Spoken Narrative and Preferred Clause Structure

1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Sutherland-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Information Flow ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Oral Narrative ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Du Bois

This study examines the spontaneous oral narrative of three native speakers of Hebrew for overall clause structure in terms of number and type of arguments per clause, following DuBois' (1985) theory of Preferred Argument Structure. The results indicate that there exists a preferred shape for narrative clauses in Hebrew and that it strongly parallels that which has been found in the ergative Mayan language, Sacapultec, upon which Du Bois' study is based. As Hebrew is a nominative-accusative language, the results point to the universality of pragmatic-cognitive factors and information flow in discourse.

scholarly journals Future or Movement? The L2 Acquisition of Aller + V Forms

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Pascale Leclercq
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Oral Narrative ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Patterns Of Use ◽  
Modal Values ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Narrative Function ◽  
Semantic Values

This study aims to advance the understanding of the impact of the discursive context in the form-function mappings of aller + V forms by native speakers (NSs) and learners of French (NNSs), and to further knowledge about the developmental patterns of use of such forms at three proficiency levels (lower intermediate, upper intermediate, and advanced). While aller + V is often referred to as a periphrastic future form, i.e., a way to express temporal reference, it also takes a range of diverse semantic values (including spatial, aspectual, and modal values), and discursive functions. We therefore set out to examine data from a cross-sectional oral narrative and a longitudinal semi-guided interview task to find out to what extent aller + V forms are used by NSs and NNSs in a study abroad context. Our main results show that at lower intermediate level, spatial values dominate, while temporal and modal values emerge at upper intermediate and advanced levels. As regards the discursive functions of aller + V, learners make context appropriate choices (among others, narrative function in oral narratives, and stance-marking in interviews), but even at advanced level, their range of semantic values and discursive functions is more restricted than native speakers’.

Why is this happened? Passive morphology and unaccusativity

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Balcom
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Syntactic Rule ◽  
English Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Unaccusative Verbs

Zobl discussed inappropriate passive morphology (‘be’ and the past participle) in the English writing of L2 learners, linking its occurrence to the class of unaccusative verbs and proposing that learners subsume unaccusatives under the syntactic rule for passive formation. The research reported here supports and amplifies Zobl' proposal, based on a grammaticality judgement task and a controlled production task containing verbs from a variety of subclasses of unaccusatives. The tasks were administered to Chinese L1 learners of English and a control group of English native speakers. Results show that subjects both used and judged as grammatical inappropriate passive morphology with all verbs falling under the rubric of unaccusativity. The article concludes with linguistic representations which maintain Zobl’s insights but are consistent with current theories of argument structure.

Cut-offs and co-occurring gestures: Similarities between speakers’ first and second languages

2019 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renia Lopez-Ozieblo
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Multimodal Approach ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
L1 And L2

Abstract This paper explores cut-offs in the oral narrations of Spanish native speakers in their mother tongue (L1), and in their language-under-study, English (L2). Fluency in the L2 varies with proficiency, and so cut-offs offer a possible means of evaluating this. However, there are certain aspects of fluency which might be common to the L1 and the L2, suggesting that the L1 and L2 share cognitive factors that lead to similar disfluency patterns. To determine if cut-offs are reliable markers of L2 fluency, independent of those occurring in the L1, we assessed the cut-off patterns in the L1 and L2 narrations of this group of speakers, following a multimodal approach. We observed similarities in both languages, potentially indicating that speakers use comparable cut-off-gesture patterns in the L1 and L2. We conclude that using speakers’ cut-offs in an L2 to gauge proficiency is meaningful only if the L1 cut-off behaviour is known.

L2-constructions that go together – more on valency constructions and learner language

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-30
Author(s):  
Armine Garibyan ◽  
Evelin Balog ◽  
Thomas Herbst
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Stimulus Word ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Verbal Stimulus ◽  
Test Battery ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Learner Language ◽  
National Corpus

Abstract This paper sets out to illustrate differences between learner language and the language of native speakers by a number of tests carried out with students of English at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. The first part of the experiment aims at testing knowledge of collocations: In order to compare to what extent combinations of certain words are stored in the constructica of native speakers and advanced learners of English, we used the test battery developed by Dąbrowska (2014): although, as was to be expected, on the whole, native speakers displayed a much greater competence at judging which combinations of words can be regarded as established collocations, interestingly, some learners outperformed some native speakers. The second part of the project was designed to explore the number and types of different valency constructions informants produce on being provided with a verbal stimulus. It is very interesting to see that, given the stimulus word caught, for example, the non-native speakers would predominantly produce sentences with police, thief, murderer, suspect etc. which do not rank amongst the 50 top collexemes of caught in the British National Corpus. We would thus argue that an analysis of the words used in particular slots of argument structure constructions (i.e. the collexemes or itecxes) provides a useful means of characterizing the language of advanced learners and to underscore the importance of collo-phenomena in language teaching.

