English Word Order Research Articles

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.

Individual differences in information processing during sleep and wake predict sleep-based memory consolidation of complex rules

Memory is critical for many cognitive functions, from remembering facts, to learning complex environmental rules. While memory encoding occurs during wake, memory consolidation is associated with sleep-related neural activity. Further, research suggests that individual differences in alpha frequency during wake (∼7 – 13 Hz) modulate memory processes, with higher individual alpha frequency (IAF) associated with greater memory performance. However, the relationship between wake-related EEG individual differences, such as IAF, and sleep-related neural correlates of memory consolidation has been largely unexplored, particularly in a complex rule-based memory context. Here, we aimed to investigate whether wake-derived IAF and sleep neurophysiology interact to influence rule learning in a sample of 35 healthy adults (16 males; mean age = 25.4, range: 18 – 40). Participants learned rules of a modified miniature language prior to either 8hrs of sleep or wake, after which they were tested on their knowledge of the rules in a grammaticality judgement task. Results indicate that sleep neurophysiology and wake-derived IAF do not interact but modulate memory for complex linguistic rules separately. Phase-amplitude coupling between slow oscillations and spindles during non-rapid eye-movement (NREM) sleep also promoted memory for rules that were analogous to the canonical English word order. As an exploratory analysis, we found that rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep theta power at posterior regions interacts with IAF to predict rule learning and proportion of time in REM sleep predicts rule learning differentially depending on grammatical rule type. Taken together, the current study provides behavioural and electrophysiological evidence for a complex role of NREM and REM sleep neurophysiology and wake-derived IAF in the consolidation of rule-based information.

Grammatical cues to subjecthood are redundant in a majority of simple clauses across languages

Grammatical cues are sometimes redundant with word meanings in natural language. For instance, English word order rules constrain the word order of a sentence like “The dog chewed the bone” even though the status of “dog” as subject and “bone” as object can be inferred from world knowledge and plausibility. Quantifying how often this redundancy occurs, and how the level of redundancy varies across typologically diverse languages, can shed light on the function and evolution of grammar. To that end, we performed a behavioral experiment in English and Russian and a cross-linguistic computational analysis measuring the redundancy of grammatical cues in transitive clauses extracted from corpus text. English and Russian speakers (n = 484) were presented with subjects, verbs, and objects (in random order and with morphological markings removed) extracted from naturally occurring sentences and were asked to identify which noun is the subject of the action. Accuracy was high in both languages (∼89% in English, ∼87% in Russian). Next, we trained a neural network machine classifier on a similar task: predicting which nominal in a subject-verb-object triad is the subject. Across 30 languages from eight language families, performance was consistently high: a median accuracy of 87%, comparable to the accuracy observed in the human experiments. The conclusion is that grammatical cues such as word order are necessary to convey subjecthood and objecthood in a minority of naturally occurring transitive clauses; nevertheless, they can (a) provide an important source of redundancy and (b) are crucial for conveying intended meaning that cannot be inferred from the words alone, including descriptions of human interactions, where roles are often reversible (e.g., Ray helped Lu/Lu helped Ray), and expressing non-prototypical meanings (e.g., “The bone chewed the dog.”).

Lability and the rigidification of word order: evidence from Early Middle English

AbstractThis article analyzes quantitatively the effect of five linguistic features on the position of the object in Early Middle English. Four of them have long been explored in the literature: object type, object length, clause type and type of verbal cluster (±auxiliary). The fifth feature, lability, has so far been given less attention. Lability is the possibility that a given verb alternates between an unaccusative and transitive frame without morphological coding. This makes lability an instance of morphological syncretism. This study tests the hypothesis that, for disambiguation purposes, labile transitive verbs show a more consistent word order (VO in this case) than non-labile transitives. If confirmed, the hypothesis would point to a non-trivial connection between the increase of labile verbs and the move towards a fixed word order in Early Middle English. Such a connection has gone unnoticed in the existing literature, which, as far as the influence of morphological syncretism on word order is concerned, has focused almost exclusively on the effect of the loss of case marking. A total of 961 transitive clauses with labile and non-labile verbs were tagged for the above-mentioned five variables. Their effect on the choice between VO and OV is measured using statistical analysis. The conclusion is that verb lability is a significant predictor of VO in the period under scrutiny, with labile verbs thus spearheading the shift towards a stable word order pattern (VO) in English. The correlation between verb lability and word order rigidification demonstrated for Early Middle English in this article may be relevant for studies on word order from multiple perspectives: language-specific, typological, synchronic and diachronic.

