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Writing-to-learn assignments engage students with a problem while they develop writing skills. It is difficult in large classes to provide training in proofreading and editing techniques. The purpose of this project was to determine if a term paper was improved after making an audio recording of a draft of the paper. Data from 2 years of papers were analyzed. In Year 2, 2 days before the final written draft was due, students submitted an audio recording of a draft of their term paper read aloud. Comparing Year 2 papers to those from an identical writing assignment from the previous year prepared without an audio recording presented an opportunity to determine the effect of making an audio recording on the quality of the written paper. Grammar, technical word use, appropriate paragraph usage, overall flow, general content, and content-animal relationship were scored from final written papers submitted by each group. Groups did not differ in overall ability, as measured by average exam scores. Submitting an audio recording was associated with improved technical word use and content but not grammar, paragraph usage, or overall flow. When written copies of the papers were compared to their corresponding audio recordings, grammar, paragraph usage, and overall flow were most often read aloud correctly even though errors remained in the written papers. Technical word use and content errors were subsequently corrected in the written papers turned in after the readings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of citations of previous research is the result of serious problems all readers of scholarly publications have: (1) articles are unnecessarily long (2) they are written in unnecessarily complex prose (3) journal subscriptions and books are very expensive. The solution: Short, clearly written scholarly papers, published in open‐access journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On one June afternoon in 2017, during an autoethnography of a malware analysis and detection laboratory, NotPetya quickly caused destruction. This malware has since been characterised as a key geopolitical event in cybersecurity, causing billions of dollars in damage as it rendered inoperable computers across the world. The hunt to identify those who had written NotPetya occurred almost immediately. However, this paper rearticulates this event through grammar, in a close reading of computation, to urge for a more‐than‐human reading of cybersecurity. By exploring the written propositions of the hackers, various computational materials – including hardware, code, and machine learning algorithms – as well as their ecologies, cybersecurity is understood to be part of an ecology of language‐practice. Engaging with N. Katherine Hayles' study of non‐human cognition and choice, computation has an ability to read, interpret, and act, and thus intervene. NotPetya is thus not only a tool of hackers but is a political actor which, alongside others, transformed the contours of the geopolitics of cybersecurity. By focusing on grammars, geopolitics does not wholly derive from the (white, male, rational) hacker, analyst, or intelligence agent, but rather from a distributed set of actors that speak to one another. Grammars permit a nuanced appreciation of cyber‐attacks, the hacker's handling of computational cognition and choice, as well as conceptualising the relation between author and computation and the risks of machine learning. Cybersecurity, through grammar, then becomes one of co‐authorship where security is not only performed by humans but is contorted by an alien politics of computation. NotPetya caused great damage in June 2017. This paper rearticulates how this malicious software participated in a more‐than‐human politics to render computers inoperable worldwide. Through grammar, it details how propositions, computational cognition and choice, and ecologies offer a new way to think of cybersecurity. Concluding, there is an assessment of the implications and risks of automation and machine learning to cybersecurity in a more‐than‐human world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the gap between academic linguistics and language education has become increasingly apparent, hindering the effective transmission of linguistic knowledge to students. This paper presents an overview of recent empirical research (mostly originating in the Netherlands) that seeks to bridge this gap by teaching students how to think like linguists within the context of L1 grammar education. The paper takes Dielemans' and Coppen's pedagogical framework for linguistic reasoning as its starting point, relates this framework to comparable initiatives and shows how recent studies have empirically examined different aspects of linguistic reasoning, including general linguistic reasoning ability, the role of linguistic metaconcepts and developing an appropriate epistemic attitude. The paper concludes with some desiderata for future research into this emerging research field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the representation of an assigned reading-to-write task by third-year level university students in Spain as indicated by the type of papers they produced and the relationship between the linguistic quality of those papers and the type of task representation. They interpret such task in different ways, therefore producing different types of papers. Their ability to write syntactically complex sentences does not lead to cognitively sophisticated composing. The authors also found that the ability to write with grammatical accuracy is not an indicator of the student's ability to express elaborated ideas which lead them to write more syntactically complex sentences.

