Verb Phrase Research Articles

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.

The Impact of Subordination Type and Finiteness on Second Language Development in Timed Impromptu Writing: An NLP-Based Analysis Using the Subordination Sophistication Analyzer

The use of subordination enables language users to achieve syntactic efficiency by allowing them to connect ideas in temporal/logical relation. Although the importance of subordination has been recognized in previous research on second language (L2) writing, it has been typically assessed with global indices that measure overall ratio of subordination. In order to capture more nuanced patterns in the development of L2 writing, this study measures the sophistication of subordination, considering subordination type (adverbialization, complementization, relativization) and finiteness (finite, nonfinite). Our natural language processing analysis of 6,566 timed impromptu essays using the Subordination Sophistication Analyzer 1.0 showed that higher-proficiency L2 learners used more subordination, and, importantly, their patterns of use differed by subordination type and finiteness. Whereas the amount of adverbialization and relativization increased along with proficiency regardless of finiteness, the use of complementization increased only for nonfinite clauses. The broader impacts of this study for education and assessment are discussed.

Phrasal verb production in child heritage speakers of English residing in Mexico: Chronological age, experience, and protracted development

Phrasal verb production in child heritage speakers of English residing in Mexico: Chronological age, experience, and protracted development

Translation Strategies of English Passive Constructions into Arabic: An Analysis of Google Translation Engine Produced Translations Using House’s TQA Model

This study explores the translation of English passive constructions into Arabic, focusing on the prevalent translation shifts and the preservation of the source functions within this process. Utilizing a qualitative methodology, it analyzes passive constructions from an English economic-political article based on House’s (2015) Translation Quality Assessment model. It reviews all passive participles classifying them into verbal and adjectival ones. The research aims to understand how these translation shifts cater to the syntactic and semantic needs of the Arabic language, particularly how machine translation tools like Google Translation engine handle these transformations. Data collected include various English passive constructions and their Arabic translations, providing a foundation for assessing either their adherence to the target language’s norms and preferences or to the literal approach that may lead to affect such preferences and norms. Key findings reveal how Google Translation engine tends to translate according to Arabic norms and produce a natural translation while preserving the source functions. The five translation strategies used by Google Translate when translating passive constructions from English to Arabic in economic-political texts are: 1) adjectival phrases, 2) active structures, 3) passive structures with internal vowel changes, 4) verbless structures with verbal nouns, and 5) verbal phrases with 'tamma'. However, the influence of such an approach may lead to manipulating the source function, which may lead to misunderstandings or to unbalanced power relations.

Exploring crosslinguistic influence on learning particles in phrasal verbs through a cognitive linguistic approach

Abstract It is now well established that English phrasal verbs cause English as foreign language learners no small degree of confusion due to the semantic complexity. However, the influence of crosslinguistic transfer on learning phrasal verbs has remained unclear. There even has been little qualitative analysis of the crosslinguistic difference between literal and metaphorical meanings of particles. This paper proposes an instructional approach underpinned by metaphor and categorization in cognitive linguistics and highlights particles as a means of disentangling polysemous verb-particle constructions. Fifteen students from four universities in Taipei City and City of Newcastle upon Tyne participated in the study. Results of the qualitative data, i.e., discussion tasks, in-session tasks, and interviews, suggested that despite the difficulty of understanding some target items, the crosslinguistic similarities and differences generally aid the learning of the phrasal verbs via the proposed approach. Raising an awareness of crosslinguistic difference between metaphorical meanings of particles can be pedagogically useful.

The effectiveness of ChatGPT as a lexical tool for English, compared with a bilingual dictionary and a monolingual learner’s dictionary

Traditionally, language learners have relied on dictionaries when trying to read or write in a foreign language. However, new LLM-based chatbots may offer an alternative to traditional dictionaries as lexical tools. This study assesses the effectiveness of ChatGPT versus the monolingual Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE, 2024) and the bilingual Diki.pl (Diki.pl, 2024) online dictionaries in supporting English language learners in receptive and productive lexical tasks. With a sample of 166 university students at B2 to C1 proficiency levels and forty uncommon English phrasal verbs, we investigate whether a leading AI-driven chatbot, a high-quality learners’ dictionary, or a popular free bilingual dictionary offers better support in accurately understanding and producing English. The results reveal ChatGPT to be more effective than either dictionary in production, and better than the monolingual dictionary, but not the bilingual dictionary, in reception.

