First verbs : On the way to mini-paradigms

This 18th issue of ZAS-Papers in Linguistics consists of papers on the development of verb acquisition in 9 languages from the very early stages up to the onset of paradigm construction. Each of the 10 papers deals with first-Ianguage developmental processes in one or two children studied via longitudinal data. The languages involved are French, Spanish, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanien, Finnish, English and German. For German two different varieties are examined, one from Berlin and one from Vienna. All papers are based on presentations at the workshop 'Early verbs: On the way to mini-paradigms' held at the ZAS (Berlin) on the 30./31. of September 2000. This workshop brought to a close the first phase of cooperation between two projects on language acquisition which has started in October 1999: a) the project on "Syntaktische Konsequenzen des Morphologieerwerbs" at the ZAS (Berlin) headed by Juergen Weissenborn and Ewald Lang, and financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and b) the international "Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition" coordinated by Wolfgang U. Dressler in behalf of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Comparing Second Language Learners' Sensitivity to Arabic Derivational and Inflectional Morphology at the Lexical and Sentence Levels

While L2 learners are less sensitive than native speakers to morphological structure in general (Clahsen & Felser, 2006; Jiang, 2007; Neubauer & Clahsen, 2009), researchers disagree about the roles different features of morphological systems play in determining the timecourse and accuracy of their acquisition by L2 learners. Some studies suggest that L2 learners process derivational morphemes in a more native-like manner than inflectional ones (Silva & Clahsen, 2008; Kirkici & Clahsen, 2013). Other research demonstrates accurate acquisition of L2 inflectional morphology as well (Gor & Jackson, 2013; Hopp, 2003; Jackson, 2008; Sagarra & Herschensohn, 2010). To date, few studies have directly compared L2 acquisition of inflectional and derivational morphology (Silva & Clahsen, 2008; Kirkici & Clahsen, 2013). Arabic verbs exhibit a system of derivational morphology whose function in constraining event structures and theta roles allows for comparably direct comparison with inflectional morphemes at the sentence level. Forty-four L2 learners and thirty-three native speakers of Arabic participated in the current study, which used three behavioral tasks: a primed lexical decision task, an acceptability judgment task, and a self-paced reading task, to triangulate a picture of L1 and L2 Arabic learners' commands of derivational and inflectional morphology at the lexical and sentential levels. Results of the lexical decision and self-paced reading tasks indicated that both L2 learners and native speakers alike made use of Arabic derivational and inflectional morphological structure during lexical access and sentence processing. However, the acceptability judgment task found that L2 learners made far more accurate judgments about Arabic inflectional errors than about derivational errors. By contrast, native speakers made accurate judgments about both kinds of morphological errors. Thus, L2 learners' behavior regarding Arabic inflectional morphology was at least as native-like as their behavior regarding derivational morphology, if not more so, across tasks. This pattern of results accords with previous research that found accurate processing of inflectional morphology in proficient L2 learners. It also adds to a growing body of research suggesting that the distinction between derivational and inflectional morphology in Semitic languages may be more graded than it is in Indo-European languages (Boudelaa & Marslen-Wilson, 2000; Frost, Forster, Deutsch, 1997)

ENGLISH WORD-MAKING

English Word-Making presents the content and methods of modern research in morphology in the form of a textbook for secondary school English students. The opening section offers a rationale for the uses of morphology at the secondary level. The emergence of English as a subject in the curriculum is traced historically; and the study of morphology is related specifically to humanistic goals and to the enhancing of skills in language analysis, speaking, reading, vocabulary growth, grammar and usage study, spelling, composition, and literary interpretation. The main body of the text consists of ten chapters, each exploring, diachronically and synchronically, a primary category of English word-formation: compounding, reduplication, derivation, conversion, clipping, back formation, acronyming, blending, and eponyming. Each chapter includes exercises that require students to apply what they have learned about the English language. At the end of each chapter are extensive Notes that reinforce and expand the concepts presented in the main text. Appendix 1 is an exposition of English spelling through a cataloguing of various phoneme-grapheme correspondences. Appendix 2 is an attempt to apply to the slang lexicon of St. Paul\u27s School (vintage 1978) the principals of morphological analysis that are treated throughout the manuscript

Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference Formal Approaches to South Slavic and Balkan languages

Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference Formal Approaches to South Slavic and Balkan Languages publishes 17 papers that were presented at the conference organised in Dubrovnik, Croatia, 4-6 Octobre 2010

Constructivist neural network models of cognitive development

In this thesis I investigate the modelling of cognitive development with constructivist neural networks. I argue that the constructivist nature of development, that is, the building of a cognitive system through active interactions with its environment, is an essential property of human development and should be considered in models of cognitive development. I evaluate this claim on the basis of evidence from cortical development, cognitive development, and learning theory. In an empirical evaluation of this claim, I then present a constructivist neural network model of the acquisition of the English past tense and of impaired inflectional processing in German agrammatic aphasics. The model displays a realistic course of acquisition, closely modelling the U-shaped learning curve and more detailed effects such as frequency and family effects. Further, the model develops double dissociations between regular and irregular verbs. I argue that the ability of the model to account for the hu..

A Computational Lexicon and Representational Model for Arabic Multiword Expressions

The phenomenon of multiword expressions (MWEs) is increasingly recognised as a serious and challenging issue that has attracted the attention of researchers in various language-related disciplines. Research in these many areas has emphasised the primary role of MWEs in the process of analysing and understanding language, particularly in the computational treatment of natural languages. Ignoring MWE knowledge in any NLP system reduces the possibility of achieving high precision outputs. However, despite the enormous wealth of MWE research and language resources available for English and some other languages, research on Arabic MWEs (AMWEs) still faces multiple challenges, particularly in key computational tasks such as extraction, identification, evaluation, language resource building, and lexical representations. This research aims to remedy this deficiency by extending knowledge of AMWEs and making noteworthy contributions to the existing literature in three related research areas on the way towards building a computational lexicon of AMWEs. First, this study develops a general understanding of AMWEs by establishing a detailed conceptual framework that includes a description of an adopted AMWE concept and its distinctive properties at multiple linguistic levels. Second, in the use of AMWE extraction and discovery tasks, the study employs a hybrid approach that combines knowledge-based and data-driven computational methods for discovering multiple types of AMWEs. Third, this thesis presents a representative system for AMWEs which consists of multilayer encoding of extensive linguistic descriptions. This project also paves the way for further in-depth AMWE-aware studies in NLP and linguistics to gain new insights into this complicated phenomenon in standard Arabic. The implications of this research are related to the vital role of the AMWE lexicon, as a new lexical resource, in the improvement of various ANLP tasks and the potential opportunities this lexicon provides for linguists to analyse and explore AMWE phenomena

Inflectional morphology in the literacy of deaf children

Severe literacy impairments are well documented in the deaf population. Morphology provides a source of text-to-meaning associations that should be available to the deaf. In this thesis, different levels of morphological awareness necessary for literacy were tested. Deaf children demonstrated that they associated morphologically related words – the first level of awareness. This was evidenced in a short-term memory task in which words sharing morphological overlap were confused more often than words sharing orthographic or semantic overlap (although these associations may have involved the combined effects of orthographic and semantic overlap). Deaf children also demonstrated knowledge of morphological generalisation (the second level of awareness) by producing predicted plural nonword spellings and over-regularisations. Finally, they demonstrated morpho-syntactic awareness – in a self-paced reading task they revealed sensitivity to subject-verb number agreement. However, deaf children demonstrated limited knowledge of irregular plural nouns and of morpho-syntax. In the self-paced reading task, they were slow to perform syntactic integration and they failed to make explicit use of agreement in a judgement task. Furthermore, even reading-age appropriate morphological awareness represents a substantial chronological delay. The findings therefore suggest that deaf children could benefit from explicit education in morphographic rules and exceptions as well as training in morpho-synta