Background Aims Methods & Procedures Outcomes & Results Conclusions & Implications WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS What is already known on the subject What this study adds What are the clinical implications of this work? Morphosyntactic problems are a core symptom of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). In the Netherlands, children with (presumed) DLD can receive special care in language‐focused treatment groups. The focus of these groups mainly lies in improving communicative intentions, vocabulary and phonology. Morphosyntactic skills receive less attention.The authors developed a scripted group‐based intervention targeting morphosyntactic skills in young children with DLD. In this study, the effect of the intervention on the morphosyntactic skills of preschoolers with (presumed) DLD was tested and the usability for pedagogical practitioners (PPs) was evaluated.Twenty‐seven preschoolers with DLD (aged 2;10–3;10 [years;months]) participated in an A‐B group study in which the development of grammatical structures was monitored with a morphosyntactic task and language sample analyses (LSA). Progression during 8 weeks usual care (UC) and 8 weeks morphosyntactic intervention was examined using Bayesian mixed effects models. In LSA, structures that were targeted were compared to control structures. The intervention consisted of a weekly script‐based group session in which morphosyntactic structures were targeted, and daily activities in which these target structures were repeated. The intervention was provided by trained PPs, who were coached by a speech‐language therapist. An early indication of usability and feasibility was evaluated using an online questionnaire.The analyses show that morphosyntactic skills improved during the intervention period, with strong evidence for growth in the production of target structures on the morphosyntactic task and target and control structures in LSA, while barely any evidence was found for growth in the use of these structures in UC. However, target structures and control structures seem to develop at the same rate. General measures of morphosyntactic ability showed improvement both during UC and the intervention phase. Evaluation among practitioners suggested that the intervention is regarded as usable and feasible.Growth in morphosyntactic skills of children in the intervention period was demonstrated, but this could not be proven to be related to the intervention because both target and control structures improved during the intervention. This growth might be due to maturation instead of the intervention. Nevertheless, our study demonstrates that the morphosyntactic skills of preschoolers with DLD can show considerable improvement over a period of 8 weeks. Furthermore, our study underlines the importance of using LSA measures when monitoring the morphosyntactic development of children, as they might be more sensitive to change than standardised tests. Most children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) experience difficulties in their morphosyntactic development. In the Netherlands, preschoolers with DLD can receive special care in language‐focused treatment groups. These groups mainly focus on stimulating communicative intentions, vocabulary and phonology, but less so on stimulating morphosyntactic skills. We designed a new group‐based intervention targeting the expressive morphosyntactic skills of children with DLD, examined the effect and investigated the usability and feasibility. Although there is strong evidence for growth in morphological skills, intervention effects could not be demonstrated. Evaluations among practitioners suggested that the intervention is regarded as usable and feasible. Furthermore, this study shows that children's morphosyntactic skills can improve over relatively short periods of time and language sample analyses seem to be sensitive to detect these changes. Currently, very few group‐based morphosyntactic interventions exist (in the Netherlands). Since practitioners were generally positive about the intervention and its usability and feasibility, the proposed intervention might benefit the treatment of morphosyntactic problems in children with DLD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the past 2 decades, probabilistic grammars have been put forward in the study of phonotactics as a necessary device to model gradient acceptability of lexical forms. This implicitly suggests that categorical grammars cannot even in principle account for such gradience. Most importantly, influential research has proposed that grammatical forms described by categorical grammars could be simply understood as by‐products of probabilistic thresholds. Therefore, either implicitly or explicitly, categorical grammars are painted as not only empirically insufficient but also theoretically and formally redundant by this interpretation of probabilistic grammars in the domain of phonotactics. This paper provides a general overview of this recent debate and argues against the standard threshold interpretation for probabilistic grammars based on mathematical results, explicit axiomatic principles, and recent experimental evidence. In its place, I propose an interpretation for gradient grammars that solves apparent inconsistencies, combines the two types of grammar, accommodates previous technical contributions and data, and establishes a clear theoretical role that opens up further research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The language of the science curriculum is complex, even in the early grades. To communicate their scientific observations, children must produce complex syntax, particularly complement clauses (e.g., I think it will float; We noticed that it vibrates). Complex syntax is often challenging for children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and thus their learning and communication of science may be compromised. Aims: We asked whether recast therapy delivered in the context of a science curriculum led to gains in complement clause use and scientific content knowledge. To understand the efficacy of recast therapy, we compared changes in science and language knowledge in children who received treatment for complement clauses embedded in a first‐grade science curriculum to two active control conditions (vocabulary + science, phonological awareness + science). Methods & Procedures: This 2‐year single‐site three‐arm parallel randomized controlled trial was conducted