Purpose: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) lag behind children with typical language (TL) in their grammatical development, despite equivalent early exposure to recasts in conversation (M. E. Fey, T. E. Krulik, D. F. Loeb, & K. Proctor-Williams, 1999) and the ability to learn from recasts in intervention as quickly as do children with TL (K. E. Nelson, S. Camarata, J. Welsh, L. Butovsky, & M. Camarata, 1996). This experiment tested whether this apparent paradox could be attributed to variations in the density of recasts in conversation versus intervention. Method: Thirteen children (7–8 years of age) with SLI and 13 language-similar children (5–6 years of age) with TL were exposed to 3 recast densities of novel irregular past tense verbs (none, conversation-like, intervention-like) over 5 sessions. Outcomes were based on spontaneous conversational productions and a post-test probe. Results: As predicted, at conversation-like densities, children with TL more accurately produced the target verbs they heard in recasts than in nonrecast models (d = 0.58), children with SLI showed no differences, and children with TL produced the verbs more accurately than did children with SLI (d = 0.54). Contrary to expectations, at higher intervention-like recast densities, the SLI group did not improve their accuracy, and the TL group performances were significantly poorer (d = 0.47). Conclusion: At conversational levels, recasts facilitated greater verb learning than models alone but only in the TL group. Increasing recast density to the modest levels in this brief intervention experiment did not benefit children with SLI and led to poorer learning for children with TL. To optimize learning, efficiency of recast distribution as well as rate must be considered.

Thesis (M. A. (African Languages) --University of Limpopo,2005 / The study aimsat finding out thecategorical status of copulatives in Northern Sotho. This will be achieved by examining the morphosemantic features of various copulatives. From a morphological perspective, thestudy focuses on the following types ofcopulative verbs: ke, se, ba, le, na, and COP. The study argues that the foresaid copulatives are not particles but are fully-fledged verbs. As far as the semantic nature of the copulatives is concerned, the study discovered a variety of meanings associated with copulatives, such as the following: the identifying, descriptive,locational and associative. Lastly, the study contends that any research on the copulative in Northern Sotho should be a morphosemantic one, as previous studies focused on one and neglected the other.

Durch ihr besonderes Verhalten haben psychologische Verben, und Experiencer-Objekt-Verben im Besonderen, in der linguistischen Forschung Berühmtheit erlangt. In vielen Sprachen konnte beobachtet werden, dass das Verhalten dieser Verben oft von grammatischen Generalisierungen abweicht, die über Prädikate und Strukturen bis dahin gemacht wurden. Diese so genannten 'psych properties' (Psych-Eigenschaften) betreffen zentrale linguistische Phänomene sowie sprachspezifische Eigenschaften und sie geben Anlass anzunehmen, dass Verben wie 'frighten' ('fürchten'), 'appeal to' ('gefallen') und 'worry' ('beunruhigen') eine besondere Stellung im grammatischen System einnehmen. Sie stehen hier Verben gegenüber die nicht primär mentale oder emotionale Konzepte ausdrücken, wie zum Beispiel 'call' ('anrufen'), 'warn' ('warnen') or 'visit' ('besuchen'). Die vorliegende Arbeit nimmt diese Beobachtungen auf und untersucht die besonderen Eigenschaften der Psych-Prädikate. / Psych verbs in general and experiencer object verbs in particular are exceptional because they often do not follow generalizations that have been made about verbs and structure types in the theory of grammar. Such so-called 'psych properties' can be observed in many languages and concern central linguistic but also language-specific phenomena. The existence of psych properties gives rise to the assumption that verbs such as 'frighten', 'appeal to' and 'worry' have a special position within the grammatical system as they stand in opposition to verbs that do not primarily express mental or emotional concepts, e.g., 'call', 'warn' or 'visit'. The present work addresses this divergence and investigates the characterizations of psych predicates.

