Type Of Grammatical Structure Research Articles

The Importance of Fluency in Reading: A Comparison of English, Swedish, Croatian, and Estonian

We report results from children learning to read in one of four different languages: Croatian, English, Estonian and Swedish. The languages all have an alphabetical script but vary greatly on the dimension deep-shallow (or complexity-simplicity, or opacity-transparency), i.e., how close orthography and phonology are related. These languages also vary in the complexity and type of grammatical structure. We used tasks to measure phonological awareness, morpho-syntactic processing, word and pseudoword identification speed, working memory, and reading comprehension. In English, Swedish, and Croatian, fluency was the most significant predictor of reading comprehension. In Estonian, morpho-syntactic awareness was the most significant predictor, although reading fluency was a close second. Fluency was of primary importance in reading comprehension because the limitations of working memory result in fast decay of input information. Therefore, it is important to read with fluency for proper text comprehension.

The lines of the head: An analysis of the headlines in a State University newspaper

Headlines are important parts of any news and newspaper. They serve as an overview of the story or article. This study aims to describe and analyze the news headlines of the past 5  issues of the school publication in one of the state universities in Region III, Philippines.  Specifically, it focuses on the types of grammatical structures are used in the headline writing; patterns that the headlines observe; semantic categories of the headwords of the headlines; reasons why the headlines framed the way they appear in the newspaper; and implications of the results to future journalism training and campus paper publication. The study is a sequential explanatory type of research that used the Fairclough theory to analyze the previous issues of the newspaper. After which, the results were presented to the two (2) advisers of the newspaper who served as the participants during the interview. It was found out that the last five issues of the student publication of a university in the Philippines commonly used clausal headlines, Subject-Verb Phrase-Direct Object clausal pattern, Headword-Postmodifier phrasal headlines, and proper names for the headwords of the headlines. The participants of the study explained that the patterns were adopted for clarity, comprehensiveness, getting the reader’s attention, conciseness, and identification. Therefore, it is recommended that continuous training must be given to the student writers to be able to be abreast of other styles and techniques so that they can present news in a comprehensive, clear, concise, and attractive way.

A Cognitive Approach to Grammatical Distance in Language Use

The main purpose of this study is to examine a relation between grammatical distance and cognitive distance in language use. To find out structural regularities or patterns whereby grammatical distance reflects cognitive distance, this study explores how language users organize or categorize grammatical entities or sequences on the basis of their cognition of specific knowledge, or experience of language use, and thus examines particular types of grammatical structures or variations, such as indirect object alternation, non-temporal uses of simple past tense, discourse functions of this and that, information structure in separable phrasal verbs, and structural variations of relative clauses. The observation on certain patterns of language use reveals that both structural variation and regularity tend to be strategically exploited for the purpose of maximizing cognitive effects and facilitating information processing, and thus the choice of a particular type of grammatical construction reflects pragmatic strategies in a cognitive-oriented way in which the use of a recurring structural pattern is optimally matched to language users’ cognitive capacity or ability.

L2 learners’ acquisition of simple vs. complex linguistic features across explicit vs. implicit instructional approaches: The mediating role of beliefs

A large number of studies have explored grammar instruction through implicit and explicit instructional conditions. The general conclusion drawn from these studies points to the superiority of explicit instruction; however, the claim has been attenuated by a number of reservations raised regarding its generalizability across types of grammatical structures and learners of different characteristics. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the comparative effectiveness of these two types of instructional conditions in acquiring explicit and implicit knowledge of complex and simple linguistic features by participants holding different epistemic beliefs. The results demonstrated a relative advantage for explicit instruction. However, the results also showed that the effectiveness of explicit/implicit instructional conditions varied for the participants. Additionally, the findings provided evidence against the assumption that complex structures are best learned through implicit instructional conditions and simple structures are best taught explicitly. The hypothesis that learners with more sophisticated epistemic beliefs outperform those with more naive epistemic beliefs in learning complex grammatical structures was not borne out by the analyses. Conclusions and suggestions for further research are provided.

Complex Sentences in an Elementary Science Curriculum: A Research Note.