in Delaware, USA. Children with DLD, not yet in first grade and with low accuracy on complement clauses, were eligible. Thirty‐three 4–7‐year‐old children participated in the summers of 2018 and 2019 (2020 was cancelled due to COVID‐19). We assigned participants to arms using 1:1:1 pseudo‐random allocation (avoiding placing siblings together). The intervention consisted of 39 small‐group sessions of recast therapy, robust vocabulary instruction or phonological awareness intervention during eight science units over 4 weeks, followed by two science units (1 week) taught without language intervention. Pre‐/post‐measures were collected 3 weeks before and after camp by unmasked assessors. Outcomes & Results: Primary outcome measures were accuracy on a 20‐item probe of complement clause production and performance on ten 10‐item unit tests (eight science + language, two science only). Complete data were available for 31 children (10 grammar, 21 active control); two others were lost to follow‐up. Both groups made similar gains on science unit tests for science + language content (pre versus post, d = 2.9, p < 0.0001; group, p = 0.24). The grammar group performed significantly better at post‐test than the active control group (d = 2.5, p = 0.049) on complement clause probes and marginally better on science‐only unit tests (d = 2.5, p = 0.051). Conclusions & Implications: Children with DLD can benefit from language intervention embedded in curricular content and learn both language and science targets taught simultaneously. Tentative findings suggest that treatment for grammar targets may improve academic outcomes. What this paper adds: What is already known on the subject: We know that recast therapy focused on morphology is effective but very time consuming. Treatment for complex syntax in young children has preliminary efficacy data available. Prior research provides mixed evidence as to children's ability to learn language targets in conjunction with other information. What this study adds: This study provides additional data supporting the efficacy of intensive complex syntax recast therapy for children ages 4–7 with Developmental Language Disorder. It also provides data that children can learn language targets and science curricular content simultaneously. What are the clinical implications of this work?: As SLPs, we have to talk about something to deliver language therapy; we should consider talking about curricular content. Recast therapy focused on syntactic frames is effective with young children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists several German language books for foreign language studying students, which should be studied during the fall season of 2013 and that includes, klipp und Klar: Ubungsgrammatik, Intensivtrainer Wortschatz und Grammatik, and kommunikative Spiele.

This paper proposes the mean dependency length (MDL) as a metric for measuring natural language requirements quality. Dependency length is a linguistic feature based on dependency grammar, which natural language researchers have traditionally used to evaluate syntactic complexity in other contexts. In this study, aided by MATLAB‐based algorithms, the authors assessed MDL over a requirements set composed of 249 original statements, rephrased into five pattern systems. Null hypothesis and effect size testings revealed that MDL is sensitive to the application of pattern rules and to the differences among the patterns, both in an absolute approach and in comparison with other metrics. Furthermore, it was also demonstrated that MDL is aligned with users' values, especially for understandability issues, and can be measured automatically. Finally, the work concluded that MDL is a convenient metric for assessing the quality of natural language requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, there has been increased interest in understanding the design (i.e., content) of regulation as a basis for studying regulation formation, implementation, and outcomes. Within this line of research, scholars have been particularly interested in investigating regulatory dynamics relating to features and patterns of regulatory text and have engaged a variety of methodological approaches to support their assessments. One approach featured in this research is the Institutional Grammar (IG). The IG supports syntactic and semantic analyses of institutional statements (e.g., regulatory provisions) that embed within regulatory text. A recently revised version—called the IG 2.0—further supports robust analyses of regulatory text by offering an expanded feature set particularly well‐suited to extracting and classifying content relevant for the study of regulation. This paper (i) provides a brief introduction to the IG 2.0 and (ii) discusses theoretical and analytical advantages of using the IG 2.0 to study regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The place of grammar instruction in second or foreign language (L2) pedagogy has always been highly controversial and although there is currently consensus that such pedagogic intervention is beneficial, numerous questions remain as to how it should most propitiously be conducted. Different theoretical perspectives have resulted in a wide array of instructional options intended to enhance the effectiveness of grammar teaching, both with respect to ensuring fuller understanding of grammar rules and helping learners use these rules in communicative interaction. The paper provides a selective overview of such "new solutions" and argues that they have not really contributed much to solving the "old problems" of grammar instruction. Reasons for this state of affairs are considered and some suggestions for how the situation can be improved are offered. The Challenge: The last few decades have seen a number of theoretically and empirically driven innovations aimed at making the teaching of foreign language grammar more effective. Have those proposals succeeding in helping learners employ grammar structures successfully in communication? The papers addresses this question and points to the way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights on the editorial process after the submission of manuscripts and the role of associate editor in the revision of manuscripts. The author discusses the importance of grammar and spelling, the process of determining if the submitted manuscripts fall to the right journal, and the proper format of the manuscripts based on the journal's requirements.

