scholarly journals Syntactic cues to the noun and verb distinction in Mandarin child-directed speech

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiyi Ma ◽  
Peng Zhou ◽  
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff ◽  
Joanne Lee ◽  
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

The syntactic structure of sentences in which a new word appears may provide listeners with cues to that new word’s form class. In English, for example, a noun tends to follow a determiner ( a/ an/ the), while a verb precedes the morphological inflection [ing]. The presence of these markers may assist children in identifying a word’s form class and thus glean some information about its meaning. This study examined whether Mandarin, a language that has a relatively impoverished morphosyntactic system, offers reliable morphosyntactic cues to the noun–verb distinction in child-directed speech (CDS). Using the CHILDES Beijing corpora, Study 1 found that Mandarin CDS has reliable morphosyntactic markers to the noun–verb distinction. Study 2 examined the relationship between mothers’ use of a set of early-acquired nouns and verbs in the Beijing corpora and the age of acquisition (AoA) of these words. Results showed that the occurrence of the form class markers is a reliable predictor of the AoA for the early-acquired nouns and verbs.

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 1421-1454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Kalandadze ◽  
Valentina Bambini ◽  
Kari-Anne B. Næss

AbstractIndividuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience difficulty in comprehending metaphors compared to individuals with typical development (TD). However, there is a large variation in the results across studies, possibly related to the properties of the metaphor tasks. This preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis (a) explored the properties of the metaphor tasks used in ASD research, and (b) investigated the group difference between individuals with ASD and TD on metaphor comprehension, as well as the relationship between the task properties and any between-study variation. A systematic search was undertaken in seven relevant databases. Fourteen studies fulfilled our predetermined inclusion criteria. Across tasks, we detected four types of response format and a great variety of metaphors in terms of familiarity, syntactic structure, and linguistic context. Individuals with TD outperformed individuals with ASD on metaphor comprehension (Hedges’ g = −0.63). Verbal explanation response format was utilized in the study showing the largest effect size in the group comparison. However, due to the sparse experimental manipulations, the role of task properties could not be established. Future studies should consider and report task properties to determine their role in metaphor comprehension, and to inform experimental paradigms as well as educational assessment.


1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 528-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona M. Morrison ◽  
Tameron D. Chappell ◽  
Andrew W. Ellis

Studies of lexical processing have relied heavily on adult ratings of word learning age or age of acquisition, which have been shown to be strongly predictive of processing speed. This study reports a set of objective norms derived in a large-scale study of British children's naming of 297 pictured objects (including 232 from the Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980, set). In addition, data were obtained on measures of rated age of acquisition, rated frequency, imageability, object familiarity, picture-name agreement, and name agreement. We discuss the relationship between the objective measure and adult ratings of word learning age. Objective measures should be used when available, but where not, our data suggest that adult ratings provide a reliable and valid measure of real word learning age.


Nordlyd ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Antonio Fábregas

One of the main topics on the study of the relationship between syntax and morphology is (deverbal) nominalizations. In this area, several generalizations that tie the morphological make-up with the syntactic structure have been made. Most relevantly, it has been argued that only overt nominalizations (those that include a nominalizer like <em>-ation</em> or <em>‑ment</em>) are allowed to have internal arguments introduced in their structural representation. In this paper, we address some previously unexplained apparent counterexamples to this generalization, and we argue that they can be captured if particular restrictions on the spell out of the syntactic structure are taken into consideration.


1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith P. Goggin ◽  
Patricia Estrada ◽  
Ronald P. Villarreal

ABSTRACTName agreement in Spanish and English in response to 264 pictures was assessed in monolinguals and in bilinguals, who varied in rated skill in the two languages. Most of the pictures were adapted from a standardized set of line drawings of common objects (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980). Name agreement decreased as language skill decreased, and agreement was lower when labels were given in Spanish rather than in English. The relationship between name agreement and word frequency, word length, and (in the case of English) age of acquisition was assessed; both word frequency and word length were found to be related to agreement. Modal responses given by monolingual subjects were nearly identical in the two languages, and the types of non-modal responses were affected by both naming language and language skill.


