Accuracy order in L2 grammatical morphemes: Corpus evidence from different proficiency levels of Turkish learners of English

The present study empirically scrutinizes the fixed natural order of grammatical morphemes relying on a manual analysis of an EFL learner corpus. Specifically, we test whether the accuracy order of L2 grammatical morphemes in the case of L1 Turkish speakers of English deviates from Krashen’s (1977) natural order and whether proficiency levels play a role in the order of acquisition of these morphemes. With this in mind, we focus on the (in)accuracy of nine English grammatical morphemes with 2883 cases manually tagged by the UAM Corpus Tool in the written exam scripts of Turkish learners of English. The results based on target-like use scores provide evidence for deviation from what is widely believed to be a set order of acquisition of these grammatical morphemes by second language learners. In light of such findings, we challenge the view that the internally driven processes of mastering grammatical morphemes in English for interlanguage users are largely independent of their L1. Regardless of L2 grammar proficiency in our data, the observed accuracy of some morphemes ranked low in comparison with the so-called natural order. These grammatical morphemes were almost exclusively non-existent features in participants’ mother tongue (e.g., third person singular –s, articles and the irregular past tense forms), thus suggesting the influence of L1 in this respect.

Evidentiality in Selibu

Selibu is a Mandarin-Khams Tibetan mixed language with about 900 native speakers in northwest Yunnan, People’s Republic of China. As a Form-Semantics mixed language, it derives most of its lexicon and grammatical morphemes from Southwest Mandarin and borrows its morphosyntactic and semantic structure from Alangu Tibetan. This article examines the contact-induced emergence of a five-category complex evidential system in Selibu with a detailed comparison with its source system in the model language, Alangu Tibetan. Our discussion focuses on the hybrid features of Selibu evidentiality in both forms and functions and also on its structural formation, which does not represent a Form-Semantics mixed type in this particular domain.

A Speech Planning Account of Guarani Grammatical Borrowings in Paraguayan Spanish

Previous studies view the use of Guarani grammatical morphemes in Paraguayan Spanish simply as grammatical borrowings (if one focuses on the morphosyntactic status of mixed forms) or as an ill-defined “interference”. But so far there has been no examination of the bilingual planning mechanisms that license and constrain these language mixes. In this paper, I explore the idea that the emergence of grammatical borrowings can be explained by message conceptualization procedures that are influenced by asymmetries in each language’s cognitive dominance. This work thus contributes to our understanding of language contact by applying what we know about language processing and utterance planning to explaining the outcomes observed in language mixing. In so doing, I hope to facilitate a tighter integration between the psycholinguistic planning and language contact literatures.

Teaching Vocabulary and Morphosyntax

This chapter takes a deep dive into the intricacies of vocabulary and grammar that DHH children must understand and use. The chapter explores the depth and breadth of vocabulary, its abstract and concrete nature, content and function words, Theory of Mind language, super verbs, academic language, and decontextualized language, and provides a review of vocabulary programs. It describes how to teach grammatical structures, including grammatical morphemes and syntax, from exposure through production, focusing on supralexical chunks or word bundles. Finally, it explores such strategies as bootstrapping and syntactic priming. As with other chapters, it ends with discussion questions focusing on application of the strategies described with the students on the caseloads provided.

