Syntactic Interference: A Study of Ígálá and English Noun Phrases in Malachai 1:6 and Mathew 2:1

Ígálá native speakers face some challenges in their attempt to acquire the English language and one of these challenges is encountered in their attempt to use English Noun Phrases. Learning English Noun Phrases by speakers whose mother-tongue is Ígálá is one of the most frequent and significant areas of difficulties at syntactic level which Ígálá learners of English come across due to the differences between the NP systems in both languages. The Ígálá language has an NP system that functions differently, for instance, the notion of definiteness and indefiniteness of articles are encoded differently than in that of the English language. Given the fact that articles are one of the most frequent words occurring in the English language Noun Phrase, this study pinned down such an important issue by describing how the differences between the Ígálá and English languages in concern to the Noun Phrase system cause Ígálá learners of English to commit errors (Mother-Tongue interference) in their English learning process as a result of Mother-Tongue illiteracy, incompetence in both L1 and L2, and inconsistencies in Ígálá articles. This work was anchored on PSG and labelled brackets as a model of syntactic analysis. The paper made use of bilingual text approach. The work observed that there is direct transfer of the grammatical features of Ígálá to English language and that there is positive transfer of linguistic features from Ígálá to English where there are linguistic similarities between the two languages. The paper also observed that possessive adjectives (his, my, your, her) pose no problem for Ígálá learners of English. The paper concluded by saying that the problems Ígálá L1 speakers encounter while attempting to use English Noun Phrases are based not only on the degree of differences between the Ígálá and English Noun Phrase systems, but inconsistencies in Ígálá articles. Keywords: Second Language, Noun Phrase, Interference. DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/60-06 Publication date:September 30th 2019

A cross-cultural study of semantic ties in the abstracts of conference proceedings

Connectedness in research article abstracts plays a vital role for them to be able to attract a broader readership. It also enhances abstracts' potential for acceptance at local and international conferences. In view of this, the study investigates variations in the strategies that writers from Anglophone and Francophone settings use to create connectedness in their conference paper abstracts. The data for this study comprise 50 abstracts submitted by these two groups of writers to the 30th West African Languages Congress and the 10th Linguistics Association of Ghana (LAG) Conference. For analytical methodology, it employs Halliday and Hasan's (1976) Cohesive Theory, which is complemented by Kaplan's (1966) Contrastive Rhetoric Theory. The findings reveal that the writers from the two cultural backgrounds employ similar strategies such as references, conjunctions, substitution, ellipsis, synonyms and repetition in maintaining connectedness in their abstracts. The differences between these two categories of writers are linked to the frequency with which these connectives are deployed in their respective abstracts. The study has implications for Contrastive Rhetoric Theory, by proving that people who belong to the same discourse community to a large extent demonstrate similar writing styles irrespective of their different cultural backgrounds

Demonstrative Paradigms in English and Ibibio: Some Contrastive Observations

This paper describes demonstrative paradigms in English and Ibibio based on their syntactic and semantic behaviours, especially with English as the language of education in Nigeria. This study is anchored on Chomsky (1986) generative grammar paradigm to explain the structures of demonstratives in the two languages and argues that the structures resemble and differ from each other in some respects and gives possible linguistic implications for Ibibio speakers of English. While data for English were extracted from English grammar texts, those of Ibibio were extracted by the researcher’s native speaker’s knowledge of the language. From the analyses, it is discovered that while demonstrative paradigm in English is a two-way opposition, Ibibio has a three-way opposition. It explains that all demonstratives in English inflect for person and number whereas of the two classes of demonstratives in Ibibio one class inflects for number while the other does not. It establishes that this grammatical unit functions as subject and determiner in the two languages while in Ibibio it further functions as an article and a verb

Contrastive grammar : a theory and practice handbook

En consonancia con los lineamientos del programa vigente de Gramática Contrastiva, materia incluida en el programa de estudios del Traductorado de Inglés de la Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, el objetivo principal de Contrastive Grammar: A Theory and Practice Handbook es brindar a los estudiantes un manual que combine las gramáticas descriptivas del inglés y del español. No pretende ser una revisión completa de todas las diferencias lingüísticas existentes entre ambas lenguas: por el contrario, el objetivo del presente manual es combinar información teórica clave con prácticas variadas respecto de estructuras dispares que representan la fuente más frecuente de interferencia entre los dos sistemas.Fil: Gómez Calvillo, M. Natalia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Meehan, Patricia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Díaz, M. Josefina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.Fil: Rolfi, Laura. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina

