bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Misrepresentation of Dutch neuter gender in older bilingual children?
Authors: Brouwer Susanne , Cornips Leonie , Hulk Aafke
Published: March 2014

Previous research revealed that monolingual children between 11- and 13-yearold show a target-like production with respect to gender assignment of definite determiners whereas this is not the case for bilingual children who massively overgeneralize de. In order to further investigate this overgeneralization, we designed an experimental decision task, “tapping the knowledge” of both monolingual and bilingual children. Our results show that bilinguals fail to represent abstract gender and that de and het are in free variation. The difference between the production and comprehension data could suggest that bilinguals have some awareness of de and het being gender markers. In that case, the overgeneralization in the production data is possibly not a grammatical phenomenon, but more likely a speech production strategy.
The status of subjects in early child L2 English
Authors: Mobaraki Mohsen , Vainikka Anne , Young-Scholten Martha
Published: March 2014

Proponents of Full Transfer/Full Access take nominative subject forms in early child L2 English as evidence for initial state functional projections. We discuss early stage longitudinal data from two Farsi-speaking children acquiring English. Our data reveal non-contrastive use of nominative subject forms, indicating initial absence of case marking. The patterns found are similar to those in the L1 English data in terms of the early non-contrastive pronoun use (e.g. Vainikka 1993/1994) and in terms of co-occurrence of null subjects with non-finite verbs. Pronominal contrasts first occur in utterances with the copula, supporting Hawkins’ (2001) proposal that it triggers the projection of AgrP under the Structure Building approach taken by Vainikka & Young-Scholten (e.g. 1994).
The morphology/syntax interface in child L2 acquisition: Evidence from verbal morphology
Authors: Geçkin Vasfiye , Haznedar Belma
Published: March 2014

Recent work in both adult and child L2 acquisition has focused on the question of whether morphological variability suggests syntactic impairment, or the lack of overt inflection could be attributable to problems associated with surface morphology (e.g. Lardiere 1998a, b; Haznedar & Schwartz 1997; Prévost & White 2000). This paper examines longitudinal data from three Turkish-speaking child L2 learners of English with special reference to inflected and uninflected verbs, copula be forms, null subjects and case on pronominal subjects. Results show that despite high rates of uninflected verb forms, the children almost never use agreement morphemes for inappropriate tense, person or number. The learners also show higher proficiency in the use of be forms than in the use of main verb inflection.
Tense as a clinical marker in English L2 acquisition with language delay/impairment
Authors: Paradis Johanne
Published: March 2014

This study examines the use of tense- and non-tense-marking morphology over time by a group of English L2 children with typical language development and two English L2 children with language delay/impairment. The aim was to ascertain whether the Extended Optional Infinitive (EOI) account characterized the acquisition patterns displayed by the affected children, suggesting that tense functions as a clinical marker in impaired L2 as well as L1 English. Results showed that the two children with language delay/impairment displayed a hybrid pattern between typical child L2 English and L1-based EOI characteristics. The difference in age of English acquisition onset between L1 and L2 is put forward as a potential explanation for the dissimilar patterns between L1 and L2 impaired acquisition.
Acquisition of the local binding characteristics of English reflexives and the obligatory status of English objects by Chinese-speaking learners
Authors: Lin Jiang
Published: March 2014

This study investigates whether Chinese speakers can acquire the local binding characteristics of English reflexives and the obligatory status of English objects. Chinese allows both the long-distance (LD) and the local binding of reflexives, whereas English only allows the local binding of reflexives. Similarly, Chinese allows both overt and null objects, whereas English only allows overt objects. Even though the two properties involve different types of antecedent-anaphora and operator-variable binding relations, both of them are likely to cause poverty of stimulus for Chinese learners of English. The results of the experiment suggest that the learners’ interpretation of binding of reflexives is more or less native-like because of the availability of the triggering data but the obligatory status of English objects is not acquirable because of the lack of the relevant triggering data.
Associating meaning to form in advanced L2 speakers: An investigation into the acquisition of the English present simple and present progressive
Authors: Liszka Sarah Ann
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the L2 acquisition of the distributional and interpretational properties of the English present simple (e.g., She works at home) and present progressive (e.g., She is working at home). To test whether advanced L2 learners are successful in assigning target-like meanings to these forms, sixteen advanced L1 French-L2 English and thirteen L1 English informants participated in two oral tasks and a written gap-fill task. Results indicate that these L2 speakers use both forms productively, but show optionality in consistently producing the progressive in appropriate environments. The study considers a permanent L2 deficit arising from L1-L2 parametric differences as a potential source of difficulty in acquiring the target-like interpretations associated with the two forms.
Subjects, verb classes and word order in child Catalan
Authors: Gavarró Anna , Cabré-Sans Yolanda
Published: March 2014

