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Linguistics.

Linguistics is the study of human language in all its aspects, from the origins of speech and the biological systems involved in the production of speech and non-speech sounds to the semantic drift of words and phrases over time to the study of...

Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2018. 4p.

1. A Grammar of Praxis: an Exposé of "A New Logical Foundation for Psychology", a Few Additions, and Replies to Alaric Kohler and Alexander Poddiakov. [2019]

  • Mammen J
  • Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science [Integr Psychol Behav Sci] 2019 Jun; Vol. 53 (2), pp. 223-237.
Subjects
Humans, Language, Mathematics, Object Attachment, Linguistics, and Logic
Abstract
Taking departure in the author's recent book "A New Logical Foundation for Psychology" the paper proposes a solution to the long-standing so-called crisis in psychology. The causes to this crisis are above all found in a ruling reductionist and mathematically supported mechanistic understanding of nature with roots in European Renaissance, and following that, of man's embedment in nature. This leaves no place for non-mechanistic relations to unique and irreplaceable persons and objects defining the human psyche or soul, and fundamental phenomena as love and grief are consequently not understood. No humanistic superstructure of language or systems of signs and concepts can repair this loss of a vital dimension in basic human practical relations to the world. However, it is just in modern mathematics and mathematical logic, that the reductions of mechanicism are surmounted, at the same time leaving a place for mechanicism within a broader conceptual frame and defining a rich practical basis for understanding the role of language and human concepts. The wider perspectives comprise a new union of natural and human sciences. Finally the paper presents replies to two important commentaries to the author's abovementioned book.

2. Reading without spaces: The role of precise letter order. [2019]

  • Mirault J, Snell J, and Grainger J
  • Attention, Perception & Psychophysics [Atten Percept Psychophys] 2019 Apr; Vol. 81 (3), pp. 846-860.
Subjects
Adolescent, Adult, Cues, Female, Humans, Male, Young Adult, Linguistics, Reading, and Visual Perception
Abstract
Prior research points to efficient identification of embedded words as a key factor in facilitating the reading of text printed without spacing between words. Here we further tested the primary role of bottom-up word identification by altering this process with a letter transposition manipulation. In two experiments, we examined silent reading and reading aloud of normal sentences and sentences containing words with letter transpositions, in both normally spaced and unspaced conditions. We predicted that letter transpositions should be particularly harmful for reading unspaced text. In line with our prediction, the majority of our measures of reading fluency showed that unspaced text with letter transpositions was disproportionately difficult to read. These findings provide further support for the claim that reading text without between-word spacing relies principally on efficient bottom-up processing, enabling accurate word identification in the absence of visual cues to identify word boundaries.

3. Is jellyfish more of a fish in English than in Dutch? The effect of informative labels. [2019]

  • Djalal FM, Voorspoels W, Storms G, and Heyman T
  • Quarterly Journal Of Experimental Psychology (2006) [Q J Exp Psychol (Hove)] 2019 Apr; Vol. 72 (4), pp. 792-797. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 May 26.
Subjects
Adult, Animals, Female, Fishes, Humans, Judgment physiology, Male, Young Adult, Concept Formation physiology, Language, Linguistics, and Translating
Abstract
Some words are lexically suggestive about the taxonomic position of their referent (e.g., jellyfish in English), and this information can vary across languages (e.g., in Dutch the equivalent of jellyfish holds no taxonomic information: kwal). To evaluate the role of such lexical suggestions, we conducted a cross-linguistic study in which similarity judgements from two language groups (Dutch and English speakers) were compared. We paired asymmetrically informative items with items that are considered to be typical members of the referenced category (e.g., jellyfish-salmon). Our analyses revealed that items were deemed more similar by speakers of a language in which the lexical information was present (e.g., English speakers tended to give relatively higher ratings for jellyfish-salmon than Dutch participants did for the non-informative equivalent kwal-zalm). Results are discussed in light of theories of concept representation and compound processing.