Wittgenstein's conception of logical and conceptual truth is often thought to rival that of the logical positivists. This paper argues that there are important respects in which these conceptions complement each other. Analyticity, in the positivists' sense, coincides, not with Wittgenstein's notion of a grammatical proposition, but rather with his notion of a tautology. Grammatical propositions can usually be construed as analyticity postulates in Carnap's sense of the term. This account of grammatical and analytic propositions will be illustrated by appeal to logical, conceptual and arithmetic truths. Its consequences for an analysis of corresponding modal notions will be indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work on norm orientations in the Caribbean Englishes has focussed largely on phonological norms, such as accents, and, to a lesser extent, grammatical norm orientation. Outside of the publication of dictionaries, however, lexical norms and their spread have received little attention. This paper examines lexical norm orientations in Trinidadian English, presenting the results of a corpus‐based study and survey study of the lexical preferences of speakers of Trinidadian English. The findings suggest that while there is evidence of American influence on Trinidadian lexicon, British variants persist. Indeed, British and American variants often coexist, albeit with different connotations in Trinidadian English. From a methodological standpoint, this paper demonstrates the benefits of using a mixed‐methods approach in looking at norms, particularly with regard to lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defends P.F. Strawson's controversial 'reversal move', the view that the reactive attitudes determine what it means to be responsible. Many are critical of this account, arguing that it leads to the result that if we were to start to hold very young children responsible, they would be responsible. I argue that it is possible to read Strawson as providing a grammatical analysis of our moral responsibility language‐game by drawing two parallels between Strawson and Wittgenstein. This interpretation shows that the formulation of the problem associated with the 'reversal move' rests on a grammatical mistake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the article "English Style in Scientific Papers," by John R. Baker published in the November 5, 1955 issue of the "Nature" journal.

This paper explores the range of uses associated with se constructions in Mexican Spanish. The validity of treating most se constructions as passives is under scrutiny. In contrast, a model to analyze the emergence of an important variety of impersonal interpretations is proposed. Arbitrary and quasi‐universal construals conform the base for finer interpretations for se constructions. In agreement with a usage‐based model, passive, impersonal and middle constructions are evaluated against four different genres which presumably determine the choice of se constructions for specific communicative necessities. While impersonal se constructions characterize journalistic writing and formal oral usage, middle se constructions are dominant in oral informal genres. Further specialization for impersonal se constructions, such as rules, norms, performative and arbitrary constructions are identified as a result of particular contexts determinacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Title‐pages represent an interesting and under‐researched type of paratextual material in the context of the Italian early modern book market. Drawing on pragma‐linguistic approaches not yet applied in the Italian context, this paper offers an analysis of title‐pages of vernacular grammars and lexicographic works that were printed in Venice in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century (31 works).In Venice, which was the hub of vernacular codification, this new genre saw increasing attempts at popularization as more and more readers demanded straightforward tools that would help them learn literary Tuscan. My analysis focuses on the marketing strategies employed by publishers, printers, and authors – viewed together as a community of practice – on the title‐pages of these works. Focus is placed on the genre labels employed in primary titles, the presentation of the author's credentials, intended readership, printer and publisher, and dedication, as well as on the modifications applied by Venetian publishers when it came to re‐print and popularize non‐Venetian works. By exploring strategies used to guide and attract target audiences, this article aims to show that linguistic approaches are useful in the study of Italian paratexts and confirms the importance of including paratextual features in studies of historical sociolinguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The place of evidence to inform educational effectiveness has received increasing attention internationally in the last two decades. An important contribution to evidence-informed policy has been greater attention to experimental trials including randomised controlled trials ( RCTs). The aim of this paper is to examine the use of evidence, particularly the use of evidence from experimental trials, to inform national curriculum policy. To do this the teaching of grammar to help pupils' writing was selected as a case. Two well-regarded and influential experimental trials that had a significant effect on policy, and that focused on the effectiveness of grammar teaching to support pupils' writing, are examined in detail. In addition to the analysis of their methodology, the nature of the two trials is also considered in relation to other key studies in the field of grammar teaching for writing and a recently published robust RCT. The paper shows a significant and persistent mismatch between national curriculum policy in England and the robust evidence that is available with regard to the teaching of writing. It is concluded that there is a need for better evidence-informed decisions by policy makers to ensure a national curriculum specification for writing that is more likely to have positive impact on pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of Harmonic Grammar with gradient symbolic representations (a.k.a. Gradient Harmonic Grammar), a weighted‐constraint model of grammatical computation in which language structures are mentally represented with numerically continuous levels of activity, or degree of presence. In this system, the penalty of each constraint violation