The incredible productivity and creativity of language depends on two fundamental resources: a mental lexicon and a mental grammar. Rules of grammar enable us to produce and understand complex phrases we have not encountered before and at the same time constrain the computation of complex expressions. The concepts of the mental lexicon and mental grammar have been thoroughly tested by comparing the use of regular versus non-regular word forms. Regular verbs (e.g. walk-walked) are computed using a suffixation rule in a neural system for grammatical processing; non-regular verbs (run-ran) are retrieved from associative memory. The role of regularity has only been explored for the past tense, where regularity is overtly visible. To explore the representation and encoding of regularity as well as the inflectional processes involved in the production of regular and non-regular verbs, this dissertation investigated three groups of German verbs: regular, irregular and hybrid verbs. Hybrid verbs in German have completely regular conjugation in the present tense and irregular conjugation in the past tense. Articulation latencies were measured while participants named pictures of actions, producing the 3rd person singular of regular, hybrid, and irregular verbs in present and past tense. Studying the production of German verbs in past and present tense, this dissertation explored the complexity of lexical entries as a decisive factor in the production of verbs. / Regularität spielt eine entscheidende Rolle bei der Produktion von Verben. Zweiroutenmodelle nehmen an, dass regelmäßige Formen aus Stamm und Suffixen zusammengesetzt werden und unregelmäßige Verben als ganze Form im mentalen Lexikon gespeichert sind. Ziel der Dissertation war eine ausführliche Untersuchung der Repräsentation von regelmäßigen und unregelmäßigen Verben im Deutschen sowie der morphologischen Prozesse bei ihrer Produktion. Dazu wurden drei Typen von Verben im Deutschen untersucht: Regelmäßige Verben (z.B. lachen) haben nur einen Stamm, irreguläre Verben (z.B. graben) haben mehrere Stämme und ihre Formen sind daher unvorhersagbar. Hybride Verben (z.B. singen) haben regelmäßige Formen im Präsens und unregelmäßige, unvorhersagbare im Präteritum. Besondere Berücksichtigung fand daher das Tempus bei der Generierung von Verben. Artikulationszeiten in einer Serie von Bild-Wort-Interferenzexperimenten lassen vermuten, dass Regularität nicht durch abstrakte generische Knoten repräsentiert ist wie es z.B. für Genus angenommen wird. Die Artikulationszeiten von allen drei Typen von Verben in einem weiteren Bildbenennungsexperiment haben gezeigt, dass Regularität eine Eigenschaft des gesamten Lexikoneintrags eines Verbs ist und nicht von individuellen Wortformen. Die präsentierten Daten sind eine Herausforderung für das Zweiroutenmodell (Pinker, 1999), sie sind jedoch mit einem Ansatz vereinbar, der komplexe Lexikoneinträge für unregelmäßige Verben annimmt.

ABSTRACT   Title: Les verbes à particule dans quatre traductions suédoise. Analyse contrastive entre langue source et langue cible. Language: French Author: Annika Holmé University/Department/Year: Linnæus University/School of Language and Literature/2010     In modern French there are no phrasal verbs and the aim of this essay is to analyse what happens to the meaning of French data, when translated into Swedish phrasal verbs. In Swedish there is very often a choice between a phrasal verb and a simple verb, for example starta et starta upp. This is a contrastive analysis based on four different translations from French into Swedish, one of which is technical, one economic, one cultural and one political. In these four translations there were in total 128 examples of a Swedish phrasal verb, or in some cases past participles. Our analysis comprises the following particles (adverbs and prepositions): av, i, ihop, in, ner, om, på, till, upp and ut. We have analysed 43 cases where these particles have occurred. First of all, we define the meaning of the French data (which is not always a verb) and then we define the Swedish translation with a phrasal verb. Next, we compare both meanings, in order to see if the presence of the particle has kept, changed or modified the meaning between source and target text. Finally, we explain the reason behind each translation. Our analysis revealed that the meaning was sometimes made explicit, as in spara in. In other cases, the meaning was intensified, as in driva på. Furthermore, the analysis revealed a difference in levels of style, where in some cases the presence of a particle passed on a more informal style in the target text in comparison to the source text, as in starta upp. Keywords: translation, French, Swedish, phrasal verbs, comparison, meaning, Aktionsart