4. The interaction of notional number and morphophonology in subject-verb agreement: A role for working memory. [2019]

  • Lorimor H, Jackson CN, and van Hell JG
  • Quarterly Journal Of Experimental Psychology (2006) [Q J Exp Psychol (Hove)] 2019 Apr; Vol. 72 (4), pp. 890-900. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 May 04.
Subjects
Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Recall, Young Adult, Comprehension physiology, Linguistics, Memory, Short-Term physiology, Semantics, and Verbal Behavior physiology
Abstract
Research shows that cross-linguistically, subject-verb agreement with complex noun phrases (e.g., The label on the bottles) is influenced by notional number and the presence of homophony in case, gender, or number morphology. Less well-understood is whether notional number and morphophonology interact during speech production, and whether the relative impact of these two factors is influenced by working memory capacity. Using an auditory sentence completion task, we investigated the impact of notional number and morphophonology on agreement with complex subject noun phrases in Dutch. Results revealed main effects of notional number and morphophonology. Critically, there was also an interaction between morphophonology and notional number because participants showed greater notional effects when the determiners were homophonous and morphophonologically ambiguous. Furthermore, participants with higher working memory scores made fewer agreement errors when the subject noun phrase contained homophonous determiners, and this effect was greater when the subject noun phrase was notionally singular. These findings support the hypothesis that cue-based retrieval plays a role in agreement production, and suggests that the ability to correctly assign subject-verb agreement-especially in the presence of homophonous determiners-is modulated by working memory capacity.

5. Finding our voice. [2019]

  • Robson, David
  • New Scientist. 5/4/2019, Vol. 242 Issue 3228, p34-37. 4p.
Subjects
LANGUAGE & languages, HISTORICAL linguistics, HUMAN evolution, COMMUNICATION, and ARCHAEOLOGY
Abstract
The origin of language is one of the biggest mysteries of human evolution, but it looks like we've finally cracked it, says David Robson [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

6. Predicting responsiveness to a sustained reading and spelling intervention in children with dyslexia. [2019]

  • Tilanus EAT, Segers E, and Verhoeven L
  • Dyslexia (Chichester, England) [Dyslexia] 2019 May; Vol. 25 (2), pp. 190-206. Date of Electronic Publication: 2019 Apr 23.
Subjects
Awareness, Child, Dyslexia psychology, Female, Humans, Male, Memory, Short-Term, Phonetics, Teaching, Treatment Outcome, Dyslexia therapy, Linguistics, and Reading
Abstract
The present study aimed to predict responsiveness to a sustained two-phase reading and spelling intervention with a focus on declarative and procedural learning respectively in 122 second-grade Dutch children with dyslexia. We related their responsiveness to intervention to precursor measures (phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming ability, letter knowledge, and verbal working memory) and related word and pseudoword reading and spelling outcomes of the sustained intervention to initial reading and spelling abilities, and first-phase, initial treatment success. Results showed that children with dyslexia improved in reading accuracy and efficiency and in spelling skills during the two phases of the intervention although the gap with typical readers increased. In reading efficiency, rapid automatized naming, and in reading and spelling accuracy phoneme deletion predicted children's responsiveness to intervention. Additionally, children's initial reading abilities at the start of the intervention directly (and indirectly, via initial treatment success, in reading efficiency) predicted posttest outcomes. Responsiveness to intervention in spelling was predicted by phoneme deletion, and spelling at posttest was indirectly, via initial treatment success, predicted by children's initial spelling abilities. Finally, children's initial treatment success directly predicted reading efficiency and spelling outcomes at posttest.
(© 2019 The Authors Dyslexia Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

7. Syntactic ambiguity resolution in dyslexia: An examination of cognitive factors underlying eye movement differences and comprehension failures. [2019]