is proportional to the activity of the structure that incurs it. The adoption of gradient activity permits unique advances in generative approaches to key types of idiosyncratic patterns in language. I review the main proposals that have been made in the framework, and outstanding issues such as the existence of gradient activity in output structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammar‐based automatic algorithm design has been shown to generate stochastic local search algorithms that compete with or outperform state‐of‐the‐art methods. In such systems, algorithms are divided in components and a grammar is used to describe how to properly combine the components to create a working algorithm. In our approach, the grammar is converted into parameters and an automatic parameter configuration tool is used to find the best configuration. This approach allows us to consider and hybridize different metaheuristic templates producing combinations never tested before, but this flexibility leads to a very large configuration space to explore. Is such complexity really needed to achieve state‐of‐the‐art performance? In this paper, we investigate this question by creating grammars that allow the hybridization of stochastic local search algorithms at most two, one, or zero times. We use these grammars to generate algorithms for the three most studied objectives of the permutation flowshop problem: makespan, total completion time, and total tardiness. The generated algorithms are compared using benchmark sets from the literature as well as a quantitative measure of algorithm complexity using a metric based on concept directed acyclic graphs. The experiments show that our system tends to generate hybridized algorithms only when they can provide a substantial performance improvement. On the contrary, when such algorithms do not improve performance, the system generates simpler algorithms regardless of the grammar used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a uniform X0‐raising analysis of VSO and VOS word order in Niuean. Accounting for VSO via X0 raising has a strong foundation in the V1 literature; the claim that X0 raising can also underlie VOS word order—as in Niuean's pseudo‐noun‐incorporation construction—is more controversial. This paper explains the VOS order of Niuean pseudo noun incorporation by appealing to a condition on prosodic well‐formedness, Argument‐φ, that requires a head and its internal argument(s) to form a unique phonological phrase. In order to satisfy this requirement, the incorporated argument undergoes prosodic restructuring into a position adjacent to the verb at PF. Since the verb arrives at its clause‐initial position via X0 raising, the syntactic input to the prosodic grammar is VSO, while the prosodic output is VOS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present ex post facto correlational research is aimed at exploring the relationship between grammar and vocabulary knowledge components in L2 reading comprehension. The study focuses on two cohorts of EFL students with different proficiency levels: more proficient (\MP) and less proficient (LP). Two dimensions of grammar knowledge are measured: implicit, through timed grammaticality judgment tasks and explicit, through grammatical error correction tasks. Two facets of vocabulary, viz. depth and breadth, are also assessed by Word Associates Test (WAT) and Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), respectively. Reading comprehension is also tapped by five indicators of vocabulary, detail and negative factual information, main idea and purpose, co‐reference and inference. The data were analyzed through multigroup structural equation modeling, running AMOS. It was revealed that in the MP group, vocabulary knowledge was a better predictor of reading. In the LP group, however, it was unveiled that the role of grammar seemed to be slightly more contributive in predicting reading comprehension juxtaposed with that of vocabulary. Some implications are also discussed at the end. The Challenge: It is well established that reading comprehension is one of the quintessential skills in language learning that is multidimensional and entails a various set of linguistic and nonlinguistic constituents and skills (Chen, 2018). However, there is still a lacuna in the literature on the relative contribution of these elements to reading across proficiency levels. The present paper attempts to fill the void on the relative role of linguistic knowledge components by including subcomponents of vocabulary and grammar constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy Studies Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy Studies Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy Studies Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A view of prominence in the philosophy of emotion is that emotional experiences are not self‐standing intentional experiences. Instead, they inherit the intentional content they have from their cognitive bases. One implication is that emotions, whose intentional contents differ in terms of the modal and temporal properties of the relevant particular object—because the intentional contents on which they are based differ in these respects—nonetheless need not differ qua emotion‐type. This leads to the same‐emotional attitude, different content claim: It is possible to have the same emotional attitude toward a range of (different) contents, as provided by different cognitive bases. This paper argues that this claim is mistaken. By appealing to the specific case of imagination, the same emotional‐attitude, different content claim is challenged. Drawing on phenomenological observations made by Jean‐Paul Sartre, supplemented with independently plausible considerations, I argue that we should recognize a distinct class of emotion types, which I call affective imaginings. Affective imaginings contrast with emotional experiences whose cognitive bases are sense‐perceptual experiences (affective perceptions). The contrast turns on the way the different contents across these cases modify the attitudinal character of the emotional experience, motivating the positing of two irreducible classes of emotional experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Somewhat hesitantly, this paper asks 'what place for you and me in assemblage?' What, if anything, remains of the 'you' and the 'me' after 'assemblage theory'? As, with this new material imaginary, subjects are once again subject to dispersal and decentring, fading into