Triggering the unlearning of null arguments in second language acquisition.

by Yang Xiaolu.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-140).Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Parameter Model of Acquisition --- p.1Chapter 1.2 --- "Positive Evidence, Negative Evidence and the Catapult Hypothesis" --- p.5Chapter 1.3 --- The Focus of the Present Study --- p.7Chapter 1.4 --- The Organization of the Thesis --- p.9Chapter 2. --- Null Arguments: A Theory of Parameters and Language Acquisition --- p.10Chapter 2.1 --- A Theory of Parameters: the Null Argument Parameters --- p.10Chapter 2.2 --- Predicting and Explaining L1 Acquisition --- p.17Chapter 2.2.1 --- A Summary of Research Findings --- p.18Chapter 2.2.2 --- The Initial Setting --- p.21Chapter 2.2.3 --- Identification of Early Null Arguments --- p.22Chapter 2.2.4 --- Triggers in the L1 Acquisition of the Target Parameters --- p.25Chapter 2.3 --- A Review of L2 Acquisition Studies: Related Issues --- p.31Chapter 2.3.1 --- The Null Argument Phenomenon in L2 Acquisition --- p.31Chapter 2.3.2 --- The Initial Setting and the Role of L1 --- p.35Chapter 2.3.3 --- Identification of the Null Arguments in Interlanguages --- p.36Chapter 2.3.4 --- Parameter Resetting and Triggers --- p.37Chapter 3. --- The Formulation of The Present Study --- p.40Chapter 3.1 --- The Status of Null Arguments in Chinese --- p.40Chapter 3.2 --- The Null Argument Parameters in Chinese and English --- p.50Chapter 3.3 --- Resetting the Null Argument Parameters and Unlearning Null Arguments --- p.53Chapter 3.4 --- Suggesting Triggers in the L2 Acquisition of English --- p.54Chapter 3.5 --- "Predictions: Null Arguments, Triggers and ILs" --- p.57Chapter 4. --- The Present Study (I): The Experiment´ؤMethodology --- p.59Chapter 4.1 --- Subjects --- p.59Chapter 4.2 --- The Tasks --- p.61Chapter 4.3 --- Coding and Marking --- p.67Chapter 5. --- The Present Study (II): The Experiment´ؤResults --- p.70Chapter 5.1 --- An Overview of the Written Results --- p.70Chapter 5.1.1 --- Comparing Task Performance --- p.70Chapter 5.1.1.1 --- Comparing Task 1 and Task2 --- p.70Chapter 5.1.1.2 --- Comparing Task 2 and Task3 --- p.72Chapter 5.1.2 --- An Overall View of the Written Results --- p.73Chapter 5.2 --- Null Elements in the Interlanguages of Chinese Learners of English --- p.75Chapter 5.2.1 --- Null Subjects and Null Objects --- p.76Chapter 5.2.2 --- Null Expletives --- p.79Chapter 5.2.3 --- Null Subjects in Matrix Clauses and Tensed Embedded Clauses --- p.81Chapter 5.2.3.1 --- Null Thematic Subjects --- p.82Chapter 5.2.3.2 --- Null Expletive Subjects --- p.86Chapter 5.3 --- Infl and Null Thematic Subjects --- p.89Chapter 5.4 --- Expletives and Null Arguments --- p.92Chapter 5.5 --- Results: Oral Task --- p.94Chapter 6. --- Discussion --- p.97Chapter 6.1 --- The Expletives-as-triggers Hypothesis Reconsidered --- p.97Chapter 6.2 --- "There, Weather it and Raising it: Their Status as the Triggering Experience" --- p.101Chapter 6.3 --- Triggering the Unlearning of Null Arguments --- p.108Chapter 7. --- Conclusion --- p.112Appendix --- p.118References --- p.13