scholarly journals Syntactic Complexity of Bifix-Free Languages

2017 ◽  
pp. 201-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Szykuła ◽  
John Wittnebel
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Complexity

Eliciting Verbs From Children With Specific Language Impairment

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Frome Loeb ◽  
Clifton Pye ◽  
Sean Redmond ◽  
Lori Zobel Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Lexical Skills

The focus of assessment and intervention is often aimed at increasing the lexical skills of young children with language impairment. Frequently, the use of nouns is the center of the lexical assessment. As a result, the production of verbs is not fully evaluated or integrated into treatment in a way that accounts for their semantic and syntactic complexity. This paper presents a probe for eliciting verbs from children, describes its effectiveness, and discusses the utility of and problems associated with developing such a probe.

scholarly journals The development of written expression in immigrant children from 6 to 9 years old

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-131
Author(s):  
Elisa de las Fuentes Gutiérrez
Keyword(s):  
School Context ◽  
Immigrant Children ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Written Expression ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Communicative Skills ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
La Mancha ◽  
Positive Feelings

AbstractThis article presents the results of a pilot study carried out based on texts from 15 immigrant children aged 6 to 9 years, who are learning Spanish in situations of immersion in the Communities of Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha. The aim is to understand how these students try to integrate into the school context and especially to determine whether the development of written expression during the early years of primary education allows them to carry out more complex linguistic actions aimed at communication, such as expressing positive attitudes towards the recipient. These actions may reveal the need to communicate and, therefore, the need to learn the language in order to integrate. The texts were taken from the ESCONES Corpus and were collected in a prior study on lexical retrieval and auditory perception in the development of communicative skills in children aged 6 to 9. The analysis carried out considered the vocabulary used, syntactic complexity and the use of linguistic actions in the different grades and found that the development of written expression may allow students to better express actions related to manifesting positive feelings and attitudes towards their interlocutor.

Familiarity of Speaker Accent on Irish Children’s Performance on a Sentence Comprehension Task

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Claire O’Connor ◽  
Fiona E. Gibbon
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Older Children ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
Comprehension Task ◽  
Computer Based

Objective: This study sought to determine whether children’s performance on a sentence comprehension task is affected when sentences are spoken in an unfamiliar native accent. Method: Fifty typically developing school-aged children living in Southern Ireland (Cork) participated; 25 in a younger group (mean 7;08 years) and 25 in an older group (mean 9;09 years). The children completed a computer-based comprehension task during which 20 sentences were spoken in a Cork accent (familiar) and 20 in a Tyrone accent (unfamiliar). The sentences were matched for syllable length and syntactic complexity. Main results: The younger children made significantly more errors when sentences were spoken in an unfamiliar accent. The older children made a similar number of incorrect responses to both familiar and unfamiliar accents. Conclusion: Younger children’s performance on comprehension tasks may be reduced when sentences are spoken in an unfamiliar accent. Possible explanations and the clinical implications are discussed.

scholarly journals Effects of Time-Varying Parent Input on Children’s Language Outcomes Differ for Vocabulary and Syntax

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762097055
Author(s):  
Catriona Silvey ◽  
Özlem Ece Demir-Lira ◽  
Susan Goldin-Meadow ◽  
Stephen W. Raudenbush
Keyword(s):  
Standardized Tests ◽  
Child Outcomes ◽  
Time Varying ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Language Outcomes ◽  
Optimal Sequence ◽  
Linguistic Input ◽  
Language Input ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Over Time

Early linguistic input is a powerful predictor of children’s language outcomes. We investigated two novel questions about this relationship: Does the impact of language input vary over time, and does the impact of time-varying language input on child outcomes differ for vocabulary and for syntax? Using methods from epidemiology to account for baseline and time-varying confounding, we predicted 64 children’s outcomes on standardized tests of vocabulary and syntax in kindergarten from their parents’ vocabulary and syntax input when the children were 14 and 30 months old. For vocabulary, children whose parents provided diverse input earlier as well as later in development were predicted to have the highest outcomes. For syntax, children whose parents’ input substantially increased in syntactic complexity over time were predicted to have the highest outcomes. The optimal sequence of parents’ linguistic input for supporting children’s language acquisition thus varies for vocabulary and for syntax.

A syntactic complexity effect with visual patterns: Evidence for the syntactic nature of the memory representation.

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 654-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Chechile ◽  
Jane E. Anderson ◽  
Stacie A. Krafczek ◽  
Susan L. Coley
Keyword(s):  
Memory Representation ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Visual Patterns

scholarly journals Who Did What and When? Using Word- and Clause-Level ERPs to Monitor Working Memory Usage in Reading

1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 376-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan W. King ◽  
Marta Kutas
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Sentence Type ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Memory Usage ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Poor Comprehenders ◽  
Anterior Negativity ◽  
Object Relative

ERPs were recorded from 24 undergraduates as they read sentences known to differ in syntactic complexity and working memory requirements, namely Object and Subject Relative sentences. Both the single-word and multiword analyses revealed significant differences due to sentence type, while multiword ERPs also showed that sentence type effects differed for Good and Poor comprehenders. At the single-word level, ERPs to both verbs in Object Relative sentences showed a left anterior negativity between 300 and 500 msec postword-onset relative to those to Subject Relative verbs. At the multiword level, a slow frontal positivity characterized Subject Relative sentences, but was absent for Object Relatives. This slow positivity appears to index ease of processing or integration. and was more robust in Good than in Poor comprehenders.

scholarly journals Syntactic Complexity and Frequency in the Neurocognitive Language System

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (9) ◽  
pp. 1605-1620 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun-Hsuan Yang ◽  
William D. Marslen-Wilson ◽  
Mirjana Bozic
Keyword(s):  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Multivariate Analyses ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Frequent Items

Prominent neurobiological models of language follow the widely accepted assumption that language comprehension requires two principal mechanisms: a lexicon storing the sound-to-meaning mapping of words, primarily involving bilateral temporal regions, and a combinatorial processor for syntactically structured items, such as phrases and sentences, localized in a left-lateralized network linking left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and posterior temporal areas. However, recent research showing that the processing of simple phrasal sequences may engage only bilateral temporal areas, together with the claims of distributional approaches to grammar, raise the question of whether frequent phrases are stored alongside individual words in temporal areas. In this fMRI study, we varied the frequency of words and of short and long phrases in English. If frequent phrases are indeed stored, then only less frequent items should generate selective left frontotemporal activation, because memory traces for such items would be weaker or not available in temporal cortex. Complementary univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that, overall, simple words (verbs) and long phrases engaged LIFG and temporal areas, whereas short phrases engaged bilateral temporal areas, suggesting that syntactic complexity is a key factor for LIFG activation. Although we found a robust frequency effect for words in temporal areas, no frequency effects were found for the two phrasal conditions. These findings support the conclusion that long and short phrases are analyzed, respectively, in the left frontal network and in a bilateral temporal network but are not retrieved from memory in the same way as simple words during spoken language comprehension.

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