Author(s):  
Nurmanov F.I. ◽  

The article focuses on the syntactic structure of the text with its semantic-syntactic-stylistic integrity, the structure and the relationship between the content of the constituent parts of the structure as well as its role in the development of writing skills and oral speech.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Leily Ziglari ◽  
Burhan Ozfidan ◽  
Quentin Dixon

<p>Twenty-five years ago, Schegloff (1989) proposed that repair is the most crucial factor in understanding the nature of language development. By observing and examining the repairs children make, not only can we understand repair organization, but also children language development and cognitive stage. Research in syntactic structure of repair, self-initiated self-repair (SISR) or other-repair have gained enough attention in recent years through the works of Forrester (2008), Radford (2008), and Morgenstern, Leroy, &amp; Caef (2013). Some studies analyzed both self-repair and other-repair (Morgenstern et al., 2013; Salonen &amp; Laakso, 2009; Forrester, 2008), whereas a few other studies analyzed only other-repairs from the perspective of parents (Huang, 2011). There are many studies done regarding the incidence of self-repair over other-repair (Schegloff et al., 1977); the relationship between repair and turn (Schegloff, 1988); corrective feedback (Laakso &amp; Soininen, 2010); other-repetition (Huang, 2011); and adult’s self-repair (Laakso &amp; Sorjonen, 2010). However, there is some inconsistency in their findings. The data for this study comprised four video-recorded adult-child interactions at a children’s home in various interactional activities (role-play, short story, or watching cartoons. The purpose of this study is to examine the incidence of self- and other-repairs in the language acquisition process of Persian children and to investigate if there is a relationship between child’s self-repair and adult’s other-repair.</p>


Author(s):  
Izabela Kraśnicka ◽  

The topic of the article will be the discussion of the issue of how gestures accompanying speech may complement a gap in a statement. The considerations will cover particular ways of filling such a gap, both semantically and taking into account the place of the gesture in the syntactic structure of the sentence. The subject of interest will be the analysis of spontaneous statements of interlocutors, which will allow for the isolation of word-gesture wholes; it will likewise describe the relationship between the two modes ahead of recounting the functions of gestures in the structure of the entire utterance. The analysis is based on commentaries from one of the journalistic programs hosting politicians in Poland.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Türkay Salim Nefes

Abstract How do perceived threats influence politicians’ attitudes towards religious minorities? Examining the Turkish parliamentary records between 1946 and 1960, this study suggests that perceived security threats significantly contribute to Turkish political parties’ negative descriptions of Armenians. The research analyzes speeches about Armenians via a mixed-method content analysis. The findings demonstrate that (a) debate about security threats is a reliable predictor of the political parties’ negative portrayals, and (b) members of the parliament justify their negative views by labeling Armenians as an enemy. The article concludes that perceived threats evoke negative speeches about Armenians in Turkish politics.


Author(s):  
Zulaikhat Magomedovna Mallaeva

The article examines the relationship between the semantics of a sentence and its grammatical structure. The complexity of the research is due to the following factors: 1) the lack of own research methods for the grammat-ical structure of the sentence; 2) the absence of more or less fully explicated concepts and terms for the study of the semantics of the sentence. In the Dagestan languages of the ergative typology, such structural types of sentences are presented, which differ both in terms of content and in terms of grammatical design of this content. The peculiarities of the syntactic structure of the language of the Dagestan languages cannot be investigated without establishing the regular connections that exist between the structural types of the sentence and the logical content of the sentence, on the one hand, and between the semantics of the sentence and a special grammatical form of representation of this content, on the other hand.


1972 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-70
Author(s):  
Richard Rystrom

Reading teachers and researchers have frequently assumed there is Some relationship between the syntactic structure of language and the reading acquisition process. Indeed, most methods for teaching reading are implicitly built upon assumptions about the interactions between language and reading behaviors. Often the findings of linguists can be used to suggest the nature of the relationship described above. Illustrated in this paper are different sentences which can be transformed in such a way that each has the same surface structure (typographic appearance) as the others, but which do not have the same meanings (deep structure). The paper illustrates why sentences which have various different meanings implicit in their syntactic structure would be difficult for beginning readers to understand.


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