scholarly journals Assessing Lexical Psychological Properties in Second Language Production: A Dynamic Semantic Similarity Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Sun ◽  
Xiaofei Lu
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Semantic Similarity ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Dynamic Semantic ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Similarity Algorithm ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
The Mean

Previous studies of the lexical psycholinguistic properties (LPPs) in second language (L2) production have assessed the degree of an LPP dimension of an L2 corpus by computing the mean ratings of unique content words in the corpus for that dimension, without considering the possibility that learners at different proficiency levels may perceive the degree of that dimension of the same words differently. This study extended a dynamic semantic similarity algorithm to estimate the degree of five different LPP dimensions of several sub-corpora of the Education First-Cambridge Open Language Database representing L2 English learners at different proficiency levels. Our findings provide initial evidence for the validity of the algorithm for assessing the LPPs in L2 production and contribute useful insights into between-proficiency relationships and cross-proficiency differences in the LPPs in L2 production as well as the relationships among different LPP dimensions.

scholarly journals Beyond Length: Investigating Dependency Distance Across L2 Modalities and Proficiency Levels

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 601-614
Author(s):  
Hengbin Yan ◽  
Yinghui Li
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Production ◽  
L2 Writing ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Writing Proficiency ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
L2 Speaking ◽  
Text Length ◽  
Positive Correlations

AbstractAs an important index of working memory burden and syntactic difficulty, Dependency Distance (DD) has been fruitfully applied in the context of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) to both native and non-native language production. Recent research has focused on DD as a predictor of writing performance across different proficiencies, while the other modality of second language (L2) performance – speaking – has been largely neglected. Moreover, while previous results reported significant positive correlations between DD and writing proficiency, a lack of control for important variables such as sentence/text length may have potentially inflated the outcomes of the analyses. In this study, we examine the effects of DD across the different modalities and proficiency levels, controlling for the effects of text and sentence lengths. Results from statistical analysis show that the mean DD of L2 writing is significantly shorter than L2 speech production, indicating that L2 writing may be a cognitively more demanding task than L2 speaking. Additionally, while significant statistical differences in DD were found across proficiency levels in both L2 writing and speech, the significance disappeared after controlling for sentence and text length. The implications of the present study for future research on DD in SLA are discussed.

A corpus perspective on the development of verb constructions in second language learners

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Römer
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Formulaic Sequences ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Data Analyses ◽  
Verb Constructions

Abstract This article reports initial findings from a study that uses written data from second language (L2) learners of English at different proficiency levels (CEFR A1 to C1) in a large-scale investigation of verb-argument construction (VAC) emergence. The findings provide insights into first VACs in L2 learner production, changes in the learners’ VAC repertoire from low to high proficiency levels, and changes in learners’ dominant verb-VAC associations from low to high proficiency levels. The article also addresses the question what role formulaic sequences play in the L2 acquisition of VACs. Data analyses indicate that, from lowest to highest proficiency levels, the VAC repertoire of L2 English learners shows an increase in VAC types, growth in VAC productivity and complexity, and a development from predominantly fixed sequences to more flexible and productive ones. The findings help to expand our understanding of the processes that underlie construction acquisition in an L2 context.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE UTILITY OF METALINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE IN SECOND LANGUAGE PRODUCTION

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guangwei Hu
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Psycholinguistic Research ◽  
Form Processing ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
Grammatical Accuracy ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
Metalinguistic Knowledge ◽  
Verbalization Task

This paper reports on a study designed to investigate psychological factors that affect access to metalinguistic knowledge in second language (L2) production. Based on previous cognitive and psycholinguistic research, it was hypothesized that real-time access to metalinguistic knowledge would be largely determined by three interacting factors: attention to form, processing automaticity, and linguistic prototypicality (i.e., whether a rule concerns a central or peripheral use of a target structure). The subjects were 64 adult Chinese learners of English. A verbalization task was used to assess their metalinguistic knowledge about 12 target uses, and a judgment test was administered to determine the relative prototypicality of these uses. Attention to form was operationalized by two consciousness-raising tasks and by time pressure. Analyses of the subjects' output on writing and error-correction tasks revealed significantly greater grammatical accuracy for more prototypical uses and on tasks that allowed more attention to form. There was also a significant interaction between prototypicality and attention to form, suggesting the influence of processing automaticity. These results are taken as evidence that there are major psychological constraints on the utility of metalinguistic knowledge in L2 performance.