Transfer and Bias in Norwegians’ Judgments of Word Order in L2 English

This study investigates transfer of V2 relative to certain adverbs in L1 Norwegian L2 English speakers of intermediate/advanced proficiency. Previous research has found transfer of V2 word order, especially relative to adverbs in elementary school children (i.e., beginners) (Westergaard 2002, 2003) as well as in highschoolers (Dahl et al. 2022; Listhaug et al. 2021). However, the question remains whether this tendency persists in intermediate/advanced adult speakers. The present study uses Acceptability Judgment Tasks (AJTs) to investigate the presence of V2 transfer in this speaker group. The use of AJTs to investigate transfer is complicated by the fact that there is sometimes talk of L2 users having a yes-bias (Romano and Guijarro-Fuentes 2023). In this study, I investigate the presence of such a bias in AJTs, and whether the emergence of a bias is potentially impacted by access to metalinguistic knowledge. I conducted two AJTs where access to metalinguistic knowledge differed. I used Signal Detection Theory (Bader and Häussler 2010) to get a measure of participants’ sensitivity (d’) and their decision criterion to investigate the presence of bias. The results revealed a clear no-bias in both experiments, suggesting we cannot always assume a yes-bias in L2 users. No detectable transfer of V2 relative to adverbs was found in this group of L2 users, whose performance was at ceiling. Furthermore, as the only way to detect V2 transfer in the data was for speakers to accept ungrammatical structures, any potential presence thereof may have been masked by this salient no-bias.

A Comparative Study of Punjabi and English Word Order: SOV Vs SVO

This study intends to compare the two languages, Punjabi and English, in terms of their apparently different word orders (i.e., SOV and SVO) under the rubric of Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA): languages may have a similar underlying word order SVO despite of the apparent variation. In the backdrop of Universal Grammar (i.e., assuming universal principles underlying apparent variation of languages: Principles and Parameters), this study employs the Minimalist framework of Chomsky where LCA is assumed to hold true at least in its empirical conclusions. This study concludes that Punjabi also underlies SVO order at base. Its variation from SVO languages like English is caused by the movement of object to ‘specifier’-I position or Spec Agro position, and the movement of verb+ auxiliary complex to I position. Furthermore, SOV languages also exhibit grammatical structures with SVO word order to strengthen the line of reasoning that basic word order for such languages is SVO. A more extensive study into movement operations and possibility of flexible word orders in languages may help the future studies in reaching correct conclusion with respect to word order.

Strategies for Word Order Variation Repair between English and Tshivenda at a Rural University

Competence in rules for arranging appropriate word order in sentences avoids ambiguity and misinterpretation in communication. Nevertheless, non-native English speakers experience difficulties in word order due to variations between English and Tshivenda. This paper examined strategies for word order variation repair between the two languages. A qualitative research approach was adopted to obtain an in-depth understanding of the use of word order in written essays. An action research method was utilised as it is a critical classroom-based inquiry for identifying and improving the teaching and learning of a particular grammatical aspect. Data were collected from 15 purposefully selected Module 1141 English Communication Skills students at the University of Venda, South Africa. A pilot study was conducted on the use of word order by 10 students who were not part of the study group but shared similar characteristics with them. After utilising discourse critical analysis, it was revealed that learners experienced difficulties regarding declarative, interrogative and negative sentences. However, after employing scaffolding strategies, the students' performance was preternatural because the lowest challenge was misformation, with only 8%, while misordering had 11%. Therefore, scaffolding strategies are recommended in teaching and learning English word order.

