The periphery of vP in the theory of wh-in situ

This article outlines an implementation of Cable’s (2010) Grammar of Q that takes into account the role played by the periphery of vP, hitherto unexplored in this framework. Empirically, what I offer is a new example, in a new language family, of a known manifestation of wh-in situ: I indeed argue that Trevisan, a Northern Italian dialect, displays compulsory clause-internal focus movement of both wh-elements and contrastive foci. Theoretically, I use the Trevisan data to present a new, tweaked application of previously proposed approaches whereby wh-elements do not contribute to clause-typing and Q-particles are cross-linguistically needed in the computation of answer-seeking wh-questions. My claim is that wh-in situ languages are characterised not only by language-specific choices between projection and adjunction of Q and overt vs covert movement of Q, but also in terms of the loci where the features relevant to wh-questions, [q] and [focus], are checked: while some languages check both in C (‘feature bundling’), others make use of the clause-internal vP-periphery to check [focus] (‘feature scattering’). The theory developed in this article provides an innovative understanding of the mechanisms involved in Northern Italian wh-in situ: what it offers is a novel, economic understanding of the morphosyntax of this question-formation strategy that reduces all core properties to different combinations of the setting of simple, universal micro-parameters related to interrogative wh-movement.

Morphosyntactic inconsistency in cross-linguistic transfer: Pedagogical implications for teaching English questions to Chinese EFL learners

As one type of the most extensively used sentences, English questions are must-learn grammatical structures for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). However, it is commonly seen that English learners across proficiency levels produce ungrammatical English questions. To determine the source of learners’ erroneous production, we conducted a written test to collect hands-on data of four types of English questions produced by 81 Chinese EFL preliminary learners. Learners’ achievement scores showed that learners from both higher and lower proficiency groups had similar difficulty producing questions. The statistics also showed morphosyntactic inconsistencies in learners’ production were congregating on auxiliaries’ choice and tense variation. Cross-linguistic transfer from first language (L1) in English question acquisition for Chinese EFL learners was measured against the three dimensions of Jarvis’ (2000) methodological model. Influence from learners’ L1 was found to be related to preliminary learners’ morphosyntactic inconsistencies. The findings suggest that practitioners in an EFL context should raise learners’ grammatical consciousness, and design production-oriented tasks, to improve learners’ morphosyntactic accuracy in English question formation.

Learner question’s correctness assessment and a guided correction method: enhancing the user experience in an interactive online learning system

In an interactive online learning system (OLS), it is crucial for the learners to form the questions correctly in order to be provided or recommended appropriate learning materials. The incorrect question formation may lead the OLS to be confused, resulting in providing or recommending inappropriate study materials, which, in turn, affects the learning quality and experience and learner satisfaction. In this paper, we propose a novel method to assess the correctness of the learner's question in terms of syntax and semantics. Assessing the learner’s query precisely will improve the performance of the recommendation. A tri-gram language model is built, and trained and tested on corpora of 2,533 and 634 questions on Java, respectively, collected from books, blogs, websites, and university exam papers. The proposed method has exhibited 92% accuracy in identifying a question as correct or incorrect. Furthermore, in case the learner's input question is not correct, we propose an additional framework to guide the learner leading to a correct question that closely matches her intended question. For recommending correct questions, soft cosine based similarity is used. The proposed framework is tested on a group of learners' real-time questions and observed to accomplish 85% accuracy.

A practical guide to question formation, systematic searching and study screening for literature reviews in ecology and evolution

1. Well-conducted systematic reviews are invaluable for synthesizing research findings. The conclusions of a review depend on how the research question was formulated, how relevant studies were found, and how studies were selected for synthesis.2. Here, we present a practical guide for ecologists and evolutionary biologists on formulating a question for a systematic review, and finding a representative sample of research findings. 3. We explain the steps involved using a worked example and practical training exercises. Throughout this guide we share tricks of the trade, included rules of thumb and software that we have found useful.4. We hope our paper helps demystify the systematic search process and encourages more researchers to adopt a systematic and reproducible approach when searching the literature.

Question Formation Problems Encountered by Students of English as a Foreign Language: A Case Study

This study aims at identifying the problems that face Sudanese university students in forming questions for communicative purposes in the English language; It is an investigation of the difficulties the students find in constructing questions correctly and accurately. Types of errors were analyzed on different linguistic levels. The results have shown that the area of confusion includes the use of the verb ‘be’, present and past tense, parts of speech and word order. The methodology used in this study was based on the students' feedback; linguistic analysis of the questions they formed. The main findings proved that the students face difficulties in forming questions resulting from the fact that their first language has a significant influence on learning English as a foreign language in general and forming questions in particular.