Purpose Elementary school students are expected to participate in science learning settings that place high demands on skill with certain types of grammatical structures, including complex sentences. This research note aims to clarify the types of complex sentences that are evident in a general education science curriculum across the elementary school years in order to assist clinicians and others in better understanding the specific language demands of science learning in the classroom. Method I analyzed all sentences within children's texts and suggested teacher scripting from the first-, third-, and fifth-grade science units of a commonly used general education curriculum aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards. We determined the frequency and type of complex sentences that were present for each type of material (text, teacher scripts) and grade level. Results Complex sentences are evident in both children's texts and suggested scripting provided to teachers at all grade levels. The rate of complex sentences in children's readings is higher in third- and fifth-grade texts than in first-grade texts. Complement clauses are common throughout, and adverbial and relative clauses are more frequent in third- and fifth-grade texts than in first-grade texts. Conclusions Children are expected to read and listen to complex sentences across the elementary school years. Speech-language pathologists should be aware of the language demands that general education science curricula may pose to students at different ages.

Effects of Grammatical Structure of Compound Words on Word Recognition in Chinese

Two lexical priming experiments were conducted to examine effects of grammatical structure of Chinese two-constituent compounds on their recognition. The target compound words conformed to two types of grammatical structure: subordinate and coordinative compounds. Subordinate compounds follow a structure where the first constituent modifies the second constituent (e.g., , meaning snowball); here the meaning of the second constituent (head) is modified by the first constituent (modifier). On the other hand, in coordinative compounds both constituents contribute equally to the word meaning (e.g., , wind and rain, meaning storm where the two constituent equally contribute to the word meaning). In Experiment 1 that was a replication attempt of Liu and McBride-Chang (2010), possible priming effects of word structure and semantic relatedness were examined. In lexical decision latencies only a semantic priming effect was observed. In Experiment 2, compound word structure and individual constituents were primed by the prime and target sharing either the first or second constituent. A structure priming effect was obtained in lexical decision times for subordinate compounds when the prime and target compound shared the same constituent. This suggests that a compound word constituent (either the modifier or the head) has to be simultaneously active with the structure information in order for the structure information to exert an effect on compound word recognition in Chinese. For the coordinative compounds the structure priming effect was non-significant. When the meaning of the whole word was primed (Experiment 1), no structure effect was observable. The pattern of results suggests that effects of structure priming are constituent-specific and no general structure priming was observable.

Metaphor and ideology: Conceptual structure and conceptual content in Spanish political discourse

This article presents the results of the analysis of a number of linguistic metaphors found in a corpus of opinion articles published in the Spanish newspaper El País. The authors included in the corpus, who tend towards the left of the political spectrum, use metaphor to express moral judgements on the actions and decisions of the conservative, centre-right People’s party ( Partido Popular or PP), which governs Spain with an overall majority. With the aim of describing this discourse, we have undertaken a qualitative analysis with a conceptual framework deriving from CDA and cognitive linguistics. First, therefore, we have made use of the methodology developed by Steen and the Pragglejaz group to extract the discourse units that could be considered as the lexical expression of an underlying mapping between domains, that is, the metaphors; second, according to the descriptions of Talmy, Croft, Sweetser, Sullivan, and Dancygier and Sweetser, we have verified that the different types of grammatical structure in which the lexical items appeared also indicated the existence of a metaphorical thought process; and third, in the words of van Dijk, we have studied the ideological semantics underlying conceptual structures and conceptual content. As we have demonstrated, all the samples of linguistic metaphors found led readers to construct the same interpretation of the meaning: The Spanish People’s party government is the past, a past that provokes rejection and which was thought to be definitively ended.

The Role of Oral Corrective Feedback Types in the Acquisition of the Grammatical Structures

<p>This study investigated whether the effects of different types of corrective feedback (CF) (simple clarification request, enhanced prompt and elliptical elicitation) would differ on the acquisition of different types of grammatical structures. The target grammatical structures were verb endings (morphological morphemes) in three different English tenses including the simple present third person singular “-s”, the present continuous verb formation marker “-ing”, and the simple past verb ending” -ed”. These targets were chosen because they are rather problematic for EFL learners to acquire. For this purpose, 31 L1 Persian EFL learners at intermediate level were given an opportunity to carry out some tasks and were provided with different types of CF on their erroneous utterances. Data analysis on the output accuracy following feedback on the three grammatical targets showed that the proportion of errors corrected in response to CF in the form of enhanced prompt was more than the proportion of errors corrected in response to the other two types of CF. These results suggest that the more explicit the CF, the more effective it would be in correcting language learners’ erroneous utterances regardless of the type of given grammatical structure.</p>

