Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

本研究在探討兩種不同教師回饋對新竹縣國小六年級學童英文句型寫作之影響以及此兩種回饋對學生英語學習態度與動機的影響。此研究以來自新竹縣某國小六年級兩個班級學生為研究對象，此二班級隨機指派為實驗組及控制組。實驗組實施習作批改時的間接回饋而對照組則實施傳統直接回饋，每週均批改一次習作。經過14週的回饋後，兩組皆進行英文句型寫作測驗並施以英語學習態度與動機問卷;3週後再進行英文句型寫作延宕測驗。研究結果顯示，學生受過教師的間接回饋批改後在英文句型寫作之正確率上有顯著進步，此顯著進步也表現在延宕測驗中的介系詞題型；但其對訂正習作上錯誤則表現顯著焦慮。希望本研究能為英語老師在教學實務上提供助益。 / The present study mainly aimed at investigating the effects of two different types of teacher feedback on English sentence writing accuracy. Meanwhile this paper also aimed at examining learners’ attitudes of the two different types of teacher feedback, and the changes of learners’ attitudes and motivation towards English learning after the implementation of different teacher feedbacks. Two sixth-grade classes in Hsin Chu County were randomly assigned to be the experimental group and the control group. The experimental group received indirect feedback (IDF) on their workbook while the control group received traditional direct feedback (DF) once a week. After the 14-week treatment, an English writing proficiency test and an English learning attitudes and motivation questionnaire were administrated to examine learners’ sentence writing accuracy and their learning attitudes and motivations respectively. Finally, a retention test was conducted in 3 weeks later to know the retention effect of two types of teacher feedback. The findings showed that the IDF had helped students gained significant progress on sentence writing accuracy. Moreover, the significant improvement was also presented on the aspect of preposition in the retention test. However, the IDF group expressed significant anxiety towards correcting errors on workbooks after the treatment of IDF. Hopefully, the findings of the present study may provide English teachers with some useful pedagogical implications.

This dissertation investigates the role of grammar and parsing in processing relative clauses across languages. A parsing theory called the Incremental Minimalist Parser (IMP), which parses sentences incrementally from left to right, is sketched based on the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 2001, 2005). We provide sentence processing evidence which supported a universal parsing theory that is structure-based. According to IMP (and other structure-based theories), a gap located at the subject position is more easily accessed than a gap located at the object position in both head-initial (e.g. English) and head-final (e.g. Mandarin) relative clauses. Experiment 1 (self-paced reading tasks) showed a processing advantage for Mandarin relative clauses that involved subject extractions over object extractions, consistent with the universal subject preference found in all other languages. Experiments 2 to 4 (naturalness ratings, paraphrasing tasks, and self-paced reading tasks) focused on possessor relative clauses. When the possessor gap was located at the subject position (i.e. in passives), a possessive relation was easier to construct than when the gap was located at an object position (i.e. in canonical constructions and sentences involving BA). The results of Experiments 1-4 suggested that processing accounts based on locality and canonicity, but not on syntactic structure, cannot account for the processing preferences of filler-gap relations in relative clauses. Experiment 5 (self-paced reading tasks) investigated whether the surface NVN sequence of relative clauses at sentence-initial positions induced garden path, and whether the animacy of the first noun in such sequences could rescue the garden path. Mandarin relative clauses involving topicalization of the embedded object were investigated. The results suggested that the surface NVN sequence did induce main-clause misanalysis (as Subject-Verb-Object). Even when the first noun was (semantically) an unlikely agent, the parser took it as a subject in the initial syntactic analysis. Semantics did not have an immediate effect on syntactic processing.