scholarly journals Event Detection through Lexical Chain Based Semantic Similarity Algorithm

2021 ◽  
Vol 1166 (1) ◽  
pp. 012016
Author(s):  
Swati Jain ◽  
Suraj Prakash Narayan ◽  
Nalini Meena ◽  
Rupesh Kumar Dewang ◽  
Utkarsh Bhartiya ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Similarity ◽  
Event Detection ◽  
Similarity Algorithm ◽  
Lexical Chain

Plural marking in the second language: Atomicity, definiteness, and transfer

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Sea Hee Choi ◽  
Tania Ionin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Mass Nouns ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Plural Marking

Abstract This paper examines whether second language (L2)-English learners whose native languages (L1; Korean and Mandarin) lack obligatory plural marking transfer the properties of plural marking from their L1s, and whether transfer is manifested both offline (in a grammaticality judgment task) and online (in a self-paced reading task). The online task tests the predictions of the morphological congruency hypothesis (Jiang 2007), according to which L2 learners have particular difficulty automatically activating the meaning of L2 morphemes that are incongruent with their L1. Experiment 1 tests L2 learners’ sensitivity to errors of –s oversuppliance with mass nouns, while Experiment 2 tests their sensitivity to errors of –s omission with count nouns. The findings show that (a) L2 learners detect errors with nonatomic mass nouns (sunlights) but not atomic ones (furnitures), both offline and online; and (b) L1-Korean L2-English learners are more successful than L1-Mandarin L2-English learners in detecting missing –s with definite plurals (these boat), while the two groups behave similarly with indefinite plurals (many boat). Given that definite plurals require plural marking in Korean but not in Mandarin, the second finding is consistent with L1-transfer. Overall, the findings show that learners are able to overcome morphological incongruency and acquire novel uses of L2 morphemes.

scholarly journals An weighted ontology-based semantic similarity algorithm for web service

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (10) ◽  
pp. 12480-12490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Liu ◽  
Weiming Shen ◽  
Qi Hao ◽  
Junwei Yan
Keyword(s):  
Web Service ◽  
Semantic Similarity ◽  
Similarity Algorithm

scholarly journals Constraints on variation, reduplication of semantics, and degrees of freedom: some notes on the computational account of code mixing

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 887-888 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT J. HARTSUIKER
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Sentence Production ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Precise Characterization

Goldrick, Putnam and Schwarz (2016) propose a very explicit account of code mixing, which nicely draws implications from the well-established findings of coactivation during bilingual language production, and that code mixing is constrained by grammatical principles. This precise characterization will undoubtedly serve as a useful basis for further research on code mixing, second language sentence production, and syntactic learning. However, there are three issues with the account that require further elaboration.

scholarly journals Lexical correlates of comprehensibility versus accentedness in second language speech

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAZUYA SAITO ◽  
STUART WEBB ◽  
PAVEL TROFIMOVICH ◽  
TALIA ISAACS
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
L2 Proficiency ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Lexical Content ◽  
Lexical Factors

The current project investigated the extent to which several lexical aspects of second language (L2) speech – appropriateness, fluency, variation, sophistication, abstractness, sense relations – interact to influence native speakers’ judgements of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and accentedness (linguistic nativelikeness). Extemporaneous speech elicited from 40 French speakers of English with varied L2 proficiency levels was first evaluated by 10 native-speaking raters for comprehensibility and accentedness. Subsequently, the dataset was transcribed and analyzed for 12 lexical factors. Various lexical properties of L2 speech were found to be associated with L2 comprehensibility, and especially lexical accuracy (lemma appropriateness) and complexity (polysemy), indicating that these lexical variables are associated with successful L2 communication. In contrast, native speakers’ accent judgements seemed to be linked to surface-level details of lexical content (abstractness) and form (variation, morphological accuracy) rather than to its conceptual and contextual details (e.g., lemma appropriateness, polysemy).

Lexical Retrieval: An Aspect of Fluent Second-Language Production That Can Be Enhanced

2002 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 723-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Snellings ◽  
Amos van Gelderen ◽  
Kees de Glopper
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Lexical Retrieval
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