Information Structure: The final hurdle?

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieke Verheijen ◽  
Bettelou Los ◽  
Pieter de Haan
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
University Students ◽  
Side Effect ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Structural Function ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Structural Differences ◽  
The Subject

Although texts produced by (very) advanced Dutch learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) may be perfectly grammatical, they often feel distinctly non-native. Dutch, as a verb-second language, makes separate positions available for discourse linking and aboutness-topics. Although the English sentences of these advanced learners conform to the subject-verb-object order of English, the pre-subject adverbial position in English is made to perform the information-structural function of the verb-second discourse-linking position, producing texts that are perceived as non-native, without being ungrammatical. A side-effect of this L1 interference is the underuse of special focusing constructions in English, like the stressed-focus it-cleft. This paper investigates the progress of Dutch writers towards a more native-like use of the pre-subject position and the it-cleft in a longitudinal corpus of 137 writings of Dutch university students of English. We conclude that information-structural differences present the final hurdle for advanced Dutch EFL writers.

Null referential subjects in the history of Swedish

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Håkansson
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Movement Strategies ◽  
Old Swedish ◽  
History Of ◽  
Striking Change ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Person Agreement

This article is concerned with null referential subjects in Old Swedish (ca. 1225–1526), and addresses the problem of why the scope for such subjects has been reduced during the history of Swedish. Within diachronic syntax it has been a common assumption that syntactic change is caused by changes in morphology. However, this study shows that deflexion only to a limited extent can explain the loss of null referential subjects in Old Swedish, since the most striking change in their use seems to take place during Early Old Swedish (ca. 1225–1375) before the loss of person agreement: whereas referential subjects could be omitted from verb-second main clauses and subordinate clauses in Early Old Swedish, in Late Old Swedish corresponding subjectless clauses are uncommon. Within the framework of generative grammar it is argued that this is an effect of changes in movement strategies to the subject position, [Spec, IP]: whereas movement to the subject position is syntactically determined in Modern Swedish, in Early Old Swedish the corresponding move is pragmatically determined. The study is based on a corpus of approximately 193,400 words, collected from 12 Old Swedish texts.

scholarly journals Der Erwerb von Verbzweitsätzen mit Subjekt im Mittelfeld bei italophonen DaF-Studierenden. Erwerbsphasen, Lernschwierigkeiten und didaktische Implikationen

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabrina Ballestracci
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Structural Differences ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University ◽  
Further Development

This paper focuses on the acquisition of German sentences by Italian native speakers in Foreign Language Teaching, with the verb located in second position, and the subject found in the middle field. The study is based upon a corpus of texts written by Italian students during their first six semesters at the University of Pisa. The first part of the study describes the main grammatical structural differences between Italian and German declarative sentences, referring to position of verb, subject and clause constituents. In the second part, I summarize the research results of the main German-Italian linguistic contrastive studies on the acquisition of word order in German, by focusing on declarative sentences with the subject in the middle field. The final part of this paper focuses on the linguistic and contextual factors influencing the acquisition process for further development in this field of study, in order to offer suggestions for foreign language teaching of German.

scholarly journals The creative component of fostering personal culture among prospective teachers by means of foreign-language education

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-246
Author(s):  
Olga Vasilevna Volodina
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Prospective Teachers ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Foreign Language Education ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Collective Creativity ◽  
Educational Product ◽  
The Subject

In the paper special attention is paid to creativity and creative thinking development in the research of fostering personal culture among undergraduate pedagogical students by means of foreign-language education. Creativity is considered one of the essential principles of the civilization progress; creativization of education is one of the main aspects of the intellectualization of education that is associated with revealing personal creative traits and developing the capability to implement creative acts in the educational environment, social and professional spheres. The purpose of the paper is to analyze pedagogical conditions for developing emotional, creative and innovative potential of prospective teachers in various productive intellectual and creative activities using foreign language educational material. The methodological basis for identifying conditions for the development of creative thinking, cognitive, speech-thinking, communicative, regulatory, reflexive skills and the subject position of students for the development of personal intellectual culture of prospective teachers are the ontological, personal, environmental, activity approaches. The efficiency of creative tasks, creative technologies and methods of studying a foreign language is analyzed; these activities are used to train students to get knowledge and skills themselves in order to solve certain problems, to enrich the experience of practical application, to expose independence in creative activity and critical thinking, to foster the traits of a creative personality, to make a personally significant educational product of interaction and collective creativity, self-expression and self-realization of prospective teachers in the process of studying a foreign language at university.