flickering networks and multiplied across orders and orderings, this paper seeks to recall the singularity of the other. To do so the paper reflects on the all too fragile difference between 'him' and 'it', and on how and why we should try to remember this difference (a recalling that may well constitute the 'we' in the first place). At the same time, the paper seeks to cite and perform specific 'relations of address'- belief, doubt, vow, dis-agreement, hesitation, promise, weeping, mourning, prayer - relations that are, arguably, specific to that between the I and Thou, and that demand a specific form of grammar, exposure and existential commitment. Finally, the paper suggests, albeit implicitly, that the forms of speech and rationalisation that we are involved in here, in papers and journals such as this, only take on sense when they are addressed to or owed to an other and that this corporeal, ethical and existential fact underwrites all other claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any account aiming to provide a comprehensive picture of children's acquisition of speech must consider both the development of the phonological grammar and the maturation of the structures and motor skills used to implement the sounds of a language. Much previous literature has been marked by a tendency to draw sharp demarcations between motor and grammatical influences, or to assert that all of child speech can be reduced to one or the other. This paper argues that it is neither necessary nor desirable to segregate speech-motor development from grammatical development when modeling speech acquisition, because they are fundamentally intertwined. The paper focuses on bringing together two literatures that have evolved largely independently. The first explores how speech-motor patterns practiced during babbling come to be disproportionately represented in the lexicon in children's earliest stages of meaningful speech. The second posits that abstract elements of phonology - segments, features, and constraints - can be understood to emerge from generalizations over stored memory traces at a more holistic level. We argue that an emergentist model of phonological learning can be enhanced by incorporating the insight that memory traces of strings that have been heard and produced are encoded more robustly than strings that have only been heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A basic question for theories of the syntax–semantics interface is whether the relationship between the form and meaning of complex aspectual expressions is mediated by the pieces that make up hierarchical syntax or whether complex forms and their meanings can pair directly, in templatic or constructional representations, for example. This paper examines the string I'm done writing chapter 3 with this issue in mind. The (be) done V‐ing structure does not seem to have been analyzed before, and I refer to it as the done state. The done state expresses a complex stative eventuality. Notably, the transitive object of the done state can hold a target state, an unexpected interpretation given the ‐ing verb (contrast I've been writing chapter 3). Apparent form–meaning mismatches of this type are regularly taken as evidence for listed, constructional mappings. I show, however, that the done state has the syntactic pieces of a stative passive of a present participle, and I argue that the done state is a previously unnoticed type of derived stative. The analysis provides a compositional account of the structure's semantics and morphology. I further argue that the syntactic items that make up the done state have the same properties that they have elsewhere in the grammar; there is no need to postulate new grammatical objects. The predictable properties of the done state find explanation in models in which complex eventualities are built up out of the minimal units that make up complex phrases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper synthesises aspects of functional grammar and cognitive stylistics to posit a theoretical approach to the teaching of the grammar of narrative writing to upper primary and lower secondary students. It is argued the development of students' metalinguistic understanding is essential if they are to make informed language choices as they write. Cognitive stylistics is an embodied theory of grammar derived from literary studies, which is used here to construct a theoretical framework for teaching metalinguistic understanding in writing. The proposed framework includes concepts to support the way writers might focus their 'readerly' attention via devices such as 'figure' and 'ground', 'scope', 'attentional windowing' and 'deixis', to create narrative perspectives and interactions between narrative participants, by means of 'clausal action chains'. The theory is premised on the idea that students can be taught to 'embody' the imagined narrative world, and make specific grammatical choices to effectively capture, for the reader, each element of their story. The framework outlines the role of the teacher, when supporting the student, in both the 'embodiment' of their narrative, and their grammatical decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that grammatical constructions, specifically argument structure constructions that determine the 'who did what to whom' part of sentence meaning and how this meaning is expressed syntactically, can be considered a kind of relational category. That is, grammatical constructions are represented as the abstraction of the syntactic and semantic relations of the exemplar utterances that are expressed in that construction, and it enables the generation of novel exemplars. To support this argument, I review evidence that there are parallel behavioral patterns between how children learn relational categories generally and how they learn grammatical constructions specifically. Then, I discuss computational simulations of how grammatical constructions are abstracted from exemplar sentences using a domain-general relational cognitive architecture. Last, I review evidence from adult language processing that shows parallel behavioral patterns with expert behavior from other cognitive domains. After reviewing the evidence, I consider how to integrate this account with other theories of language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the AGL literature from a psycholinguistic perspective. It first presents a taxonomy of the experimental familiarization test procedures used, which is followed by a consideration