event, with its pronominal subject, in the lower end of the CP field, is well-poised to capture this potential ambiguity. Language-particular properties can also play a determining role in the orientation of the embedded evidential, as is the case of the subordinator ha in Paraguayan Guarani. It is argued that this subordinator requires the presence of a Complementizer specified with a (strong) Modal component (which encodes certainty/commitment on the part of the attitude holder with respect to the embedded proposition) and that this property biases the orientation of ra’e towards the matrix attitude-holder argument.

The The Students’ Problems in Learning of Subject Verb Agreement Towards The Third Grade Students of University of Muhammadiyah Tangerang

This study aims to find out the subject and verb writing errors made by students majoring in English Education at Universitas Muhammadiyah Tangerang when they complete paragraphs in verb form. Error analysis technique was conducted in this study to find the errors faced by the students in terms of present tense, identify the types of errors as well as the sources of errors. This study is descriptive research with 10 students participating in this study. The data of this study were collected from 1) students' writings focusing on students' sentences containing subject-verb agreement errors, and 2) interviews obtained from the students. The findings of this study are as follows: Subject and verb errors made by students cover form of information, omission, and addition errors, while from the point of view of linguistic categorization, the errors made by students are in the form of using singular plural nouns placed as subjects, improper use of verbs, and improper use of verbal and nominal sentences in making present tense sentences. The analyzed data also shows that students' errors in subject-verb agreement are classified as local errors. The cognitive strategies were chosen by them in comprehending the grammar

The Displaced Omphalos-(s)tone: Ergativity and the Contrapuntal Deixis of the Midlands in Roy Fisher’s Eccentric Topopoetics

Birmingham occupies the pivot of a centripetal metaphor of cardinal points. Yet the historical marginalisation of the industrial Midlands has rendered its centrality almost inconceivable for its inhabitants. In postwar poetry, the most salient figure to speak from this inconceivable centre is Roy Fisher. A pioneer of neomodernist topopoetics in the British Poetry Revival, this self-effacing jazz pianist embodies the period’s fluctuating alignments of place and thought. He does so by de-centring the local poetic subject via two related processes: deictic counterpoint and shifts towards ergativity. The latter term names a syntactic structure, foreign to English, in which the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are paired. This linguistic metaphor captures the displacements of transitivity and deixis that Fisher’s multifocal poetry effects on the thematic nexus of the Midlands and the poetic subject. This eccentricity is where Fisher is coming from.

Investigating ¬Grammatical Errors Made By The Second Semester English Major Students, Almarj University

This research is an attempt to investigate the sources of errors in writing.
 The main aim of this study was to find out the reasons behind students, errors when they write essays.
 The study took place in Faculty of Arts in the department of English. Data were collected from 15 second semester English major students, 200-250 word essays introducing themselves. Results showed that kinds of grammatical errors committed by students are: subject verb agreement, pronouns agreement, wrong use of tenses.