SUBJECT POSITION AND INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN L2 SPANISH

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-803
Author(s):  
Covadonga Sánchez Alvarado
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
High Productivity ◽  
Simple Rules ◽  
Intermediate Learners ◽  
L2 Spanish ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Vp Focus

AbstractThis study investigates the acquisition of the constraints regulating subject position in the L2 Spanish spoken by English native speakers and provides a representational account following the premises of the Multiple Grammars (MG) model. The acceptability of preverbal and postverbal subjects is compared considering different discursive contexts (i.e., broad focus, Verbal Phase [VP] focus, and subject focus). Three groups (i.e., native speakers, intermediate learners, and advanced learners), with 28 subjects each, took part in the study. Findings show that advanced speakers behave in a more nativelike manner than intermediate learners. Learners, nonetheless, are not capable of blocking the acceptability of preverbal subjects in those contexts in which native speakers disfavor them and show high productivity levels of underspecified L2 rules that lead them to accept postverbal subjects in infelicitous contexts (e.g., VP focus). These results are consistent with MG, the representation model proposed by Amaral and Roeper (2014), because an acquisition path can be described using simple rules with lexical or pragmatic restrictions, which may be targetlike. Optionality can be explained considering that L1 and L2 rules coexist and are never deleted, simply assigned different productivity levels or blocked.

scholarly journals THE PROBLEMS OF RAISING STUDENTS AWARENESS (MOTIVATION) IN THE PROCESS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES TRAINING

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (9(77)) ◽  
pp. 257-261
Author(s):  
Vira Chorniy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
University Students ◽  
Bologna Process ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
Language Training ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Interactive Activity

The article highlights the problems of junior university students’ motivation to studying foreign languages. These problems are vital and widely discussed by scholars due to implementation of Bologna process. The author offers to understand the motivation as a process that combines individual and situational parameters aiming to transform the subject situation into the relevant motive. The author proves that the leading motive of the students should be awareness of the necessity of foreign language command for the successful professional activity. But students are primarily influenced by the teacher’s motivation. Under this framework the levels of the teacher’s activity forming is presented together with the framework of the motives study. On the basis of the references survey common classification of the motives is considered as well as techniques that stimulate the process of communication. The examples are taken from foreign and Ukrainian sources on methodology of teaching. These practical examples prove that communication centered training involves all language training skills. The article contains strategies and examples the above strategies. In the conclusion the reasons that determine students’ motivation are considered. It is proved that the most effective way of foreign language teaching is an interactive activity of a teacher and a student. Systematic estimation, encouragement and consideration of students’ professional interests are key elements in the process.

scholarly journals Specificational Copular Sentences in Russian and English

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara H Partee
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Copular Sentences ◽  
Specificational Sentences ◽  
Predicate Type

The Russian sentence (1), from Padučeva and Uspensky (1979), and English (2) are examples of specificational copular sentences: NP2 provides the ‘specification’, or ‘value’ of the description given by NP1. (1) Vladelec ètogo osobnjaka – juvelir Fužere. owner-NOM this-GEN mansion-GEN jeweler-NOM Fuzhere ‘The owner of this mansion is the jeweler Fuzhere.’ (2) The biggest problem is the recent budget cuts. Williams (1983) and Partee (1986) argued that specificational sentences like (2) result from “inversion around the copula”: that NP1 is a predicate (type ) and NP2 is the subject, a referential expression of type e. Partee (1999) argued that such an analysis is right for Russian, citing arguments from Padučeva and Uspensky (1979) that NP2 is the subject of sentence (1). But in that paper I argued that differences between Russian and English suggest that in English there is no such inversion, contra Williams (1983) and Partee (1986): the subject of (2) is NP1, and both NPs are of type e, but with NP1 less referential than NP2, perhaps “attributive”. Now, based on classic work by Roger Higgins on English and by Paducheva and Uspensky on Russian, and on a wealth of recent work by Mikkelsen, Geist, Romero, Schlenker, and others, a reexamination the semantics and structure of specificational copular sentences in Russian and English in a typological perspective supports a partly different set of conclusions: (i) NP1 is of type and NP2 is of type e in both English and Russian; (ii) but NP1 is subject in English, while NP2 is subject in Russian; and (iii) NP1 in specificational sentences is universally topical (discourse-old), but only in some languages (like English) is that accomplished by putting NP1 into canonical subject position. In other words, both English (2) and Russian (1) move the -type NP1 into some sentence-initial position for information-structure reasons, but in English NP1 ends up as syntactic subject, whereas in Russian, it’s inverted into some other left-periphery position.