  • Stella M and Engelhardt PE
  • Dyslexia (Chichester, England) [Dyslexia] 2019 May; Vol. 25 (2), pp. 115-141. Date of Electronic Publication: 2019 Apr 16.
Subjects
Adult, Female, Humans, Language, Male, Memory, Short-Term, Reading, Young Adult, Comprehension, Dyslexia physiopathology, Dyslexia psychology, Eye Movements, and Linguistics
Abstract
This study examined eye movements and comprehension of temporary syntactic ambiguities in individuals with dyslexia, as few studies have focused on sentence-level comprehension in dyslexia. We tested 50 participants with dyslexia and 50 typically developing controls, in order to investigate (a) whether dyslexics have difficulty revising temporary syntactic misinterpretations and (b) underlying cognitive factors (i.e., working memory and processing speed) associated with eye movement differences and comprehension failures. In the sentence comprehension task, participants read subordinate-main structures that were either ambiguous or unambiguous, and we also manipulated the type of verb contained in the subordinate clause (i.e., reflexive or optionally transitive). Results showed a main effect of group on comprehension, in which individuals with dyslexia showed poorer comprehension than typically developing readers. In addition, participants with dyslexia showed longer total reading times on the disambiguating region of syntactically ambiguous sentences. With respect to cognitive factors, working memory was more associated with group differences than was processing speed. Conclusions focus on sentence-level syntactic processing issues in dyslexia (a previously under-researched area) and the relationship between online and offline measures of syntactic ambiguity resolution.
(© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

8. Are linguistic and social-pragmatic abilities separable in neurotypical infants and infants later diagnosed with ASD? [2019]

  • Yamashiro A and Vouloumanos A
  • Developmental Psychology [Dev Psychol] 2019 May; Vol. 55 (5), pp. 920-933. Date of Electronic Publication: 2019 Feb 07.
Subjects
Attention, Child Development, Child, Preschool, Communication, Female, Humans, Infant, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Prospective Studies, Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis, Child Language, Interpersonal Relations, Linguistics, and Speech Perception physiology
Abstract
Adult humans process communicative interactions by recognizing that information is being communicated through speech (linguistic ability) and simultaneously evaluating how to respond appropriately (social-pragmatic ability). These abilities may originate in infancy. Infants understand how speech communicates in social interactions, helping them learn language and how to interact with others. Infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who show deficits in social-pragmatic abilities, differ in how they attend to the linguistic and social-pragmatic information in their environment. Despite their interdependence, experimental measures of language and social-pragmatic attention are often studied in isolation in infancy. Thus, the extent to which language and social-pragmatic abilities are related constructs remains unknown. Understanding how related or separable language and social-pragmatic abilities are in infancy may reveal whether these abilities are supported by distinguishable developmental mechanisms. This study uses a single communicative scene to examine whether real-time linguistic and social-pragmatic attention are separable in neurotypical infants and infants later diagnosed with ASD, and whether attending to linguistic and social-pragmatic information separately predicts later language and social-pragmatic abilities 1 year later. For neurotypical 12-month-olds and 12-month-olds later diagnosed with ASD, linguistic attention was not correlated with concurrent social-pragmatic attention. Furthermore, infants' real-time attention to the linguistic and social-pragmatic aspects of the scene at 12 months predicted and distinguished language and social-pragmatic abilities at 24 months. Language and social-pragmatic attention during communication are thus separable in infancy and may follow distinguishable developmental trajectories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

9. Literature reading modulates pronoun resolution in counterfactual world: Evidence from event-related potentials. [2019]

  • Dai H, Chen L, Ni C, and Xu X
  • Journal Of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, And Cognition [J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn] 2019 May; Vol. 45 (5), pp. 904-919. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Jul 16.
Subjects
Electroencephalography, Female, Habits, Humans, Male, Pattern Recognition, Visual physiology, Young Adult, Brain physiology, Comprehension physiology, Evoked Potentials, Linguistics, Literature, and Reading
Abstract
Counterfactuals are contrary-to-fact statements that are widely used in daily life to convey thoughts about what might have been. Different from fact-based processing, successful counterfactual comprehension requires readers to keep in mind both suppositional information and presupposed fact. Using event-related potentials, the present study investigates how the process of establishing a coreferential relation (i.e., pronoun resolution) is influenced by counterfactual context, and whether it will be modulated by individual difference in literature reading. We compared the P600 (a positive-going deflection, which often reaches its peak around 600 milliseconds after presentation of the stimulus) effects elicited by gender-mismatched pronouns in three conditionals (causal vs. hypothetical vs. counterfactual) between two groups (literature exposure high- vs. low-level group). Results show that for low-level group, incongruent pronouns elicited robust P600 effects across all three conditionals, while for high-level group, the P600 effects were pronounced only in causal and hypothetical conditionals, but not in counterfactual conditionals. These findings suggest (a) different from causal and hypothetical conditionals, the dual meaning and pragmatic implications of counterfactuals may prompt people to go beyond here and now to elaborate their mental models and entertain alternative interpretations, and (b) substantial literature exposure would further enhance pragmatic inference of counterfactual context, leading high-level readers more inclined to elaborate discourse with possible alternative inferences, while leaving low-level readers habitually resort to more straightforward coreferential interpretation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