It is, uh, very likely? The impact of prosodic uncertainty cues on the perception and interpretation of spoken verbal probability phrases.

People typically use verbal probability phrases when discussing risks ("It is likely that this treatment will work"), both in written and spoken communication. When speakers are uncertain about risks, they can nonverbally signal this uncertainty by using prosodic cues, such as a rising, question-like intonation or a filled pause ("uh"). We experimentally studied the effects of these two prosodic cues on the listener's perceived speaker certainty and numerical interpretation of spoken verbal probability phrases. Participants (N=115) listened to various verbal probability phrases that were uttered with a rising or falling global intonation and with or without a filled pause before the probability phrase. For each phrase, they gave a point estimate of their numerical interpretation in percentages and indicated how certain they thought the speaker was about the correctness of the probability phrase. Speakers were perceived as least certain when the verbal probability phrases were spoken with both prosodic uncertainty cues. Interpretation of verbal probability phrases varied widely across participants, especially when rising intonation was produced by the speaker. Overall, high probability phrases (e.g., "very likely") were estimated as lower (and low probability phrases, such as "unlikely," as higher) when they were uttered with a rising intonation. The effects of filled pauses were less pronounced, as were the uncertainty effects for medium probability phrases (e.g., "probable"). These results stress the importance of nonverbal communication when verbally communicating risks and probabilities to people, for example, in the context of doctor-patient communication.

Informal language contact and formulaic language development of Chinese students abroad during a global crisis

Abstract This longitudinal mixed-methods study tracked the informal language contact and phrasal verb knowledge of 21 Chinese foundation program students in the United Kingdom (UK) during the 2019–2020 academic year through three rounds of data collection. Because of the disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the study was able to capture the impact of a global crisis on the experiences of international students studying abroad and learning a second language (L2). Data from a Language Contact Questionnaire, a Study Abroad Social Network Survey, and semi-structured interviews indicated significant changes in their L2 use and social networks. Our findings showed that the students sharply reduced their L2 contact and increased their use of first language (L1) during the pandemic. Productive and receptive tests assessing phrasal verb knowledge revealed that the students did not make significant gains after the pandemic lockdown. The study suggests that significant changes in the living environment can directly impact students’ L2 usage and their formulaic language development.

Are cleft sentence structures more difficult to process?

This study compares the processing of cleft structures against that of monoclausal sentences using event-related potential (ERP). We aim to understand how syntactic complexity is processed by comparing the neural response to cleft and single-clause sentences with identical verb phrases, controlling for verb bias frequency effects. 60 participants were tested, and we presented 100 cleft and 100 monoclausal sentences, balanced for active and passive verb usage. The P600 component, which is associated with syntactic complexity, was examined to assess the processing load of cleft structures. Results showed that cleft structures incur a greater processing load, as indicated by a P600, compared to monoclausal sentences. This indexed the increased difficulty of processing the additional syntactic operation required to parse cleft sentences. These findings echo the results of behavioral studies of sentence comprehension on clinical populations.