The Prosody of Wh-exclamatives and Wh-questions in German: Speech Act Differences, Information Structure, and Sex of Speaker

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Repp
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Structural Effects ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Accent Structure

The prosody of non-assertive speech acts other than questions is rather underexplored. Very little is known about the role of information structure in non-assertive speech acts in general. The present study presents two production experiments examining the prosody of string-identical verb-second (experiment 1) and verb-final (experiment 2) wh-exclamatives and wh-questions in German in relation to their status as different speech acts, in relation to their sensitivity to information structure, and in relation to speaker sex. The study shows that the two speech acts are differentiated by many prosodic means, both globally (duration, intonation contour) and locally (accent distribution in the clause-initial and clause-final regions; pitch, duration, intensity on various elements in the clause, especially the subject pronoun and the direct object, which are more prominent in exclamatives, and the verb-second auxiliary, which is more prominent in questions). Exclamatives overall show a very rigid prosodic contour; they typically are realized with an accent on the subject pronoun and on the object and end in a fall. Questions are much more flexible; they are realized as rises or falls, and show a more varied accent structure in the clause-initial and clause-final regions. Both speech acts show information-structural effects of givenness marking, but the effects in exclamatives are remarkably weak. It is proposed that the speech-act marking prosody overrides information-structural effects to some extent. Male and female speakers show differences in their preferred accent patterns for the two speech acts. Some acoustic differences are only reliable for female speakers.

scholarly journals Flowers for Louise Gluck, or On the Possible Uses of Poetic Pragmatism

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-152
Author(s):  
Tatiana D. Venediktova
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Slow Motion ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
Louise Gluck ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Individual Existence ◽  
Literary Pedagogy

May not a “sorceress”/poet be “a pragmatist at heart” (Louise Gluck)? How does her “sorcery” — to quote the Nobel jury: using “poetic voice” to make “individual existence universal” — communicate and work in her readers? How may the notion of language as experience inherited from the pragmatist tradition inform literary pedagogy in the age of globalization? A sample of recent (December 2020) readings of Louise Gluck’s poems by Moscow University students is considered, including their judgments on the measure and scope of the poet’s “universality”. Slow motion, experiential reading inviting “disentrenchment” of the subject position is suggested as a useful alternative to text-centredness and insistence on the unique and holistic nature of the cultural context.

Critical thinking development of linguistic university students in the process of teaching listening in English

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
Ilona A. Evstigneeva ◽  
Viktor V. Poroshin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
University Students ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
World View ◽  
Three Phase ◽  
Language Communication ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Educational Potential

Critical thinking is a special type of mental activity aimed at interpreting the world around us and evaluating the expected results. In this work, we consider the critical thinking development of linguistic university students in the process of teaching listening in English, analyze the terminology on the subject under study, develop and describe a three-stage model for the critical thinking development of linguistic university students through listening. A foreign language has a huge educational potential for the development of a student’s personality, and the development of critical thinking is most actively carried out in foreign language communication. It is believed that students form a new world view, close to native speakers’. Thus, critical thinking allows us to consider objects, phenomena and processes from different sides, to find non-standard solutions, to comprehend familiar information in a different way. We give definition of the concept of “critical thinking”. The proposed algorithm is based on the technology of developing critical thinking, which is used in synthesis with the model of teaching listening. Since the technology of developing critical thinking of linguistic university students is represented by three stages: chal-lenge, content comprehension and reflection. It is easily projected onto the above-mentioned model of three-phase listening teaching, which is mandatory for students of a linguistic university. The standard tasks presented in the work on the critical thinking development through listening form a system of exercises aimed at achieving a certain result at each stage of teaching.

scholarly journals The clause-initial position in L2 Swedish declaratives: Word order variation and discourse pragmatics

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Bohnacker
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
New Information ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Transfer Of Information

In a recent study of the clause-initial position in verb-second declaratives (the prefield), Bohnacker & Rosén (2008) found significant differences between native Swedish and German concerning the frequencies with which constituents occurred in the prefield, as well as qualitative differences concerning the mapping of information structure and linear word order: Swedish exhibited a stronger tendency than German to place new information, the so-called rheme, later in the clause. Swedish-speaking learners of German transferred these patterns from their L1 to German. Their sentences were syntactically well-formed but had Swedish-style prefield frequencies and a strong pattern of Rheme Later, which native Germans perceive as unidiomatic, as an acceptability judgment and a rewrite-L2texts task showed. The present study extends Bohnacker & Rosén's work in three ways. Learners of the reverse language combination (L1 German, L2 Swedish) are investigated to see whether similar phenomena also manifest themselves there. Secondly, written and oral data from highly advanced learners are examined to see whether the learners’ persistent problems can be overcome by extensive immersion (3, 6 and 9 years of L2 exposure). Thirdly, besides investigating theme–rheme (old vs. new information), some consideration is given to another information-structural level, background vs. focus. The learners are found to overuse the prefield at first, with non-Swedish, German-style frequency patterns (e.g. low proportions of clause-initial expletives and high proportions of clause-initial rhematic elements). This is interpreted as evidence for L1 transfer of information-structural or discourse-pragmatic preferences. After 6 and 9 years, a substantial increase in clause-initial expletive subjects, clefts and lightweight given elements is indicative of development towards the target. The findings are related to current generative theorizing on the syntax-pragmatics interface, where it is often maintained that the integration of multiple types of information is one of the hardest areas for L2 learners to master.

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