10. Beyond subjective judgments: Predicting evaluations of creative writing from computational linguistic features. [2019]

  • Zedelius CM, Mills C, and Schooler JW
  • Behavior Research Methods [Behav Res Methods] 2019 Apr; Vol. 51 (2), pp. 879-894.
Subjects
Adult, Automation, Female, Humans, Judgment, Male, Reproducibility of Results, Software, Students psychology, Young Adult, Creativity, Linguistics, and Writing
Abstract
The question of how to evaluate creativity in the context of creative writing has been a subject of ongoing discussion. A key question is whether something as elusive as creativity can be evaluated in a systematic way that goes beyond subjective judgments. To answer this question, we tested whether human evaluations of the creativity of short stories can be predicted by: (1) established measures of creativity and (2) computerized linguistic analyses of the stories. We conducted two studies, in which college students (with and without interest and experience in creative writing) wrote short stories based on a writing prompt. Independent raters (six in Study 1, five in Study 2) assessed the stories using an evaluation rubric specifically designed to assess aspects of creativity, on which they showed high interrater reliability. We provide evidence of convergent validity, in that the rubric evaluations correlated with established creativity measures, including measures of divergent thinking, associative fluency, and self-reported creative behavior and achievements. Linguistic properties of the short stories were analyzed with two computerized text analysis tools: Coh-Metrix, which analyzes aspects of text cohesion and readability, and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, which identifies meaningful psychological categories of the text content. Linguistic features predicted the human ratings of creativity to a significant degree. These results provide novel evidence that creative writing can be evaluated reliably and in a systematic way that captures objective features of the text. The results further establish our evaluation rubric as a useful tool to assess creative writing.

11. Measurement invariance of language brokering extent and attitudes in linguistic minority adolescents: Item response theory analyses. [2019]

  • Shen Y, Seo E, Hu Y, Zhang M, and Chao RK
  • Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology [Cultur Divers Ethnic Minor Psychol] 2019 Apr; Vol. 25 (2), pp. 170-178. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Oct 11.
Subjects
Adolescent, Adolescent Behavior ethnology, Asian Americans psychology, Female, Humans, Language, Male, Mexican Americans psychology, Psychometrics, Reproducibility of Results, Translating, Adolescent Behavior psychology, Emigrants and Immigrants psychology, Linguistics, Minority Groups psychology, and Surveys and Questionnaires standards
Abstract
Objective: Using item response theory, we sought to evaluate measurement invariance of language brokering extent and attitudes in 3 linguistic minority groups of adolescents.
Method: The sample included 765 (302 Chinese American, 327 Korean American, and 136 Mexican American; 57% females) ninth graders from immigrant families.
Results: Differential item functioning was detected for several items, and we retained items with equivalent parameters across 3 groups. The final items showed adequate internal consistency reliability and criterion validity.
Conclusion: The refined scale is cross-ethnically invariant and appropriate for use with Chinese-American, Korean-American, and Mexican-American adolescents to compare their language brokering experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