of shortcomings and potential improvements of the empirical methodology. It then turns to reconsidering the issue of grammar learning from the point of view of acquiring constraints, instead of the traditional AGL approach in terms of acquiring sets of rewrite rules. This is, in particular, a natural way of handling long‐distance dependences. The final section addresses an underdeveloped issue in the AGL literature, namely how to detect latent hierarchical structure in AGL response patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a rich tradition of building computational models in cognitive science, but modeling, theoretical, and experimental research are not as tightly integrated as they could be. In this paper, we show that computational techniques—even simple ones that are straightforward to use—can greatly facilitate designing, implementing, and analyzing experiments, and generally help lift research to a new level. We focus on the domain of artificial grammar learning, and we give five concrete examples in this domain for (a) formalizing and clarifying theories, (b) generating stimuli, (c) visualization, (d) model selection, and (e) exploring the hypothesis space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses perception and causative verbs in English and European Portuguese within Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) Agree framework and provides an answer for the old riddle of why these verbs appear to select for different infinitival complements in their active and passive forms. Assuming that infinitival clauses are Case-bearing projections (Raposo 1987, Nunes 1995), the paper proposes that in active structures, the infinitival head and the embedded subject can both agree with the matrix light verb and so “share” the accusative Case it licenses. In passive structures, on the other hand, the intervening φ-features of the participial head block the agreement between the finite T and the infinitival head, which will then be licensed only if preposition insertion is sanctioned as a Last Resort repair strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the study that observed the effects of dialogue journaling via electronic mail on the language produced by learners of Spanish as a second language, compared with the traditional version of the technique which is the paper-and-pencil to know whether electronic mail affects grammatical accuracy, appropriate use of vocabulary, and language productivity. The grammar and vocabulary accuracy, and the language quality produced via computer-mediated communication was analyzed. Male and female English native speakers, ages 19-25 participated in the study. They were divided into experimental and control groups and were asked to write messages to their instructors. The students believed this survey helped improve their foreign language learning and attitude towards Spanish.

In trying to make clear whether understanding is a mental state Wittgenstein asks a series of questions about the timing and duration of understanding. These questions are awkward, and they have posed a great challenge for commentators. In this paper I review the interpretations by Mole and by Baker and Hacker, and point out their problems. I then offer a new interpretation which shows (1) that a "mental state" in this context means a state of consciousness, (2) that Wittgenstein's questions are intended to elicit the grammars of the words "understand" and a "state of consciousness", (3) that, in this way, he clearly shows that understanding is not a state of consciousness and (4) that he also provides a therapy to dissolve the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper Graham Frater finds early signs of a revival of explicit instruction in English grammar to pupils of compulsory school age in England; this is accompanied by an expectation that such teaching might play an important part in closing the ‘writing gap’. He suggests that, strengthened by the National Literacy Strategy, this early re-awakening invokes again some of the debates that accompanied the construction of the National Curriculum. Rooted in a case study of a text by a low-achieving Y7 writer, and in two surveys of effective practice with writing (covering Key Stages 2–4), this paper argues that purposeful text-level teaching, reading in particular, and the creation of real readerships offer more secure ways of promoting progress in writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss how recent theoretical linguistic research focusing on the Minimalist Program (MP) (Cho95, Mar95, Zwa94) can be used to guide the parsing of a useful range of natural language sentences and the building of a logical representation in a principles-based manner. We discuss the components of the MP and give an example derivation. We then propose parsing algorithms that recreate the derivation structure starting with a lexicon and the surface form of a sentence. Given the approximated derivation structure, MP principles are applied to generate a logical form, which leads to linguistically based algorithms for determining possible meanings for sentences that are ambiguous due to quantifier scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of whether humans represent grammatical knowledge as a binary condition on membership in a set of well-formed sentences, or as a probabilistic property has been the subject of debate among linguists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists for many decades. Acceptability judgments present a serious problem for both classical binary and probabilistic theories of grammaticality. These judgements are gradient in nature, and so cannot be directly accommodated in a binary formal grammar. However, it is also not possible to simply reduce acceptability to probability. The acceptability of a sentence is not the same as the likelihood of its occurrence, which is, in part, determined by factors like sentence length and lexical frequency. In this paper, we present the results of a set of large-scale experiments using crowd-sourced acceptability judgments that demonstrate gradience to be a pervasive feature in acceptability judgments. We then show how one can predict acceptability judgments on the basis of probability by augmenting probabilistic language models with an acceptability measure. This is a function that normalizes probability values to eliminate the confounding factors of length and lexical frequency. We describe a sequence of modeling experiments with unsupervised language models drawn from