A line of research initiated in Borer and Wexler (1987) and more recently pursued in Wexler (2004) indicates that language acquisition is conditioned by the maturation of the principles that regulate the projection of derived subjects. We consider what might be the consequences of assuming such maturation for the distribution of subjects in child Catalan, and with that purpose we examine the spontaneous productions of three Catalan-speaking children with regard to the production of overt and null subjects and the distribution of subjects in relation to verb class. Our findings indicate a delay in the production of subjects with unaccusatives, fulfilling the predictions of Wexler’s hypothesis, in an otherwise early target-like development of monoargumental verb structures.
Person and number asymmetries in child Catalan and Spanish
Authors: Bel Aurora , Rosado Elisa
Published: March 2014

This study provides a unified account for the different Number Agreement patterns attested in early Catalan and Spanish. The scarce Person Agreement errors analyzed indicate the existence of a pragmatic rather than a syntactic deficit while, concerning Number, the distribution of plural subjects show than children are sensitive to linear order as in other domains of grammar. As for Number marking, subjects trigger Number Agreement on the verb in preverbal and not in post-verbal position. Following Guasti & Rizzi’s proposal (2002) we suggest that the overt movement of the plural DP to a position in which it enters into an agreement relation with V is not realized, yielding the possibility that Agreement features not be checked in the overt syntax and that the verb surfaces without plural marking.
Étude distributionnelle des constructions en ba en chinois
Authors: Ting-Au Cheng
Published: March 2014

The objective of this paper is to explore the applicability of Gross's theory of Lexicon-Grammar to the study of Chinese syntax. The paper is concerned with the ba-construction in Chinese. It aims to show that the very concept of exhaustivity is crucial in an area of study which has been badly in need of new ideas. To highlight the complexity requirement of the ba-construction, we have examined respectively all the relevant constituents within a canonical sentential framework, i.e. #N0 W0 ba-N1 W1 V W2# and it is found that previous accounts of the ba-construction cannot adequately characterize all its syntactic properties. Hence a much more thorough study will be needed if we bear in mind to provide a sound, verifiable, empirical support for constructing a viable model for Chinese syntax.
Tree pruning
Authors: Kuroda S.-Y.
Published: March 2014

This paper was originally written in 1965. It introduces two principles that determine the derivation of surface structure constituent trees from underlying deep structure trees. The first principle specifies that a non-branching node is eliminated, unless it is a preterminal node directly dominating a lexical item. The second principle is that if the head of a phrase is deleted, the nodes of the phrase dominating the head are eliminated. How to derive reasonable surface trees from underlying trees in a principled manner is much concern in Japanese syntax: due to the agglutinative character of the language under-lyingly complex sentences can become simple sentences at the surface level.
Du locatif directionnel au datif dans les constructions du verbe arriver
Authors: Ogata Kozué
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the relationship between the directional locative and dative in the constructions of the verb arriver in French. These elements have points in common: semantically, they are both directional, syntactically, they can have the forme à N. Comparing two types of constructions for arriver: the locative and non-locative, we observe different co-occurrence restrictions between the dative and locative (directional and non-directional) in these constructions. Our analysis shows us that the dative and the directional locative are mutually exclusive, in that a verb can only take one directional object which is strongly related to it. The locative and the dative appear to be compatible in cases where the former is included by the latter, because according to the hierarchy between them the dative has a priority over the directional locative when they are in the same construction.
The Syntax of Emphasis — A Base Camp
Authors: Ross Háj
Published: March 2014

This paper attempts a survey of the major emphatic constructions in English, and of the processes which derive them from a proposed bisentential source. The source for a garden-variety pseudocleft sentence like What Jeb hankers for is a smooth transition is argued to be What Jeb hankers for is he hankers for a smooth transition – the rule of Pseudocleft Formation, which is optional for some speakers, deletes the redundant struck-through elements. Whether this ellipsis has occurred or not, a rule of Copula Switch can apply to transform the post-copular constituent into the subject of the resulting sentence: He hankers for a smooth transition is what Jeb hankers for. Copula-switched or not, and deleted or not, the subjects of all such pseudoclefts can be Deictic Dislocated, freely to the left, less so to the right. The returning pronouns which emerge in the course of these operations are the demonstratives that and this. Some examples of the resultant structures are: What Jeb hankers for- [that / this] is (? he hankers for a smooth transition); *[That /This] is (** he hankers for
a smooth transition) - what Jeb hankers for; He hankers for a smooth transition - [that/ > this] is what Jeb hankers for; [This / >?That] is what Jeb hankers for - he hankers for a smooth transition
. Akmajian's motion to derive cleft sentences from pseudoclefts is seconded, and it is argued that Deictic Dislocation can provide some evidence for the correctness of such an analysis, in the face of apparent counterexamples to it. Thus, since What Tony regretted was [the pizza / that Mildred loved Baryshnikov] are both grammatical, we would expect both clefts to be. But: It was [the pizza / *that Mildred loved Baryshnikov] that Tony regretted. However, left-dislocating both foci yields two good clauses: [The pizza / That Mildred loved Baryshnikov] – it was that that Tony regretted. Thus we conclude that the ungrammaticality of the clefted that-clause is merely due to a violation of a surface filter.
Verbs of Mental States
Authors: Salkoff Morris
Published: March 2014