Verbbenämning innebär förmågan att benämna en bild utifrån den aktivitet som bilden illustrerar. I tidigare studier har det visat sig att barn tidigt i språkutvecklingen har svårare för verbbenämning än substantivbenämning (Gentner, 1982; Kauschke, Lee & Pae, 2007). Detta förklaras delvis av att verb är mer lingvistiskt komplexa än vad som är fallet för substantiv (Gentner & Boroditsky, 2001), samt att de är svårare att illustrera (Masterson, Druks & Gallienne, 2008). För att undersöka benämningsförmåga används oftast bildbenämningstest och för verb saknas ett svenskt test för barn. Föreliggande studie syftade till att undersöka verbbenämningsförmågan hos svenska barn samt att utröna om den svenska översättningen av Action Naming Test (ANT) är tillämplig på svenska barn. Deltagarna testades både med ANT samt Boston Naming test (BNT), för att få ett mått på de deltagande barnens benämningsförmåga av såväl verb som substantiv, och för att möjliggöra en jämförelse dem emellan. I den föreliggande studien deltog 116 barn i åldern 3;6 till 5;5 år uppdelade i fyra åldersgrupper. Resultaten på ANT visade att barnen fick högre testpoäng med stigande ålder. En felsvarsansalys visade att de vanligaste felsvaren var semantiskt relaterade (ord tillhörande samma eller en överordnad semantisk kategori) eller perceptuellt relaterade (visuell feltolkning) till målordet. En jämförelse av resultaten på ANT och BNT visade genomgående högre andel rätta svar på ANT. Det finns flera tänkbara förklaringar till detta. En förklaring är att barnen har passerat den ålder då substantiv är lättare att benämna än verb. En annan förklaring är att de helt enkelt har lättare att benämna verb än substantiv. Mer troligt är att testresultaten inte är jämförbara med varandra. Med några ändringar kan ANT bli ett användbart verbbenämningstest för svenska förskolebarn. / Verb naming comprises the ability to name an activity illustrated in a picture. Previous studies have shown that pre-school children have more difficulties in the naming of verbs than in naming of nouns (Gentner, 1982; Kauschke, Lee & Pae, 2007). This is explained as being partly due to the greater linguistical complexity of verbs compared to nouns (Gentner & Boroditsky, 2001) and that verbs are more difficult to illustrate (Masterson, Druks & Gallienne, 2008). Picture naming tests are frequently used in order to investigate naming ability but today a verb naming test is not available for Swedish children. The present study aimed to investigate naming ability of verbs in Swedish children, and to evaluate if the Swedish translation of the Action Naming Test (ANT) is applicable on children. In addition, all participants were tested with both ANT and the Boston Naming Test (BNT) in order to evaluate the participating children’s naming ability of verbs and nouns in order to make a comparison between the two of them. In the present study 116 children aged 3;6 to 5;5 years divided into four age groups participated. The results on the ANT showed continuously higher scores with increasing age. The error analysis showed that the most frequently occurring error categories were either semantically related (words within the same or superordinate category) or perceptually related (misinterpretation of the picture). When comparing the results between the ANT and the BNT higher scores were shown on the ANT in all age groups. This could imply that the participating children are beyond the age when nouns are easier to name than verbs, or that unlike previous studies, verbs are easier to learn. More likely, the test results are not comparable with each other. With some adjustments, the ANT is considered applicable for Swedish pre-school children.

Named entity recognition (NER) is the task of identifying the named entities (NEs) in the texts and classifying them into semantic categories such as person, organization, and place names and time, date, monetary, and percent expressions. NER has two principal aims: identification of NEs and classification of them into semantic categories. The local grammar (LG) approach has recently been shown to be superior to other NER techniques such as the probabilistic approach, the symbolic approach, and the hybrid approach in terms of being able to work with untagged corpora. The LG approach does not require using any dictionaries and gazetteers, which are lists of proper nouns (PNs) used in NER applications, unlike most of the other NER systems. As a consequence, it is able to recognize NEs in previously unseen texts at minimal costs. Most of the NER systems are costly due to manual rule compilation especially in large tagged corpora. They also require some semantic and syntactic analyses to be applied before pattern generation process, which can be avoided by using the LG approach. In this thesis, we tried to acquire LGs for person names from a large untagged Turkish financial news corpus by using an approach successfully applied to a Reuter&rsquo / s financial English news corpus recently by H. N. Traboulsi. We explored its applicability to Turkish language by using frequency, collocation, and concordance analyses. In addition, we constructed a list of Turkish reporting verbs. It is an important part of this study because there is no major study about reporting verbs in Turkish.