state-of-the-art machine learning methods in natural language processing. Several of these models achieve very encouraging levels of accuracy in the acceptability prediction task, as measured by the correlation between the acceptability measure scores and mean human acceptability values. We consider the relevance of these results to the debate on the nature of grammatical competence, and we argue that they support the view that linguistic knowledge can be intrinsically probabilistic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the transitivity of existential and psych-constructions in Korean to canonical transitives and intransitives. It is shown that these constructions are neither transitives nor intransitives. This paper argues that they can be unified as pseudo-transitives (i.e., somewhere between transitives and intransitives) and provides a structural analysis for pseudo-transitives using Appl. Pseudo-transitives provide support for the theory that transitivity is a continuum, and not categorical (Hopper & Thompson 1980). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reemergence of grammar instruction in the Common Core State Standards has likely left teachers confused. On the one hand, they have been told repeatedly that grammar instruction does not improve student outcomes, and can, in fact, be 'harmful' to students. However, on the other hand, many Anglophone countries, including the United States, have re-introduced grammar instruction as an important component of the English language arts curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to clarify some of the controversies around grammar instruction by beginning with a brief historical review. Following, we offer teachers various pedagogical suggestions to enable them to address grammar in an engaging, meaningful fashion, as opposed to the isolated, decontexualized activities that have traditionally plagued grammar instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammar-based test generation provides a systematic approach to producing test cases from a given context-free grammar. Unfortunately, naive grammar-based test generation is problematic because of the fact that exhaustive random test case production is often explosive, and grammar-based test generation with explicit annotation controls often causes unbalanced testing coverage. In this paper, we present an automatic grammar-based test generation approach, which takes a symbolic grammar as input, requires zero control input from users, and produces well-distributed test cases. Our approach utilizes a novel dynamic stochastic model where each variable is associated with a tuple of probability distributions, which are dynamically adjusted along the derivation. We further present a coverage tree illustrating the distribution of generated test cases and their detailed derivations. More importantly, the coverage tree supports various implicit derivation control mechanisms. We implemented this approach in a Java-based system, named Gena. Each test case generated by Gena automatically comes with a set of structural features, which can play an important and effective role on automated failure causes localization. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, the well-balanced distribution of generated test cases over grammatical structures, and a case study on grammar-based failure causes localization. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including how to incorporate teaching pronunciation in the introductory classroom, the solid approach to teaching grammatical gender, and the students' perspective on learning with technology.

This paper explores the syntactic and semantic properties of movement and adjunction and proposes a new analysis of these two phenomena according to which they are closely related to each other. The basic pieces of grammatical machinery that carry out movement also carry out adjunction. Building on independently appealing ideas concerning neo-Davidsonian semantic composition and 'move as re-merge,' the proposed framework naturally accounts for (i) adjuncts' puzzling status 'either inside or outside' a maximal projection, (ii) adjuncts' ability to escape reconstruction, and (iii) the prohibition on extraction from adjuncts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to identify the salient features of Professor Yamuna Kachru's contributions to Hindi linguistics. The paper begins by identifying the seven research areas of her contributions and then goes on to focus on her pioneering work on Hindi syntax and her final work on Hindi grammar. The seven areas embody a wide range of topics. Although a detailed treatment of the topics is beyond the scope of an article such as this, it suffices to say the papers offer state-of-the art treatments of these topics within the latest theoretical framework of that time. The specific aspects of her theoretical and methodological contributions are underscored in the conclusion after noting the wide-ranging impact of her scholarship on succeeding generations of Hindi linguists. Simply put, she was the Chomsky of Hindi linguistics - a pioneer, a visionary, a teacher and a scholar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acquisition of complex motor, cognitive, and social skills, like playing a musical instrument or mastering sports or a language, is generally associated with implicit skill learning (SL). Although it is a general view that SL is most effective in childhood, and such skills are best acquired if learning starts early, this idea has rarely been tested by systematic empirical studies on the developmental pathways of SL from childhood to old age. In this paper, we challenge the view that childhood and early school years are the prime time for skill learning by tracking age-related changes in performance in three different paradigms of SL. We collected data from participants between 7 and 87 years for (1) a Serial Reaction Time Task (SRT) testing the learning of motor sequences, (2) an Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) task testing the extraction of regularities from auditory sequences, and (3) Probabilistic Category Learning in the Weather Prediction task (WP), a non-sequential categorization task. Results on all three tasks show that adolescence and adulthood are the most efficient periods for skill learning, since instead of becoming less and less effective with age, SL improves from childhood into adulthood and then later declines with aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]