This article is a summary of a longer investigation of the so-called psych verbs that have been much studied in the literature. I have defined a psych verb as one that takes a complement clause subject that S and Nh, a human noun object. These are sentences like That John was so stingy (troubled + annoyed) Helen. It turns out that psych verbs so defined are heterogeneous: one group refers to a change in the mental state of Nh, a second to a change in the physical state of Nh, and a third group refers to no change of state at all in Nh. Some of these verbs take an optional or required particle, e.g., calm takes down optionally, but only bowl over is a psych verb as defined here. Others do not appear with Nh, but rather with a noun referring to some mental state of Nh, as in That the officer treated his men so curtly blunted (*them + their morale). A lexical study of these verbs shows that there are more than 600 in English. Various syntactic properties of these groups of psych verbs have been studied, and the results have been collected into a table, an extract of which is appended here.
Diphtongues vocaliques et diphtongues consonantiques
Authors: Schane Sanford A.
Published: March 2014

Within the syllable I look at the properties of diphthongs, defined as a glide and adjacent vowel. Both halves of a diphthong may occur within the nucleus of a syllable, or else only the vowel part is in the nucleus whereas the glide component functions as part of the onset or coda. This distinction is phonological and not necessarily phonetic and leads to a distinction between vocalic diphthongs and consonantal diphthongs. From this perspective, the diphthongs of English, French, and Spanish are examined. I provide criteria for distinguishing the two types of diphthongs. However, at times these criteria may be in conflict: the solution to this paradox is to be found through a constraint against syllables with no onset.
A preliminary version of this study was presented at a conference dealing with syllables at the Université de Nantes, March 25-27, 1999. I thank the participants at that conference for their comments.
Some Elements for an Empirical Approach to the Study of Meaning
Authors: Vergnaud Jean-Roger , Zubizarreta María Luisa
Published: March 2014

This article argues that meaning must be analyzed in terms of a notion of description. That notion is taken to apply quite generally beyond the language faculty to other cognitive and perceptual modalities. Descriptions are gathered into families, each family having the structure of a semilattice. The semilattice connective corresponds to the and connective of natural language. One distinguishes between pure descriptions and mixed descriptions: a mixed description obtains when pure descriptions are conjoined by means of Boole's connective +, corresponding to the exclusive or of natural language. To illustrate, the description associated with a yes-no question is a mixed description, and so is the description associated with such determiners as English any or English wh-. The connective + is naturally extended to families of descriptions. In turn, mixed descriptions may themselves be arranged into families, with each family having the (really dual) semilattice structure of a family of pure descriptions. Finally, descriptions may be related by the connective IF-THEN. That connective is construed as a mapping between mixed descriptions. In particular, the focus structure of an utterance is defined in terms of that connective. Given a description UXW with subdescription X, X is the focus of UXW iff. the relation IF X is a description of t, THEN UtW is a description hold. The approach adopted ultimately derives from Chomsky's critical appraisal of theories of meaning that rely on some notion of "reference to a world"; see Chomsky (1992, 2000).
Morphologie dérivationnelle et mots simples
Authors: Vitas Duško
Published: March 2014

The traditional representation of nominal inflection in Serbo-Croatian lexicography cannot link the entries between which a close derivational relationship exists. In the dictionary, this relationship is usually expressed by a stereotyped definition that is based on the meaning of the basic entry. Two types of nominal modifiers of this kind are discussed in this paper: modifiers for gender mutation and modifiers for amplification (formation of diminutives and augmentatives). It is shown that both modifiers form the new noun from the initial one according to the same model and in the way that the nominal inflective class is described. The extension of the traditional nominal class can thus be seen as a tuple of the elementary morphographemic classes that describe the derivations of the basic entry. The consequences of such an extension of the nominal inflective class to the development of the electronic dictionaries of simple words DELAS and DELAF are examined.
Nonnative and second-language speech perception
Authors: Best Catherine T. , Tyler Michael D.
Published: March 2014

