Neurolinguistic Programming and English Language Teaching: An Exploration of Linguistic Variants in NLP for its Connection to ELT

The human brain, which can be programmed through a multiplicity of practices, is the foundation of NLP. Language teachers can effectively program their students for improved language output if made aware of the Neuro-functioning of the brain. This new-fangled aspect of language teaching is, hitherto, an uncharted area in the Pakistani teaching context. The current study seeks to look into the existing estate of English language pedagogy in Pakistani scenario with the assistance of the NLP Milton Model, based on the employment of the language patterns by famous hypnotist-Milton Erickson. The focal point of this model is- presupposition, mind read, lost performative, unspecified verb, comparative deletion, cause and effect, universal quantifier, complex equivalence, modal operator, nominalization, and unspecified referential index. It has implications, to a great extent, in ELT to generate preferred results. For this study, the sample population is chosen through purposive sampling technique and encompasses language skills’ classes; whereas, the five English Language institutions were preferred through random sampling method. This study, accordingly, underpins the exploitation of NLP as a toolkit for effectual language pedagogy. Besides, it also advocates copious ways for meaningful, motivational, and momentous communication between language teachers and learners.

Dutch

This chapter discusses ellipsis in Dutch and the dialects of Dutch. It provides detailed information on the major types of ellipsis as they have been presented in Part III of this handbook: gapping and stripping, predicate ellipsis (VP-ellipsis and pseudogapping), Conjunction Reduction and Right-Node Raising, sluicing, fragments, nominal ellipsis, Comparative Deletion, and Null Complement Anaphora. It discusses the main insights from the literature as well as new observations with respect to these constructions. The final section shows that the Dutch dialects display an enormous amount of variation concerning ellipsis constructions. In particular, it examines the variation in NP-ellipsis with possessive, demonstrative, and adjectival remnants and variation with respect to sluicing.

Russian

This chapter provides an overview of the major types of elliptical constructions in Russian: NP-ellipsis, clausal ellipsis (sluicing, sprouting, polarity ellipsis), vP-ellipsis, gapping, comparative deletion, Right-Node Raising, and fragment answers. The aim of this chapter is to examine these constructions in a cross-linguistic perspective, highlighting phenomena that seem peculiar to Russian, and outlining the set of restrictions on ellipsis licensing that does not differ from those of other languages. In addition, we discuss the controversial puzzle of verb-stranding constructions: these constructions seem to involve ellipsis, but its nature is still a matter of debate in the current literature.

Comparative Deletion

This chapter presents a selective overview of three classes of ellipsis phenomena that manifest themselves in the comparative construction: Comparative Deletion (CD), Comparative Ellipsis (CE), and phrasal comparatives (PCs). A survey of some central empirical generalizations and their theoretical interpretation in the extant literature consolidates three findings. First, while CD displays all the characteristics of a syntactic ellipsis operation, its exact nature still remains elusive. Although some core properties of CD fall out from modeling CD in analogy to the matching analysis for the relative clause, the competing raising account is better equipped to tackle others, such as the identity condition on ellipsis and opacity. Second, CE proves less recalcitrant in that most of its core manifestations are reducible to independently attested ellipsis operations, specifically those found in coordinate structures. Finally, as for PCs, the evidence available at the moment is best compatible with a hybrid approach that treats PCs as base-generated constructions in some languages, but derives them by syntactic ellipsis in others.

How to Neutralize a Finite Clause Boundary: Phase Theory and the Grammar of Bound Pronouns

A bound pronoun in the subject position of a finite embedded clause renders the clause boundary relatively transparent to relations ordinarily confined to monoclausal, control, and raising configurations. For example, too/ enough-movement structures involving a finite clause boundary are degraded in sentences like * This book is too long [for John to claim [that Bill read ___ in a day]] but improved when the finite clause has a bound pronominal subject as in ? This book is too long [for John1 to claim [that he1 read ___ in a day]]. This bound pronoun effect holds across a wide range of phenomena including too/ enough-movement, tough-movement, gapping, comparative deletion, antecedent-contained deletion, quantifier scope interaction, multiple questions, pseudogapping, reciprocal binding, and multiple sluicing; we confirm the effect via a sentence acceptability experiment targeting some of these phenomena. Our account has two crucial ingredients: (a) bound pronouns optionally enter the derivation with unvalued ϕ-features and (b) phases are defined in part by convergence, so that under certain conditions, unvalued features void the phasal status of CP and extend the locality domain for syntactic operations.