THE TYPOLOGY OF APPLICATIVE/CAUSATIVE MARKING IN TAPUS

This paper constitutes an initial examination of the applicative/causative suffix -ge in Tapus, a divergent traditional Minangkabau variety spoken in rural Western Sumatra. Our aim is to show that the similarities and divergences from Standard Indonesian of traditional rural varieties provides insight into the properties of “Indonesian-type” languages in general. The distribution of applicatives/causatives in Tapus is interesting for several reasons. First, applicative/causative suffixes in Indonesian-type languages are well-known for the use of the same morphology for a variety of purposes. The fact that a single form is used for these different functions raises the question of whether the applicative/causative morphemes are two (or more) distinct morphemes or whether the form has a unitary linguistic function. We will show that the unitary analysis for causative and benefactive uses of the applicative/causative suffix cannot account for the data in Tapus. Another area of interest with regard to this suffix relates to constraints on movement. We show that the Extreme Locality Hypothesis cannot account for the Tapus data based on the interaction between the applicative/causative suffix and information question formation/relativization. Finally, we demonstrate that Pylkkänen’s typology of applicatives makes incorrect predictions with respect to the interpretations available for benefactives in Tapus and other Indonesian-type languages, showing the necessity for an expanded taxonomy of applicative forms. Our general conclusion is that the detailed examination of grammatical constructions in divergent Malayic varieties leads to new and surprising insights into the grammatical profile of Indonesian-type languages.

Grammatical and Syntactical Functions of Auxiliaries in English and Urdu

The current study investigates grammatical and syntactical functions of auxiliaries in Urdu and English to draw certain distinctions regarding the behavior, syntactic representation and semantic content auxiliaries add to the main verbs (Vs) through the X-bar theory as a theoretical framework within the minimalist program (MP). The data of the current research were collected from authentic sources (Urdu and English text books and grammars) to consider a diverse range of possible usage of Urdu and English auxiliaries. 200 sentences extracted from textbooks and grammars were analyzed grammatically in terms of morphology, and syntax (through tree-representation and their movement). The findings indicate sharp differences related to the syntactic position of auxiliaries in Urdu and English. In Urdu, auxiliaries always occupy their position after the main verbs in a sentence and their position is fixed and also have the ability to mark number (singular & plural) and gender (masculine & feminine). In contrast, English auxiliaries can only mark number. Another sharp difference is observed in the question formation process. In Urdu, unlike English, auxiliaries cannot be moved from its latent position towards the specifier position at the beginning of the sentence to construct question structures, because, if it happens, the sentence is considered ungrammatical which may result in the violation of MP. The findings of the study would prove helpful for understanding the semantic, grammatical and syntactical nature and behavior of auxiliaries comparatively in Urdu and English.

Question formation strategies in Kunuz Nubian

This is an analytical and descriptive study that is based on a general theoretical framework which can be characterized as “basic linguistic theory”. It aims to study Kunuz Nubian interrogative pronouns and question markers. Previous studies failed to pay adequate attention to these features. It is an attempt to characterize the strategies used in question formation and to identify the question markers. I argue that the question markers in this Nubian dialect fall into three sets: (a) the set of question markers -yaa, -naa, and -waa are used with sentences (non-copular construction) involving the neural marker -r-. (b) the set of questions markers that are used if the neural marker –r- is in a copular construction: -yaa, -re, -waa. (c) another set of question markers are attached to a declarative sentence in which the verb or copular verb is accompanied with the past tense morpheme. The study has also provided a list of interrogative pronouns that can occur with or without the question markers. Moreover, it has been shown that both compound and complex sentences are turned into interrogatives via the same question strategies used in simple sentences.

Does Syntax Need to Grow on Trees? Sources of Hierarchical Inductive Bias in Sequence-to-Sequence Networks

Learners that are exposed to the same training data might generalize differently due to differing inductive biases. In neural network models, inductive biases could in theory arise from any aspect of the model architecture. We investigate which architectural factors affect the generalization behavior of neural sequence-to-sequence models trained on two syntactic tasks, English question formation and English tense reinflection. For both tasks, the training set is consistent with a generalization based on hierarchical structure and a generalization based on linear order. All architectural factors that we investigated qualitatively affected how models generalized, including factors with no clear connection to hierarchical structure. For example, LSTMs and GRUs displayed qualitatively different inductive biases. However, the only factor that consistently contributed a hierarchical bias across tasks was the use of a tree-structured model rather than a model with sequential recurrence, suggesting that human-like syntactic generalization requires architectural syntactic structure.