Yes / Young children often struggle with referential communications because they fail to compare all valid referents. In two studies, we investigated this comparison process. In Study 1, 4- to 7-year-olds (N=114) were asked to categorize pairs of objects according to their similarities or differences, and then identified a unique quality of one of the objects by responding to a referential question. Children found it easier to judge the differences between objects than similarities. Correct judgments of differences predicted accurate identifications. In Study 2, 4- to 5-year-olds (N=36) again categorized according to similarities or differences, but this time were asked for verbal explanations of their decisions. Recognition of differences was easier than recognition of similarities. Explanations of errors were either: a) ambiguous; b) color error: c) thematic (creative imaginative explanations). Children offered thematic explanations when they failed to recognize similarities between objects, but not for errors of difference.

No description available.

Suivant la proposition de Tarski (1936), la sémantique vériconditionnelle associeà une phrase déclarative des conditions de vérité. Ainsi, comprendre le sens dela phrase “Il pleut”, c’est pouvoir dire après avoir regardé par la fenêtre si elle estvraie ou fausse. Toutefois, ceci ne permet de rendre compte que des phrases déclaratives,et pas des questions puisqu’aucune situation ne rendra jamais la question“Qui a appelé ce matin ?” vraie ou fausse. Hamblin (1973) propose la premièrethéorie des questions dans le cadre de la sémantique véri-conditionnelle, et proposede leur associer des conditions de résolutions, c’est-à-dire des ensembles deréponses. Comprendre le sens de la question “Qui a appelé ce matin ?” c’est alorssavoir que “Jean a appelé” est une réponse possible, tandis que “il pleuvait” n’enest pas une.Très rapidement, l’étude de la sémantique des questions s’est tournée versles questions enchâssées dans des phrases déclaratives (questions indirectes). Eneffet, il est beaucoup plus aisé de juger des conditions de vérité d’une phrasesdéclarative que des conditions de résolution d’une question. Or moyennant deshypothèses sur la sémantique des verbes enchâssant des questions (‘savoir’, ‘oublier’.. . ), on peut relier les conditions de vérité d’une phrase déclarative au sensde la question qu’elle enchâsse. Cette approche, proposée par Karttunen (1977), adonné lieu à une littérature théorique très riche. / Two important questions arise from the recent literature on embedded questions.First, Heim (1994) proposed that embedded questions are ambiguous betweena weakly and strongly exhaustive reading. Spector (2005) recently proposedan intermediate exhaustive reading as well. Second, adverbs of quantity such as’mostly’ can quantify over answers to an embedded questions (Berman, 1991). Ananalysis of this phenomena reveals an analogy between embedded questions andplural determiner phrases, and suggests a fine-grained structures for the denotationof questions (Lahiri, 2002).The first part of the dissertation consist of three psycholinguistic studies on theexhaustive readings of questions under ‘know’ in English, the acquisition of thesereadings under ‘savoir’ by French 5-to-6-ear-olds, and the properties of emotivefactivepredicates such as ‘surprise’. The second part presents a theory of embeddedquestions built on Klinedinst and Rothschild’s (2011) proposal to derive exhaustivereadings as implicatures, although it differs in the fine-grained structureit adopts for questions denotations in order to account for plurality effects as well.The theory solves problem raised by B. R. George (2013) and makes predictions fora larger range of sentences.

Instructional design and delivery may be one tool available to teachers to increase the academic and social behaviors of all students in the classroom. Effective instruction is an evidence-based teaching strategy that can be used to efficiently educate our youth across all learning environments. One effective instructional strategy includes increasing students’ opportunities to respond to instructor-posed questions during lectures. Students may respond to questions using a response card system as a way to promote active engagement. This study examined the most common form of instructor-posed questions presented during lecture, recall and recognition questions, to determine the differential effects on students’ academic and participation behavior in a college classroom. Results found no differentiation in students’ academic behavior with respect to question type. Students’ participation behavior was greater when the instructor used class wide active responding procedures than observed in baseline conditions that represented typical college instruction.

This paper surveys a range of constructions in which prosody affects discourse function and discourse structure.We discuss English tag questions, negative polar questions, and what we call “focus” questions. We postulate that these question types are complex speech acts and outline an analysis in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) to account for the interactions between prosody and discourse.