Domains of ordering

This paper develops a theory of linearization in which the LCA (Kayne, The antisymmetry of syntax, MIT Press, 1994) linearizes one portion of the clause, with a secondary algorithm linearizing a second portion of the clause when the LCA-determined order of terminals would conflict with other principles of the morphosyntax. The empirical focus is the correspondence or lack thereof between scope and word order in Japanese, Tagalog, and English: for one portion of the clause, there is a strict correspondence between the linear order of certain elements and their scope, while for another portion of the clause, this correspondence breaks down. Given a theory of LCA-determined linear order and clause structure following Biberauer [Linguist Inq 45(2):169–225, 2014], alongside a restricted theory of reconstruction, we show that the portion of the clause for which the LCA determines linear order is that which displays the strict correspondence between linear order and scope, while that for which the secondary algorithm determines linear order is where the correspondence between scope and linear order breaks down.

An Investigation on the Speaking Constraints and Strategies Used by College Students Studying English as EFL Learners

Learning English is essential nowadays because of the widespread use of the language all over the world. In Indonesia, students have the opportunity to learn English language from elementary school, all the way to university. However, this does not imply that Indonesian students studying English at universities are proficient in the language, particularly when it comes to speaking English, when they often face an overwhelming number of challenges, both linguistically and psychologically. This study aimed to analyze the challenges that students experience while speaking English and to discuss the students' actions to address the difficulty. A mixed-method research was employed by collecting qualitative and quantitative data. The research's instruments were observation, questionnaires, and interviews. This study's participants include 45 second-semester English literature students at a state university in Malang, Indonesia. The findings of the study revealed that several students had psychological difficulties while speaking English, such as anxiousness, low confidence, worries about making errors, and being mocked. It was also noted that they have uncertainty about word order in English, a lack of grasp of grammar, and difficulty selecting appropriate vocabulary. Inadequate practice in speaking was considered one of the difficulties encountered by students. The students used Rebecca Oxford’s Strategies Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) learning strategies to overcome issues in speaking English.

A Morphosyntactic Analysis on Narrative Writing of the Fresh Year Students’s of Management Informatics AMIK MEDICOM

The purpose of the research is to analyze about morphology and sintactic structure in writing an English narrative essay. Morphology and Sintax are very important studies in learning English. Morphology is the study of how words are structured and how they are put together from smaller part, as morphemes are the smallest significant units of grammar. Meanwhile syntax discusses how sentences are structured. The purposes of this research are to cover the students morphosintactic errors operating on the students of the management informatics students’ narrative writing and how these errors affect the whole clause structure, the inflectional morphemes, derivational morphemes and the pattern of clause structure in the students narrative writing. The method used in this reserch is qualitative describtion where the data sources are taken from the fresh year students narrative writing. The finding revealse are two kinds of morphology, they are derivational and inflectional. Affixes such as suffixes, infixes, prefixes, ablaut and reduplication are kinds of derivational morphology, meanwhile plural, possessive, past time, progressive, comparative, and superlative are kinds of inflectional morphology. Syntactically, the errors occur becuse of not being aware how to build a phrase or a sentence in English. They write more than one verb in a phrase or a sentence which does not need but one. As well they are not sure about word order in English and how to build a simple sentence. They like to miss subject or object pronoun in their sentence. We can explain that by saying that all these forms do not exist in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Language), resulting in the tendency for the students to omit or add these forms in their writing. Too many clauses in one sentence often occur in their sentece.