12. Predicting emotional health indicators from linguistic evidence of psychological distancing. [2019]

  • Shahane AD and Denny BT
  • Stress And Health: Journal Of The International Society For The Investigation Of Stress [Stress Health] 2019 Apr; Vol. 35 (2), pp. 200-210. Date of Electronic Publication: 2019 Jan 30.
Subjects
Adaptation, Psychological, Adolescent, Arousal, Defense Mechanisms, Female, Humans, Male, Thinking, Young Adult, Affect, Emotional Intelligence, Linguistics, Social Adjustment, and Social Distance
Abstract
Psychological distancing, a form of cognitive reappraisal, involves construal of emotionally valenced stimuli in an objective manner, or with perceived spatial and temporal distance. Prior work suggests that in appropriate contexts, reappraisal broadly, and distancing specifically, is related to adaptive mental and physical health outcomes. Additionally, recent research suggests that shifting language to be more distant (i.e., linguistic distancing [LD]) can have adaptive emotion regulatory effects. The present study addressed whether LD is also associated with adaptive health indicators. Participants transcribed their thoughts while viewing negative or neutral stimuli in one of three ways: (a) by implementing objective language, (b) by implementing spatially and/or temporally far away language, or (c) by responding naturally. Across psychological distancing groups, LD was associated with lower negative affectivity (lower perceived stress and depression symptoms), better general well-being (better emotional well-being and energy and vitality), and better emotion regulation (ER; greater reappraisal frequency and fewer difficulties in implementing ER). Participants who used more LD in the objective group had lower negative affectivity, better general well-being, and better ER, and those in the far group had better ER. The results reveal linguistic mechanisms underlying ER and its relationship to health indicators, suggesting future examination of LD interventions.
(© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

13. Differences in relative frequency facilitate learning abstract rules. [2019]

  • Monte-Ordoño J and Toro JM
  • Psychological Research [Psychol Res] 2019 Mar; Vol. 83 (2), pp. 384-394. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Jun 11.
Subjects
Female, Humans, Male, Young Adult, Auditory Perception, Learning, and Linguistics
Abstract
Humans learn the rules that govern how the elements of their language are organized over an input that is often not homogeneous (it might contain noise, or even include rules from different linguistic systems, as it might be the case for bilinguals). In the present study we explore the conditions under which participants can learn an abstract rule when it is presented in a heterogeneous context. Results from six experiments show that listeners can learn a token-independent rule even if it is presented together with some exemplars that implement a different regularity (Experiment 1a and 1b). In fact, learning rules from an input containing several patterns does not seem to differ from learning them from an input containing only one (Experiment 1c). More surprisingly, we observed that listeners can even learn an abstract rule that is only implemented over 10% of the exemplars that compose a familiarization stream (Experiments 2a and 2b). When the proportion of tokens implementing the target and the non-target rules is balanced, we did not observe any learning (Experiment 3). Our results suggest that listeners use differences in relative frequency to keep separate linguistic rules apart. This allows them to learn different abstract regularities from a non-homogeneous linguistic signal.

14. Independence of syntactic and phonological deficits in dyslexia: A study using the attraction error paradigm. [2019]

  • Antón-Méndez I, Cuetos F, and Suárez-Coalla P
  • Dyslexia (Chichester, England) [Dyslexia] 2019 Feb; Vol. 25 (1), pp. 38-56. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Nov 08.
Subjects
Adolescent, Child, Female, Humans, Male, Memory, Short-Term, Dyslexia psychology, Linguistics, and Phonetics
Abstract
This paper addresses the question of whether dyslexic children suffer from syntactic deficits that are independent of limitations with phonological processing. We looked at subject-verb agreement errors after sentence subjects containing a second noun (the attractor) known to be able to attract incorrect agreement (e.g., "the owner(s) of the house(s) is/are away"). In the general population, attraction errors are not straightforwardly dependent on the presence or absence of morphophonological plural markers but on their syntactic configuration. The same would be expected for dyslexic children if their syntactic problems are not phonological in nature. We also looked at the possible effect of system overload on syntactic processing by comparing auditory and written presentation of stimuli and stimuli with high and low frequency attractors. Dyslexic children produced more agreement errors than age-matched controls, but their errors were distributed in the expected manner and did not align with the presence of morphophonological number markers in the subject overall. Furthermore, there was no effect of either presentation mode or attractor frequency on the number of agreement errors. Our results confirm the existence of syntactic difficulties in dyslexia and suggest that they are not due to a phonological deficit or to verbal working memory limitations.
(© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

