Verbal structure and content in written discourse

Item does not contain fulltextThis paper forms a bridge between the article on noun phrase patterning by Ravid et al. 2002 and that on passive voice constructions by Jisa et al. 2002. The study reports on a cross-linguistic, developmental study of verbal structures and verb types used in two genres of written discourse: personal narratives and expository texts. The study is aimed at (a) establishing the profile of linguistic features that characterize and differentiate these two genres; (b) identifying the developmental changes beyond middle childhood that lead to the proficient use of a full repertoire of verbal structures in the construction of both types of text; and (c) providing fresh empirical evidence for cross-linguistic similarities and differences in the linguistic devices used for Genre differentiation. The paper begins to address these issues by considering quantitative aspects of Genre differentiation in four age-groups (grade-school children, junior high school, high school, and adults) and in five languages (Dutch, French, Hebrew, Icelandic, and Spanish). We expected narratives and expository texts to be characterized by contrasting distribution of the categories that we analysed — verb tense, aspect, mood, voice, and person — across the age-groups and languages under study. To test this prediction, all verbs in our sample were analysed using common coding procedures in all five languages, followed by a statistical analysis of the frequency distribution of each coded category (as our dependent variables) across Age and Genre in each of the languages

Clause packaging in writing and speech: A cross-linguistic developmental analysis

Item does not contain fulltextThis article analyses clause packaging in the written narrative and expository texts in Dutch, English, French, Hebrew, and Spanish by grade-school children and adults. A “clause package” is defined as a text unit consisting of clauses linked by syntactic, thematic, and discursive criteria. Our study attempts to arrive at an understanding of cross-linguistic universals in the distribution of clause-package types as a function of Genre and Modality in both children and adults. To this end, we distinguish finite vs. nonfinite coordination, subordination, and relativization; we compare their distribution in the five languages; and we examine the semantics of the conjunctions occurring in narrative vs. expository texts. Results show that, in all languages, children tend to use more coördinate devices than adults, whereas adults use more adverbial, complement, and relative clauses. A clear interaction was found between Genre and type of clause packaging: For both children and adults, coordination was the preferred device in narrative, whereas subordination occurred more often in the expository texts

The Effect of Plausibility on Sentence Comprehension Among Older Adults and its Relation to Cognitive Functions

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Older adults show age-related decline in complex-sentence comprehension. This has been attributed to a decrease in cognitive abilities that may support language processing, such as working memory (e.g., Caplan, DeDe, Waters, & Michaud, 2011,Psychology and Aging, 26, 439–450). The authors examined whether older adults have difficulty comprehending semantically implausible sentences and whether specific executive functions contribute to their comprehension performance. METHODS: Forty-two younger adults (aged 18–35) and 42 older adults (aged 55–75) were tested on two experimental tasks: a multiple negative comprehension task and an information processing battery. RESULTS: Both groups, older and younger adults, showed poorer performance for implausible sentences than for plausible sentences; however, no interaction was found between plausibility and age group. A regression analysis revealed that inhibition efficiency, as measured by a task that required resistance to proactive interference, predicted comprehension of implausible sentences in older adults only. Consistent with the compensation hypothesis, the older adults with better inhibition skills showed better comprehension than those with poor inhibition skills. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that semantic implausibility, along with syntactic complexity, increases linguistic and cognitive processing loads on auditory sentence comprehension. Moreover, the contribution of inhibitory control to the processing of semantic plausibility, particularly among older adults, suggests that the relationship between cognitive ability and language comprehension is strongly influenced by age