Language experience systematically constrains perception of speech contrasts that deviate phonologically and/or phonetically from those of the listener’s native language. These effects are most dramatic in adults, but begin to emerge in infancy and undergo further development through at least early childhood. The central question addressed here is: How do nonnative speech perception findings bear on phonological and phonetic aspects of second language (L2) perceptual learning? A frequent assumption has been that nonnative speech perception can also account for the relative difficulties that late learners have with specific L2 segments and contrasts. However, evaluation of this assumption must take into account the fact that models of nonnative speech perception such as the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) have focused primarily on naïve listeners, whereas models of L2 speech acquisition such as the Speech Learning Model (SLM) have focused on experienced listeners. This chapter probes the assumption that L2 perceptual learning is determined by nonnative speech perception principles, by considering the commonalities and complementarities between inexperienced listeners and those learning an L2, as viewed from PAM and SLM. Among the issues examined are how language learning may affect perception of phonetic vs. phonological information, how monolingual vs. multiple language experience may impact perception, and what these may imply for attunement of speech perception to changes in the listener’s language environment.
The relationship between identification and discrimination in cross-language perception
Authors: Wayland Ratree
Published: March 2014

The effects of stimulus presentation contexts on cross-language consonant category identification and category goodness rating were examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, native Korean listeners’ identification and goodness ratings of Thai stop consonants were obtained under two conditions: ‘single’ and ‘triadic’ stimulus presentations. In the ‘single’ stimulus presentation, each target Thai stop consonant was presented in isolation for categorical identification and goodness rating, while the target stimulus (X) was presented between two other stimuli (A and B) in the ‘triadic’ stimulus presentation. Korean listeners’ identification data obtained under both presentation contexts were then used to generate ‘predicted’ discrimination scores. However, Korean listeners’ ‘actual’ (AXB) discrimination scores of Thai stop consonant contrasts were also obtained. The results indicated that the two stimulus presentation conditions (i.e., ‘triadic’ and ‘single’) did not affect the choice of modal categories with which the Thai consonants were identified and that native Korean listeners had no perceptual difficulty discriminating among Thai stop consonants. However, a slightly better fit between ‘actual’ and ‘predicted’ discrimination scores derived from the ‘triadic’ identification data was observed. On the other hand, the identification of Korean stop consonants obtained from the Thai listeners in Experiment 2 showed a strong effect of stimulus presentation contexts. Specifically, the identification of Korean lax /p/, /t/, and /k/ varied depending on whether they were presented in the context of an aspirated or a tense stop in the ‘triadic’ stimulus presentation format. Nonetheless, like the Korean listeners in Experiment 1, Thai listeners had no difficulty discriminating among Korean stops. In contrast with Experiment 1, however, a much stronger correlation between ‘actual’ and ‘predicted’ discrimination scores derived from Thai listeners’ ‘triadic’ identification data was observed.
Music and language learning
Authors: Gottfried Terry L.
Published: March 2014

Research in second language learning has found correlations between general intelligence, musical ability, and success in learning the second language. The studies reported here concern the extent to which university conservatory students are better at perceiving and producing unfamiliar linguistic tones in Mandarin. In Experiment 1, native speakers of American English with musical training performed significantly better than non-musicians when determining whether a sine-wave tone went up, down, or remained the same in pitch. Musicians also performed significantly better than non-musicians when asked to identify the four distinctive tones of Mandarin (high-level, mid-rising, lowdipping, high-falling), which had analogous shifts in fundamental frequency to those of the sine-wave stimuli. Accuracy on the Mandarin tones for both groups was relatively low since listeners were not trained on the phonemic contrasts. Experiment 2 compared musicians and non-musicians on discrimination and imitation of these unfamiliar tones. Listeners were presented with two different Mandarin words that had either the same or different tones; listeners indicated whether the tones were same or different. All listeners had significantly more difficulty discriminating between mid-rising and low-dipping tones than with other contrasts. Listeners with music conservatory training showed significantly greater accuracy in their discrimination. Likewise, musicians’ spoken imitations of Mandarin were rated as significantly more native-like than those of nonmusicians. These findings suggest that musicians may have abilities or training that facilitate their perception and production of Mandarin tones. However, further research is needed to determine whether this advantage transfers to language learning situations.
Behavioral and cortical effects of learning a second language
Authors: Sereno Joan A. , Wang Yue
Published: March 2014

