<p>Abstract: This paper is based on a qualitative investigation concerning the effect of errors on the intelligibility of learner texts and whether there are some errors that can be considered graver than others. The investigation was based on five student texts that were collected at an upper secondary school in the Swedish province of Värmland. The texts were sent to five native speaker evaluators in Britain and the United States of America. The errors represented were categorized as followed: substance, grammar, word choice, transfer errors and other errors.The results indicate that errors concerning substance, word choice, other errors and grammar were not considered grave. Concerning the grammatical errors, there were only a small number of cases that were considered grave. Therefore, the conclusion was drawn that grammatical errors do not affect the intelligibility of any of the five texts. However, the results from the investigation show that transfer errors, i.e. when the writer has transferred characteristics from the first language to the target language, were considered affecting the intelligibility to a larger extent than errors belonging to the other categories.</p>

This study investigates the morphosyntactic competence of advanced ESL learners and native speakers of English. Using the framework of the Government and Binding approach (Chomsky,1981, 1986), the study tests the predictions made by the evolved Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 2009), namely that the grammars of advanced L2 learners are unreliable(where reliability means converging to the L2 grammar), non-convergent to the L2 grammar, and characteristic of patches (where patches are extragrammatical principles independent of the normal syntactic processes). The participants of the study were tested on three tasks (timed grammaticality judgment task, a correction task, and a preference task). The findings of the study indicate that the difference between the morphosyntactic competence of the advanced ESL learners and that of native speakers is gradient rather than categorical.

This study investigates the morphosyntactic competence of advanced ESL learners and native speakers of English. Using the framework of the Government and Binding approach (Chomsky,1981, 1986), the study tests the predictions made by the evolved Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 2009), namely that the grammars of advanced L2 learners are unreliable(where reliability means converging to the L2 grammar), non-convergent to the L2 grammar, and characteristic of patches (where patches are extragrammatical principles independent of the normal syntactic processes). The participants of the study were tested on three tasks (timed grammaticality judgment task, a correction task, and a preference task). The findings of the study indicate that the difference between the morphosyntactic competence of the advanced ESL learners and that of native speakers is gradient rather than categorical.

Cette thèse propose une analyse des temps composés (ou "parfaits") en allemand, anglais, espagnol et français. La modélisation du système temporo-aspectuel mise en place applique l'idée qu'aussi bien le "temps" que l'"aspect" sont des catégories obligatoires, et insiste sur la nécessité d'une troisième catégorie, "temps relatif", pour rendre compte des parfaits. Spécifiquement, ces derniers disposent d'un trait de temps relatif PARFAIT, caractérisé par une relation d'antériorité stricte. Cette sémantique du PARFAIT est mise à l'épreuve dans une étude des adverbes de type "depuis", et des temps surcomposés. Les interactions du PARFAIT avec les différentes valeurs de la catégorie ASPECT mènent à une analyse de l'aspect non-marqué et de la relation scalaire entre aspects perfectif et imperfectif. L'étude de deux adverbes, "gerade" en allemand et "tocmai" en roumain, montre qu'il existe des items lexicaux qui interagissent avec ces échelles temporelles.

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the amount of language models (i.e., dose frequency) that Spanish-English bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) require in order to consistently produce challenging target grammatical forms for 6 morphemes, 3 in English and 3 in Spanish, via a structural priming task. Participants included two 2nd grade children with SLI, five typically developing kindergarten children, and three typically developing 2nd grade peers. Participants were administered 10 control and 10 experimental cloze phrase computer tasks for each morpheme. In the control condition participants finished cloze phrase sentences which targeted the target morpheme while in the experimental task participants heard a model of the target morpheme and were subsequently required to finish the cloze phrase. Results replicated results of structural priming for all groups in each language. Results also indicated that Spanish was more robust in producing morphological priming effects in comparison to English morphological forms possibly due to linguistic differences. Clinical and research implications are discussed. / text

Typically developing Spanish-English bilingual children's production of twelve grammatical morphemes was analyzed for accuracy and described as a function of their English mastery, as indexed by mean length of utterance (MLU). Results revealed positive trends in morpheme accuracy as MLU increased. Despite a large degree of between subject variability, the data demonstrated general patterns that were consistent with previous literature, namely that the rate and trajectory of morpheme acquisition differs from monolingual norms, and that particular morphemes are predictably more and less challenging for bilingual children to produce accurately. MLU "cut-points" were suggested based on functional breaks in accuracy for several morphemes. / text

In this thesis four children, between the ages of 6 and 7, identified as at risk for language or reading impairment, participated in a bilingual intervention. The bilingual literacy intervention included a grammatical component that incorporated past tense verb, noun phrase, and prepositional phrase instruction. The children completed a sentence repetition test (SRT), which allowed examiners to measure grammatical progress over the coarse of the intervention. Overall SRT results showed that moderate grammatical gains were made during the intervention. The study also provided data on the sensitivity of SRT in targeted grammatical areas. The results showed that the past tense verb and noun phrase portions of the SRT had low sensitivity to progress. These findings suggest that clinicians can use SRT to measure overall progress; however, supplemental tasks should be used to evaluate past tense verb and noun phrase abilities in English-dominant bilingual children with language or reading impairment. / text