The marking of new information in children's narratives: a comparison of English, French, German and Mandarin Chinese*

1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Hickmann ◽  
Henriëtte Hendriks ◽  
Françoise Roland ◽  
James Liang
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Children's Narratives ◽  
New Information ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Functional Complexity

ABSTRACTThis study examines children's uses of nominal determiners (‘local markings’) and utterance structure (‘global markings’) to introduce new referents. Two narratives were elicited from preschoolers, seven-year-olds, ten-year-olds, and adults in English (N = 80), French (N = 40), German (N = 40), and Chinese (N = 40). Given typological differences (e.g. richness of morphology), these languages rely differentially on local vs. global devices to mark newness: postverbal position is obligatory in Chinese (determiners optional), indefinite determiners in the other languages (position optional). Three findings recur across languages: obligatory newness markings emerge late (seven-year-olds); local markings emerge first, including Chinese optional ones; local and global markings are strongly related. Crosslinguistic differences also occur: English-speaking preschoolers use local markings least frequently; until adult age global markings are rare in English, not contrastive in German and not as frequent in Chinese as in French, despite obligatoriness. It is concluded that three factors determine acquisition: (1) universal discourse factors governing information flow; (2) cognitive factors resulting from the greater functional complexity of global markings; (3) language-specific factors related to how different systems map both grammatical and discourse functions onto forms.

scholarly journals Diachronic Aspects of Preferred Argument Structure in English and Broader Implications

2002 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reijirou Shibasaki
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Old French ◽  
Gradual Transition ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
History Of

Building on speculations from preceding studies, this study aims to determine whether Preferred Argument Structure (PAS, Du Bois 1987) holds for early stages of English. As Ashby & Bentivoglio (to appear) concede in their concluding remarks, a simple comparison of PAS, in Old French and Modem French for example, is not sufficient for uncovering and understanding the nature of PAS. Therefore, this study aims to show the gradual transition of PAS in the history of English.

scholarly journals The discourse motivation for split-ergative alignment in Dutch nominalisations (and elsewhere)

Pragmatics ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freek Van de Velde
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Discourse Grammar ◽  
Grammar Model

Dutch nominalisations of the type het eten van vlees (‘the eating of meat’) have ergative alignment. The alignment is functionally motivated, in that it is a natural consequence of the flow of discourse. The functional account that is put forward here draws on the notion of Preferred Argument Structure (Du Bois 1987) and on the distinction between foregrounded and backgrounded discourse (Hopper & Thompson 1980). Support for this account comes from other domains of ergativity in Dutch, such as causativised predicates and participial constructions and from the observation that the alignment in Dutch nominalisations is in fact split-ergative. The present study adduces corpus evidence to corroborate the claims. In the last section, the analysis is cast in a Functional Discourse Grammar model (Hengeveld & Mackenzie 2008), including its hitherto underdescribed Contextual Component.

Verbal patterns in Palestinian Arabic

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lior Laks ◽  
Ibrahim Hamad ◽  
Elinor Saiegh-Haddad
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Narrative Text ◽  
Oral Narrative ◽  
Semantic Class ◽  
Actual Usage ◽  
Text Production ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Form Function ◽  
Palestinian Arabic ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract The study examines the distribution of verbal patterns and their semantic-syntactic functions as they are used in spoken narrative text production by adult native speakers of Palestinian Arabic. 30 native Palestinian Arabic adult speakers from Kufur Qareʕ, a village in Central Israel, were shown a clip demonstrating conflicts and were asked to produce an oral narrative text based on it. The verbs used in these narratives were examined according to root, pattern, transitivity and semantic class. The results revealed strong tendencies with regard to the distribution of the patterns that were used. CaCaC was the most productive pattern by type and token counts. This stands in contradiction to the results for verb innovation, where the CaCCaC and tCaCCaC patterns are selected almost exclusively, and it highlights the gap between productivity based on new formations and productivty based on basic forms in use. In addition, some verbal patterns were extermely rarely used. The results also show that there was no transparent form-function relation with respect to the semantic functions of verbal patterns. Most semantic functions were delivered in a small number of patterns (between 1–3) and the majority of them were in were found in one pattern, CaCaC. The results shed light on the actual usage of Arabic verbal patterns in text production and their semantic and syntactic features.

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