Explanations of language learning often involve appeals to distinct learning mechanisms. On one hand, learners’ innate characteristics are emphasized, with learning tied to a limited time period, a critical period, when the brain is predisposed for success in language learning. This view is often contrasted with a position emphasizing the role of the environment in shaping language learning, highlighting the contribution of feedback mechanisms and the nature of the speech input. One approach has been to examine how second languages are learned in order to directly examine change due to learning. To this end, the present paper documents the behavioral and cortical changes resulting from learning a novel language contrast, specifically Mandarin tone. Hemispheric differences in the processing of language contrasts are observed, with significant left hemispheric participation in native listeners and no hemispheric preference for non-native listeners. Additional experiments examined the training of non-native listeners, revealing that tone perception accuracy can be improved with minimal exposure. Furthermore, it can be generalized to new stimuli and talkers, retained for at least six months, and transferred to production. Native listeners identify post-training productions more accurately than pretraining productions and acoustic analyses of the post-training F0 contours show better approximation to native speaker norms. These behavioral changes due to training can also be observed cortically, with the learning of Mandarin tone contrasts associated with significant increases in activity in the traditional language areas (left hemisphere superior temporal gyrus) as well as the recruitment of neighboring neural areas. Implications for theories of language learning will be addressed.
The graphical basis of phones and phonemes
Authors: Port Robert F.
Published: March 2014

The notion of phonetic segment, phone and phoneme are closely related and all are intuitively appealing. At least one of them seems like the right description for speech. But all those who report these intuitions happen to be people who learned to write using a phonetic alphabet in early childhood. Speech is difficult to attend to because of its rapidity, its variability, and the invisibility of the most important body movements, so some cognitive scaffolding for attending to speech accurately is required. The technology of alphabetic writing was modified for this purpose about a hundred years ago. Our alphabet experience accounts for the persuasiveness of our intuitions but segments (phonemic or phonetic) are probably not important units in the psychological representation of language.
4. Specific language impairment in French
Authors: Jakubovitz Celia , Tuller Laurice
Published: March 2014

Ce chapitre présente une vue d’ensemble de la recherche internationale sur l’acquisition du français dans le contexte d’un Trouble Spécifique du Langage (dysphasie, SLI, TS(D)L), soulignant des contributions de cette recherche pour notre compréhension actuelle de cette pathologie, mais aussi notre compréhension de la structure du français, et, plus généralement, notre compréhension de l’organisation de l’esprit pour le langage. Après une revue des propriétés fondamentales du TSL (définition, prévalence, étiologie, pronostic à long terme, sous-types), avec référence particulière au contexte clinique en France, nous considérons les propriétés grammaticales du TSL en français, suivi d’une discussion de la notion de marqueur clinique pour le TSL. Une attention particulière sera accordée à l’hypothèse que le TSL serait lié à la nature de l’interaction entre la faculté du langage proprement dite et des systèmes de performance, et des motivations pour ce point de vue seront présentées à partir de travaux sur des constructions particulières chez les enfants TSL francophones, de travaux sur l’évitement de certaines constructions chez des enfants plus âgés et des adolescents, et de travaux dans lesquels des sujets avec TSL sont comparés à des sujets apprenant le français dans d’autres contextes atypiques (surdité, épilepsie) ou comme langue seconde.

This chapter presents an overview of international research on acquisition of French in the context of SLI, highlighting contributions this research has made to our current understanding of this pathology, but also to our understanding of the structure of French and, more generally, our understanding of the way the mind is organized for language. After a review of the fundamental characteristics of SLI (definition, prevalence, etiology, long-term prognosis, subtypes), with specific reference to the clinical setting in France, we provide an outline of the grammatical characterization of SLI in French, which is followed by a discussion of the notion of clinical marker for SLI. Proposals made to explain these findings in the context of cross-linguistic research on SLI are reviewed. The hypothesis that SLI is linked to how the language faculty proper interacts with performance systems is given particular attention, and support for this view is presented from work on SLI in French from study of specific constructions in children with SLI, from study of how older children with SLI and adolescents avoid certain constructions, and from studies in which subjects with SLI are compared with subjects learning French in other atypical contexts (deafness, epilepsy) or as a second language.
Developing conversational skills in a second language: Language learning affordances in a multiparty classroom setting
Authors: Cekaite Asta
Published: March 2014

From a longitudinal perspective, the present study explores L2 novices’ development of conversational skills in a primary school immersion classroom. Securing the teacher’s conversational involvement in a multiparty classroom setting usually involves a considerable amount of interactional work. The present study focuses on changes in the lexical and interactional design of the utterances aimed at initiating exchange with the teacher. The design of the novices’ initiating moves changed over the course of the year, moving from simple attention getters (vocatives) to lexically elaborate moves. It is argued that the interactional task of securing the teacher’s uptake provides a powerful language-learning context in which success or failure to recruit a conversational partner results in modified strategies for solving interactional problems.
Language transfer in child SLA: A longitudinal case study of a sequential bilingual
Authors: Kwon Eun-Young , Han ZhaoHong
Published: March 2014

In this chapter we report on a 26-month longitudinal study of a Korean-speaking child acquiring L2 English in the United States (AoA: 3;6). Focusing on negation, plural, and possessive marking, we examined the nature of language transfer as a function of changes occurring in the participant’s L1 and L2. We subsequently found bidirectional transfer in the child’s placement of the negator, reverse transfer in certain plural constructions, and a delay in the acquisition of possessive marking that is attributable to the lack of a corresponding feature in the participant’s developing L1. Importantly, this pattern of transfer appears to arise from the waxing and waning of the child’s L1 and L2.

