10,399 research outputs found
Lexical typology : a programmatic sketch
The present paper is an attempt to lay the foundation for Lexical Typology as a new kind of linguistic typology.1 The goal of Lexical Typology is to investigate crosslinguistically significant patterns of interaction between lexicon and grammar
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Effects of Output and Note-Taking on Noticing and Interlanguage Development
Recent literature in second language acquisition (SLA) suggests that opportunities for output production contribute to target like acquisition. In the course of second language (L2) production, learners are prompted to notice the gaps and/or holes in their knowledge, and thus give extra attention to such discrepancies in subsequent input (Swain, 1995). Given that whether these gaps and/or holes are indeed noticed by the learners is crucial for successful intake, researchers have resorted to approaches such as note-taking and think-aloud as measures of noticing. This study investigates the role of written output in helping learners notice linguistic forms provided in subsequent input. In particular, it examines note-taking as a way to facilitate noticing. Twenty-three advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) learners were randomly assigned to two groups ─ a note-taking group and a non-note-taking group ─ and were asked to complete a three-stage writing task: (i) to give a written description to a picture, (ii) to compare the description to a model text, and (iii) to rewrite the description. This was immediately followed by a retrospective questionnaire designed to shed light on the “noticing process.” The results suggest that written output has a positive effect on learners‟ ability to notice linguistic forms that they have previously found problematic in subsequent input, and that note-taking apparently helps learners better use the linguistic forms included in subsequent input in their own rewriting
Methodological Tools for Linguistic Description and Typology.
International audienc
The role of age of acquisition in late second language oral proficiency attainment
The current project examined whether and to what degree age of acquisition (AOA), defined as the first intensive exposure to a second language (L2) environment, can be predictive of the end state of postpubertal L2 oral proficiency attainment. Data were collected from 88 experienced Japanese learners of English and two groups of 20 baseline speakers (inexperienced Japanese speakers and native English speakers). The global quality of their spontaneous speech production was first judged by 10 native English-speaking raters based on accentedness (linguistic nativelikeness) and comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and was then submitted to segmental, prosodic, temporal, lexical, and grammatical analyses. According to the results, AOA was negatively correlated with the accentedness and comprehensibility components of L2 speech production, owing to relatively strong age effects on segmental and prosodic attainment. Yet significant age effects were not observed in the case of fluency and lexicogrammar attainment. The results suggest that AOA plays a key role in determining the extent to which learners can attain advanced-level L2 oral abilities via improving the phonological domain of language (e.g., correct consonant and vowel pronunciation and adequate and varied prosody) and that the temporal and lexicogrammatical domains of language (e.g., optimal speech rate and proper vocabulary and grammar usage) may be enhanced with increased L2 experience, regardless of age
Access to recorded interviews: A research agenda
Recorded interviews form a rich basis for scholarly inquiry. Examples include oral histories, community memory projects, and interviews conducted for broadcast media. Emerging technologies offer the potential to radically transform the way in which recorded interviews are made accessible, but this vision will demand substantial investments from a broad range of research communities. This article reviews the present state of practice for making recorded interviews available and the state-of-the-art for key component technologies. A large number of important research issues are identified, and from that set of issues, a coherent research agenda is proposed
Video-based interaction, negotiation for comprehensibility, and second language speech learning: a longitudinal study
The current study examined the impact of video-based conversational interaction on the longitudinal development (one academic semester) of second language (L2) production by college-level Japanese English-as-a-foreign-language learners. Students in the experimental group engaged in weekly, dyadic conversation exchanges with native speakers in the US via telecommunication tools, wherein the native speaking interlocutors were trained to provide interactional feedback in the form of recasts when the non-native speakers’ utterances hindered successful understanding (i.e., negotiation for comprehensibility). The students in the comparison group received regular foreign language instruction without any interaction with native speakers. The video-coded data showed that the experimental students incidentally worked on improving all linguistic domains of language, thanks to their native speaking interlocutors’ interactional feedback (recasts, negotiation) during the treatment. The pre-/post-test data led to significant gains in their comprehensibility, fluency and lexicogrammar, but not in the accentedness and pronunciation dimensions of their spontaneous production abilitie
Presentational/Existential Structures in Spoken versus Written German: Es Gibt and SEIN
This article presents a synchronic, corpus-based examination of spoken German with regard to the distribution and function of presentational/ existential es gibt NP and a range of SEIN NP structures such as da SEIN , locative SEIN , es SEIN , and zero-locative SEIN . In particular, the use of da SEIN has been neglected in previous research. While es gibt is equally frequent in the spoken and written data, SEIN structures are typical of spoken German only, with da SEIN being the most frequent. The article concentrates on clauses with indefinite NPs, while the presentation of events with da and wider da-usage in spoken German are also considered
State of the art review : language testing and assessment (part two).
In Part 1 of this two-part review article (Alderson & Banerjee, 2001), we first addressed issues of washback, ethics, politics and standards. After a discussion of trends in testing on a national level and in testing for specific purposes, we surveyed developments in computer-based testing and then finally examined self-assessment, alternative assessment and the assessment of young learners. In this second part, we begin by discussing recent theories of construct validity and the theories of language use that help define the constructs that we wish to measure through language tests. The main sections of the second part concentrate on summarising recent research into the constructs themselves, in turn addressing reading, listening, grammatical and lexical abilities, speaking and writing. Finally we discuss a number of outstanding issues in the field
Design of a Controlled Language for Critical Infrastructures Protection
We describe a project for the construction of controlled language for critical infrastructures protection (CIP). This project originates
from the need to coordinate and categorize the communications on CIP at the European level. These communications can be physically
represented by official documents, reports on incidents, informal communications and plain e-mail. We explore the application of
traditional library science tools for the construction of controlled languages in order to achieve our goal. Our starting point is an
analogous work done during the sixties in the field of nuclear science known as the Euratom Thesaurus.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen
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