Search Results (21)

Situation types can be viewed as the foundation of representation of sentence meaning. Noting that situation types cannot be determined by verbs alone, recent studies often focus on situation type prediction in terms of the combination of different linguistic constituents at the sentence level instead of lexically marked situation types. However, in languages with a fully marked aspectual system, such as Mandarin Chinese, such an approach may miss the opportunity of leveraging lexical aspects as well as other distribution-based lexical cues of event types. Currently, there is a lack of resources and methods for the identification and validation of the lexical aspect, and this issue is particularly severe for Chinese. From a computational linguistics perspective, the main reason for this shortage stems from the absence of a verified lexical aspect classification system, and consequently, a gold-standard dataset annotated according to this classification system. Additionally, owing to the lack of such a high-quality dataset, it remains unclear whether semantic models, including large general-purpose language models, can actually capture this important yet complex semantic information. As a result, the true realization of lexical aspect analysis cannot be achieved. To address these two problems, this paper sets out two objectives. First, we aim to construct a high-quality lexical aspect dataset. Since the classification of the lexical aspect depends on how it interacts with aspectual markers, we establish a scientific classification and data construction process through the selection of vocabulary items, the compilation of co-occurrence frequency matrices, and hierarchical clustering. Second, based on the constructed dataset, we separately evaluate the ability of linguistic features and large language model word embeddings to identify lexical aspect categories in order to (1) verify the capacity of semantic models to infer complex semantics and (2) achieve high-accuracy prediction of lexical aspects. Our final classification accuracy is 72.05%, representing the best result reported thus far. Full article

The study explores the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in addressing grammar challenges among children with learning disabilities, aiming to assess the efficacy of an AI-driven tool for personalized interventions. A sample of 100 children aged 8–12, diagnosed with learning disabilities, was recruited from special education programs. Participants were divided into an experimental group (n = 50), which used an AI-based grammar assessment tool with personalized feedback, and a control group (n = 50), which completed conventional paper-based grammar tests without feedback. The AI tool administered adaptive grammar tasks, including sentence correction and verb conjugation, and performance was evaluated over four weeks using pre-test and post-test measures. A quasi-experimental design and statistical analyses, including t-tests and repeated-measures ANOVA, revealed a significant improvement in grammar performance for the experimental group (M = 78.5, SD = 5.6) compared to the control group (M = 70.2, SD = 6.1; p < 0.001), with a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.84). Participants and educators reported high engagement and usability of the tool. The findings underscore AI’s potential to provide tailored learning experiences, addressing individual needs more effectively than conventional strategies. Further research should examine long-term outcomes and broader educational applications to maximize its impact. Full article

Heritage language (HL) research has investigated adults and children, while adolescents have garnered far less attention, despite adolescence being a crucial time in the development of idiolects and identities, and, hence, also for language maintenance. This study describes HL usage among Estonian-Swedish bilingual teenagers. Data were collected from 21 first- and second-generation Estonian heritage speakers (aged 12–17). Non-standard usage occurred in our corpus at low rates but was found across most speakers in certain areas of morphosyntax. We describe which factors drive such non-standard usage based on the example of two structures with more frequent non-standard occurrence: (1) object marking and (2) experiencer constructions with the verb meeldima ‘to like/please’. Around 6% of objects were marked in divergent ways. Speakers employed two strategies for marking non-standard objects: case omission (i.e., using nominative and/or unmarked forms) and substitution (i.e., using non-target-like marking). Non-standard forms occurred in 11% of experiencer constructions. Speakers diverged more with marking the nominative Stimulus than the dative-like Experiencer, although both occurred in standard and non-standard forms. The reported usage patterns can be explained through the combined effect of cross-linguistic influence, simplification, and input frequency. We also tested the relation between non-standard usage and the speaker’s sociolinguistic background, with mixed results. Considering the limited size and scope of the corpus, overall, the reported divergent usage patterns evidence the role of linguistic input and cross-linguistic effects. Full article