Research has indicated that there is a worldwide increase in the numbers of sexual offenders brought before court in the last two decades as well as an increase in recidivism after imprisonment of sexual offenders. It was found that imprisonment is not the only effective sentence option for sexual offenders and that there are certain categories of sexual offenders that can be rehabilitated more effectively within the community while serving a community-based sentence like correctional supervision. Research has also shown that the risk of re-offending can be decreased by such a sentence. In order for courts to consider correctional supervision as sentence for certain sexual offenders they request pre-sentence assessment reports from social workers to assist them to determine the suitable offenders for this sentence option. The court has certain expectations from social workers in terms of these pre-sentence assessments that are not always met. Amongst other factors, this is caused by the difference in approach between social workers and judicial officials as well as the different goals each profession has in terms of sexual offenders. The problems and needs of social workers with the pre-sentence assessment of sexual offenders were explored in this study as well as the expectations and problems of judicial officials in this regard. Social workers indicated that they lack certain skills, knowledge and confidence as well as professional support and resources to compile effective pre-sentence reports. Judicial officials expect more intensive and comprehensive assessments that focus on the determination of risk of re-offending and the risk to the community. In order to address the problems and needs of both the social workers and judicial officials, suggestions for the improvement of co-operation and understanding of the two different approaches were made as well as guidelines for social workers, trainers and supervisors to enable social workers to present more effective pre-sentence assessments to courts. / Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

The work is distinguished by its novelty because the syntax of dialects of the Lithuanian language has been hardly explored so far. The goal of this work was to make a thorough description of complex sentences of the East Upper Lithuanians, Vilnius people Dieveniškės and Lazūnai subdialects. While achieving the purpose, the following tasks had to be solved: to explore the typology of complex sentences; to describe the means of subordination; to make an analysis of the structure peculiarity of complex sentences. The resources used in this work are a book written D.Mikulėnienė and K.Morkūnas “Texts of Dieveniškės subdialects”, published in 1997, “Litauische mundartliche Texte aus der Wilnaer Gegend mit grammatischen Anmerkungen” by Peter Aruma, published in Dorpat in 1930. The latter contains texts of Dieveniškės and Lazūnai subdialects. The third resource that was used is “The vocabulary of Lazūnai dialect” by J.Petrauskas and A.Vidugiris, published in 1985. The material was collected from all the available resources and it comprises 2276 complex sentences. Having carried out the research, it appeared that complex sentence components of the subdialects are joined by conjunctions, relative adverbs, relative pronouns, particle ar and responsive words. Complex sentences might have one or several subordinate components. The sentences having one subordinate component might be of functional (explanatory, modifying, suppositional) and of semantic (time, reason, condition... [to full text]

Research has indicated that there is a worldwide increase in the numbers of sexual offenders brought before court in the last two decades as well as an increase in recidivism after imprisonment of sexual offenders. It was found that imprisonment is not the only effective sentence option for sexual offenders and that there are certain categories of sexual offenders that can be rehabilitated more effectively within the community while serving a community-based sentence like correctional supervision. Research has also shown that the risk of re-offending can be decreased by such a sentence. In order for courts to consider correctional supervision as sentence for certain sexual offenders they request pre-sentence assessment reports from social workers to assist them to determine the suitable offenders for this sentence option. The court has certain expectations from social workers in terms of these pre-sentence assessments that are not always met. Amongst other factors, this is caused by the difference in approach between social workers and judicial officials as well as the different goals each profession has in terms of sexual offenders. The problems and needs of social workers with the pre-sentence assessment of sexual offenders were explored in this study as well as the expectations and problems of judicial officials in this regard. Social workers indicated that they lack certain skills, knowledge and confidence as well as professional support and resources to compile effective pre-sentence reports. Judicial officials expect more intensive and comprehensive assessments that focus on the determination of risk of re-offending and the risk to the community. In order to address the problems and needs of both the social workers and judicial officials, suggestions for the improvement of co-operation and understanding of the two different approaches were made as well as guidelines for social workers, trainers and supervisors to enable social workers to present more effective pre-sentence assessments to courts. / Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