Foster-Cohen (2001) suggests a sliding-window approach to understanding child second language acquisition (SLA). She views development as a continuum along a variety of axes, including but not limited to age, cognitive maturity, and proficiency, which are interrelated such that waxing along one axis may coincide with waning along another. Adopting the “sliding window” notion as its conceptual backdrop, this chapter reports on the longitudinal study focusing on language transfer as a function of changes occurring in the child’s L1 and L2. Transfer was herein defined as a process in L2 acquisition (L2A) whereby one language influences the other. This is dubbed substratum transfer when the influence comes from the L1 and reverse transfer when the influence comes from the L2 (Odlin 1989).
English in cyberspace
Authors: Lotherington Heather , Neville-Verardi Deanna , Ronda Natalia Sinitskaya
Published: March 2014

This chapter explores the educational gap between contemporary cyberspace communications that bring youth of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds together in an era of local-global synergies, and resources and approaches used in English language and literacy teaching and testing, and questions the political agenda to gate-keep restrictive literacy attainment which creates unhelpful divisions between L1 and L2 users. The authors raise relevant communicative issues for second language users in this discussion of contemporary digital genres and platforms that are growing in global popularity, such as contending with the shifting orthographic conventions used in digital conversations which at the same time facilitate conversational practice free from the stigma of an identifying “foreign” accent.
Navigating and interpreting hypertext in French
Authors: Williams Lawrence
Published: March 2014

As a point of departure for exploring the challenges of reading and interpreting digital texts, this chapter provides an analysis of the use of the French second-person pronouns tu and vous in French-language hypertext. The results of this study suggest that fundamental differences (e.g., traditional linearity versus multilinearity; frequency and ease of editing) between traditional, printed text and hypertext create an environment susceptible to producing conflicting uses of these pronouns. Pedagogical applications for examining second-person pronoun use and critical framing of various featurs of French-language hypertext are provided as means for promoting electronic literacy and language awareness.
Learner noticing, negative feedback, and uptake in synchronous computer-mediated environments
Authors: Sotillo Susana M.
Published: March 2014

This study analyzes a subset of data from chat logs and transcribed voice chats from a previous investigation by Sotillo (2005) of exchanges between tutors and English as a Second Language (ESL) learners as they collaborated on four learning tasks in an instant messaging environment, Yahoo! Instant Messenger (YIM). Given the characteristics of learner-interlocutor exchanges and negotiation work documented by previous Second Language Acquisition (SLA)/Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) researchers (e.g., Blake, 2000; Jepson, 2005; Smith, 2003), this study focuses on the characteristics of repair work in language-related episodes, type and quality of negative feedback, and learner uptake. The purpose of this study is to identify how learners notice linguistic forms (both erroneous output and target-like linguistic forms) during naturally occurring negotiation work in an online environment using voice and text-based chat.
Exploring native and nonnative interactive discourse in text-based chat beyond classroom settings
Authors: Lee Lina
Published: March 2014

This paper reports on a study that explored how nonnative speakers (NNSs) interacted with native speakers (NSs) in a chat room. Fifteen university students worked collaboratively with expert speakers to complete six task-based activities. The findings indicated that online communication fostered high levels of interaction using various types of negotiation strategies. Students benefited from being exposed to a wide range of functional discourse produced by the NSs. Further, expert scaffolding increased students’ awareness of linguistic forms that led to modified output including self-repairs. Students, however, experienced difficulties comprehending linguistic variations including regionalisms. Students also failed to perform certain tasks, such as direct and indirect speech acts. The results suggest that learners not only need to work toward maintaining a balance between fluency and accuracy, but also develop their intercultural communication skills in order to successfully engage in online exchanges with NSs. Expert speakers, on the other hand, need to be aware of not over intervening in the interaction. The study concludes that text-based chat involving NSs is a powerful mediating tool for the enrichment of language learning that goes beyond a traditional classroom setting.
Discourse analysis of podcasts in French
Authors: Guikema Janel Pettes
Published: March 2014