Background: Experts are a favorite source of information in the news media as they have the ability to provide balanced and authoritative comments on important issues. However, two factors cast doubt on the extent to which such experts can actually provide balanced information: conflicts of interest and areas of expertise. In this paper, we analyze the use of expert voices during the COVID pandemic in two Austrian broadsheet papers. Methods: We examine the use of reporting verbs employed to indicate the journalists’ stance towards the expert comments as well as the relationship of those comments to the experts’ fields of expertise and to any potential conflicts of interest. Results: Our analysis shows that the media uncritically reported experts that had considerable conflicts of interest, while others were permitted to comment on topics far outside their particular fields. Conclusions: In the absence of journalistic scrutiny, distance, and context, both of these practices are likely to have led audiences to take the experts’ comments at face value and therefore to have embraced unbalanced information that amplified official narratives, to the exclusion of alternative voices. Full article

This article explores patterns of linguistic behaviour and challenges associated with low(er) linguistic competences in primary school learners in subject-specific areas of the curriculum. The study draws on science test data, specifically on two assessment tasks, collected from 209 primary school students, aged between 9 and 11 years (Key Stages 5 and 6 of the statutory framework for learning in England). The population sample is made up of learners from six state primary schools in Yorkshire and the Humber Region, UK. Some of the learners speak English as their mother tongue while others speak English as their second or third language. Learner test data were analysed in order to answer the following research questions: (1) What verb collocations do learners use when demonstrating their content knowledge on the topic of “separating solids and liquids” in Science? (2) Do English language learners (ELLs) and English native speaking learners (ENSs) use verb collocations differently? If so, what is the nature of these differences? The results revealed differences between linguistic performances in the two groups of learners. ENSs tended to produce natural collocations with motion verbs. ELLSs, however, faced challenges in producing idiomatic language. They also encountered more difficulties than ENSs in understanding assessment tasks’ instructions and/or in reporting subject-specific knowledge in response to the assessment tasks. Full article

Tinnitus is originally derived from the Latin verb tinnire, which means “to ring”. Tinnitus, a complex disorder, is a result of sentient cognizance of a sound in the absence of an external auditory stimulus. It is reported in children, adults, and older populations. Patients suffering from tinnitus often present with hearing loss, anxiety, depression, and sleep disruption in addition to a hissing and ringing in the ear. Surgical interventions and many other forms of treatment have been only partially effective due to heterogeneity in tinnitus patients and a lack of understanding of the mechanisms of tinnitus. Although researchers across the globe have made significant progress in understanding the underlying mechanisms of tinnitus over the past few decades, tinnitus is still deemed to be a scientific enigma. This review summarises the role of the limbic system in tinnitus development and provides insight into the development of potential target-specific tinnitus therapies. Full article

There are two future time reference auxiliaries in Afrikaans, sal ‘will’ and gaan ‘go’. These auxiliaries are interchangeable in many contexts. In light of the ongoing grammaticalization of gaan, it is pertinent to describe the alternation between sal and gaan in different Afrikaans registers, and contextualize it in the West-Germanic language family where English and Dutch have similar alternating constructions. This is accomplished by analyzing Afrikaans corpus data from the 1970s and the 2000s, both spoken and written. Normalized frequencies and relative frequencies for the use of sal and gaan are reported according to a number of variables, including time, register, lexical verb, syntactic subject, clause type, sentence type, and future proximity. The effect of sentence type and future proximity is consistently present in all the datasets, and a possible change is detected in the effect of subject and clause type. Compared with English and Dutch, Afrikaans future alternation patterns more like that of English, even though it is more closely related to Dutch. Full article

Based on sociolinguistic data collected from 29 Chinese L1 speakers of English in the US, this article investigated the quotative markers used by non-native speakers in their direct speech reporting. By conducting regression analysis, both linguistic factors (the tense of the verb, the subject pronouns, the mimetic status of the quotation, the content of the quotation, and the presence of discourse markers) and extralinguistic factors (gender, extracurricular contact with native speakers, and length of stay in the target country) were examined and further discussed. Our results revealed that factors such as the content of the quotation, the tense of the verb, and the presence of other discourse markers significantly influence the choice of quotative markers in non-native speech. We demonstrated that non-native speakers use a variety of quotative verbs in their direct speech reporting. Nonetheless, because of L1 impact, they rely primarily on the dominant form say. We also noticed that while non-native speakers might not be accurate in their words when reporting direct speech, they use prosodic cues to make their storytelling more convincing and authentic. Full article

