An Analysis of Preposition (Idiomatic Phrases, Prepositional Phrases and Zero Prepositions) Detection Errors in the Writing of Graduate ESL Learners of Pakistan

In this paper we describe a methodology for detecting preposition errors in the writing of ESL graduate learners To investigate the nature of errors in the writing skill problems of graduate learners two fifty graduate male and female learners randomly selected from four colleges and one university were asked to complete two writing skill tasks Fifth word deletion and open composition test The study is related to the research question Why ESL graduate learners commit errors in their writing skills a Prepositions phrasal verbs and idiomatic phrases It is detected that preposition overuse and preposition omission are the common problems for ESL Besides students deem prepositions quite tricky to use in their writing So the findings show the wrong use of prepositions specifically with in of and unnecessary insertion of prepositions It is observed that errors are because of the interference of L1 in L2 Besides the final results of the two tests showed that Prepositions prepositional verbs prepositional phrases phrasal verbs zero prepositions are quite problematic for ESL learners The learners try to put prepositions on the same patterns of L1 which ultimately leads them towards error

Examining the Tip of the Iceberg: A Data Set for Idiom Translation

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) has been widely used in recent years with significant improvements for many language pairs. Although state-of-the-art NMT systems are generating progressively better translations, idiom translation remains one of the open challenges in this field. Idioms, a category of multiword expressions, are an interesting language phenomenon where the overall meaning of the expression cannot be composed from the meanings of its parts. A first important challenge is the lack of dedicated data sets for learning and evaluating idiom translation. In this paper we address this problem by creating the first large-scale data set for idiom translation. Our data set is automatically extracted from a widely used German-English translation corpus and includes, for each language direction, a targeted evaluation set where all sentences contain idioms and a regular training corpus where sentences including idioms are marked. We release this data set and use it to perform preliminary NMT experiments as the first step towards better idiom translation.Comment: Accepted at LREC 201

An Analysis of Preposition (Idiomatic Phrases, Prepositional Phrases and Zero Prepositions) Detection Errors in the Writing of Graduate ESL Learners of Pakistan

In this paper we describe a methodology for detecting preposition errors in the writing of ESL graduate learners. To investigate the nature of errors in the writing skill problems of graduate learners, two fifty graduate male and female learners randomly selected from four colleges and one university were asked to complete two writing skill tasks: Fifth word deletion and open composition test. The study is related to the research question: Why ESL graduate learners commit errors in their writing skills? (a) Prepositions, phrasal verbs and idiomatic phrases. It is detected that preposition overuse and preposition omission are the common problems for ESL. Besides, students deem prepositions quite tricky to use in their writing. So the findings show the wrong use of prepositions specifically ‘with, in, of’ and unnecessary insertion of prepositions. It is observed that errors are because of the interference of L1 in L2.  Besides, the final results of the two tests showed that Prepositions (prepositional verbs, prepositional phrases, phrasal verbs, zero prepositions) are quite problematic for ESL learners. The learners try to put prepositions on the same patterns of L1 which ultimately leads them towards errors. Keywords: Prepositions, idiomatic phrases, prepositional phrases, zero prepositions and interference of L1 in L

Collocations in Portuguese: A corpus-based approach to lexical patterns

Collocations and, more generally, multiword expressions, have been extensively studied for the English language and a large set of resources are available in terms of linguistic description and tools for language learning. On the contrary, combinatorial resources for Portuguese are scarce, although specific types of collocations, such as light verb constructions, nominal compounds and proverbs, have been the topic of many studies. This chapter reviews different theoretical perspectives on multiword expressions and collocations in Portuguese and presents in more detail the results of the COMBINA-PT project, a corpus-based approach to the study of collocations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Neurophysiological markers of phrasal verb processing: evidence from L1 and L2 speakers

Bilingual Figurative Language Processing is a timely book that provides a much-needed bilingual perspective to the broad field of figurative language. This is the first book of its kind to address how bilinguals acquire, store, and process figurative language, such as idiomatic expressions (e.g., kick the bucket), metaphors (e.g., lawyers are sharks), and irony, and how these tropes might interact in real time across the bilingual's two languages. This volume offers the reader and the bilingual student an overview of the major strands of research, both theoretical and empirical, currently being undertaken in this field of inquiry. At the same time, Bilingual Figurative Language Processing provides readers and undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience in the development of psycholinguistic experiments in bilingual figurative language. Each chapter includes a section on suggested student research projects. Selected chapters provide detailed procedures on how to design and develop psycholinguistic experiments

The role of constituents in multiword expressions

Multiword expressions (MWEs), such as noun compounds (e.g. nickname in English, and Ohrwurm in German), complex verbs (e.g. give up in English, and aufgeben in German) and idioms (e.g. break the ice in English, and das Eis brechen in German), may be interpreted literally but often undergo meaning shifts with respect to their constituents. Theoretical, psycholinguistic as well as computational linguistic research remain puzzled by when and how MWEs receive literal vs. meaning-shifted interpretations, what the contributions of the MWE constituents are to the degree of semantic transparency (i.e., meaning compositionality) of the MWE, and how literal vs. meaning-shifted MWEs are processed and computed. This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary selection of seven papers on recent findings across linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-based and computational research fields and perspectives, discussing the interaction of constituent properties and MWE meanings, and how MWE constituents contribute to the processing and representation of MWEs. The collection is based on a workshop at the 2017 annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) that took place at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany

An interdisciplinary, cross-lingual perspective

Multiword expressions (MWEs), such as noun compounds (e.g. nickname in English, and Ohrwurm in German), complex verbs (e.g. give up in English, and aufgeben in German) and idioms (e.g. break the ice in English, and das Eis brechen in German), may be interpreted literally but often undergo meaning shifts with respect to their constituents. Theoretical, psycholinguistic as well as computational linguistic research remain puzzled by when and how MWEs receive literal vs. meaning-shifted interpretations, what the contributions of the MWE constituents are to the degree of semantic transparency (i.e., meaning compositionality) of the MWE, and how literal vs. meaning-shifted MWEs are processed and computed. This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary selection of seven papers on recent findings across linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-based and computational research fields and perspectives, discussing the interaction of constituent properties and MWE meanings, and how MWE constituents contribute to the processing and representation of MWEs. The collection is based on a workshop at the 2017 annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) that took place at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, German