The aim of this work was to collect a body of evidence of the recategorization of mental verbs, and make an analysis of their meanings and grammar. The research showed that the most active in this respect were the verbs of perception. Depending on the grammatical and semantic co-text, the verbs of perception expressed a material, verbal, relational, existential or happening processes. The verbs of cognition were less active. Their secondary meanings often expressed the same process with a slight change of meaning. When recategorized, the verbs of cognition denoted material, existential, and verbal processes, as well as the processes of perception and affectivity. The verbs of affectivity were the least active. Most of them had only one or two meanings that denoted the same process.

Several theorists (amongst whom Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004:175) have stated that the verb (or the verbal group) is the core element in clauses and is largely responsible for the grammatical structure of language. In spite of this pivotal role that verbs fulfil in clauses, lexical specificity is rarely investigated in this class. Instead researchers prefer to investigate lexical specificity in the noun class. It is against this background that the main purpose of this study is to investigate specificity in the lexical verbs of first language (L1) English users and Black South African English (BSAE) users. In order to achieve this aim the secondary aims of the study are: to develop a framework for the analysis of lexical specificity in the lexical verb word class (ii) to compare specificity with regard to lexical verbs in L1 English and BSAE by using corpora, which allows one to firstly test the analysis framework on corpus data and secondly to determine whether or not lexical verbs in BSAE are less specific than lexical verbs in L1 English (iii) to establish the reasons for the differences in lexical specificity with regard to lexical verbs between L1 English and BSAE English. In order to achieve these aims, two corpora were used: the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (also known as LOCNESS) that consists of texts written by a subpopulation of L1 English users and the Tswana Learner English Corpus (also known as the TLE) that consists of texts written by a subpopulation of BSAE users. The results obtained in this study were interpreted from both a systemic functional perspective and a cognitive perspective. The initial quantitative results indicated that even though the BSAE users use lexical verbs (tokens) more frequently than L1 English users do, the BSAE users have fewer lexical verb lemmas (types) at their disposal than the L1 English users. Statistical tests determined that the mean type/token ratio between the two independent corpora is not only significant, but that the degree to which there is more specificity in the lexical verbs of the L1 English users than in the lexical verbs of the BSAE users is large. Due to space constraints, the qualitative part of the study focused only on the communication verbs in LOCNESS and the TLE. In order to provide an in-depth overview of the communication verbs, the communication verbs were divided into five semantic subcategories (using frequency counts and semantic considerations). They are: (i) to say something in a particular manner] (ii) to say something in order to express one’s feelings] (iii) to say something in order to convey information] (iv) to say something to someone in order to elicit a certain response] (v) to say something in response to something already said] Each of these semantic categories in turn was divided into semantic subcategories to present a detailed insight into the communication verbs employed in both LOCNESS and the TLE. In the study it was determined that there is overall more specificity in the lexical verbs of the L1 English users than in the lexical verbs of the L2 English users. It was also determined that there is overall more lexical diversity within the lexical verbs of the L1 English users. The following factors influenced the lexical specificity and lexical diversity in the corpora: (i) In cases where more general communication verbs are elaborated by verbs containing manner elaborations, the BSAE users tend not to use the more specific verbs. (ii) Communication verbs that usually play an important role in academic literacy (such as summarise and argue) are used to a lesser extent by the BSAE users than the L1 English users. (iii) In cases where a communication verb could possibly belong to another semantic category (as is the case with the verbs stress and maintain) the BSAE users tend to avoid using the verbs as communication verbs. (iv) Some communication verbs (such as demand and beg) acquired additional meanings in BSAE. (v) Some essay topics in both LOCNESS and the TLE influenced the frequencies of some communication verbs in the respective corpora. Considering the factors above, it was found that being a L2 English user means that English will not always function in the same contexts for the BSAE users as it would for the L1 English users. Therefore the vocabulary of the BSAE users will only be specific and diversified in those semantic categories needed to function in certain contexts. Consequently, the findings of this study can be used to contribute to the development of pedagogical material in academic literacy courses being presented to BSAE users to create an awareness of the variation in English and all the contexts in which it can function. The findings can also be of value to researchers in the fields of lexicography and computational linguistics. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2011