Teacher vs. Peer Oral Corrective Feedback in the German Language Classroom

AbstractThis classroom study investigated the effects of oral teacher and peer corrective feedback on the acquisition of the German present perfect tense, including auxiliary verb selection (a rule‐based structure) and past participle formation (an item‐based structure). Intermediate learners of German were assigned to a teacher feedback condition, a peer feedback condition, or a control group. Learners in the teacher feedback group were corrected by their course instructor, while learners in the peer feedback group were trained to provide guidance to each other at the beginning of a two‐day instructional treatment. Results from both an immediate and delayed posttest showed that while both experimental groups significantly improved in grammatical accuracy with both auxiliary selection and the past participle, the largest improvement was seen among the learners in the peer feedback group. These findings suggest that peer corrective feedback heightens learners' awareness of linguistic forms and that learners who provide such feedback may benefit not only from receiving but also from providing it. The results further demonstrate that peer feedback can be effective with less‐proficient learners and with different types of grammatical structures.

An N-gram Analysis of Korean English Learners' Writing

The purpose of the study is to investigate EFL Korean learners’ use of continuous word sequences. For this, the study compiles a small corpus of Korean learners’ essays for contrastive analysis with a native learners’ corpus, and extracts lists of 4-word sequences (4-grams) from the Korean learners corpus (KLC) and the native learners corpus (LOCNESS). The analysis is based on the following: grammatical structures and functional roles. First, the result of the study from the perspective of grammatical structure is that Korean learners overuse a type of grammatical structure: Noun phrase/Pronoun + verb (I do not think). Meanwhile, native learners prefer to use the structure of Preposition + Noun phrase (at the end of). Second, from the perspective of functional roles, Korean learners overused 4-grams indicating their attitudes towards proposition (I have to study), and underuse text-organizing 4-grams (on the other hand).

The structuring of experience in the grammars of Pitjantjatjara and English

This paper briefly surveys grammatical resources in the Australian language Pitjantjatjara, for representing the experience of its speakers, and contrasts these with corresponding resources in English. The focus is on types of grammatical structure, interpreted from the perspective of discourse semantics, using the analytic tools of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). However the field is built up in steps so that no prior knowledge of (SFL) is expected of the reader. The starting point is with types of structure within clauses, for construing experience as configurations of people, things, processes, places and qualities. An ‘orbital’ model is proposed for interpreting these structures. This is the basis for analysing structures that link clauses in series, including types of interdependency and logical relations between clauses. A ‘serial’ model is proposed for interpreting these types of structure. Finally these resources for structuring experience within and between clauses are contextualised in patterns of discourse, using extended text examples.

Constructing interlanguage: building a composite matrix language

Treating interlanguage as language contact results in an explanatory account of second-language acquisition (SLA). The proposed model is informed by three sets of assumptions. First, lexical structure is composed of levels or substructures; the relevant levels are lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and morphological-realization patterns (Talmy 1985; Jackendoff 1990; Myers-Scotton and Jake 1995). Second, the distinction between content and system (i.e. functional) morphemes, developed in the matrix language frame model of intrasentential code switching (Myers-Scotton 1993), determines how lexical items can contribute to building the interlanguage grammatical system. Two types of system morphemes are recognized: conceptually activated system morphemes and structurally assigned system morphemes (Bock and Levelt 1994 ; Jake and Myers-Scotton 1996). Finally, the matrix-language and embedded-language distinction structures interlanguage. In SLA an INTENDED matrix language, the target language, and a DE FACTO matrix language, the developing linguistic competence, are recognized. The L1 acts as an embedded language. Interlanguage structures are projected by lexical substructures of the three linguistic systems in contact. Principles structuring language contact and the nature of the grammatical elements projecting lexical structure determine what types of grammatical structures each system can contribute and how they are combined into a developing composite matrix language