15. Variation, race, and multiracial identity in linguistic research. [2019]

  • Holliday NR
  • Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science [Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci] 2019 Jan; Vol. 10 (1), pp. e1480. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Aug 06.
Subjects
Humans, Social Behavior, Continental Population Groups, Linguistics, and Research
Abstract
What is the relationship between ethnolinguistic communities and ways of speaking? Who is an authentic speaker of an ethnolinguistic variety? In a time where scholarly and public conceptualizations of race and ethnicity are variable and rapidly changing, potential effects on both self-identification and ways of speaking present an area ripe for study. However, linguistics and allied fields have often overlooked individuals and communities that do not neatly conform to well-defined racial categories. As multiracially identified individuals are one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the United States, researchers will necessarily need to address the way that traditional methodologies have excluded individuals and groups who fall outside of these racial and ethnic categories. This presents a unique challenge for sociolinguistics in particular, since we are interested in how people draw on linguistic variation to perform aspects of their identities, including their races and ethnicities. This study examines the ways in which race and ethnicity have been traditionally conceptualized in linguistics and allied fields, and draws on research from other social sciences to see how they have begun to study individuals who fall outside of traditionally pre-existing social categories. The study also briefly discusses the results of one of the first major sociolinguistic studies on multiracially identified participants, which found substantial effects of self-conceptualization and self-identification on linguistic behavior of these participants. Finally, it will address future questions and directions for research at the intersection of personal identity, race, and language. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Evolution of Language Linguistics > Linguistic Theory Linguistics > Computational Models of Language Linguistics > Language Acquisition.
(© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

16. Chinese lexical database (CLD) : A large-scale lexical database for simplified Mandarin Chinese. [2018]

  • Sun CC, Hendrix P, Ma J, and Baayen RH
  • Behavior Research Methods [Behav Res Methods] 2018 Dec; Vol. 50 (6), pp. 2606-2629.
Subjects
Humans, Asian Continental Ancestry Group, Databases, Factual, Linguistics, and Vocabulary
Abstract
We present the Chinese Lexical Database (CLD): a large-scale lexical database for simplified Chinese. The CLD provides a wealth of lexical information for 3913 one-character words, 34,233 two-character words, 7143 three-character words, and 3355 four-character words, and is publicly available through http://www.chineselexicaldatabase.com . For each of the 48,644 words in the CLD, we provide a wide range of categorical predictors, as well as an extensive set of frequency measures, complexity measures, neighborhood density measures, orthography-phonology consistency measures, and information-theoretic measures. We evaluate the explanatory power of the lexical variables in the CLD in the context of experimental data through analyses of lexical decision latencies for one-character, two-character, three-character and four-character words, as well as word naming latencies for one-character and two-character words. The results of these analyses are discussed.

17. The Acquisition of Exhaustive Pairing in Multiple Wh-Questions in Mandarin. [2018]

  • de Villiers J, Ning C, Liu XL, Zhang YW, and Jiang F
  • Journal Of Psycholinguistic Research [J Psycholinguist Res] 2018 Dec; Vol. 47 (6), pp. 1369-1389.
Subjects
Child, Child, Preschool, China, Female, Humans, Male, Semantics, Comprehension physiology, Language Development, Language Development Disorders physiopathology, and Linguistics
Abstract
The comprehension of paired wh-questions is examined in child Mandarin, to compare the age of acquisition with that of children speaking European languages like English and German. In Study 1, participants were 734 Mandarin speakers aged 2;6-7;11, drawn from four regions of China. Results reveal a striking parallel between the acquisition of exhaustive answers in Mandarin and that in languages with wh-movement. The significant correlation with children's exhaustive interpretations of the universal quantifier every (dou) also parallels findings in English. In Study 2, the performance of children (N = 100) identified as having language impairment is compared to that of non-impaired children (N = 130), and the results support the idea that answering these paired wh-questions is a potential semantic deficit in language-delayed children.