ABSTRACT THE EFFECT OF ASKING REFERENTIAL QUESTIONS ON THE PARTICIPATION AND ORAL PRODUCTION OF LOWER LEVEL LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN READING CLASSES &Ouml / zcan, Seda MA, Program in English Language Teaching Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Nurdan G&uuml / rb&uuml / z May, 2010, 84 pages This study aims at investigating the effect of asking referential questions on the oral participation and production of lower level language learners in reading classes. The main purpose of the study is to inquire whether the reticence of lower level language learners to participate in lessons due to their poor language ability could be overcome by asking questions that require their opinions and comments, rather than solely answering questions to display their comprehension. For this purpose an action research was conducted in a lower level preparatory class at Izmir University of Economics over a 4-week period. This action research included a preliminary investigation stage to discover the reasons for low level of participation in these classes and to come up with a hypothesis to solve the problem, and 3 reading lessons to test the hypothesis. During those 3 lessons students were exposed to both display and referential questions and the number of students and responses were calculated for both question types to collect quantitative data. In addition, the mean lengths (in words) of students&rsquo / responses to display and referential questions were calculated to find out the differences of students&rsquo / responses in terms of length between display and referential questions. The analysis of quantitative data indicates that lower level language learners participate more when asked a referential question. Additionally, referential v questions engender longer responses compared to the responses given to the display questions.

published_or_final_version / Language Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This thesis explores how question FORCE (Rizzi 1997) is represented and licensed in Korean polar alternative questions (Korean PAQs). The syntactic properties of polar alternative questions have not been fully discussed in the literature; this work seeks to address that gap. The thesis has two main components. First, I provide an initial detailed investigation into the syntactic structure of Korean polar alternative questions (Korean PAQs), also called A-not-A questions, such as ciwu-nun ca-ni an ca-ni? ‘Is Jiwoo sleeping or not?’ I argue that Korean PAQs consist syntactically of a single clause. In this respect, Korean PAQs are distinct from both alternative questions and polar questions. The second goal of this thesis is to account for the asymmetric behaviour of complementizers in main clauses and embedded clauses. Variant complementizers occur in main clauses in Korean PAQs, while neutralized ci is the only complementizer which is licensed to appear in embedded clauses. Furthermore, Korean PAQs are incompatible with constituent questions in main clauses, but compatible with them in embedded clauses. This asymmetry is explained by appealing to the notion of a unique illocutionary question force in main clauses. In main clauses, the syntactic constituent ForceP cannot carry more than one kind of illocutionary question force: it bears either constituent question force or polar alternative question force, but not both. In contrast, since embedded clauses contain non-question (non-answer-requiring) complementizers, separate question forms do not conflict with each other in this location. Based on a wide range of empirical data from Korean, this thesis proposes to distinguish Force (‘question’) complementizers in the main clauses from Type (‘interrogative’) complementizers in embedded clauses. The novel data from Korean polar alternative questions require a major rethinking of the received view on the analysis of complementizers as expressed in Rizzi (1997). My analysis shows that the pragmatic categories of illocutionary force are highly significant for syntactic analysis in ways that have not been treated consistently in theoretical discussions of questions, in particular as regards the very distinct roles of main and embedded ‘questions’. / Graduate

Thèse--Paris. / Published also as Institut de droit comparé, Études de sociologie et d'ethnologie juridiques, 34. Bibliography: p. [163]-164.

Multiple-choice (MCQs) and short-answer questions (SAQs) are the most common test formats for assessing English reading proficiency. While the former provides test-takers with prescribed options, the latter requires short written responses. Test developers favor MCQs over SAQs for the following reasons: less time required for rating, high rater agreement, and wide content coverage. This mixed methods dissertation investigated the impacts of test format on reading performance, metacognitive awareness, test-completion processes, and task perceptions. Participants were eighty English as a second language (ESL) learners from a Midwestern community college. They were first divided into two groups of approximately equivalent reading proficiencies and then completed MCQ and SAQ English reading tests in different orders. After completing each format, participants filled out a survey about demographic information, strategy use, and perceptions of test formats. They also completed a 5-point Likert-scale survey to assess their degree of metacognitive awareness. At the end, sixteen participants were randomly chosen to engage in retrospective interviews focusing on their strategy use and task perceptions. This study employed a mixed methods approach in which quantitative and qualitative strands converged to draw an overall meta-inference. For the quantitative strand, descriptive statistics, paired sample t-tests, item analyses, two-way ANOVAs, and correlation analyses were conducted to investigate 1) the differences between MCQ and SAQ test performance and 2) the relationship between test performance and metacognitive awareness. For the qualitative strand, test-takers’ MCQ and SAQ test completion processes and task perceptions were explored using coded interview and survey responses related to strategy use and perceptions of test formats. Results showed that participants performed differently on MCQ and SAQ reading tests, even though both tests were highly correlated. The paired sample t-tests revealed that participants’ English reading and writing proficiencies might account for the MCQ and SAQ performance disparity. Moreover, there was no positive relationship between reading test performance and the degree of metacognitive awareness generated by the frequency of strategy use. Correlation analyses suggested whether a higher or lower English reading proficiency of the participants was more important than strategy use. Although the frequency of strategy use did not benefit test performance, strategies implemented for MCQ and SAQ tests were found to generate interactive processes allowing participants to gain deeper understanding of the source texts. Furthermore, participants’ perceptions toward MCQs, SAQs, and a combination of both revealed positive and negative influences among test format, reading comprehension, and language learning. Therefore, participants’ preferences of test format should be considered when measuring their English reading proficiency. This study has pedagogical implications on the use of various test formats in L2 reading classrooms.