Role of Verbal Encouraging Phrases (VEP) on Students Academic Achievement at Secondary School Level

The role of verbal encouraging phrases (VEP) in education has garnered significant attention in recent years, as educators and researchers alike seek to understand the factors that enhance student motivation and academic performance. The researchers designed two research objectives to execute the study were as; to find out the difference based on gender perceptions in the role of verbal encouraging phrases and the academic achievement of students in secondary level; to examine the relationship between the scores of verbal encouraging phrases and students' academic achievement. The current study was a descriptive research that was designed to investigate the role of verbal encouraging phrases in students' academic achievement at secondary school level. The researchers selected the sample of 350 secondary school students from the population. A research questionnaire was developed to collect data from the respondents. The evaluation of academic performance was based on task completion time and accuracy. Preliminary findings suggest a significant positive correlation between the use of verbal encouraging phrases by educators and heightened academic motivation among students. Further analysis reveals that the used of verbal encouraging phrases (VEP) is strongly associated with improved academic achievement, underscoring the importance of verbal reinforcement in educational settings. The study's outcomes highlight the critical of verbal encouragement in fostering a motivating learning environment, thereby contributing to enhanced academic performance. These insights provide valuable implications for educational practices, suggesting that educators should strategically employ verbal encouraging phrases to boost students' motivation and academic success.

L2 learners’ mindfulness in relation to their memorization/learning of L2 phrasal verbs

L2 learners’ mindfulness in relation to their memorization/learning of L2 phrasal verbs

Analisis Kualitas Isi dalam Teks Berita detiknews.com Edisi Januari 2024 sebagai Referensi Bahan Ajar Kelas XI SMA

This research is motivated by the tendency of news today to pay less attention to the 5W+1H elements (What, Who, Why, When, Where, and How) which are explained according to the concept of objectivity and effectiveness of news and information. The purpose of this study is to analyze the quality of information in the detik.news January 2024 edition. This analysis focuses on information quality, data availability, efficiency, and objectivity. This study is based on “Detiknews.Com News Text January 2024 Edition” and data collection techniques with the goal of learning, analyzing, and documenting. The analytic techniques used are qualitative and quantitative. In data collection, we used a formal data collection method that included the use of a symbol (or symbol) and a collection method. The purpose of using this qualitative deskriptif method is to analyze verbal phrases found in detiknews.com articles. The findings of this study may be seen in relation to the number of stories that have been published on detiknews.com, namely whether they have high quality images with clear and easy-to-understand text. The purpose of news reporting is to report on current events without revealing any personal information. The quality of information found on detik.news is intended to be useful in determining whether a piece of information is reliable in terms of language, objectivity, effectiveness, and the extent to which it has been disseminated to the public.

English-to-Hindi translation divergence study of English phrasal verbs

English phrasal verbs pose complex semantic interpretations and cause significant problems in their translation into the target language. The paper selects some frequent and highly polysemous English phrasal verbs listed with 10 or more senses in the English WordNet, collects sample English sentences from the British National Corpus and examines their Hindi translation equivalents in terms of the morpho-syntactic structure of Hindi verbs and the representation of semantic information. This study attempts to present the semantic equivalence in rendering the identical semantics in the verbal system of both languages under consideration. The study found that the most frequent and common way of realising the concepts represented by English phrasal verbs in Hindi is by incorporating the compound verb constructions in the Hindi language. Besides that, we observe multiple mapping patterns of English phrasal verbs in Hindi, including the simple Hindi verb (v), compound verb (v1-v2), and conjunct verb (noun/adjective/adverb-verb) constructions.

Exploring the differences in syntactic complexity between lay summaries and abstracts: A case study of The New England Journal ofMedicine

This study explores the difference in syntactic complexity between lay summaries (LSs) and scientific abstracts holistically and across their common rhetorical moves. Twenty-three syntactic complexity indices were employed to analyze a corpus of LSs and their counterpart abstracts from TheNew England Journal of Medicine. The analyses revealed that the LSs employed significantly shorter production units, more subordinate structures, more verb phrases, but fewer coordinate phrases and fewer complex nominals. Notably, the number of specific noun modifiers within complex nominals did not differ significantly between the two groups, indicating a comparable level of nominal sophistication. Moreover, we observed significant differences in the syntactic complexity of sentences realizing the common rhetorical moves across the two genres. Specifically, sentences introducing background and presenting results were syntactically simpler in the LSs, whereas the syntactic complexity of sentences summarizing methods and drawing conclusions remains largely consistent across both groups. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the linguistic features of LSs and offers useful implications for LS writing practice.