This chapter examines the discourse of French-language podcasts to discover their potential for use in the foreign language classroom to facilitate the development of listening proficiency. Through detailed analysis of authentic podcast transcripts, the chapter highlights linguistic, lexical, and cultural features of this type of discourse in order to demonstrate how such a tool can be used both in and outside the classroom. Of the various types of podcasts in French, the news archive receives the most attention largely because it is always current but also because of its cultural and linguistic authenticity and wide availability. A variety of practical suggestions for implementing news archive podcasts at various levels of French instruction are provided, including how to find and select appropriate podcasts and how to guide students in listening to authentic spoken French.
Interactional and discursive features of English-language weblogs for language learning and teaching
Authors: van Compernolle Rémi A. , Abraham Lee B.
Published: March 2014

This chapter provides an overview of the nature of authentic (i.e., non-educational) weblogs (blogs) and offers a number a recommendations for using blogs in the English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) curriculum to promote second language literacy. Our discussion centers around blog-writing as social practice as opposed to using blogs to help learners develop formal writing skills. Following a brief overview of a small corpus of diverse blogs, we provide a number of recommendations for integrating blog-reading and blog-writing in the ESL/EFL classroom. We extend Herring’s (2007) multifaceted approach to analyzing computer-mediated discourse to the field of second language (L2) learning and teaching, and we discuss ways in which students and teachers can construct, manage, and analyze a corpus of blogs. We also present a number of ways to design learning opportunities in the ESL/EFL classroom around the reading and writing of blogs.
Linguistic and social dimensions of French-language discussion forums
Authors: Blattner Géraldine , Williams Lawrence
Published: March 2014

This study explores selected linguistic and social dimensions of 20 French-language discussion forums in order to provide teachers and learners of French with an overview of this relatively new type of online communication space. Although the discussion forum is an older type of computer-mediated communication (i.e., compared, for example, to blogs and text messaging), little research has focused on linguistic patterns and tendencies in French-language forums, which seem to vary greatly, depending on any number of factors. As such, this chapter examines the use of second-person pronouns (tu and vous), the subject pronouns nous and on, the variable use of the negative particle ne, and orthographic variation using a corpus-driven approach. The analyses provided here can serve as models or templates for teachers and/or learners who wish to examine these same linguistic and social dimensions in other forums or compare this type of communication to traditional spoken and/or written discourse, either in or beyond the formal learning context of the classroom.
A graph-based approach to the automatic generation of multilingual keyword clusters
Authors: Aizawa Akiko , Kageura Kyo
Published: March 2014

In this paper, we report an effective graph-theoretic method for generating Japanese and English bilingual keyword clusters using the keyword lists assigned to academic papers by the authors where each of the generated clusters contains keywords with similar meanings from both languages. The advantages of the method are that (i) various domain-dependent keyword pairs useful for IR can be automatically extracted and clustered, (ii) the computation cost is reasonable, and (iii) low-frequency keywords can be properly treated and maintained for later use in IR applications. We apply the method to a set of Japanese and English keywords extracted from academic conference papers in computer science, and show that our method gives a very promising result.
Automatic term detection
Authors: Cabré Castellví M. Teresa , Estopà Bagot Rosa , Palatresi Jordi Vivaldi
Published: March 2014

In this paper we account for the main characteristics and performance of a number of recently developed term extraction systems. The analysed tools represent the main strategies followed by researchers in this area. All systems are analysed and compared against a set of technically relevant characteristics.
Detection of synonymy links between terms
Authors: Hamon Thierry , Nazarenko Adeline
Published: March 2014

This paper presents a new approach for the evaluation of the detection of synonymy relations between terms. Our goal is to help the terminology structuring. This approach exploits the synonymy relationships which have been extracted from lexical resources to infer synonymy links between complex terms. The inferred links are then validated by an human expert in the context of a terminological application. In a previous evaluation on documents dealing with electric power plant, the expert has underlined that the most important point is to increase the recall even if the precision is low and if some links are mistyped. This paper reports new experiments which help to understand how this synonymy detection approach is to be used. Various lexical resources — from general language dictionary to very specialized semantic information — are exploited and compared as bootstrapping knowledge. Results show the complementary of the different sources.

The first evaluation relied on traditional recall and precision measures. However, those scores do not reflect the usefulness of the inferred links for the terminology structuring. From the terminologist’s point of view, erroneous links are quick to eliminated. They may even suggest good ones. Above all, the system points out relations between terms which are generally not found manually. We thus aim at proposing a new evaluation criteria which better reflects the expert’s and terminologist’s point of view in the application context. This score points out the quality of the results and the validation cost rather than the proportion of validated links. We have designed an evaluation score which takes into account the productivity of the dictionary links. It can be viewed as a normalization of the precision.
Term extraction using a similarity-based approach
Authors: Maynard Diana , Ananiadou Sophia
Published: March 2014