This paper reports an event–related potential (ERP) study examining the processing of “gapless” relative clauses (RCs), normal (“gapped”) RCs, attributive clauses, Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) forms and the morphological markers de and le in Mandarin Chinese. The objectives were to (1) determine whether a processing cost signature can be identified for gap–filler processing by comparing gapped RCs with SVO forms; and (2) determine whether processing gapless RCs is more similar to processing gapped RCs that they resemble on surface or attributive clauses that they resemble structurally by comparing gapped RCs, gapless RCs, and attributive clauses. ERP data was collected from 27 native speakers as they read 160 sentences containing gapped, gapless, attributive, and SVO sentences, which differed only in the second word of the string (e.g., 教授设计的/烧菜的/助手的/设计了/那个广告… The professor designed Ø/cooked food/assistant’s/designed that advertisement…). Results indicate that (1) the head noun evoked larger N400 and P600 components and the determiner elicited a larger sustained anterior negativity for the gapped RCs than for the SVO forms, and (2) the word immediately following the head noun evoked a larger P600 and the determiner elicited a larger sustained anterior negativity for both gapped and gapless RCs than for attributive clauses. These results indicate that (1) gap–filler integration in Mandarin is both semantic (hence the N400) and syntactic (hence the P600) in nature, and (2) gapless RCs are neurophysiologically processed more like gapped RCs than attributive clauses. The ERP signatures to verb+le, verb+de, verbs with verb–object (VO)+de morphological structure, and noun+de revealed that the processing costs for VO verbs and noun modifications were higher than for simple verbs, and the morphological markers de and le induced similar processing costs, even though de triggered the positing of a syntactic gap whereas le did not. Full article

This paper reports on a literary corpus study of four grammatical tenses across four European languages. The corpus consists of a selection of eight chapters from Javier Marías’s Spanish novel Así empieza lo malo ‘Thus bad begins’, and its translations to English, Dutch, and French. We annotated 1579 verb forms in the Spanish source text for tense, and, subsequently, their translations in the other languages, distinguishing between two registers within the novel, i.e., dialogue and narration. We found that the vast majority of the Spanish tenses are translated one-to-one to their counterparts in the three languages, especially in narration. In dialogue, we found several deviations, which we could partially account for within an Optimality Theoretic approach by appealing to the notion of markedness along two different typological dimensions, namely, tense (present versus past) and aspect (imperfective versus perfective). Full article

Languages vary systematically in how semantic information is “packaged” in verbs and verb-related constructions. Mandarin Chinese contrasts typologically with English in its lexicalization of state change. Most Mandarin monomorphemic verbs are moot about or imply a state change, whereas many English monomorphemic verbs (e.g., kill, break) entail the fulfillment of a state change. Recent studies suggest that Mandarin monomorphemic verbs form a continuum in the strength of state-change implicature. State-change verbs have been found difficult for first language (L1) learners. This study reports two experiments that investigate the lexical semantic knowledge of Mandarin monomorphemic implied or moot state-change verbs by intermediate (N = 19, mean age 21) and advanced (N = 12, mean age 21) English-speaking second language (L2) learners of Mandarin Chinese. The results reveal L2 learners’ general preference for the state-change interpretation for the monomorphemic verbs and their limited sensitivity to the nuanced strength of state-change implicature in the Mandarin verbs. Typological differences in the lexicalization of state change are argued to contribute to the difficulties in L2 learning of the lexical semantics in the semantic domain of state change in Mandarin. Full article

Intelligent user interfaces (IUI) are driven by the goal of improvement in human–computer interaction (HCI), mainly improving user interfaces’ user experience (UX) or usability with the help of artificial intelligence. The main goal of this study is to find, assess, and synthesize existing state-of-the-art work in the field of IUI with an additional focus on the evaluation of IUI. This study analyzed 211 studies published in the field between 2012 and 2022. Studies are most frequently tied to HCI and SE domains. Definitions of IUI were observed, showing that adaptation, representation, and intelligence are key characteristics associated with IUIs, whereas adaptation, reasoning, and representation are the most commonly used verbs in their description. Evaluation of IUI is mainly conducted with experiments and questionnaires, though usability and UX are not considered together in evaluations. Most evaluations (81% of studies) reported partial or complete improvement in usability or UX. A shortage of evaluation tools, methods, and metrics, tailored for IUI, is noticed. Most often, empirical data collection methods and data sources in IUI evaluation studies are experiment, prototype development, and questionnaire. Full article