18. Chinese Children's Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study. [2018]

  • Hu S, Guasti MT, and Gavarró A
  • Journal Of Psycholinguistic Research [J Psycholinguist Res] 2018 Dec; Vol. 47 (6), pp. 1279-1300.
Subjects
Child, Child, Preschool, China, Female, Humans, Male, Psycholinguistics, Comprehension, Language, Language Development, and Linguistics
Abstract
There is a debate as to whether topic structures in Chinese involve A'-movement or result from base-generation of the topic in the left periphery. If Chinese topicalization was derived by movement, under the assumptions of Friedmann et al.'s Relativized Minimality (Lingua 119:67-88, 2009), we would expect children's comprehension of object topicalization (with OSV order) to be worse than their comprehension of subject topicalization (with SVO order). This study examined 146 Mandarin-speaking children from age three to age six by means of a picture-sentence matching task with an appropriate context. The results showed a subject/object asymmetry when the topic marker is overt, and no asymmetry when the topic marker is covert. This suggests that the presence or absence of topic markers play an important role in children's comprehension of topicalization. We propose that both structures involve movement in the adult grammar, but not in the child grammar, at least initially. Sentences without overt topic markers are base-generated on a par with gapless sentences with a topic, and the base-generation analysis is abandoned as soon as children learn the syntax and semantics of topic markers, which function as attractors of topics.

19. Audiovisual Translation in the Foreign Language Classroom: Applications in the Teaching of English and Other Foreign Languages [2019]

  • Lertola, Jennifer, Research-publishing.net (France), Lertola, Jennifer, and Research-publishing.net (France)
  • Research-publishing.net. 108 pp.
Subjects
Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Audiovisual Instruction, Teaching Methods, Communicative Competence (Languages), Films, Multimedia Materials, Computational Linguistics, Translation, Foreign Countries, Native Language, Undergraduate Students, Layout (Publications), English (Second Language), Spanish, Italian, and Spain
Abstract
Rapid technological changes have given rise to new methods and opportunities in language learning. In the past two decades, interest has been growing in the integration of Audiovisual Translation (AVT) with a communicative approach to language learning and teaching. AVT indicates the transfer of verbal language in audiovisual media and it is usually used as an umbrella term which refers to "screen-translation", "film translation", "multimedia translation", or "multimodal translation" (Bollettieri, Di Giovanni, & Rossato, 2014; Chiaro, 2009; Perego, 2005). AVT modes can be divided into two main groups: captioning (written language transfer procedures) and revoicing (oral language transfer procedures). These language transfer procedures can take place between two languages (interlingual) or within the same language (intralingual). Both captioning and revoicing tasks can be used effectively in second language acquisition. This work focusses on the foreign language classroom, presenting a systematic review of studies carried out in the last twenty years on the applications of captioning and revoicing in this context in order to offer an overview of the state of the art and encourage further research. The literature review presents research on the topic, paying particular attention to relevant experimental studies (i.e. empirical research that involves data collection), which are reviewed in terms of research focus, target languages, participants, learning settings, audiovisual materials, and captioning/revoicing software and type of analysis (i.e. qualitative and/or quantitative). The first part considers studies on captioning, namely on standard interlingual subtitling, reverse interlingual subtitling, and intralingual subtitling. The second part focuses on the research currently available on revoicing: reverse interlingual dubbing, intralingual dubbing, and audio description. Finally, the third part presents the studies that combine captioning and revoicing; in particular, reverse interlingual and intralingual subtitling and dubbing.

20. Lexical Formation Error in the Descriptive Writing of Indonesian Tertiary EFL Learners [2019]

  • Ginting, Siti Aisah
  • Online Submission, International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation v2 n1 p85-89 Jan 2019. 5 pp.
Subjects
English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Error Patterns, Writing (Composition), Foreign Countries, Grammar, College Students, Morphemes, Computational Linguistics, Error Analysis (Language), Writing Evaluation, Morphology (Languages), and Indonesia
Abstract
This study was aimed at identifying the kinds and frequency of formal errors on Indonesian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' descripting writing. Therefore, descriptive analysis research design was implemented to achieve the objective. The data were collected from the descriptive writing of university students in Indonesia (N = 40). Then, the data were computerized and tabulated by using descriptive statistic (frequency and percentage) in SPSS version 21. The result of this study presents that from 223 errors, suffix was the most frequent formal errors (32.29%) in Formal Misselection, followed by calque (22.87%) in Formal Misformations and omission (12.56%) in Distorsion. In conclusion, most of the students have considerable difficulty in forming the correct form of the words. Therefore, to produce an excellent descriptive writing, the students are suggested to learn and practice more on words formations (grammar).

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