Traditional methods of multi-word term extraction have used hybrid methods combining linguistic and statistical information. The linguistic part of these applications is often underexploited and consists of very shallow knowledge in the form of a simple syntactic filter. In most cases no interpretation of terms is undertaken and recognition does not involve distinguishing between different senses of terms, although ambiguity can be a serious problem for applications such as ontology building and machine translation. The approach described uses both statistical and linguistic information, combining syntax and semantics to identify, rank and disambiguate terms. We describe a new thesaurus-based similarity measure, which uses semantic information to calculate the importance of different parts of the context in relation to the term. Results show that making use of semantic information is beneficial for both theoretical and practical aspects of terminology.
Presidential inaugural addresses
Authors: Kovalyova Natalia
Published: March 2014

This study of political discourse describes the genre of presidential inaugural addresses from a perspective of the social action performed. The paper focuses on linguistic features that surface in the text due to its functioning in a ritual of power transition that converts an individual into a public figure and an audience into a nation. Placing the genre in domain of epideictic rhetoric, the analysis goes on to reveal the specifics of speaker-listener relations, primarily orality of the text and the rhetorical advantages and limitations that shape it. The study also reports on the pronominal distribution that aligns with various public roles and responsibilities which the speaker prepares to take on.
Patterns of agentivity and narrativity in early science discourse
Authors: Dorgeloh Heidrun
Published: March 2014

Between the 15th century and today there have been significant changes in the organisation of scientific discourse, previously identified as developments towards more literate styles (Biber & Finegan 1997) or less narrativity (Atkinson 1992, 1996). This paper argues that such changes affect the linguistic expression of agentivity, in particular. Corpus-based evidence for Early Modern and Modern English shows that early science texts moved from narratives in non-primary use (serving a non-narrative function) to a more function-based, argumentative text pattern. While, originally, both narrative and argument in science were based on personal reference and preserved agentivity, modern scientific discourse nominalises the experience and impersonalises the argument. This explains why the language of science has generally been characterised as static and impersonal.
Discourse on a par with syntax, or the effects of the linguistic organisation of letters on the diachronic characterisation of the text type
Authors: Pérez-Guerra Javier
Published: March 2014

This paper deals with the integration of functional (discourse-based) and formal (syntactic and statistical) phenomena in an overall linguistic explanation which accounts for the distribution of ‘marked’ declarative sentences in the epistolary genre, where ‘markedness’ implies deviation from the unmarked clausal pattern ‘(non-dummy) subject + verb (+complements)’. Discourse- and sentence-based issues such as information packaging (principle of end focus), constituent length (principle of end weight), syntactic complexity and the organisation of the sentence are investigated in a corpus of late Middle, Modern and Present-day English letters. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of the corpus data provide an interesting insight into the possibility of characterising a particular genre – letters – according to both its complexity and its informative and linguistic organisation.
Politeness as a distancing device in the passive and in indefinite pronouns
Authors: Toyota Jun-ichi
Published: March 2014

This paper deals with the relationship between the passive and the indefinite pronoun from a functional perspective. We point out that the linkage between these two constructions is often made possible due to politeness, in a sense that both constructions create pragmatic distance between a speaker and interlocutor, often known as impersonalisation. One can observe this linkage throughout the history of English, but indefinite pronouns were used more frequently in earlier times, and the passive later. The change of functional load in these constructions illustrates that impersonalisation has always been important, but has been achieved by different constructions. We argue that politeness played an important role in this change.
Newspaper commentaries on terrorism in China and Australia: A contrastive genre study
Authors: Wang Wei
Published: March 2014

Newspaper articles are a common genre that has been examined in contrastive rhetoric research to explore its rhetorical and linguistic patterns. However, this chapter aims to go beyond this and to explore how the writers position themselves, manipulate the topic and address their readers by the use of various linguistic strategies and devices. This chapter illustrates the key findings by examining two newspaper commentaries, one Chinese and one Australian. The analysis indicates that the Chinese writer tends to avoid personal voice by the use of more facts and evidence to establish arguments, while the Australian writer shows personal identity clearly by presenting his viewpoint. These findings are discussed in relation to the respective sociocultural contexts in which the texts were written.
English web page use in an EFL setting: A contrastive rhetoric view of the development of information literacy
Authors: McBride Kara
Published: March 2014

The nonlinear and interactive nature of Internet searches makes them quite different from other types of reading acts. This chapter describes a study that investigated how English as a foreign language (EFL) Internet users in a Chilean university community approached English language websites and databases. Participants were observed in computer workshops, surveyed, interviewed, and asked to use a think-aloud protocol while navigating unfamiliar websites in English. Contrastive rhetoric and schema theory were used to interpret the findings. English-specific problems included word order confusions and incorrect interpretations of synonyms. Among the younger participants, level of English proficiency did not correlate highly with skill in finding information over the Internet. Differences between user schemata and Web page layouts were found to negatively affect some information search attempts. Pedagogical implications are discussed.