Subject-verb agreement mismatches have been reported in the L2 and heritage literature, usually involving infinitives, analyzed as default morphological forms for fully specified T-heads. This article explores the mechanisms behind these mismatches, testing two hypotheses: the default form and the surface-similarity hypotheses. It compares non-finite and finite S-V mismatches with subjects with different persons, testing whether similarity with other paradigmatic forms makes them more acceptable, controlling for the role of verb frequency. Participants were asked to rate sentences on a Likert scale that included (a) infinitive forms with first, second and third person subjects, and (b) third person verbal forms with first, second and third person subjects. Two stem-stressed verbs (e.g., tra.j-o ‘brought.3p.past’) and two affix-stressed verbs (e.g., me.ti-o ‘introduced.3p.past’), varying in frequency were tested. Inflectional affixes of stem-stressed verbs are similar to other forms of the paradigm both phonologically and in being unstressed (tra.j-o ‘brought.3p.past’ vs. trai.g-o ‘bring.1 p.pres’), whereas affixes of affix-stressed verbs have dissimilar stress patterns (me.ti-o ´introduced.3p.past’ vs. me.t-o ‘introduce.1p.pres’). Results show significantly higher acceptability for finite vs. non-finite non-matching, and for 1st vs. 2nd person subjects. Stem-stressed verbs showed higher acceptability ratings than affix-stressed ones, suggesting a role for surface-form correspondence, partially confirming previous findings. Full article

An increasing amount of research shows that bilinguals that engage in codeswitching (CS) may show different patterns of usage and sensitivity to particular linguistic structures depending on community norms. Additionally, proficiency may play a different role in sensitivity to code-switched utterances depending on speaker background, as well as the structure investigated. In this study, we aim to examine how bilinguals not exposed to CS in the community rate CS vs. unilingual sentences involving mood selection in Spanish. In an online acceptability judgment task (AJT), 20 Spanish L2ers rated sentences containing verbs in the indicative and subjunctive mood in restrictive relative clauses manipulated for the specificity of the antecedent in two separate sessions: a Spanish monolingual mode and a CS session. The L2ers did not show evidence of a CS effect and maintained a mood distinction according to the specificity of the antecedent both in unilingual and codeswitched sentences. These results are in contrast with the results previously reported for Spanish heritage speakers (HSs), where a CS effect is attested in the loss of preference for the subjunctive in nonspecific relative clauses in the CS vs. the monolingual Spanish condition. Additionally, this distinction is found at both lower and higher proficiency levels. The differences between these speakers and HSs are consistent with data from previous research on CS effects on phonology and Det–N switches. We argue that exposure to community norms is necessary for the acquisition of patterns not related exclusively to the grammaticality of switch junctures (I-language). Full article

Variation among closely related languages may reveal the inner workings of language acquisition, loss and innovation. This study of the existing literature and of selected interviews from recent narrative corpora compares the marking of evidentiality and epistemic modality in Chuquisaca, Bolivian Quechua with its closely related variety in Cuzco, Peru and investigates three hypotheses: that morpho-syntactic attrition proceeds in reverse order of child language acquisition, that convergence characterizes the emergence of grammatical forms different from L1 and L2 in contact situations, and that the Quechua languages are undergoing typological shift toward more isolating morphology. It appears that reportive -sis disappeared first in Bolivia, with eyewitness/validator -min retaining only the validator function. This finding seems to concord with reverse acquisition since it has previously been claimed that epistemic marking is acquired earlier than evidential marking in Cuzco. Meanwhile, Spanish and Quechua in nearby Cochabamba are claimed to mark reportive evidentiality via freestanding verbs of saying. I explore the reportive use of ñiy ‘to say’ in Chuquisaca as compared to Cochabamba and Cuzco and suggest the need for comparative statistical studies of evidential and epistemic marking in Southern Quechua. Full article