Several theorists (amongst whom Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004:175) have stated that the verb (or the verbal group) is the core element in clauses and is largely responsible for the grammatical structure of language. In spite of this pivotal role that verbs fulfil in clauses, lexical specificity is rarely investigated in this class. Instead researchers prefer to investigate lexical specificity in the noun class. It is against this background that the main purpose of this study is to investigate specificity in the lexical verbs of first language (L1) English users and Black South African English (BSAE) users. In order to achieve this aim the secondary aims of the study are: to develop a framework for the analysis of lexical specificity in the lexical verb word class (ii) to compare specificity with regard to lexical verbs in L1 English and BSAE by using corpora, which allows one to firstly test the analysis framework on corpus data and secondly to determine whether or not lexical verbs in BSAE are less specific than lexical verbs in L1 English (iii) to establish the reasons for the differences in lexical specificity with regard to lexical verbs between L1 English and BSAE English. In order to achieve these aims, two corpora were used: the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (also known as LOCNESS) that consists of texts written by a subpopulation of L1 English users and the Tswana Learner English Corpus (also known as the TLE) that consists of texts written by a subpopulation of BSAE users. The results obtained in this study were interpreted from both a systemic functional perspective and a cognitive perspective. The initial quantitative results indicated that even though the BSAE users use lexical verbs (tokens) more frequently than L1 English users do, the BSAE users have fewer lexical verb lemmas (types) at their disposal than the L1 English users. Statistical tests determined that the mean type/token ratio between the two independent corpora is not only significant, but that the degree to which there is more specificity in the lexical verbs of the L1 English users than in the lexical verbs of the BSAE users is large. Due to space constraints, the qualitative part of the study focused only on the communication verbs in LOCNESS and the TLE. In order to provide an in-depth overview of the communication verbs, the communication verbs were divided into five semantic subcategories (using frequency counts and semantic considerations). They are: (i) to say something in a particular manner] (ii) to say something in order to express one’s feelings] (iii) to say something in order to convey information] (iv) to say something to someone in order to elicit a certain response] (v) to say something in response to something already said] Each of these semantic categories in turn was divided into semantic subcategories to present a detailed insight into the communication verbs employed in both LOCNESS and the TLE. In the study it was determined that there is overall more specificity in the lexical verbs of the L1 English users than in the lexical verbs of the L2 English users. It was also determined that there is overall more lexical diversity within the lexical verbs of the L1 English users. The following factors influenced the lexical specificity and lexical diversity in the corpora: (i) In cases where more general communication verbs are elaborated by verbs containing manner elaborations, the BSAE users tend not to use the more specific verbs. (ii) Communication verbs that usually play an important role in academic literacy (such as summarise and argue) are used to a lesser extent by the BSAE users than the L1 English users. (iii) In cases where a communication verb could possibly belong to another semantic category (as is the case with the verbs stress and maintain) the BSAE users tend to avoid using the verbs as communication verbs. (iv) Some communication verbs (such as demand and beg) acquired additional meanings in BSAE. (v) Some essay topics in both LOCNESS and the TLE influenced the frequencies of some communication verbs in the respective corpora. Considering the factors above, it was found that being a L2 English user means that English will not always function in the same contexts for the BSAE users as it would for the L1 English users. Therefore the vocabulary of the BSAE users will only be specific and diversified in those semantic categories needed to function in certain contexts. Consequently, the findings of this study can be used to contribute to the development of pedagogical material in academic literacy courses being presented to BSAE users to create an awareness of the variation in English and all the contexts in which it can function. The findings can also be of value to researchers in the fields of lexicography and computational linguistics. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2011