A PRE-STANDARD CHUVASH TEXT WITH A DATIVE-ACCUSATIVE DISTINCTION

This paper introduces the linguistic evidence extracted from the first translation of the Gospel of Matthew into Chuvash, which was published in Kazan in 1820. On the basis of a detailed analysis of dialect-specific features, and especially phonological and morphological innovations, the attested variety should be classified among the Kărmăš—Xĕrlĕ Čutay varieties of Viryal Chuvash. Such a conclusion is consistent with the available extra-linguistic evidence regarding the dialect affiliation of this early Bible translation. Many of the archaic features found in the first translation of the Gospel of Matthew into Chuvash were previously documented in other preStandard Chuvash texts from the 18th—19th centuries. One salient feature that distinguishes the Gospel translation from the other contemporary sources is that the attested variety retains the old distinction between the dative and accusative case markers (after a limited number of lexical and grammatical morphemes). Modern Chuvash makes use of the syncretic dative-accusative case suffix -(n)A, dial. -(j)A, which developed through the merger of reflexes of Proto-Turkic dative and accusative case markers, owing to phonological and paradigmatic factors. The loss of the dative-accusative distinction is usually considered an early phenomenon in the history of Chuvash because there is no trace of such a distinction in the modern Chuvash dialects. However, the fact that at least one of the Viryal Chuvash varieties featured the dative-accusative distinction as late as the 19th century provides evidence for a recent origin of the case syncretism in Chuvash. This makes the first translation of the Gospel of Matthew into Chuvash a key source on the development of the Chuvash case system prior to the emergence of the dative-accusative syncretism.

The segmental phonetics and phonology of Hyow, A Tibeto-Burman language of Bangladesh

This paper presents a description and analysis of segmental phonetics and phonology of Hyow, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by almost 4,000 people in the southeast of Bangladesh. Hyow demonstrates phonological features which are absent in other Chin languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch. Proto Kuki-Chin initial voiceless nasals are not only preserved in Mara and Central Chin languages (Van Bik 2009: 220), but also in Hyow. Unlike other Southern Chin languages, Hyow final liquids are sometimes preserved or developed into central approximants. In fact, final liquids are preserved in Bangladesh Hyow, and in two varieties of Laitu – Keyni and Myebon – and Laisaw in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. The salient and prevalent phonological process of re-syllabification in Hyow demonstrates that the glottal stop cannot be treated as a phonetic property of the coda-cluster sonorants, which is otherwise treated as glottalized in some Chin languages by scholars, e.g. Hakha Lai (Hyman & Van Bik 2002: 114). Hyow does not show a phonemic contrast between long and short vowels which is very often found in Chin languages. Though Mainland Southeast Asian Languages are profoundly known for having sesquisyllables or reduced syllables, in Hyow, vowels of initial syllables of disyllabic words carrying grammatical morphemes are harmonized with vowels of root-initial syllables, which confirms the absence of such type of reduced syllables in Hyow. The phonological description and analysis in this paper are furthermore supported by phonetic data and illustrations. Discussions of variant phonetic realizations of certain segments have also been included.

Source/Goal (a)symmetry

This paper compares the expression of Source and Goal in German and Polish, on the basis of descriptions elicited with a series of video clips. As satellite-framed languages (Talmy 1985, 2000), both German and Polish mainly rely on grammatical morphemes to encode Path of motion with respect to Source and Goal. Nevertheless, despite this shared typological feature, these languages also display fine morphosyntactic and semantic differences. Our study reveals that the expression of Source and Goal is more asymmetrical in German than in Polish, both in types of linguistic resources and in semantic distinctions. We show that German speakers tend to combine Path satellites with Path verbs – including both deictic satellites and deictic verbs – more frequently in Source-oriented events, depicting them with finer semantic distinctions than Goal-oriented events. In the expression of the Ground, however, they tend to make finer distinctions in the expression of Goals as compared to Sources, by using a greater variety of prepositions. Polish speakers, by contrast, tend to express Source and Goal in a more symmetrical fashion. These cross-linguistic differences are discussed in the light of language-specific characteristics and their role in the expression – symmetrical or asymmetrical – of Source and Goal.

Introduction

The introduction states the main question of the book and sets the theoretical basis of the study; namely that every language codes a unique semantic structure in its grammatical system. This semantic structure consists of functional domains and subdomains, and each subdomain consists of a finite number of functions. The functional domains, subdomains, and functions can change over time. Even if languages have identical functional domains, the internal composition of these domains may vary. Every language contains a finite number of coding means such as lexical categories and derivational morphology, linear orders, phonological means, inflectional morphology, deployment of lexical items to code grammatical functions, including serial verb constructions, adpositions, and free grammatical morphemes. The role of the formal means is to allow for the realization of the functions from the semantic structure of the language and to assure the principle functional transparency.