Robert Alter's New Translation of the Hebrew Bible: An Assessment for Translators

In the introduction to his new translation of the Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter is quite explicit about the task he set himself: “The present translation is an experiment in re-presenting the Bible in a language that conveys with some precision the semantic nuances and the lively orchestration of literary effects of the Hebrew and at the same time has stylistic and rhythmic integrity as literary English.” Alter explains this in more detail in the introduction and in his book, The Art of Bible Translation, with explicit criticisms of other English translations. In this paper I will explore Alter's own norms for translation and how he has applied them, paying special attention to parallel syntax, language level, repetition, wordplay, Hebrew and English word order, poetry in prose, rhythm, names of God, textual criticism, chapter division, and textual structure, as well as what Bible translators can learn from Alter’s translation.

Simulation of English Word Order Sorting Based on Semionline Model and Artificial Intelligence.

To improve the word order ranking effect of English language retrieval, based on machine learning algorithms, this paper combines a semionline model to construct an artificial intelligence ranking model for English word order based on a semionline model and establishes a semisupervised ELM regression model. Moreover, this paper derives the mathematical model of semisupervised ELM in detail and uses FCM clustering to screen credible samples, ELM collaborative training to mark each other's samples, and the marked samples to calculate the output weights of semisupervised ELM regression. In addition, based on continuous learning of OSELMR, this paper uses confidence evaluation to screen out credible unlabeled samples, OSELM collaborative training to mark the credible samples with each other, and credible unlabeled samples to calculate the output weight of SSOSELMR. Finally, this paper designs a control experiment to analyze the model algorithm, compares and counts the parameters, and draws a statistical graph. The research results show that the model constructed in this paper is effective.

On the derivation of three-verb clusters in Old English

Word order in Old English has some properties in common with those in other Germanic languages, such as V2 in a main clause and Vf-final order in a subordinate clause. However, it had idiosyncratic traits that led to word order changes in the later stages of English. Focusing on the word order of three-verb clusters (modal+have/be+participle) in Old English, this paper argues that the rise of functional projections with the head in its initial position shaped changes in word order in the history of English.

The Impact of Raising Awareness of Arabic and English Word Order Differences on Arabs’ English Use

English is a language with a rigid word order, whereas Arabic is more flexible. Canonical English word order is often a challenge for users whose first language is flexible. This study explores how Arabic learners transfer their knowledge of Arabic word order styles into the English language, and it compares Arabic learners’ use of English word order before and after raising learners’ awareness of Arabic and English word order differences. The significance of this study is manifested in its employment of both Error Analysis and Contrastive Analysis to determine priorities for efforts. The study employed an action research design to investigate the impact of adapting Galperin’s teaching model alongside explicit teaching of differences in Arabic and English word order. Four Arabic English language teachers and 142 Saudi students participated in the present study. The participating students were taking a beginning-level English course at a Saudi university. Through mixed-method approaches, the findings of the pretest and posttest showed that some learners used their knowledge and experience of Arabic standard and slang word order to compose sentences in English. This study concludes that the intervention helps Arabic learners avoid committing word order errors, as the posttest scores are better than the pretest scores at a statistically significant level.

Information structure and OV word order in Old and Middle English: a phase-based approach

This article re-examines the evidence for OV and VO variation and the loss of OV order in historical English, and presents a novel and unified analysis of Old and Middle English word order based on a uniform VO grammar, with leftward scrambling of specific types of objects. This analysis provides an insightful framework for a precise analysis of how OV word orders differ from VO word orders. We show in detail that OV with referential objects involves discourse-given objects. We then present a phase-based analysis from a VO base in which objects undergo feature-driven movement to spec,vP triggered by the information structure of the object. We propose that this analysis also yields a syntactic framework for analysing the derivation of preverbal quantified and negated objects, as well as a natural explanation for the stepwise loss of OV word order.