Navigating the Linguistic Labyrinth: Challenges of Using Phrasal Verbs for L2 Learners

The acquisition and usage of phrasal verbs present significant challenges for second language (L2) learners due to their complex and idiomatic nature. This paper explores these difficulties through a multifaceted analysis of the linguistic and cognitive obstacles that phrasal verbs pose to learners. The study examines the study's participants, which can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. The paper delves into the learners’ competence levels and other issues affecting their ability to grasp phrasal verbs, which often affects their competence and performance in this area of English grammar. The paper also discusses the pedagogical approaches that have helped to facilitate the learners’ learning of phrasal verbs, such as contextual learning, teachers’ ability, corpora, and technology-based tools. The research findings underscore the importance of innovative teaching strategies and continuous practice for L2 learners to effectively navigate the linguistic labyrinth of phrasal verbs. By identifying key challenges and potential solutions, this paper contributes valuable insights into the complexities of language acquisition and offers practical recommendations for educators and learners alike. Ultimately, it aims to enhance our understanding of the intricate relationship between language, culture, and cognition in the context of L2 learning.

Phrasal Verb Usage in Korean EFL Learners’ Speaking and Writing

Phrasal Verb Usage in Korean EFL Learners’ Speaking and Writing

THEORETICAL INFLUENCES ON PHRASEOLOGY IN MODERN LINGUISTICS

The article discusses the specifics of the phraseology in English, the factors of formation, and the relation to literary language norms. It aims to interpret specification of simple verbal phrases, their formation reasons and their relationship to literary language norms. In article is also analyzed the theories of phraseology, using them in practical examples of everyday usage

Parallelisms between Verb–Particle Constructions in English and Verb–Verb Compounds in Japanese: Evidence from Acquisition Research

This study shows two parallelisms between (i) the acquisition process of English verb–particle constructions (VPCs) by children in the process of acquiring English as a native language (henceforth ENL children) and (ii) that of Japanese verb–verb compounds (VVCs) by children in the process of acquiring Japanese as a native language (henceforth JNL children) using the CHILDES database. First, both JNL and ENL children produce creative N–N compounds and complex predicates during the same period, in line with the proposal by Snyder that the Compounding Parameter (TCP) is set to positive for both Japanese and English languages. Second, particles or verbs which are used to represent the path of motion in English VPCs and Japanese VVCs are produced before the VPCs and VVCs they are used in because complex predicates are created by the combination of two or more constituents, such as verbs and particles. Thus, our findings corroborate the proposal that Japanese is a [+TCP] language and suggest that Japanese makes use of VVCs instead of VPCs. Furthermore, this parallelism observed among ENL and JNL children in the acquisition process of creative N–N compounds and VPCs/VVCs, respectively, suggests that English VPCs and Japanese VVCs are related expressions in a grammatical sense. This in turn implies that VPCs and VVCs are connected by more than their semantics; indeed, it implies that they are realizational variations of the same abstract linguistic structure.

The Difficulties of Translating English Phrasal Verbs into Arabic,”The Case of Libyan EFL Graduate Translation Students at the Libyan Academy”

The Difficulties of Translating English Phrasal Verbs into Arabic,”The Case of Libyan EFL Graduate Translation Students at the Libyan Academy”

Optionality and paradigmaticity

Abstract Zooming in from the grand-scale descriptions of the Mainland Southeast Asian convergence area, this paper focuses on Htanaw, an Austroasiatic language in Myanmar’s Shan State. Close contact with Burmese/Intha, Pa’O, and Shan led to a restructuring of Htanaw, exemplified here by the verb phrase, which exhibits an intriguing mixture of (isolating) Austroasiatic and (morphologically complex) Tibeto-Burman features. The Htanaw VP is internally complex with optional bound morphemes expressing grammatical and semantic categories. Based on original fieldwork data and available published material, this study presents the dynamics of the Htanaw verb phrase patterns and puts them in an areal typological perspective.