Recent research into hemispheric differences in sentence comprehension has produced a puzzling disparity between the results from behavioral studies on neurologically normal individuals and studies utilizing other methods such as electrophysiology, neuroimaging and the investigation of neuropsychological patients. The former approach tends to produce results that indicate a restriction of the right hemisphere (RH) to lower-level processing mechanisms that are comparatively less sensitive to context than the left hemisphere (LH), while the combined findings of the latter approaches suggest that not only is the RH capable of processing language at a higher level, it is particularly sensitive to contextual information and, furthermore, this may form part of the special role of the RH in language tasks. Accordingly, the present series of studies employed a normal-behavioral approach to further investigate the underlying processing mechanisms of the RH during sentence comprehension tasks. In each of the four experiments, right-handed adult participants completed a computer-based lexical decision task where reaction time and error rates were recorded. Stimuli were always centrally-presented, followed by a laterally-presented target word or non-word. In the first experiment, the sensitivity of the RH to message-level meaning was investigated by assessing whether it benefits from additional contextual information in sentences that was not the result of simple word-level associations. The remaining experiments aimed to examine several current models of RH language processing; specifically, they examined the applicability of the coarse-coding hypothesis (Beeman, 1993) and the integrative processing model (Federmeier, 2007) to RH sentence processing. The combined results of the four experiments lead to several conclusions. Firstly, this series of investigation consistently demonstrated that the RH does display a sensitivity to message-level processing that appears to be at least equivalent to that of the LH. This conclusion is uncommon in the normal-behavioral literature, but is consistent with evidence produced by other methodologies. Secondly, the coarse-coding hypothesis is insufficient in explaining RH language processing at the sentential level. Although there is considerable evidence in support of the coarse-coding model of RH processing of individual words, the findings of the present investigations do not support its applicability beyond this level. Thirdly, the integrative/predictive distinction between RH/LH language processing also appears to have limited applicability beyond sentence fragments and may instead be reflective of higher-level processing differences (e.g., wherein the RH may utilize a para-linguistic situation-model processing method whereas the LH may rely purely on a linguistic mechanism). Based on these conclusions, the present series of investigations appears to have resolved the inconsistent finding previously prominent in normal-behavioral literature and goes some way in determining the applicability of current models of RH language processing.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Cleveland State University, 2009. / Abstract. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on June 11, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-105). Available online via the OhioLINK ETD Center. Also available in print.

The first aim of this work is to describe the subordinate implicit clauses in Italian and in French and to compare the structures of these clauses in both languages. The second aim is to examine the use of the subordinate clauses formed with gerund in Italian and in French in a corpus of journalistic texts. The work is divided into a theoretical and a practical part. At the beginning, the theoretical part includes an explanation of some notions and a short description of the morphology and syntax of the non-finite verb forms in Italian and in French. A larger part of the work is then dedicated to the description of the subordinate implicit clauses in Italian and in French. The practical part contains an analysis of the subordinate gerund clauses in both languages. The corpus analysis is conducted using the corpus InterCorp and its aim is to examine the frequency, the semantics and the function of gerund in Italian and in French in journalistic texts.

Embodied accounts of action-language processing propose that meaning is constructed with the assistance of relevant sensory-motor representations (eg., Fischer & Zwaan, 2008). In support of this view, comprehending an action-sentence can slow the production of an overt action, when features of that action are incompatible with corresponding sentence features (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002). Additionally, performing an overt action can impede the comprehension of incompatible action-sentences (Zwaan & Taylor, 2006). Action-sentence comprehension can even be disrupted by watching visual displays with incompatible directional features. Namely, comprehending a sentence describing a movement in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction is less efficient when simultaneously viewing a stimulus moving in an incompatible direction, even when no overt manual rotation action is performed. Embodied accounts contend that such action-sentence compatibility effects arise as a result of covert simulations of specific motor programs developed through one’s physical experiences with particular objects. I present evidence that these effects could also be generated by a more abstract type of knowledge, that is not tied to a particular object. I am referring here to the idea of a population stereotype, which is the natural tendency of people to associate the direction of certain actions with the conceptual properties of a physical display (e.g., a clockwise device rotation implies an increase in device output). Such population stereotypes typically are consistent with specific motor experiences. For example, turning down the volume of a stereo in many cases involves a counterclockwise rotation of a dial, and this experience is consistent with a population stereotype that implies that reducing a quantity is achieved by a counterclockwise action. If comprehension of a sentence describing reducing the volume on a stereo is faster while turning a dial in a counterclockwise direction, it can not be determined if a resulting compatibility effect reflects compatibility between the described action and the stereotype, or between the described action and real motor experiences. I will present a case in which a population stereotype is not compatible with everyday experiences and establish that population stereotypes make a substantial contribution to action-sentence compatibility effects. I will also report a number of unsuccessful attempts to replicate previous studies of action-sentence compatibility and discuss replication attempts made by others. / Graduate