This study investigated grammatical difficulty from the perspective of second language (L2) learners in relation to their overall L2 proficiency and L2 performance and knowledge. The design included the administration of a student questionnaire, an interview, a proficiency test, and oral production and metalinguistic tasks. The proficiency test and questionnaire were administered to 277 university-level Chinese EFL learners in Taiwan. The questionnaire explored learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty of 20 English grammar features. Thirty of the students who completed the questionnaire met with the researcher individually to complete a grammatical difficulty ranking activity, 2 grammar exercises and 2 stimulated recalls, all of which aimed to further explore why the learners considered the selected features to be more (or less) difficult for them to learn. The oral production tasks were administered to 27 of the students who completed the questionnaire. The metalinguistic task was administered to 185 of the students who participated in the questionnaire survey. The questionnaire results indicate that, overall, the participants did not perceive the 20 target features to be difficult to learn. Notwithstanding, the ranking results of the questionnaire suggest that learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty are based on whether the rules to describe the formation of language features are easy or difficult to articulate. The qualitative results show that the learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty were influenced by several factors including their L2 knowledge, L2 grammar learning experience, and L1 knowledge, all of which were examined with reference to syntactic, semantic, and/or pragmatic levels. In terms of the relationship between learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty and their overall L2 proficiency, results show that learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty do not vary at the syntactic level, but that there is some variation at the pragmatic level. Regarding the relationship between learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty and their L2 knowledge, results suggest that learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty vary according to their implicit/explicit knowledge of the features in question; at the explicit knowledge level, the feature perceived to be less difficult to learn is used more accurately, while at the implicit knowledge level, this is not the case.

This study investigated grammatical difficulty from the perspective of second language (L2) learners in relation to their overall L2 proficiency and L2 performance and knowledge. The design included the administration of a student questionnaire, an interview, a proficiency test, and oral production and metalinguistic tasks. The proficiency test and questionnaire were administered to 277 university-level Chinese EFL learners in Taiwan. The questionnaire explored learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty of 20 English grammar features. Thirty of the students who completed the questionnaire met with the researcher individually to complete a grammatical difficulty ranking activity, 2 grammar exercises and 2 stimulated recalls, all of which aimed to further explore why the learners considered the selected features to be more (or less) difficult for them to learn. The oral production tasks were administered to 27 of the students who completed the questionnaire. The metalinguistic task was administered to 185 of the students who participated in the questionnaire survey. The questionnaire results indicate that, overall, the participants did not perceive the 20 target features to be difficult to learn. Notwithstanding, the ranking results of the questionnaire suggest that learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty are based on whether the rules to describe the formation of language features are easy or difficult to articulate. The qualitative results show that the learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty were influenced by several factors including their L2 knowledge, L2 grammar learning experience, and L1 knowledge, all of which were examined with reference to syntactic, semantic, and/or pragmatic levels. In terms of the relationship between learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty and their overall L2 proficiency, results show that learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty do not vary at the syntactic level, but that there is some variation at the pragmatic level. Regarding the relationship between learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty and their L2 knowledge, results suggest that learners’ perceptions of grammatical difficulty vary according to their implicit/explicit knowledge of the features in question; at the explicit knowledge level, the feature perceived to be less difficult to learn is used more accurately, while at the implicit knowledge level, this is not the case.

SANTRAUKA Skirtingų kultūrų ir kalbų gausa sąlygoja būtinybę vienos tautos vertybes, mintis ir stilius perteikti kitai, taigi vertimas tampa kultūrinių kontaktų kūrimo ir plėtimo priemone. Kadangi vertimo svarba tarpkultūrinės komunikacijos raidoje nuolat auga, jis susilaukia vis daugiau lingvistų dėmesio. Gramatinė vertimo pusė sukelia eilę sunkumų, todėl geras vertėjas turi ne tik puikiai išmanyti gramatikos taisykles, bet ir gebėti jas taikyti praktiškai bei tinkamai atlikti įvairius pakeitimus, kurie neišvengiami vertimo procese. Šis darbas skirtas anglų kalbos gramatinės inkorporacijos proceso pristatymui ir jo perteikimo lietuvių kalboje būdų ir ypatumų analizei. Gramatinės inkorporacijos procesas, apibūdina konstrukcijas, kuriose pasak Farkas ir de Swart (2004:1), veiksmažodis ir vienas iš jo argumentų sudaro glaudžiai susietą junginį. Šis fenomenas neretai tampa vertimo sunkumų priežastimi, kadangi yra daug atvejų, kai inkorporacinių konstrukcijų pateikimas originalo ir vertimo kalbose skiriasi leksine ir semantine prasme. Tokie vertimo sunkumai bei jų analizė ir suteikia pagrindą šiam darbui, kuriame gramatinės inkorporacijos konstrukcijos analizuojamos gramatiniu ir vertimo aspektu. Darbe, naudojantis aprašomuoju, gretinamuoju ir statistiniu metodais, apžvelgta mokslinė literatūra, atskleidžiamos inkorporacinių konstrukcijų ypatybės, pateikiami ir aptariami pavyzdžiai bei analizuojami jų vertimo būdai. Atliktas tyrimas patvirtino hipotezę, kad ne visos... [to full text]