MOVE STRUCTURES AND THEIR RHETORICAL VERBS OF RESEARCH ARTICLE ABSTRACTS ACROSS ENGLISHES

Genre-based studies on moves structure of research article (RA) abstracts have established variations across cultures. However, previous studies included at most two countries for comparisons of abstracts written by native against non-native speakers. With the advent of World Englishes, it is deemed more practical to examine abstracts across Englishes to determine the writing conventions of the L1, L2 and EFL speakers of English. Consequently, the present study is a structural move analysis of RA abstracts focusing on the macro-structural moves across the Englishes and the lexical verbs employed used in each move. It examined 36 RA abstracts from linguistics and language and education fields, consisting of 12 abstracts each from the Inner, Outer and Expanding Circles of English by Kachru (1992). Each abstract was segmented into moves using the Five-Move Model of Santos (1996), which includes moves: (1) Situating the Research (STR); (2) Presenting the Research (PTR); (3) Discussing the Methodology (DTM); (4) Summarizing the Findings, (STF), and (5) Discussing the Research (DTR). The study found that the Inner Circle of English has the structure: Abstract à (STR) + PTR + DTM + (STF) + (DTR). The Outer Circle has the structure: Abstract à (STR) + PTR + (DTM) + STF + DTR. The Expanding Circle has the structure: Abstract à (STR) + PTR + DTM + (STF) + (DTR). The formulaic structures of abstract moves revealed that the only common move across Englishes is PTR. Following the approach of Musa et al. (2015), the lexical verbs realizing the purpose of each of the rhetorical moves were listed in order to come up with lists of rhetorical verbs which can be used in structuring an RA abstract. The study concludes with implications for academic writing instruction that calls for future abstract analyses that are world Englishes-inspired

Conditional knowledge-based coherence strategy choice : engaging supervisory on-script corrective feedback in research writing

Research writing has been traditionally considered a challenging task for international Chinese Higher-Degree-by-Research (HDR) students, particularly at their novice stage as a writer. To help them conquer the challenges, supervisory on-script focused corrective feedback is a pedagogical method for providing models of conditional knowledge and helping produce coherent research writing. This supervisory pedagogy has been researched (Aitchison et al., 2012; Can & Walker, 2014). However, the pedagogical use of schemas and conditional knowledge as a facilitator for successful research writing are under researched with respect to international Chinese HDR students. This lack of knowledge limits the pedagogical possibilities for building international Chinese HDR students’ capacity for creating coherent research writing. Investigating the possibilities for improving their conditional knowledge and schemas can help address this challenge. This warrants a new approach to developing pedagogies that improve HDR students’ research writing, one that captures a dynamic view of the development of their conditional knowledge and schemas in a coherent hierarchy. In this doctoral study, the investigation focuses on the construction of conditional knowledge for creating micro-level coherence in research writing engaged by supervisory on-script corrective feedback. To this end, the potential for engaging conditional knowledge and schemas involves analysing evidence of international Chinese HDR students’ coherence strategy choices and their supervisor’s corresponding on-script corrective feedback. This study points to the need for pedagogies that accommodate text-based and reader-based coherence in HDR students’ research writing. The primary aims of the research reported in this thesis were to investigate the interrelationships among (a) international Chinese HDR students’ conditional knowledge used in creating the micro-level coherence; (b) their choices of the coherence strategies used; and (c) their supervisor’s modelling of appropriate choices of coherence strategies via on-script focused corrective feedback on these students’ draft research texts. The case study used interrelated approaches to address these aims. First, this study explored the appropriateness or otherwise of these HDR students’ use of coherence strategies through collecting and analysing evidence of the conditional knowledge they used in creating the micro-level coherence in their research writing. Second, a key pedagogy used to enhance their conditional knowledge for creating coherence, supervisory on-script focused corrective feedback, was developed. Through mapping, categorising and conceptualising the conditional knowledge required for creating the micro-level coherence in HDR students’ research writing, this study connects text-based and reader-based coherence. This study thereby develops a new supervision pedagogy which recognises and mobilises supervisor’s modelling of conditional knowledge for enhancing HDR students’ conditional knowledge in order to build HDR students’ capabilities for producing coherent research writing

Challenges in the translation of legal texts: the case in Kosovo

Our paper conducts a contrastive analysis between Albanian and English lexical units in the language of laws using corpora analysis. It fills a literature gap related to Corpus linguistics in order to better comprehend patterns of legal lexicon. We use KWIC Concordance to extract the top frequently words and concordance lines in order to analyse differences and similarities among lexical units in Albanian (Source Language) and English (Target Language) laws, compared to those identified in respective corpora. Additionally, we identify types of errors in translation, difficulties in translating legal texts, and factors that influence translators’ errors in translating certain laws of the Republic of Kosovo from Albanian into English. According to our analysis, both languages have in common the use of the same grammatical patterns such as: conjunctions, prepositions, and the use of the common noun forms. The rest have significant differences in their usage, especially with regards to particles and determiners. Our contrastive approach demonstrates that some of these laws were not originally written in Albanian and then translated into English language, as many articles within these laws lack the appropriate word structure and word order and in some cases are semantically ill-formed in the Source Language. Key words: analysis, corpus, language, legal, translation, KWIC Concordance. &nbsp