Використання графічного процесора для прискорення пошуку кореферентних об'єктів з використанням моделі RoBERTa

"The problem of finding coreferential objects (coreference resolution) in Ukrainian-language texts is considered, examples of co-referentiality in the Ukrainian language are given. Coreference in texts means the relationship between syntactic units that point to the same object (referent) in a given context. The differences between English-language and Ukrainian-language texts in solving the problem of searching for coreferenced objects and the difficulties that arise in finding coreferenced objects are noted. In particular, there are differences in the order of words in sentences: strict word order in English and arbitrary word order in Ukrainian. It is also pointed out the need to take into account the relationship between objects that are not part of the co-reference groups (predicates and secondary parts of sentence). Created an application that searches for reference objects in Ukrainian-language texts using the Transformers library and the RoBERTa language model. The use of a graphics processor to speed up the search for referential objects by the algorithm is considered. The work of the algorithm was tested on a set containing 2500 texts. 21.3 times acceleration reached due to the use of a graphics processor (GPU) in comparison to the performance of CPU. The resulting acceleration has greatly facilitated the development and testing of the application."

The Impact of Raising Awareness of Arabic and English Word Order Differences on Arabs’ English Use

The Impact of Raising Awareness of Arabic and English Word Order Differences on Arabs’ English Use

A Comparison of the Lasi language with English

Languages can be similar in sharing and transferring meanings/ideas, but they may be the different in their word order. The word order of English is subject-verb-object, while the word order of Lasi and Sindhi is subject-objectverb. This study explores out and compares the word order in Lasi and English at the sentence level. We can see a plenty of work on the structure of Pakistani languages. However, there is very less, almost zero work on Lasi’s word order. Thus, this study compares the word order of English and Lasi. The data for the current study acquire through unstructured interview from native speakers of Lasi. Firstly, the word order of Lasi and Sindhi have been compared via the rules of word order of standard Sindhi. Secondly, the study compares the word order of Lasi and English through the theory of word order universals (Greenberg, 1963). The study finds that Lasi and Sindhi use SOV word order, whereas English uses SVO. The SOV word has been followed in the written and violated in spoken form; the natives do not usually follow this word order while speaking. However, this violation does not affect form and meaning of sentences; it is equally well- accepted like the written form.

영어 어순의 개념적 비대칭성

The purpose of this study is to reveal that there are cognitive factors as well as grammatical factors in determining English word order and to explain how human’s conceptualization affects the structures of a language. Through Figure-Ground organization, the conceptual asymmetry inherent in English sentences was examined, and the correlation between it and the word order is the following; in compound nouns, Ground precedence alignment can be seen. The verb which functions as a complement in the infinitival clause can be designated as “Figure”, whereas the verb which functions as a modifier can be designated as “Ground”. The more objective and intrinsic property of the adjective, the closer it is to the head noun. In the case of adverbs, the subject-oriented adverbs are located close to the conceptualizer, and the pure manner adverbs are located to the right of the verb.

Information-structural transformations of additive adverb EVEN (a case study of the English language written records and corpora of the XII-XVII с.)

The paper presents the study of the adverb even in Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse and Early English Books Online, which texts and digital solutions help investigate the impact of sentence information structure on adverbial development. Corpus and semantic analysis of the XII-XVII c. written records have been the basis for singling out even as a focusing adverb outlining its distinctive features as an additive. The author proposes a new methodology to annotate information structure of the sentences with the adverb retrieved from the corpora taking into account the word-order change over the span of the 1150s-1690s of the English language development and introduces its corpus annotation. There has also been tested the elaborated scheme of tagging given / new information in multi-layer corpora based on Discourse Representation Theory (1st layer) as well as sentence Topic / Focus (2nd layer). It has been assumed that as a result of changes of the underlying word order in Middle English, the language requires the emergence of such new sentence information structure markers as a ‘therapy’, viz. additive even. It has been discovered that it functions as the degree and manner adverb in Old English, while in Middle English it operates as a restrictive (either exclusive or particularizer) or scalar additive adverb. The study specifies that when carrying out the latter function, it marks the sentence component which exemplifies mirative Focus emphasizing the surprising information in the discourse; this triggers the inverted word order in the clause with X-element left dislocation. Corpus data analysis in the English language through the 2nd half of the XV–XVII c. shows that due to the fixed SVO order in this period there is a considerable increase in the frequency of using even as a focusing adverb that mostly highlights mirative Focus.